Harry M. Lightsey III was appointed by Gov. Henry McMaster to serve as South Carolina Secretary of Commerce in June 2021. Since his confirmation, Lightsey has led the agency’s globally competitive recruitment strategy – leveraged through the “Launch to Legacy” brand – for South Carolina’s evolving target industries, resulting in multiple years of historic economic development performance.
Under Lightsey’s leadership, the state has secured some of the largest and most transformative projects in South Carolina history.
Among the landmark announcements are Redwood Materials’ $3.5 billion investment in Berkeley County to establish a closed-loop battery materials supply chain; Scout Motors’ $2 billion investment in Richland County to revive a classic American automotive brand as an electric vehicle; and BMW Manufacturing’s $1.7 billion expansion to support electric vehicle production at Plant Spartanburg.
Lightsey leads the agency with an open and collaborative approach, working alongside the state’s executive and legislative leaders to align South Carolina’s economy for sustained, long-term growth.
As part of this effort, he championed the establishment and federal designation for the Nexus for Advanced Resilient Energy (SC NEXUS), elevating South Carolina’s position in advanced energy and mobility innovation. This effort also ensures businesses remain nimble, innovative, and successful by expanding the agency’s breadth of complimentary services.
A fixture in South Carolina’s business community for decades, Lightsey served in top executive leadership roles for major corporations in South Carolina and across the nation.
Notably, he served as the president of BellSouth Telecommunications for South Carolina prior to the company’s merger with AT&T, afterward becoming president for AT&T’s Southeast region.
Following his 26 years in the telecommunications industry, Lightsey joined the General Motors Corporation where he directed the automaker’s federal government affairs operation, as well as the emerging technologies, OnStar, and infotainment divisions.
Lightsey most recently served as a principal with Hawksbill Advisors — a subsidiary of Hawksbill Group. He has also served as a member of the board of directors of the Federal Reserve Bank in Richmond, Virginia.
A native of Columbia, South Carolina, Lightsey is a 1978 graduate of Princeton University and a 1981 graduate of the University of South Carolina School of Law.
In an interview with Integrated Media Publishing editor David Dykes at his office in Columbia, Lightsey discussed the state’s economic development strategy, infrastructure needs, and focus areas for investment. Here are excerpts from that conversation.
Q. Where you think South Carolina stands right now in terms of economic development? … What challenges do you see?
Lightsey: First of all, I would say South Carolina’s economic growth has been strong over the last decade in particular, and that has been great for our state. I think it has improved the quality of life of our citizens. If you look at average salaries in the state, the numbers are going up across the board, and that’s great. That’s what we strive for.
In terms of workforce, there have never been more South Carolinians working in the state than today. Workforce participation, if you exclude retirement folks, retirement-age folks, the participation numbers are historically high. So I would say that the state of South Carolina is extraordinarily good. I think in terms of where we are in the Southeast, we’re very competitive. The Southeast overall has experienced strong growth relative to the rest of the nation. I think that the states directly to our north, North Carolina, and to our south, Georgia, to our west, Tennessee, are our primary competitors that we tend to see in terms of the projects, where they’re looking to locate. And I think between the four of those states, we’re extremely competitive and we do very well.
Q. U-Haul has ranked South Carolina as a top destination for new residents. How is Commerce working with other agencies to ensure water, sewer, and power infrastructure can keep pace with this rapid growth? And there’s been a lot of conversation, either pro or con, about the digital data centers, or the data centers and its power needs and its water needs. How is South Carolina going to deal with the growth? How should it?
Lightsey: Growth is a good problem to have, and there probably are a number of states in our country that would love to have the problems associated with growth that South Carolina is experiencing. I will tell you that I grew up in South Carolina in the 1960s and 1970s in a period of time where we weren’t experiencing growth. In fact, we were seeing a pretty dramatic loss of jobs, loss of population, and those were not good times. Those were fairly desperate times. So a strong part of what we’re trying to do is position South Carolina so that we never have to experience something like when all the textile jobs left the state in the ‘70s, '80s, and '90s. So that’s important. I would say in terms of positioning South Carolina for future growth, I think we’ve gotten to the point in our state where we need to be deliberate. We need to get away from a philosophy of economic development that prevailed necessarily and for very good reasons and served very good purposes in its time.
