October 14, 2009
Eying economy from a different perspective.
LEFT: Working between her home offi ce in Driggs and the Idaho Falls office of the Yellowstone Business Partnership, Kim Billimoria is helping the organization better understand how to utilize mass transit for the entire region. CITIZEN PHOTO / HOPE STRONGSometimes it’s important to take a step back in order to appreciate the entire forest as well as its individual trees.
As Communications Specialist for the Yellowstone Business Partnership, Kim Billimoria is employed now with a new perspective. Where she once worked with more of a microscope, Billimoria now handles a wide angle lens, appreciating Teton Valley as a link in the chain that is the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.
Working with Valley Advocates for Responsible Development as the group’s Communication and Education Director in the not so distant past, Billimoria’s beat was land use. She focused on this valley and the issues of growth it faced as thousands of acres went out of agriculture and into development. She watched and listened and learned as Teton County, Idaho was put through the paces, a horse lathered with the sweat of change.
“I loved living and working in Driggs,” Billimoria said. “I was made aware of the connectedness to the region, aware that what we do here impacts places beyond the borders.”
With Yellowstone Business Partnership, Billimoria’s audience is different, broader. Instead of focusing on one Idaho County, she now works to advance sustainable enterprise in 27 counties throughout a tri-state region including Montana and Wyoming as well as Idaho. Her mission with YBP is to bring businesses together with a commitment to the triple bottom line: economic, social, and environmental.
Yellowstone Business Partnership believes that to be truly profitable in this region, businesses must fulfill their social and environmental responsibilities, and care for the region as a whole, Billimoria said.
“Land use underpins almost every quality of life issue you can think about,” Billimoria said. “It wasn’t a big leap to start looking at regional transportation, getting people moving around the region conveniently and affordably.”
Engaged in a six-month feasibility study of a transportation cooperative within the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, YBP and Billimoria are taking a look at what it takes to provide alternatives to private automobiles that are more friendly to youth, elderly, and tourists who are not comfortable navigating the Rocky Mountain roadways.
With the vision of uniting existing transportation providers like START bus, Alltrans, Targhee Regional Public Transportation Authority, the Salt Lake Express, and others, the feasibility study is divided into supply and demand teams, teams considering recreation, tourism, and marketing, as well as a team focused on working with the government agencies committed to transportation on the state, county and city levels.
Funded primarily through federal stimulus dollars, YBP has shouldered the task of wrestling regional transportation to the ground to help determine how to get more people to more places in the region with economic benefits for the region’s businesses as well as lessening the carbon footprint in the process.
It is somewhat fitting that Billimoria should be engaged in the study of transportation and travel in the Rocky Mountains. Six years ago, she set out with her husband from Boston for a yearlong road trip to explore the west. As avid skiers and climbers, both fell head over heels for the region and decided to invest themselves in Teton Valley. The daughter of Evangelical missionaries in Kenya and Tanzania, Billimoria went to high school on the slopes of Kilimanjaro.
Now she lives and works in the shadow of the Tetons, trading one iconic mountain range for another as she raises a family and works for the greater good of the Yellowstone Ecosystem.
