Gov. Holcomb’s accessibility, personal touches shape economic legacy, colleagues say

It’s likely that no one has ever cried at an Indiana Economic Development Corp. board meeting, but earlier this month, Gov. Eric Holcomb came close.

During that meeting, the IEDC celebrated yet another record year for pledged investment after companies expanding or locating in Indiana promised in 2024 to spend $39.1 billion on projects. In his final moments as board chair, the two-term governor commended those in the room, saying their efforts have led to a better Indiana.

“I, most importantly, just want to express my gratitude for the reason you did it,” Holcomb said. “The ‘why’ that we do this—to create more opportunity for our neighbors, for Hoosiers—is why we get up every single day.”

Holcomb’s administration has focused its economic strategy on courting new companies and investing in those already here. Over eight years as governor, his administration has met with companies in more 30 countries, retooled the workforce development strategy and tallied more than $126 billion in companies’ investment commitments (though the state doesn’t track how much of that planned investment has come to fruition).

While Holcomb says his strides were a result of momentum built by previous administrations—those of former Republican Govs. Mike Pence and Mitch Daniels—people who worked with Holcomb say his presence and accessibility at board meetings, the bargaining table and international trips was a differentiator.

“He’s willing to roll up his sleeves and be in the meetings both on the strategy side but also pitching companies,” Secretary of Commerce David Rosenberg told IBJ. “He came up as a staffer, and you see that a lot where maybe things didn’t go exactly as planned, but he’s not there complaining. He’s leading and getting to the point where we need to be.”

As for what’s next, Holcomb said he has been offered a number of opportunities but hasn’t committed to anything. He said he might revisit those conversations in February or March.

“My wife said to me, looked me in my eyes, and said, ‘I want to watch you deprogram right before my very eyes,’” Holcomb said. “She will get her way, and we’ll take a couple [of] months to exhale, and then we’ll figure out what steps to take.”

Economic direction

Holcomb’s focus coming into office in 2017 was to make economic development a driver of higher wages and improved quality of life. The IEDC focused on building what it called “the economy of the future” and capitalizing on a workforce and sectors that were already at least somewhat present in the state.

“We’re not just cultivating the crops that we have and the ecosystems that we have,” he told IBJ. “We’re also hunting, and we’re going out and bringing back what will help elevate an ecosystem that’s already there.”

That effort received a boost when the state—through a partnership between the IEDC and the Bloomington-based nonprofit Applied Research Institute—applied for and received three federal hub designations for microelectronics, life sciences and clean hydrogen production, all areas the state was seeking to build on.

Brad Rateike, a longtime friend and colleague who worked in the Trump administration, said Holcomb “masterfully” worked with both the Trump and Biden administrations to bring home the best opportunities for Indiana.

“It’s never been about sound bites to him. It’s about, ‘What’s the right thing to do?’” Rateike said. “His approachability, his likability, is one of his greatest assets.”

The hub—or industry-focused alliance—designations present a road map to guide state strategy for courting private investment, and they represent a “very measured and very laser-focused” effort to inject innovation into the state’s stalled and existing industries, Holcomb said.

To maintain a focus in the most strategic areas, the administration “had to say no to a lot of deals that maybe the state would have historically invested in,” Rosenberg said. “Whether because it wasn’t in an industry in the future. [Or] it wasn’t high wage enough. [Or] it didn’t match with where we wanted the state to go.”

Over the past year, South Korean chip manufacturer SK Hynix announced plans for a West Lafayette fabrication facility, Elanco Animal Health has been building a headquarters that will anchor a new life sciences district in Indianapolis, and Eli Lilly and Co. has expanded its footprint and investment at the LEAP Research and Innovation District in Boone County.

“Those are almost like generational kinds of investments,” said Ivy Tech Community College President Sue Ellspermann, who served as lieutenant governor under Pence. “And we had several in the governor’s two terms.”