And that philosophy was, you know, we will go for any kind of project anywhere, and we’ll try our hardest to win it, and we’ll win our fair share and we’ll move on.
I think today we need to be more deliberate about the kind of projects that we’re bringing into the state. We have to look in terms of what kind of quality jobs are they going to bring, what types of salaries are they going to bring with them, where are they going to locate, what communities are they going to be in, do they fit with those communities? Do those communities want those types of industries to be in those communities? So I think it’s really important for us, more important than ever for us, to be communicating with our local communities as well as taking a hard look at where we are in South Carolina. So we’re in a great position and we’re in a position where we can be very deliberate because of the fact that we have such a strong economy right now. We can say no to projects that don’t fit here in the state. And so, you know, that was a sea change.
For a long time, we never said no to any project. But now we look hard at the fit, and we’re seeing if it doesn’t fit with a community or if a community is not interested in that type of project, then we will tell them that they need to look elsewhere.
So that’s a big change. I think that in terms of, you know, our communities, infrastructure is critical. The governor has suggested to the Legislature that $1.1 billion be appropriated to support infrastructure in South Carolina, and that’s important too. We’re very grateful that the Legislature has appropriated a significant amount of money over the past several years towards infrastructure, roads, water and sewer, communications infrastructure, those types of things.
Those investments are showing benefits in our communities today. They will benefit our communities for years and years and decades to come. So, you know, we work very hard with communities in terms of where they want to locate industrial parks, what kind of infrastructure is there. We were very fortunate. We have a group called LocateSC that really helps communities with site development across the state.
And the Legislature has appropriated a significant amount of money for the past several years towards site development in our state. So LocateSC works with the counties, works with cities, looks at industrial sites, actually has a certification program that certifies sites as being ready in terms of utilities and wetlands permits and all of those kind of things.
We continue to invest in sites and help counties and cities develop new sites to make sure that they have the right infrastructure, they have the right utilities, the power access, roads, all of those things. And that’s important too. What fuels opportunities for future growth is having sites that businesses could come in and locate and get into business as quickly as possible.
That’s really what drives businesses once they make a decision that they’re going to locate a new facility somewhere. They’re looking to see how quickly can I get into business, what is the environment in terms of whether it’s pro-business or not. How flexible are the regulators? How flexible are the people that I’m dealing with? How quickly can I hire a workforce? These are all the characteristics that they evaluate when they’re looking at sites, and in order for us to be competitive, we have to be able to lead in all of those areas.
Q. Should we be concerned that there are not more corporate headquarters in South Carolina?
Lightsey: It’s interesting. I think there is somewhat of an urban myth that there aren’t a whole lot of headquarters in South Carolina. We actually do have a lot of corporate headquarters in South Carolina. We also have regional headquarters that cover, say, the United States, Canada, and Mexico for a European company like Michelin. We have companies that have their United States headquarters in South Carolina.
However, three years ago, the Department of Commerce conducted a strategic planning exercise. It was the first strategic planning we had done in over 20 years. And we decided we were going to emphasize three different areas in terms of priorities for future economic development. One of those three was headquarters and research and development facilities. We felt we could be very competitive in those areas. And so we are getting the word out to decision makers that South Carolina is a great place to have your headquarters.
Many C-level folks have vacation homes here in our state along the coast, in the pretty parts of our state, which there are a lot. And (what) we want to communicate to them is, you know, you come here to vacation. You come here because of the fact that you enjoy being here, and it’s a great place for you to have your business here too.
Q. So how do you deal with CEOs who make these important decisions?
Lightsey: It can be a very subjective process. And the CEO is the ultimate decision maker. And most of these projects that we’re looking at — you know, these are significant decisions for the corporations and companies that are making them. These are investments that they’re going to make for decades, not just, you know, for tomorrow. And so they take them very seriously and most of these decisions are made at the C-level, in many cases by the CEO. So it’s important to reach out to those decision makers.
About 2 1/2 years ago, we launched our new brand, “Launch to Legacy.” And what we wanted to tell decision makers that if you come to South Carolina, we’ll be your partner from the minute you launch in our state to when you become part of the legacy fabric of our state. And we felt it was critically important to have folks that are here in South Carolina tell that story. You know, not just a bunch of statistics or pictures of machines and all that kind of stuff.
