Today we’d like to introduce you to Stephanie Lodwick.
Hi Stephanie, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
I didn’t realize I have been on this path my whole life until I took a step back to reflect on it.
Like many 20 year olds, I graduated college in 2010 and fell into retail management. I managed high volume Starbucks stores for almost 8 years before I took action on utilizing my degree and finding a career. This choice led me to the University of Southern Indiana’s Outreach and Engagement department, where I took an administrative role in The Center for Applied Research. The pay was very low, but I was able to complete my MBA for free while discovering my passion for helping businesses. The department essentially sold the University’s assets e.g., faculty expertise, student labor, equipment rentals, etc. (at reduced rates) to various organizations to help businesses solve problems. Soon, the department expanded (thru grant funding) to also help student entrepreneurs launch and grow a business. I simply supported all of these endeavors until the days came for me to lead them. Which it turns out, I’m really good at seeing the gaps and helping people find the next steps to fill them!
I transitioned from this role at the University to the Growth Alliance for Greater Evansville (now, Evansville Regional Economic Partnership), where I continued to support entrepreneurial development for the broader community and even started advising part-time for the Small Business Development Center. It was at this time that the connection came full circle for me. I absolutely love helping people find their passion, helping them access resources, and pushing them to try and succeed in their dream, but I didn’t want to be an entrepreneur myself.
Why? Because I grew up in small business household. My mom worked for startups until she started her own business (a winery in Southern Illinois) and my dad owned his own car repair service for most of my life. When you’re a child of entrepreneurs, you are inherently an entrepreneur yourself. The family revolves around hours of operation, P&L’s, and growth strategies and that taught me very early in life that owning your own business was a 24/7 job. While I will always be grateful for that experience and in awe of those people, I am content in this supporting role. And I am proud of the help that I have been able to give to these businesses.
I relocated to Southern California from Southern Indiana in 2021 and quickly found my way back into supporting business development through the Downtown Long Beach Alliance. Which I’ve been doing for the last 3 years.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
This is a great question. I would say the biggest hurdle is that Innovation, entrepreneurship, business development, economic development are all ideas that people generally support but don’t really understand. Trying to get stakeholders and program supporters to comprehend the one size fits all model is not applicable to any business can be very difficult. The support role is crucial to all of the success stories we hear, but is often invisible. The work can be very tedious, data-driven, and time consuming so when its finally complete, its often already been forgotten. For example, taking a food pop up from catering part-time and serving in farmers markets to having enough capital and clientele for their own storefront can take several years. However, from the outside perception, that same business always has a long line at events and thousands of followers on Instagram so the reason they haven’t “grown” must be due to a lack of support or resources (usually from the City or State).
Essentially, the work takes time and is not sexy so people lose patience or find alternative, less positive, scenarios that support the delay in progress. It makes the road less smooth for those of us trying to pave it.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
I am an Economic Development Manager, which is really a relationship and data manager. I have to keep tabs and offer support for an entire ecosystem to survive and grow. Most people think its just business, but business needs a place to exist so I also do a lot of work with our commercial real estate owners and professionals. I not only help them put businesses into properties, but I also provide them with the data about our current market conditions so they can use that data to “sell” the community. I am very proud of the network that I have built in this space (pun intended). In the last three years I have built a strong reputation for connecting professionals, specifically bringing new investors, brokers, and clientele into the Long Beach area. My flagship Brokers by the Beach events have become a household name among the community and continue to grow even beyond my reach.
I also spend a lot of time driving new business into our Downtown, through either outreach to national or regional chains looking to expand or through entrepreneurial education programs that help locals launch their own business.
The project that I am most proud of is our DTLB Food Series, a program created with Feel Good Kitchen LB. Since Long Beach is unique and has its own Health Department, our rules are a bit different than the LA and Orange County. With the goals of reducing illegal food vending and filling vacant storefronts, we created an education workshop series that not only helped food-trepreneurs through the technical components, but also the easy to forget nuances of owning a small business. In our second year, we added an incentive component – a popup food event called The Weekly Crave, that provides an incubator-esque experience for these now licensed/permitted vendors to host a trial run of their business within the safety of our event. We pay for the Temporary permits, develop the marketing, and pair these brand new businesses with a recognizable existing business to help drive foot traffic and give them real-world experience. We host The Weekly Crave every Tuesday over the course of a month while activating a vacant storefront. Thus far, the program has been a huge success with 10 new businesses launched in 2025 and majority of Weekly Crave participants selling out at their event. It is also worth noting that the we hosted one of the DTLB Food Series cohorts entirely in Spanish, which proved to have its own eye-opening barriers. Those spanish businesses are currently popping up every Tuesday in the month of October to sell their foods.
What sort of changes are you expecting over the next 5-10 years?
I would like to stay within the economic development industry, but may migrate back to education or try my hand at the private sector. As long as I am passionate about supporting the community I serve, the location itself isn’t super important. I just want to help people live in their dreams and have fun while doing it.
The current climate is a little worrisome but we’ve already made it through some very significant, historical disruptions. I wouldn’t try to predict what’s to come, but will stay optimistic that we can continue to navigate as we have.
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