But while the projects the state has courted over the last decade have raised Indiana’s average hourly wages, per-capita income still lags behind the national average. State officials have predicted that the statistic will improve with jobs coming online and greater adoption of upskilling programs. But it’s a problem several administrations before Holcomb’s have tried and failed to solve.

To try to take a big leap forward, Holcomb—through former Commerce Secretary Brad Chambers—decided Indiana needed a game-changing opportunity. So the state created the LEAP District, which is meant to be a campus of more than 9,000 acres that will be shovel-ready for the biggest economic development projects. LEAP has landed two tenants so far—Lilly and San Francisco-based Meta Platforms Inc.— and the state is working to attract manufacturing, mixed-use and corporate campuses in the biotech, life sciences, advanced manufacturing and microelectronics sectors.

“Being able to move faster than business and allow them to make that investment, get return on investment sooner, has really been critical as we’ve set ourselves apart from others,” Rosenberg said.

However, the state and developers are still working to overcome major utility challenges at the site. Boone County does not have enough water within its borders to supply the park at its estimated buildout. Potential water pipeline solutions and the state’s method in purchasing land for the park have triggered a debate over whether more local-control parameters are needed. Democrats have also criticized the state for the hundreds of millions it has spent on the endeavor.

Holcomb has maintained that the project is on the right track and presents a great opportunity.

Convening and bargaining

Holcomb described the state’s economic private investment growth as a line that looks similar to the shape of a hockey stick. The state had steady growth for decades—like moving up the gently sloping blade of the stick—but has spiked (like the sharp rise of the handle) in the last three years with double-digit, billion-dollar totals.

That’s in part because computer chip manufacturers, data companies, battery makers and auto companies have been announcing some of the biggest projects in history all across the country, spurred in part by a huge federal investment in domestic technology. But those close to Indiana’s economic development efforts say Indiana has been able to land some of those projects because of the work Holcomb did to woo the companies.

Luke Bosso, a former Holcomb economic development adviser, said the governor was at his best when hosting small gatherings with CEOs at his office or residence.

“There are few people that sell Indiana the way Gov. Holcomb does,” Bosso said. “He is so genuine about his love and passion. You could see the CEOs understanding how great it was to be here. Sometimes, we wouldn’t win, and you would hear the CEOs call the governor, and you could tell they were genuinely disappointed to tell him they weren’t picking Indiana.”

When Holcomb was networking and meeting with CEOs, he gave out his cell number so they could call or text him anytime, Bosso said. That readiness to hear from business leaders, he said, allowed the governor to figure out how to support programs, opportunities and solutions that work.

Holcomb said a strategy critical to his administration’s success was gathering government, the corporate sector, academia and philanthropic partners at the same table. That resulted in faster turnarounds when companies made inquiries, and it improved collaboration among all parties.

“When we meet with someone who has an interest in growing their business or starting their business, we can have representatives from all four of those verticals in the room at the table—solving, answering, addressing whatever issue they raise,” Holcomb said. “Continuity, certainty, predictability, stability are the ingredients for our success rate.”

The inclusion of higher education in those meetings stands out to Ellspermann.

“That had never happened prior to the governor,” she said. “That says a lot about his foresight and the way the IEDC has been leveraged with a focus on higher wages, great jobs, great companies to make Indiana their home and grow in Indiana.”

When the state started focusing on workforce as a bargaining chip, Ellspermann said, it saw exponential growth in planned private investment. If that strategy had been used earlier, she said, the state could have bagged larger investments it lost out on.

That stands out to companies, too, Rosenberg said. With all the top leaders at the table with a unified goal, he said, private-sector leaders got a feeling that they knew what they were getting if they picked Indiana.

Billion-dollar investments aside, Holcomb said 70% to 80% of the state’s economic development announcements are small and medium-size businesses. Bosso said the number of deals struck with Hoosier companies to enable their growth is an underpublicized part of Holcomb’s legacy.

