27-02-2025
Meet Christine Mackay: How she helped breathe new economic life into Phoenix
Christine Mackay is one of the nominees for USA TODAY's Women of the Year program, a recognition of women who have made a significant impact in their communities and across the country. The program launched in 2022 as a continuation of Women of the Century, which commemorated the 100th anniversary of women gaining the right to vote. Meet this year's honorees at
Look in any direction in Phoenix, and Christine Mackay's influence can be found.
As economic development director of the nation's fifth-largest city, Mackay has played a critical role in attracting companies to Phoenix, diversifying the city's economy and restoring pride in areas worn out by time and disinvestment.
Park Central in midtown, the city's first shopping mall, was a lifeless sea of asphalt. It sat mostly vacant before Mackay's efforts helped transform it into a dazzling destination with restaurants, apartments, a hotel and medical school.
She's doing the same at Paradise Valley Mall in the northeast and Metrocenter Mall in the west. Both were ghost towns before Mackay set her sights on revival. Now, they're being replaced with lively urban villages with shops, restaurants, entertainment and housing.
To the south, Mackay is attracting companies to Phoenix's envisioned tech corridor along the Loop 202 freeway near the towering South Mountain.
However, her most widely recognized accomplishment is at the city's north end.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, the state's largest direct foreign investment at $65 billion, is set to transform the region. Developers plan to build a "city within a city" surrounding the company, including hotels, offices, industrial buildings, apartments, retail spaces and educational facilities.
Mackay was part of the team of local and business leaders who traveled to Taiwan to successfully pitch Phoenix as an expansion site.
Her efforts have created tens of thousands of jobs and are expected to make the city more resistant to recession by expanding the economy from one focused on construction and finance to include technology and health care.
It has been an "incredible ride" for Mackay, who grew up in Arizona and remembers a time when the Phoenix area looked quite different.
"It wasn't the grown-up place it is today. Most of the roads that were north of my home were dirt," she said.
Mackay was raised in Scottsdale by a single mom.
She remembers horseback riding in the desert and getting in trouble for making "long-distance" phone calls to her friend who lived 30 miles away.
"It was just this ideal place to grow up," Mackay said, reflecting.
She attended Saguaro High School, then studied at Scottsdale Community College and later graduated from Arizona State University with a business degree. She earned an economic development certificate from the University of Oklahoma.
She started working in municipal economic development in Chandler in 1998 and then was recruited to Phoenix in 2014. Before Chandler, she worked in private commercial real estate.
Now, she takes joy in helping write the story of the city's future, calling it "the most amazing career you can imagine."
But Mackay has had her share of challenges, too.
TSMC, a record-breaking deal, was once her biggest defeat.
Years before the company selected Phoenix for expansion, it initially rejected the city's proposal. That crushed Mackay, who recalled that she was recruited to Phoenix from her post working in economic development in Chandler for the specific purpose of attracting semiconductor companies.
She doubted her worth and questioned her former successes. Maybe it was all a fluke, she thought.
Mackay was vindicated when, after re-pitching Phoenix, TSMC announced a $12 billion investment in 2020. That figure would balloon to $65 billion.
"The only failure that anybody ever has is not trying again," Mackay said of the experience.
She hopes other women remember to be themselves and not accept rejection, even two or three of them.
"The worst thing that can happen is someone says no, and that's not such a bad thing," Mackay said.
Here's what Mackay said about her life and career. Answers were shortened for length.
When I started in real estate in the 1980s, there were not a lot of women in either economic development or commercial real estate, but that didn't stop me. I was excited about the possibilities and worked to learn as much as I possibly could. At that time, I was the only woman in our company, outside of the receptionist and secretaries, so it was me and about 40 men!
I worked for Bill Gosnell. He was a signature broker here in Arizona back in the '80s and '90s. And he used to put me — I'm in my 20s — he would stick me in his Mercedes, buy me a Slurpee at the 7-Eleven in the dead of summer in Arizona and take me to failed industrial buildings. And I had to walk the buildings and tell him why they failed.
My next was assistant city manager in Chandler to Pat McDermott. He used to challenge me like I've never been challenged in my life. He taught me how to collaborate and how to compromise and convince people that what I needed was right.
I would have to say Park Central. ... Nobody had redeveloped a mall in Arizona, so I didn't have anyone to call. My mom worked at Park Central back in the day at Goldwater's. We used to go pick her up when I was a small kid, and there was a pet store in the basement. I'm waiting for my mom, I'm probably 12 years old, and I bought a baby raccoon! ... I didn't own the raccoon by the time my mom came out of the store.
Park Central was such a personal project to me, knowing that that was a place my mom had worked and a place that was so near and dear to me where I would go back-to-school shopping when I was a kid. So, being part of solving that puzzle of something no one had ever done before and being part of that team was absolutely amazing.
When Creighton University announced that that was the location it had chosen for the medical school, I am surprised that everyone in Phoenix did not hear the war whoop that came from this floor by me when I yelled how excited I was.
It was 2016. We had just been informed by TSMC that they had not selected any city in the U.S. to expand.
I'd been brought to Phoenix by the city manager to take Phoenix back to being a tech city. It had started as a tech city in the 1940s, '50s and '60s. And in the '90s and early 2000s, it had really lost its way. It had become a back-office, call-center-focused market.
The first major pitch I had — to do what I had been part of in the East Valley: bringing semiconductor companies to the market — had slipped through my fingers. I just wore that one really hard.
We took this so hard at first and then determined that we would formulate a plan to overcome the challenges they had presented to us. In 2019, after spending three years solving their concerns, Mayor Gallego, Greater Phoenix Economic Council and I went back into Taiwan to pitch one final time. And as they say, the rest is history.
While it came out unbelievably well, there were a few years there where I drug pretty low. Was I really worth my salt? Can I really? Was it all a fluke? That everything that had happened in Chandler with the semiconductor companies didn't really have anything to do with our team? It had to do with something else? When we won TSMC in 2020, we kind of got vindicated.
The only failure that anybody ever has is not trying again. Until you see a building being built, there is always an opportunity to keep going after these projects. The greatest confidence you have to have in your city is in the fact that you can do these things, that this is a place where you can deliver world-class (projects).
My mom taught me to never give up. She used to tell me how stubborn I am, and I carry that stubbornness into my life and always have.
What I would tell other women is that don't let one or two or three things get you down. You have to have the confidence from within yourself. ... And if you're confident and you're brave, if you tackle things with humor and grace, it gives a much easier way for you to be able to find that path, to be able to to move a team forward, to help people move forward with you.
Just because you stumble and because you fail? Don't get inside your head. Don't get inside your head and think, "I'm a failure. I can't do this. I'm never going to find my place," because trust me, you will.
When former Phoenix City Manager Ed Zuercher hired me, he said, "We've interviewed 73 applicants for this job. Why should we hire you?"
I had a job (in economic development in Chandler); I didn't really care what I said. And I told him, "Because if you don't hire me, I'm just going to keep taking everything from you that I want."
He just laughed. So be brave, be yourself. Don't be afraid that people aren't going to like you because they will. If you're authentic, they will. They will hold on to that.
I take on challenges like a puzzle. How do the pieces fit together, what do we need to accomplish and overcome, and who are the people we need at the table to make decisions? We strategize on all possible outcomes and then execute from there. I will tell you though, my team will most likely tell you that I am just stubborn!
Don't listen to anyone who tells you that you can't do something. Think about what you want to accomplish, and then go for it. The ride is incredible, and getting to wake up each day and getting to build a city is the most amazing career you can imagine!
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Christine Mackay honored for efforts to grow economy, rebuild Phoenix
