Karl Dye

President & CEO 

Tri-City Development Council (TRIDEC)

What has been your/your company’s most significant success over the last 12 months?

Economic development plays the long game, but in the past three years we continue to lead and support industrial recruiting for $1 billion+ projects like the Darigold Pasco plant and Atlas Agro’s Pacific Green Fertilizer Plant in Richland.

On which boards do you currently serve? With which nonprofits do you volunteer? 

Columbia Ability Alliance, Benton-Franklin Workforce Development Council, Tri-County Partners Habitat for Humanity, Tri-City Regional Chamber of Commerce, Visit Tri-Cities.

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve received?

You sell yourself, then your company and then your product. The last thing you ever bring up is price, and if you did a good job on the first three, the price is never an issue.

Name one item on your bucket list. 

Wing on over to London and jam with the Stones.

Name one thing about yourself you want people to know.

I’m interested in who you are and where you came from.

What was your first job, and what did you learn from it?

I was picking rocks behind a D-4, a small Caterpillar track-type tractor, outside of Latah, Washington, on May 18 when the western sky turned black and the farmer’s wife I was working for came and gave us a ride home as Mount St. Helens had erupted. I learned to focus on the big rocks and let the small ones go.

What is your favorite Tri-Cities restaurant and what do you order there? 

Woo’s Teriyaki, beef bulgogi.

What has you most excited about the future of your company or industry?

Continuing the growth curve of the Tri-Cities into the next 30 years to become the second largest metro in Washington, leaving Spokane in our dust.

If you had one wish for the Tri-Cities, what would it be? 

I wish we had floating saunas for rent on the Columbia River.