Current Committees and Chairs
Executive Committee
President – Ralph Martin
Vice President – Rebecca Miller
Secretary – Sue Goulder
Treasurer – Carolyn Chrisman
Government Relations
Chair: Allie Bennett
The Government Relations Committee works strategically with members to outline and promote the organization's legislative priorities, coordinating with legislators and organizing the yearly Missouri Northeast days at the Capitol.
Marketing
Chairs: Rebecca Miller and Allie Bennett
The Marketing Committee oversees the strategic marketing of Missouri Northeast, including social and website content. Working collaboratively with Missouri Partnership, the marketing committee has recently completed a podcast project and website overhaul.
Leadership Northeast
Chairs: Carolyn Chrisman and Shari Schenewerk
This planning committee organizes and conducts a six-session regional leadership institute focusing on the northeast region of Missouri. The program is designed to enhance the leadership skills of the participants while they gain a deeper understanding of our region. Currently in our fourth year, we focus on six topics important to our region; workforce, broadband, agriculture, transportation, healthcare, and navigating government systems while visiting different areas of the region.
Trails
The Missouri Northeast Trails Coalition is working with partnership organizations like Missouri DNR, State of Missouri Parks, Missouri Parks Association, Missouri Bike Federation and our Regional Planning Commissions to develop bike/ped trails throughout the region. The trails project will provide significant returns on investment through tourism, workforce talent attraction, healthy living/wellness, improved mental health, strengthening of local economies and business development. Destination trails attract visitors from outside the local area who travel specifically to use a trail. The benefits from destination trails are most commonly measured in terms of the local business impacts. This includes business revenue, employment, and employee earnings. In addition to its direct effect on businesses, visitor spending also has a ripple effect in the community as employees and business owners spend their earnings, and local and state governments receive more tax revenue. Historical data shows an increase in revenues for the communities and businesses along the trails as the trails develop and grow their number of events and visitors. These benefits impact communities across the region from the smallest to the largest.
Broadband
Chair: Ralph Martin
Long before the Covid 19 pandemic swept across the world, Missouri Northeast had already identified the issue of a lack of broadband availability, and the effects it was having on our region. In some cases, broadband was available, but did not have the speed or bandwidth necessary to do the things we wanted or needed to do. In other cases, there was no broadband available at all. Parents were unable to work from home, teachers and students were unable to complete homework assignments or do research, and our senior population were unable to access telehealth options even though the doctors that they needed to see on a weekly or monthly basis were 1 to 4 hours away. We started working that day to increase awareness and help find answers to this problem. Our group has been very active in the education of state and federal leaders in regards to the broadband situation and how it is affecting Missourians from all over the state.We will continue to work to provide all the people in our region with fast, safe, reliable, and affordable broadband and cell phone connectivity.
Childcare
Chairs: Carolyn Chrisman and Allie Bennett
The Childcare Committee works to increase the access and number of quality childcare offerings in communities across the region. There is no “one size fits all” solution for a community. Some communities will need to rely on their public education system; others on a local church; in home care; and facility care. This committee focuses on listening to concerns, sharing information, and advocating for needed changes in regulations, licensing, and funding.
Housing
Chair: Sue Goulder
The Housing Committee was formed to collectively work across north Missouri to find solutions to address our lack of housing. We researched many options however, we realized that each community has very unique needs. As we gathered much valuable knowledge and data this committee has moved to an ad hoc committee.
