Name & occupation: Thom Tillis, United States Senator for North Carolina.
Previous jobs held: I served as Speaker of the North Carolina House of Representatives for two terms; before that, I served two terms in the minority. I was the minority whip and led the campaign effort that gave Republicans a majority in the North Carolina General Assembly. Before serving in the North Carolina House of Representatives, I was PTA President at Hopewell High School, a Town Commissioner, and a Parks and Recreation Advisory Board Commissioner.
In the private sector, I joined the tech industry at age 20, working in insurance. I moved to Boston to work for Wang Laboratories and then joined PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), where I was admitted to the partnership in six years. In 2009, I joined IBM Global Business Services, which PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) management consulting services acquired.
If there was one thing you could tell your younger self today, what would it be and why? I’m a no-regrets kind of guy. Probably never purchase those really short shorts that were popular back in the late ’70s. I don’t know.
What is one of your top legislative priorities and why? Securing our border and implementing comprehensive immigration reform remains one of my top legislative priorities. We must avoid the mistake of many Western industrialized nations that become so successful and focused on work that having families and the demographics to support the future are forgotten about. You can have the demographics necessary to support the future through immigration reform, but you can only have meaningful immigration reform through first securing our border.
If you could have Congress solve one problem affecting North Carolina, what would it be? Immigration. North Carolina has a thriving economy, and through the efforts of Republican majorities in our state legislature, we have become one of the best places for businesses to invest. We desperately need resources that even our universities can’t provide. We have chronic shortages of engineers, doctors, and nurses, so our economic potential is not fully realized. We have both short-term and long-term needs in North Carolina for these workers. Demographers say that by 2100, we will start losing population, and we are about to hit the apex. We have time to fix it, but we will start experiencing problems long before we begin shrinking. We already see it in the chronic job shortages, even in states of high unemployment. That needs to be fixed for a thriving economy like North Carolina.
Finally, what does the GOP Senate need to do in order to regain the Majority in 2024? We need to be a steady influence and understand the Senate is structured to force compromise. We need to be focused and steady to produce results for the American people. There’s a lot of childish behavior right now, and we can differentiate ourselves by being thoughtful, professional, and respectful.