One question has come up a lot for Sean Feeney: “Where will you open your first restaurant outside of New York?”

As the owner of nine restaurants — eight in Brooklyn — he has spent a decade building a brand in and around the city. The question of where to open next is daunting in the culinary world, with the focus often on cities like Las Vegas and Los Angeles, or international locales like Dubai. Then, over a coffee in 2022 with a colleague from his finance days, Feeney learned about a major project in Utah that could be a good fit.

From New York City to Utah City, Fini Pizza and Fini Cafe to open as Utah City’s first restaurant and café concepts

Utah City is a development within Vineyard that boasts a walkable, community-driven, sustainable design. In early May 2026, Feeney opened Fini Pizza with a crowded event in the heart of the new neighborhood. He watched the community come together and line up to try his food, mimicking the energy he experienced 10 years ago during his first restaurant opening in Brooklyn.

Feeney’s team of 35 employees was hired in two weeks and left him impressed, even coming from a city known for culinary talent. “They are inherently hospitable,” he says, noting that six of his Utah team are in culinary school at Utah Valley University.

Opening put them among the earliest businesses to set roots within the ambitious community project. Three years ago, the space looked very different.

“It was 800 acres of dirt. And I stood there with … all the partners in Utah City with all these renderings of what it was going to be like and I really had no idea,” Feeney says, remembering a 2023 visit. “I saw these beautiful mountains, and I thought if we can create the same brand of hospitality and pizza that we have in Brooklyn while looking at the mountains, it would be amazing.”

Since 2019, developers with the construction company Flagship Homes have been partnering with the Vineyard municipality, talking to urban planning experts and breaking ground on an ambitious project that aims to refocus daily life around healthy living.

The planned site will be home to housing projects, university spaces, sports clubs, hotels, food markets and a new space for the Huntsman Cancer Institute. With plans for light rail and strong public transit options, the idea is to design a city centered on daily interactions while reducing dependency on cars, making it unique in a country that has spent generations building roads and parking lots.

In 2012, when Flagship built its first home in the Vineyard area that would become Utah City, there were 150 residents, according to the company’s co-managing partner Nate Hutchinson. Now, he says, there are 23,000. They came up with a 10-year master plan for developing the area that sold out in five years.

“We loved the location and wanted to continue to build there and were out of product, essentially, so we acquired 90% of the developable land left in the city,” Hutchinson says. It took them years to get willing sellers, and by 2021, they had purchased the whole area.

For Hutchinson, a positive was that the farmers in the area who ran the city council at the time had already been planning lower-density development near the golf course, and a higher-density development around the train station. They brought in Miami-based urban planner Andrés Duany and Boston-based walkability expert Jeff Speck to help.

“Historically, communities were all designed around people,” Hutchinson says, “and over the last 70 years — especially in the United States — we’ve designed things around the automobile. … We used to work, live, worship, recreate, do everything within walking distance. And then what happened with the cars was, ‘Let’s put the factories away from the houses because of pollution.’”

Now, with Utah City, residents can experience that people-centered community once again.“What we’re trying to say is you don’t really need the housing to be separated,” Hutchinson says.

“I think we’ve got to get back to thinking about the future and building communities that will last and be beneficial for the next generation.”

Nate Hutchinson

Affordability as a selling point

Owning a home has become so out of reach for U.S. citizens that the issue has dominated national headlines for years. A December 2025 report by Bankrate showed more than 75% of U.S. homes were “unaffordable,” defined as costing more than 30% of income. This means owning a home has become a luxury instead of a practical step. Utah, in particular, routinely makes headlines as a state with poor affordability figures.

For Hutchinson, whose construction business sells homes across multiple states, this is something he hopes Utah City can address.

“It will be the first community designed around mixed use, walkability and a transit stop,” Hutchinson says. “This will be a place where … [up to] $4 million product is sold, and this will be a place where you can rent a studio apartment.”

Advocates of walkable cities like Utah City have argued that not owning a car and reduced travel costs save its residents money, improving affordability. This can push housing prices up, but most “walkable” areas in the U.S. have been in large cities like New York.

Hutchinson, meanwhile, says he is keeping affordability in consideration by offering more options.

“It at least provides an option for people that don’t necessarily want to take care of a half-acre lot, or can’t afford a half-acre lot,” Hutchinson says.

Holistic ideals

In 2024, the Huntsman Cancer Institute began work on a new facility in Utah City. As a National Cancer Institute within the University of Utah system, the organization carries significant impact on any community. For the Huntsman team, the idea of a walkable and community-focused city fit perfectly with many of the design choices they wanted to make in a new location.

“We have had the desire for many years to expand our comprehensive cancer campus,” says Brad Cairns, the institute’s CEO. “We want to be able to bring our high-quality care and our unique access to clinical trials to more patients in Utah.”

About 10% of the Huntsman Cancer Institute’s patients live in Utah County, and those at the institute want to be closer to those who normally travel long distances by car to reach the facilities.

“When you’re being seen for cancer, every mile, every minute counts,” says Don Milligan, who recently retired as chief administrative officer at the Huntsman Cancer Institute and University of Utah Health.

Milligan was instrumental in organizing the early designs and partnerships with Flagship and the Vineyard community. He says it provided a great opportunity to create something from scratch that serves a key need.

“It has this opportunity of land in that area that is yet unshaped, and we could become part of creating a new cancer center in a new city,” Cairns says. “Our ultimate view of what we’d like to create is a care center, a research center, an entrepreneurial center, a convening center, a real hub that’s unique in the entire state of Utah in the way it brings together cancer care research and entrepreneurial opportunities that no other place can.”

Centering community

The Huntsman team embodies many of the same values Hutchinson advocates for in advancing community health. For example, the cancer institute’s new space will incorporate open, green areas and will have a community engagement office. The team is excited to have trains and hotels within walking distance to help their patients and their families, as well as housing for their staff.

For Hutchinson, this type of interactive and multi-use thinking is what appeals to him.

“Specifically in Utah, people are fearful,” he says. “People think, ‘You’re forcing this type of high-density development on us,’ and I think it’s really important to clarify that this is a choice. I think our state is in desperate need of it.”

The logic is built around the evolution and progression in the marketplace that has led to housing crises and disconnected communities in 2026. For Hutchinson, this is something he hopes to change by implementing the insights from walkability and sustainability experts. He notes that 100 years ago, planning wasn’t so sprawled, and it could be rethought to meet those goals.

“It’s been more inward focused about, ‘What is this community doing for me?’” Hutchinson says. “I think we’ve got to get back to thinking about the future and building communities that will last and be beneficial for the next generation.”

Utah City partners with LVBL to reimagine racquet sports with a curated racquet club that integrates sport, music and a social club

Toni Drummond needs to pinch herself sometimes. As co-founder of the drone company Future Flight Global, she gets to help create a real-life version of The Jetsons: air taxis carting people and packages from location to location, pilots stopping to pick up their passengers and then taking off into the air, and drones becoming a more fixed part of everyday life.

‘Cooler than The Jetsons’: Utah ushers in next generation of aviation

What excites Drummond as a self-proclaimed aviation geek isn’t 1960s science fiction cartoons come to life; it’s how the pieces come together.

Private companies and government officials have spent recent years laying the foundation for a network of advanced air mobility projects, intending to transport both goods and people. Proposed plans include increased use of drones in the commercial sector, air taxis, movement of medical supplies and the development of new aircraft known as electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL). Collectively, this sector is known as advanced air mobility.

In March 2026, Utah was chosen by the federal government as one of eight states testing these new aircraft and funding early-stage projects, drawing a mix of large and small companies together. Already, the development of this sector has brought opportunities for national and local companies. Utah’s Vector Defense has teams based in Ukraine and Israel developing unmanned systems, working with militaries to develop drones for warfare. Lindon-based Fortem Technologies won a $25 million investment from Lockheed Martin to develop systems that counter drones.

What is advanced air mobility, and how will it shape the future of transportation?

The proposals carry weight in a state like Utah with a mix of urban and rural applications. With Utah’s help, ordering packages, transporting hospital patients and going about daily life could look different in the decades to come.

Drummond, who’s based in Arizona, thinks Utah is a natural fit.

“Utah is not being utilized properly,” Drummond says of aviation systems in the state. “The landscape of Utah actually lends to using these types of technologies because everything, like Arizona, is very spread out. So Utah was really in the hot seat for us looking into this.”

Drummond spent her career in aviation and created a company that rents out private jets. She noticed a pattern around the same time her interest in drones was growing: Charter clients would fly from Nevada into Utah, and then take their private jet around the Beehive State before returning to Nevada. There was a gap in Utah’s charter flights market, she notes, and she saw an opportunity to expand.

But advanced air mobility companies are eyeing an even bigger opportunity. Already, advancements within this burgeoning field are creating new avenues for military applications. The federal government, meanwhile, views the industry as crucial to edging out Chinese manufacturing and military encroachment.

The green light

After the Trump administration signed an executive order last June titled “Unleashing American Drone Dominance,” the regulatory environment surrounding low-altitude air transportation shifted. The policy required the federal government to advance testing of unmanned aircraft flights and address policy gaps, increase the use of AI in drone development and begin testing eVTOLs.

For several years, Aaron Starks, CEO and president of 47G, had been looking into the aerospace and defense sector, and more specifically, eVTOLs and advanced air mobility. After he left his role as chief revenue officer at World Trade Center Utah five years ago, he joined a company looking to raise $20 million for advanced air mobility. They raised the money, and Starks says, “I fell in love with the idea of digitizing airspace above critical infrastructure, delivering people, parcels and packages via drone technology and air taxi.”

He began talking to insiders from aviation and military-adjacent fields, government officials and investors about these projects to try to build up interest.

“I then founded 47G and immediately went to work on putting together a vision for the state to follow on air mobility,” Starks says. He gathered a roundtable of partners, including Utah’s Department of Transportation (UDOT).

UDOT had also been looking into this area for years, considering what kinds of legal frameworks need to be put in place, both for safety and to prevent regulation from hindering development.

“The possibility of all these things happening — as a state, we’ve been looking at it since the early 2010s,” says Matthew Maass, director of the UDOT Division of Aeronautics. “We’ve realized that this was going to be coming and we needed to prepare for it.”

47G’s roundtable became Project ALTA, which developed a project called uFLY, led by UDOT to coordinate with Oklahoma, Oregon, Idaho and Arizona.

“I like to think of 47G as a bit of the architect on this,” Starks says. “We don’t build infrastructure, obviously; that’s the state’s responsibility. But we convene all of the partners and especially the industry to advance these efforts.”

Then came the eIPP, or the eVTOL Integration Pilot Program, a round of funding dedicated to state-led projects announced by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) in March. UDOT was selected as one of eight partners across the country to test and develop this sector of advanced air mobility. Several private companies, both inside and outside Utah, will also test this field under UDOT’s oversight.

“For us, this is really about moving things out of research and development and moving this into commercialization,” says Patrick Buckles of BETA Technologies. “We’ve been able to demonstrate the aircraft now for multiple years, flying all over the U.S. through the state of Utah, [including] dedicated demos we did with UPS.”

The benefits are robust, as Starks points out that one of BETA Technologies’ key materials is developed in Utah, with federal funding bringing more industry-adjacent businesses into the sector.

Maas, meanwhile, points out that this project is largely about creating safety procedures and exploring the existing underlying infrastructure. While the federal government has jurisdiction over airspace, Utah will look into establishing norms for cities, construction and planning. For example, outlining the zoning that would allow constructing a “vertiport,” or vertical takeoff and landing site. Maas also notes airports have been planning for possible impacts of electric vehicles for years, and $2 million was recently appropriated for eVTOL charging stations at Utah airports.

Military applications and cutting red tape

For Red Cat Holdings’ Brendan Stewart, the company’s senior vice president of regulatory affairs, the federal eVTOL pilot program allows his company to help clean up regulations that drone companies view as restrictive. At the same time, he says, the program can increase drone manufacturing in the U.S.

“I started with Red Cat back in 2021, with the goal to advance American drone manufacturing into the 21st century and create a manufacturing base as a bulwark against China,” Stewart says.

For the companies, it’s also a way to explore how this industry can create offshoots for them, as the peripheral technology and new developments may lead to new revenue.

Lydon Sleeper, the head of U.S. strategic policy at Joby Aviation, says, “Essentially, what the eIPP will do is it’ll allow us to partner with states and the federal government, the FAA and the Department of Transportation to pull forward some of our commercial operations plans.” He views the project as a chance to have the federal and state governments provide “a little extra regulatory support” so the private sector can help cut red tape and explore policy.

He notes that Joby is likely to partner with the Department of Defense on future projects, too. As the sector grows, the militarization aspects could compound. In an example Starks gives, some of the byproducts and materials used in making eVTOLs can have additional use to the military and help deepen Utah’s role in that sector.

“One of those technology areas that had been announced was advanced materials,” says Starks, explaining that carbon fiber composite is often used in the construction of aircraft. “We’re now putting them on missile silos and cones. … We are maybe the carbon fiber composite Mecca of America.”

For industry leaders, that’s part of the appeal. The effort to build a new aviation ecosystem is creating opportunities that reach far beyond passenger flights, from manufacturing and materials science to defense and infrastructure.eVTOLs still have regulatory hurdles, infrastructure challenges and public skepticism to overcome before Utahns can hail an air taxi as easily as calling a rideshare. But for people like Drummond and Starks, as well as companies, policymakers and aviation enthusiasts building the industry, the future of flight feels closer than ever.

Utah’s flying future

Rural Utah’s data center boom

With the advancement of a planned data center in the county — originally proposed to be more than twice the size of Manhattan before being reduced by half — Box Elder residents are weighing in on whether they want to house such a project. For Ferry, who lives in Box Elder County, the project represents a “new race.”

“When you look at what’s out there, with the advancements that are being made by foreign adversaries — China, Russia, others — who may not have a free society, Western mindset,” Ferry says. “This is our opportunity to participate and advance and show our ability to perform and to win this space race we’re seeing today, which is an AI race. … I think that’s really getting at that core of that question of moral imperative.”

The framework of a moral imperative echoes statements by Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, who has referred to AI as a necessary industry to grow for national security reasons.

The data center project, also known as the Stratos Project, began to take shape in talks between Cox and “Shark Tank” TV personality Kevin O’Leary in January 2026 and has brought international attention and input from environmental groups, academics, journalists and more. Hearings have been delayed, meeting venues have been changed to accommodate more residents wishing to voice their opinions, project filings have been submitted and then withdrawn to allow more time to compile accurate information, and county commissioners have expressed concern that they were brought into planning discussions only after concepts for the Stratos Project had already been mapped out.

