Ohio's Generational Opportunity: A Conversation with J.P. Nauseef

Over the past few years there has been an incredible amount of investment and momentum for Ohio technology and innovation. From Intel's $20 billion announcement they’re building a new manufacturing hub in Ohio to Innovation Districts across the state, JobsOhio President and CEO J.P. Nauseef calls this a "generational opportunity" for the Buckeye State.

OhioTechNews.com spoke with Nauseef, who has led JobsOhio during this transformational moment, and he shares insights into JobsOhio's mission, tech highlights, and the pivotal role they play in shaping Ohio's economic landscape.

Nauseef discusses Ohio's journey from the economic lows of 2011 to becoming a national leader in economic development. The conversation also explores Ohio’s significant advancements in technology, healthcare, and manufacturing, among others, highlighting how Ohio can lead in the next generation of innovation.

OhioTechNews.com: What does JobsOhio do for those that aren't familiar with your work?

J.P. Nauseef: JobsOhio is an economic development company dedicated to helping companies and their people thrive in Ohio. We’re a private, non-profit corporation with a business mindset, stable funding, and flexibility, which allows us to move at the speed of trust. Our mission is to empower world-class corporations, entrepreneurs, and talented individuals to prosper in Ohio. Our team of industry experts aims to serve you and provide you and your company with a competitive advantage in your marketplace.

Q: Ohio is at an interesting moment in time, one that you've called a "generational opportunity." What makes you so bullish on Ohio?

Governor DeWine often proclaims, “This is Ohio’s Time!” I believe he’s right; Ohio’s time is right now.

Looking back 13 years ago, the situation in Ohio wasn’t nearly as optimistic. Ohio lost 18.4% of the jobs in critical industrial sectors between 2001 and 2010. By 2011, Ohio's economy had hit rock bottom.

JobsOhio was launched in 2011 as a unique construct: the first and only statewide private economic development corporation in America with private funding. JobsOhio was designed to rebuild Ohio’s industrial core across nine targeted industrial sectors ranging from advanced manufacturing to automotive, aerospace, technology, healthcare, life sciences, financial services, chemicals, logistics, and agribusiness.

We work alongside the state but come to the table with stable private resources from the profits we earn running the JobsOhio Beverage System. We pay them forward to give Ohio companies and their people an advantage in the intense competition for industrial expansion and job creation.

We’ve come a long way since. We’ve pivoted from the bottom to a turnaround from 2011-2019. And since 2019, Ohio has been a national leader in economic development by helping companies and their people grow. In 2019, we added a 10th sector – Military and Federal. Ohio is home to a vast array of federal and military installations that support nearly 400,000 jobs and contribute $40 billion to the state economy each year. As a result, Ohio is working to be the most military-friendly state in the nation.

Site Selection magazine's Global Groundwork Index recently rated Ohio as the #1 state in the country for economic development and infrastructure projects from 2019 to 2023 based on job creation, capital expenditures, and strategic infrastructure. That is a completely independent accounting of meaningful economic activity, investment, and performance that maps to our internal performance metrics. Since 2011, Ohio generated more than 217,000 new job commitments and $117 billion in investments in our ten targeted sectors.

And I can tell you that this extraordinary achievement is all thanks to the work of TEAM OHIO, which includes the visionary policies from the DeWine/Husted Administration and the Ohio Legislature, together with JobsOhio and our seven regional JobsOhio Network Partners statewide.

Nationally, Ohio is #2 for global investment and #2 for megaproject investment two years in a row. CNBC America’s Top States for Business ranks Ohio with the #3 cost of living, and Moody’s Housing Index rates Ohio #3 for affordability based on a powerful mix of higher median income and lower housing prices.

Ohio’s national leadership was born out of an evolution of strategy and the guts to be bold and invest in the face of adversity. In 2019, we added talent initiatives, expanded our sites program, catalyzed $3B in Innovation District investments, fought to secure more commercial airline service, and added programs to rebuild Ohio’s small downtowns and support small businesses.

