What does it look like when a career becomes a calling? For Ron Kitchens, Managing Partner and CEO of Greater St. Louis Inc., the answer has been a 30-year journey of turning economic potential into human possibility.
I recently had the privilege of sitting down with Ron for Episode 32 of The Whittaker Report Podcast, and within the first few minutes, it was clear: this is someone who doesn’t just work in economic development — he is driven by it. Ron’s career began not in government or academia, but as an entrepreneur with a singular passion for creating jobs. That passion, he’ll tell you, never left. It simply grew.
One of the stories Ron shared that stopped me in my tracks was the Kalamazoo Promise — a community scholarship program that guarantees every Kalamazoo public high school graduate access to college funding. Think about what that means. Not just the doors it opens for individual students, but the message it sends to an entire community: “We believe in you before you’ve proven yourself.” That kind of bold, structural investment in people is the hallmark of a leader who sees economic development not as a spreadsheet exercise, but as a moral one.
Ron also reflected on his work in Wichita Falls, Texas, where his team helped secure three of the largest economic development projects in the city’s history — investments projected to increase the local tax base fivefold and potentially eliminate the need for a local property tax altogether. The numbers are impressive. But what stands out is the *why* behind the work.
Raised in Ozark, Missouri, and married to a St. Louis native, Ron brings a personal rootedness to his professional mission. He’s not parachuting into communities. He’s building them — brick by brick, deal by deal, relationship by relationship.
In a field where success is often measured in announcements and ribbon cuttings, Ron Kitchens is a reminder that the real metric is lives changed. His story challenges all of us — in economic development and beyond — to ask a harder question than “What did we accomplish?” The better question is: “Whose life is better because of what we did?”
That’s a standard worth working toward.
(Listen to my full conversation with Ron Kitchens in Episode 32 of The Whittaker Report Podcast at whittakerassociates.com/podcast.)