Who We Are

Hal Johnson is the kind of advisor that serious organizations retain for decisions that cannot be reversed. Over a career spanning more than three decades, he has guided some of the most complex and consequential industrial location decisions in the United States. Not by offering the most options, but by identifying the right one. His counsel is sought because it is grounded, methodical, and consistently accurate.

As Founding Principal of Industrial Strategic Partners and a licensed broker specializing in Industrial Projects with NAI Ready, Hal brings the rare combination of economic development leadership, infrastructure expertise, and transactional depth that most organizations require but rarely find in a single advisor. He created ISP's proprietary RAPP Framework, the infrastructure-first evaluation methodology that has become the firm's defining contribution to the field of industrial site selection.

His career at the highest levels of economic development shaped his conviction that infrastructure determines outcomes. As President and CEO of the Upstate SC Alliance, he led one of the Southeast's most recognized regional economic development organizations, attracting major capital investment and building the infrastructure-driven positioning strategies that drew global manufacturers to the region. Before that, his roles at the Orangeburg County Development Commission and the South Carolina Department of Commerce gave him direct experience in how policy, infrastructure, and capital interact, experience that informs every ISP engagement.

Hal holds the Society of Industrial and Office Realtors designation (SIOR), one of the most respected credentials in commercial real estate, and has served as Chairman of the Southern Economic Development Council. He was named Economic Developer of the Year by the South Carolina Economic Development Association in 2013. He has held leadership roles on NAI Global's Elite Corporate Services and Logistics Teams, reflecting his standing within the broader industrial real estate community.

His client roster reflects the scale and diversity of the work: BMW, Magna, Walmart, Toyota Tsusho America, Oatly, Pet Supply Plus, AFL Communications, Lennox International, Food Lion, Husqvarna, and Zeus, among others. Projects have ranged from 50,000 to over 800,000 square feet, spanning greenfield development, expansion, and consolidation across manufacturing, distribution, and logistics sectors. In every case, the work begins with infrastructure and ends with a decision the client can defend.

Hal builds the strategic clarity that makes the right transaction inevitable. His clients know where a project stands at every stage, because he ensures there is never a reason not to.

Trish Haver has built, reorganized, and de-risked more multimodal infrastructure than most practitioners encounter in a career. She brings almost 30 years of experience across freight and passenger rail, port operations, federal infrastructure programs, and executive leadership. She brings it with the authority of someone who has seen what works and what fails at scale.

As Chief Commercial Officer of the North Carolina Railroad (NCRR), she led Strategic Planning, Government Relations, Economic Development, Real Estate, Engineering, Safety, Construction, and Communications. Under her leadership, NCRR achieved 65% revenue growth through deliberate line-of-business diversification. She secured a $105 million federal CRISI grant, the first in the organization's history, and launched a nationally recognized FRA-approved Track Protection Program that expanded to 12 states, generated more than 200% revenue growth in its second year, and recorded zero incidents. She also led infrastructure recovery operations in Western North Carolina in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene. She was the first woman to lead engineering at NCRR and has been recognized with the Women in Rail Innovation Award.

As CEO of Pyxis Associates, she held executive oversight of $250 million in industrial and multimodal infrastructure projects, with clients including the Port of New Orleans, Port of Mobile, Metro Ports, Grand River Railway, ElementUS, Avondale Global Gateway, Dreamstar Lines, and ConGlobal.

Her tenure as Vice President of Strategy and Industrial Development at the Port of New Orleans and Public Belt Railroad further illustrates the breadth of her capabilities: she engineered a six-month financial turnaround that eliminated operating losses, developed a 10-year rail capital strategy that supported a $1.5 billion container terminal investment, and secured $7.3 million in CRISI funding that drove 25% intermodal growth and 33% productivity gains.

Before these executive roles, Trish spent more than 20 years at Norfolk Southern Railroad, advancing to Senior Port Development Manager and managing major East Coast port relationships while facilitating over $100 million in capital investment.

Her ability to read the nuances of complex infrastructure systems and execute across regulatory, operational, financial, and political dimensions, which is what clients retain her for. Throughout her career, Trish excels at aligning stakeholders, building durable partnerships, and ensuring that strategy leads to practical, measurable outcomes.

Trish has earned the respect of every room she has entered.

Jacob Crist specializes in port and logistics projects, industrial sales and leasing, and valuation services. With 17 years of experience, 12 in the public sector and 5 in the private sector, he brings a well-rounded, practical perspective and the ability to manage multiple roles across complex projects.

Jacob drives revenue growth by sourcing, structuring, and executing industrial transactions and development initiatives. His 12 years at the Port of New Orleans gave him direct command of operations, real estate, business development, and management, experience that shapes how he evaluates every industrial opportunity in a coastal or intermodal context. His current work in corporate services at Colliers adds transactional depth across brokerage, advisory, development, and valuation.

As ports modernize and expand, property decisions become increasingly critical. Jacob helps clients understand true market value to set appropriate lease rates, align tariffs, and benchmark performance effectively, combining expertise in port operations, public and private sector real estate development, and valuation finance.

He is known for navigating transactions that others find too complex to close. Clients do not engage him for his market knowledge alone. They engage him because he acts on it.

Kenny Thompson brings a disciplined, intelligence-driven approach to industrial site selection and transaction advisory. As a licensed broker specializing in Industrial Projects with NAI Ready, he works directly with clients to identify, evaluate, and execute on industrial opportunities, translating market data into decisions that hold up under scrutiny.