A controversial project

As with the space race, Cox’s argument involves developing military applications for the technology — so much so that Cox’s office referred the plan to the Military Installation Development Authority (MIDA) for input and approval.

Deeda Seed, senior Utah campaigner at the Center for Biological Diversity, noticed the project early on and had concerns. Her team had been tracking various development plans by MIDA.

“We’ve noticed in the last little bit that there has been this real uptick in speculators wanting to develop hyperscale data centers in inland port project areas, and actually everywhere,” Seed says. “It’s a disturbing frenzy of activity, really.”

Public backlash was swift and led to a compromise in early June that the data center would reduce its footprint by 50%. The project still has studies and municipal approvals to work through, but the debate has boiled over for many.

“We’ve been really disappointed, of course, at the reaction that we’ve had from elected officials to the developers themselves in terms of how public input has been sidelined and ridiculed at times,” says Luis Miranda, interim chapter director for Sierra Club Utah, a grassroots environmental organization.

For Ferry, the tension around the Stratos Project comes up in his life outside of work. “I’m staying an hour after church, talking to my neighbors about the situation,” he says.

How water factors in

Utah’s environmental position is already precarious, which exacerbated many residents’ concerns. All 29 counties in Utah are in some level of drought, according to Ferry. There was no real snowpack this past year, meaning water levels are going to dive.

“The temperatures were really the story,” Ferry says. “We had an average of three degrees above normal temperature this last winter. … Our systems, our way of life, are built around snowpack and the collection of that runoff into our reservoirs. And this year, that just did not happen. In our stream runoff, we’re going to see some of the lowest levels, if not the lowest levels, that we’ve ever seen.”

This is likely to compound. With warming temperatures each year — and a super El Niño expected to heat up the globe even further this year — this means less water will likely work its way into the Great Salt Lake. And the gains that helped conservation efforts in past years will likely work as a savings account the state will end up dipping into, Ferry explains.

Some data centers, meanwhile, use notoriously large amounts of water for cooling. Although proponents cite the Stratos Project’s planned “closed-loop system” as a way to reduce water consumption, and Ferry emphasizes that the current application would shift the site’s water use from agricultural to industrial rather than increase it, water remains one of the project’s most contentious issues.

The centers also require massive amounts of energy. Existing centers used up to 4.4% of all energy consumption nationwide in 2023 alone, according to a Congressional study.

Miranda laments what he refers to as “the reality of a Great Salt Lake that is actively dying, a governor that is telling us to pray for it, and is telling us that he’s going to do everything he can,” but then this project would “drain” the lake further.

Seed points out that the last hydrological study of the area was conducted in 1971, so she notes a firm need for more environmental studies. “Even back then, things weren’t looking good,” she says.

“The point here is that we shouldn’t be fast-tracking and subsidizing this when there are these huge questions about what it does to the health of our community here in northern Utah,” Seed says. “This project could make our air quality even worse than it is right now. [When] you dry up everything, as we are learning, you get airborne dust. That’s a huge issue for us.”

Next steps

The Box Elder case will continue to work through municipal processes, including environmental testing studies, and public input will remain open, according to Ferry. He voices confidence in the state’s ability to separate interests and consider the case independent of pressures around job creation or the “moral imperative” of AI.

“We are not a state that is looking at pushing aside environmental regulation and other hindrances to development to get things done,” Ferry says. “What we’ve done, and the reason I think we’ve been so successful, is in the state of Utah, we recognize the environment is critically important. … There’s a process to this, and I’m very confident that the state of Utah does this the right way.”

He says the key aspect here is for the Stratos Project team to provide as much correct information as possible for the commissioners, the state and the public.

Seed remains concerned about how these proposals come into existence in the first place.

“There’s this imbalance in how we make decisions about development right now,” Seed says. “We’re incentivizing development at — in my organization’s view — a reckless pace that fails to account for the public harm that’s created by many of these developments. Our position is that we shouldn’t be subsidizing that [from the public sector].”

For Miranda, the fight isn’t just against the Box Elder case but rather among smaller proposals as well that may be receiving less attention. He worries about how this uptick in AI processing and the infrastructure required will affect this beloved state.

“This feels like a bit of a gold rush that can kill the planet,” Miranda says.

How data centers are filling in commercial real estate gaps

Utah wants to lead America’s nuclear renaissance

On April 1, 2026, four astronauts left Earth’s atmosphere to travel on a ten-day mission to the moon and back. The Artemis II mission was historic, marking the first time humans have traveled to the moon since the Apollo 17 mission in December 1972. In late 2022, the Artemis I mission successfully sent an uncrewed rocket around the moon. This time, the astronauts went along in hopes that this flyby will enable future missions to have humans explore the moon for longer periods and open up the possibility of potentially farther flights, like reaching Mars.

Reynolds grew up near Ogden and worked on NASA projects for more than two decades after earning his undergraduate degree at Brigham Young University. He notes that Utah is crucial in these historic steps, given the laboratories and facilities involved in designing crucial spaceflight parts like the booster rockets that shoot astronauts outside of Earth’s orbit.

“I heard it said that you can’t get to space without going through Utah,” Reynolds says. “I think that’s a pretty good motto for what we do in the booster office.”

Why Utah plays such a big role

Since the 1940s, the United States’ space programs have used facilities and private companies in Utah to create parts for historic missions. The Artemis II mission in 2026 has helped usher in a new focus for the aerospace industry in the state, with a renewed focus on the role industry can play in supporting exploration and the boost to commercial prospects from technological developments.

One of the major companies supporting this mission is Northrop Grumman. Their origin story is through an evolving chain of companies: Thiokol, along with other Utah entities, was involved in making parts that played key roles in spaceflight. That company was first acquired by ATK in 2001, and then was subsequently acquired by Orbital ATK in 2015, and finally by Northrop Grumman in 2018.

Now, Northrop Grumman has 10,000 employees in the Beehive State, with 3,000 who worked on the Artemis II project.

Artemis II, like many NASA missions before it, was built with key aspects of its design in Utah, even to the transportation, as the Union Pacific rail company delivered rocket motors to Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Hill Air Force Base transforms decaying WWII buildings into the DoD’s largest commercial hub

How to get a rocket to the moon

Dave Griffin, an engineer at Northrop Grumman and subject matter expert on the booster rockets in Artemis II’s flight, started his career at ATK after growing up in Utah. He explains that the rockets needed a huge amount of power to get the astronauts all the way to the far side of the moon.

“The goal is to get outside of the gravity of Earth,” Griffin says. “It takes a lot of thrust and a lot of energy to be able to do that.”

He notes that the two boosters for the flight, built at Northrop Grumman’s Promontory facility, each have about 3.6 million pounds of thrust.

“They only burn for about 126 seconds,” he continues. “We go from sea level to about 25 nautical miles, about halfway to the Kármán line [an internationally recognized boundary between Earth’s atmosphere and space] in that 126 seconds.”

From there, the boosters fall off the ship and back to Earth, and the rocket will use four engines in the remaining tank to power itself out of the atmosphere. Throughout spaceflight programs, these parts have been built for reuse — meaning these boosters will be recovered and cleaned. In fact, both Griffin and Reynolds point out that the Artemis II used many reused parts built in Utah during NASA’s space shuttle program that ran from 1972 to 2011.

The power of Artemis II’s boosters is a considerable leap from recent spaceflight ventures. Reynolds notes that the shuttle program that ran for 50 years focused on low-earth orbit missions, primarily culminating in the Hubble Space Telescope and the International Space Station. These projects massively advanced understandings of space and the technology required to operate off-planet missions, while the Artemis era is focusing on pioneering flights in which humans can travel to distances never reached before.

The power required to achieve this feat is considerable. The 3.6 million pounds of thrust Northrop Grumman’s booster provided helped to bridge this gap.

“It gave the capability of this rocket a much-needed boost if you’re trying to go from where we were — just circling the earth at 100 to 200 miles — to being a quarter-million miles away from the moon,” Reynolds says.

The private sector takes note

April’s Artemis II flight opened up new possibilities. From Reynolds’ reading, expeditions and exploration are often government-led, but managed through relationships with private companies. While companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin have made headlines in recent years for wanting to privatize spaceflight, Reynolds believes that the advancement of space exploration will remain within the public sector while fueling the private sector with new contracting opportunities and commercial pathways.

In fact, both SpaceX and Blue Origin are contractors working on the Artemis program, developing the landing mechanisms for when rockets will touch down on the moon’s surface.

Rebranding a movement: UADA is now 47G

For Aaron Starks, CEO and president of the aerospace and defense industry organization 47G, the development of Utah companies playing a major role in Artemis rockets highlights a key policy point for his nongovernmental organization (NGO). 47G aims to promote Utah’s role in space and defense technology, and he sees an ambitious future for private companies as a result.

“It was our initial vision and plan back in 2023 to resurrect the idea of creating a spaceport in Utah,” Starks explains. “We have participated in the space economy in many ways — certainly at a company level — but in 1971, Utah was one of four states that competed for the space shuttle program. At that time, NASA wanted to take passengers to space every month through the space shuttle vehicle. We ultimately were not selected. Kennedy [in Florida] was, and that’s because we didn’t have open water that would allow us to return the boosters to Earth to reuse them.”

Even without serving as the primary launch site, Utah has seen many opportunities take hold over the years.

Noting that 47G has investments from every college and university in Utah, Starks points out that the NGO serves as a springboard for talent within the state to get involved. Private companies approach the organization with projects, and they help facilitate contacts. With programs like the Space Dynamics Laboratory at Utah State University, for example, Starks notes a strong connection between the academic, private and public sectors in the state to compete for more of these types of projects going forward.

“Now they’re talking about the future of aerodynamics, space engineering, pharmaceutical research in space,” Starks says. “All of that is starting to happen.”

As Artemis II’s journey to the moon strengthens the bonds of collaboration between Utah and spaceflight exploration, back on Earth, the mission serves as a launching point for a private sector that wants to commercialize the stars.

Podcast: Proactive protection with Strider Technologies co-founder and CEO Greg Levesque

When Utah’s lawmakers and business community gathered in November 2025 for a two-day meeting, attendees walked away with a directive: the best way to address homelessness is collaboration across sectors and a multidisciplinary, scientifically backed approach.

AI in healthcare: Utah leaders discuss the future of patient care

State Rep. Steve Eliason — who spent decades working in the healthcare industry and 15 years serving in Utah’s House of Representatives — noted a culture change. The room was filled with healthcare providers, business owners, philanthropists and government workers. Even Utah’s richest woman, Gail Miller, was in attendance and making comments.

Years earlier, Eliason invited then-Lt. Gov. Spencer Cox to quietly spend a night in a homeless shelter, where they met a young man whose father with schizophrenia had disappeared. On his own, the 19-year-old had been unable to pay his rent and was evicted — and only sought a bed in the shelter after living on the banks of the Jordan River in single-digit temperatures. For Eliason, the case highlighted the myriad ways interventions could prevent such personal spirals.

“Bringing it down to a very personal, human level to see that these safety nets are not comfy couches, that they are safety nets that keep people from freezing to death, and to the extent people are motivated to get back on their feet — there’s lots of programs and people willing to help them,” Eliason says.

By 2025, after years of research and planning by various Utah governmental bodies and agencies, ideas for addressing the needs of unhoused people are beginning to change. Thanks in part to a concerted effort of Salt Lake County mayor, Jenny Wilson, to prioritize a reimagined slate of services and policies, Salt Lake City’s leadership began to see the issue of homelessness as interlinked to broader institutional problems: incarceration, access to healthcare and general crisis support.

Agencies and policymakers, as well as their partners in the private and public sectors, now examine homelessness as not isolated but as an opportunity to create an innovative model that challenges decades of standard U.S. policy and treats poverty and illness as issues that can be addressed through policing.

Even outside legal experts — including a longtime judge from Miami and co-chair of the American Bar Association Criminal Justice Mental Health Committee, Steve Leifman — have found in Salt Lake City a largely invigorated business and political climate that wants to rethink how state interventions are done, not just as a way to assist those institutionalized but also to reduce the burden on taxpayers and the cycle of violence.

The beginning of a shift

Katherine Fife, the associate deputy mayor of Salt Lake County, says the mayor’s office felt there needed to be adjustments in how public policy managed the needs of the area’s unhoused community.

“Mayor Wilson said we need to kind of look at the things a little differently, look how these different systems and issues intersect a bit better,” Fife says. “We need to see if we can look at tackling it in a different way than we have in the past.”

Wilson’s team formed a group assigned to the issue, and they’ve been researching and engaging stakeholders ever since. By the end of 2022, the group took a trip to Miami, where they met Leifman. In late 2025, after he retired, Salt Lake County contracted Leifman to come on board and consult officially.

After years of site visits, meetings, reports and sessions on key takeaways related to the problem, Salt Lake has been able to draw on what Leifman has seen working in Miami. One key element is buy-in and support from those outside the government who recognize the benefit to the overall community in providing more services.

“We realized in Utah that we in the public sector can’t solve this issue alone,” Fife says. “We play our role, but so do our private sector partners and our businesses. They have cared about this issue about the individuals they’re seeing on the streets, but also the impact on their businesses and the community as well.”

For Leifman, a focus on mental health and how it intersects with the criminal legal system — and questioning what interventions would work better — began years ago in a courtroom. His defendant was a Harvard-trained psychiatrist, Leifman explains, who was suffering from late-onset schizophrenia. This person ended up having a psychotic episode during the hearing, making Leifman aware that the law didn’t provide the tools to help.

“In the United States, we have applied a criminal justice model to an illness, and it hasn’t worked, and it will never work,” Leifman explains. “What we really needed to do, and what we’re starting to do, is to apply a disease model or a population health model to an illness, just like we would do for heart disease and cancer. And you get much better outcomes when you do that.”

Tiny homes could be the future of housing the homeless

Leifman notes that in the mid-twentieth century, there was a deinstitutionalization of mental health facilities as public attitudes changed about how to address mental health. Then, in the 1980s and 1990s, upticks in national practices like mandatory minimum sentencing and the “War on Drugs” fueled a push to incarcerate large numbers of people. These compounded problems are facing those who are without a safety net and are at the point of living on the street.

As for historical policies and the intentions behind them, Leifman explains, “This is decades of maybe well-meaning — or not so well-meaning, sometimes — of a perfect storm that came together. And everybody has the same crisis,” Leifman says. “It doesn’t matter where you go.”

