One year into leading greater:SATX, people often ask me about the biggest lessons I’ve learned in this seat.
It isn't about a single project. It's a reminder of just how important it is that economic development remains a long-term game in an increasingly competitive landscape.
Our momentum is now showing up in results. Yet every major win we announced this year traces back to a decision someone made a decade or more ago.
This month, Industrial Electric Manufacturing selected Brooks as home for a $200 million investment expected to create up to 3,000 jobs by 2030. This is the largest job-producing economic development win for our region in at least two decades, and one that carries greater:SATX past its annual jobs goal for 2026. But that win didn't start this quarter. Brooks is a job center today because, a generation ago, this community looked at a closing Air Force base and decided to build something there instead of letting it become a vacant field. IEM is the return on that bet.
The pattern holds across every announcement.
Toyota chose San Antonio for a $3.6 billion expansion this summer, roughly doubling the size of its plant and adding 2,000 jobs. It did so after building trucks here for twenty years. This is a company that knows exactly what it's like to operate in this region, looked at its options across North America again, and chose to go deeper here. That's the kind of endorsement corporate leaders pay the most attention to.
When Blackwave selected Port San Antonio for its first U.S. factory, it chose a campus that had spent two decades building an ecosystem conducive to innovative companies in aerospace, defense and cyber.
While our team worked incredibly hard to get the deal across the finish line, none of these companies came because of something we did last quarter. They came because people before us made long-term investments in infrastructure, talent and industry clusters — and, most importantly, stayed with them.
That is the kind of foundation that creates lasting competitiveness. And making a long-term bet, and staying with it for twenty years, takes something a lot of regions don't have: the ability to align around a shared vision and execute with urgency. That, more than any single incentive or cost advantage, is Greater San Antonio's sharpest competitive advantage.
When I stepped into this role, I talked often about momentum. A year later, that momentum is visible in results. What stands out most to me today is something deeper than wins alone: People across Greater San Antonio want to come together around a shared vision for economic development and are hungry to turn ideas into action.
Over the past year, I've spent time with our greater:SATX investors, business leaders, educators, workforce partners, elected officials, military leaders, and community organizations across our region. Priorities may differ, but I continue to see people willing to solve problems, pursue opportunities and work together to move the region forward.
In many places, organizations spend as much time competing with one another as they do competing against other markets. What I've experienced here is largely different. Many communities talk about collaboration. While imperfect, San Antonio practices it. And, to use a sports metaphor, practice makes perfect.
That mindset matters. It builds trust, accelerates decisions, and gives employers and investors confidence that this is a region capable of getting things done. It's also how we're increasingly seen from the outside. Site selectors and corporate executives look at Greater San Antonio and see one of the nation's largest concentrations of military talent, growing strength in cybersecurity, aerospace, advanced manufacturing, life sciences and healthcare, and a region adding jobs, attracting new residents and diversifying its economy. Most importantly, they see opportunity, and partners willing to work together to turn it into results.
So the question I find most useful for a region to ask is not what we won this year. It's what we're deciding right now that will shape the next transformational project someone announces in 2036.
The regions we compete with are asking it too. Austin, Nashville, Phoenix and Dallas, among others, continue to invest aggressively in their futures, strengthening workforce pipelines, expanding infrastructure, supporting innovation and building the communities that attract talent and jobs.
They are not standing still. Neither can we.
Winning regions keep strengthening the advantages that led to their success in the first place. They develop talent before a company announces jobs. They build infrastructure before capacity becomes a constraint. They support innovation before the next industry emerges. And they invest in quality of place, because talented people have choices about where they live and work.
Most importantly, they act before they have to.
So here is what I'm asking of this region over the next year: four investments that can shape the wins we announce a decade from now.
Keep cutting the time and cost to get a site ready, so that when a company is deciding fast, Greater San Antonio is ready faster. We're already working on this alongside the City of San Antonio, Bexar County and the State, and it's well within our reach.
Build the growth capital stack, and let local investors lead it, so the companies ready to scale can scale here at home.
Fund talent before the jobs are announced, so the pipeline is ready when the next employer arrives.
And bring more people into the work between the deals. The confidential rooms will always be small by necessity. But the work around them, from site readiness to capital formation to workforce pipelines to infrastructure, is an open invitation. The wider we extend it, the more aligned we'll be when the next project arrives.
One year into this role, my optimism about Greater San Antonio is stronger than ever. Not because success is guaranteed, but because I've seen firsthand what this region does when it decides something matters.
The next twenty years of wins are being decided this year. Let's make them count.
Sarah Carabias Rush is the President & CEO of greater:SATX Regional Economic Partnership.
greater:SATX is investor-funded. If you want to talk about what your company’s investment makes possible, my door is open.