Christopher Chung, CEO of the Economic Development Partnership of North Carolina, joined High Point University
President Nido Qubein in the Power List interview, a partnership for discussions with influential leaders. The interview
was edited for clarity.
Christopher Chung defers to the politicians at ribbon cuttings, but insiders know he’s a key force
in state industry recruitment after a decade leading the 70-employee Economic Development Partnership of North Carolina. The son of Taiwanese immigrants earned a dual-major bachelor’s degree in Japanese and economics at Ohio State University, then worked in industry hunting jobs in Ohio and Missouri before moving to Raleigh in 2015. EDPNC was started under the tenure of former Gov. Pat McCrory, a Republican who favored a split from the N.C. Department of Commerce. Since then, Chung has cultivated bipartisan support for the partnership, which works on deals before
getting final financial approval from the state agency and elected officials. He and his wife, Emily, have two daughters.
Why did you major in Japanese?
In my formative younger years, Japan was really in economic ascendancy. You will remember in the 1980s, our automotive industry here in the United States and
other industries in the country were worried about Japanese prominence, much in the same way that today we see that same concern about China.
I grew up in a suburb of Columbus, Ohio, that was home to a lot of Japanese family transplants who worked at the major Honda factory on the outskirts of Columbus. I got to know a lot of these kids personally, but also saw that there was probably a good professional reason long-term to study this language.
I developed an interest in the food and the culture, all those things that when you’re 11 or 12 years old, they might drive your interest in learning a new language.
My parents had quite a bit of exposure to Japanese culture because Japan governed Taiwan from about 1895 to the end of World War II.
It ended up being a great decision, personally, because it led me into the career path that I’m in right now.
The Economic Development Partnership of North Carolina is a vital, vibrant organization in our state. You have been a champion in attracting so much business to our state, highlighted by Toyota Battery, Boom Supersonic, Apple, and so on. What attracts people to the Tar Heel state?
The number one draw by far is the access to human capital. If you’re a company, whatever industry you are, you need people to be successful. It doesn’t matter if you’re in manufacturing or technology or life sciences, you depend on the access to that skilled talent to be the number one company in your particular industry.
When companies look here in North Carolina, they’re really floored by the workforce story, both in terms of what we’re producing through fine institutions like High Point University and all our private and public schools across the state, as well as our two-year community colleges.
We have a lot of people who are leaving military service from right here in North Carolina re-entering civilian life. And then add that people who continue to migrate in from the Northeast, the Midwest, California, other parts of the South.
We continue to be a magnet for people moving here who bring not only their educational abilities, but their skills, their experiences, their connections, and all of that creates a really attractive talent picture.
You and your staff have done a fantastic job in attracting something like 70,000 new jobs in our state, which, of course, contributes measurably to economic impact, tax base and housing starts. Do we have capacity to keep growing?
Well, I would rather be answering that question, than other states that may be wondering, “Well, what does it take to emulate the kind of success North Carolina has?”
I’ll be very clear. We are part of a broader team of partners doing this type of work all across the state that involve the public sector, the private sector, the nonprofit sector. We get to be the tip of the spear in a lot of these conversations with companies.
By no means does that credit fall solely to our organization. We have so many local, regional, private sector partners that we all call in when we get these opportunities.
But where is that equilibrium? At some point are we going to be taking jobs from this company, or do we really have a supply of workforce that we
can promote?
That’s really going to be the key to North Carolina’s long-term, sustained success in economic development. Can we keep up with the challenges of growth? I think any state would much rather have to deal with the challenges of growth.
That’s where we depend on our state policymakers, and our local government officials, to make sure that we’re investing in things like educational capacity, infrastructure, housing availability.
If not properly managed, we might see growth start to have some really negative consequences.
But, yes, I believe that North Carolina will continue to have plenty of room to grow as long as we’re smart about planning our investments in the future so that that growth never becomes a liability or compromises the quality of life that has drawn people here for decades.
What do you mean by improved infrastructure? Does that mean highways, airports, ports?
One thing that people notice in a high-growth area can be traffic congestion. That starts to really erode into quality of life. Here in the Piedmont Triad region of Greensboro, Winston-Salem and High Point, the road system is very well planned and built out. There is a tremendous amount of excess highway capacity right now that really sets this region up well for the future. We want to make sure that continues to be the case in places like Charlotte, the Triangle, Asheville, Wilmington and other high-growth markets in the state.
We’ve also really seen in the past few years, across the whole country, as well as here in North Carolina, housing has gotten to be really expensive and really hard for people to get into.
If they’re not making a certain amount of money, they really have to look very far away, and commute a much greater distance to get to the jobs that are being created in the center parts of these growing markets.
These are challenges of growth. We’d much rather have them, but that doesn’t make them any easier of a challenge to try to address.
Sometimes we lose a deal, right? They go down to South Carolina and part of that is often money that some of these companies are looking for.
Much as I hate to admit it, yes, sometimes that does happen. Part of that is often money. As a state, we’ve made a lot more progress. I think roughly 10 years ago when I started in this role, I would say incentives were much more of a frequent reason as to why we would lose, especially the really big transformative deals.
A deal like what Toyota is doing here in Greensboro, that would’ve been one we would be vulnerable to losing based on incentives a decade ago. We didn’t quite have the mindset that we had to be very, very competitive.
I would say that that’s come a long way because of the governor and the General Assembly working closely together to figure out how we incent these deals responsibly, but in a way that’s going to allow us to emerge tops in the competition.
Today, we actually lose deals much earlier in the process when we do lose, because we lack the kinds of industrial real estate necessary to attract some of these very large advanced manufacturing facilities.
Those parcels of land are getting increasingly in short supply, partly because we’ve been successful in filling those types of sites with major users.
We have to make sure that inventory doesn’t get so low that we start being unable to compete for a lot of these big projects.
What is your biggest challenge?
We want to make sure that when companies continue to look in North Carolina, we can answer their concerns about long-term workforce availability.
Talent is the big reason that we wore the crown for two years in a row for being the top state for business, according to CNBC. We want to make sure that from a workforce and talent standpoint,
we continue to be the superlative choice across all 50 states.
That isn’t something that will just happen. That is my concern because it’s going to take very deliberate, intentional policy and strategy for us as a state to stay top of the country, top of the game in this regard. If we do that, I think the future is in very, very
good hands.
We know that artificial intelligence and technology is going to evolve. How do you see that as affecting workforce preparedness?
No one is going to be able to predict where technology takes us in the next five or 10 years. Of course, there are futurists and people who think they know, but the reality is that’s a big question mark.
That further underscores the importance of life skills. Things like critical thinking, lifelong learning. These are skills that will serve anybody well, regardless of where technology takes our industries.
For any of us to guess what industry is going to look like, there’s probably going to be more of us who are wrong than right.
But let’s imbue our students and our graduates with the skills that will enable them to be prosperous and successful, whatever the economy looks like in a decade from now.
What is it that excites you when you get up in the morning?
Unlike when I first moved here nine years ago, I have two kids now who were born in North Carolina, two little girls who are 3 and 1.
That probably subconsciously gives the work a new meaning. People in economic development often talk about the fact that if they’re successful doing their work, maybe that means their kids won’t have to move far away for a job.
I don’t worry about North Carolina being a great economy by the time my kids are working age, if I can do my part in this role in the brief time that I’m in it, maybe that just increases those chances that our girls will stay close by and we’ll continue to be closer. ■