Your Fed, Your Voice: Tim Nowak

Seema Sheth: Hey there, and welcome. This is Your Fed, Your Voice. My name is Seema Sheth, and I’m the regional executive of the Louisville branch of the St. Louis Federal Reserve. One of the coolest parts about my job is that I get to talk to people about how they experience and impact the economy. We’re known at the Fed for using a ton of data, but behind every data point is a person with a story, with triumphs and challenges.

And the point of this podcast is to share those stories with you. So today we have a very special guest. His name is Tim Nowak, and he’s the executive director of the World Trade Center in St. Louis. Tim, so great to have you with us.

Tim Nowak: Well, now, that is one of the better introductions I’ve had in a while. We need to share this with my team here.

Sheth: Anytime.

Nowak: Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity. This is kind of fun.

Sheth: Well, I’m glad to have you here. And one of the reasons is because I feel like you work for an organization that most people don’t understand well. So can you tell me a little bit about what World Trade Centers do?

Nowak: So the World Trade Center, as you can imagine, we’ve heard of this name. We’ve heard it over the years. We’re one of about 300 WTCs all throughout the globe. Shanghai, Beijing, London. There’s World Trade Centers all over.

Our license was brought here to St. Louis 32 years ago, back in 1993. And wasn’t me. Wasn’t around at the time. But it’s pretty interesting because if you look at the birth of the World Trade Center, St. Louis, our license is housed within what is called the St. Louis Economic Development Partnership.

And it’s a little bit unique. I think it’s important for your listeners to understand. At the time, there were very few WTCs that were housed within an economic development agency. Our focus at that time was all about programming. It wasn’t putting a name and a big sign on a building and a real estate deal. It was much more focused on how can St. Louis interact with and connect to what was then, just this beginning wave of globalization.

If you think back on it, it was the fall of the Berlin Wall not long before that. It was the opening up of markets and the movement of goods and people and investments. And so, really, the leaders here in St. Louis said, “we want to be a part of it.” And so they brought the license in for the World Trade Center. Our focus, at that time, was what our name is. It was trade. It was, hey, how do we connect companies here to new markets, introduce them, get them selling their goods or their services in new markets?

But it’s evolved since then. We’ve grown, and focusing---we’ve learned over time that trade leads to investment and investment leads to talent. It’s fun. And it’s been great work. Like I said, 32 years. And the funny thing is that you’re now seeing---in other markets, like Los Angeles, San Diego, and others that have moved their own World Trade Centers into their economic development agencies.

Sheth: I want to talk to you a little about small business and entrepreneurship because I think there’s this idea that if you want to be an entrepreneur, you’ve got to go to a coast. And there’s also this idea that the majority of businesses in the country are big businesses, when it’s the reverse. The majority of businesses in the country are small businesses. So how do you, as a World Trade Center, support entrepreneurship or small business? What does that look like for you all?

Nowak: Oh my gosh, I’m glad you brought it up. There’s a stat out there---I’m not making this up. I won’t make up statistics with the Federal Reserve.

Sheth: We’re the Fed. We love a stat.

Nowak: I mean, we can’t just throw stuff out around---

Sheth: Oh, we’ll check it.

Nowak: Yeah, I know you will. You’ll fact check me. Chuck Gascon does all the time. So no, there are about 3,000 exporters in the St. Louis region, just shy of about 3,000 exporters. 85% of those are what are classified as small- to medium-sized enterprises. So yes, yes, the Boeings and the Nestlés are big and important multinational companies here in this region, and they are. And we need them and the great, many jobs that they contribute to this economy. But make no mistake: it’s the small- to medium-sized companies that are driving this economy, and they’re driving our export economy

And so, at the core, that’s where most of our work, I think, is felt the greatest. When we can work with a company here and connect them with a distributor in Mexico, as we did---we took a trade mission in 2019 to Mexico City and a small manufacturer here of generators, actually, nitrogen generators, went with us and connected with new distributors in Mexico that led to seven-figure in new sales for this company, by his own admission, the company owner.

So the state of Missouri is a vital partner of ours. The Department of Economic Development has an International Trade and Investment Office. The state of Missouri, actually has, I think, about 15 offices internationally. And many companies aren’t even aware that this is a resource for them. These are boots on the ground that can help a company navigate getting into a new market. How would you even begin it? So that’s fun.

Sheth: You name-dropped a St. Louis Fed celebrity. I don’t know if you know, but you did. You talked about Charles “Chuck” Gascon, who is a regional economist. I think his official title is he’s an economist and research officer. But he’s the person that is spending a lot of time really hyperfocusing on what is happening in the seven-state area that makes up the eighth district of the Federal Reserve. And I want to know about the work that you’ve done with him or with the Fed. Can you share with us how that’s been, what you’ve done?

Nowak: Chuck and the team at the Fed have been valuable partners for our work for many, many years. I’ll go back, just a couple of things. Chuck was very involved with us. We reached out. We first started working with him when the World Trade Center applied for inclusion in the Brookings Institution Global Cities Initiative.

And this was a fun project. We were really interested. This was back in 2015. And Brookings out of Washington, D.C., they had this hypothesis that all too often, international strategies---export foreign direct investment strategies---were driven at the state level.

And with funding from JPMorgan Chase, they invited metropolitan areas around the United States to apply for inclusion to develop their own export and foreign direct investment strategies, meaning that as this global economy has evolved, we have to be looking at what’s in it for St. Louis, in our case, and how do we---maybe it’s different. Maybe it’s more unique than the state of Missouri would define.

And so we applied for inclusion. Our office led that application. And Chuck was at the table with us. We got into it. And as a process of that, we developed, researched, and surveyed and developed our own metro export plan and our own foreign direct investment plan.

And we’re forever grateful for Chuck’s involvement with that. And he’s been an annual speaker for us at various events. He’s helped us to form and really ask us challenging questions of our own business retention and expansion program that we developed in the pandemic.

And there’s even another special connection because in 2015, as we were surveying businesses, local businesses, we went out and interviewed about 35 foreign-owned companies in St. Louis. How did you end up in St. Louis? Was it a merger and acquisition? Was it a new investment? Where is your headquarters? Is it Europe, Asia, Latin America?

And as we were interviewing these companies, time and again, we learned that the greatest barrier to increasing their investment in St. Louis was the lack of international connectivity. So we began working very closely with our airport in St. Louis, the director Rhonda Hamm-Niebruegge, and outreach to airlines, whether it’s British Airways, Air France, Aer Lingus, Lufthansa. And I’m proud to say, three years ago, we’re celebrating the three-year anniversary of direct flights between St. Louis and Frankfurt, Germany.

And it really was a team effort. It was born out of that Global Cities work that the Fed was very instrumental in. And it was one where it was so gratifying. We led a trade delegation on that inaugural flight back in 2022. And to take 35 of our business leaders, civic leaders, our elected leaders to be on that first flight, it was surreal.

Sheth: Tim, thank you so much for being here with us today. This has been a phenomenal conversation. I know I learned a ton, and I hope that all of you that have listened and watched have as well. If you like what you see and you want more of this to show up in your feed, please like and subscribe so that when we come out with another podcast, you’re the first to know about it. But for the Federal Reserve, I’m Seema Sheth, and this has been Your Fed, Your Voice. Thank you so much.

[THEME MUSIC]