Kelly Colopy is the human services director for Salt Lake County, and her office handles services related to mental health, substance use and behavioral health. They also cover pretrial cases, indigent legal services and probation, meaning their office sits at the intersection of many of the issues facing unhoused populations.

Working in these policy meetings with Fife and Leifman, Colopy is also a strong advocate for collaborative approaches that engage different community stakeholders in addressing homelessness before people reach the worst circumstances. She explains that there are many people in Utah whose services play a role.

“Many of those are nonprofit providers,” Colopy says. “Businesses are engaged. People are hiring. There are all kinds of folks engaged across these pieces. And what we’re doing now is looking at a more comprehensive system so that it is more coordinated and connected.”

Why Utah is at an innovative crossroads

Colopy explains that the reason people end up in housing crises has primarily to do with a lack of stability or basic resources, which can exacerbate underlying mental health issues or create trauma that leads to them.

“When you look at the percentage of people falling into homelessness, the majority of people fall into homelessness due to income,” Colopy says, “not mental illness and not substance use disorders. They fall in because of income, they fall in family disruption.”

She explains that in these situations, issues like substance abuse come into play as a form of self-medication as access to healthcare becomes limited or impossible.

The practical response Colopy and others in Salt Lake County’s working groups are discussing is called a sequential intercept model, which outlines the various off-ramps that communities can build to assist someone without using force or punitive measures before they reach a full crisis. Colopy explains that the first point of intercept would be ensuring people have access to housing and healthcare before they might ever be incarcerated, and that crisis response is available for those with mental health issues.

From there, if people do become engaged with law enforcement, courts or jails, the framework provides diversion programs that can redirect people out of serving jail time and into treatment instead. These types of paths out of standard criminal legal proceedings and into resource- and treatment-focused programs make up the remaining five intercepts under the model. In order to achieve this, Colopy explains, cities, counties and states need to coordinate across institutions and industries.

“We have it piecemeal in place, but it is not as coordinated and as robust as it could be,” Colopy says, pointing out that someone on parole needs access to housing and employment to ensure they won’t end up incarcerated again. “That model has been around for a while. But bringing everybody together and understanding it in ever-shifting dynamics right within communities has been really what bringing [Leifman] in is helping us to reconvene around.”

For the judge’s part, the cycle of recidivism, the tendency for individuals to reoffend and return to the criminal justice system, is a crucial one to break and is interconnected with access to healthcare.

“People either graduate or drop out of a program and we don’t really know what happens to them,” Leifman says. “And so they fall out and they end up back in an acute system of care, which is either jail, homelessness or hospitalization, which are all extraordinarily expensive systems for them to go through for the taxpayer, for the community. And the outcomes become very, very poor.”

Leifman argues this process, without interventions, perpetuates as people have no structure to build their lives after incarceration, “costing the community a huge amount of resources.” He explains that no one wants to see others homeless and sick, living on the street.

“We’ve learned that just getting someone treatment for their mental illness may not be sufficient,” Leifman says. “So when we don’t give people what they actually need, and they don’t succeed, we have this tendency to blame them for failing when the reality has been we haven’t given them what they actually need to recover.”

But to drive the point home, he argues that attempting to address mental illness by way of the criminal legal system is “like having chest pains and going to a podiatrist.”

“There’s a lot of research and science, and Salt Lake is really committed to trying to align the proper diagnoses with the proper treatments,” Leifman says. “What is unique about Salt Lake that I particularly enjoyed working there is that there’s this great sense of collaboration and recognition of what needs to be done.”

Utah is well-positioned but still experimenting

Leifman argues that Utah is in a very good position to deal with the problems that lead people to be unhoused, but one of the hardest parts is addressing the needs of those with the most acute mental health needs who would benefit from these types of interventions.

Fife points out that collaborating across disciplines helps people see more broadly the ways issues like homelessness can be addressed by bringing in people with distinct areas of expertise.

“Utah is unique,” Fife says. “We have so many people that care in every sector, every type of person. I mean, they just care so much. People are hungry for knowledge.”

After spending much of his career focused on this issue and volunteering at shelters on Christmas Eve, Eliason is aware that some of the most important voices shaping these policies are those who are impacted themselves, who generally don’t have the logistical capacity to attend policy meetings.

“You definitely have to try to stay in touch as much as possible with the people that we’re trying to help to understand the challenges that they’re facing, and try to design policy that will help them succeed through combined efforts of programs, policies, and individual accountability and effort,” Eliason says.

But he remains positive about the shift he’s seen at meetings like the two-day convening in November about homelessness and notes that people across the state, of all classes, are eager to get involved. Eliason refers to this as the “Utah way.”

Colopy, who echoes the sentiment that Utah has a very engaged community on this issue, explains that the model will involve many people who want to step up.

“Employment opportunities for people coming out of the prison,” Colopy says, “having a sense of like connection and hope and income, that’s going to help a lot, right? Investment in healthcare, investment in creating additional support systems for people as they’re coming out. That’s going to matter along the way. And investments in housing … we can’t move people through our mental health systems fast enough because there’s no place for them to go when they leave and they go back to the streets. And so, what does that look like in terms of housing investment and our business partners investing in that housing?”

For Eliason, this is a crucial point because the steep cost of housing has made this more difficult to achieve. He noted this process can at times feel like bailing water out of a boat, but was optimistic that the changing attitudes toward “upstream” thinking could make a big difference.

Leifman, who will continue working with Salt Lake City on this issue with his team for the foreseeable future, argues that the public health framework helps convince people to make those upstream changes.

“Look, we all need to look at these issues as what they are: They’re illnesses,” Leifman says. “At the end of the day, it’s about getting data, using data, and making decisions based on the information that we have, not just setting up a program, and then making sure that the systems are well-coordinated and it’s not a siloed, fractured system.”

How to extract lithium from the Great Salt Lake (without depleting water levels)

The Great Salt Lake is our collective responsibility

Among other high-level goals, the law was one of the first in the country to outline regulations for how a company could operate if they were pulling lithium from the lake. Media framing was consistent: Despite Utah being considered pro-business, the lake’s dangerously low water levels drew a red line for lawmakers.

The bill included a key restriction: The common mining method of evaporation, which expends large amounts of water to concentrate minerals, would not be allowed. For one company, this was a key opportunity that paid off in early January of 2026.

The proposal

Jake Alexander, a geologist previously with the Utah Geological Survey, took on a newly created position as mineral operations manager, specifically overseeing companies’ filings for mining for the state’s Forestry, Fire and State Lands (FFSL) division, part of the Department of Natural Resources.

For several years, the state of the lake had been perilous. The historic low water levels — with conditions so poor that they are visible from space — were in part due to heavy use of evaporation pools to extract minerals like salt and magnesium.

A proposal from Lilac Solutions, an Oakland, California-based company that aims to use a new method of extracting lithium while creating minimal impact on the surrounding environment, became a significant focus for Alexander’s new role throughout 2025. His team had to discuss the plan with outside experts and build guardrails to balance between the industrial benefit of domestically sourced minerals and the dangerously low water levels harming the ecosystem of the lake.

“The idea here is we can have something that is non-evaporative, non-depletive, in the sense that they’re not really affecting water levels, but you’re pulling out a valuable mineral that can benefit the state, the country, the people of Utah,” says Alexander. “If there’s a way to do that together, that’s something we really want to encourage. And that’s kind of how the process fits through it. It’s a multi-step process, and they are the first ones to go through it.”

How Lilac won over investors and regulators

As electric vehicles have taken off globally and the need for lithium in battery manufacturing has increased in the electronics market, the Great Salt Lake provided an opportunity for mining companies with lithium deposits in the brine, potentially proving to be profitable. At the same time, ion exchange technology, which had long been used to separate chemicals, was being developed for a new application: to extract lithium from surface water.

This new approach, referred to as direct lithium extraction (DLE), has been framed as a novel strategy that could ensure a lower impact on environments and much less water loss than traditional lithium mining, which is often based on long-term evaporation methods.

“Lilac’s one of the earlier DLE technology companies. We have an ion-exchange-based technology that is an in-house proprietary; we manufacture our own ion-exchange here in the U.S.,” says Mark Mulligan, VP of engineering & projects at Lilac Solutions. “It’s an exciting growth area for the industry and will help unlock a lot of the resources that have not been traditionally able to be unlocked in a sustainable manner.”

The company was founded in 2016, and raised $300 million from a range of investors. They implemented a pilot program at the Great Salt Lake to demonstrate their process, which has satisfied regulators and investors, allowing them to move forward with a full facility. The first phase they’re implementing at the lake will pull 5,000 tons annually of lithium carbonate equivalent, which will be produced for battery manufacturing.

On January 12, Lilac announced they entered an agreement with Trayxs North America, which will be buying 50,000 tonnes of lithium from the company over a 10-year period.

“[We’re] continuing to advance and commercialize the technology from the earliest days when it was bench-top in the university through to really a self-standing company,” Mulligan says.

Mulligan says they chose Utah because the company has a U.S.-based technology and they manufacture some of their most crucial parts in Nevada, so they wanted to operate this project domestically, and they are confident they can extract high levels of lithium from the lake. Another factor for them was that Utah is considered a business-friendly state.

Lithium’s relevance on the global stage has exploded. Between artificial intelligence and data centers requiring large amounts of energy, the continued growth of the EV market, and an increased need for battery-powered utilities, Mulligan says the need for lithium will only grow in the years to come.

In countries like Argentina and Chile, evaporation-based extraction is common and leading to high-profile fights about ecosystem degradation as the mineral has become a key piece of energy transition practices. Meanwhile, Utah has used frameworks like HB 453 to entice new businesses that can make a profit both in and for the state while prioritizing sustainability.

The proposal hinges on a key turning point for the Great Salt Lake. Lilac’s DLE process suggests that lithium can be pulled out in a way that avoids losing water and maintaining the ecosystem, a claim that has won the support of outside experts like Westminster University biology professor Bonnie Baxter, who worked with Lilac to review their ecosystem impact.

“Their feasibility assessment essentially says there were limited potential impacts,” says Alexander. “Most of it was based around how they are going to account for some of the small water depletions that happen, but they’re not using evaporation.”

For Rob Dubuc, the general counsel of Friends of Great Salt Lake, environmentalists have noticed that the company has spent considerable time answering their questions and making efforts towards transparency in their claims. While he says the results of an expanded project remain to be seen, he expressed optimism about the technology and its potential.

“When it comes to these new extractive industries, like lithium extraction, seeing a company come in that uses a new technology that is largely non-consumptive when it comes to water and non-intrusive when it comes to the lake not occupying tens of thousands of acres in evaporative ponds in order to extract the resource, we’re just not opposed to that,” Dubuc says. “We think that that is a step in the right direction when it comes to this industry.”

Michael Broussard ventures from Utah to Saudi Arabia’s hospitality sector

Michael Broussard, CEO and founder of Broussard Properties, announced in mid-November a $2 billion pipeline of investments between his company and Monolith Capital to develop hotels across Saudi Arabia. That new venture, Monolith Arabia, combines investments from the United States and the United Kingdom into wellness resorts across the country at a moment when its geopolitical position is changing rapidly.

Utah Business recently caught up with Broussard to discuss the project, its challenges and hurdles, and opportunities for growth.

The direct sales pivot

UB: What is the plan for Monolith Arabia?

MB: The way we like to describe it is next-generation hospitality, wellness and residential destinations across the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

UB: Can you talk a little about what that means?

MB: Our core offering is a network of wellness and rejuvenation resorts that will offer a full service, including an on-site stem cell institute where we will be able to provide stem cell treatments to guests. They can use all of our different networks, so they can come in and we’ll do the full blood work on them, and they’ll be able to receive treatments.

We will be able to have a real ethical standard, too. A lot of times in that business, places just order stem cells, right? You don’t really know the background of it or where it comes from and the efficacy of it. So, we feel like our product will be very spectacular that way. The Ministry of Tourism, the Ministry of Investment, and the Ministry of Health in Saudi Arabia love our concept because right now, Saudis leave the country and go to Switzerland and other places to get these exact treatments. So, the fact that we will offer this product and this type of service in amazing destinations in Saudi Arabia is really what’s driving our opportunity here.

UB: Talk about where the stem cell element came into the mix. At what point was that introduced, and how did it become a central piece?

MB: My background is that I’m a hospitality operator. My partners with Monolith Capital brought this concept [of a stem cell institute] to the wellness to give us a product that would be superior in the marketplace. We are partnering up with COLEL, and they are launching a destination resort in Mexico to lead this effort and provide these services.

In partnership, that’s how we’ll offer that. I have no medical background, just a very loose framework about how all this stuff works. So, I rely on the professionals to do that.

We’re creating these opportunities to make this network of destinations that will all work hand-in-hand to provide these great services and experiences.

UB: At what point did the connection between you guys at Monolith and the Saudis come into play? How did the relationship start?

MB: I’ve been working on developing concepts in Saudi Arabia for over three years. Then, I tried to buy a building from Monolith Capital in Florida. And while that transaction didn’t close, we discovered how well we work together.

[Monolith Capital] was interested in coming with me to Saudi Arabia to learn more and understand the landscape. Once I got them there, and I set up the core opportunities of all the work I’ve been doing the past couple of years, we created these offerings with these wellness resorts. In addition, we are also going to construct a number of hotels and branded residences.

They are developers by trade, so they have experience developing hotels. In addition, we want to do these branded resorts. It was just the right time to find the right partners.

That’s really what I’ve achieved here is I founded a company; I found the right partners to help me develop and grow the company. Collectively as a team, we’ve really achieved some amazing things in the past year. Now, we have the support of the Ministry [of Investment] for our first 11 projects to move forward.

One exciting thing about that is on all of our projects, the private land owner or the government is contributing the property into the venture. Let’s say we’re going to build a hotel that we will brand as Marriott. We get the land contributed in kind. Then we provide the additional equity that we need beyond the construction financing, and that’s how we scale up our project. But the ability to have the in-kind property contributed is amazing for being able to grow this portfolio.

So again, to further expand on that, with a $200 million project, $100 million worth of land is donated to the project, 50 in construction financing we set up, and then we contribute the additional equity needed, $50 million or so, to complete the project.

UB: It’s a very involved project. There are a lot of moving pieces to keep track of.

We’ve had to get the government’s endorsement, and the press release announced that we signed for it [in November].

That’s really a significant thing to have that support of private landowners and the government to scale our projects. One additional example is a beautiful destination called Aseer in Abha. We signed a deal last week with the governor there to get the land contributed in kind to our project. We’re going to build an amazing hotel destination wellness concept on top of this amazing mountain. It’s just stunning.

