Maureen Donohue Krauss on state’s ght to protect manufacturing prowess

In 30 years of economic development work, Maureen Donohue Krauss, president and CEO of the Detroit Regional Partnership, said she has never seen such a rapid pace of activity. Of the organization’s 200 or so projects in the pipeline, about 70 percent are related to manufacturing and mobility. Ford Motor Co.’s massive investment in Kentucky and Tennessee lit a re under Michigan economic developers, who have since banded together to better position the state to capture the tens of billions of dollars being spent by automotive companies on the electric vehicle transition. But to say Michigan is losing the race for the automotive future, Krauss argues, is at out false. The following conversation has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.

` How did you start in economic development?

I went to Albion College and the University of Michigan and have a master’s degree from UM in public policy. I was literally a college intern in economic development at the predecessor to Ann Arbor Spark. So I started this career as an intern and spent most of it in di erent locations.

` Where else did you work before the Detroit Regional Partnership?

I’ve worked in most of the metro Detroit regions — Macomb, St. Clair and Oakland counties. I was in Oakland County the longest. I was the head of economic development and community a airs, a larger 100-person department. So much of the work was around international work, and international work is really regional. When we talk about bringing international companies here, they need to know about regional pipelines of supply chain, of talent. Economies are regional. That really had my mindset that regional is something that I’m very passionate about.

I went to Indianapolis for three years, sort of jump-starting their regional e ort that had been dormant. I commuted the whole time from Detroit. It’s only 4 hours and 23 minutes. I’d come back here Friday and leave Sunday night or Monday morning. And you know you can do a lot of work in the car on the phone.

` How many projects are you currently trying to land?

We have between 180 and 200 projects in our pipeline. Some ip very quickly — two months and we have an announcement. Some take two years. It’s really across the board … We had a project in this week that is potentially 1,200 jobs.

Rumblings

` Given the economic worries of late, has investment and interest slowed?

In 30 years, I've never seen this (high) activity level.

` Why, do you think?

There is that sort of onshoring activity, reshoring, that we're seeing. There is really an acknowledgement of our talent. We have a really strong talent story to tell and it's exciting to tell it. We all need more talent. So how do we make sure talent has the right skills, the right opportunities to upskill and is meeting the needs of the business community? It's harder to do when you don't have all the assets. And I'm not picking on any place I've been in particular, but some people don't have this pipeline of talent, you know, this group of the second-largest amount of engineers in the country. They don't have an experienced manufacturing labor force. They don't have a supply chain.

` How does your group work with the Michigan Economic Development Corp. and all the other local agencies?

That is really the foundation of this, having a trust relationship with those partners because we deal with so much highly con dential information, and we all have individual pieces of knowledge of the whole picture. Our region has worked as an 11-county region, so the city (of Detroit) and the 11 counties around it, for quite a few years. If you go back historically, there has been regional economic development in this area for probably my whole career, 30 years. I think this area has always understood that whole regional concept. It’s people who know to use Detroit as our calling card, but talking about our combined

BY | KURT NAGL

Donohue Krauss, president and CEO, Detroit Regional Partnership

impactful. With the (Michigan Economic Development Corp.), we really are hand and glove. It’s probably 50/50 whether a lead comes to them or a lead comes to us. But they’re our rst call because we

Administration) grant was a perfect example of what happens when

What was that grant?

The EDA grant is for the Global Epicenter of Mobility. It’s $52 million, plus we had to have a 23 percent match we threw in there. It was only one of 21 in the country. They had over 500 applicants, and ours was one of the largest ones. Because the auto industry is not just an important important industry in this country, and we really lead in this mobility space. We need to keep that. We are

What turns o businesses when it requirement, zoning requirement or incentive going to be here when we've nally signed the dotted line? So that uncertainty can happen at the local and the state level. Let's say a company is making a 20-year investment. It's a huge to change every couple of years after they've made an investment. Our talent still wins us deals because they're skilled and experienced, which a lot of these