Sally Avery is the Director of the Center for Economic Research in Tennessee (CERT). CERT serves as the research function of the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development (TNECD), tasked with providing research to support informed decision-making and strategic competitiveness in economic and community development. Sally joined TNECD in 2012. Key areas of work for her team include research in support of company expansion/relocation decisions; incentive evaluation and impact analysis; metric-tracking and reporting; industry cluster evaluations; and other ad hoc research studies.

Sally holds a degree in International Economic Development from Sewanee: The University of the South. Originally from Virginia, Sally now lives in Nashville, Tennessee with her husband, Thomas, and Labrador, Jenny.