The landscape reminds me of Moab and a little bit of St. George. And that’s what people don’t understand about Saudi Arabia, is that some of it [has such a] beautiful landscape.

Actually, it’s very mountainous. This area that we’re building, this particular destination, it’s like 20 degrees cooler than the other parts of Saudi Arabia. It’s very much a destination that people want to go to in the summer to get away from the heat.

UB: Can you talk about what the next couple of years will look like? How do you manage the construction? The logistics and the workforce — it’s a lot to set up.

MB: The biggest risk in the development process is controlling the construction. We have formed a joint venture with one of Saudi Arabia’s leading construction companies, Al-Redwan Contracting Company.

They are a legacy family construction company that has been in business for over 50 years. They have a Grade A license. They have over 500 employees.

We have now formed a joint venture in which they will construct our whole portfolio of properties. We have a lot of experience on the ground with a company that has built over 20 hotels that we will be in a joint venture with. We can control that process, and we can execute on a very high level.

We are launching our business and [opened] our doors in January, in Riyadh, our headquarters. We have hired a CEO, Dr. Yasser Altighi. He’s a very renowned doctor in the healthcare space and will help us create this experience in the wellness area. He will be one of 20 employees that we’re bringing on board in Q1 to launch all of our products and portfolios across the kingdom.

UB: Can you talk about the Utah connection?

MB: I’m from Utah. I’m a lifelong Utahn.

I went to Saudi Arabia, and I started on the ground level, not really knowing what to expect. I was invited to a conference there, and I’ve just moved through the landscape of trying to sort out how I’m going to construct a deal, what I’m looking for. I found the partner.

I saw the landscape in Aseer, and I recognized it as Moab and that people would want to come and recreate in an area like this because it’s amazing. Not only the temperature, but the landscape and just the beauty of the area. It’s my whole lifelong experience [and] what has launched this company.

The Broussard Investment Fund is headquartered in Utah. It’s a Utah venture.

I have a joint venture with Monolith Capital. They are shareholders in the company, and my company is a shareholder in the company. I’m the founder and chairman [of Monolith Arabia].

In addition to that, we have secured the commitment from a sheikh that I can’t publicly identify, but he has agreed to, and we are moving forward with a commitment of over $8 billion in land. He has a massive land bank, so we’re going to build a number of projects and he wants us to develop his properties.

So there’s three main players [in this deal]. We’ve got a billionaire sheikh. We have myself in Utah, who’s helped get everything started. And we have Monolith Capital, a firm based in Washington, in Florida and in London.

What I think the story is about, though, is me taking a bold step, right? It was very much an unknown to go there and then just stay after it. I’ve been to Saudi Arabia four times this year for like 30 days each time, meeting with the government, meeting with different stakeholders in wellness and in resorts, meeting and courting huge investors, such as the sheikh.

There’s a lot of opportunity in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. That’s what I’m growing. My success will translate into success that I can also reinvest in Utah and other projects here as I make things happen there.

I will certainly make things happen in my own hometown and in my state as I will continue to be a lifelong Utahn. My family’s here and they’re all the owners of this company.

UB: You mentioned it’s been three years since you’ve been looking into Saudi Arabia, but can you talk about what that original conference was that you got invited to?

MB: I was invited to attend the Founders Club International delegation. I paid to attend and go on this delegation and get an additional 10-day tour of the kingdom. We met with different departments: the Ministry of Tourism, the Ministry of Investment. And originally, I went to the kingdom thinking that I was going to raise capital in Saudi Arabia to deploy to vacation rentals in Utah and in the U.S., thinking that the Saudis would be interested in investing in my companies in Utah.

But I soon discovered that all of the opportunities are in Saudi Arabia. They’ve opened their country since 2019, where all the Muslims in the world have all always wanted to go to Saudi Arabia and visit their religious destinations of Mecca and Medina and have the pilgrimages and the experiences that they’ve all aspired to. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia had restricted how many people could come in and who could come in. They have since opened that up.

So now, tens of millions of more people are flowing into the kingdom. There is this amazing demand for hospitality products, hotels, resorts and wellness facilities because they just haven’t had many people there. And now, the kingdom is wide open for tourism and as many people as possible will come in there.

There’s demand for a hundred million. So they can take 19, but in five years, they might open it up to 25 million as the hotels build up.

There’s an interest and demand to go there. And so, we’re catching it on a very interesting time, and it’s just amazing that we can come there and build the product that will be completely utilized and occupied in and has such demand.

UB: Is there anything that you wanted to share that you hadn’t already?

MB: The only thing I would want to say is that my goals on the onset of this were to try to do something new. I needed a challenge. And all of a sudden, I took the risk and I made the trip.

All these opportunities have blossomed out of it. I would like to encourage others in the business sector that sometimes you need to be willing to take risks to really see what’s possible.

Q&A: DiversiFi CEO on how fresh $8M will help break the ‘shipping duopoly’

A collective shift happened in multilevel marketing (MLM) when Justin Serra launched his new business after leaving Modere in 2023. The shift was captured in a change of terminology: instead of “MLM,” companies began referring to the industry as “direct sales.”

Utah wants to lead America’s nuclear renaissance

This shift is intended as more than a linguistic or branding change; it reflects changes in the business model in response to stronger regulation and critical public views of MLM companies, as well as shifts in consumers’ buying habits. In recent years, social media changes, technological shifts and the fast-paced nature of selling have all made it easier for companies to reach millions of customers easily. Companies that formerly built their marketing around networks are taking advantage of these new tools.

Serra, now the co-founder and CEO of MAKE Wellness, says the paradigm shift was already taking place at Modere before he left two years ago.

“I think all of us kind of collectively came together with this feeling that there actually does need to be some change in the way network marketing or multilevel marketing was done or had been done,” Serra says. “You can already start to see that in the industry — a pivot toward a consumer-centric focus, less of a focus on recruiting. … Take the regulation out of it, take the negative stigma where some companies did the recruiting-focused type stuff, and companies had to make a pivot to a more modern approach just to survive because the economy was shifting,” he says.

The shift to sales-based compensation

The “direct sales” pitch aims to refocus away from recruitment and classic distributors altogether.

Many businesses operating in the space have shifted their models away from networking-based sales, for example, and more toward affiliate marketing, an increasingly popular sector in viral marketing overall that leverages well-known public figures and social media influencers who can earn commissions on products they promote.

In this new structure, affiliates are not distributors like the classic MLM company, where someone buys a large quantity of the product and attempts to sell it to people in their network. Instead, they simply get a commission on the sales they do make, which is meant to reduce the pressure to constantly recruit new distributors.

“I would say there’s some real positives from this shift,” says Tyler Whitehead, MAKE Wellness co-founder and COO. “The ubiquitous availability of products and information — like on Amazon, you can find anything and everything — but at the same time, information and personal testimonials are still … where consumers are buying products.”

One of the key drivers of this change is the ability to make sales through social media. Influencers, celebrities and even niche accounts can reach audiences and generate sales through commissions, rather than in-person purchasing and selling to their communities.

“They’re not trying to get other people to do what they do,” says Todd Bagley, former North America Director of Sales for Amare Global, pointing to previous arrangements he has seen with stars from Bravo’s “Real Housewives” series and Olympic athletes who have sold products this way. “They’re just representing brands on their platform.”

Surviving regulatory challenges

Serra says his startup is performing extremely well, which he credits in part to this shift.

“I think it is based on this new philosophy of, ‘Let’s be consumer-centric-focused, let’s have affiliate-style marketing,’ and then the last part of that puzzle is that, yes, there is a back-end where if you can refer other affiliates, you can earn an overwrite on their efforts, but it’s kind of the third part of that puzzle instead of being the whole puzzle,” Serra says.

As many know, MLM companies have been the target of critical regulation and scrutiny for decades. There are entire YouTube channels and HBO’s “Last Week Tonight” segments dedicated to arguing that the industry is a pyramid scheme, while lawsuits and federal investigations have publicly targeted companies perceived as predatory. The Federal Trade Commission website warns about overlaps between MLM companies and pyramid schemes. Netflix documentaries, such as “(Un)Well,” pit the subject front and center for investigation.

The core issue revolves around the recruitment process, which involves bringing in sellers who must purchase goods and then attempt to sell them to others. Federal investigations have revealed that many people who were recruited for this type of side hustle barely made any money at all, let alone enough to make it a full-time job.

In Utah, MLM companies have long been an integral part of the business landscape, with many performing well financially. Bagley says Utah’s unique culture has made it a strong performer for this type of network-based model, which he says performs well among religious and immigrant communities.

“The reality is, some of your biggest [MLM companies] are outside Utah,” Bagley says. “I mean, California probably has as many or more. Florida has quite a bit. But yeah, there is kind of this little hub in South Salt Lake Valley and Utah County.”

According to Bagley, the need to address the distribution side of the business has been building over time, with both sellers and companies needing to be careful — and vague — about the amount of money they claim participants can earn. He also says they’ve invested in their legal claims departments.

“‘I got a $20,000 bonus check from my company,’” Bagley says, paraphrasing how people used to talk about their work as distributors for MLM companies. “Back in the day, people would post that check, and they would say, ‘Check out this check from my side hustle.’ Well, today you can’t do that because it’s very misleading. It’s not a side hustle.”

The companies that are structured this way can’t survive in 2025, according to Serra’s assessment.

“I think the companies in the network marketing space that kind of buried their heads in the sand and said, ‘Oh, we’re still doing the belly to belly thing, we’re just going to invite your friends over to your house and give them the pitch,’ those were the companies that died first,” Serra says. “You also had to see this emergence of startup-type companies that could build it from the ground up with that consumer focus and affiliate-friendly approach.”

Last-touch attribution is deteriorating your market results

On August 27, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox made a bold argument while on a Bloomberg podcast: Nuclear energy could meet several lofty and seemingly disparate political goals at once — not only in Utah but nationally.

How two Utah companies became critical to international shipping overnight

“If you care about economic progress in our country, if you care about national security, if you care about the environment, you have to believe in nuclear power,” Cox told the Bloomberg reporter.

Nuclear power has taken a backseat role in the United States’ energy sector for decades, making up less than 20 percent of the country’s power generation. It suffered setbacks due to fears of repeating historic accidents and meltdowns, as well as exposure to radiation that causes environmental and public health concerns. For financiers, massive upfront costs in the range of tens of billions of dollars also solidified the sector’s limitations.

But for many large tech companies and politicians, the attitude has been slowly shifting over time. Proponents argue that nuclear is both clean (like renewable energy) and safe (despite famous accidents) while delivering larger amounts of power that can keep up with the booming needs of modern society. They continue on to say that neither wind nor solar, for example, delivers the amount of power necessary for modern technology or a sufficient number of jobs.

Massive tech companies, meanwhile, have already been investing in nuclear. In June, the World Bank and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) entered into a partnership to help ensure that global financial institutions would back the nuclear power industry and push for a “scale up” of the sector.

Utah’s going nuclear

The legislature and governor of Utah aim to move the state into the center of that process, while the state’s private sector is vying for regulations that will streamline licensing and help ensure success. Cox’s 2024 plan, “Operation Gigawatt,” aims to increase Utah’s power output by embracing geothermal and nuclear power. On the Bloomberg podcast, he reflected on what he saw as poor energy policy in the U.S.

“We made a very bad decision,” Cox said, arguing that in the 1970s, the country decided, “We weren’t going to bet on nuclear. The rest of the world has moved ahead of us, and that’s a huge mistake right now, as we are in an energy arms race and we have to win.”

In May, Utah signed a memorandum of understanding with Hi Tech Solutions and Holtec International to create business and infrastructure for the nuclear power industry in Utah. In August, the state signed a memorandum of understanding with TerraPower, another nuclear power company.

“Two years ago, Utah wasn’t positioned at all for commercial nuclear power. The state is greenfield — there are no existing commercial nuclear generating assets here,” says Chris Hayter of Hi Tech Solutions, explaining that while there were wealthy companies in the industry nationally, Utah had no real nuclear infrastructure or footprint for growth.

Hayter began working in the nuclear power industry as a plant laborer at the Columbia Generating Station in Washington, where he paid his way through college. He’d met the founders of Hi Tech Nuclear in 2007 while working at the nuclear plant. He continued working with them until 2013, when he had the opportunity to start the company again — now named Hi Tech Solutions — and take it in a new direction.

When Hayter first started with Hi Tech, “Across the nation, the nuclear industry was shutting down perfectly operating plants due to economic challenges, not technical ones,” he says. “Well-run facilities couldn’t compete with government-subsidized wind and solar, combined with artificially low natural gas prices. We were struggling because of the gas lobby; the cost of natural gas was almost artificially low, and what we call renewables today were receiving massive subsidies. The lobby as an industry wasn’t quite getting us to that level. We were facing not even a slow death, but a kind of expedited death of industry. And I think it went from Fukushima [in 2011] to about 2018.”

Hayter says he moved to Eden, Utah in 2007 to raise his family. Years later, he relocated Hi Tech Solutions to Utah, seeing an opportunity to build something transformative.

For him, promoting nuclear power has been a long-term effort, with several difficult years spent waiting for the market to bounce back. One of the key changes has been technological developments around small modular reactors, which are more cost-effective and considered safer.

“In that early 2010 to 2013 timeframe where the tragedy happened at Fukushima, all of these things happened; I will tell you, people told me I was crazy,” Hayter says. “They were like, ‘If you’re going to go build a company, why not just build it in the tech sector?’ I wanted to build a company focused on people and safety first while delivering the technical excellence our industry demands; not one that cuts corners on workforce development or safety to maximize short-term profits.”

The future of nuclear

The shift to building more nuclear power infrastructure could make a big difference for technology and business in Utah. On Monday, Hi Tech and Holtec, alongside Cox, announced a plan to build a set of small modular reactors that will be constructed and developed in Brigham City. The companies are creating a campus where people can be certified to do nuclear jobs at the site, and are partnering with universities and high schools to make it a strong educational option. To achieve this initiative, the companies will be partnering with the Division of Natural Resources and the Governor’s Office of Economic Opportunity.

Hayter says he plans for the company to hire 3,000 to 5,000 people over the next decade. He also hopes the campus will enable their employees to be trained and located in Utah rather than bringing in people from other parts of the country.

Hayter says the development is a result of Cox and the Legislature firmly supporting nuclear power, and he hopes that the state continues to embrace this approach. As technology advances, he believes that the nuclear ecosystem of companies being built is crucial to make sure Utah can deliver at the necessary scale.

