It’s been a little under a year since Corrina Ruffieux took over for longtime Haywood County Tourism Development Authority Executive Director Lynn Collins, but Ruffieux’s wasted little time bolstering the TDA’s destination marketing strategy with robust and insightful data meant to show the county’s relative strengths and weaknesses while also hedging against uncertainty with new initiatives designed to keep the money flowing into Western North Carolina’s tourism-based economy — especially in post-mill Canton. 

A $100,000 grant from the Transylvania County Tourism Development Authority has put a $2 million project to build a red spruce nursery past the halfway mark of its fundraising goal.

She’s only been on the job for a few months, but the Haywood County Tourism Development Authority’s new executive director is already taking steps to streamline and refine the authority into an organization that’s proactive and premeditated, rather than reactive and organic.