Kenny's foundation in commercial real estate was built at NAI Earle Furman, where he developed an early command of property operations, market dynamics, and client service. He applies that same rigor at ISP, combining deep market research capabilities with active deal execution across industrial sectors.

Kenny's value to clients is precision at every stage: the right sites surfaced, the right questions asked, and the right terms negotiated.

Power is no longer a line item on a site selection checklist. For a growing category of industrial users, it is the determining constraint. Projects that would have been straightforward a decade ago now require navigating a utility environment that was never designed for customers arriving with requirements in the 500 to 1,000 MW range. John Geib spent 42 years on the inside of that environment, and now works on behalf of the clients who need someone who understands both sides of the table.

John retired from Duke Energy in January 2024 as Director of Enterprise Technical Services, closing a career that began in distribution engineering and moved through commercial and industrial account management before spending its final 20 years in Duke's Economic Development group. In that capacity, he helped attract major industrial and data center projects to the Duke service footprint, built Duke's site readiness program, and was a principal architect of North Carolina's first Mega-Sites. He developed deep working knowledge of transmission and distribution infrastructure, rate design, regulatory affairs, real estate, legal, and government relations across two decades of executing large-scale projects.

Historically, US utilities defined a large customer as one requiring 25 MW. The infrastructure, risk management practices, and regulatory frameworks that govern utility operations were built around that standard. Today's industrial and technology users are arriving with requirements that are twenty to forty times that scale. Utilities are in the process of rebuilding their practices to accommodate this shift, and that process is dynamic, unpredictable, and a source of significant project risk for clients who do not understand how utilities think, invest, and decide. John does. He understands what drives utility investment decisions, how grid and generation constraints create real project exposure, and where the opportunities exist for clients willing to approach the utility as a strategic partner rather than a commodity vendor.

After retiring, John founded The Kilowatt Collaborative to extend that expertise directly to large industrials navigating utility operations, policies, and practices. Within the ISP team, he serves as the authoritative resource on every power dimension of site evaluation: grid access, procurement strategy, rate structure, regulatory positioning, and the evolving utility landscape that determines whether a site can support what a client intends to build, not just today, but for the life of the investment. He holds a Mechanical Engineering degree from the University of Virginia, is a registered professional engineer in North and South Carolina, and is a member emeritus of the Utility Economic Development Association.

Most site selectors treat power as a variable. John spent 42 years determining how that variable gets resolved.

The companies ISP advises make infrastructure decisions that reshape their cost structure for decades. Miles Tedder has made those decisions, and operated under their consequences, across four industries, multiple C-suite roles, and 35 years of managing supply chains at scale.

Miles is the only consultant at ISP who has been the client. As Chief Operating Officer at Pet Supplies Plus, he oversaw a supply chain that purchased and managed more than $1 billion in inventory annually, built 4 distribution centers, and grew EBITDA from $5 million to over $112 million across eight years. He has negotiated freight at every mode, including truckload, LTL, parcel, and international, and sourced directly from Asia, managing thousands of containers annually through the same port infrastructure his ISP colleagues advise on. He has led more than 20 distribution and third-party logistics operations, including internationally, and directed the enterprise systems that tie procurement, distribution, and demand together.

Within the RAPP Framework, Miles serves as the operational translation layer. A RAPP Score identifies what a site's infrastructure can support. Miles answers what that means in practice: what a power interruption costs a distribution operation, what inadequate air connectivity does to a sourcing team's landed cost, what the wrong rail decision does to unit economics over thirty years. He evaluates sites not as real estate decisions but as operational commitments, because that is what they are.

He brings equal depth to supply chain design after a site is selected: logistics network architecture, 3PL selection and oversight, enterprise system assessment and implementation, and the cross-functional leadership required to turn an infrastructure decision into a functioning operation. He has partnered with multiple private equity firms to unlock and accelerate enterprise value through operational transformation.

He holds an MBA in International Business from Mercer University and completed the Executive Session on Channels to Market at Harvard Business School.

Miles works with clients who are making infrastructure-dependent decisions at enterprise scale, and is the advisor who has the experience of making them, and built the operations to prove they worked.

Ellen Johnson runs the internal engine that keeps ISP and its sister firm, Path to Profit Partners, organized, aligned, and moving forward. As Hal’s wife and, as the team will tell you, his handler, she keeps priorities straight, follow-through tight, and the right information in the right hands at the right time.

Her focus is operations, financial coordination, legal logistics, marketing, and research so the principals can remain focused on client work. Her background spans executive operations, marketing strategy, and financial services, including time as a Certified Financial Planner at Merrill Lynch, which means she enters every engagement with a financial discipline the work demands.

Inside ISP, Ellen serves as integrator and marketing lead: managing internal financials and legal coordination, stewarding the website and brand presence, and driving the research that supports business development and major decisions. She is the connective tissue between ISP’s industrial real estate practice and the sustain-tier services clients need once their sites are operational.

Through Path to Profit Partners, Ellen supports the Sustain block, building and managing the systems, communications, and vendor relationships that keep post-project work organized and on track. If a client is working with ISP, Ellen is the one making sure the relationship continues past activation.

She has served on multiple advisory boards, emceed the 10th Anniversary DIG SOUTH Tech Summit, and spoken at major business and entrepreneurship conferences. Her ability to blend operations, marketing, finance, and relationships makes her the steady operational force behind both firms.

Ellen ensures that every ISP engagement runs with the discipline, clarity, and follow-through that complex infrastructure decisions demand.