For our Newsmakers series, we conducted a phone interview with Ashley Swearengin, Chief Operations Officer of Fresno's Regional Jobs Initiative. Read on for this local business leader's story of her journey through Fresno, told in her words and in an archive of stories from The Bee in which she has appeared.

Tell me about when you came to Fresno, or if you grew up here?

I moved here as a freshman in high school, which was January of 1987, and I've been here ever since. And it's the longest place I've ever lived.

I think your trail with The Bee starts out at the law firm of -- I want to say, Baker, Manock and Jensen -- and from there, I know I saw Central Valley Business Incubator, Central California Futures Institute, could you run me through a timeline of your moves through Fresno?

OK, started with Baker, Manock and Jensen, I was their marketing person. I was there from 1995 to 1998. In October of 1998, I went over to become director of the Central Valley Business Incubator. I got interested in that as an MBA student at Fresno State, and was working with Dr. [Tim] Stearns, the entrepreneurship professor. And he was working with the Business Council on getting that project started, and suggested that I go, and just kind of try it out. I actually had visions of starting my own business, and he suggested I go there, get that nonprofit set up, get it going for about six months, and then go off and start my own business. But I ended up staying there two years and fell in love with entrepreneurship and its benefits in the community ...

My background is business and I love the strategy of business, but I also love this region very much, and it was a place where I got to help new businesses and sort of satisfy the business part of me. But then I saw the social and economic benefit to the region, so I kind of got very involved in this sort of civic activist/economic development space. So the Incubator really brought those two things together for me.

I did that for two years and then, about that time, let's see, January of 2000, the Great Valley Center released a report called "The Economic Future of the San Joaquin Valley." And it talked all about the new economy, and at this time of course the dot-com thing was going wild, there was money everywhere, you know, there was just all this economic prosperity, certainly throughout California and across the nation. And we weren't feeling any of it in the Central San Joaquin Valley. And that was very frustrating.

Great Valley Center released this report saying the Valley's got to change the way it competes and move towards higher value-added industries. And the lightbulb went off. For me, it just really was a great blueprint, there were a number of other business people in the area -- Ken Newby, for example, Deb Nankivell at the Business Council, Alan Pierrot at the Business Council -- a core group of people said, "OK, we've got to do something about the economic conditions here and we've gotta completely revamp the way things work."

So the Business Council largely was driving this, and they knew that it needed full-time staff attention, so they went to Dr. [John] Welty [president of California State University, Fresno] and said, "We need an entity to drive new economy conditions, would you be willing to make space available on campus at Fresno State to be the staffed leadership for that effort?" And he offered up the Central California Futures Institute, and suggested that that be the platform for working with the Business Council on new economy initiatives. And the Business Council and Dr. Welty asked me to come from the Incubator to lead that.

So that happened in 2000, September of 2000, and as the director of the Futures Institute, our main project was working with the Business Council on the Fresno-area Collaborative Regional Initiative, which was sort of the first -- one of the major parts that went into the RJI. So we spent about three years on the Collaborative Regional Initiative, and in that time, the Futures Institute kind of morphed and went from this think tank, publications, release information but not really be the people to drive any specific recommendations or change, we decided that we actually should be the ones on the ground championing initiatives and making things happen. So we changed from the Futures Institute to the Office of Community and Economic Development, to reflect our more hands-on approach. ...

So then the CRI happened for about two or three years, and then we linked up with the Mayor's Council of Economic Advisors and launched the Regional Jobs Initiative.

To dip back in time a little bit beyond that, where'd you go to high school?

I graduated from Fresno Christian. ... I spent one semester at Clovis West, and then went to Fresno Christian for my 10th, 11th and 12th grade.

And then you went on to Fresno State?

Right.

What beyond business has kept you in the Valley?

You know, my immediate family is here, but really more than anything, it was just a philosophical -- well, let me back up. My husband and I, when we were engaged ... we got married in 1994, so the summer of '94, he had moved around a lot as a kid, and I had moved around some, not as much as he, but enough to know, sort of, what moving is like. And also I had lived in some places long enough to know the benefits of putting roots down and sort of blooming-where-planted. And the two of us, it was just like a knowing, we just knew that we were supposed to be in Fresno, whatever job opportunities would present themselves. We weren't sure, we knew it might have meant some sacrifice career-wise, but it just was a much more attractive option than always moving around for the job. And my husband was in broadcast TV at that time, and of course, those folks move -- I mean, you get a job and the next day that you're in your new job, you start sending out tapes to get to the next market. And that was just not an attractive option. We just felt like, you know, putting roots down, working to benefit the area. That's just so much more satisfying than town-hopping. So we always knew we'd be here.

