Business View Civil and Municipal | January 2021

17 CIVIL AND MUNICIPAL JANUARY 2021 NEW MEX I CO PARTNERSHI P Mexico. Through a coordinated approach and a formal network of economic developers, the Partnership helps simplify the site selection process by providing expertise on talent, critical infrastructure, educational and R&D institutions, real estate and facilities, incentives – all the factors that go into a business location decision. Melinda Allen, Interim President & CEO of the New Mexico Partnership, recently spoke with Business View Magazine about how the organization promotes everything the land of enchantment has to offer and the reasons why so many businesses have chosen to call New Mexico home. The following is an edited transcript of the conversation. BVM: Can you give us an overview of the New Mexico Partnership? Allen: “We are a private, non-profit organization that is contracted by the state Economic Development Department to market and recruit new businesses to the State of New Mexico. We have goals related to job creation and business recruitment that we aim to hit every year. “We do that in a variety of different ways, including a very robust and aggressive sales mission and tradeshow schedule. We typically participate in 25 to 35 events per year, many of those being industry focused shows, where we try to educate and recruit companies to New Mexico. We also do sales missions in targeted cities or locations across the U.S. where we meet with a wide range of site selectors, who manage entire pipelines of projects, and company contacts. “While we do a lot of outreach this way, we also have a significant social media and digital presence. Given current events, we are now doing much more virtually than we’ve done before and are seeing some promising results, even in these difficult times. The Garrity Group came on board on Jan. 1, 2020 and have really helped us to take our presence in digital, traditional, and trade media to the next level.”