BusinessReport.com

The Baton Rouge Area Chamber received more than 200 resumes from across the country from applicants looking to become its new president/CEO.

Board and search committee chairman Jim Ellis said many of the candidates were well-qualified, but Adam Knapp stood out in part because of his economic development background, his public- and private-sector experience and his Louisiana roots.

Knapp is currently the deputy director/chief of staff of the Louisiana Recovery Authority. He previously served as an economic development advisor for former Govs. Mike Foster and Kathleen Blanco, and the policy director at LED.

Knapp officially starts his new job on April 21, replacing Stephen Moret, who stepped down in January to take over as LED secretary. Business Report caught up with Knapp by phone in Detroit, where he was about to watch his alma mater, Davidson College (N.C.), go on to victory over Wisconsin in the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Basketball Tournament.

Q: What did you present as your main selling points [for this job]?

I focused on three things. First, being a native of Louisiana, who has been out of state, who has been in the private sector and is passionate about the future of our state, and wanting to stay here and help make it the state that we can all be proud of.

The second was having been in public policy in state government at the highest levels as part of the economic development change engine that has been happening, I think in the state over the last 10 years in small ways and in big ways, depending on what year you were in. I’ve been here doing it since 2002. It’s something I’ve been engaged in very heavily, from working on recruitment projects to win big economic development deals like Union Tank Car or expansions of existing companies like Albemarle and Northrup Grumman Ship Systems, to changing public policy that’s going to help diversify our economy and commercialize technologies out of the universities. I’ve been engaged at that level for the state, and I think that aligns with what the Baton Rouge Area Chamber has been leading on over the last three years especially, and something that the board and membership truly believe in.

And then third, emphasizing that in the private sector experiences that I’ve had, it has been very close to something I think is critical to our future, which is developing the culture of entrepreneurship. My role at Accenture was heavily working with technology startups around the country, getting to know what makes them tick and what is the future that can be created from cultivating young companies that are true growth engines. And that’s where I think nationally the economy will continue to go, supporting small companies that can have a growth curve and that’s where you can truly see a future economic strategy going.

Q: How do you sell Louisiana or Baton Rouge to a company?

You have to do it on a number of different factors. You have to be able to talk about what is truly unique about Louisiana in terms of a place to do business. The state’s been making strides to improve our tax climate, to improve our workforce delivery system and is continuing to do so, we hope, in this legislative session. And you begin to talk to them about educational changes and reforms that have taken place. Over the last 10 years, we’ve seen some of the biggest strides and progress for improving our public education system that is the long-term pipeline for workforce that our companies here are going to look to for their growth. And to be able to tell that story and have the business intelligence about what makes our area strong, and be able to explain why the business community itself here embraces the growth of these companies here or new ones coming in, what they can expect when they’re here the partnerships they can find, the alignments they’ll find.

And lastly, it’s just that we have such an incredible infrastructure as a state for economic growth if you think of the nature of the waterways, the modal transportation systems that we have. When you begin to point out all of these facets of who we are and how unique our culture is and the positive attributes that we carry, I think that’s the kind of story that you tell. And then you get into the negotiations that make it from being one of a few to being a final winner of a deal.

Q: Talk a little about the relationships between our area and other metro areas, particularly New Orleans. New Orleans has been conspicuously absent from all of the 10/12 corridor hype. How do we bridge that gap so that we can work together, rather than being at cross purposes?

The first thing to talk about is the fact that the Baton Rouge area itself, our nine-parish region, has a buzz about it today. What we have got to be able to demonstrate first is what is our unique character that is just truly getting a lot of our citizens and our business community excited today about changes happening, about improvements that are making us stable for growth for the long term. And when you understand your own character as an economic area and you can communicate that with your partner regions, I think that you can build partnerships. A lot of what’s been discussed about tensions between other areas of the state whether it’s been New Orleans or you name it, there are still great staff relationships, great partnerships between businesses that operate in New Orleans and Baton Rouge and elsewhere. So much of it is not true to what is the actual day-to-day experience that businesses are having in their personal relationships. When you think about the interconnectivity of our two economies between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, if you remember after Katrina there were so many businesses that saw slowdowns when the New Orleans economy stagnated, it made it so clear how interconnected we are. So on a day-to-day basis, the businesses are operating in a connected fashion, and I think that drives our expectation that the leaders operate in a connected fashion. Whether they are in Lafayette, Lake Charles, Shreveport, Alexandria, Monroe, we are all part of interconnected economies even across our state boundary lines throughout the Gulf Coast. And when we begin to think that way, we begin to grow our own region and those other regions as well.

Q: Lay out your agenda for your first 100 days.

There are three big things that I think matter in the first 100 days. First is to introduce myself to the stakeholders throughout the region, to introduce myself to the board and to the community. One of the things that I think is so critical for folks to know as I get to know them is my ability to carry forward what is an incredibly dynamic agenda for the Baton Rouge Area Chamber that has already been spelled out.

