Mississippi is set to receive a Gold Shovel Award. What does that recognition mean for the state?

We're obviously excited about the opportunity to win a Gold Shovel. Area Development Magazine is really speaking to our customers — the people that we're going after and encouraging more and more capital investment in our state. We work very hard every year to ensure that we are bringing more and better-paying jobs to Mississippi. To be recognized by this organization is yet another feather in our cap.

Many of the projects behind that recognition are capital-heavy — refining, port infrastructure, transformers. Mississippi isn't typically the first state that comes to mind for that kind of deal. What is it about the state that's attracting that scale of investment? We've announced $85 billion in new capital investment in the state of Mississippi since I've been governor. My predecessor announced $7.2 billion in eight years, just for scale. We've had a really good run.

The reasons we've been successful are because we have readily available power. These large industrial projects require a lot of power. We were long power when we started winning five years ago, and we've announced 4,000 megawatts of additional new power generation just over the last couple of years. We're continuing to get ahead of the curve in terms of available power. A lot of states don't have that. A lot of regions don't have that. In Mississippi, we have available power.

How important is having physical sites ready to go?

All of those things are important, but you also have to have a place to put these large industrial projects. We started investing in site development five years ago. We've spent hundreds of millions of dollars to ensure that we have 30 readily available sites where the infrastructure has already been put in place.

So there is typically a lead time to get all of that done. We've already erased that lead time. We've got 30 sites situated in every region of our state where the infrastructure is there — the water, the sewer, the power — ready to go.

How does the combination of power, sites, and workforce translate into a competitive advantage when you're going after projects?

The combination of all of those things leads to what is our biggest competitive advantage in Mississippi, and that is speed. We pride ourselves on being the place in America, and therefore the best place in the world, to get a company from spending money to making money faster than anyone anywhere else in the world. That gives us a competitive advantage.

Permitting and timelines are major concerns for companies nationally. How are you addressing that? That formula has been incredible. I'll sum up that speed-to-market advantage by quoting someone that most people have heard of, and that's Elon Musk. He said, and I quote, "Insane execution speed by the state of Mississippi." He knows a little something about executing business, and he has seen it because they announced a $20 billion capital investment project in Southaven just a few months ago.

What has changed in how Mississippi approaches workforce development?

When I got elected governor in 2019 and came in in 2020, we immediately recognized that we had to up our game when it came to workforce development and workforce training. We passed legislation creating what we call Accelerate Mississippi.

Accelerate Mississippi is our workforce development and workforce training entity. It is unique in that it is run by the private sector. I appoint the board members from the private sector, and they hire the team and the staff, because I believe the private sector knows better what jobs and what training is needed than anybody in government ever will.

We found that we were spending hundreds of millions of dollars a year on workforce development and workforce training, but there was no coordinated approach and no collaboration between the different entities. Now we have a one-stop shop, and they are ensuring that we are training people not for the jobs of the last 50 years, but for the jobs of the next 50 years.

Mississippi has received national attention for improvements in early literacy. How does that factor into your workforce story?

It helps tremendously, because when corporations are making long-term investments, they plan to be producing not just next year or next month, but 20, 30, 40, 50 years from now.

Today Mississippi has the smartest fourth graders in the southeastern United States, which means in 10 years we're going to have the smartest workforce in the southeastern United States, and employers recognize that. We've gone from 49th best in America in fourth grade reading to number nine. We've gone from 50th in fourth grade math to number 16. Our high school graduation rates have gone from 72 and a half percent to over 90 percent.

The New York Times called it the Mississippi Miracle, but it wasn't a miracle. It was the result of strong public policy, accountability, and buy-in from teachers, administrators, parents, and students.

What do you want companies to see when they evaluate Mississippi five years from now?

What I hope they see is five years of continued momentum by the state of Mississippi to land multi-billion-dollar projects, and not just to land them, but to deliver on them.

A lot of states talk a good game. Mississippi actually delivers, because we see those investments as a partnership. Our people will not be successful unless companies are successful.

Five years from now, I want CEOs to be able to look not only at AWS, xAI, Nissan, Toyota, and Siemens, but also five more years of success and see that those companies are operating, growing, and expanding because their workforce has met their expectations and hopefully exceeded them.