For the 12th year in a row, Site Selection Magazine has named TVA among America’s top 10 utilities for economic development. John Bradley, TVA senior vice president of Economic Development, chalks the honor up to his team’s focus on service.
Coaches dream of winning back-to-back national titles. For TVA’s Economic Development head coach, whose team was just named one of America’s top 10 utilities for economic development for the 12th straight year, back-to-back success is the norm and not an exception.
“By focusing on ‘service’ you set your team up for success at all levels,” says John Bradley, senior vice president of TVA Economic Development. “TVA’s mission is to serve and improve the lives of the 9 million people of the Valley. Serving the needs of the communities, states and local power companies is the key for our employees to successfully drive jobs and investment to the region.”
Each year, Site Selection Magazine evaluates and ranks America’s top utility economic development teams. Citing “service” and “savvy” among the soft criteria, the magazine also crunched some hard numbers to arrive at its list, including corporate facility project jobs and capital expenditure (CAPEX) numbers from the previous year; straight totals and per-capita calculations; website tools and data; innovative programs and incentives for business; and the utility’s own job-creating infrastructure and facility investment trends.
TVA succeeds on all scores. Last year, TVA Economic Development efforts drove an incredible $8.3 billion in investment from nearly 250 companies (including Bridgestone, Google, GM, GE Aviation, Bowling Green Metal Forming and Agero), and created 72,000 jobs across its seven-state service region. (Read more about these incredible 2016 results here.)
The magazine notes that the TVA Economic Development team does a “particularly good job of keeping abreast of the infrastructure capabilities (electric, water, sewer, rail, etc.) of all the major sites within their service territories. This saves a considerable amount of time in our decision-making and due diligence processes.” Also new in 2016, TVA introduced The Valley Workforce Institute, an event where TVA personnel train local economic development teams on recruitment and retention of talent, and sales and leadership skills in order to close deals.
“Economic Development is in our DNA, and TVA has been serving our communities since 1933,” says Bradley. “And I’m proud of our team because there is no greater honor than to serve the people—to help bring them economic growth, environmental sustainability and high quality of life.”
