Fresh Take ft. Stephen Moret

This interview featured Stephen Moret, President & CEO, Virginia Economic Development Partnership. JB and Stephen discuss Virginia consistently high ranks as a "top state for business" due to its high-ranking universities, workforce, and business-friendly regulations. Learn more about the Commonwealth's future and its intrinsic link to the Capital Region.

Hosted by JB Holston.  Produced by Jenna Klym, Justin Matheson-Turner, Christian Rodriguez, and Nina Sharma. Edited by Christian Rodriguez. 

Learn from leaders doing the work across the Capital Region and beyond. These conversations will showcase innovation, as well as history and culture across our region, to bridge the gap between how we got here and where we are going.

About our guest:

Stephen Moret is the President and CEO of the Virginia Economic Development Partnership. Before joining VEDP in January 2017, Moret served as chief executive of the Baton Rouge Area Chamber and Louisiana Dept. of Economic Development, as well as the LSU Foundation and its real-estate development arm. 

At VEDP, he has collaborated with state, regional, and local partners to craft an ambitious vision focused on transformational goals, including accelerating employment growth; enabling every region to grow; and moving back to the top of national business climate rankings. He led Virginia’s successful state-and-local team bid for Amazon’s HQ2 and is launching a world-class, custom workforce program along with the Virginia Community College System.

For seven years, Moret served as secretary of Louisiana Economic Development, transforming it into one of America’s top state economic development agencies. While there, he led business development efforts and built higher ed partnerships that helped secure a variety of projects in urban and rural areas, including software/IT centers, food/agricultural processing facilities, and a few of the largest FDI projects in U.S. history. 

Prior to LED, Moret was CEO of BRAC, which he and his team transformed into a nationally competitive, regional EDO. He also served as a consultant with McKinsey & Company; a public policy fellow with the Public Affairs Research Council of La.; and a consultant to Harvard Business School.