'Start-up guy' Skancke leaves Las Vegas Global Economic Alliance

When Tom Skancke was appointed the first president and CEO of the Las Vegas Global Economic Alliance, he told the board members who hired him that he wasn’t in for the long haul.

He was true to his word.

Hired in late 2013 by the new version of what once was the Nevada Development Authority, Skancke told board members and the committee that hired him that his expertise in economic development was limited, and his primary purpose would be to bring change in how to think about local economic development in the same way that Gov. Brian Sandoval was revamping it for the state. He also wanted to expand the organization, raise money and build it with a leader with an economic development background.

“When I was recruited to take this position 2½ years ago, I told the board I’m a start-up guy, I’m a turnaround guy,” Skancke said in an interview prior to his last day at the Alliance.

“This wasn’t going to be a career or a 20-year proposition for me,” he said. “I saw an opportunity to make a cultural change here on how we do business and how we look at the way we do business in Southern Nevada.”

Since most people weren’t aware of Skancke’s game plan, it came as a shock to some in late March when he announced his plans to leave the organization.

“Tom made a personal call to go out at the top of his game,” said Ray Specht, chairman of the Alliance’s board.

“He has done what we hired him to do, which is to take this economic development organization, build a team and put us on a course to more effectively compete in a 21st-century global economy,” Specht said in a statement he issued at the time.

Since the announcement came at a time when the organization was negotiating a new office-space lease after two years at Switch’s InNEVation Center, some thought the departure was politically motivated and had to do with the different stances taken by the Alliance and the Las Vegas Metro Chamber of Commerce on Sandoval’s plan to fund K-12 education with new business license taxes.

Skancke discounted the speculation and now says the Alliance’s leadership on the education debate was one of the top accomplishments in his tenure at the helm of the organization.

“I’ve literally accomplished everything I set out to do,” he said. “A lot of people asked me to stay and thought I was sick or that I was under some type of cloud. But that was not the case. Anyone who knows me knows that I make my own decisions, and this was a decision I thought long and hard about and I’m proud of the work this organization has done.”

‘GET PEOPLE TO SAY YES’

Skancke viewed convincing Alliance members to take a different perspective on education as his biggest challenge because it was ingrained in the business culture to say no to anything that was going to cost money.

“It’s a culture here,” he said. “No is easy here. Yes is difficult. Saying yes to something is a challenge.

“Passing a piece of legislation is a hell of a lot more difficult than killing a piece of legislation. It’s easy to kill stuff. It’s not easy to get two-thirds, much less a simple majority, to say yes.”

Skancke approached taking a stance of support for the governor’s plan by conducting research and interviewing company executives that had accepted or rejected Southern Nevada as a place to relocate.

“No one solely moved here because of low taxes and the regulatory environment, access to ports, no manufacturing fees or logistics fees,” he said. “They were part of the reason but not the only reason.

“Meanwhile, we found that the greatest barrier for a company’s entrance (to the state) was our education system and our ability to provide quality workers,” he said.

“We were consistently coming in 50th among all of the states, and if you count Puerto Rico, Guam and Washington, D.C., we’d still be dead last.”

Skancke found that of 251 opportunities to attract companies to Southern Nevada, 35 percent of them — 85 total — decided not to come because of the state’s education system and workforce availability. He took that data to several board meetings, some of them special sessions.

“The no coalition said no; we said no, but we added we’ve got to look at alternatives. Yes, we said no to the margins tax, but we said we’d come up with other solutions,” Skancke said. “No business organization had ever reached out to education advocates to change the conversation.”

That’s how the Alliance moved the conversation.

“That’s what leaders do,” Skancke said. “They try to get people to say yes.”

EXPANDED STAFF, PAYROLL

Skancke admitted he couldn’t do it by himself, and he had to recruit like-minded professionals to his team. That, too, was one of his key accomplishments, he said.

When he started, there were five employees working with a $1.5 million budget. Today, there are 19 with a budget of about $4.5 million.

Among the additions to the team is Jonas Peterson, who already has been named to succeed Skancke as president and CEO.

Skancke describes Peterson as “a true economic development expert,” and Peterson considers Skancke a friend and mentor.

“He has been a transformational leader for the LVGEA and built the organization into a true community and economic development group,” said Peterson, who joined the alliance in 2013 as chief operating officer, coming from the Santa Clarita, Calif., Economic Development Corp.

“Tom built an amazing team and a great board of directors and expanded the budget and staff very quickly,” said Peterson, who has received degrees in community and economic development from Penn State University and North Dakota State University.

Peterson said he plans to keep the group’s momentum going with its next visioning session in early July.

And what’s next for Skancke?

He says he doesn’t know, but if he does, he’s keeping the decision close to the vest.

It’s no secret Skancke has a passion for transportation, so some of his options might involve how to move people and goods.

He will continue to serve on the Nevada Transportation Department board of directors after receiving an appointment from Sandoval in 2013 and on his company’s $360,000-a-year contract as a transportation consultant to the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority.

A high-speed rail advocate who developed a coalition of regional transportation organizations with like-minded goals of developing a rail system in the West, Skancke has some interest in the newly minted Nevada High-Speed Rail Authority, which replaces the California-Nevada Super Speed Train Commission, which had a maglev proposal linking Las Vegas with Los Angeles on its radar.

“I admit it, I love seeing infrastructure produced, so that’s why things like high-speed rail, developing mobility for the work force to the workplace and even water sustainability infrastructure strategies are attractive to me,” Skancke said. “So really, I don’t know where I’m going to be. I’ve had offers to work in the Far East, maybe I’ll go do that for awhile.”

He said he would like to work for the U.S. Department of Transportation some day but has no particular job in mind.

But his best memories will be about the Alliance team, which he plans to continue to support, and he also will continue to back its economic diversification planning because he believes Las Vegas has so much potential but might be getting too comfortable with all the positive economic news that has occurred in the last year.

“We cannot get comfortable with one industry driving the other,” he said. “It’s a codependent relationship, and then we get lazy. And what happens when we get lazy? We start fighting amongst ourselves again. And then what happens? Another recession hits. And then what happens? We go back to, ‘Oh, we’ve got to get back to working with our neighbors.’ ”

Skancke wants to continue to see change for Las Vegas.

“Jonas is a professional economic developer. I’m a change agent,” he said. “They (critics) mistake my passion for ego. I’ll tell you, that just isn’t the case.

“I believe we’ve changed Las Vegas, and I’m very proud of that.”