So our campaign is really focused on C-suite folks that are telling the story of why they came to South Carolina, why they’re here in South Carolina, why they’re staying in South Carolina.
It is targeted at those decision makers around the world that may be considering looking for a place in the United States or in the Southeast. And what I found, you know, advertising has gotten very sophisticated, and they have the ability to target specific audiences like CEOs. And so our campaign, as we roll from Phase 1, which was more of a general awareness campaign, into Phase 2, is going to be much more targeted, much more focused on reaching key decision makers. And we can do that digitally. We can do that through all of the different digital outlets there are in today’s world. And so we’re taking advantage of those kind of opportunities.
Q. How does South Carolina compare in terms of incentives, tax advantages, to North Carolina, Georgia, and Tennessee?
Lightsey: We are constantly looking at what other states are doing in terms of their incentives and incentive structure. South Carolina has a very flexible incentive structure, and that allows us to be competitive across a broad range of types of companies that may want to look here. But we are continuing to evaluate what we can do to be competitive particularly with those states you mentioned, but also, you know, across the United States, particularly in areas that we haven’t established a strong reputation. If you’re an automotive manufacturer anywhere in the world and you’re looking to establish a facility somewhere in the United States, South Carolina is going to be on your list because we have 500 companies in the automobile industry. We have a robust supply chain. We have a great employee base with over 75,000 people in South Carolina working in the automobile industry. So we’re going to be on your list.
But if you’re a biotech company, we may not be on your list. You know, you may be thinking about California or Massachusetts. Actually, biotech has been the fastest growing sector in South Carolina for the last three years, experiencing an impact to our economy over $20 billion.
And so what we need to do is figure out ways to let people know if they’re in the biotech industry that they can consider South Carolina, that there are good reasons for them to be here, that if they come here, they’ll be successful. So those are the kind of challenges that we have — to get our name out in areas that maybe we aren’t as well known and to let people know that we have the ability to support them and for them to be successful here as well.
Q. Talk about the urban versus rural divide. How are we ensuring rural communities are equipped to handle growth? And you’ve talked a lot about industrial growth, but just growth overall. How are we trying to help the rural areas stay up and catch up?
Lightsey: First of all, I will say I think one of the great advantages we have in South Carolina, frankly, is that we are a relatively geographically small state. So even if you choose to live in a rural area, the odds are that you’re somewhere close to one of our more urban centers. … I think that there are great things going on in rural economic development.
One of the things that we’re starting to see that I’m very excited about is that smaller cities are really working on developing their quality of life and what they can do for their citizens, and that starts to ripple out. So you can have a city like Sumter, South Carolina, that has invested in their Main Street downtown area, that they have now restaurants and nightlife and those kind of things.
And you see a company like eVAC, which is one of the few companies outside of Asia that makes rare earth magnets, locate a significant facility in Sumter. So those types of things are happening.
We have for the last several years had a specific effort in South Carolina Department of Commerce called our Rural Economic Development Grant. And so what we’re working with are the more rural counties in South Carolina, working with those communities. We provide consultants to them for free, and the consultants work with them on a strategic plan for how they want to develop their community, what they want to do, what their priorities are. And then at the end of that process, we make available a grant of $250,000 for them to work on their top priority item, whatever that is. And we’ve seen a number of exciting projects come out of that in some of our rural communities. So that program has been very successful, and we hope to continue that going forward as well.
We work with sister agencies. The Rural Infrastructure Authority is an agency that really spun out of the Department of Commerce. And I’m the chairman of the board of that agency. The Legislature has invested a significant amount of dollars. They’ve also made available to them federal funds like the ARPA (American Rescue Plan Act) dollars, over $1 billion to help build water and sewer infrastructure in rural parts of our state, and they’re working hard to deliver those projects on time and on schedule.
The Legislature and federal government made available dollars to invest in telecommunications infrastructure and broadband in particular. That was all conducted with the Department of Commerce and the Office of Regulatory Staff. South Carolina now ... is a leader in terms of broadband availability across our state. There’s not a single part of our state where broadband telecommunications is not available.
And for rural communities, that can be significant. If you’re a business that wants to locate in a rural community, you can do that and still have connectivity, the same kind of connectivity you can get in an urban area. You can be located on the main street of a rural community and have broadband availability, and that’s significant. And I think that will lead to future opportunities in our rural communities. Because I do think under the right circumstances, rural communities offer a great quality of life. They really appeal to folks that want to have an impact on their community, that want to know who their neighbors are, that want a more quiet life than maybe you can experience in an urban environment, that maybe enjoy the outdoors, that kind of folks. Rural communities offer great quality of life for those types of benefits.
