Gwyn Fisher speaks about Memphis and her role at the Greater Memphis Chamber with an astute credence.

There’s a comfort in her tone. Almost unwavering, given the number of times she's spoken publicly on the subject matter — along with other Chamber staff — and says, “Diversity is our superpower.”

That comfort, that confidence, that conviction in her voice it comes from a centralized belief. One she carries, firmly, and one that has extended itself throughout her staff and the Memphis Chamber. She believes Memphis is on a precipice of something great. All it may take is for others to understand the city the way she does.

Fisher took over for Ted Townsend in December 2022, after he succeeded Beverley Robertson as Memphis Chamber president and CEO. Since stepping into the chief economic development officer role, she's overseen the addition of 11 new projects, over 1,600 jobs and a capital investment over $1 billion for the region. This includes notable deals such as the $6 million investment from Metalogalva with its MSS Steel facility. Within the first six months of 2023, the region saw more growth than all of 2022, she said.

Gwyn Fisher's road to the Greater Memphis chamber

Fisher previously worked as the Greater Memphis regional director for the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development (TNECD), beginning in April 2013. It was during her tenure with the state that her and Townsend’s partnership grew and was a contributing factor on why he poached her for the Chamber.

"As president and CEO of the Chamber, hiring Gwyn was one of my first and easiest decisions. We'd worked together for years, going back to when I hired her as the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development's regional director for West Tennessee," Chamber president and CEO Ted Townsend said.

She jests that she’s a “recovering attorney” and her pathway toward economic development really stemmed from a mixture of two ideals. One half was from her early attorney years and the thrill of helping bring a deal together from a litigation sense. The other half came out of her time in the nonprofit sector and becoming attached to mission-driven work.

She graduated from the  University of Memphis Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law and from Scripps College and worked as a judicial law clerk early in her career. Later, was the founder and CEO of Memphis-based Revolution Strategy, a strategic communications firm aiding nonprofits in public-private partnerships. Prior to Revolution Strategy, she spent three years, between 2008 and 2011, as the executive director for the nonprofit MPACT Memphis.

“I need my work to matter,” she said.

That desire to bring progress together through working partnerships at the state level and seeing the positive impacts it could have on local communities has now become more of a calling card for Fisher. A larger component of that, she said, is knowing the Chamber can work without the nuance of partisanship.

“It’s a very different tone and tenor than the state,” she said. “We can do work that transcends the election cycle.”

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Fisher added that during her tenure with the TNECD she worked with both Gov. Bill Haslam's and Gov. Bill Lee’s administrations along with different Shelby County commissioners due to election cycles. Being involved in a group that is funded by the Memphis business community, she said, provides advantages. There’s more common ground and more importantly, a better chance to build foundations here compared to at the state level where progress can sometimes be halted based on the election cycle.

'Sell Memphis and trust the data

That mindset extended into a conversation with Townsend, Fisher said, regarding what they could achieve at the Chamber and resources they could bring to Memphis’ business community.

"She has a deep passion for Memphis and an impressive resume of wins that let her hit the ground running on day one," Townsend said.

Since Townsend and Fisher have taken the helm at the Chamber, the two have continued to push a shared agenda: Sell Memphis and trust the data.

“We were selling Memphis but never took that data-driven approach,” she said.

The research from the Greater Memphis Economic Research Group, GMERG, as the Chamber often refers to it, has been paramount in understanding what industries are growing within the region and where additional investment and workforce development programs need to be targeted.

That data has extended into other Chamber programs such as Memphis Moves and the Prosper Memphis initiative. The latter’s aim is to attract 700 new industry firms to the region and add 50,000 high-quality jobs to the workforce by 2030. Additionally, the goal is to ensure that 50% of those new jobs go to minorities.

Those figures are reachable and not made up, Fisher said. She said the research done by the Chamber has shown that the advanced manufacturing, medical and orthopedic device manufacturing and finance are all growing industries within the region, along with a strong food and beverage sector. The region has one of the nation’s highest concentrations of minority workforce and tech talent. The Memphis region carries the most Black tech talent, not Atlanta, she said.

To date, the Chamber's current economic development project pipeline consists of 51 deals resulting in more than 13,600 jobs and a capital expenditure worth more than $15 billion.

The goal is to provide pathways for workforce development in local communities and help connect that workforce to growing opportunities as more companies begin to invest or continue expanding current operations within the Memphis metropolitan area. That hyper-local approach, she said, will help Memphis leapfrog and capitalize on an asset it already has: talent.

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'If we get them here, it is a very easy sell'

The other half of that equation is telling Memphis’ story.

“If we can get a company here to visit they’re absolutely blown away,” Fisher said. “If get them here, it is a very easy sell.”

With so many companies turning toward diversity, equity and inclusion goals the reality is you can’t recruit your way there if you’re not located in a diverse city, she said. The Memphis MSA has the advantage of being located within three states and has the workforce several companies are looking for.

That combined with Memphis being the supply chain and logistics hub for the nation has been key in courting new companies to invest in the region, she said. It is already existing positives for the region’s economic growth, that many outside of Memphis are unaware of, she said.

“One thing Memphis has always done very well is adaptive reuse,” Fisher said. “Other cities are tearing down things that make them unique. What makes Memphis unique is there is so much space for both [reuse and new construction].”

However, Fisher was quick to acknowledge a lot of those minor details such as Downtown Memphis’ skyline, its affordability and the room for an expanding urban corridor are conversational fragments. She believes, those elements are positive portions of a conversation she and her staff can and should be weaving into any conversation they have when someone asks about Memphis or where they are from.

Everyone is an economic developer, she said. It starts with always speaking with that economic development voice and how we approach, speak and connect about Memphis.

A key component to that is understanding the data and making sure she and her team are selling Memphis to bring a better quality of life to the region.

For Fisher, higher quality jobs are a cardinal component. Access to them, to jobs closer to $75,000 salaries, it helps breaks the poverty cycle, helps improve school systems, creates flexibility for families to help invest time back into communities and neighborhoods, she said.

“We’re not about growing one share of the pie, we’re about making the pie bigger for everyone,” Fisher said. “When we can do that, everything else is gravy.”

Neil Strebig is a journalist with The Commercial Appeal. He can be reached at neil.strebig@commercialappeal.com, 901-426-0679 or via X/Twitter,@neilStrebig

This article originally appeared on Memphis Commercial Appeal: Memphis Chamber's Gwyn Fisher talks economic development, diversity