And your husband, he was a broadcaster, is he still broadcasting?

He's on radio now. He's the general manager and he does on-air stuff at ESPN 1430.

What are some of the things happening in town that you've been really either excited by or interested in?

Oh gosh, there are so many things. Well, obviously my day job, the things that I see happening in the business community and in the civic sector. It is so fascinating and every day, almost every day, certainly every week, it just seems like another chapter unfolds and we see more and more progress happening. So that is -- the business element of it, and the civic and public sector stuff is all wonderful. ...

I'm very hopeful about ... the work going on at Fresno Unified and the citizen's task force that's been working to transform Fresno Unified. I take a lot of hope and encouragement from that, even though I'm not directly involved in any way. I'm really, really excited about the Creative Fresno and the Mindhub movement, I'm just pleased to death with that, and love the people involved, and I'm cheering them on. And that kind of is connected to the arts community and FCASH (Fresno Coalition for Arts, Science and History) and Cynthia Cooper's work. Again, just kind of a cheerleader of that, I'm not necessarily into art myself, but I know how important it is for livability, and I want it to happen and grow here, so I'm real excited about that.

I see a lot of younger professionals moving into the market from other major metropolitan areas and they're bringing new ideas, they're bringing a familiarity with information technology ... they're just bringing a new energy. And I think that's shaking loose a lot of things in the community. I think things are possible now that weren't possible even five years ago, because more and more people understand that change is necessary in Fresno and change is good. So that's cool, just seeing the glimpse of that. There are some angel networks that are getting started that are looking at -- that are investing in startup companies. That's been a long time coming, it's very needed, and that's very encouraging. You know, I can go on and on. There's lots of cool stuff at Fresno State, you know. I'll stop there.

You mentioned the Great Valley Center report ... and since that report came out, do you feel like we're keeping pace with the growth that the report recommended happen here?

The report was a catalyst, but it really didn't have a lot of specific recommendations or timelines. It cast a vision. And I would say that we absolutely have -- we get feedback a lot from other parts of the region and other parts of the state and even the nation that Fresno is so aggressively moving things forward and doing what it can to reshape its future. I mean, we're on the national stage right now, so I think we've surprised everyone with the way we've taken the vision in that report.

It's a big gap between a vision that's cast in a report and then actually seeing change on the ground. I can't even begin -- I didn't know this starting up, and if I had known, I may have been intimidated and not tried to do it. But so much has to go into taking that vision and making it a reality. And if you look at other parts of the Valley, nobody else has grabbed onto the vision of that report like Fresno has. Nobody. Not southern San Joaquin, not northern San Joaquin, it's the greater Fresno region that has taken that report and put it into action and let it shape our local economic development practices and really has driven everything we've done in the last five years.

How has Fresno changed since you've been here?

I've been here since '87. I started paying attention to civic affairs and that kind of thing I guess when I graduated from college in '94. What's changed in that time? Well, first of all, there's a recognition that things are changing and have to change, from an economic standpoint. When I was at the Business Incubator, for example, in 1998, there was not much acceptance in civic leadership of the need for startup companies, and it was still pretty politically foolish to talk about the need to diversify the economy. There was just such a concern that we would be deviating from our core industry, which has been agriculture. And nowadays, even the agriculturalists will tell you, we've got to diversify because ag is only declining, and the number of jobs that are there. They certainly want to see us diversify into industries that are compatible and help maintain ag as a core, but they themselves are ushering people forward and suggesting that new industries be developed and nurtured here. That's a significant shift.

I think there's a lot more optimism in Fresno. I think that the self-image problem that people have always referred to about Fresno -- I think that's changing. It's kind of like we're getting more connected to other parts of the state and nation, and as we do that, we realize that actually we've got a lot of momentum here. We're doing some things that are more fun and more aggressive than many other regions of the country, and we're starting to get our confidence about the fact that we can change what our community is like. And that's just wind in our sails, you know? And besides the obvious things, like it's a lot more built out, and gosh, you now, it's like a whole new city in Northeast Fresno and Clovis that wasn't there. But I think those are kind of the underlying tones and things that are going on.

