Efforts made to keep grads in Connecticut
STAMFORD — Dana Wachsmuth moved in 2016 to a city of approximately 130,000 after growing up in a town of a few thousand. She has no regrets about the relocation.
The 21- year- old Sherman native, who is majoring in digital media and design at the University of Connecticut’s Stamford campus, is looking to get a job in the city after she graduates later this year.
Gov. Ned Lamont’s administration wants many more to follow in her footsteps.
To stanch an outflow of young professionals, state officials announced this week the launch of the Governor’s Innovation Fellowship, an initiative that will give participants $ 5,000 grants while they work for one year at nine Stamfordbased firms. Lamont wants the program to help spur Connecticut companies to hire more graduates from the state’s colleges and universities — a group of workers who are vital to accelerating the state’s incomplete economic recovery.
“Compared to Sherman, there are a lot more opportunities here in Stamford,” Wachsmuth said in an interview at UConn’s downtown academic building. “There’s a lot more going on, a lot more people, and it’s a lot more diverse. I feel like there’s always something to do and always a place to go to. It’s like a mini New York City.”
Many departures
First- term Democrat Lamont readily acknowledges the state’s longstanding struggle to keep its college graduates.
“We attract the best and the brightest from around the country. They come to our amazing universities,” Lamont said this week at an event announcing the fellowship program, held at the downtown offices of Tru Optik, one of the participating companies. “And about 42 percent of them leave at the end of the four years.”
Lamont was referencing a study published three years ago by career- resource site Zippia that showed that such a percentage of Connecticut graduates moved out of the state to take their first jobs.
That departure rate ranked 29th- highest among the states. Delaware faced the largest exodus, with 71 percent of its graduates leaving. Next came Vermont at 70 percent and Rhode
Island at 69 percent.
At the other end, California and Texas lost the fewest graduates. In both states, only 20 percent left.
A number of factors have compelled Connecticut graduates to decamp — among them a high cost of living in much of the state, a desire to avoid long driving and mass- transit commutes and a preference for living in cities such as New York and Boston.
The departures have contributed to unfilled positions at many companies — a trend that partly accounts for the state’s still- sluggish economic recovery. In December, job growth was flat.
Overall, Connecticut has recouped 86 percent of the jobs lost in its 2008- 2010 recession.
“The last time we surveyed them, a little over half of our members said they’re having trouble recruiting and retaining young professionals,” said Shannon King, government affairs associate for the Connecticut Business & Industry Association. “This is going to continue to be a really big issue.”
Looking for talent
Scheduled to launch in a pilot phase this spring in Stamford and then roll out across the state in the next two years, the GIF will choose 15 to 20 fellows this year to each receive a $ 5,000 grant to help cover housing and other living expenses. Fellows also will receive mentorships and other support services.
Arccos Golf, Curacity, Henkel, ISG, Octagon, Sema4, Synchrony, Trebel and Tru Optik are the companies that have so far signed up The digital media and design program here at UConn- Stamford is appealing because of the proximity to all the companies where we want to get jobs,” said Wachsmuth, who plans to apply to the program.
Colleges and universities in the state will identify high- achieving students as potential fellows. Candidates will then be invited to apply for suitable positions, and the participating companies will hire them through their regular hiring processes.
“We are fully capable of competing with the likes of New York City and Boston — the quality of life here is absolutely amazing,” said Martha Crawford, dean of Sacred Heart University’s Jack Welch College of Business & Technology. “It’s not Sacred Heart against UConn. It’s not Fairfield against Stamford. It’s all of us working together.”
GIF funding and oversight comes from CTNext, an entrepreneurship- focused subsidiary of Connecticut Innovations, the state- chartered venture capital organization.
The initiative is modeled after the Indiana- based Orr Fellowship.
Some of the pilot- stage companies such as Tru Optik had already forged ties with CTNext. Several years ago, CTNext’s Technology Talent Bridge program helped the firm finance two paid summer internships.
“Quite frankly, we wouldn’t have been able to afford them at the time without those subsidies,” said Tru Optik Co- Founder and CEO Andre Swanston, a 2004 University of Connecticut graduate and Danbury resident. “With the Governor’s Innovation Fellowship, it was something that I was really excited to be a part of, as a way to not only selfishly find really good talent for Tru Optik, but also to help keep that talent in the state of Connecticut.”
Those two interns later came on as full- time employees, joining a company that helps advertisers leverage audience data to reach consumers across streaming- media platforms.
One of them, Bridgeport native and resident Viet Le, now represents as one of the firm’s longest- tenured software engineers.
“This place has a really great environment, and it’s very friendly,” said Le, who graduated from the University of New Haven in 2015. “Stamford’s a great city, and it all meshed and worked out well.”
Growing in Stamford
Tru Optik and the other firms participating in the GIF comprise some of the state’s fastest- growing companies, heightening their need for new recruits.
Swanston’s firm now employs 27 in Stamford. He expects the local headcount to reach 50 by the summer of 2021.
“With some of these larger companies right here in Stamford, I believe that it helps attract more talent for everybody,” Swanston said.
Those multinationals include consumer- goods giant Henkel, which represented the city’s largest corporate arrival of 2017. It has 428 employees based in its downtown offices at 200 Elm St. In addition, it employs 421 in Rocky Hill, 120 in Darien and 81 in Trumbull.
Sema4, which specializes in genomic testing, also moved its headquarters to Stamford in 2017. Since then, it has grown its local headcount from 75 to 214.
In the third quarter of this year, Sema4 plans to open an approximately 70,000- square- foot lab in the city’s Waterside section. It will complement a lab in Branford that employs 73.
Separate from the GIF, Henkel and Sema4 and a number of others based in the city have qualified for state subsidies totaling tens of millions of dollars to support more hires.
The corporate expansions powered the city’s 6 percent population growth between 2010 and 2018, which bucked the statewide population stagnation in that period.
At the same time, UConn’s surging Stamford enrollment has boosted the talent pipeline. Its undergraduate headcount totaled 2,126 last fall, up 43 percent from five years ago. During the same time frame, its graduate contingent jumped 54 percent to 717.
“I’m always excited to see what the city of Stamford is going to come up with next. They have new things happening all the time,” said Wachsmuth, who has lived in the university’s downtown residence hall since its 2017 opening. “It’s really neat to see the city transforming before my eyes.”