In 2020, as the pandemic began, we stepped up again to introduce a growth capital fund to attract and retain high-growth early-stage businesses, talent, and their intellectual property. We also added various programs to enable access to broadband, support a quick pandemic recovery, and build our world-class Ohio workforce.

By expanding our strategy to address the market, we’ve beat our own high-water mark for new jobs, capital investment, payroll, and customer service – all of which have led to record returns on investment for Ohio.

Q: Intel coming to Ohio brings high-volume Tier 1 semiconductor foundry services to our state. Beyond Intel itself, what kind of impact will welcoming the semiconductor industry (suppliers, etc.) to Ohio look like?

The semiconductor industry is spread across the state with each region having supply chain contributors. In the early 2000’s a small foundry was based in northeastern Ohio area, while the foundry has left the state, many other companies critical to the industry have grown here. Southeastern Ohio is home to silica sand mines, silica sand that is processed into polysilicon for semiconductor wafers. The western region of the state is home to fabless semiconductor firms providing designs for the autonomous mobility and defense applications. Companies providing components for semiconductor manufacturing and inspection equipment are present throughout northeastern, central, and southeastern Ohio. Peppering multiple regions of the state are companies providing specialty chemicals, solvents, slurries, minerals and materials used to produce semiconductors.

Intel’s Ohio One is one of the most important investments the industry has made in decades, and we’re already seeing impacts. First, the news that Intel had chosen Ohio for its first Greenfield manufacturing facility in 40 years in the United States reached more than 6 billion people worldwide, putting Ohio on the map and in the consideration set for other semiconductor manufacturers as well as their supply chain partners.

Second, this is the first high volume tier 1 semiconductor foundry in Ohio, and it will lead to the addition of a many more suppliers as those supply chain partners come alongside Intel in Ohio. Intel had identified roughly 140 suppliers when we made the announcement in 2021, and as of spring 2024, the company counts 359 suppliers in Ohio. These companies are spread throughout the state. The initial manufacturing facility will be located on a 926-acre site in Licking County. An additional 500 acres is adjacent to the site to support suppliers providing services inside the fabs and working alongside Intel on the production lines.

Third, as part of the deal, Intel is catalyzing new workforce development pipelines to connect residents with good-paying jobs in the semiconductor industry by supporting various education initiatives. They include K-12 science, technology, education, arts, and math (STEAM) programs, collaborative research projects, and semiconductor-specific curricula for associate and undergraduate degree programs.

Further, Intel has committed to invest $50 million over the next decade in partnership with Ohio universities, community colleges, and other higher education institutions. Ohio institutions will also be eligible for an additional $100 million in nationwide funding from a partnership between Intel and the U.S. National Science Foundation. For instance, the Intel Semiconductor Education and Research Program for Ohio (SERP) is funding over 60 post-secondary education institutions across the state, including community colleges and historically black colleges and universities, to build a pipeline of manufacturing technicians. These talented individuals will benefit every manufacturer in the state. There are many more programs (you can learn about them here). These programs alone mean that Ohio’s future workforce will be even better at building the things the world needs.

In addition to the points above, Intel will add 3,000 direct jobs, support tens of thousands of supplier and support jobs, and has already increased their capital investment statement from $20 billion in 2022 when they announced to $28 billion as of 2024. Infrastructure investments are happening to support Intel and the resulting supply chain. Those investments go beyond just the manufacturing site. For instance, Intel, working with the Ohio Department of Transportation, spent 18 months identifying a new site and route to get massive manufacturing equipment from the Ohio River in Manchester, Ohio, to Central Ohio. These “super-loads” can be 900,000 pounds, 19 feet wide, 24 feet high, and 270 feet long, and it takes 8-15 days to travel approximately 140 miles from the dock in Adams County to the site in Licking County. The infrastructure improvements and route planning are already benefiting other manufacturers in the area as they are also utilizing these improvements for their shipments.

Q: What will the "Silicon Heartland" look like in 10 years?

Ohio’s technology ecosystem continues to expand in both statewide presence and the subsectors supported. We have over 18,000 technology establishments in the state and over 270,000 tech workers. This workforce spans a broad range of research & development, design, implementation services, support, operations, and more.

