You Schmooze You Lose.

• Author: Cutting, Bill
• Position: Chris Roybal

Chris Roybal

PRESIDENT AND CEO, ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION OF UTAH

Curtis Pearson

Chris Roybal is no schmoozer. Oh sure, he and his colleagues may have had a good deal to do with millions of dollars in economic value added to Utah's economy during the 90s, but it wasn't due to schmoozing. In fact, the mission statement of the Economic Development Corporation of Utah speaks volumes about the public/private sector economic development, but totally absent are words like schmooze, party, entertain, junket, glad hand, back slap, or golf.

The 40-year-old Roybal, EDCU president and CEO, has held the top job since August of last year, but he's been with the EDCU since '93, fresh off a three-year stint with the Governor's Economic Development team. A University of Utah geophysics major, he first caught the finance bug when he took a course on teaching engineers how to write business plans. A soft oil market in the mid-80s convinced him to perform a mid-course correction, and he was off to UCLA for an MBA. After two or three consulting jobs out of grad school, Roybal found himself working full time at EDCU recruiting new businesses and helping local companies grow.

But it is the out-of-state businesses that require most of the time and energy of the dozen or so EDCU staffers. Professional site selectors, corporate officers and hosts of others considering Utah as a potential locale for a facility know they will get everything they ask for -- and more -- when they put in a request to the EDCU. At least that's how Roybal gauges his group's performance. "When site selectors and companies come in and ask for 12 pieces of data," he says, "my goal is to give them ten additional...