New director, new direction: Sturdivant takes helm of 58 INC.

There’s a new leader at the helm of Shelby County’s economic development organization 58 INC.

Amy Sturdivant was hired at the end of January as the new managing director of the organization. She will fill the role previously held by Yvonne Murray and joins Melody Whitten, director of development, and Jackson Pruett, senior project manager, on the team.

She brings more than 20 years of public and private sector work with communities in Alabama and Illinois.

Sturdivant grew up in the suburbs of St. Charles, Illinois, received bachelor’s degrees in environmental design, architecture and philosophy in interdisciplinary studies from Miami University in Ohio and completed her graduate degree in architecture management and urban and regional planning from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

“I went away to school then went back there [to Illinois] and worked for a lot of my career with cities in the Chicago area and also as a consultant,” she said. “I worked in community-based economic development and planning through consultant firms.”

During her time there, she served as a community consultant, municipal development director and executive director, working with more than 20 communities in the Chicagoland area.

It was 2009 when Sturdivant made the move to Madison, Alabama, to become the city’s director of planning and economic development.

“I’ve always liked to work in high growth areas, and [Madison] was the next place looking for economic development services,” Sturdivant said.

After five years in that role, she took the position as the director of business recruitment for HudsonAlpha, a 152-acre biotech campus in Huntsville, where she recruited bioscience startups and companies to come to Cummings Research Park.

Sturdivant determined the next step in her path was to go back to the consulting nature of work she enjoyed in Illinois and working for multiple communities.

It just so happened 58 INC. had an opening. When she saw the job posting, she said she kept coming back to it and decided to apply.

“I studied Shelby County quite a bit,” Sturdivant said. “I was impressed with the professional management and the real diversity in so many ways of the communities that are here. Lots of things that attracted me reminded me of my home county in Illinois. It sounded exciting to be able to help smaller communities looking for retail growth but larger communities like Hoover who have existing biotech companies seeking to build on that.”

Shelby County Manager Chad Scroggins said that once his office received Sturdivant’s resume, he actively recruited her and offered her the job out of dozens of other applicants.

“She brings a desire to work in a local community, but she has the background of professional economic development consulting,” Scroggins said. “She has a unique mix of public service, biotech service and economic development consulting. I think she will do an amazing job.”

Sturdivant was offered and accepted the position on the last day of 2020 and started at the end of January.

She achieved a goal of doing a windshield tour of every community, city or town within Shelby County within her first two weeks. The third week, an industrial development program was held, and she was able to meet face to face with almost all the Shelby County mayors.

“They are essentially our clients, but we are here to make sure they have the tools and support they need to make those wins happen whether they are retail, downtown, industrial projects,” she said. “There are lots of different goals and a lot of excitement around achieving those goals.”

She described her first 58 days as a listening tour of the mayors, elected officials, county manager and anyone who has property or existing business in play.

“That’s how I operate,” she said. “I listen. Then I kind of plug in and am definitely a team player and like to know what matters to each team. I want to work with each project the way they want.”

The purpose of 58 INC. is to advance economic prosperity and business health using targeted initiatives and business recruitment to provide a robust economy focusing Shelby County, is to intentionally cultivate a dynamic economy and a prepared workforce for the benefit of the communities. It works with corporate, retail, talent and entrepreneurship development.

Its primary focus is to achieve balanced job growth in the commercial, retail and industrial sectors. It also serves as the lead for industrial, commercial and retail recruitment and retention and workforce readiness initiatives throughout the county.

By working closely with various communities, corporate representatives, local government officials, business owners, private developers, chambers of commerce and land-use planning officials, 58 INC. works to bring desired economic investment to all communities in Shelby County.

Sturdivant and her husband, who teaches middle school math and an introductory class on personal finance, have four children. Three live at home, and one attends UAB. She stays in Shelby County during the week and drives home to spend weekends with her family.

Professionally, she said she is excited to work with a variety of communities at different stages and to apply and share the knowledge on bioscience retention start-ups and traction she was able to gain with HudsonAlpha and share with partners in Shelby County.

“Personally, I also love communities and love to learn about a new community, and it’s exciting to be able to explore new places and add lasting value working with teams to do that. It’s my passion. My hobby is the same as my job.”