Speaker Chris Chung, CEO of the Economic Development Partnership of North Carolina (EDPNC), a private-public partnership with 60+ employees and its main office in Cary, shared the EDPNC’s five focuses: (1) business recruitment; (2) existing industry support; (3) international trade assistance; (4) small business start-up counseling; and (5) tourism promotion. According to Chung, the small business counselors field 20,000 calls annually from every NC county. And in 2016, NC saw $2.9B in tourism spending, $700M in state and local tax revenues and has $218K working in the industry.