He runs a real growth company.

• Position: Southern Growth Policies Board executive director J. Paul Essex Jr.

CEOs be warned. J. Paul Essex Jr., the new executive director of Research Triangle Park-based Southern Growth Policies Board wants your company's money: "One of my goals is to build that corporate support back up," he says.

Before taking over in September, Essex had served two months as interim head of the 13-year-old think tank, which issues periodic reports on the state of the 13 Southern states.

"In the midst of the search process, we kept hearing from people who said we ought to keep Paul on because he was doing such a good job," says Ed Kilgore, Georgia Gov. Zell Miller's director of intergovernmental relations. "Before we got to a final cut, we talked him into considering the job."

Essex, 58, came to the job with a diverse background. Born in New Jersey but raised in Winston-Salem, he enrolled in N.C. State's engineering program in the late 1950s. "That was the era of Sputnik," says Essex, the son of a Western Electric personnel manager. But his college education was interrupted by a three-year stint in the Army.

After he returned to school in 1962, he went to work for The News & Observer in Raleigh. "By the time my degree materialized, I was moving up through the newsroom ranks," he says.

In 1972, after 10 years as a reporter and news editor, he heard his old college chum Jim Hunt was running for lieutenant governor. Essex...