Irene Spanos was appointed director of the
Oakland County Dept. of Economic Development & Community Affairs by Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson in 2011. As director, she oversees the operation of the department and its six divisions: Business Development (attraction/retention), Planning, Finance, Workforce Development, Marketing & Communication and Community & Home Improvement. Before her appointment, she spent seven years with the county as a senior business development representative, specializing in the bio-technology and medical devices sectors and was involved in the launch of
Medical Main Street, the county's initiative to grow the life sciences and health care industries in Southeast Michigan. She also worked with companies headquartered in Europe on growing their presence in Oakland County.
Spanos majored in marketing and holds a business administration degree from Wayne State University. She is a member of the Swedish, German & French American Chamber of Commerce, and Southfield's Healthcare Corridor board. Spanos also sits on the Mechatronics Certificate advisory board for Oakland Community College, on the advisory board of Oakland University's Incubator:
OU INC and is a member of the
Michigan Economic Developers Association and the International Economic Development Council (IEDC) Research Group.
Follow Irene Spanos on
Twitter.
Why Oakland County Needs More Global Firms
Oakland County has more global firms than most Midwest states. Yes, it's true. Oakland County is home to over 900 foreign-owned firms from 38 different countries. (We just welcomed our first New Zealand Company a few months ago.)
So why is this important? Why do we care whether a German firm or a Japanese firm locates in our community or not? What's the big deal? Actually, it's very important on so many levels. Every economic development organization aims at diversifying the make-up of the region they work for. It's very dangerous if you have only one prominent industry in any community. What happens if or when something changes in that industry? Well, as goes that one industry, so goes your entire community.
Diversification. Diversification. Diversification. In Oakland County, we've been working on this diversification since 2004, when County Executive L. Brooks Patterson first launched his
Emerging Sectors® initiative. The program is an economic development initiative to diversify the make-up of Oakland County. We actually just celebrated our $2 billion target of investment from emerging sector companies. These emerging sector companies created over 26,000 new jobs in that same period.
Industry diversification is an insurance policy on our community's future vitality. Global diversification is yet another insurance policy for our community. When things in the USA are going through a cyclical (or not so cyclical) downswing, our foreign-owned firms are still going strong – retaining workers, launching new products, etc. The same is true with other countries around the world and their economic cycles. As other countries go through similar financial cycles/down swings many of the other 38 countries probably will not be. So if a community is globally diversified, that community hopes there are always countries in the world that are stable and growing. The recession of 2008 wasn't as bad for Oakland County as other parts of the state because of our foreign-owned firms and our industry diversification.
Most people would think Canada, our neighbor, has the largest number of companies in our community. But they are wrong. Canadian firms make up 98 of our total 970 foreign-owned firms. Our largest number of global companies comes from Japan, at 203. Companies like Nissan, Hino Motors, Hitachi, Toshiba, Mitsubishi, Kawasaki, Fanuc Robotics, Honda, Sumitomo, Akebono and Denso make up our Japanese community. We have the largest Japanese school in the nation and several cultural institutions for all of our ethnic populations (dance and culture programs, places of worship, schools in their mother language, restaurants , ethnic markets, etc.) which make Oakland County a very exciting place to live surrounded by all of these rich cultures.
Germany comes next, with 187 companies. Most are focused on the automotive industry, but we are now seeing other industries looking at locating in our community – specifically IT and medical devices. Companies like BASF, BEHR, ThyssenKrupp, Daimler Financial Services, EDAG, FEV engine Robert Bosch, Siemens, Kostal, Volkswagen, and Hoerbiger all make up our vibrant German community. The next highest group of companies is from the United Kingdom, France, and Sweden, all at about 100+ companies each. Companies like Faurecia, Valeo, Dassault Systems, Parrot, Gates Corporation, GKN, and Seco Tools are just some of the companies from those European countries.
Asia is the next big wave in Oakland County. We already have a great foundation of Asian companies in our community, from the likes of Japan at 203 companies, Korea with 40 companies, and China with 32. Companies like SAIC (Shanghai Automotive Industry Corp.), Detroit Heavy Truck, MINT Group, WAL fuel Systems, Fuyao Automotive, Daewoo International Corp, Hwaseung, Hyundai Rotem and LG are just some of them. We are also home to Mahendra Engineering, TATA Technology and WIPRO, along with 26 other Indian firms that call Oakland County home. All continue to grow and prosper nationally.
So how do we do it? It's actually quite easy. We go to their countries to talk about what a great place southeast Michigan is for their U.S. location. We remind them of Michigan's strategic location in the Midwest, show them the educated workforce we have here, and help them continue to grow their U.S. business. In the last two years our economic development team went on trade missions to Germany, Japan, Italy, Greece, Denmark, Dubai, Korea, China, and the U.K., to name a few. In the next two years, we are planning to go to Japan, Korea, China, Dubai and Germany again, and also to Turkey and Saudi Arabia, which already have two companies apiece here. It's a start!
Location decisions are made by the parent companies in their respective countries. We have to meet with the top folks to educate them on the strong business case that Michigan has to offer. When we are successful with foreign direct investment, our county, region and state gain so much – from new tax revenue, new technology, new investment, and of course new jobs for our residents. As Mr. Patterson advises us all, we can't make our county "Recession Proof" but we should work towards making Oakland County "Recession Resistant." That is accomplished by the insurance policies mentioned above – industry diversification and global diversification.
Below are YouTube videos from global executives on why they chose to locate in our region:
France
Germany
Japan