The San Antonio Economic Development Foundation (SAEDF) hired Daniel Chavez as the Vice President of Business Recruitment with a focus on developing the bioscience and healthcare industry.
“I am pleased to join the San Antonio Economic Development Foundation recruitment team and will work to attract new business to one the fastest growing cities in the United States,” Chavez said.
Chavez said he is determined to assist and diversify San Antonio’s growth by recruiting companies in the healthcare/bioscience, aerospace, information technology/information security, and advanced manufacturing sectors.
The San Antonio Economic Development Foundation is a nonprofit organization that aims to attract new business and industry to San Antonio.
SAEDF President Mario Hernandez said the foundation has “had some turnover” of staff and is in the process of rebuilding its staff.
“We feel like (Chavez’s) basic understanding of the process is there and we can teach him a lot,” he said.
Hernandez said SAEDF is going to “throw him into the mix” of finding companies that are looking to expand and encourage them to come to San Antonio.
“We’ll ask him to focus on the biosciences and healthcare as an area of expertise to learn so that in time he will become a knowledgeable expert in that particular sector,” Hernandez said.
He described the bioscience and healthcare industry as a “target sector” for San Antonio. One in six employees in San Antonio work in either the bioscience or healthcare field, according to SAEDF numbers.
“We’ve got a tremendous cluster already and they are growing dramatically around the country and the world,” he said.
Each vice president on the SAEDF recruitment team keeps up to date with one of San Antonio’s target/horizon sectors. Chavez said the bioscience and healthcare industries are “a hugely important asset to our local community.
“I will be keeping up with industry trends and how they affect our local economy and how that impacts recruitment in the healthcare/bioscience sector,” he said.
In June, SAEDF assisted Cytocentrics, a German biotech and robotics company, in locating to San Antonio. The company will employ more than 300 locally-trained people and will invest a minimum $15 million in establishing operations here over the next five years.
*Featured/top image: San Antonio’s downtown skyline, looking southeast from the top of the Weston Centre. Photo by Kara Gomez.
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