Building a brand

Having worked under his two gubernatorial predecessors, Holcomb said he knew a key step would be building the Hoosier brand and improving the state’s visibility on a global scale.

The governor “knew that if he was going to set this environment to have companies that want to be here, he had to be out telling them Indiana’s story,” Bosso said. “The governor made economic development a priority from day one.”

Holcomb’s IEDC established its own global summit—an event atypical for a state to host. Launched in 2022, the Global Economic Summit drew over 900 attendees from more than 40 diplomatic delegations representing 32 countries. Panel topics ranged from health sciences to artificial intelligence to global trade.

And over eight years, the governor went on at least 27 foreign trade trips, visiting more than 30 countries on six continents. This year alone, he took seven trips. The countries included Greece, Saudi Arabia, Ukraine and Ireland.

“We travel around. People know what’s happening in Indiana and are excited to come to meetings with us,” Rosenberg said. “It’s not trying to educate them about Indiana like we used to do.”

The state’s new “For the Bold” brand and international trade trips have helped position Indianapolis as an international destination, said Chris Gahl, executive vice president and chief marketing officer for Visit Indy. He mentioned how his team received a request from an executive who wanted to bring her trade show to the city after speaking with Holcomb off-handedly at an event while he was abroad.

Within weeks of entering office, Gahl said, Holcomb and his team met with Visit Indy to talk about partnering to move tourism initiatives and bids forward. That has materialized into appearances at pitches, meetings and conventions, letters of support for hosting bids, video testimonies and handwritten cards.

“It was evident that Gov. Holcomb understands tourism as an economic development strategy,” Gahl said.

One standout example, he said, was Holcomb’s part in bringing the National Confectioners Association’s Sweets & Snacks Expo to Indianapolis after it spent 20 years in Chicago.

When the group had its 2020 expo in Chicago canceled by the pandemic, Gahl said, Holcomb coordinated with Mayor Joe Hogsett to ensure the event could be moved to Indianapolis for 2021, when Chicago was expected to be still mostly locked down. Afterward, Gahl said, the governor showed up to personally greet the group and got to know the CEO.

So when Visit Indy made a pitch to the confectioner’s group in December 2021 to host future expos, Gahl asked Holcomb whether he would kick it off. He was happy to do it, Gahl said, and was happy to welcome the group back after Indianapolis won a commitment to host six more expos over a decade. Ultimately, the expo had a $12.7 million economic impact, Gahl said.

“It certainly stands out when the governor of a state is physically in a presentation room advocating for his home capital city,” he said. “It is an anomaly to have a governor participate actively.”

Beyond the boardroom

Improving a state’s overall economic direction often requires intervention in indirectly related issues, as well. That was something Holcomb understood, colleagues said, which materialized especially in quality-of-place and education investments.

A key investment strategy was two $500 million installments of the Regional Economic Acceleration and Development Initiative, called READI for short. The ongoing program seeks to uplift quality-of-life, economic development and workforce development projects (which are supplemented with private investment) through target funding in more than a dozen regions throughout the state.

The state expects its READI investments to result in at least $2 billion in matching funding from local public, private and philanthropic organizations.

Those investments, Rosenberg said, will make Indiana a better place to live. That, in turn, will improve the workforce and overall outcomes, he said, as well as show outside companies the state is investing in itself. “No other state is investing a billion dollars into population growth and quality of place,” Rosenberg said.

Holcomb said the state has also made progress on education—a key measure for company executives—with a $170 million investment in the science of reading, increased teacher compensation and a revision of how the state approaches high school, with a focus on apprenticeships.

Secretary of Education Katie Jenner said Holcomb has been a partner in developing policies and has given her department the space to make change. She has a memory of hauling a whiteboard over to the Governor’s Residence to talk about developing the talent pipeline in schools.

“He is not only a listening ear, but he also was right there with us as staff members,” she said, “with his sleeves rolled up, trying to determine the best solution.”•