Q. Not to mention affordability.
Lightsey: Affordability is very key. Obviously, rural communities are much more affordable than urban communities. You can really make your dollar go a lot farther in a rural area than in an urban area.
Q. Let’s talk about manufacturing. As we look at our competitive edge in manufacturing, how can we improve upon the existing salary ranges of $44,000 to $100,000 to attract more talent to the state?
Lightsey: We’ve done great in terms of our average salary. And if you talk to folks, they will tell you that they can remember, you know, back in 2010, 2012, if a company came in and they were paying a salary of, you know, $13, $14 an hour, that was considered a great project. Today, if you look at many of the counties in South Carolina, the average salaries are well in excess of that. In most places, well over $20. In some areas like in Charleston and Greenville, Columbia, significantly higher than that. So average salaries have gone up in South Carolina over the last 10 years, which is great. But we can do better. The automobile industry in particular, salaries are typically 40 percent higher than the average salary in South Carolina. Biotech, which I mentioned, average salaries are 70 percent higher than average. And then headquarters, research and development, those are higher-level salaries as well. So, you know, we’re looking to continue to grow in those areas.
Q. Given AI and automation are beginning to affect the manufacturing sector, how is the state tailoring its workforce development initiatives to prepare workers for the more technical roles?
Lightsey: In South Carolina Department of Commerce, we’re not directly responsible for workforce, but we work very closely with our Department of Employment and Workforce. We also work with the technical colleges. We work with the universities. We view one of our jobs is to communicate on behalf of businesses that are here in South Carolina and businesses that are thinking about coming here in South Carolina what kind of skills they need to be developing in their students in order to be employable by those companies.
So we have a number of programs that we’re involved with that will help prepare students for the future. AI is a game changer. I think that is well recognized now and well established that AI is going to impact just about every company in every way. I had a great call a couple of weeks ago with a guy named (Bob) McGrew, and he is the former chief research officer for OpenAI. He recently left OpenAI and established his own company called Arta. And they are focused on how AI can impact manufacturing. So it’s interesting to me that the former research chief research officer of OpenAI is now focused on AI and manufacturing.
And I think, you know, like any technology, it will create challenges for a lot of businesses, but it will also create opportunities. So what we hope to do is help the companies in South Carolina capitalize on the opportunities that they might have in front of them. And one way to do that is by helping our students understand that if they develop the right skill sets in those areas, they can be employable here in our state and then they can be very successful. So, you know, that’s one of the things we want to do for sure.
Q. Aerospace and the defense industry have potential for enormous growth in South Carolina. How do you balance the booming automotive industry with developing more activity around aerospace?
Lightsey: Aerospace has been an incredibly successful sector in South Carolina for at least the last 15 years. If you think about it, Boeing is in Charleston building the 787. That program is going extremely well right now, and they’re in the process of doubling the capacity of what they’re going to be able to do down there in Charleston, which is fantastic. The fact that they’re building the 787 in Charleston makes Charleston one of the — I think it’s less than five places in the world where a wide-body jet is built. And so that’s a very elite company to be in. And then Lockheed Martin builds the F-16 fighter jet in Greenville. That jet is really the basis for the U.S. and its allies' airpower, which is significant, and air superiority. And, you know, as a patriot, I would say it’s quite an experience to go to the Lockheed Martin factory in Greenville, and they’ve got a big banner hanging from the ceiling that says, “Freedom Starts Here.” And that’s exciting. But having those companies here has led to a number of suppliers and supply chain, just like in our automotive industry, (coming) to South Carolina and found success here.
We will continue to try to work to grow that. I would say that automotive and aerospace really have become kind of the backbone of our manufacturing, advanced manufacturing industrial capabilities in South Carolina. Those are probably our two most prominent manufacturing sectors. And so we want to continue to grow both of those as we go into the future, and we will work to do that. We also, as I said, we’re emphasizing these other areas like biotech, advanced energy, headquarters research and development to diversify our economy so that we will continue to be strong even if one sector takes a dip in the future.
