HERMITAGE, Pa. – Rod Wilt isn’t planning to leave Penn-Northwest Development Corp. just yet, but when he does, he already has his successor as executive director in mind.
Jake Rickert, currently PNDC’s associate executive director, is being prepared to assume Wilt’s role when he decides to step away from the organization he has led since fall 2020.
“Whenever you’re running a business as a business, you have to always be looking for an opportunity to find the next leader,” Wilt says. “This organization is 40 years old. We’ve got to think about the next 40 years, and then you break that down to the next five.”
When he started at Penn-Northwest in 2020, Wilt says he interviewed its members to learn what they expected from an economic development organization.
“There were really a couple of things that were resounding to me throughout those dozens and dozens of interviews,” he recalls.
One was that Mercer County needed “a champion” to talk about “what a great place this is to live, learn, work and play,” he says. Another was figuring out what the organization could do to retain more of the local youth who understand “the climate and culture here”; recruit the college students who come to the community but leave after earning their degrees; and convince the people who went away to school and never considered coming back to return.
“I believe people are leaving not because of a lack of opportunity, but because of a lack of knowledge about the opportunities,” Wilt says. But to connect with young people, it couldn’t be “a 55-year-old, gray-haired man” but rather a group of young people who were here to talk “to that generation that’s coming right behind them.”
Representatives of local volunteer organizations have told him they can’t find people who want to help. Similarly, he says, it wasn’t that young people didn’t want to serve on the boards but that they were unaware of the opportunities that were available to them.
Background
During his senior year at Penn State University’s Shenango Campus, Rickert, who had served four years in the U.S. Army, was looking for an internship and Penn-Northwest reached out.
“Everyone in the economic development community jokes that no one ever gets into this field on purpose,” Rickert says. “Everyone always kind of trips into it.”
He started as an intern in fall 2021. After graduating the following May from Penn State Shenango with a bachelor’s degree in corporate communication, he was hired as director of workforce development at Penn-Northwest, where he led the Homegrown Initiative and the Future Leaders program.
“We wanted to help him find his next career, and I quickly realized that this organization would be well served by somebody that has that skill set,” Wilt says.
“I loved the mission that Penn-Northwest had to rebuild this community and make something great of Mercer County,” Rickert says. “I grew up here, and I’ve heard people talk about problems and never a solution. This was the first place that talked about solutions and not problems, and I love that about this place.”
Within a year or two after Rickert started with the organization, Wilt says he saw the structure he put together for the Future Leaders and Homegrown Initiative and realized that what Rickert was doing could be cross-pollinated throughout the entire organization.
“That’s when I really began to understand that our staff meetings and our staff development was something that was really lacking, and what the team and me especially really needed is some structure,” he continues. “So that’s where I’ve really tapped into Jake’s strength and background.”
About two years after joining Penn-Northwest full time, Rickert received the Young Economic Development Professional to Watch Award at the Pennsylvania Economic Development Association Fall Conference.
Brad Gosser, executive director and vice president at Greenville-Reynolds Development Corp. and chairman of Penn-Northwest’s board of directors, had been acquainted with Rickert. He suggested early on to Wilt that Rickert might make a good successor. Wilt was at a point where he needed to free up some time and Gosser suggested putting Rickert in charge of day-to-day operations.
In addition to his role at Penn-Northwest, Wilt has several outside business interests. At the end of the next five years, he is looking at “living on the banks of the Clarion River up on my farm and getting out of all this insanity,” he says.
At the same time, the Shenango Valley was facing a variety of both opportunities and challenges, from the “meltdown” of Sharon Regional hospital and closure of the Penn State University Shenango Campus to a potential large development at exit 15 of Interstate 80.
“We just didn’t realize there would be these monumental economic development challenges at the county level that I needed to be freed up to go focus on,” Wilt says.
From his military background, including his service in the National Guard, Rickert “understands how to structure job positions, how to hold people accountable, how to quantify their success, how to evaluate and rate them,” Wilt says.
To pay for the new associate executive director’s position and other initiatives, Penn-Northwest secured $620,000 in funding from the Pennsylvania Department of Community and Economic Development and the Zekelman Foundation.
Rickert’s role includes oversight of Penn-Northwest’s workforce development, membership, marketing and events, and the organization’s day-to-day functions, such as finances and general operations.
“The idea at first is a little concerning, because Rod has so many good contacts with the state and federal government and people in general,” Gosser says. “There are enough large projects going on it that makes sense to keep him on. And I think that’s his desire also because of the good things going on. So, certainly we didn’t want to lose Rod cold turkey.”
Penn-Northwest’s Approach
Economic development organizations tend to look externally for someone to run them, to bring in new ideas, Rickert says. That isn’t necessarily bad but it “always, to some extent, disrupts what’s going on.” Penn-Northwest’s approach was to take someone who is young and have him work his way through each department.
“By the time they get to this seat, they know everything about the community from multiple levels,” he continues. “By the time they take this seat, we have someone that’s been built by and for Mercer County.”
If things progress as they have to this point and if Wilt decides to move on, Gosser expects that Rickert will grow into the position.
“He’s done a great job,” Gosser says. “Jake has a pretty good drive, and his management style is pretty good.”
Rickert still is being developed to serve as Penn-Northwest’s chief administrative officer, but Wilt says he envisions the “associate” part of his title going away in months, not years, while he remains around as a resource, “still tackling the big projects here while he’s getting the structure right.”
By June 2030, he wants to be in a position “emotionally, physically, mentally and financially” that he can just shut down.
“I’ve been running since I was a kid, and I’ve had a job since I was 13,” he says. “I have a lot of things that I want to do while I’m still young and fit, but by that time, Jake will be in full control of this organization, and I would just be like that special envoy working on stuff.”
Pictured: Rod Wilt is preparing Jake Rickert to succeed him as executive director of Penn-Northwest, positioning the organization for a seamless transition and long-term stability.