Over Tex-Mex and corn cakes SPARK hopes to lure entrepeneurial talent away from Silicon Valley's over-saturated business landscape to Ann Arbor's budding high-tech industries.
In an effort to attract key executive talent and investment, the recently created regional economic development organization is aggressively reaching beyond Michigan's borders to network with U-M alumni who've settled in California.
Touting their partnership with the University of Michigan, a portfolio of promising start-ups and the desire to commercialize $800 million in research, SPARK's director of talent enhancement, Amy Cell, played host last night at the Blue Chalk Café in Palo Alto, hoping to entice experienced and ambitious executives who can launch and grow innovative Ann Arbor companies.
"What's surprising is what started as a personal initiative on Amy's part has snowballed into something much larger," says Elizabeth Parkinson, SPARK's director of marketing. "U-M's Alumni Association promoted the event through their network and now we're getting calls from Chicago and the East Coast wanting us to duplicate this kind of outreach."
Parkinson is seeing a lot of interest from people associated with the Ann Arbor region who, even though they don't live here anymore, want to help promote it. This has opened the door to create a series of outreach events in other markets. "Though U-M was the first to jump on this, we see this as an opportunity to work with our other private and public partners to bring talent and investment from outside the state."
Source: Elizabeth Parkinson, Ann Arbor SPARK
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