Q. With the growth of automotive and aerospace, do you worry about — do you have union concerns?
Lightsey: Well, South Carolina is actually the lowest state in the country in terms of union participation. And union membership just does not fit with the culture of South Carolina. South Carolina is a culture where people work together to accomplish results. And that’s what I hear from the companies that have located here over and over again is the relationship they have with their employees in South Carolina is like none other anywhere in the world. And these are companies like Boeing and others that are global companies. So, you know, South Carolina has a very distinct and unique culture that I’m very proud of. We tend to work together to accomplish results, and I think that goes to how employees feel about the companies that they work for.
They’re part of that team, and they’re there to — for everybody’s mutual success, and that just doesn’t work well in a union environment. So, you know, our participation rates are very low. And, you know, that is certainly — having that flexibility is one of the things that brings companies to South Carolina. They look for that flexibility that they can establish a direct relationship with their employees. They don’t have to go through an intermediary like a union.
They’re not locked into all of these workplace rules that come with union representation. And so, it’s certainly part of our culture. It’s something that we are proud of, and we continue to try to work to continue that.
… I will say that I think generally there are union activists that are in our state that are telling people it’s a great idea to join a union. I think that once people learn what the facts are in terms of union representation, what has happened in other places where unions have come to dominate the workforce, how that has impacted the ability of companies to be successful, and for them to be successful, I think once they learn the facts, they tend to understand why having the freedom to work where you want, when you want, to apply for the jobs that you’re interested in and not be locked out of jobs by union-type rules, those kind of things, they are not that interested in union membership.
Q. Talk about the measures that you think need to be taken, have been taken … to help small businesses, especially, deal with rising inflationary pressures on their operating costs.
Lightsey: Small businesses are certainly a huge part of the South Carolina economy. And, you know, we get a lot of press about Boeing and BMW and those companies, but by and large, the impact of small businesses is much bigger than those types of companies. And so it’s important to support our small businesses.
We have a number of programs here at the Department of Commerce to help small businesses. We have a group that helps small businesses navigate all the red tape that’s required to deal with the Small Business Administration at the federal level. We have a group here in South Carolina that helps small businesses establish programs where they can export their goods outside of our state or outside of the United States to develop markets around the world. And that helps them, I think, continue to be successful even if they are having inflation pressure here at home. They can still export their goods around the world and be competitive. Those type of programs are important and we’ll continue to pursue those types of things. And I think in the future, going in the future, small businesses will need to understand, you know, how technology is going to impact their business and how these new technologies will bring opportunities to them as well as challenges and how to deal with those.
And we’ll continue to work on ways to help them and help their employees develop the right skill sets to understand those technologies and be able to capitalize on them.
Q. What’s the one thing that keeps you up at night these days?
Lightsey: What keeps me up at night? I think that just the tremendous amount of change that’s going on in our world. We have this tremendous technological change that’s happening. We talked about the automobile industry. We talked about AI, robotics, sensor technology. Also the revolution that’s going on in biotech as you’re starting to see technologies that are being able to develop cures for diseases that have been around since the dawn of time for the first time. These are all tremendously promising technologies, but they’re also very disruptive and they create a lot of challenges. And one of the things I’ve said really since I came into this position five years ago is we need to understand this changing world that we’re moving into so rapidly. And we need to be able to equip our state to be able to deal with that. And I think that continues to be the biggest challenge that keeps me up at night.
Q. If you could go back during your tenure as Commerce Secretary and do one thing differently, what would that be?
Lightsey: What would I do differently? That’s a great question. I think I would probably try to push harder. We’ve changed a lot at the Department of Commerce. As I said, we came out with our new strategic plan. We launched our new brand. We’ve diversified our recruitment. But that’s taken five years, and I would probably have liked to have been able to do that in a substantially shorter amount of time.
Q. What’s next for you after this year?
Lightsey: That all depends on the next governor. I serve at the pleasure of the governor. I love this job. This is a great group of people to be around. They are mission-driven. They want to help their fellow citizens. They wouldn’t be in this agency unless they didn’t identify with that mission. And that is incredibly powerful. Our folks are very dedicated, and they’re a lot of fun to work around and be around. And I’ve enjoyed my time here tremendously. And I would love to be able to continue that, but we’ll see who the next governor is and if they want to continue to have me serve or not. That certainly will be their choice.
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