Which country is getting the most time and attention from the Governor’s Office of Economic Development?

If you guessed England or France, Canada or Mexico, you’d be wrong. The most frequent destination for Nevada economic development officials — and the place Gov. Brian Sandoval is headed Saturday for a weeklong trade mission — is actually Poland.

“We’re kind of going steady with Poland,” said GOED chief Steve Hill about the country of 38 million, which has the sixth largest economy in the European Union but is the 18th most visited in the world.

A special sauce of elements has promoted the two countries to best-friend status, including strong engagement from Las Vegas’ Polish community, a dozen or so visits GOED officials have made to the country in the past four years and the similar trajectories of the two countries in recent years. As a result, 13 Polish businesses so far have expanded into Nevada.

Nevada’s trying to cultivate industries around drones, advanced water technology and autonomous systems, and Poland’s got its eye on the same things.

“Their macroeconomic focus is on entrepreneurship and innovation and they’re a highly educated society, and these things line up quite nicely with the priorities we have in Nevada,” said Kris Sanchez, director of international trade for the Governor’s Office of Economic Development, who makes it a point to visit Poland every time he’s in Europe and has gone about four times each year since 2013.

This trip will include a small delegation — only about 15 people including representatives from the state’s universities — but the agenda is already packed. Nevada will be holding an innovation summit in Lublin and a business conference in Gdansk.

The state plans to sign several agreements, including ones for faculty and entrepreneur exchanges between the two countries, and one between the Institute of Aviation in Warsaw and the Nevada Institute of Autonomous Systems to work together on “beyond visual line of sight testing.”

“It’s going to be a very aggressive trip,” Sandoval said on Friday. “Five days of really promoting Nevada.”

Breaking stereotypes

Poland, which didn’t even exist as an independent state for more than 100 years before World War 1, suffered another dark century after that. Its invasion by Nazi Germany in 1939 marked the beginning of World War II, and it was under Soviet control for another 50 years.

An estimated 6 million Poles died in World War II — 15 percent of the country’s population in 1939 — and it was an epicenter of the Holocaust as the site of the Auschwitz concentration camp.

“It never had a chance to develop,” said John Petkus, honorary consul of Poland in Las Vegas.

“There’s all that pent-up demand.”

But Poland emerged from Communist rule in 1989, and its economy has since taken off. It’s gross domestic product has grown at over 3 percent in recent years and was the only country in the European Union to have positive year-over-year growth even through the Great Recession.

Petkus says he still has to educate Americans about a country they may only know as home to polkas and pierogies (dumplings), or may view as underdeveloped.

“I have to get past people thinking of wheelbarrows,” he said. “I have students from UNLV who want to go there and ask do they have Internet. Their Internet speeds are faster than in the U.S. and you can get WiFi anywhere.”

In turn, he said, many Poles recognize Nevada as little beyond the Las Vegas Strip. They’re first drawn to the U.S. cities with big Polish populations, including Chicago and New York.

But Nevada is home to about 15,000 Polish-born people, and there are about 40,000 residents overall who come from Polish descent, Petkus said. There’s a Polish-American Chamber of Commerce, a Polish church and a Polish dance troupe.

The business momentum

Sanchez credits Petkus, who’s lived in Vegas since 1994, with helping kickstart the partnership.

“He was instrumental in the beginning in getting us to really look at Poland as a strategic partner,” said Sanchez, who first visited in 2013.

Since then, there have been trade missions going in both directions. This spring, a Polish delegation came to Nevada, and the Legislature honored Poland Business and Education Week in a proclamation.

Sandoval first visited in 2015 during a multi-country European trade mission but will go exclusively to Poland on this trip. He’s “hugely respected in Poland,” Petkus said, and will address a conference that has featured world leaders as the top speakers.

“We were consistently there. When you’re consistent you start building trust,” Petkus said. “Our chamber works with the chambers in Poland to keep that momentum going.”

Rather than trying to recruit a business or two at a time, Nevada’s goal through the missions is to try to establish the infrastructure so it’s a launching pad for Polish businesses to set up shop in the U.S.

“The important thing is we’re building a platform through which Nevada is the connection. In doing that we’re catering to companies that have many different objectives,” Sanchez said. “The key for us is that Nevada is the place where they are going for the first point in the U.S. to accomplish their objectives and we’ll in turn benefit from that.”

GOED wants to create joint business “accelerator” programs with Poland. Depending on a Polish company’s goals, employees might move to Nevada for a period of time and incorporate a subsidiary in the state or work to perfect their technology here.

The agency is also hoping to replicate that model in the Czech Republic.

It’s not that the federal government isn’t doing things to develop international business relationships — agencies including the U.S. Commercial Service and the Select USA program are doing that — but the state has to be proactive in attracting businesses specifically to Nevada.

“We’re not the federal government’s priority. We’ve got to do our work and get out there and promote the state. And frankly, for so long Nevada’s been known for the mining industry and hospitality and gaming. But our economy is growing in different ways,” Sanchez said.

Cultivating new sectors of the economy requires bringing in outside technologies and outside companies, he added.

“Much of this effort and what the governor’s doing is changing the perception, the narrative about Nevada around the world,” Sanchez said.

A success story

One businesswoman who’s been sold on Nevada is Beata Drzazga, who Sanchez described as the most successful female entrepreneur in central and eastern Europe.

Drzazga was a nurse in Poland and said she loved the opportunity to be close with elderly patients, hug them, make a human connection. She realized not all hospitals operated like that and decided to open her own business in spite of doubters.

It grew from 1 employee to 100 to 1,000. Seventeen years later, BetaMed now has 3,000 employees and serves 6,000 patients in home health care, respiratory therapy and a 100-bed hospital.

She was originally going to branch out into United States in Miami, where she owns a home. But Petkus met her at a gala and persuaded her to look at Nevada instead.

She told The Nevada Independent she’s now looking to expand into the U.S. first in Nevada and said she’s currently getting a lay of the land here — the tax environment, business rules, market needs.

In the meantime, she’s been named the first-ever international business ambassador from Nevada. She works her contacts in Poland, urging fellow businesspeople to visit Nevada on a trade mission and forwarding good prospects to Sanchez for further vetting.

Her pitch to overseas businesses: “Why are you not looking at Nevada?” she said. “Try to do something there because these people are very open.”

Riley Snyder contributed to this report.