Second is to build personal relationships with our team. We have a great organization at the Baton Rouge Area Chamber, just some of the brightest staff that I’ll have a chance to work with who are vital. The success of the mission of our organization will rely on the incredible people that we have.

Third, we have a legislative session that [started] March 31, and there are things in that session that are going to matter for our region’s competitive advantage, and jumping with both feet into the legislative process to work with our regional delegation, to work with members of the Legislature and the administration, to make sure that our needs are focused on. We need to talk about the importance of state and regional workforce reforms that are a priority to this administration, and what those are going to do for the Baton Rouge region when they are enacted. To continue to talk about LSU as the premier public research university for the state, to focus on the necessary funding for the future growth of Pennington, to continue to talk about comprehensive ethics reforms. We’ve had incredible success in the first session that Gov. [Bobby] Jindal led. There’s more to be done. We’ve been able to tell that story since that session nationally, we’ve seen that occurring through the Department of Economic Development as they have been out, and as that story gets out, it’s giving us an edge that we have a new way to describe the state that leads to competitive advantage. Not only do we have all these incredible things that are happening to change the dynamics of doing business here, but we also have a way to talk about the culture of doing business here that is different. The importance of continuing to push measures that are going to strengthen business retention and recruitment. When you talk abut additional funds for closing economic development deals and mega projects, those are critical needs for funding. The need for bold education reforms. Those are going to continue to be a critical area when we talk about a balanced economic strategy—you have to talk about the need for improving public education long-term.

Q: Does the chamber have a role in bringing the area’s delegation together and keeping them on the same page?

We do, and we’re beginning to see a much more cohesive regional delegation than may have existed in the past, and I think that’s a credit to the folks that have been recently elected. I think it’s a credit to the Baton Rouge Area Chamber and other regional stakeholders who’ve been working on it pretty hard in the last months and years. So it’s beginning to occur, and it’s something that this organization feels strongly, that we can be a success when our delegation is pulled together behind a common mission and voting together and pushing deals together.

Q: Is Jindal’s workforce package close to what you believe needs to happen?

It is. What we would emphasize is the importance of the business community at the regional and local level to articulate what its needs are and have control over the funds and how those needs are met. If you think about some of the things that the Baton Rouge Area Chamber has been doing over the last year, there have been some truly detailed workforce studies to understand the growth sectors that our regional economic strategy focuses on, to know where those job shortages are that affect our growth, to know how to then take resources in a fashion that brings businesses together in a collaborative way to train workers both pre-employment and during employment to create a pipeline throughout employees’ careers. The ability for each region to have the control over those outcomes, rather than that coming from the state, is the administration’s vision that I’ve heard articulated, and is something that I feel very strongly is the direction we need to be going.

There are things that also are proposed that are going to strengthen the Louisiana Community and Technical College System. We have been blessed with the Baton Rouge Community College to have a high quality institution that is growing and creating a pipeline of two-year degrees into the workforce. If you’ve been on that campus recently, or to our technical colleges in the area, you’re seeing growth that is truly astounding.

One of the aspects of what the administration’s proposing is a fund of dollars that can be used to target workforce development in a way that we talk about a deal-closing fund for securing economic development deals through incentives. If you can package deals when you are working with retention prospects and recruitment prospects who will be looking at our area, to say, not only are we going to be making this lucrative for your business to help you build infrastructure that you need to compete when you land here, we also want to make sure you have dollars to prepare the workforce that you will need to be a success. Those types of things are creating ways to think about economic development and it’s something that we really need to emphasize and support in this legislative session.

Q: As we talk about diversifying our economy, what specific industries should we target?

The chamber has been heavily focused on growing in existing sectors that offer strengths and also looking at new technology-based industries. One that I think that is critical is the digital media industry. The Baton Rouge Area Chamber has had a very focused strategy, for example, on bringing in and growing the digital media industry, whether you’re talking about video game development, whether you’re talking about post-film production and the entire film industry that the state has been focused on remains a growth opportunity for our region.

The construction boom that has been occurring post-Katrina has been offering new opportunities for our region. And then the manufacturing sector itself continues to see growth.

Q: Do you have the sense that this is a key moment, that if we don’t seize it we’ll look back at the late years of this decade as a missed opportunity?

Absolutely. We’re at a tipping point. We have been making just tremendous strides over the last three years to build this organization as a world-class economic development organization, focusing on business retention and growth, business attraction, building a special opportunity fund, focusing on education and looking at new public policy that’s going to create change for our region and for our state. If we don’t seize the moment now when we have a new administration, we have a new dynamic in the Legislature, we have a new dynamic in the populace. I think that’s the great opportunity we have right now that makes me very excited to be the CEO of this organization. It’s exactly the moment in our time in south Louisiana and in the Baton Rouge area to make something different occur.

THE KNAPP FILE

Occupation: President/CEO, Baton Rouge Area Chamber [effective April 21]

Age: 34

Hometown: Lake Charles

Education: Davidson College (N.C.); also studied at John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University; Julius-Maximilians Universistät, Germany

Family: Married, no children