Senior Vice President of Government Relations
The first native eastern Kentuckian to join Braidy Industries staff was Nathan “Nate” Haney, senior vice president of government relations. When Craig Bouchard asked him to join his small staff of handpicked individuals charged with building his billion-dollar brainchild in Ashland, Haney said he felt an unexpected and overpowering calling to return to Appalachia.
“I never thought I would have the opportunity to come back to east Kentucky. But I was just drug back here,” Haney says.
Haney attended the University of Louisville (U of L) as an undergraduate before earning his law degree at U of L's Brandeis School of Law and then his MBA from Bellarmine University. His wife Meredith is a Louisville native. The couple was settled in a good house in a nice neighborhood with their three young children.
After spending time in Governor Matt Bevin’s administration as a deputy secretary of the Governor’s Cabinet for Kentucky where he worked on two of Bevin’s flagship initiatives, including the Red-Tape Reduction, he settled into life as a principal at the government relations firm of McCarthy Strategy Solutions. “I thought I would be there forever,” he recalled.
Then Charles Price, a family friend and Braidy Industries Board of Directors member and investor, invited Haney to meet Bouchard. The first meeting was in Louisville at the Brown Hotel with Bouchard, Price and fellow board member John Preston, whose father was born in Hazard, Kentucky.
Pretty soon, Haney was part of the initial meetings between board members, Gov. Bevin and Bouchard’s first key executives, including Julie Kavanaugh, Alan Blankshain, Stephen Miller and Tom Modrowski. When Bouchard and others were brought to Kentucky to visit potential sites, Haney was invited to tag along, too.
Then, in a true foreshadowing in his twist of fate, Haney happened to be in the halls of the General Assembly the last night of the 2017 legislative session when Kentucky lawmakers unanimously approved a $15 million investment in the then-unnamed Braidy Industries. When the announcement came, Haney thought he might eventually get an opportunity to represent the firm as a lobbyist in Frankfort. He never expected Bouchard would ask him to join his team.
“We had a great life. We were content. It wasn’t that I was coming here chasing anything but this true calling, just this magnet to come back to Ashland. It was unbelievable. My wife, when I first talked to her, said, ‘Absolutely not.’ But she realized then after about a week of me being very emotional, unusually emotional, that I was just clearly drug back here.”
The son of Mike and Mary Beth (Perry) Haney, Nate Haney was born and raised in Paintsville where he graduated from Paintsville High School, but his family has deep ties to Ashland. His mother spent part of her childhood in Ashland where she attended Hager Elementary while her father Allan “Bud” Perry served as executive assistant to Ashland Oil founder Paul G. Blazer. Perry eventually settled in Paintsville after ending his career with Ashland Oil and buying the Paintsville Herald. He later bought the Salyersville Independent and founded the Big Sandy News.
Haney and his late grandfather were close and while looking through some old things Haney found his grandfather’s memoirs. In a part of the book, he wrote about his time at Ashland Oil. “The greatest time of his life was his time at Ashland Oil and if he could have changed things he may have stayed at Ashland Oil rather than buy the Paintsville Herald, which is what he did. That just struck me,” recalled Haney.
“There was a quote in there that I used whenever I was talking to Meredith. It was really about me, even though my grandfather wrote it about him,” said Haney. Perry had written in his memoir, “You think about how, maybe even why, you got to be what you are. Some people clearly have a path planned and followed early on. Some know where they are going or want to go, and few even get there. Some throw darts and some go where the wind blows. Like me.”
Ultimately, Haney said his decision came down to the realization that they could be a part of something historic for the region. “How many opportunities does anyone in their life get to build a billion-dollar company from the ground up? No matter where it is, first of all, very few people get that opportunity… Who gets to build a company that is going to impact where they are from, their heritage, their lineage, their roots – the way that this company will? I would say very few people get that opportunity. That is the incredible opportunity about this,” he added.
“When we build this facility, people will say ‘You all are 100 percent in our family.’ I might be the only team member right now who is in the family, but once we do what we say we are going to do, then our people in east Kentucky are going to say, ‘I trust you; I believe in you and what can we do to make this the strongest company in the world?’ And the loyalty will be so strong. Employee loyalty will be amazing.”
As for his own American dreams, Haney still has big ones. “We are going to build this company and I will be on track to potentially be a CEO of a large company someday, maybe this company, which has always been a dream of mine. When I was nine years old, I told my grandfather I wanted to be the CEO of a Fortune 500 company and he kind of giggled."
Haney is a member of the Distinguished Alumni Hall of Fame at Paintsville High School. He and his wife Meredith and their three children, Miles, Hayes and Rawley, have purchased and are renovating a home in Bellefonte.