bigcitysmalltown with Bob Rivard Bob Rivard

Belinda Román, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Economics at St. Mary’s University. Locally, Dr. Román is also Secretary/Treasurer of the San Antonio Business and Economics Society, and has conducted impact studies for the SABÉR Research Institute, an economic development think tank dedicated to researching regional economies and their development, with a focus on assisting the San Antonio Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. Earlier this year, the Wall Street Journal named Román as the most accurate of all the economists it tracked in 2023. Listen as Dr. Román discusses how she brings humanity to her economic practice.   
 

How did the South Texas Medical Center become San Antonio's leading smart jobs engine over the last 25 years? This week’s guest is Jim Reed, the recently retired longtime chief executive of the San Antonio Medical Foundation, which led that extraordinary growth in the medical, health care and biscoences sectors. During his tenure managing the development of hundreds of acres to the growing medical center, it became home to the region's greatest concentration of hospitals, clinics, medical office complexes, and retail businesses and residential units serving and housing many of the nearly 90,000 medical center workers. Economists today say that nearly one in five gainfully employed San Antonians now work in these sectors. 
 

This week’s guest is Mary Thorsby, the CEO of the nonprofit ABODE, whose mantra is contemplative care for the dying. ABODE operates end-of-life care in a single home on San Antonio’s near-Northside, caring for terminally ill individuals in the last weeks and months of life. It’s one of only three such programs in Texas.  As it prepares to celebrate the 10th anniversary of its founding, listen as we learn more about ABODE. 
 

This week, two perspectives on innovation in San Antonio. We revisit our conversations with Jenna Saucedo-Herrera of Greater: SATX as she discusses how San Antonio is winning on workforce development, and Emily Royall of Smart Cities San Antonio on how her team is using data to improve the quality of life for San Antonians.   
Listen in full to both conversations: 
Jenna Saucedo-Herrera's episode originally aired on October 30, 2023 as Episode 30. 
Emily Royall's episode originally aired on July 11, 2023 as Episode 15.  
 
 
 

We have Garrett T. Capps in the studio this week with guest hosts Kory Cook of KRTU 91.7 and Nicholas Frank of the San Antonio Report. Garrett T. Capps tours internationally with his band, Nasa Country, and has been a longtime curator of unique musical events in our city. Listen as we discuss how Capps has created space for other touring musicians at the bar he co-owns, The Lonesome Rose, how they weathered the disruptions to business on the St. Mary's Strip from COVID to construction, and the deep musical history in our city that has been largely overshadowed by Austin in the last fifty years. 

Liz Tullis never gave up advocating for her son Conrad after his near-drowning and anoxic brain injury as an infant. Neither did Dr. Peter Fox, the founder and head of the University of Texas Health Science Center's Research Imaging Institute in San Antonio; and they are this week's guests.  Listen as they discuss their unlikely journey to change how the medical community views pediatric non-fatal drowning and the powerful story behind the founding of the nonprofit Conrad Smiles Foundation.