inTulsa Director of Research attends Princeton's Management Conference

Last week, inTulsa’s Director of Research, Jake Cronin had the privilege of serving as a panelist at Princeton’s 2023 Management Conference speaking alongside other innovative Tulsa initiatives and thought-leaders like Tulsa Innovation Labs’, Conor Godfrey, Black Tech Street’s, Tyrance Billingsley, and Build inTulsa’s, Desiree Frieson. The Tulsa panel focused on the city's strategy for fostering inclusive economic development. In many ways, Tulsa epitomizes the rise, fall, and rebirth of the American city. The original oil capital of the world, Tulsa is now at a critical juncture after a decade of stagnant growth and a reliance on its volatile and vulnerable industries. While many cities are grappling with similar challenges, Tulsa is piloting one of the most forward-thinking and comprehensive approaches to economic development in the country, making Tulsa an interesting case study in fostering inclusive economic growth. 

Over the course of the panel, the speakers had an opportunity to share a bit about that strategy and our pursuit of building a vibrant and inclusive Tulsa. Thanks largely to the philanthropic vision and resources of the George Kaiser Family Foundation, the largest place-based foundation in the country, Tulsa is strategically investing in a holistic, talent-centric approach to economic development with a central focus on enabling social and economic mobility. Research from Raj Chetty and others has shown that education and skills are increasingly important to economic mobility. As such, Tulsa’s core strategy is built around skill development across the lifecourse. This ranges from high-quality early childhood education programs that provide children with the foundational skills needed for life-long learning through workforce development programs that prepare Tulsans for the jobs of the future. While Tulsa is investing heavily to train and upskill current residents, we also recognize the need to attract outside talent to foster innovation and fill critical skill gaps. To this end, GKFF established Tulsa Remote in 2019 - a program that pays remote workers $10,000 to relocate to Tulsa and work for a year. To date, Tulsa Remote has brought in over 2,000 remote workers making it the largest remote worker program in the country. 

Crucial in this strategy is building the critical infrastructure needed to cultivate entrepreneurs and attract outside business. Guided by research from Tulsa’s Tech Niche Report, Tulsa is strategically targeting industries with a clear “right to win”. This includes advanced mobility, cybersecurity, virtual health and energy tech. This work is exemplified by Tulsa’s recent receipt of $38 million from the Economic Development Agency’s Build Back Better Regional Challenge. Led by Tulsa Innovation Labs, Tulsa was one of 21 cities to receive such an award. The funding will be used to develop a flight corridor for advanced mobility flight testing, a state of the art research facility, infrastructure investments at the Inola industrial park, and certification and training programs targeting critical skill gaps in advanced mobility. In addition, inTulsa serves as a “last-mile” organization that matches diverse talent to innovate companies. This unique approach seeks to bring new and innovative companies while cultivating an active talent network of candidates ready to transition into knowledge economy jobs. A key throughline with all of this is building an inclusive economy that is accessible to traditionally underrepresented populations. Two organizations at the forefront of this work are Build In Tulsa and Black Tech Street. Both organizations work to honor the legacy of Black Wall Street by closing the black wealth gap in Tulsa. This is most notably conducted by catalyzing the creation of multi-generational Black wealth through tech and entrepreneurship. 

Over the course of the panel we shared about Tulsa’s history, our challenges, our opportunities and our strategy for building an inclusive and vibrant economy. We believe that economic development is best approached through a holistic strategy tackling key barriers to inclusive growth. While many of these efforts are relatively young, Tulsa is already seeing early returns to these investments. For the first time in a decade, Tulsa saw more college-educated workers move into the city than moved out. Over the coming years, we anticipate Tulsa will be a forefront of national conversations about effective strategies to promote economic growth and mobility. The team was privileged to share more about what we’re doing here in Tulsa and learn from academics leaders and other professionals around the nation on public sector problem-solving and innovations. 

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