Athletics brought Ellen McNair to Alabama from her hometown of Boston in the late 1970s. That same desire for competition has kept her in the state ever since.
McNair, who has just completed her first year as the State of Alabama’s Secretary of Commerce, surprised her family back in the ’70s when she announced she had an opportunity to run track for the new women’s team being formed at Auburn University. McNair’s parents were so unfamiliar with the college that they had to look at a map to find out where it was located.
“I was a 17-year-old Boston girl moving to Auburn, and I didn’t know anybody there,” McNair recalls with a smile.
But McNair quickly met people during her time at Auburn, where she graduated with a degree in economics. Those connections led to the opportunity to interview for a job with the Alabama Department of Commerce (then known as the Alabama Development Office), where McNair discovered a competitive excitement to economic development that she found to be similar to the world of sports.
“I really fell in love with economic development right from the beginning,” McNair says. “I’ve always loved the team aspect of sports, and this is a lot like that. You have different roles for different projects. Sometimes you’re the quarterback, sometimes you’re in a support position. But you are always part of that team, and everybody has to do their job well.
“If you like to compete, this is a great job. Because it is competition. The successes are awesome, the defeats are tough. But we always learn from it together as a team.”
McNair soon found herself settling in Montgomery with her husband and eventually their two children. She initially bounced back and forth a few times between ADO and the Montgomery Area Chamber of Commerce. Along the way she met and worked with current Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey, who served as assistant director of the ADO from 1982 to 1985.
“She took me under her wing and made the time to mentor me,” McNair says. “That whole experience was such a great opportunity for a young person out of college. I was at the table with some major companies from around the world, and right away I could see the impact that bringing these quality jobs to a community can make.”
McNair finally landed at the Montgomery Chamber in the 1990s as its chief economic developer officer. Over the ensuing decades, she worked on nearly 600 national and international recruitment projects with a capital investment of more than $8 billion. But one project in particular stands out.
In 2001, it was announced that the South Korean Hyundai Motor Company was looking for a site to build its first United States manufacturing facility. Montgomery joined a long list of more than 100 communities throughout the country — including in Michigan, New York, Ohio, Texas and neighboring Georgia — that were competing for the lucrative project.
It easily was the most expansive economic development effort of McNair’s career. Yet throughout the year-long recruitment process of Hyundai, McNair says she never thought much about it actually being successful.
“You can’t think about winning when you’re working on a project like that,” McNair says. “All you’re thinking about at the moment is to just not get eliminated (from consideration). Stay in the game, be patient and keep working. You just kept focusing on the next play, the next goal that you had to hit.”
Finally, in April of 2002, McNair and other Chamber members gathered to learn Hyundai’s site decision, which because of the time difference from South Korean was being announced at night in Alabama. During the day-long wait, McNair says she began thinking for the first time that Montgomery had a chance to be chosen.
And win it did.
“That project was such an intense, group effort,” McNair says. “To win it was so huge for this community. It really changed Montgomery in so many ways. More than 15,000 jobs in the Montgomery area are associated with Hyundai and their suppliers.”
Having become firmly established in Montgomery, McNair says she was content to finish her economic-development career at the Chamber. Her children still live in Montgomery, and she now has six grandchildren to keep her busy.
But when Greg Canfield announced in October of 2023 that he was stepping down after 12 years as Alabama Commerce Secretary to return to the private sector as managing director of economic development at the Burr & Forman law firm, Ivey tapped her former mentee at the old ADO to replace him. Much to McNair’s surprise.
“I was not at all expecting that. It hadn’t even crossed my mind,” McNair says. “I loved what I did at the Chamber. Loved the team there and the job. But this was such a great opportunity. I have huge shoes to fill. But Greg had built an amazing team, and I’d worked with so many of them before. They made the transition easy. I’m so thankful for the team Greg built.”
At the request of Ivey, McNair spent much of her first year as commerce secretary working to develop a new long-term economic strategic plan called Catalyst. The plan was officially announced in October, replacing the state’s previous framework known as Accelerate Alabama.
McNair says the new plan doesn’t make a bunch of drastic changes to the state’s current approach to economic development. Instead, it focuses on what needs to be done to remain competitive in the years ahead. McNair says it all starts with continued and improved collaborations with such statewide organizations as the Economic Development Partnership of Alabama, Innovate Alabama, the Business Council of Alabama, the Economic Development Association of Alabama and the Retirement Systems of Alabama.
“We all have our own goals and objectives, but there are ways we can work together even better,” McNair says. “We want to establish this collaboration across the state for years to come, so we’re all in the same boat rowing in the same direction. The power of collaboration is so tremendous. It really makes a difference when you can work with a group where everybody is onboard.
“This organization (the Department of Commerce) has been very successful. But you want to always strive to continue improving. You should never be happy with where you are. Because as soon as are, somebody is going to pass you.”
And as a former track athlete, McNair never likes to be passed.
Cary Estes and Stew Milne are freelance contributors to Business Alabama. Estes is based in Birmingham and Milne in Auburn.
This article appears in the January 2025 issue of Business Alabama.
