John McDermott has been the business editor of The Post and Courier since 2006. He’s written about all facets of the South Carolina economy, served in the U.S. Air Force and is a graduate of the University of Hawaii-Manoa journalism program.
The last time the S.C. State Ports Authority looked for a new leader from the outside it brought in an international headhunting firm.
The nearly $100,000 recruitment effort in early 2009 took four months and attracted more than 100 potential candidates from across the globe.
The SPA elected to skip that step in its latest CEO search, a breakneck, hush-hush process that took all of 46 days from start to finish.
The agency didn’t need to look far. The far-and-away top pick was running a business about 15 miles away in North Charleston, just across the Cooper River from the port’s Mount Pleasant headquarters.
After a pair of closed-door sessions, the SPA’s board of directors voted unanimously early last week to hire Micah Wallace as their next president and chief executive officer.
He replaces Barbara Melvin, who unexpectedly resigned on Aug. 21 after three years in the role.
Mallace, 41 and a married father of three, is jumping right into his five-year contract. He starts the $525,000 job Monday morning.
“We debated to go out and do a search, but at the end of the day … nobody really compared to Micah,” said Bill Stern, the ports authority’s longtime board chairman. “Why are we going to spend state money, why are we going to waste potentially four to eight months … with a search when we know that we have the most capable individual right here.”
He called the process “a true board decision” that included one-on-one interviews between Mallace and each of the nine members from around the state.
Stern added that “a vast array” of would-be candidates “were very interested” in the job, from “California back to the East Coast” — all from out of state.
“It would be a learning process to learn the way we do things in South Carolina, even if they were as qualified as Micah — and in my estimation none of them were,” Stern said.
Seeing both sides
After Melvin left, Stern said he reached out to Mallace, who knows his way around both the SPA’s terminals and boardroom. He was the agency’s top sales executive before resigning in late 2021 for Harbor Logistics LLC, a regional trucking and warehousing company headquartered on West Montague Avenue and owned by a New York investment firm.
Stern said his “heart was broken” when Mallace told him he was jumping ship to the private sector, though he’d later come to realize “he never really left the port.”
“He was still very much involved in what went on here,” the SPA chairman and Columbia-based real estate developer said. “He knew what was going on. He interacted with the port’s employees. This was all port-related.”
Mallace’s “nut-and-bolts” knowledge of the transportation industry and its inner workings was exactly “what we were looking for,” Stern said.
“Hands down, there was nobody in country we could have picked better,” he said.
Mallace is a a Chicago native who landed in the Lowcountry in 2002 when he enrolled in the College of Charleston to study logistics and supply chain management. When he returned later to the George Street campus to pursue a master’s in business administration, he met future “mentor” Jim Newsome, the SPA’s leader from 2009 to 2022.
Between degrees, Mallace worked in management for a major ski resort operator and in commercial real estate.
“But really my formative career experience started at the port,” Mallace said shortly after Monday’s board vote.
Newsome hired the newly minted MBA in 2011 as a regional sales director. About two years later, Mallace gave an elevator-style description of his job in a short video shot at the Wando Welch Terminal to help promote his alma mater’s business school: “I’m responsible for making sure these ships are full in the way in, take a lot of containers off and are full on the way out. … I call on companies and ask them to bring their containers through Charleston versus other East or West Coast ports,” he said.
The Mount Pleasant resident worked his way up to chief commercial officer overseeing all SPA cargo accounts in early 2021. He held the title for nearly two years before leaving for Harbor Logistics, several months after Newsome retired.
“I got to see the port on the other side of the fence as a customer but also as a partner in pursuing projects and working with the commercial team to underwrite opportunities,” Mallace said Monday. “So it’s been an interesting career where I’ve seen it internally and on the other side.”
‘What we’ll be’
The former sales chief is returning to the SPA and taking the helm with one top priority in mind. It ties into the 2013 video he appeared in about steering more container traffic toward the Port of Charleston.
“I think where the focus really needs to be put is on growth,” Mallace said. “There is a need for growth. Any port, any business, needs to grow. If you’re not growing, you’re losing.”
The issue is particularly pressing now, he added.
“The industry, in general, is going through what has been a very, very challenging three-year freight recession and is starting to come out on the other side of it, hopefully,” Mallace said. “In an environment like this, you have to be super growth-focused. And so that’s what we’ll be.”
The port’s new skipper is holding back on spilling any details as prepares for his first day back at his old stomping grounds and for his first “State of the Port” address that he’ll deliver on Oct. 28 at the Charleston Area Convention Center.
“We’ll tell you at the end of the month,” he said.
