Louisville's growth play

What are Louisville's biggest assets and how can we best leverage those?

That was recently a topic of discussion on the Access Louisville podcast. We took the weekly LBF show live for a special episode — recorded in front of an audience and with three guests: 

• Jennifer Barber, office member in charge, Louisville, Frost Brown Todd
• Scott Catlett, chair, Impetus for a Better Louisville and former Yum Brands Inc. chief legal and franchise officer
• Mike Mountjoy, founding partner and chairman emeritus of MCM CPAs and Advisors (now Cherry Bekaert)

All three were members of LBF's Power 50 list of Louisville’s most influential business people. They are all also at different stages of their careers, with Barber making her first appearance on that list, Catlett being a regular and Mountjoy being part of the inaugural Power 50 Hall of Fame. We talked about their careers for a bit at the top of the show, with each sharing their proudest accomplishments.

After the career talk, we got to talking about what Louisville should look to accomplish as a city — and they all three had great takes: 

On building the economy

"We talk about bringing big companies here — we don't need to bring the big companies here. We need to bring people here," said Mountjoy. He advocates 0% income tax as a means of doing that. "The businesses follow the people, not the other way around. There aren't enough engineers in Louisville. There need to be more. There's not enough technology people here." 

On getting involved

"One thing about our community is it's small enough if you want to make a difference you can," said Catlett. "There are plenty of organizations where you can contribute and make a difference and it's gonna take that. We can't look to the leaders of the past. We need people to step up — of today's generation, of tomorrow's generation — to really be a force for good in the community." 

On the workforce

"The talent pool is still very strong. Outside of the legal industry, I think the issue for Kentucky and for Louisville is less the talent pool and more workforce participation," said Barber, noting a troubling trend within that metric. "We've got to increase our workforce participation. We're going to have to tackle some things like housing issues and childcare issues to get more Kentuckians and more Louisvillians into that talent pool." 

Access Louisville, sponsored by Baird, is a weekly podcast from Louisville Business First. It's available on popular podcast services including Apple Podcasts and Spotify.