Fisher opens new building, could nearly double Camas workforce

Fisher Investments, Camas’ largest private employer, has completed construction on a new, five-story building at its Fisher Creek campus in Camas.

The building will allow the money-management firm to add 1,100 employees to its ranks, which would nearly double its Camas-based workforce.

“Fisher Creek’s expansion is an important part of our mission to better the investment universe and help more clients globally,” Damian Ornani, Fisher Investments’ chief executive officer, stated in a news release. “We’re hiring aggressively in all areas of our business to continue delivering the excellent service to which our clients are accustomed and to support our ongoing rapid growth.”

The investment firm employs nearly 4,000 workers worldwide, including 1,700 employees at its Camas headquarters.

The company said the 132,000-square-foot building, which is located on a 15-acre site, “features a state-of-the-art computer lab, employee training facilities and a performance-quality auditorium.”

Asked about the timeline for adding the new employees in Camas, John Dillard, the company’s head of global public relations, said Fisher Investments is growing “as fast as (it) reasonably can” and also hiring at other facilities in the United States.

Dillard said the company had leased space from the Camas School District inside the former Underwriters Laboratory building off Northwest Lake Road “for just over a year” to house employees while the new Fisher Creek campus building was under construction. Those employees have now transferred from the UL building to the Fisher Creek site.

The company stated in its news release that the new Camas building “follows the successful opening of Fisher Investments’ first full-service office on the East Coast in Tampa, Florida in June.”

The company also has offices in Texas and California.

Fisher Investments is by far Camas’ largest private employer. Adding 1,100 employees to its 1,700 Camas workers would put Fisher Investments on par with the Camas paper mill during its heyday in the 1970s, when the mill — which now employs fewer than 200 workers — was Clark County’s biggest manufacturing employer with more than 2,600 workers.

Jill Hitchcock, senior executive vice president of Fisher Investments’ U.S. private client group, said the company was recently recognized by The Oregonian in the newspaper’s “Top 10 Best Places to Work” list.

“We’re thrilled to bring more new, high-paying jobs to the Southwest Washington and Portland metro area,” Hitchcock stated in the news release.

Fisher Investements’ website shows more than 40 open positions at its Camas headquarters. To learn more, visit fishercar eers.com.