James Blair, Managing Director, Navigator Consulting

James Blair has over 40 years of experience in site selection and project management. He was director of the German-American Chamber of Commerce’s site selection program (Atlanta) for two years and director of Georgia’s Europe Office (Brussels) for 18 years, returning to Atlanta in 2005 as director of Georgia’s Foreign Direct Investment program and its six international offices. He worked with over 175 companies that located business operations in the United States. These include familiar corporate names like Porsche, JCB, Merial, Hansgrohe, Georg Fischer, Pirelli, Saint Gobain, and Alpla. Blair sits on the boards of the Belgian-American Chamber of Commerce and the Transatlantic Business Investment Council (TBIC), as well as Emory University’s Advisory Board for German Language Study. Awarded the prestigious “Officer of the National Order of Merit” medal by French President Sarkozy in 2012, Blair has also been certified each year from 2017–2019 by Swiss Global Enterprise as a “U.S. Expert in Site Selection.” Blair received an International MBA (1983) from the University of South Carolina and interned with Siemens in Erlangen, Germany. He speaks fluent German and he is proficient in French and Dutch.