(upbeat music) - Recently, my colleague Mary Gamba on our series "Lessons and Leadership", we sat down and spoke with Tim Crouch, who's chief strategy officer at Choose New Jersey, talking about going out to the West Coast.

Choose New Jersey as a not-for-profit that promotes economic development in the state of New Jersey.

And Tim talked about the effort to bring film, television initiatives from the West Coast to New Jersey, and really talking to folks about what New Jersey is versus what the perception of New Jersey may be to a whole range of folks.

And we also talk with Tim about international trade in these very challenging times, and bringing more industry and business into New Jersey.

Here's the conversation Mary and I have with Tim Crouch.

Check it out.

Tim, how you doing?

- Very good, yeah.

Great to be here.

- You got it.

Tell everyone what Choose New Jersey is.

- So, Choose New Jersey is the state's leading economic development nonprofit.

We work closely with the state government to tell New Jersey's story right the way across the world.

- Tim, what part of New Jersey did you grow up in?

- Closer to Old Jersey than New Jersey.

Happy to be in this one for sure.

- Where where did you grow up?

- So, born and raised in Southern England.

Actually, I've crossed the threshold, I've now spent the majority of my adult life in the United States.

So, this is home.

It doesn't sound like it, but this is home now.

- Awesome.

Talk to us about the West Coast Initiative.

There's a strong effort to tell folks on the West Coast that, no, this is New Jersey not what you may think New Jersey is.

Talk about that.

- Yeah, I think that's exactly right.

So, for a good while now, New Jersey in the economic development world, we've known that it's really important to tell our story internationally.

So, we've had offices in Europe.

As recently as last year, we opened offices in East Asia, Tokyo, Taipei, and Seoul.

We have two offices now in India.

We've long accepted the need to tell New Jersey's story outside of the borders of the United States.

But really actually, when we do visits domestically to key markets where key industries for our state are headquartered, it dawned on us probably about this time last year that there's more to do domestically.

And I think when you think about a market of the scale of California, you know, whatever it is, it's the fourth or fifth biggest economy in the world, if it was treated as a separate country.

- The world, that's right.

- The justification for having a presence there to tell that story was pretty clear.

And I think for us, the reality is, is that we think we're lucky I suppose We know what New Jersey is, because we live it, we breathe it, we see it every day.

We see it strengths in life sciences, biotech, pharmaceuticals.

We see its rising prominence in film and TV production.

We see its legacy in FinTech, in innovation, and so on.

And a whole host of other things besides.

That's not necessarily the case for those outside of the state who don't necessarily can't draw the distinction between kind of what New Jersey offers versus Pennsylvania versus Connecticut versus Massachusetts, to telling that story with that nuance is critical.

- Yeah.

So, Mary, jump in, 'cause I wanna talk a little bit more about film.

- Oh, you know, that's where I was going.

That's near and dear to my heart.

So, Tim, my son is currently studying acting over at NYU Tisch, and yeah, I'm very excited and also excited I live in a little town called Westfield, and there's a Netflix special being filmed here right now.

Timothee Chalamet was right down the road filming one of those little biopics about Bob Dylan.

- Hold on one second.

J.Lo is here in Montclair where I am as we're taping, just to be clear.

- You're kidding me.

All right, you win.

- Just telling you.

I got your attention now.

April, our makeup artist, just said, "Yeah, I heard."

- Yeah.

She's driving around trying to find her, get that autograph.

- Yes.

- It's so exciting.

It is just to be here to hear the excitement and just the business that it brings to the town or the small businesses, the cafes, the coffee shops, et cetera.

Talk about that film industry coming to New Jersey and what it means to our economy and to our community.

- Yeah, for sure.

And such a good way to frame it.

I mean it's exciting.

We are all excited when you get these big productions coming to the state, but it matters for the businesses on the ground and the communities that the productions are going into.

To put that into perspective, and kudos to the Governor and First Lady for the work they've done to put the film tax credits in place and make sure that the Film Commission is equipped to support those productions.

