Richey Piiparinen, Director of Urban Theory and Analytics at the Maxine Goodman Levin School of Urban Affairs, has published a Levin Policy Brief, "Cleveland’s Talent Landscape." According to the abstract, the term “brain drain” implies a region’s talent pool fading out, with the “best and brightest” leaving for greener pastures. Piiparinen says plugging the brain drain has become a cottage industry for consultants and nonprofits alike, and that it is arguably the modus operandi of the new Cleveland Talent Alliance, a consortium of economic development agencies whose goal is to grow the region’s talent pool. “It’s important we measure progress and not just activity,” explains one of its leaders.

Measuring progress entails getting a baseline. This Levin Policy Brief—the third in an ongoing series—investigates. The first brief examined Cleveland’s potential to be a hub of healthcare worker training, and the second analyzed mortality rate shifts post-COVID. In the third installment, Piiparinen moves on to talent, or human capital—an upstream factor to innovation—which he says is an upstream factor to industry composition, firm formation, employment, and income.  Read More »

Photo Credit: The photo on the College homepage referring to this news item is by DJ Johnson on Unsplash.