SALISBURY — Gov. Pat McCrory’s administration now includes three Rowan County residents.
Today, McCrory named Tony Almeida as senior adviser to the governor for jobs and the economy and Fred Steen as the governor’s legislative liaison, according to a press release.
Steen, of Landis, is a former state representative who is leaving the 76th district seat that he held for eight years. He chose not to seek re-election last year in order to run for the U.S. House of Representatives, but he was unsuccessful in his bid for the 8th district seat.
Almeida, a retired vice president at Duke Energy, lives in Salisbury and worked as the economic development director on McCrory’s transition team.
Susan Kluttz, former Salisbury mayor and city council member, was previously announced as the new secretary of cultural resources in the new governor’s cabinet.
McCrory also announced today the appointment of Chris Estes, of Charlotte, as state Chief Information Officer.
“In order to help North Carolina fulfill its potential, we must work together as a team to fix our broken government and make North Carolina a place of economic growth and opportunity,” McCrory said in the press release. “Tony, Fred and Chris will be an integral part of my leadership team as we work to achieve that goal.”
Almeida joins the McCrory administration with 32 years of management experience at Duke Energy, where he served as vice president for economic development. At Duke Energy, Almeida was integral in developing the vision and strategy that resulted in the Apple, Google and Facebook data centers being recruited to North Carolina. Almeida also has extensive experience working with state, regional and local governments to implement large development projects and recruit businesses to the state.
Steen joins the McCrory administration after serving the people of District 76 in the N.C. House of Representatives since 2004. Most recently, he was chair of the House Committee on Public Utilities and vice chair of Commerce and Development. Steen also served on many study committees, such as Energy Independence, The Blue Ribbon Commission on Transitions to Community Living, Select House Committee on Public-Private Partnerships and the Legislative Research Commission on the Third Party Sale of Electricity. He also served on the Joint Oversight Committees of Health and Human Services and Transportation.
Prior to serving in the General Assembly, Fred was elected mayor of Landis five times.
Estes enters state government with extensive management and IT experience in the private sector. Estes most recently served as a principal at Booz Allen Hamilton, a leading strategy and technology consulting firm where he helped some of the largest companies digitize their customer experience. He previously served as business development manager at PricewaterhouseCoopers before joining IBM after its acquisition of the company in 2004.