“Utah is building America’s most comprehensive nuclear energy ecosystem. We’re transitioning from planning to execution, building manufacturing plants, workforce training centers, and ultimately nuclear power generation facilities,” he says. “With strong legislative support and strategic partnerships with Holtec and others, we’re creating the infrastructure that will position Utah as the national leader in advanced nuclear technology.”

Editor’s note: This article has been updated to correct several factual inaccuracies regarding Utah’s nuclear infrastructure and Chris Hayter’s background. The original version incorrectly suggested Utah had existing nuclear infrastructure when Mr. Hayter arrived, when in fact the state had no commercial nuclear assets. We’ve also clarified that Mr. Hayter moved to Utah in 2007 for family reasons, not because of the state’s business climate, and began his nuclear career as a plant laborer at Columbia Generating Station, not in an office setting. Additionally, some quotes have been amended to more accurately reflect the current status of Hi Tech Solutions’ projects in Utah and provide proper context regarding industry conditions.

Energy experts discuss grid stability, electric vehicles and nuclear power

The deal for Hill Air Force Base (AFB)’s Enhanced Use Lease program was signed and ready to go when the 2008 recession hit. In a period when the United States lost 8.7 million jobs and households lost $19 trillion in net worth, a new business development park would likely run into some challenges.

Click, watch, buy

But the administration and workers at Hill AFB had already been waiting decades to get started. A bit more time to firm up the plan was manageable.

The plan was to replace decaying, World War II-era bomb depot buildings by leasing the federal land to private businesses. With few businesses looking to expand at the time, the Enhanced Use Lease program — known in the Air Force as EUL — was paused and fine-tuned instead.

“[The program] kind of just existed for several years as we got everything established and everything got right-side and we started building product,” says Brett Christensen, the chief of the base’s EUL program. By 2016, major defense contractors like Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin would be leasing tens of thousands of square feet of office space on the base.

As of this year, the plan has grown considerably — and even become the Department of Defense’s largest commercial real estate EUL program.

Hill AFB has continued to expand, with plans for additional offices, a new gate entrance to the base, and expansion to I-15. The EUL program, arranged as a cooperation between the Air Force, the state of Utah and private sector developers, has become one of Hill AFB’s most notable Utah-focused community projects.

Solving a long-term problem

While the program’s draw is proximity and a deepened relationship with the Air Force for private-sector companies that develop weapons and technological systems with and for the Department of Defense, the EUL program actually started as a way to solve a generations-long problem that plagued Hill AFB. The large bomb depots that were built for WWII operations in the 1940s were facing continuous, hazardous problems like pipes rotting.

“[The buildings] are, of course, 80-plus years old. Over time, [we’ve] converted them mostly to offices,” Christensen says. “And they’re really difficult to maintain. They contain various amounts of contamination, lead, asbestos. They’re aged and they need either updating or demolition, so what we recognized is we needed to try to replace these buildings.”

The military construction process (known as MILCON) run by Congress doesn’t typically prioritize funding these types of projects, he says.

“What they really spend their money on, primarily, is what we call new mission MILCONs, which supports new weapons systems like Sentinel nuclear weapons, the F-35, F-22,” Christensen says. “So those projects tend to get money.”

The goal was to demolish all the hazardous buildings, but without funding, Hill AFB felt they needed to come up with their own solution. According to Christensen, that’s where the leasing program came in.

“The general idea is that the federal government can lease off underutilized land to private industry and the federal government receives some kind of payment in kind for the use of that land,” Christensen says. “Every EUL with the DOD is slightly different.”

The current program, mostly located within Falcon Hill Aerospace Research Park, involves leasing out 550 acres. It is located on the side of the base adjacent to I-15 and currently has all available space — 1.3 million square feet — under lease. On top of offices and research projects, there are restaurants and retailers in the space. Many of the defense contractors are specifically connected to the nuclear weapons enterprise. There are also police and fire departments dedicated to the area.

“The Falcon Hill program creates a business magnet, which will attract new businesses to our community that otherwise wouldn’t have interest. … With the new program, our city becomes a desirable option for those industries, especially for those that don’t necessarily need to be located on base.”

Brody Bovero

Christensen estimates that about 5,500 employees occupy these spaces.

What’s unique about the project to him is that it’s not just a ground lease; it’s a profit-sharing model. The developer leases square footage to the tenant and makes money off rent, and Hill AFB gets a percentage of that rent.

The developer that handles the project, Sunset Ridge Development Partners (SRDP), is comprised of El Paso-based Hunt Companies and the Utah real estate developer Woodbury Corporation. They partnered with the state and Hill AFB in a tri-party agreement to form SRDP.

Christensen says they primarily focus on offices that could do multi-family, retail, warehousing and potentially some light industrial production that’s environmentally friendly.

Breaking new ground

In April, Cambridge, Mass.-based Draper Labs announced it had begun construction on a new space at Hill AFB. For Paul Hendrickson, Air Force ICBM modernization and Utah site lead, the announcement gave the company a chance to build on the ways it bridges gaps between academia and defense contracting.

Draper Labs was founded at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1932 by engineer and scientist Charles Draper, who was interested in building instruments to track and navigate aircraft. In the 1970s, Draper Labs became a nonprofit so it could develop systems instead of only focusing on research as an academic institution, as doing production work is prohibited for research programs.

As of 2025, Draper Labs has 12 campuses across the U.S., and the Falcon Hill site will open in 2026.

“As we continue to expand, we’re kind of out of room in Cambridge,” Hendrickson says. “Moving to Utah made sense because of our long-term relationship with the Air Force, the amazing technological base that Utah offers, and coming to where the talent is.”

Hendrickson grew up in Layton, Utah, near the base. His father did guidance engineering work for Boeing, a role that Hendrickson eventually would take on himself in a military posting at Hill AFB years later. He retired from the Air Force in 2023 after 21 years, and his aim was to return to Utah.

He joined Draper Labs to build its Clearfield office in 2024, and then the plan to establish a presence on the base came up. For him, the opportunity to see the project through from start to finish adds a deeper opportunity to put Draper Labs’ stamp on the space.

“It allowed us to kind of drive the internals of that building,” Hendrickson says. “We’re building an engineering innovation and development center. We’re gonna do Draper-type things for guidance, navigation and control, precision electronics, potentially all the way through production, but that’s going to be determined as we continue expanding the company. The building will be built out to the latest security standards to support ER, [as] various customers require that. You know, all the latest and greatest engineering tools.”

Hendrickson notes that Draper Labs maintains its educational mission by funding master’s degrees and PhD candidates in areas “critical to national defense.” There are currently over 100 people in these degree programs and about 18 participating universities that have these scholars at them.

There is a philosophy of Charles Draper’s that the company applies now in both educational programs and the contacts at Hill AFB: “You can build facilities and hire people to come to them,” Hendrickson summarizes, “but if you go to where the talent is and give them the hard challenges to solve, then good things happen.”

For him, this idea has a lot to do with how the Falcon Hill project can connect Utah’s various educational, business, technology and military sectors all at once.

“One of the nice things about the state of Utah is it’s one of the fastest growing aerospace and defense communities in the U.S.,” he says. “They’re very supportive of that. The pipeline from the universities is phenomenal — they work very closely with the industry to make sure they’re vectoring their graduates to make sure they support these types of missions. So we see a lot of room for growth not only with the core universities but also with the tech colleges.”

How it all comes together

For Christensen, the EUL program’s efficiency makes it work best for companies. He credits this especially to the state of Utah’s creation of a department specifically to oversee federal and state land leasing, the Military Installation Development Authority (MIDA).

“The state of Utah recognized that, suddenly, 500 acres of federal land was going to have commercial real estate on it and be generating property tax for the first time ever,” Christensen says. “And there would likely be something similar to an Oklahoma land rush as cities attempted to annex parts of the base to claim that tax revenue. The state didn’t want that.”

He says they foresaw different cities trying to determine which parts of the boundaries were theirs.

But tax revenues are only one consideration among many for Hill AFB’s neighboring communities. Brody Bovero, the city manager of nearby Syracuse, says there are multiple perspectives on how the base impacts the local economy and how it can factor into their decision-making.

“The first is a supply and demand versus capacity perspective, and the second is a business multiplier perspective,” Bovero explains. “In the former, some may see that the demand created by the Falcon Hill program will be largely absorbed by the supply provided by the federal land on the base instead of private, developable land within the surrounding communities.”

He says this could be seen as a negative by cities, but he thinks “those surrounding communities wholeheartedly support Hill AFB and its strategic mission.”

Syracuse has another city between its boundaries and Hill AFB — Clearfield — but it is still close to the base’s south and west gates.

“I believe most of our city views it from a business multiplier perspective,” Bovero says. “The Falcon Hill program creates a business magnet, which will attract new businesses to our community that otherwise wouldn’t have interest. … With the new program, our city becomes a desirable option for those industries, especially for those that don’t necessarily need to be located on base.”

The cities have even taken things a step further and built infrastructure specifically around the needs of private companies leasing these sites.

“In Syracuse, we have adjusted our general plan to accommodate the industries associated with the Falcon Hill program,” Bovero says. One major road has been developed with major utility upgrades to handle the type of traffic needed for the projects.

For Christensen, these planning considerations factor into their leasing process, too, ensuring ideal setups for tenants. A benefit of Falcon Hill, he says, is that tenants don’t have to go to local municipalities to get approvals for their projects; they get those directly from the Air Force and DOD, which they see as a more streamlined process.

“The city doesn’t levy burdens on the developer for new streetlights,” he says, “so that’s attractive to certain tenants.”

MIDA maintains and builds roads, hires police and fire departments, and oversees the administrative aspects of the land.

Companies have a 50-year ground lease, meaning the development company builds the building and then leases it. In 50 years, the ground lease finishes, and Hill AFB can take ownership of the parcel and whatever facility is there. The lessees could also renew the lease after those 50 years. There is also a clause in the lease that requires them to build an escrow account where the company leasing would demolish and give everything back to Hill AFB at the end of the lease.

Every time a company that participates in the program builds, they get a 50-year lease on that parcel, Christensen explains. With the addition of new areas to lease under the I-15 expansion, even more lessees will enter the program in the coming years.

“It’s going to take a long time for this to work through the process,” he says. “We’re going to have to clean up the books — maybe in 10-15 years, we’re going to have to reconcile everything to make sure it’s all on a similar timeline.”

A new chapter for Utah’s aerospace and defense

Hill Air Force Base transforms decaying WWII buildings into the DoD’s largest commercial hub

With about a month’s warning, dozens of countries suspended shipping to the United States, as they had no infrastructure to process the import fees for that amount. While the shift applied to international postal services instead of private carriers like DHL and FedEx, this meant hundreds of mail handling agencies worldwide would have to figure out how to ensure tariffs that were never processed before could be paid.

Enter two Utah companies, including St. George-based Zonos, which has been focusing on international fees and tariffs for 16 years.

On August 21, eight days before the exception was set to end, Zonos founder and CEO Clint Reid posted on LinkedIn that his company was in the midst of “very exciting news” related to these international shipments. U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) had listed Zonos and Utah’s SafePackage as qualified parties to collect duties on these smaller packages, send those duties to CBP directly and mark those duties as paid on behalf of the government.

Trading Partner: International sales made easy thanks to Zonos

SafePackage, for its part, issued a press release the next day calling the development a “significant regulatory milestone.”

Within a few days, many more companies announced that they would also process payments ahead of and after the Aug. 29 change. But for Joshua Aikens, Zonos’ senior customer service manager for community affairs, the change led to a “land grab” in which private companies in the space could get relationships with international postal services first.

“For a small company like ours, it’s a big deal,” Aikens says of Zonos’ ability to process the payments for CBP.

Aikens says they began talking with postal services internationally, starting with “the biggest ones first, then everybody else we just put into the queue.” In the final weeks of August and the beginning of September, Zonos has publicly confirmed that they are processing payments for Israel, Vanuatu, Canada, New Zealand, Ukraine, the United Kingdom, Australia, and more. The contracts are generally exclusive, meaning Zonos is the only company partnering with these countries’ postal services.

“Before this E.O. dropped, we were already discussing with CBP and the [United States] Postal Service (USPS),” he says.

Aaron Bezzant, Zonos’ head of supply chain, says the company noticed an opportunity when the Trump administration’s first attempt at ending the de minimis exception failed in February of this year. Throughout the spring and summer, Bezzant says Zonos began meeting with contacts in Washington, D.C. and building relationships, helping ensure they could be picked as a qualified party to process payments once the exception was eventually ended.

“We just saw a technology problem,” Bezzant says, clarifying that their team listened to interviews with government officials and realized they were the type of solution that the agencies were looking for. “The whole process has never been transformed because there was never a lot of need for it.”

Part of what made the announcement a natural step for Zonos, Aikens says, is that the company already had a pre-existing contract with USPS to make software.

“We basically were saying the postals [services internationally] need some way to collect that duty and tax, and it could be in advance at the checkout — just like we do for regular merchants — or it could be like an invoice and built after,” Aikens says.

Bezzant clarifies that the company’s core focus is on payments for duties and taxes. But as part of this process, they’ve had to build out some security protocols to work with CBP, opening up additional opportunities for Zonos in the future. He also points out that the information they’ll be collecting on shipments and purchasers goes beyond what the government was able to do previously.

The de minimis exemption has a recent history of controversy in the global trade space that led to Trump’s executive order. In January, the Congressional Research Service published a report arguing that a 2015 change by Congress to raise the exemption from $200 to $800 had established the figure “well in excess of inflation.” It stated that “the number of de minimis entries has increased from 153 million in 2015 to more than 1 billion in 2023.”

E-commerce companies like Shein and Temu, for example, had offered low prices to U.S. customers through the exemption, selling packages under $800 without tariffs and beating prices from U.S. companies that import larger amounts, therefore paying duties before they sell the product. For supporters of the de minimis both within the U.S. and abroad, the argument was that lower prices helped consumers domestically while benefiting foreign companies and global trade.

In April, Trump called the exemption a “scam” and suggested it could be used for illicit packages and drugs, repeating a talking point that’s been growing from groups like CBP and the National Sheriffs’ Association.

Utah at the forefront of tech diplomacy

Aikens, who was raised in Utah, notes that there’s been a long-term shift toward working within the international market and trying to develop a global position in trade.

“Utah is definitely making some noise on that front, and we’re kind of along for the ride,” he says.

In early February, President Donald Trump signed an executive order calling for the secretaries of the treasury and commerce to form a sovereign wealth fund within 90 days that could potentially buy TikTok.

