In honor of National Small Business Week and Economic Development Week 2026, David Ponraj sits down with Tarsha Hearns of Economic Growth Strategies for a candid, practical conversation about what it really means to put entrepreneurs at the center of economic development strategy.

Tarsha brings over two decades of ecosystem-building experience in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and beyond, and she doesn't hold back from calling out copy-paste program design to naming the trust problem that quietly fractures ecosystems from the inside.

In this episode, we cover:

• What entrepreneurship-led economic development actually means and how it differs from the traditional playbook of chasing big corporate relocations, including a look at programs and resources dedicated to entrepreneurship-led ED that Tarsha has tapped into
• The Dallas Collaborative for Capital Access and how a JP Morgan Chase-funded initiative brought together CDFIs, city officials, and ESOs to tackle a capital desert in South Dallas without launching yet another loan fund
• Why speed of capital matters more than amount or cost and how EIC's Catalyzer platform is implementing automated underwriting to help CDFIs say yes faster
• The "copy-paste" trap and why importing a program that worked in another city without assessing your own ecosystem is a recipe for duplication, not impact
• The trust problem nobody talks about—how broken referral loops, siloed data, and lack of follow-through erode confidence across the ecosystem, and what to do about it
• Data collection done right—practical tips for capturing client outcomes at every touchpoint, including how to build incentives into your grant structure
• Rapid-fire advice—what communities should start doing (quarterly convenings), stop doing (operating in silos), and the free C-Cube Toolkit to help get those ecosystem conversations started

Resources mentioned:

• Economic Growth Strategies Ecosystem Assessment — start here to identify gaps in your ecosystem's infrastructure, data strategy, and capital access programs
• IEDC — the leading professional organization for economic developers, with programs and resources dedicated to entrepreneurship-led economic development
• C-Cube Toolkit — a free resource for starting ecosystem coordination conversations
• California SCALE Network — statewide referral network model connecting SBDCs, CDFIs, chambers, and more

In this episode of Breaking Down Barriers, host David Ponraj sits down with Erik Reader of Reader Area Development to celebrate National Small Business Week, Economic Development Week, and the 100th anniversary of the International Economic Development Council (IEDC).

Erik brings 15+ years of on-the-ground experience in community and economic development— from running a chamber/tourism hybrid organization and leading the Illinois Main Street statewide network, to working with CDFIs and SBA CDCs. He joins David to talk candidly about the state of small towns across America, what it really takes to bring a Main Street back to life, and why the human side of entrepreneurship matters more than any metric.

In this episode, you'll hear:

• Why remote work and post-COVID migration are reshaping small towns and creating new opportunities for communities under 50,000
• Whether brick-and-mortar businesses on Main Street can still thrive (spoiler: never say never)
• Erik's AREA framework—Assistance, Retention, Expansion, and Attraction—and why attraction should always come last
• David's addition to the model: Succession and why protecting existing businesses is more valuable than funding new ones
• What Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition (ETA) is and why it may be the safest path into business ownership
• Real-world examples from Havana, Illinois and Geneva, Illinois on what deep community engagement can unlock
• Why the best downtowns lean into their quirks instead of copying what worked somewhere else
• The art of community storytelling—from placards and visitor guides to AR/VR preservation (like Dunedin's Kellogg Mansion)

Connect with Erik Reader:

• LinkedIn: Erik Reader
• Web: readerareadevelopment.com

What if the real problem with small business lending isn't the banks, but that nobody's actually built the system around the business owner?

In this conversation, David sits down with Charles Kollo, Head of Innovation at BBIF, a Florida-based CDFI (Community Development Financial Institution), for a candid conversation about why the $200 billion community lending ecosystem is ripe for disruption, why CDFIs have been slow to modernize, and what it will actually take to put capital access back in the hands of business owners.

Charles brings a rare global lens to the conversation: he's built a digital bank in Sub-Saharan Africa, worked with major banking groups across Côte d'Ivoire, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, and beyond, and now applies those lessons to the U.S. CDFI space.

In this episode:

• Why CDFIs were created (and why they've been slow to innovate)
• The outdated 1970s credit scoring system that's still running the show
• Why high interest rates from alternative lenders are essentially a "laziness fee" (and what accurate risk prediction could change)
• The real victim in the lending ecosystem: the small business owner
• What mobile money in Africa can teach us about capital deployment in the U.S.
• The three ingredients needed to actually solve this problem: clarity of thought, tools, and distribution
• Why EIC may be positioned to bridge the gap

Links & Resources:

• Rethinking Capital Access for Small Businesses with Charles Kollo
• Learn more about CDFIs: cdfi.org
• Learn more about BBIF: bbif.com