Photo by April Greer

When Stephen Moret (MBA 2001) first read of Amazon’s search for a second headquarters in the Wall Street Journal, he was certain the newspaper had made a typo. The online retailer couldn’t be talking about creating 50,000 jobs. Moret’s years in economic development told him 5,000 jobs made more sense, and that would still be a huge boon to the community that won the bid. But when the RFP landed in his inbox at the Virginia Economic Development Partnership (VEDP) later that same afternoon in September 2017, Moret found that Amazon was, in fact, promising tens of thousands of jobs as well as a $5 billion construction investment. “This is the ultimate opportunity,” Moret recalls thinking at the time.

He had been on the job as president and chief executive officer of VEDP only about eight months, and the commonwealth was not known for the generous incentives that other states were likely to offer, but Moret knew that Virginia could make a strong case. Both his own career and the planning he had undertaken in the early months of his tenure were perfectly aligned with this unexpected opportunity.

Moret was first introduced to economic development as an undergraduate at Louisiana State University. As a junior, he was elected student-body president, a role that included serving on a state government reform commission tasked with understanding how public policy decisions had limited Louisiana’s potential. When he applied to HBS, he wrote about the experience and his aspirations to make an impact at the intersection of the public and private sectors. “I wanted to envision a future state and bring it to life,” he says. A dream job, he wrote, would be secretary of economic development in Louisiana. Less than a decade later, then-governor Bobby Jindal appointed Moret to the position.

Among Louisiana’s myriad challenges was convincing companies considering a Louisiana location that the state would be able to provide the necessary workforce. Moret developed FastStart, which helps companies identify and train employees. Within three years, it was widely viewed as one of the top state workforce development programs in the United States. “People think about economic development folks making pitches to companies, and wining and dining, and that is part of it,” says Moret. “But what really matters is creating a great operating environment for companies: stable and attractive tax and regulatory climate, outstanding talent, workforce development.”

Over the course of nearly eight years, the Louisiana Economic Development agency’s efforts attracted companies that included IBM, CGI, CSC (now General Dynamics IT), and Electronic Arts, as well as some of the largest foreign direct-investment manufacturing projects in US history, for a total of more than $62 billion in private-sector capital investment.

Several years later, the chance to do similar work in Virginia—a place with very different challenges—attracted Moret. In the economic development world, Virginia stands out for its novel approach to the issue. The commonwealth’s economic development authority is a professional, nonpartisan organization overseen by a board of directors appointed by the governor and legislature. As a result, the Virginia Economic Development Partnership has continuity through elections, a fact that has helped Moret attract the talent necessary to address the range of issues, from the over-reliance on federal government jobs in the metropolitan DC area to the need for new industry in former coal regions.

One of Moret’s first tasks was to develop a comprehensive strategic plan for economic growth, which identified the tech sector as an area of potential growth. The key factor in attracting technology companies would be the strength of the talent pipeline, VEDP determined. The near-final draft of the comprehensive plan that sat on Moret’s desk in September 2017 proposed dramatically expanding Virginia’s investment in computer-science education. That was the moment the Amazon RFP arrived.

A $1.1 billion investment in the tech-talent pipeline, with a goal of more than doubling the annual number of degrees awarded in computer science and related fields, became the centerpiece of Virginia’s bid for Amazon’s HQ2. Ultimately, Moret estimates, more than 500 people worked on the proposal, among them several fellow HBS alumni—including VEDP’s vice president of economic competitiveness Sean Brazier (MBA 2013) and JBG Smith CEO Matt Kelly (MBA 2004).

One of Moret’s goals for VEDP is to be a “super-collaborator.” Economic development is really a team sport, he says. The process was both familiar and unprecedented. “It was similar to any RFP in its elements, but the stakes were enormously different. It’s probably the largest private-sector competitive economic development project in US history.”

Initially, the state was promoting several different sites, but in January 2018 Amazon narrowed its search, announcing a list of 20 finalists that included Northern Virginia, near Washington, DC. Finally, in November 2018, about 14 months after the process began, Moret received the news: Virginia had won the bid. “It was an exciting moment,” he recalls, “but there was also just a little disappointment.” The company had also chosen New York City, halving the number of jobs and investment associated with the Virginia headquarters. (Amazon subsequently decided not to build a headquarters in New York.)

For Moret, the bigger moment came months later, as the Virginia General Assembly began funding the tech-talent pipeline VEDP had been poised to propose even before the Amazon RFP. “It will certainly help Amazon meet its needs, but it’s also going to help us attract other companies,” he says. “This is going to be transformational for us.”

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