(NN&V Staff) – The representative group for Nevada’s most important economic component has a new state director, it was announced today. In naming Randi Thompson to head its Silver State operations, the National Federation of Independent Business, America’s leading small business association, is tapping someone with wide experience and deep roots in Nevada’s political, governmental, and media vineyards.
“We’ve scored a major coup in getting Randi Thompson on our team,” said NFIB regional state public policy director Daniel Markels. “Small businesses have a unique message policymakers need constant reminding of, and that is they are not smaller versions of bigger businesses, but instead have distinctly different difficulties in remaining solvent. Randi knows this fundamentally, having run her own enterprises and her family’s Snoshu Tavern.”
Thompson is owner of As You Wish, a Reno-based government and public relations consulting firm that she opened in 2004. The jobs she does for her clients were the same as when she ran her own firm from 1993 to 1999.
In between her enterprises, Thompson worked five years (1999 to 2004) as the public and governmental affairs coordinator for the Nevada office of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, where she was also a special assistant for its parent, the U.S. Dept of the Interior, between 1984 and 1987.
Her professional path also made stops at the Energy Department (1988-1989) to work on the Super Collider project and as executive director for the Industry Association for the Super Collider Project (1989-1992).
Some of the current and former clients Thompson has been advocating before the Nevada Legislature since 1993 include and have included the Associated Builders and Contractors, Nevada’s Gifted and Talented Education, the Nevada Humane Society, the Red Cross of Northern Nevada, the Northern Nevada Network, the Solace Tree, and the Alliance for Nevada’s Economic Prosperity.
A graduate of Reno High School and the University of Oregon, where she received her bachelor’s degree in journalism, Thompson has also been a television correspondent for Nevada Newsmakers and a co-host of the show since 2005.
For her community, Thompson is president of the Nevada Opera and a trustee of the Reno-Tahoe Airport Authority. She has volunteered her time for the Make-A-Wish Foundation of Northern Nevada, the Food Bank of Northern Nevada, and PACK PAWS, where she was a founding board member of the group promoting women’s sports at the University of Nevada, Reno.