If you go back a couple of years pre-pandemic, I think physical production in the state was valued at something like 50 or 60 million a year, not to be sniffed at.

That's a big sum of money.

That's now tenfold, and with a trajectory that could have that topping a billion per year by the next couple of years.

So, what that means in practice, of course, it's not just the actors, the directors, the cinematographers.

It's the dry cleaners, the hotels, the catering companies,- - Restaurants.

- the transport companies, all of the kind of, what we think of, I guess is a supply chain for film and TV production.

Not to mention the physical infrastructure that's being built out across the state.

So, Netflix's landmark announcement a year or so ago that they were gonna build their East Coast production hub in Fort Monmouth, it's huge for the state that's, you know, close to $1 billion in investment- - Big deal.

- across 300 acres of what was Fort Monmouth, the military facility there.

That's a real statement of trust by Hollywood that New Jersey has both the locations, but also the production talent and that supply chain to cope with really, really big productions.

And I think maybe the other thing I'd say on that, it's interesting when we have our conversations with the major studios who, you know, they make film and TV shows in the UK, in Australia, other bits of Europe.

Hungary is quite an important destination.

We all know that Georgia has done well to attract a lot of production.

New Jersey now plays at that level.

We are generally, considered in the top three states across the United States and top five globally as places to bring big film and TV.

- Well, hold on.

New Jersey is, one second.

New Jersey is top five globally?

- Top five globally.

Yeah.

Generally our competitors, really, California is its own thing.

Although the news in the industry is that production is leaving the state, which is pretty tough for California.

Domestically competitors will be New Jersey, Georgia- - What about New York?

- to an extent.

- New York is set.

We don't just put New York and New Jersey together though, Tim.

Do we distinguish New York from New Jersey?

Because New York City, - Absolutely.

Yeah.

- that doesn't count on our bill does it?

Not our bill.

- Not at all.

Completely separate.

So, I think the feedback we get is that New York is increasingly becoming quite a difficult place to film.

Quite difficult place to get permitting, but simply the traffic of moving people in and out of sets.

The ability to shut down roads temporarily to be able to film scenes is getting unworkable in several parts of New York.

And, of course, in New Jersey that's good news in that they're a direct competitor and we're able to really differentiate ourselves with a very film-friendly environment.

So that means that we play really well against those domestic competitors and actually, increasingly against UK and Australia as the two big international competitors.

- Help us on this.

AI and the work that you and your colleagues are doing.

- Yeah.

- Creating and developing the strategic direction of the organization.

- Yeah, indeed.

So, really, really important for the state.

Important, because we see it as a huge opportunity for New Jersey.

We've got a history and legacy of innovation.

We have the right mix of existing industries that are likely to be catalyzed, that innovation is gonna be driven by AI.

You think about pharma and drug discovery.

You think about FinTech in that corridor of sort of Jersey State.

- Financial technology, FinTech.

- Exactly right.

- Go ahead.

- Exactly right.

These are all industries that are gonna be catalyzed by advanced artificial intelligence, generative AI.

And for us, we've then got Princeton as the sort of crown jewel educational institution.

So for us, critical, you get the right partners involved.

The Princeton AI hub that was announced about a year ago, the founding partners announced about a month ago.

- We just, one second.

Check out our interview with Chris Paladino, who heads up the Helix, 'cause he talked about that as well.

Go ahead.

- Brilliant.

And the Helix, again, a kind of great asset for the state.

Another strategic innovation center alongside the AI hub at Princeton.

So, yeah, two great examples of where you've got existing strengths of the state being turbocharged, catalyzed, and where AI will be a critical component to us.

- Tim Crouch, chief strategy officer at Choose New Jersey.

Tim, thank you for joining us.

We appreciate it.

- Thanks so much.

Great to be here.

- You got it.

Stay with us, we’ll be right back.

- [Narrator] One-On-One with Steve Adubato is a production of the Caucus Educational Corporation.

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