Mesquite has snagged itself a new economic guru. Rachel G. Flores has been officially hired as the Manager of Economic Development for the City of Mesquite, stepping into her new role on April 23. Flores comes packed with a hefty resume, sporting a mix of finance, marketing, communications, policy, and law. Not one to shy away from the turf of small businesses, her track record is lined with stints in entrepreneurship and development, according to the City of Mesquite, Texas.

Before landing in Mesquite, Flores flexed her leadership muscles in various locales, including a significant role as the Executive Director of the Brownsville Community Improvement Corporation in Texas. Her skill set was further sharpened with executive positions sprawled across Washington State, Georgia, and Nevada. It's reported that she has knitted strong alliances with chambers of commerce, small business centers, and the wide swatch of county-to-federal programs.

Staking her claim in the private sector, she once hustled for a New York start-up focused on exchange-traded funds, as an advisory hotshot. Her economic development chops come seasoned with recognition—an award-winning member of the International Economic Development Council. All this draped over a bedrock of education with dual master's degrees from Pepperdine University’s Caruso School of Law and an undergrad diploma from Cornell.

Flores isn't just all work and no play. Her eclectic nature found its way to film, as she momentarily dallied with study in the program at Université Paris Diderot. A feat accomplished amid the cultural bustle of Paris, France. A polyglot to boot, she is fluent in English and Spanish, with Italian locked in her linguistic arsenal as well.

Now with the reins of Mesquite's economic future in hand, Flores is tasked to quite literally lay down the ground game. She's to cook up, manage, and roll out programs with a clear goal—to pump up business retention and sweeten the deal for investors. Mesquite's commercial landscape awaits what Flores has up her sleeve, a narrative likely to unfold in chapters of growth and prosperity for the city.