Although she doesn’t officially start until April 29, Chester County’s new Assistant Economic Development Director Karen Davison got a chance to meet the Chester business leaders she’ll be working with at a recent Chester Development Association (CDA) Executive meeting.
Before the meeting, Davison sat down with The N&R to talk about her experience and why she chose to accept the position of Assistant Director for Chester County Economic Development.
Davison is originally from the Pawleys Island area and is a graduate of the College of Charleston.
She majored in Business and Hospitality and started her career with a law firm, specializing in business development services.
Following her time at the firm, she joined the Charleston Regional Development Alliance, which she described as a regional business group similar to the other regional business alliances in the state.
“I was there for about four years, doing economic development, which is where I got my career started,” she said.
During the Covid pandemic, business activity slowed down and Davison took a look at her career and where she was and decided it was time for a change.
“I had an itch to go somewhere else,” she said. That somewhere was Charlotte and the Charlotte Regional Business Alliance.
“I had some friends that lived in Charlotte and I visited there a few times. It always impressed me with how clean it was; Charlotte is sort of a compact city, but it has a lot of different things going on, a lot of young professionals. The stars aligned for me to work at the Charlotte Regional Business Alliance in 2022,” she said.
And now she has brought her expertise and business contacts back home to South Carolina.
“This opportunity came open and I was really excited for it, because most of my development experience has been on the regional level and being on the local side, I’ll be where I can learn a little bit more about what goes on behind the scenes,” Davison said.
She said in her position at the Charlotte alliance, she worked fairly frequently with Chester County Economic Development, and in fact with all of the county partners, “but right from the beginning, I heard that Chester was killing it — they’ve got a lot going on. They had the Gallo announcement, they had the Albermarle announcement. I worked closely with (outgoing Assistant Director Kris Phillips) as well as Director Robert Long, we talked frequently about all of the activity going on, how they were able to pull labor from Columbia and Charlotte, that they really have a good selling point. I was definitely aware of all of the activity going on here,” she said.
“My experience previous has been a lot of external marketing, as well as some project management, but it gets to a certain point at the alliance level where you have the project off to the counties, because they’re the ones that will eventually cut the deal. I think being able to be on the recruitment side means I’ll be able to travel some, but still do a lot more project management and in a way, being a consultant for companies, helping them to understand how to be successful in Chester County.”
Davison said what drew her to the Assistant Director position was the opportunity to work on the local level, and in a county that has a lot of activity taking place.
During the meeting, Economic Development Director Long said outgoing Assistant Director Kris Phillips did a fantastic job for CCED for over three years, helping the county get on the radar because of all the things happening in the community.
Long said Davison was selected unanimously from list of three final candidates, and everyone on the selection team said she was the perfect one for the job.
“We’ve already warned her that as soon as she starts, we’re busy right now — in fact she joined me for a new project that we picked up today — it was a project being generated by our European office, and I said let’s just hop on this call, since she was here,” Long reported.
He gave a brief on Davison’s career and background in economic development.
Davison told the CDA Executive Board she was excited to be involved on the local side of development and is looking forward to “getting her hands dirty” on the local level.
