Coming Home

By Ian McNulty
Contributing Writer

Young professionals who leave New Orleans for greener career pastures elsewhere sometimes do so with a bitter taste in their mouths but with a soft spot in their hearts for the city.

Reasons these expatriates cite for moving on include frustrating post-college job searches, trepidation over the future of the local economy or the plight of public education. Some mention an "old school” business environment where family ties too often trump qualifications and experience.

But many who take flight leave the door open for a possible return. They express a desire to reconnect with the town where they lived formative years and enjoyed a unique cultural atmosphere.

"I probably would move back if I could find the right job,” says Tina Ghorban, 32, a Tulane MBA graduate who lives in New York and works in market research for pharmaceutical giant Pfizer Inc. "I still miss it.”

Recruiting residents

Interviews with some individuals and families who left the local area, as well as with people who have recently returned or just moved to New Orleans for the first time, reveal motivations that are both unique to the individual — such as finding the right job at the right time — and endemic to the city. Often, it is crime and education issues that push people out, and affordable homes and cultural vibrancy that attracted them here.

Several nonprofit groups are working on programs to lure people back to New Orleans by bridging the gap between desire and opportunity and playing up the city’s traditional strengths.

Working together through a joint project called NolaNOW, the Young Leadership Council and the Idea Village are building a network of young, professional New Orleanians who live in other cities with the aim of helping them start their own businesses or find promising work here. The nonprofit groups are building a database of such individuals using the Web site NolaNOW.org, and creating newsletters to highlight positive changes in the city, list job opportunities and connect them with people who can help develop business opportunities.

Another effort, by the organization Relocate New Orleans, is reaching out to “empty nesters” of the baby boom generation who are starting second careers; telecommuters who can work anywhere they can find an Internet connection; and artists and others for whom the local job market and public education system are not intractable deterrents to living in the city.

The group’s Web site, RelocateNewOrleans.com, gives a sales pitch for the lively culture of New Orleans, provides an overview of neighborhoods with real estate information and local contacts and has links to relocation resources, such as utility companies and schools. The group sponsors events to welcome newly arrived residents and help them make connections in the community by meeting city officials and learning about volunteer opportunities.

Proponents say the payoff from their efforts could include increased job and small business creation, better homeownership rates, a larger tax base and a more highly engaged citizenry, all ingredients to potentially improve the problems expatriates so commonly cite on their way out the door

"You get these expatriates back here and you get people who are engaged, motivated and have this great new perspective to share,” says Tim Williamson, president of the Idea Village, which helps entrepreneurs develop their businesses. “They know about the crime and the education system and they’re moving back anyway because they love New Orleans.”

Why they leave

Sometimes, love for New Orleans isn’t enough to keep people here in the first place.

Ghorban reluctantly left New Orleans in 1999 with her husband Hooman after they had lived in the city for 10 and 12 years, respectively. Both had recently earned MBA degrees at Tulane. Like other expatriates interviewed for this story, she says they each started their job searches locally — hers in the biomedical sector, his in finance — but eventually came to the conclusion that the opportunities in New Orleans couldn’t live up to their ambitions.

"There just wasn’t anywhere for me to go,” she says. “A job search is always difficult, but up here (in New York) I was able to find many more opportunities. It felt like people valued you here for your experience and education rather than whether you went to brunch with their family on Sundays.”

Other expatriates found opportunity locally, but saw too much uncertainty in the future of New Orleans and their prospects here to commit to building a career. That’s the reason one native, a 33-year-old graduate of Isidore Newman High School and the University of New Orleans who asked that his name not be used, said he left a local financial services job paying $50,000 for a position in New York paying $35,000 in 1998. He now works as a bond trader for a European bank and says he has dramatically increased his income from that first New Orleans salary.

Though his move meant he was initially making significantly less money in a city with a much higher cost of living, he says the trade-off was worth it both for the career growth potential he found there and greater peace of mind that if he were to lose his job through a merger he could find another one in the same sector.

"The bottom line is there aren’t many big companies (in New Orleans) you can count on being around for a while, they’re consolidation targets instead of acquirers,” he says. “If the right job landed in my lap tomorrow, I’d be there because it’s a great town to live in, it’s full of great people. But to be honest, I’d always be a little worried about the future.”

Networking

The people behind NolaNOW and Relocate New Orleans don’t expect that their efforts will fundamentally reshape the local economy to compete with much larger job markets. Rather, their approach has been to sow seeds of hope, change people’s perception of New Orleans and showcase the city as a promising place to be in the future.

"With NolaNOW, we’re trying to communicate the optimism and enthusiasm in the city right now, so when an opportunity presents itself they will really think about taking it,” says Gerald Duhon, executive director of the Young Leadership Council, a nonprofit that organizes volunteers to take on civic improvement projects. For instance, the group’s Web site touts changes instituted by the Nagin administration, and local business organizations and the growing arts scene in the Warehouse District.

