Five counties. Tons of economic development projects. Life on the road. Five hours and 17 minutes to Salem. Five hours and 17 minutes to get back home. Some days I would do all of it in one day. And I regularly visited virtually every little community in those five counties.

With the fancy Masters diploma in hand, I considered a job working for one of the big eight accounting firms in their consulting division.

When Brian thinks back to how he got into the economic development profession, he realizes that economic development chose him, not the other way around.

“If there was ever a person who didn’t live in Baker County who had an impact in Baker County, it was Neil Goldschmidt,” explains Brian Cole, now chairman of the Baker County Board of Commissioners, who earlier served as director of the Baker City/County Economic Development Department.