Building From the Ground Up: Entrepreneurship-Led Economic Development with Tarsha Hearns

In honor of National Small Business Week and Economic Development Week 2026, David Ponraj sits down with Tarsha Hearns of Economic Growth Strategies for a candid, practical conversation about what it really means to put entrepreneurs at the center of economic development strategy.

Tarsha brings over two decades of ecosystem-building experience in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and beyond, and she doesn't hold back from calling out copy-paste program design to naming the trust problem that quietly fractures ecosystems from the inside.

In this episode, we cover:

• What entrepreneurship-led economic development actually means and how it differs from the traditional playbook of chasing big corporate relocations, including a look at programs and resources dedicated to entrepreneurship-led ED that Tarsha has tapped into
• The Dallas Collaborative for Capital Access and how a JP Morgan Chase-funded initiative brought together CDFIs, city officials, and ESOs to tackle a capital desert in South Dallas without launching yet another loan fund
• Why speed of capital matters more than amount or cost and how EIC's Catalyzer platform is implementing automated underwriting to help CDFIs say yes faster
• The "copy-paste" trap and why importing a program that worked in another city without assessing your own ecosystem is a recipe for duplication, not impact
• The trust problem nobody talks about—how broken referral loops, siloed data, and lack of follow-through erode confidence across the ecosystem, and what to do about it
• Data collection done right—practical tips for capturing client outcomes at every touchpoint, including how to build incentives into your grant structure
• Rapid-fire advice—what communities should start doing (quarterly convenings), stop doing (operating in silos), and the free C-Cube Toolkit to help get those ecosystem conversations started

Resources mentioned:

• Economic Growth Strategies Ecosystem Assessment — start here to identify gaps in your ecosystem's infrastructure, data strategy, and capital access programs
• IEDC — the leading professional organization for economic developers, with programs and resources dedicated to entrepreneurship-led economic development
• C-Cube Toolkit — a free resource for starting ecosystem coordination conversations
• California SCALE Network — statewide referral network model connecting SBDCs, CDFIs, chambers, and more