Gail Cruikshank to Retire From Greater St. Cloud After 12 Years as Talent Director

(KNSI) – A longtime stalwart in the St. Cloud business development community is getting ready to hang up her hat.

Gail Cruikshank, (middle in red) who spent more than 12 years building Greater St. Cloud’s talent and workforce programs from the ground up, will retire in May 2027. The organization announced the retirement Tuesday and opened its search for the next Talent & Community Impact Director.

Cruikshank started in June 2014 as the first person to hold the job, one of the earliest in the region to treat attracting and keeping workers as an economic development strategy rather than a side project. She helped build JobSpot, the regional job board, and St. Cloud Shines, the region’s talent attraction and marketing campaign. She also started DisruptHR St. Cloud, a rapid-fire speaker event for human resources and business leaders now in its second year.

She helped create EPIC, short for Exploring Potential Interests and Careers, the annual hands-on career day that brings thousands of Central Minnesota high school students to St. Cloud Technical and Community College to try out jobs with local employers. She also ran the local side of MYALP, the Minnesota Young American Leaders Program, a University of Minnesota leadership program built with Harvard Business School that takes six Greater St. Cloud professionals each year. Her other work includes the Employer of Choice recognition program, a human resources affinity group, and Talent Summits that connected more than 250 employers and job seekers.

The organization, known as the Greater St. Cloud Development Corporation until it rebranded last December, serves Stearns, Benton and Sherburne counties.

Cruikshank will stay on staff through the transition and is expected to overlap with the incoming director by several months. She moves to a part-time advisory schedule in early 2027 before retiring in May.

After that, she will stay on the Governor’s Workforce Development Board representing Central Minnesota.

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