The battle against fast-fashion knockoffs

A looming ban on the app, which would make it a crime for companies to support the app while it is owned by ByteDance, was paused by Trump on his first day in office on the suggestion that the United States government and the company could work out a deal. In January, fears that ByteDance could be controlled by the Chinese government resulted in a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that a forced sale of the company was justified.

In Utah, the app’s uncertain future has left many in doubt about how to build their online brands. In December 2022, Gov. Spencer Cox issued a ban on the app for all government devices in the state, and Utah was one of dozens of states that sued TikTok on the basis that the app targeted and exploited minors.

All along, companies have been building audiences.

Businesses want brand champions

The chaos surrounding TikTok is the latest in years of posturing and questions of ownership around massive tech platforms, following Elon Musk’s 2022 contentious but ultimately forced acquisition of Twitter; a decade of acquisitions and rebranding at Meta, Facebook’s parent company; and a headline-grabbing introduction of AI into the mainstream digital media environment. Amid these public-facing battles, small channels, retailers and businesses of all sizes weather constant changes while building their brands online.

For Utah companies, social media sharing opportunities have business leaders exploring ways to convert their customers not just into one-time clients but brand advocates who share links, promotions, events and products with friends.

The options around gamified social shopping are increasing each year. Apps like Flipp, which encourages social interactions and reviews — and rewards customers by providing discounts and loyalty cards — can save users a lot of money in the long run while deepening a company’s organic reach online. Amazon and Facebook both have marketplace products, which constantly introduce more elements to shrink the distance between social interactions and digital purchases.

“You try to be scientific about it and use data, but you’re almost just looking at vanity metrics. … What TikTok Shop has done that’s so genius is open up the primary data points everybody cares about and make them totally transparent.”

Trenton Romph

Mike Alexander, CEO of Borboleta Beauty, says his team has a large Amazon business and has been exploring different routes to engage their key customers — but the environment is new enough that they’re working on several options simultaneously.

The appeal goes beyond straight marketing into building an active relationship with customers, updating the idea of a rewards program for a more involved set of interactions. To Alexander, the upshot is that gamification can incentivize customers to participate while also sincerely recommending and engaging with the brands they like.

“I think every brand is looking for opportunities to engage their community at a higher level,” Alexander says. “Sometimes, you’re just lucky — you have these cult brand followers posting on social and talking about it with their friends. Everybody’s thinking about how you reward people for doing that.”

For example, Alexander chooses to frequent Maverik gas stations instead of larger chains like Shell primarily because a rewards program gives him a reason to support a regional business.

“That’s a local business that has [implemented] gamification. I can go get free drinks when I want just because I’m getting my gas there,” Alexander says. “Whereas, if they didn’t have those rewards, I may just go to Shell or wherever.”

By the numbers

While loyalty programs aren’t new, their integration with giant social media platforms is still evolving. TikTok Shop launched in late 2023, tapping into the app’s giant user base of over 135 million monthly active users in the United States, according to Statista. A December 2024 Pew Research Center report also found that the platform is used for more than just entertainment, as more than half of all adult users — or 17 percent of all adults in the country — said they get their news through the app. This finding reflects a shift in the tech environment that makes social platforms a kind of digital mall with everything a user might need in one place.

The Pew report also found that public support for banning the app declined in 2024, dropping to 32 percent from 50 percent a year and a half earlier. In this context, incredibly high viewership and engagement on the app makes it easy for brands and individuals to go viral, even more so than on other apps like Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

While Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and WhatsApp all had higher numbers of registered users in 2024, TikTok users spent more time interacting with content — and that interaction translated into sales.

A February 2024 report from Sprout Social, a software firm for social media content creators that conducts research around how social media platforms work, found that 30 percent of TikTok’s daily users have used the “shop” function, a statistic that is consistent with weekly users.

As these trends emerged and distilled over the past two years, companies like Sprout Social began referring to this type of review- and sharing-based retail as “social commerce.” This process is distinct from but within the umbrella of e-commerce, which is a more broadly encompassing term for any kind of digital commerce.

“Some people look at [social commerce as] acquiring customers, keeping customers and locking people in,” Alexander says. “But it really is about saying, ‘Hey, are we taking care of our amazing customers the best way possible?’ And then making it fun for them … I think everybody wins that way.”

The core concept for Alexander is an older approach to business, centering on the clients and users involved.

“Ultimately, this is about loyal customers and how you reward loyal customers,” Alexander says. “Look at Cafe Rio. People go to Cafe Rio just to hit their punch card, right? I think this works at the smallest level.”

The digital mall

For Trenton Romph, head of marketing at Pattern, the big question is how to use this process to build an “awesome community” for the brand. Pattern — an e-commerce platform that works with companies to promote and sell their products online — had been working across several mainstream platforms like Amazon and Walmart for e-commerce, and once newer, social shopping platforms like TikTok Shop came along, they were able to integrate it into what they were already doing. They began building a team specifically focused on social marketing that could drive sales within the channel instead of more traditional advertising, and Romph already sees the deep potential involved.

“You’ve got a lot of these little shops setting up a camera and going on TikTok LIVE,” Romph says. “They show every single product in their store on LIVE — their employees just being like, ‘This dress is perfect for a night out with your husband. This dress is perfect for like a birthday party with the girls.’”

He points out that, in a mall, only a handful of people might encounter a live demonstration of products organically — but online, that potential multiplies.

“If you rotate your staff in front of the camera every now and then and run that for eight hours, you’re probably going to get at least a couple thousand eyeballs from TikTok pushing traffic to it,” Romph says. In this way, casual scrolling could naturally introduce users to the outfit they want to wear on a date that weekend or introduce them to a new place or store.

How TikTok became public enemy no. 1 in the United States

Social shopping isn’t going dark

At the same time that this embrace of digital marketing tools has taken hold, some retailers are pushing against it. By focusing on community-driven and exclusivity-based business models, some stores can build reliable and predictable budgets by offering a community-oriented and in-person experience.

This isn’t unique to small businesses. Major brands like Lush — which has stores in more than 50 countries and has become a mainstay in malls — made headlines after a 2021 decision to halt its use of social media.

“We want to explore new ways of reaching customers beyond regular social channels and unhealthy algorithms,” Lush’s creative director, Melody Morton, told Campaign in 2023. “We know we can capture a new audience by collaborating with brands and franchises that people love and follow on unique, innovative products.”

But even if/when these brands stop using social media themselves, they still have users talking about them and promoting them, either through direct ambassador programs or through word of mouth.

“One of the biggest drivers behind social shopping has always been influencer marketing,” Romph says. Sometimes, influencers work on a barter basis, while others try to implement fixed rates based on their follower count and guaranteed posts. Costs can vary wildly, leaving business owners with little insight into how much growth or sales are actually coming from these investments.

“It’s just like this wild swing,” Romph says about the rates businesses can be quoted. “You try to be scientific about it and use data, but you’re almost just looking at vanity metrics. … What TikTok Shop has done that’s so genius is open up the primary data points everybody cares about and make them totally transparent.”

With TikTok Shop making social media sales trends more predictable and understandable, more people are creating accounts dedicated to reviewing and explaining products. For Romph, these are not traditional social media influencers — he prefers to think of them as salespeople running the modern equivalent of infomercials on their channels.

And even if TikTok is fully banned in the U.S., Romph believes social shopping is here to say.

“Social shopping has been proven,” he says. “[If Tiktok gets banned], one of these big companies is going to replace it.”

Do TikTok “side hustles” really work?

Clark Ivory, CEO of Utah’s Ivory Homes, is waiting for innovation in the housing market. The last major idea to boost home accessibility, he says, was the development of the 30-year mortgage just after World War II.

Closing in on a century later, the housing market across the country is in a bind, tied up by changing work and cultural habits that are exacerbating outdated policies and infrastructure.

Residents in the United States are watching their cost of housing increase while inflation and wages have struggled to keep up despite slow growth at mid- and lower-bracket income margins. During the pandemic, many people drove up the cost of housing nationally by moving out of cities; in rural areas, a lack of available housing has followed, even for those who can afford it.

In this context, Utah has become one of the states hardest hit. As a high growth state with new businesses and startups opening each year, the population increase and changing infrastructural needs have amplified the problem.

A 50,000-unit housing deficit

“We need to create 27,000 homes a year in our market over the next 10 years to keep up with what the demographers are suggesting will be the number of households created,” Ivory says. “We only produced 22,000 this year, so we’re 5,000 short. And we probably have somewhere between a 40,000-50,000 deficit already. People are doubling or tripling up, and they can’t get into housing; they can’t afford it.”

For Ivory, a lot of the problems stem from inconsistency in the market for building new homes. Pointing out that much of the regulation and approval for individual housing projects happens at the municipal level, he argues it can be challenging to create statewide change to allow new construction to flourish.

In some areas, he says, local officials can oppose new housing overall and maintain rules that make it difficult or inefficient to create new housing. One rule that stands out to him is localities that require new homes to be built with a garage — which can add significant costs to construction and the eventual purchase or rental of homes.

“There needs to be a movement toward design that figures out great ways to deliver smaller homes. [Regulators are] not really focused on the mid-range. And the truth is, what we have to start talking about that will really unlock supply is housing affordability matters at every level.”

Clark Ivory

“The bottom line is, we have a supply deficit right now,” says Steve Waldrip, senior advisor on housing strategy and innovation to Gov. Spencer Cox. “So our focus is on creating supply, and then within that supply, we’re focused on creating ownership opportunities.”

Some of the ideas being discussed by policy experts and industry players include repurposing public lands that are not being used, loosening regulations to create mid-tier housing accessibility, tapping into state resources to ensure interest rates can remain low, and restructuring commercial real estate for housing use.

Utah’s business community sees these changes as a way to ensure continued growth for companies across the board.

“We see it as not just a critical issue for the state of Utah in terms of our long-term economic prosperity for the middle class to be able to afford to live here, but also to retaining great companies and attracting great companies,” says Scott Cuthbertson, CEO of the Economic Development Corporation of Utah. “We just don’t have enough housing. And this is a nationwide issue, but it’s particularly acute in the Intermountain West and Utah specifically.”

How Utah plans to deal with the housing crisis

Waldrip points out that affordability is a major limiting factor.

“For 90-100 years, as a general rule, the cost of a home has been three times the median wage,” Waldrip says, saying that only major cities on the country’s coastline acted as outliers. “That’s how our whole financial system is set up. … That’s what allowed everybody to finance homes, save money for down payments, and it was a reasonable ratio.”

In Utah, housing costs are now 6.2 times the median wage, he says.

“Utah is the third highest behind Hawaii and California,” Waldrip says. “Essentially, we’ve cut affordability in half.”

Incentivizing mid-tier housing development

One possible solution is the state’s rainy day fund, says Dejan Eskic, senior research fellow at the Kem C. Gardner Policy Institute. This fund has reserves that can offer low interest rates to home buyers.

“The state has taken like $300 million of that to do a pilot program where, if you have projects that meet certain thresholds on affordability, we’ll give you a low interest rate loan to help develop your infrastructure or help offset some of your costs,” he continues.

Multifamily to the rescue

Eskic argues the current regulatory environment makes mid-tier housing projects inefficient for developers.

“Builders are building the bigger stuff because that’s the product they can move right now,” he says of high-end housing. Eskic points out that more affordable homes are not ideal for developers because of local requirements they have to meet.

“You’re going into a greenfield development, and you’re going to have a huge battle with the city, but at the end, you’re going to make about the same money — maybe a little less because you’re going to single-family,” he continues.

Urban density vs. costly suburban sprawl

For Waldrip, this environment has created a dynamic where the state has to adjust its role.

“The government used to only have to get involved in subsidized housing and the lower economic strata,” he says. “Because of these seismic shifts in the market structure, we’re going to have to be more thoughtful about how we intervene, or — probably more accurately — remove obstacles to the creation of more housing.”

Cuthbertson points out this can also be approached through city planning and urban design. Culturally, a lot of focus has been on housing in suburbs, which can come with major transportation needs. But he suggests that there are solutions within cities themselves.

“If you don’t want to sprawl, then you need to go up vertically,” Cuthbertson says. “The sprawl problem adds congestion, adds to commute times and creates problems. It’s costly.”

This hits home for Ivory. He argues that many developers want to access the middle of the market.

“There needs to be a movement toward design that figures out great ways to deliver smaller homes,” Ivory says. “[Regulators are] not really focused on the mid-range. And the truth is, what we have to start talking about that will really unlock supply is housing affordability matters at every level.”

Several weeks earlier, on May 26, the city council had unanimously passed a plan to install fiber internet in residential areas. Problems followed when a group called the Utah Taxpayers Association (UTA) began gathering signatures to drop the plan.

Bountiful went into damage control mode. In July, American Association for Public Broadband Executive Director Gigi Sohn penned an op-ed in the Salt Lake Tribune advocating for Bountiful’s plan to be implemented. Trade publications focused on public-owned broadband picked up the news and talked about how a dark money organization was funding “anti-competition” programs in Bountiful.

By summer, the deal went through despite the petition-gathering campaign. It was a unique moment because Bountiful decided to create its own utility, unlike most of the previous build-outs of the agency’s tech. UTOPIA will build the fiber connectivity in the coming years, and the city will own the infrastructure.

“They’re a public power city. They did a lot of surveys and said that one of the key things that their residents like is the ownership of what Bountiful has provided for them,” UTOPIA’s CMO Kim McKinley says, noting that UTOPIA doesn’t actually provide the internet itself but instead builds the infrastructure and then allows private internet companies to use it, ensuring they can create the best possible access without threatening internet service providers (ISPs).

To illustrate this, she likens UTOPIA to an airport: Salt Lake City builds the airport, and then Delta, Southwest, and other airlines have the option to fly in and out of it. According to the company, UTOPIA is the nation’s largest and most successful community-owned open-access fiber network and offers the nation’s fastest internet speeds, up to 10 gigabits per second for residents and 100 gigabits per second for businesses. For the last 15 years, every UTOPIA project has been paid for completely through subscriber revenue.

But that’s not what those leading the campaign against UTOPIA would have internet customers believe.

The campaign against UTOPIA Fiber

By November 2023, a new organization was targeting UTOPIA by running television ads against the agency and sending anti-UTOPIA mailers to project areas.

“Government-run networks mean waste, corruption and failure,” declared an ad campaign that played across Utah in late 2023, paid for by a group called NoGovInternet.com, a project of the Domestic Policy Caucus.