Lightcast forecasts the Ohio Information Technology sector to grow by 13% from 2022 to 2027. This growth rate exceeds that of all other Ohio sectors and does not even capture the impact of the Intel project.

Data center expansion continues to be a growth area. In 2011 we had just under 400 data centers in state. We now have over 1,500 data centers when considering the blend of private corporate data centers, co-location facilities, and cloud providers. With no shortage of AI use cases here in the Midwest, we anticipate data center expansion as the data-driven digital economy continues to grow.

Ohio is home to 16 National Centers of Academic Excellence in Cybersecurity, a designation awarded by the National Security Agency. These Centers of Excellence, along with the Ohio Cyber Range Institute, and the arrival of the Air National Guard Cyberspace Wing position Ohio to lead in the development of cybersecurity workforce, solutions, and practices.

Intel brings massive momentum to a future-facing, transformative industry sector to Ohio, making the state a national domestic semiconductor/chip manufacturing leader.

Semiconductors will become a significant Ohio export, making the U.S. competitive on a global scale with a product in demand around the world. This also means that our state infrastructure will require robust access to logistics, including air cargo and other connectivity, both nationally and globally.

This new industry serves as a talent magnet – skilled workers will relocate to Ohio, and Ohio students, young people, and families will stay here for high-paying careers – the industry and the “Silicon Heartland” create generations of opportunity for those who work as technicians, engineers, researchers, and leadership.

Intel has indicated plans to make significant investments over the next decade in partnership with Ohio universities, community colleges, and the U.S. National Science Foundation – we’re seeing this in action through the Semiconductor Education and Research Program for Ohio. Partnerships with these institutions will span a range of activities, from collaborative research projects to building semiconductor-specific curricula for associate and undergraduate degree programs.

Today, Ohio ranks sixth for the number of military veterans in our state, and due to Ohio’s focus on being the most military-friendly state in the nation, more of the U.S. veteran population will come to Ohio to work once their military careers have ended. Intel is committed to hiring veterans, regardless of skill level, and providing extensive learning opportunities to help veterans meet their personal and professional goals after their service to our country. This is an initiative that JobsOhio is supporting through our Talent Acquisition Services program, which includes on-base hiring events targeting veterans and military spouses.

Intel is committed to being a global leader in sustainability. The company’s 2030 goals include achieving net positive water use, 100% renewable energy use across its global manufacturing operations, and conserving 4 billion kWh of energy, a 10% reduction in carbon use, and zero waste to landfill. In Ohio, Intel is building a state-of-the-art water reclamation system, which will reduce the need for water and water treatment services from local municipal facilities. The company uses similar systems in facilities in Oregon and Arizona. Over the last decade, Intel’s water conservation efforts have saved approximately 37 billion gallons of water, enough to sustain over 337,000 U.S. homes for one year.

Q: What are the next steps that our state can take to promote the development and growth of our tech industry and startups? How do we position Ohio as a tech hub?

Ohio is already a rising tech hub thanks to our talent base, affordability, central location, and business friendliness. The trends for onshoring, reshoring, and retreating from high-cost coastal cities should help us gain from the anticipated $1 trillion U.S. semiconductor industry to be built out by 2030.

Ohio is rich in options for higher education, with 14 four-year public universities with 24 branch campuses, 23 two-year community and technical colleges and more than 50 four-year private colleges and universities. We host 5, Carnegie R1 Research Universities. These institutions are incubators for talent and technology solutions.

Intel’s chip fabrication in New Albany alone could generate more than $100 billion in capital investments. Its supply chain will span the state, leading to the growth of industry clusters. Already, the number of Ohio companies in Intel's global supply chain has doubled.

In a world where everyone is talking about the explosive growth to come from AI and quantum computing, it’s good to know that Ohio has nearly quadrupled our data center growth since 2011, and AWS is investing another $7.8 billion by 2030. And importantly, Ohioans know how to make things. We have the #2 concentration of electrical equipment manufacturing employment in the U.S.

Ohio clearly has the ingredients to lead the next generation of tech.