What are some of the projects that you're working on right now?

Well, let's see, I'm working very much with the food processing industry and helping get that cluster launched. Also working with the advanced logistics and distribution cluster. We're working with the construction industry very closely. We're still pushing forward our Central California Broadband Initiative. We're working on a community report card, the second edition of the New Valley Times, which was the futuristic newspaper published a year ago January. We are working on, oh gosh, we're starting to look at creating a blueprint for sources of renewable and innovative energy for the Valley. Workforce continues, all kinds of workforce development-related programs. We're starting to branch out and connect to other parts of the region with the state interagency task force that we've been pushing. I mean, it's pretty much, it's all RJI, but those are kind of the things that are top-of-mind right now. I just would add the physical infrastructure issues and coming up and funding infrastructure that supports industrial development is the next big push for us. Customer service. Local government.

Now the Regional Jobs Initiative has as its goal to bring how many jobs is it exactly?

Well, we specify 25- to 30,000 jobs.

Where are most of those jobs going to be, do you think?

If you look at the job creation over the last 18 months, it's come from construction, health care, manufacturing, food processing and distribution -- warehousing, distribution jobs.

OK. And it's going to continue in those patterns?

I think so. I think the information/call center group has also expanded and is poised for more expansion.

How do you think Fresno is doing in connecting to some of the development that's happening in California, happening statewide? ... Things like the stem cell research initiative, for example, the Million Solar Roofs Initiative and projects like that. Do you think that Fresno's going to get its slice of those developments?

Well, I know, like on the Million Solar Roofs, we're specifically charging after renewable energy, solar, biomass, and so we're going to be proactive and make sure that we do get a piece of the action there. On the stem cell research, I read in the paper that Ed Kashian's on one of those subcommittees, so we have a local connection there. I don't know a lot more about that other than to say, you know, it's a major, major initiative and could we see any benefits from that in the Fresno area? I think we probably could, but I don't know of any group that's proactively pursuing opportunities there like we are in renewable energy. So I'm not sure how that's going to unfold.

What about just the way the city feels for residents? In the next few years, how do you see, for example, downtown transforming?

You know, I'm not directly involved in anything downtown-related, but what gives me hope is watching groups like One-By-One Leadership and the Downtown Association, and you know, Craig Scharton did his class with the undergrad entrepreneurship students this last semester, and there's a movement to get cultural arts districts established and do more organic kind of district-based developments. And I think there's a mindset shift happening and people are starting to recognize the value of that. That coupled with -- I think the City of Fresno is being very, very aggressive and the Redevelopment Agency's being very aggressive -- so I think their sort of bigger development-type push coupled with the more neighborhood district-based push together is going to be pretty powerful. I don't know if that's clear. But it's kind of like what's happening is you've got this agency approach, kind of grass-tops, from the City of Fresno, and they're being real aggressive and ambitious right now. And then you've got more of these neighborhoods sort of, what I call the district type of development, coming from the ground up. So I think when you put the two together, it should be dynamic.

Do you have any fears about anything coming up in the future, any obstacles that Fresno has to face?

I feel like we -- I personally am motivated -- very, very motivated, the people I work with, it seems like everyone is motivated by this feeling that we have to get as much done as possible because there are significant challenges looming. That if we don't get ahead right now, we may fall further and further behind and never be able to catch up. So those of us that have been working on the RJI, for example, we've been running at breakneck speeds for several years now. We've been sprinting. I thought, well, this is a longterm project, we're going to get into marathon mode and kind of pace ourselves. We've been sprinting. Since, you know, March of 2003, because there's this feeling that it's now or never.

Specific challenges? I can't really point to any one thing and say, "Boy, if that happens, we're all dust." But I can say there seems to be a window of opportunity right now, and there's an attitude of change, we've got great leadership with Mayor Autry, who is very bold about being aggressive. I think the Council has busted through some walls lately -- I don't know, it just seems like our time is now. So if we don't take advantage of this opportunity, probably the next five years, we'll have missed out on a lot. And that's probably my greatest fear, is that we won't realize the opportunity we have right now.