“We were seeing TV ads first, and now we’re seeing a very aggressive attack campaign that is hitting cities throughout the state—both cities that have been working with us and potential cities,” said UTOPIA Executive Director and CEO Roger Timmerman at a Wednesday press conference in Murray, Utah. “Overwhelmingly, our customers in these communities are very quick to identify that this information is misleading and inaccurate. … We don’t even know who is behind the campaign and can’t get them to respond to correct the information. We believe this is probably an effort from incumbents who don’t want competition.”

Timmerman claims UTOPIA hasn’t been negatively impacted by the attack ads and instead enjoyed the best year it’s ever had in 2023. In December, UTOPIA announced the successful completion of its build in the city of Santa Clara, Utah, its fifth city in 2023 and 19th city overall. A company press release claims UTOPIA Fiber has expanded its subscriber base to over 60,000, serving approximately 200,000 businesses and homes across more than 50 communities in Utah and the West.

In response to the campaign against UTOPIA, the company unveiled its own campaign at the press conference on Wednesday. The “Chosen by YOUtah” campaign serves to highlight the role Utah residents have played in founding UTOPIA Fiber and shaping the network’s future.

“It’s amazing that, in Utah, we have access to the largest open-access, community-driven fiber broadband in the country,” UTOPIA Fiber Director of Government Relations Nicole Cottle said during the press conference. “Some of the benefits it has brought to our state are increased competition and the increasing of broadband availability. … There are many things that make Utah great, and this happens to be one of them.”

The history of UTOPIA Fiber

UTOPIA’s approach focuses on individual communities and has grown as more communities in Utah request access. It all began in 2002 when 11 cities from the state decided to join forces and create an agency that would build faster internet in their area.

“Back in the early days, the cities went to the major telecom incumbents of the area—the cities who started this project—and said, ‘We would like for you guys to build in our area. We see that the internet connectivity is going to be important for our cities as we go forward,’” McKinley recounts of UTOPIA’s origin. “And at that time, those incumbents just elected not to build in those areas. … These cities took it upon themselves in a very ‘Utah spirit’ way to say, ‘Well, if they’re not going to deliver, we’re going to figure this out [on our own].’”

At the time, the focus wasn’t fiber internet because the technology hadn’t been developed yet. McKinley notes there were many legislative challenges for the agency to overcome before it could figure out a more effective structure.

“The reason people partner with us is because we’ve done everything wrong,” she says. “We’ve gone through the trenches. We want to help lift other networks until they’re at a point where they can operationally break even, and then they can go and do it on their own.”

By 2010, UTOPIA created a subdivision called UIA, which focuses more on growing the agency and working with communities that want to join the network. The agency has a board made up of the original cities that created it. When they build in an area, cities take out bonds so that it isn’t paid by taxes but rather through subscriber fees. Individuals pay a flat rate to UTOPIA each month plus a rate to whichever ISP they pick to actually provide their internet. The revenue UTOPIA earns from subscriber fees goes back to continuing to build the network, and there’s a board that oversees where it goes, according to McKinley.

Power for the people

One of the success stories McKinley points to is how UTOPIA installed internet for Morgan, Utah. As the pandemic proved internet access to be absolutely crucial for everything from education to health care delivery and daily work routines, rural communities are often left behind across the nation. Municipal broadband agencies have routinely tried to center those concerns in their platforms to build accessible connectivity.

The town of less than 5,000 in the state’s northern center wouldn’t have been an obvious priority under normal circumstances for UTOPIA, given its size and accessibility. But the city was able to trade, McKinley says, instead of taking out bonds to build the project.

“The reason we were able to get to rural Morgan, Utah, is because we did a UDOT trade,” she says. “They had some conduit and some stuff going up there, so we just did a trade: ‘If you give us this, we’ll help you somewhere else that you need assistance.’ And so if you do those little co-operations and talk to people and see what’s possible, I think those things can happen.”

McKinley notes that where private companies don’t have the incentive to get fast and effective internet everywhere—especially lower income areas or logistically challenging places—public utilities can figure out solutions with the cities and through subsidies plus through not having to generate large revenue.

For McKinley, the problem with attack ads is less about UTOPIA and more about an existential issue for private companies. She notes that being an open-access platform allows the ISPs a benefit: not having to pay to build the infrastructure but getting to benefit from it by signing new clients.

She believes the fight from private companies has more to do with opposition to a normalization of municipal ownership, which might lead some public utilities to eliminate private internet providers altogether. But in her mind, UTOPIA belongs in government.

“We view this very much as an infrastructure play more than anything,” she says. “It’s not just important for YouTube; it’s important for smart city apps, it’s important for monitoring, it’s important for everything coming down the line. I think what they’re really scared of is what could be if a visionary comes in and changes something.”

We’re really excited that this project will help provide power to the state and [its] citizens.

Luigi Resta

Utah Business proudly presents this year’s cohort of our Leaders of the Year award. These 12 honorees represent accomplishments of Utah’s business community in 2024 and were selected by the Utah Business editorial team.

Luigi Resta

President | rPlus Energies

in/luigi-resta-63371a5

Luigi Resta was in the middle of a walkabout in his home state of California, considering how to move forward with his career in renewable energy, when he got a call. It was 2018 and he’d been let go from his previous job about three months earlier.

The call was from Christian Gardner, CEO and chairman of Utah’s Gardner Group. He wanted to invest in Resta’s plan to build large-scale renewable energy. The two would launch rPlus Energies the same year.

“It was a time of reflection to create some clarity and vision in what I wanted to do in my life going forward in the renewable business,” Resta says of 2018. “I wanted to find an investor that was a family office in real estate development because I figured there were a lot of similarities with that and renewable energy.”

Six years later, the company is making its mark across the state, and 2024 was a whirlwind. In February, rPlus Energies — now with 65 employees and projects in 20 states — announced an investment of up to $460 million from Sandbrook Capital. In July, it secured over $1 billion in construction debt financing for the 800-megawatt (MW) Green River Energy Center in Emery County. In September, the company broke ground on the project, which will provide energy to the whole state and have an economic impact on every county in Utah, Resta says.

The Green River Energy Center will be one of the largest solar-plus-storage facilities in the nation.

For Resta, a major part of the project’s appeal is the way the center will provide renewable energy to rural Utah as well as jobs and economic benefits. While there were 25 workers on site as of December 2024, Resta projects the number of employees will grow to more than 500 before construction is completed ahead of March 2026. The solar-plus-battery facility will complement work that other power generators have been doing across the state, he says, as well as help provide economic diversity, opportunity and educational perspective.

As of 2024, Resta has been working with renewable energy for 20 years, but his formative experiences were on his family’s organic farm in Northern California. Community is a big part of how he approaches work, he notes, and rural areas are of particular interest to him for their potential to help shape energy practices.

“I’m really attracted to the communities that are multi-generational, rural,” Resta says. “And this would include Utah, where true sustainability exists.”

Tapping into this potential and strengthening the economy across the state is part of Resta’s vision for making Utah a renewable energy leader.

“It’s domestic energy,” he says. “We’re really excited that this project will help provide power to the state and [its] citizens … for use and consumption here.”

This story appears in the August issue of Utah Business. Subscribe.

Imagine two organizations operating on the same street. Both do frontline community work to provide basic needs and are dealing with fairly tight budgets. Both have leaky roofs.

One has 15 percent of its budget going to overhead, a figure that Jill Bennett, CEO of the Utah Nonprofits Association, says gets treated as the “gold standard” by boards and donors — a goal increasingly portrayed as a myth by nonprofit administrators. The other has 20 percent overhead costs.

“There are some givers who would say, ‘I’m going for the 15, it’s clearly a better organization, they’re probably doing things right,’” Bennett says. “The one with the lower overhead keeps patching it and patching it and patching it. … I don’t know about you, but I’d rather work for the organization that doesn’t have a leaky roof, and I think that should inform funders, as well.”

A balancing act

With lingering problems from inflation and the pandemic, employee retention remains a problem across various markets and sectors. Nonprofit employees have been particularly hard hit because grantmakers and donors often expect them to maintain lower budgets. For experts who work in the sector, the balance comes in making sure donors are well aware of the reality facing non-governmental organizations (NGOs).

Meanwhile, in recent years, high-profile NGOs have made headlines for wasteful spending on things like private jets and luxurious parties. This has led to a core tension for nonprofit management: Public perception demands transparency around spending, but the pressure to keep costs low also undercuts their ability to attract strong workers. Nonprofit administrators have been pushing back on the broad categorization of all NGOs under the same banner, arguing that there’s no way to enforce a norm around how much overhead is too much.

Bennett considers this issue particularly important in Utah because there are many NGOs at the local level. She points to a study that found 6.7 percent of Utah’s workforce is in the nonprofit sector.

“It’s a huge amount of employment, and yet we’re held to different standards,” she says. “Nonprofits focus on better futures for everyone. We care for unsheltered people and their pets. We care about clean air and water for our children and their families.”

The importance of frontline workers

Kathleen Bodenlos, CEO of the Discovery Gateway Children’s Museum in Salt Lake City, says the pressure to keep costs low can create complex staffing choices at the front lines.

“It does require a balance between our efforts to fundraise and then keep our costs down,” she continues. “Talent in a museum is typically the highest of line items; it’s where we spend most of our money. What we’ve tried to do is create a culture that people want to work in. … Retention is always a hard thing, too, because employees can always find a higher-paying job. If they find one, they tend to move on.”

Bodenlos points out that the department store Target pays a bit better than Discovery Gateway can pay its floor operations team, so the museum can have trouble retaining staff. But those staff members are crucial — they clean and protect the art and build complex exhibits, among other things.

“They make the museum, they build the exhibits, they greet the visitors. They do everything for us, and without a really strong talent force, we wouldn’t be where we are,” Bodenlos says.

Why debunking nonprofit overhead myths is crucial

In its 2023 Nonprofit Workforce Survey, the National Council of Nonprofits found that more than 74 percent of nonprofits reported vacancies. “We’re seeing people leave the sector,” Bennett says. “Inflation hit nonprofits particularly hard. We are so thin on our margins that, if we have a choice, we try to put our money into programming. That means there are fewer dollars for people who work there.”

Meanwhile, donor fatigue can crop up for NGOs because of the public perception that they should keep administrative costs at nearly zero. Saru Ramanan, director of communications at the Utah Nonprofits Association, argues that a bit of scrutiny on an organization’s budget can be good for transparency but that there is a double standard around that being applied only in a nonprofit setting.

“It’s a trade-off for tax exemption, this high level of transparency and very high level of accountability,” Ramanan says. “It’s a long-standing historical perception that is borne out of volunteer work: You ask for nothing in return. [There is a] connotation around doing things out of the goodness of your own heart, and here we have this growing professional sector that is getting more professionalized over the years. It’s not just activists, it’s not just volunteers, … but I don’t think the public perception has kept up with that professionalization of the sector.”

Bennett, meanwhile, points out that not all overhead is the same. She says some might use their budget to implement a data analysis that interprets the impact of their programs and allows them to better serve their clients.

“Historically, I think organizations have been held to a standard by charity watchdog groups in terms of every dollar given, what’s the allocation to overhead, and what’s the administrative cost and the programs,” Ramanan says. “Invariably, you see the compensation issue. If you can’t attract and retain talent, people are going to leave.”

Compensation gets a lot of attention and is tied to the scale of the NGO, Ramanan says, but there are incentives that can make staying easier for workers who are invested in the job, like flexibility regarding hours and remote work, support for career training and more. She also says many scandalous cases make the news when public perception sees them as wasting donor money, but points out that many NGOs she knows would be reluctant to cut frontline staff and are more likely to take the hit in the office.

Bodenlos says the role of a museum is different from the delivery of basic services, which allows it more revenue options. For example, the nature of hosting in-person exhibits opens it up to for-profit support.

“In our particular case, most of our funders are corporate sponsors,” Bodenlos says. She says this flexibility allows them to focus on funding staff through ticket sales, summer camps, art camps and their toy store. “Basically everything that is earned revenue is how we support our employees,” she continues.

A call for change

In June, Ramanan and Bennett traveled to Washington, D.C., to advocate for several regulations that would give nonprofits more flexibility.

“The call to action is to ask the funding community to support general operating support and allocate more grant dollars toward those administrative functions,” Ramanan says. “With project funding, you can often only guarantee a full-time role for one to three years. How do you build sustainability if you’re so dependent on program funding that every few years, you have to change your entire program? It’s really a call for greater sustainability by supporting sound investment.”

The senior brand marketing manager at Park City-based Competitive Cyclist is living a dream this week while traveling around Europe to follow the beginning of the 2024 Tour de France. Thanks to his company’s partnership with Amaury Sport Organisation (A.S.O.), he’s getting an opportunity to connect Utah with the worldwide cycling community.

“Experiencing firsthand the Tour starting in Italy and watching the peloton pass me inches away in the ancient streets of Florence and then climb the roads of Bologne was incredible,” he says. “Now I’ll ride that same road before the pros arrive — only half as fast as they will — but I can’t wait to be cheered on by the fans and find a perfect spot to watch the [general classification] battle unfold.”

The trip is more than just for fun; it signals the deepening role Gonder’s team is playing at the Tour. On June 27, Competitive Cyclist announced alongside A.S.O. that they would be the only official Tour de France retailer in the United States for the third year in a row.

Competitive Cyclist is a retail company that sells road and mountain bikes, while A.S.O. is a French sports promotion company that organizes 100 competitive events in 36 countries, including the Tour de France. Celebrating the connection between the two companies, A.S.O. noted Competitive Cyclist’s role in the U.S. market as a whole.

“With their high-level customer service and expertise in the bike industry, we believe that Competitive Cyclist is the top bike specialist to connect the world’s biggest bike race with US cycling fans,” said Nicolas Denolf, licensing and merchandising manager at A.S.O., in the release.For Gonder, the partnership is a natural fit because Competitive Cyclist carries brands deeply associated with cycling’s most famous event, including sponsors like Santini, Oakley, Continental and Shimano. Building on these connections, he says, is a part of the partnership.

“The A.S.O., in turn, gets exposure to the large U.S. road cycling customer base,” Gonder points out.

Meanwhile, in Europe, Gonder is seeing the world’s top-tier cyclists in action. They crossed from Italy into France to follow the professionals as they climbed Col du Galibier.

“This morning [July 2], I looked out my hotel window at nearly 20 kilometers of camper vans lining the mountain’s road,” he says. “I’m into the sport, the riders and the beautiful roads they ride on.”

The experience is allowing him to consider the sport’s growth within the U.S. and Utah. He points out that the Beehive state uniquely appeals to riders who want to train.

