Thursday, December 20, 2007

IntoPittsburgh: Domestic Migration Pittsburgh

With this post, I have listed all four IntoPittsburgh projects: Pittsburgh 2.0 (Pittsburgh2.0), InsideOut Pittsburgh (Diaspora), International Migration Pittsburgh (Immigration), and Domestic Migration Pittsburgh (Migration). In parentheses are the corresponding tags. IntoPittsburgh is also a tag for posts discussing two or more of the projects. The goal of each project is job creation, which is the mission of IntoPittsburgh.

How can domestic migration to Pittsburgh create jobs? While we are happy to help people who want to move to Pittsburgh do so, our ideal candidate is someone willing to create her or his own employment opportunity. We know that there are members of the Burgh Diaspora who are highly motivated to boomerang and that drive can inform a strong entrepreneurial spirit.


Jessica Trybus is an exemplar boomerang migrant:

With the end of graduate school approaching, Jessica Trybus, didn't have a job, so she created not one, but two for herself.

The director of "edutainment" at her alma mater Carnegie Mellon University's Entertainment Technology Center (ETC) the past two years, Ms. Trybus at the same time launched her own gaming start-up, Etcetera Edutainment.

The 28-year-old Trybus embodies the Pittsburgh "boomeranger" the region is hoping to lure back.

After growing up in North Park, Ms. Trybus left for college at Cornell in the late 1990s and after graduation, moved to the West Coast to satisfy her life-long acting bug.

But Ms. Trybus soon discovered she loved the business side of the entertainment industry, and after jobs at Drew Barrymore's production company Flower Films and at Alta Vista, she and her now-husband, fellow entrepreneur and Pittsburgh-native Anthony Lacenere, returned in 2002 in search of a "better quality of life."

I've told Jess and other members of IntoPittsburgh that we can replicate her experience, helping both expatriates and the region at the same time. We also recognize that there are not enough jobs to lure back all the people who would like to return. Instead, we are seeking expatriates who are exceptionally interested in Pittsburgh's future and wouldn't rather live anywhere else.

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