About Us

WHO WE ARE

The Minnesota Business Partnership leverages the knowledge and experience of more than 100 CEOs and senior executives from Minnesota’s largest employers. We analyze our state’s challenges with a long-term, global view, and we make recommendations to strengthen Minnesota’s economy and quality of life. Our members represent a broad range of business interests, political perspectives, and personal philosophies, but they are united by a desire to maintain a high quality of life for all Minnesotans by ensuring that the state’s economy remains strong and globally competitive.

Guiding Principles

The forces of globalization, technology and demographics are reshaping our world. To maintain and improve our economy and the quality of life it supports, we will have to adapt how we fund and deliver public-sector services and benefits to these evolving economic realities. This means finding new ways to meet growing public demands, while improving our global competitiveness for 21st century careers and opportunities.

Make it clear who the customer is and who the provider is.
To remain globally competitive, we must make government more productive and accountable by making it clear that people are the customers, not the government.

Make it clear that people — not government or institutions — pay for things.
The relationship between those who pay, those who benefit and those who provide should be as clear and direct as possible. This will enable people to understand actual costs and require providers to respond to actual needs.

Fund people, not institutions.
People should be the direct beneficiaries of public programs, not the systems that were developed to deliver the services.

Provide timely, understandable information to help people make decisions.
Meaningful information can help people make informed decisions based on actual outcomes rather than on the perceived value of certain inputs or processes. Information will help people make better choices and help providers understand and respond more appropriately to people’s demands.

Give people choices and the ability to exercise them.
People are in the best position to understand their individual needs and should have options for how to best meet those needs. Government may be one option, but it shouldn’t necessarily be the first or only option.

Staff

Kurt Zellers
CEO
Kurt.Zellers@mnbp.com
@BizPartnership

Amy Walstien
Education Policy & Workforce Development Director
Amy.Walstien@mnbp.com
@AWalstien

Gavin Hanson

Gavin Hanson
Fiscal and Economic Policy Director
Gavin.Hanson@mnbp.com

Abby Loesch

Abby Loesch
Health Care and Employment Policy Director
Abby.Loesch@mnbp.com

 

Jonathan Blake

Jonathan Blake
Communications Director
Jonathan.Blake@mnbp.com
@jblakemn

Katie Nadeau

Katie Nadeau
Operations Director
Katie.Nadeau@mnbp.com
@KatieNadeau

Maddie Wallace

Maddie Wallace
Operations Manager
Maddie.Wallace@mnbp.com
@bizpartnership

Contact us

4150 IDS Center
80 South 8th Street
Minneapolis, MN 55402
O (612) 370-0840
F (612) 334-3086
mnbp@mnbp.com