Flin Flon, Creighton and Denare Beach have a new regional economic development coordinator. Meet Emily Roberts-Young, who began the job last month and will represent all three communities.
Roberts-Young is new to the north, having moved up to the Flin Flon area from Winnipeg earlier this year after graduating from the Univ. of Manitoba with a bachelor’s of arts and a major in developmental economics. Roberts-Young works with the group formerly known as the Regional Economic Development Commission (REDC), rebranded recently as Invest FDC - each letter standing for one of the communities she represents.
“I’m feeling great about it,” she said.
“It’s very much in my wheelhouse and I have a lot of plans. I want to focus on business and industry development, on growth, through different plans and committees surrounding the mining sector, natural resources and other community projects - supporting the whole community and building on those building blocks.”
When she first arrived in the north, Roberts-Young worked with the Flin Flon Arts Council and its imagiNorthern project, helping oversee a project aimed at both helping northern artists share their work with larger audiences and monetize it along the way.
From there, Roberts-Young joined the City as a tourism officer, before joining on the economic development side earlier this summer. As regional economic development coordinator, Roberts-Young will work with leadership in Flin Flon, Creighton and Denare Beach to help find new ways to boost all three communities’ economy. She plans to rotate between all three communities throughout the week to best serve each place, spending two days a week in Flin Flon and Creighton and one in Denare Beach.
“We have these big goals and we’re just slowly chipping away at it, talking to the right people and getting the smaller things done to work toward the larger things,” she said.
So far, Roberts-Young has helped usher in the group’s experiential tourism accelerator program, which is aimed at boosting smaller tourism-based business in the area. After an intake this summer, the program got underway earlier this month. Roberts-Young is also diving into business retention and expansion plans for the near future, along with helping create a regional asset inventory - tracking what land is available, vacancies, updating databases and business directories and the like.
“I feel with economic development, it never stops. I have a whiteboard with a very large checklist, with a lot of things to work towards,” she said.
“One of the things I really want to accomplish is supporting and building up local businesses. I think that’s really key, helping instill that entrepreneurial spirit in our local residents here. I’d also like to help make this place more investment-ready, to kind of get the eyes of investors into the area - that’s a big one I want to work towards.”
While there are points to work towards now and in the future, Roberts-Young said she’s willing to take suggestions and pointers from residents. While she doesn’t come from the north, she said she’s open to learning about the region and how she can best help out.
“I’m always available and always open. If anybody has questions, no matter how big or small, I want people to know they can always get in touch and come down to the office to see me if I’m available,” she said.
“I want to hear from the community and what the community wants - as someone who’s not born and raised here, coming in with fresh eyes from outside, I think I can offer a lot, but there’s a lot going on here too I’d like to get a better understanding of.”
