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Meeting for the first time this year, the Wyoming Business Council’s Board of Directors on Thursday had a full slate of priorities to attend to. New leaders had to be elected. Hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants needed to be awarded. Updates on the performance of various projects the group had funded around the state needed to be heard.

But before all that, the council had even more pressing business on its hands: figuring out what, exactly, its role was in building up Wyoming’s economy, and how the group’s objectives fit within the state’s long-term economic development scheme.

WBC Executive Director Shawn Reese was clear that there were lots of good things happening in Wyoming. In legislative sessions in 2018 and 2019, state lawmakers had made significant strides in supplying Wyomingites the tools they needed to build the economy, from initiatives to encourage the development of broadband, the founding of foreign trade markets and trade offices, and newly founded efforts to train and expand the workforce, inspire and invest in entrepreneurs and empower research.