Ingram's March 2023

Julie Roller Weeks Abilene Convention & Visitors Bureau, Abilene Although she calls herself a “proud ruby sneaker-wearing Kansan,” Julie Roller Weeks knows the state has a lot more to offer than just Dorothy and Toto. “We have so many stories to tell,” she said. “Tourism is the most rewarding because all economic development activities start with a visit.

Candace Wright Blue Valley Technologies, Home Candace Wright readily concedes the multiple downsides of the 2020 pandemic, but from tiny Home, Kan.—population 171—she sees another side of it in the way American workplaces and lifestyle choices have changed. “We now know that you can live wherever we want to with connectivity

Tourism is a value-add to communities, and my goal is to generate economic growth in Abilene through tourism.” Originally from nearby Woodbine in Dickinson County, she earned her journalism and mass communication degree from Kansas State, then immediately began working to promote Kansas communities—serving as a Main Street director in Augusta, working in economic development in Pottawatomie County, and marketing Kansas products for the Department of Agriculture in Manhattan. Now, she’s back in her home county and leading Abilene’s convention visitors office, a task abetted by the presence of a presidential library. She’s helping the town garner increasingly noteworthy national attention: Destination of the Year by the Midwest Travel Network , Best Historic Small Town by USA TODAY , Friendliest Small Town in the U.S. by TravelAwaits , Best Small Town to Visit by Smithsonian Magazine , and many others. “From Eisenhower to the Chisholm Trail, worldwide entrepreneurs, incredible architecture … we are rich with attractions,” she said. “The goal is to keep Abilene’s name front of mind as a community that’s doing great things. If you’re going to work in tourism in Kansas, Abilene is a shining star!”

today,” she says, and she should know: She’s the CEO of Blue Valley Technologies, serving a four-county area of north-central Kansas with a full suite of IT services for business and home. “I tell people I’m rural by choice,” says Wright, who joined Blue Valley in 2007 as controller after 11 years as a CPA in nearby Marysville. “We offer the exact same opportunities any other place offers” with remote work today. “The pandemic advance how important connectivity is. Once you get that, everything is at your fingertips. We always knew that, but the pandemic pushed us over the cliff in knowing how important that is.” Wright was elevated to CEO in 2018, and oversees Blue Valley and its Networks Plus division. Interestingly, at a time of acute labor shortages, she has a harder time filling positions in larger service cities like Topeka and Salina than she does in the smaller communities. Some of that she attributes to employees, including her COO and an engineer, who made the same decision she did to choose rural. “After you move away, you realize how great it was back where you were,” she says. “My husband and I wanted to raise our kids in the same kind of environment we grew up in.”

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