Ryan Starks

Public sector to private sector, without a vote

Ryan Starks spent nine years in Utah state government — every step of it an appointment or a hire, never a ballot. He rose from managing director of growth and innovation to executive director of the Governor's Office of Economic Opportunity (GOEO), appointed by Gov. Spencer Cox in January 2023. In May 2025 he moved to the private sector, becoming Executive Director — later President & Executive Director — of the Economic Development Corporation of Utah (EDCUtah), the nonprofit that operates as part of the Salt Lake Chamber and serves as the state's primary private business-recruitment organization.

The two organizations aren't separate worlds. GOEO used to contract with EDCUtah to manage corporate recruitment on the state's behalf; while he ran GOEO, Starks chose not to renew that contract, calling the experiment a "mixed bag." Now on the EDCUtah side, he has said publicly he wants to re-enter that same government contract.

Starks is also a listed board member of BioHive, a 501(c)(3) branding the state's life sciences industry — alongside Jefferson Moss, who also sits on that board. Both men are also listed on the Northern Utah Economic Alliance's advisory roster, alongside Gage Froerer, Sen. Stuart Adams, and Starks' brother Aaron Starks of 47G.

The path from Heber City to the Capitol

Starks grew up in Ogden Valley, the middle child of five brothers, and served an LDS mission in Quito, Ecuador before studying business and Spanish at Weber State University, where he was student body president. An early internship at the old Governor's Office of Economic Development led to graduate work in public administration and economic development, then a stint at the Governor's Office of Management and Budget — before landing in Heber City as executive director of the Heber Valley Chamber of Commerce and Wasatch County's tourism and economic development office (Nov. 2011 - Nov. 4, 2019, eight years). Starks and Tom Stone, chairman of the Wasatch Center for Advanced Professional Studies (CAPS) board, brought that program to Wasatch High School together; Starks served as its first managing director.

During his eight years in Heber Valley, Starks also served on a full slate of local boards: the Wasatch Open Lands Board (WOLB), the Heber City Community Alliance for Main Street (CAMS), the Midway Business Alliance, the Soldier Hollow Advisory Board, the Wasatch Community Foundation, the Heber Valley Railroad Board, and the state-level Utah Office of Tourism and State Parks and Recreation boards. He also worked with Heber City leaders to create a new industrial business park near the Heber City airport.

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In 2019, the state recruited him to run its rural economic development programs. He became GOEO's managing director of operations, later growth and innovation, then its executive director in Jan. 2023, then EDCUtah's Executive Director starting May 19, 2025.

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Appointed boards

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The Utah Rising grant

On April 29, 2025, Starks and the Industrial Assistance Account (IAA) Committee approved a 10-year, $3.2 million taxpayer grant for "Utah Rising: A Free Enterprise Vision for Utah's Economy" — an initiative of the Salt Lake Chamber Foundation, the nonprofit arm of EDCUtah's own parent organization. Starks personally waived statutory requirements for the grant, an authority available only if the recipient is a "targeted industry" or a "quasi-public corporation." The Chamber Foundation, a 501(c)(3), does not clearly fit either category. Starks also sat on the Utah Rising steering committee himself while approving its funding.

Per its own materials, Utah Rising describes itself as a business-led, statewide economic strategy jointly presented by the Utah Chamber and Salt Lake Chamber, launched in fall 2024. Its Steering Committee is chaired by Spencer P. Eccles; Derek Miller, President & CEO of the Utah Chamber, is quoted extensively on its materials but holds a separate role. It sets goals across six focus areas — workforce and education, housing, transportation, livability, business environment, and natural resources — each paired with a named "signature project," including a $1 billion investment in mental health-professional training and doubling FrontRunner rail service along the Wasatch Front.

Utah Rising's own published rosters list the Governor's Office of Economic Opportunity as a member of both its Steering Committee and its Technical Committee — the same office that approved and administered the $3.2 million grant to the initiative it was formally participating in. EDCUtah, the organization Starks moved to lead, sits on the Technical Committee as well.

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The 2026 audit: a wider pattern

More than a year after Starks left GOEO, the Office of the Legislative Auditor General reviewed how the office managed the broader category of funding the Utah Rising grant belonged to — and found the problem wasn't limited to that one deal. Report No. 2026-18, published Sept. 15, 2026, found GOED could not consistently document how nearly $249 million in pass-through and Industrial Assistance Account (IAA) funds was used between fiscal years 2023 and 2025 — a window covering nearly all of Starks' tenure as executive director. The audit attributes the failure to "past GOED leadership" as an institutional finding; it does not name Starks individually.

One case from within that window, cited in the audit: in January 2024, the GOEO board approved a $2 million, non-matching IAA grant to the Utah Beef Producers for a meat processing facility. GOEO disbursed the full amount upfront. The business began operating without a full permit, engaged in improper dumping, and closed less than 20 months later. The office's own file on the grant held a single report — an expenditure list submitted after the facility had already shut down. The audit states GOEO learned of the closure from outside sources, not its own monitoring. The state has since recovered roughly 11% of the original award.

The audit also tracked how many IAA grantees had documented annual or final reports on file, by fiscal year: 30% in FY2023, 33% in FY2024 — both years within Starks' tenure — falling to zero percent in FY2025, the year he departed and new leadership began.

What this would trigger in corporate America

None of what follows is a claim that Starks broke a specific law — he has not been charged with anything. It's a comparison of governance mechanisms: what these same fact patterns would typically set in motion at a publicly traded company, versus what actually happened here.

Family network

Starks' brother Steve Starks is CEO of the Larry H. Miller Company and was named by Gov. Cox as vice chair of the organizing committee for the 2034 Utah Olympic and Paralympic Games. Another brother, Aaron Starks, is president & CEO of Utah Aerospace & Defense (47G) — the same industry association Ryan Starks signed a memorandum of understanding with, alongside Beta Technologies, while serving as GOEO executive director in Jan. 2025.

EDCUtah itself is one of two co-chairs on NUEA's board — Bob Stevenson (Davis County Commissioner, 2026 candidate for HD16) and Gage Froerer (Weber County Commissioner) hold that co-chair role jointly, with Chris Roybal as NUEA's President. Full campaign-finance case file: Case 19, Candidates 2026.

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Personal political giving

Searches of Utah campaign finance disclosures found no political contributions from RGX Strategies or EDCUtah as filing entities.

Open questions

Questions worth asking

• Ask Heber City or the county: is the industrial business park credited to Starks in 2019 the same Commerce Park parcel later sold via Invitation to Negotiate in January 2024?
• Ask Starks: is RGX Strategies, LLC still an active consulting business, and does he remain personally involved in client work while running EDCUtah?
• Ask EDCUtah's board: were they aware of the Utah Rising grant, pending or approved, when they hired Starks on May 7, 2025?
• Ask EDCUtah: when and why did Starks' title change from "Executive Director" to "President & Executive Director"?
• Ask EDCUtah: does its Form 990 or internal conflict-of-interest policy address Starks' relationship to RGX Strategies or the Utah Rising grant?
• Ask Starks or campaign finance officials: what was the "Starks, Aaron" committee that received a $200 payment from Ryan Starks in May 2020?
• Ask the Legislative Auditor General's office: can the $249 million figure in Report 2026-18 be broken down by fiscal year or by which executive director was in office when each award was made?
• Ask GOED: why did the office sit on the Steering and Technical Committees of the same initiative it was funding, and did anyone flag that as a conflict before the grant was approved?

Sources