“Out of our backdoor are some of the best cycling grounds in the world,” Gonder says of Utah’s landscapes. “Pro cyclists use these landscapes as training grounds and even home bases as they prepare for the Tour de France. So, for us, partnering with A.S.O. to be the official U.S. retailer for all Tour de France merchandise brings things full circle.”

He argues that Utah has been the starting point for many riders because of the National Interscholastic Cycling Association. The sport’s popularity in the U.S., he hopes, will grow as U.S. contenders fare better in major tournaments. Sepp Kuss, for example, won the Vuelta a España in 2023, and for Gonder, it was a big moment to see a U.S. competitor in cycling media perform so well.

“I don’t think we’re far from an American winner of the Tour de France, and that would do wonders for the American cycling market, and our business would be a beneficiary,” Gonder says.

For these logistical reasons, much of the legal response to cyber threats has focused on prevention rather than prosecution.

This is clearest when looking at systems that could cause major economic fallout if they fail: ports, electricity grids and global financial institutions all report major threats to their networks. The response is to shore up defenses before an attack, but even then the government itself admits its limitations.

In late August 2021, President Biden urged technology companies to do more to take the onus of prevention off the individual, encouraging major private companies like Google to better protect data. Then, in July 2023, the Biden-Harris Administration released a cybersecurity certification program with support from manufacturers like Amazon, Google, Best Buy and Logitech. The program allows companies to label “smart” products that meet basic cybersecurity standards.

“What we’ve been doing for about 40 years is bolting cybersecurity onto all the stuff we’ve built … and bolting cyber on the back-end is, as we found out, not really the most efficient way to do cybersecurity," Acting Principal Deputy National Cyber Director Jake Braun said at an event in San Antonio.

Utah needs to pay particular attention to this problem. A 2023 report based on FBI data from consumer site VPNPro ranked the state the ninth most at-risk in the union. The report found that Utah residents lost $98,840,388 to scams in 2022.

State-wide efforts to track threats

In 2013, Utah launched its own task force to address cybercrime, with prevention as the main approach. Now the Utah Cyber Center, the program is a combined effort between the Department of Public Safety and the Department of Technology Services. A summary of Utah’s program published by the National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO) explains that the original task force’s goal was to create a system that could monitor threats, share information and connect government agencies in the event of an attack.

In particular, the task force was interested in addressing challenges related to ransomware, where attackers seize digital assets or lock out administrators until a ransom is paid. These attacks are now more easily thwarted by several backup copies of data stored in physically distinct locations.

By June 2018, the task force soft launched the Utah Cyber Center in the basement of Utah’s State Office Building. “The Cyber Center allows all known or suspected cyber security incidents to be reported to one single point of contact, disclosing all known information and interactions, immediately upon discovery,” the 2020 NASCIO summary read. “The Cyber Center is now the center point for election security coordination and monitoring.”

These days, the Center focuses on protecting governmental data and elections from attacks. But it doesn’t just cover state governments; according to its website, it also provides “coordination of local, state, federal, and private sector breaches.”

The significance of this approach can be felt particularly among Utah’s small business community, where resources for responding to a cyberattack may not exist.

Why prevention is key

Jarom Roney, CEO of Onward Technology in Draper, says prevention is the most important thing for his small business clients. But as most small businesses don’t have the resources to staff an entire department dedicated to cyber security, third-party vendors like Onward Technology are the first line of defense.

“For most, we are their IT departments. So we’re going in there, we’re setting up their networks, their computers, we’re doing help desk and troubleshooting when they have issues,” Roney says, pointing out an increase in phishing emails, emails that try to get employees to click on a link scam link, as a particular problem.

“That’s often one of the most common ways [cybercriminals] get into a business: social engineering,” he says. “You contact an employee, you’re impersonating someone else, you get some information from them. It doesn’t really matter at that point what security’s in place. Oftentimes, you can knowingly let them in. We hear about that a lot.”

Ransomware has been less of an issue for Roney’s clients because Onward Technology has strict backup policies where they store digital information so it can be accessed safely in the event of an attack. He also ensures that every client has “enterprise-grade antimalware” on devices.

However, in the event of a ransomware attack, Roney says he would urge businesses not to pay the ransom to regain stolen or blocked data as attackers cannot easily be found.

From an IT perspective, he says, resolving an attack after it has happened is far more complicated than just changing a password, as there may be lingering code and malware that can continue to impact a network. Especially with more sensitive data, like in medical or legal fields, the impact of exposed data can vary widely, so it really depends on the business’s focus and needs.

“Every business is going to see it and you have to be prepared for it,” Roney says. “Even us as an IT company, where all of our employees are in the field and are prepared for it, when we do our tests, we’ll always get a few clicks on [scam emails].”

Roney’s tips for avoiding cyberattacks as a small business:

• Create filters that will reduce spam.
• Train employees to recognize unusual requests and scam emails.
• Implement security exercises such as sending out phishing emails to employees to check if they can recognize a scam and helping employees improve their ability to differentiate between real and fake contacts.
• Have a firewall against subscriptions.
• Create backups of data with three copies of all data at any given time: two backups with one offsite.

Companies like Beehive Meals, for example, donate food to public schools. In November 2022, the Utah Jazz partnered with Mark Miller Subaru to donate almost $30,000 to renovate West Lake STEM Junior High’s computer lab. The Utah Adopt-A-School program exists to connect businesses with schools for sponsorship and learning opportunities.

Through these examples and many more, Utah’s volunteerism culture shows up as strong support for its education sector.

Shared success

The Utah Adopt-A-School program launched two years ago and uses an online portal to connect for-profit companies with schools that might have intersecting needs. Some of the program’s “success stories” predate the initiative and helped establish the idea—for example, Chevron operates a refinery near Salt Lake City and routinely donates money to the nearby Davis School District.

MarketStar is also featured for its role in creating programs like the Skill Up High School Sales Skills Challenge, which focuses on teaching teens sales and encouraging a career in technology. The company’s Pack the Pantry program, meanwhile, provides basic groceries and food to students in need.

“Based on the principles of volunteerism and service, partnerships with Utah’s education system ensure the collective success of communities, industries and individuals in this inclusive, proactive industry-with-education approach,” the Adopt-A-School website reads.

In just a few easy steps, companies can sign up and browse a list of local schools’ specific needs. After schools approve connections with businesses, the two can begin working together to create lasting benefits.

Another company utilizing the program is the Salt Lake City-based railroad company Stadler U.S. Inc. In partnership with Salt Lake City School District, Salt Lake Foundation, Salt Lake Community College (SLCC) and Talent Ready Utah, Stadler “offers a youth apprenticeship adopted from the Swiss model of apprenticeship,” according to the Utah Adopt-A-School website. Students from Salt Lake City School District split their time between the classroom and Stadler, earning credit toward an Associate of Applied Science degree from SLCC. Stadler also provides students with mentoring and a system of support.

“With Utah Adopt-A-School, businesses have a unique opportunity to utilize Utah’s education system as a tool for workforce development,” reads a February 2022 press release from Gov. Spencer Cox’s office announcing the plan.

Giving through food

Beehive Meals—a Layton, Utah-based company that preps, seals and delivers frozen freezer meals—picks a new school each month and donates food to all of its teachers, staff, office staff and janitors.

“We’ve had PTAs reach out to us in the past, and our meals fit really well with teachers. [They’re] able to put something in [the crockpot] in the morning before they go and work a long day,” says Beehive Meals Co-Founder and CEO Allyse Jackson.

As they were running that program, Jackson says, Utah first lady Abby Cox got in touch about her Show Up for Teachers program and opportunities to collaborate. At the Show Up for Teachers conference in July 2023, Beehive Meals donated 100 sets of five meals. They also held a raffle for schools to win a set of meals for each educator and staff member in the entire school. In total, she says, they donated about $200,000 to 18 schools in 2023.

Beehive Meals is now launching a charitable effort called One Big Family, which will encourage other corporations and foundations to magnify their efforts and reach more schools in the coming years.

“As a small business where my husband and I are the owners, we own 100 percent of the company, so we don’t have to go through several layers to make decisions,” Jackson says. “So it’s really been something we want to do … that’s the cool part of owning a small business.”

Jackson notes that the pandemic helped her business grow while the education sector struggled. That prompted some of her desire to give back and support teachers within her community.

“Teachers and schools have been so negatively impacted by the pandemic and COVID-19,” Jackson points out, noting that her own kids experienced challenges due to lockdowns. “We’re able to kind of see that firsthand with the teachers, so it’s something that we just kind of feel like we want to be connected to.”

The road to higher education

This year marks 20 years since the Success in Education nonprofit launched as a project of the Garffs, a family famous for their car dealerships across the West. The project aims to help high school students create and follow a game plan for after their higher education concludes.

Since its creation in 2004, Success in Education has grown from being a $500,000 organization in 2012 to operating a $3.6 million budget in 2022, with several key programs focusing on different areas of student interest and needs.

Success in Education programs impact schools across the state, according to a map on their website. The Road to Success program incentivizes daily reading. Another of their programs, Keys to Success, aims to provide high school students with what they need to apply for college and meet important deadlines—all through an app.

Both programs take advantage of a critical concept in education: gamifying the process.

“We have about 140,000 downloads on the app. Students participate in a self-reflection interest survey, and the app tells them which careers would be good for them,” says Success in Education VP Erin Trenbeath-Murray. “There’s also a ‘reality check’ that asks if you want a house and a cellphone and how much you would need to make.”

After that, the app tells users which universities offer the majors they’re most interested in. It also allows them to apply for FAFSA directly through the app.

“Every time they complete a step, they get points, and every month, they get rewards from the points. It could be a movie or Chick-fil-A,” Trenbeath-Murray says, pointing out that local businesses often donate, giving the program highly impactful connections to the community.

About two years ago, Trenbeath-Murray says, the Success in Education team amped up its incentives, got rid of glitches and did focus groups to improve the Keys to Success application. They also started partnering with the Utah College Application Month in October, attending events at many Utah high schools to help encourage students to apply to college.

A 2021 annual report from the Utah System of Higher Education noted the success of this collaboration, stating the commissioner’s office partnered with Keys to Success to develop a college application checklist embedded in the app that provided students with an interactive way to navigate the college selection process. According to the report, this resulted in the creation of 5,218 new accounts in October 2021.

The partnership with the state led to a major growth period for Success in Education. “Then it just skyrocketed,” Trenbeath-Murray says.

Beyond the classroom

Success in Education programs don’t stop there. The Ken Garff Esports program creates esports clubs in schools where students can join and connect their academic work to gaming, participate in tournaments across the state and meet others. The program focuses on encouraging students to pursue careers in computer programming and other forms of digital media.

The foundation also holds small, one-off events like STEM fairs that promote science and technology education among students. There have been fly fishing events encouraging students to reconnect with nature, Code to Success programs emphasizing computer science and workshops promoting leadership skills. The impact has been large enough that the Utah System of Higher Education has included its partnership with the foundation as a major focus in past strategic plans for growth and access, naming the Keys to Success app as an important driver for access to students.

The final program run by Success in Education is Women Who Succeed, which partners young high school- and college-aged women with adult mentors to help them navigate their education and early careers.

“Our No. 1 priority was to get high school young women on a track to not only go to college but also to complete college,” Trenbeath-Murray says of the program’s origins. “We’ve set up 55 internships and have just over 700 or 800 young women that have been mentored, all of whom went to college and had passing grades.”

Trenbeath-Murray says she’s also seen major growth in adult participation. Today, the program has 165 mentors—a number that far surpasses the expected 10-15.

The program also focuses intensely on communities outside major economic hubs. Advertising Women Who Succeed through the Keys to Success application, early access to program applications goes out to students in rural and Indigenous schools before being made available to young women statewide later on.

“If we as businesswomen in the community can help mentor, guide, lead and love these young women, we all succeed,” says Laura Peifer, a Women Who Succeed mentor.

Nathan Foster

Managing Director | Rio Tinto Kennecott
Follow on Linkedin

When a massive investment in the underground copper mining plan at Rio Tinto Kennecott came through from its parent company last spring, it happened quicker than expected. A subsidiary of the multinational mining giant Rio Tinto, which operates a copper mine on the outskirts of Salt Lake City, had cracked open a plan to access huge deposits of minerals that sat nearly a mile below the surface.

It can take years of feasibility planning to figure out whether a complex operation will be worthwhile, but in this case, years of interest from the surface mining team in the area helped pave the way for a smooth proof of concept. One of the key players in that process was Nathan Foster, Rio Tinto Kennecott’s managing director.

“We’ve been exploring this specific ore body for about 12 years,” Foster says, referring to the underground deposits his team will begin extracting in earnest in 2024. “That’s the challenge—or the opportunity, I guess—with underground mining specifically. You don’t have a lot of data; you can’t see it … you spend a bit of money, drill a little bit and get a bit of development in to truly understand if going after a full-scale operation is going to be economical or not.”

The site was already a big deal. Large enough to be seen from space, it’s also the second-largest copper mine in the United States—but there was more to unearth.

Last June, Rio Tinto announced it was investing $498 million into the underground project, following research and development investments of $55 million, $108 million and $25 million in the two years before.

“At that point in time, we knew the ore was there, but we just needed to understand it a bit more,” Foster says of the development phase. He began working on the site in late 2021 after stints on other continents, and he served as the underground general manager before his promotion late last year. “We knew enough at that point in time that we really started focusing on getting the actual development capital approved.”The shift is part of a strategic effort on the part of the company to become a major player in the U.S. copper market. A major component in both electric vehicles (EVs) and sustainability, demand for copper’s extraction and refinement is expected to double by 2035, according to the International Energy Agency. While Chile, Peru and the Democratic Republic of the Congo are currently the world’s largest producers of copper, this project aims to make Utah a key player in the electric energy manufacturing boom.

“There’s going to be this massive shift to EVs across the U.S.,” Foster says. “The amount of electricity that’s going to have to be generated to support that—the improvements to the infrastructure and the grid—are really significant. And that’s going to require mining and metals.”

On top of the copper, the developments in technology that are allowing Rio Tinto to access the deep ore are also giving them access to some sellable byproducts. Foster says they are now capturing tellurium out of their waste stream, the metal used in solar panels.

“You would never open a tellurium mine, but we’re able to sell that to a Utah solar panel manufacturer now,” he says.

Meanwhile, the mining itself will use more electric trucks and equipment—technology Foster says didn’t exist 10 years ago that will make the operation safer and more efficient.

“It’s less hot, less emissions,” he says. “All of that is less infrastructure, which is going to save money and make it better for our miners, as well.”