In today's podcast, we're talking with Mark Anthony Thomas, President at Pittsburgh regional Alliance as part of our series accelerating the success of minority-funded companies. Impact mentors, we believe there is value in creating meaningful dialogue around the actionable steps that our guests are working on to eradicate the systemic inequalities in our startup ecosystem. While symbol stands the working on achieving their short and long term goals, Mark as two decades of experience crafting and executing economic growth strategies, and cross-sector collaboration from New York City, Los Angeles in Atlanta, and now Pittsburgh, he led the city of Los Angeles effort to make neighborhoods more livable and served as director of the mayor's operation innovation team. Before moving to Pittsburgh, he was selected by the New York City Economic Development Corporation to serve as his first Senior Vice President of partnership. Establishing teams to foster and manage industry and international relationships and business attraction. 

S Mark, thank you, thank you so much for being with us today. 

M I'm happy to be here. 

S You've been to several places. And the last one was New York. Now Pittsburgh, how was the transition from New York to Pittsburgh being?

M I would say what I like about the United States is that all of our cities are so different, right? So Pittsburgh is a lot smaller, but a lot more of a boutique place, meaning the technologies economy is very specific in regards to what is strong at. Whereas New York is kind of good at a lot of things. And it's just a metropolis and a way that very few places are so transitioning from there to here has been pretty sweet. It has allowed me to really delve deep into a place where I feel I can get my hands around much easier. 

D It's great. Well, from one Pennsylvanian to another I'd like to say welcome. I don't know if you know, but I'm originally from Harrisburg. So I'm happy to see you in Pittsburgh, you're doing some great work. So I have a quick question. I want to jump right into it. I would like to hear more about the startup ecosystem in Pittsburgh, how it's growing and in the space around helping minority entrepreneurs and startups. 

M Okay. Yeah. So I was gonna two different things, right. So from a purely economic perspective, Pittsburgh has a lot of what a lot of cities want, where it has great universities, great technology, great innovation. What it historically has not had is the commercialization and the ecosystem that really transforms those ideas into great companies. And so over the last few years, there's been a lot of intentionality change that, obviously, with Carnegie Mellon, University of Pitt, can we have 30 plus other universities, that's kind of a lot of opportunities to really bloom in a way that we've always wanted to hear, but it hasn't happened.

And so kind of look for a number of IPOs, a lot of just announcements of things that are expanding, that really transform it into a bona fide competitive tech hub in a way that Boston or Raleigh, or Austin are

in relation to bringing more black and brown founders in particular into our tech scene, we actually have a number of pretty prominent players, one that comes to mind is black techniques, and that really cultivate diversity in our local ecosystem. And I would say obviously, over the last year, nearly everyone from the VCs to the companies to the public sector evolved made investments to further ensure that we're equitable and our tech economy. 

D Yeah, I can recall a few years ago doing some research around the venture space in comparison to Pittsburgh and other markets like Philadelphia, that Pittsburgh had more exits than any other city in the state. And the retention around that talent is definitely growing as well. Can you speak a little bit about that? 

M Yeah. So actually, in lead, through my role are reasonably talented, and we're considered export market.

We have a lot of students, a lot of people who go to school here and graduate but have

Historically left for other markets with New York actually being one of those tough markets. And so now we're trying to be very intentional to keep entrepreneurial talent, student talent, talent that can really help companies scale and grow from leaving insurance people know about the opportunity here. But I will say you have to be very active and have initiatives and be very thoughtful and making sure that happens, or else people will display to the main brand mark is innocent and cover mine. 

S So that's actually one of the biggest problem of, you know, what we call like, secondary and tertiary cities, where, you know, it's it's the ecosystem that has a problem of retaining talent. And it's specific, you know, minority tolerance. So all the activities that are being, you know, that you kind of described are meant to retain the talent, is there anything specific for minorities, or is about retaining the global talent that you have in the seat, also, the student population tends to be more diverse than any cities, kind of general population? 

M So by default, if you capture a larger share of that, you get more people of color, more international votes. And so they're the natural audience that you're targeting, when you kind of look at the title of students. And I would say broadly, for the people who are coming up, kind of they're from Pittsburgh, historically finished products has been a place where people outside of school fled, right, like, I saw a stat that just so like Pittsburgh diaspora, just black people are kind of everywhere with why we have Steelers fans everywhere. But finally, I think you see us in other traditional industrial hubs, trying to be more aggressive, making sure to stay but also know that if they do stay like there's a lot of opportunities for are the bigger companies that are in in Pittsburgh, and India helping you to do that to achieve that goal. Peter, about more and more about that. Yeah, so I'm actually a part of our organization as part of this umbrella group called the Allegheny conference. And that includes nearly all the major employers within the region, whether it's PNC Giant Eagle, the penguins, like you name it, they're all axes. And so they support our effort to do broad economic development work, but specifically on talent attraction strategies, that's actually encouraging because, you know, if you don't have the support of the local business ecosystem, and nothing just in terms of like job growth and job creation, but also in helping educating the ecosystem to the opportunities, you know, it your job becomes immediately harder. Yeah, and I think depending on kind of location, obviously, coming from New York, the government in the public sector played a pretty active role, but I think they're fairly unique and just kind of the outsized influence they have on the tech ecosystem system into my EDC, in particular, in Pittsburgh and other markets, really, it is a private sector.