Greater Dubuque Development Featured at Governor’s Empower Rural Iowa Task Force

Greater Dubuque Development Featured at Governor’s Empower Rural Iowa Task Force

On April 8, the Governor's Empower Rural Iowa Task Force convened in Dubuque as part of the lead-up to the 2026 RISE: Iowa Rural Summit. The task force – the Governor's designated body for addressing Iowa's most pressing rural challenges – gathered in Dubuque to tackle one of its core priorities: talent attraction and retention.

Greater Dubuque Development was invited to present its regional workforce strategies as a model for communities across Iowa. Nic Hockenberry, Director of Workforce Programming and President of the Professional Developers of Iowa, joined a practitioner panel moderated by Krista Tedrow, Director of Development for Pathfinders RC&D, alongside Jenae Sikkink of the Greater Des Moines Partnership and Michael Gould of the Iowa Economic Development Authority. Following the panel, task force members broke into small groups to discuss how the approaches shared could be applied in their own regions.

Three Greater Dubuque Development initiatives drew particular interest as replicable models:

  • Greater Dubuque Development Skills Gap Analysis: Presented as the foundation of an evidence-based workforce strategy, the analysis gives communities the specificity needed to align training investments with real employer demand. Task force members were encouraged to start with existing data sources and track a small number of consistent metrics over time rather than waiting for large-scale research capacity.
  • Child Care Solutions Fund: Highlighted as an example of reframing childcare as workforce infrastructure, the employer-backed fund model demonstrated how communities can engage the business community as investors in talent retention — particularly for workers on the margins of workforce participation.
  • Opportunity Dubuque: The program's integrated model of tuition support, success coaching, and employer co-design generated strong interest from task force members. The key takeaway for rural communities: start with one sector, one college partner, and one or two anchor employers. The success coach role, even at part-time scale, is the highest-leverage single investment a community can make.

Being asked to present before the Governor's task force and to have Dubuque's work cited as a statewide model, reflects the strength of the partnerships and data driven approach that define Greater Dubuque Development's workforce programming. The work happening here is not just moving the needle locally, it is shaping the conversation about what's possible for rural Iowa.

To learn more about the Empower Rural Iowa Task Force, contact Nic Hockenberry, Director of Workforce Programming, at nicolash@greaterdubuque.org or 563-557-9049.