Mr. James Blair is the Founder and Managing Director of Navigator Consulting LLC, a business site selection consultancy based out of Atlanta, GA. Navigator Consulting offers customized business site selection services to German and other European SME’s, primarily to companies from the German “Mittelstand”, seeking to establish business operations in the U.S.

Mr. Blair and the Navigator Consulting team coordinate the full range of business location services (facility or site selection, operating cost analysis, community recommendations, introduction to statewide economic development authorities, business incentives, etc.) in collaboration with state economic development agencies and with private sector partners like attorneys, tax accountants, engineering firms, environmental consultants, etc.

Mr. Blair was previously Director of Foreign Direct Investment at the Georgia Department of Economic Development. Mr. Blair coordinated the business recruitment efforts of Georgia’s international offices in Europe, Japan, Korea and China and managed a specialized team of project managers in Atlanta who work with international executives seeking to locate business operations in the USA.

Executive Director of Georgia’s European Office in Brussels for 18 years before returning to Georgia in 2005, Mr. Blair also served as Chairman of the Council of American States in Europe, the official organization of US states with full-time FDI offices in Europe. Mr. Blair presented at a number of prestigious US investment conferences organized, for example, by “Capital” magazine (Germany), KBC Bank (Belgium), the German Chambers of Commerce (Germany), the Paris Chamber of Commerce (France), the Department of Trade and Industry (United Kingdom) and Confindustia (Italy).

Before working with Georgia, Mr. Blair spent five years in international banking at Bank of America. In 25 years of working in the field of economic development, Mr. Blair has helped locate 175 international companies in Georgia whose subsidiaries today employ some 8,000 persons. These include large companies like JCB, Porsche, UCB, Randstad and Saint Gobain, as well as smaller companies like Balta Carpets, Hailo, Hansgrohe, Knapp Logistics, Perkins Engines, SolarMax and WIKA Instruments.

Mr. Blair was awarded the prestigious “Officer of the Order of Merit” medal by the French government in 2012 in honor of his service in promoting French-American business relations.

Mr. Blair has a BA and an international MBA from the University of South Carolina and speaks German, Dutch and French.

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