"Everyone knows about our quality of life, our culture,” says Duhon. “What we need to do is convince them that they can be part of the turn-around here, that it’s not business as usual here any more.”

The idea to build a network of expatriates started with informal weekly meetings among a group of friends, including the Idea Village’s Williamson, who left New Orleans for jobs but returned and were interested in encouraging local entrepreneurship.

"We believed similar individuals are the best candidates to move back and start businesses here,” Williamson says.

Part of the effort relies on a sense of solidarity and shared experience. The Idea Village connects local entrepreneurs with people who can provide guidance, professional services and potential access to capital, and Williamson says NolaNOW could provide similar assistance to expatriates. For example, he says, the same expatriate business consultants in Boston who work with the Idea Village on local projects could end up helping an expatriate entrepreneur in New York who would like to form a business back home in New Orleans.

"They help because they’re New Orleanians,” he says. “They share New Orleans in common, and you just don’t realize how unique we are here until you leave ... Even if they don’t live here now, this is a way for them to give back and be part of the community.”

In the future, the groups hope to organize networking events for expatriates in their own cities through NolaNOW. They may also host homecoming-style events in New Orleans to “reintroduce” the city, Williamson says, with dinners, tours and other events, in much the same way economic development officials court companies to do business here.

"I’m not sure we can convince them to move back immediately, but if we can engage them in the renaissance going on here and help them with their own goals, we’re one step closer to having them back,” says Williamson.

Backtracking

For some who have returned to the city, New Orleans wasn’t their starting point, but a stop along career trail.

Atlanta native Matt Konigsmark, 35, says he was thrilled when his employer, Cox Communications, transferred him to New Orleans in 1998 to work on the company’s local Web site, InsideNewOrleans.com. He and his wife Anne, a journalist, had long been enthralled by the city’s culture and enjoyed living here. But he felt the tug of greater professional opportunity elsewhere, and in 2000, the couple headed to San Francisco where he took a job managing a similar Web site, called BayInsider.com.

Despite a higher-paying job and much more vigorous tech sector on the West Coast, Konigsmark says he and Anne soon found themselves sniffing for job leads back in New Orleans. Their San Francisco apartment cost twice as much per month as the mortgage note for the Uptown cottage they had owned in New Orleans, and Konigsmark says he began to feel like an ambassador for New Orleans on the West Coast, constantly singing its praises to friends there.

"We realized we had never been happier anywhere else; we left our hearts in New Orleans,” he says. “This is the environment I want to raise my kids in, there’s diversity and an identifiable, unique culture.”

By the summer of 2002, Konigsmark was hired by the Nagin administration as director of marketing, and the couple moved back to New Orleans. His office has since produced marketing programs focused on local pride and invigoration, such as the “Care Again” campaign. Apart from his City Hall job, Konigsmark is helping develop the Southern Food & Beverage Museum, which recently opened its first exhibit in a temporary space in the New Orleans Centre.

Fresh perspective

Frank Williams, board president of Relocate New Orleans, says getting people to move, or move back, to New Orleans can have exponential benefits for the city. People relocating from cities with a higher cost of living are often bowled over by the comparatively affordable home prices and are apt to become homeowners here, says Williams, who owns Parkway Realty in the Esplanade Ridge area. That’s good for the city’s tax base, which in the long run could mean more funding for public education and city infrastructure, he says.

In the future, the group hopes to work with the alumni associations of local universities and with convention organizations to pitch the city as a place to retire or move for a second career.

"Maybe we’re not ready to attract Fortune 500 companies right away, but this is something we can do right now in lieu of doing nothing,” says Williams. “Our main goal is to increase the tax base and get revenue for our city.”

People relocating to the city also often have fresh energy to help improve their new community, Williams says. His organization tries to tap into this interest early with its “Newest New Orleanians” welcome events.

For an example of this potential, Relocate New Orleans can look to members of its own board. David and Suzanne Lapin moved to New Orleans last year from Singapore, where David had been the treasurer for an investment bank. They fell for New Orleans’ sense of place and history immediately during a short visit and soon bought a home in the Garden District. David, 53, is retired while Suzanne, 51, is now an agent with Latter & Blum Inc./Realtors.

After attending a Relocate New Orleans welcome breakfast, the Lapins volunteered to serve as chairmen for the group’s next event, scheduled for October, and joined the organization’s board. Their enthusiasm for the city has already generated a small influx of new residents. The couple’s eldest son Gregory, 25, recently moved from New York to buy a home in the Irish Channel; their younger son Steven, 23, is moving here as well. Both plan to apply to Tulane University Law School. David says his mother is also considering relocating to the city.

"Most people who live here don’t realize how wonderful it is,” he says. “The town is very underrated, and people who come here to visit are in for a surprise.”•
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