BRAIN DRAIN BRAKE : PRECIS

 

Business leaders and local officials in Tulsa, Okla., puzzled for years over how to fill the hole created when young people left for big coastal cities. What, they wondered, could keep  professionals rooted in the heartland?

They ended up turning that premise on its head : Rather than fighting to hold on to native Tulsans, they decided to recruit outsiders. In recent years, the rise of virtual work opened up a new way of responding to the city's brain drain.

Five years after the George Kaiser Family Foundation began offering $10,000 to remote workers willing to move to Tulsa for at least a year, some 3,300 people have taken up the offer.

The World Students Society thanks Emma Golberg.