Bruski honored as '40 Under Forty' recipient

 

Ekalaka native Marcell Bruski, 27, was recently named to The Billings Gazette's 40 Under Forty list. The Billings paper has been compiling the list of its community's best and brightest people for decades. The general 40 Under Forty article and the piece on Bruski were published on February 12th on the Gazette's website.

The Eagle spoke with Bruski about her career at Big Sky Economic Development, as well as her receiving the honor earlier this week.

"Big Sky Economic Development's mission is to sustain and grow our region's vibrant economy and outstanding quality of life, by providing leadership and resources for business creation, expansion, retention, new business recruitment and community development," she told the Eagle on Tuesday.

She explained that basically, what BSED does can be broken into three main categories: business advising and lending, community development, and new business recruitment.


After graduating from Carter County High School, Bruski headed to Billings to attend Rocky Mountain College where she eventually received a bachelor's degree in Business Administration. She admitted that she was unsure of what professional path she wanted to take at first.

While attending classes at Rocky, Bruski worked at a dental office and also held a side job reffing lower level volleyball and basketball games. After her junior year, she secured an internship working for the Billings Chamber of Commerce.


"I stayed with the chamber as a part-time employee my senior year at Rocky," she said. "I was basically an event assistant."

Bruski really started to enjoy her work around that time. One of the highlights that year was when the Billings Chamber helped put on the NAIA women's basketball tournament at Rocky. Rocky was in the tournament, and as a student, Bruski had a sort off VIP pass to the entire thing.

By the time Bruski finished school in 2017, her relationship with the chamber had blossomed into a full-time position. It was a position, she said, they created just for her. She remained there for about a year.

Bruski really valued the time she spent working for the chamber. She said she met a lot of other young professionals from the Billings area. A few of her friends were working for BSED at the time, which is how she heard about the opportunity to work there.


Fast forward five years and Bruski has been through multiple promotions and is on her fourth title at BSED. She is currently the Big Sky Economic Development Director of Marketing and BillingsWorks.

BillingsWorks is a community collaboration to address the opportunities and challenges facing the business community in the area. She said they work to build talent attraction and resources, align education with bushinesses (often through the form of paid internships) and work to ensure that the future workforce is meeting the needs of area businesses.

"My job is continually evolving. I'll be here for the foreseeable future."

Bruski is also very active in her community. She is a member of the Montana Economic Developers Association, served as a past president on the Billings Depot board of directors and serves as a Montana Ambassador. She was also a part of the production of the "Edge of the Plains" documentary, is a Gallup Certified BP10 Coach and was part of the Montana Young Professionals Summit Leadership Committee.


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"Part of the marketing portion of my job, I plan all of our large organizational events, a few of my favorites (it's a time we get to bring our board, member investors, and community partners together, it's always a joy to plan and execute these things)."

Some of those things Bruski was referring to include annual meetings, premieres, grand openings, and hosting a bi-weekly podcast.

If Bruski wasn't in her current career, she said that she would love to be a veterinarian. She loves to travel with her husband Austin Trunkle when they can find the time.

She credits her successes to her parents and younger brother.

"My parents instilled in us how important it is to support and love one another, because at the end of the day, we always have our family to fall back on. I'm enormously grateful for my parents endlessly supporting the activities my brother and I were involved in."

To the question, "what advice would you give a teenager about success?" Bruski responded: "Lean into what you are naturally good at and focus on bettering those natural talents. We all tend to focus on getting better at the things we are the worst at, which it's important to get better in those areas, however if you take that energy and shift it to focusing in and developing the talents you are naturally good at, wow, you'll be off to a great start to finding a career that allows you to utilize those skills."

Marcell Bruski is the daughter of Mark and Georgia Bruski of Ekalaka. You can read her Q & A about being selected to the Billing's Gazette's 40 Under Forty list at https://billingsgazette.com/business/40under40/marcell-bruski-lean-in-on-what-you-are-naturally-good-at/article_95e4dae6-82fc-11ed-8633-ef9eedc552a4.html . Find out more about Big Sky Economic Development at https://bigskyeconomicdevelopment.org/about-bsed/mission-service/ . Learn about one of Marcell's favorite projects to date by visiting https://rock31.org .

 

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