- Pritzker Fellows
- Current Fellows
- Christy George
Christy George
President & CEO of the Illinois Economic Development Corporation
Biography
Christy George is the President and Chief Executive Officer of the Illinois Economic Development Corporation, a public private partnership focused on global business development for the State of Illinois. She oversees all aspects of the organization, including marketing, sales, financing, and personnel.
Most recently, Christy served as Executive Director of the Chicago 2024 Host Committee for the Democratic National Convention. In this role, she oversaw the Host Committee’s successful fundraising and civic engagement efforts, and served as the primary liaison between the Democratic National Convention Committee, the City of Chicago, and the State of Illinois to create a world-class experience for all convention attendees and residents.
Before leading the Host Committee, she served as First Assistant Deputy Governor for Budget & Economy in Illinois Governor JB Pritzker’s office. During her time in the Governor’s Office, she spearheaded the state’s business attraction and engagement efforts, led on workforce development priorities, crafted the Reimagining Energy & Vehicles (REV) Act, and oversaw the operations of multiple state agencies, boards, and commissions. Before joining the Governor’s Office, George served as the Executive Director of the Illinois Commerce Commission and several roles at the City of Chicago including Deputy Budget Director for Public Safety, Assistant Commissioner at the Department of Business Affairs & Consumer Protection, and Assistant Corporation Counsel in the Department of Law.
Christy obtained her J.D. at Loyola University Chicago School of Law and her undergraduate degree from Ohio Wesleyan University. A native Californian, she currently lives in the Beverly-Morgan Park neighborhood of Chicago with her husband and daughters.
Seminars
"How to Sell a State: Business Attraction, Competition & the Politics of Economic Development"
Why does a company choose Illinois instead of Texas, Ohio, Georgia, or North Carolina? Winning a corporate investment is rarely about a single tax incentive or piece of real estate. States compete on workforce, infrastructure, energy, taxes, incentives, quality of life, political leadership, global connectivity, relationship, and whether a company believes a state and its communities can deliver what they promise. Even more important, once a state wins a major investment, who actually benefits?
Christy George, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Illinois Economic Development Corporation, a public private partnership focused on global business development for the State of Illinois, has had a front row seat to the wooing and maintaining of corporate investment in Chicago and the aftereffects.
She served as Executive Director of the Chicago 2024 Host Committee for the Democratic National Convention and was the primary liaison between the Democratic National Convention Committee, the City of Chicago, and the State of Illinois. Before that, she was First Assistant Deputy Governor for Budget & Economy in Illinois Governor JB Pritzker’s office. George—whose long professional history in budgets, public safety, business and consumer affairs, and the law—will take you inside the competition to attract businesses, investment, and jobs. Drawing on real-world projects and experiences, together we’ll examine how governors, economic development organizations, utilities, universities, local communities, businesses, and civic leaders work together to sell a state, who benefits from economic development and how communities influence major investments, and the responsibility of government to ensure that transformational investments create opportunities for the people who already live there.
Seminars are off the record and open to current UChicago students only.
What is—and equally crucially, what is not—economic development? Let’s explore our fundamentals—business attraction, retention, and expansion—and take on the topline issues of how companies decide where to invest, who actually makes a location decision, and the fundamentals companies use to make it. What differentiates one state from another? What are our state’s competitive advantages, perceptions, challenges, and what does “Team Illinois" look like in practice? What do winning projects teach you—and, crucially, what do you learn from losing them?
You want a business to move to Chicago? Let’s get in the weeds. What are the fundamentals of site selection and site readiness? What does "speed to market" mean? We’ll also go deep on energy as economic infrastructure; electricity availability, reliability, and the explosive growth in demand from data centers and these increasingly controversial economic-development projects; water, land, and infrastructure requirements; transportation, broadband, and utility infrastructure; permitting and regulatory certainty; and why states are investing hundreds of millions of dollars in site readiness.
Special Guest: Dwayne Pickett, VP, Clean Hydrogen Market Development, Constellation
This week, we’ll take a candid and bracing look at why economic development incentives exist in economic development, and the art of negotiation around them, through the case study of building the Illinois Quantum & Microelectronics Park, or IQMP. Among the many issues we’ll explore: tax credits vs. grants vs. infrastructure investments; state, local, and workforce incentives; how companies compare competing offers; performance agreements and claw backs; jobs vs. capital investment; building ecosystems around research, talent, infrastructure, and capital; the difference between recruiting a company and building an industry cluster; and negotiating under confidentiality and when a state should walk away.
We talked last week about how the city won the Illinois Quantum & Microelectronics Park; now let’s explore who has benefitted and who owns the role of ensuring that equity. We think about workforce as part of our overall economic infrastructure—engineers, scientists, advanced-degree talent, immigrants and expats, skilled trades, and organized labor to name a few—and capacity-building for community colleges, nontraditional careers, universities and national laboratories, and the like. Who’s responsible for making sure that, for instance, hiring opportunities for communities historically disconnected from major economic opportunities, and why are workforce commitments increasingly becoming part of economic-development negotiations? Let’s also talk about community engagement before and after major projects are announced, how community organizations can be partners rather than obstacles, and how mutual trust is formed. Crucially, what happens when community priorities and a company's priorities conflict?
Economic development is partly a competition of facts—cost, talent, infrastructure, taxes, and incentives. But it’s also a competition of narratives. A CEO, board member, or site selector may arrive at the table with an opinion about Illinois long before they ever look at a site. Where did that perception come from? And how do you change it? Why does a city’s reputation matter in economic development, and what are the key differences between reality, reputation, and perception? Where does the media in all its forms, including entertainment, fit in? How can a single news cycle influence a state's reputation, when are negative perceptions grounded in legitimate concerns verses reality, who are the best validators of a city’s worth, and how long does it take to change an entrenched narrative about a city?
Let’s look at our second case study—the 2024 Democratic National Convention. We’ll go behind the scenes of what it meant to host the DNC in Chicago, from why Chicago pursued the convention and the ins and outs of building the host committee to fundraising and private-sector participation, working across business, government and civic institutions on everything from the convention hall to vendors and labor politics, and more. We’ll explore the key question: When the government says a major event will generate millions of dollars in economic impact, how much of that money actually reaches local businesses and neighborhoods?
You have the business, the convention, and the team on the hook. How do you close? Here are some of the factors we’ll unpack one by one:
- Political environment as a site-selection factor
- What CEOs mean by "business climate"
- Political stability & predictability
- Governors & political leadership
- Legislatures & local governments
- Regulatory certainty
- Elections & changes in administrations
- Partisan politics vs. long-term economic strategy
- Social policy & corporate decision-making
- National political narratives about individual states
- Political reality vs. political perception
- How businesses evaluate political risk & when political opposition can kill a project
- Community opposition to major projects
- Environmental & neighborhood concerns
- The role of activists & advocacy organizations
- Building coalitions around major investments
- The politics of incentives
- Managing confidential projects in a political environment
- Delivering after the announcement