PATSY HAZLEWOOD Job: Regional director of the "jobs base camp" in Southeast Tennessee Employer: Tennessee Department of Economic and Community DevelopmentEducation: A native of Fayetteville, Tenn., she graduated from Middle Tennessee State University Career: After teaching seventh-grade math briefly in Winchester, she joined South Central Bell Telephone Co., as a real estate specialist in 1974. She served with Bell and its successor companies, BellSouth and AT&T, until she retired as an assistant vice president for Southeast Tennessee in 2008.Community roles: She was campaign chairwoman of the United Way of Greater Chattanooga in 2001, chairwoman of the Chattanooga Area Chamber of Commerce in 2002, the first female president of the Chattanooga Downtown Rotary Club in 2009, a founding director for CapitalMark Bank and Trust in Chattanooga and a deacon of Signal Mountain Presbyterian Church. Personal: She and her husband, Hal, have one grown child, and she lives on Signal Mountain.
Patsy Hazlewood began her 34-year career with Ma Bell in a newly created position without a job description.
"That was highly unusual for South Central Bell at the time, but I got a chance to work on helping build a new facility in Brentwood and work with a lot of great people," Hazlewood recalled Wednesday.
Through successive mergers with Bellsouth and AT&T, Hazlewood served in a variety of real estate, engineering and management posts with the telephone giant in Middle and East Tennessee before retiring as an assistant vice president in 2008. But three years into her retirement, the Signal Mountain businesswoman took on another newly created job in July.
Hazlewood is among nine new regional directors hired by Gov. Bill Haslam to represent the state's Department of Economic and Community Development across Tennessee. Hazlewood is responsible for helping grow jobs in the 10-county region from Marion to McMinn counties.
Through her career, Hazlewood has been an active community volunteer, serving on the boards of more than a dozen business, civic and church groups. But she said she takes the greatest satisfaction in helping promote business and job growth.
"I've worked with a lot of great organizations that are really committed to helping people, but I'm convinced that the best way you can help anyone or any family is give them an opportunity to get a job and earn a livable wage," she said.
Bill Hagerty, commissioner for Economic and Community Development, said Hazlewood and the eight other regional directors for his department across the state should help gauge the economic needs of Tennessee and help provide in-person assistance for new and expanding businesses.
"She has the experience and skill to serve Tennessee businesses as a single point-of-contact for state services," Hagerty said.
Despite budget cuts in the planning staff of Economic and Community Development, Hagerty said his agency is trying to do more to help existing businesses grow. Hazlewood said she has visited dozens of businesses and Chambers of Commerce to prepare a new strategic plan for the region, scheduled for release this month.
With the addition of major new companies such as Volkswagen, Amazon and Alstom and the presence of hundreds of other manufacturing firms, Hazlewood said the state is working to lure or grow more suppliers to such companies.
Even with double-digit unemployment in most of the 10 Southeast Tennessee counties this year, Hazlewood said the region is poised to benefit by its attractive location and logistics support and presence of major training centers such as UTC, Chattanooga State and Cleveland State.
"It's an exciting time for this part of the state," she said.