LONGMONT — The Longmont Economic Development Partnership shook up its staff this past summer that saw the departure of several employees, including the group’s longtime chief operating officer. 

Former LEDP COO Wendi Nafziger — who, according to her LinkedIn profile, had been with the partnership for nearly four decades — and ex-senior vice president Morgan Smith, who’d been at LEDP for about two years, have moved on, the former staffers and current LEDP CEO Jessica Erickson confirmed Friday. 

Nafziger is heading a bit south to take over as business development manager for Commerce City, a role she said she’ll start on Monday. 

Smith recently launched Catapult Creative Co., a marketing and branding collective that connects clients to a network of contractors, consultants and freelancers. 

“Longmont EDP is a non-profit organization, and like most non-profit organizations we realized early on in the pandemic that our funding would likely be negatively impacted, and it has been,” Erickson told BizWest in an email. “We consciously made some very difficult decisions early on in order to shore up our reserves and secure the long-term viability of the organization, including furloughs, reduction of hours and the layoff of employees, as well as a short-term subleasing of some of our space to help cover our overhead.”

The partnership recently created a new collective impact program coordinator position, “whose sole focus will be on coordinating with our partners and the community at large on the implementation of the Advance Longmont 2.0 strategy under our collective impact model,” Erickson said. The LEDP has also “hired a new economic development specialist whose focus will be on the management of both our business retention and expansion and real estate services programming and more specifically the intersection between the two.”

Erickson declined to name the two new hires but said an announcement would be made to the community within the next week.

“As a result of taking early action to address the potentially negative financial impacts of COVID-19 to Longmont EDP, the organization continues to be strong, we are more confident than ever that our strategy is solid, and we are in a sustainable financial position,” Erickson said. “Just like Longmont, Longmont EDP finds itself in recovery and rebuild mode and will ultimately be stronger than ever, in part as a result of the new talent we are adding to the organization that aligns well with our core mission and strategy.”

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