Below are my notes, and video, from the keynote address I used to kickoff Technically Builders Conference. It informed this story we published on Technically. My slides are here.
Maria Romero has 90 days to find a job — or she gets deported.
In December, the Mexico City native completed her MBA in marketing analytics at Philadelphia’s Drexel University. She’s young, educated, with in-demand skills. The kind of immigrant Americans across the political spectrum say we want.
And yet: Maria is worried. It’s February 2025 when the Technical.ly newsroom first meets her — 30 days left, tick tock tick tock. Higher interest rates have ended the tech hiring boom. Volatility is everywhere. Her STEM degree and F1 visa gives her years to work like any American citizen — no quirky paperwork, not even modest immigrant sponsorship costs. But she’s nervous anti-immigrant rhetoric is making a tough hiring climate worse for her. Forget about paying bills, if she doesn’t get a job she’ll get kicked out of a city, out of a country, that she was ready to call home.
She applies to more than 500 jobs. She does coffee meetings, texts friends, has her story told by a news outlet and responds to inbound outreach. She also keeps on living — she walks her dog, she goes to restaurants she loves.
The thing we do before our life changes forever is almost always mundane.
Continue reading Keynote: The case for storytelling (for entrepreneur-led economic development)
