group for the north dakota trade office and last but not least we have leslie alexander, international director for the tennessee department of economic and community development. but before getting to the panelists, i want to frame this. discussion just a little bit more. forgive me, i can't help but pu some data on power point slidesc so i wanted to share with you a little bit of some research that we at mckenzie have done. a few years ago we did a survey over 2,900 global company executives. we asked first the reasons for o why thesene executives and thei companies were seeking new locations. by far and away the number one reason was to reach new markets or customers as you can see on this chart. no other answer came even close including, i might add, seeking locations that had a lower cost profile. we also asked these executives s what criteria they used to choose specific locations.wth po the most important, again, by far and away was the size and growth potential of a local economy. that's what executives cared about.and than half of the executives also ome cared about key compon

so, leslie alexander with the state of tennessee. i want to say thank you to our governor who is a big proponent of obviously foreign direct investment into the state of tennessee, but also workforce development. and our commissioner of economic and community development, randy boyd, was first tasked before he came to the state with developing a stronger workforce, identifying how to develop a stronger workforce. but i'm going to hold those two things on the side and talk a little bit about our strengths as a state as that's what we're here to do as well. but also talk about some of the similarities. we're talking about the united states of america here as well, and foreign direct investment into the united states. one thing i love about the panel and my colleagues here is that, yes, we are all landlocked. and so when you look at it from a logistics perspective, we provide a really unique perspective. we're not on the coast. we don't have a big port for someone to come into. we logistically have very unique attributes. and tennessee