Although Missouri lawmakers cut funding for the Missouri Technology Corporation (MTC), the public-private partnership will receive support from Gov. Mike Parson’s Supply Chain Management Task Force.
“As they are working to implement their strategic plan, we've aligned that with our strategic plan and the Department of Higher Education Workforce Development, and we've found areas where we can support one another to achieve our mutual goals,” said Mardy Leathers, director of the Missouri Department of Higher Education Workforce Development and co-chair of the Supply Chain Management Task Force.
The St. Louis Post Dispatch reported that MTC’s funding was put on hold as part of a state budget freeze during the pandemic.
However, since then, Parson established his Supply Chain Management Task Force in November 2021.
“We're focused on increasing labor force participation and educational attainment and so certainly we look across multiple sectors,” Leathers told the St. Louis Record. “One sector is absolutely in the entrepreneurial or the startup space. We also look at technology commercialization. We want to help ensure that Missouri continues to be a place that is able to commercialize ideas and make them tangible to help solve some of the challenges that may be out there in the market.”
The Supply Chain Management Task Force, launched in January, is charged with exploring constraints on Missouri’s supply chain from a workforce development, labor, and infrastructure perspective.
“We are leveraging some of our resources, which will include finances in some way, to help them achieve some of the goals of their strategic plan,” Leathers said.
The areas in which the task force will support the MTC include in:
Talent attraction.
“In their second phase, startups begin to bring in talent,” Leathers said. “Often, it's the individual entrepreneur or someone close to them who is doing all the work for the organization, but as those organizations mature, they need to attract certain types of talent and bring in other individuals to help grow the organization.”
Connecting pipelines.
“We also are leveraging some of our industry credentials and certifications in fields like IT, healthcare, and finance to help develop the skill sets of those entrepreneurs or the talent they may need to bring on as they expand services,” Leathers said.
Increasing awareness.
“We serve a target population and they serve a specific cluster of our economy,” Leathers added. “Just connecting, talent, education and skill development resources to the sector to help them be as dynamic and resilient as they can is our focus.”