When Egor Folley was in his teens living in his native Russia, he didn’t speak English very well and relied on books printed in English as an aid to learn the language. A chance pickup of a biography of Henry Ford led Folley down a rabbit hole of Michigan engineering history, the state’s manufacturing boom, and a burgeoning love affair with the Motor City.
“Ten years ago, people were not interested in coming here, and instead going out to California and New York,” says Folley, who is now 29 and has been a Detroit resident for nearly a decade.
Folley remembers being mocked early in his career when he talked about beelining to Detroit as soon as he got the chance. He started off working around various European economic centers helping entrepreneurs build startups before landing at Global Detroit, where his title is global interpreter-in-residence.
It’s individuals like Folley — international expats with equal parts familiarity and curiosity about Michigan and its various economies — that Global Detroit has worked to attract to the city and elsewhere across the state for the last 15 years, and not just to add it its own headcount. The staff of 25 straddles two offices in Detroit and Grand Rapids, but its work over the last decade-and-a-half has facilitated dozens of new immigrant-founded startups in the state that in turn bring hundreds of jobs and millions to the state’s economy.
“The last 15 years for me have been a real journey,” says Steve Tobocman, Global Detroit’s president and CEO “Every year I get engaged in the work, i remain convinced what powerful drivers immigrants provide to Detroit and the Michigan economy all across the state.”
For much of the past 15 years, Global Detroit benefitted from support from Michigan elected officials on both sides of the aisle at the state level, and handled each presidential administration accordingly with little to no resistance.
“Eight years ago, during the first Trump administration, for a lot of the higher-skilled stuff there often weren’t policy changes,” Tobocman says. “But we did see decreased numbers…of immigrant student enrollment.”
It’s too early to compare similar measures a few months into the second Trump administration. But a flurry of executive orders in tandem with increased force from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office, cuts to various social safety nets, a ramp-up on tariffs on imported goods, and dismantling of some diversity, equity and inclusion efforts — all against a rising tide of anti-immigrant sentiment — brought dizzying levels of uncertainty to nonprofits, advocacy groups and other organizations across the country. Some orgs scrambled, some laid low lo avoid retaliation or crossfire, some accepted a doomed fate and set their respective wind-downs, and others decided to wait and see.
Tobocman says he has been working extended hours since the November primary election, and continues to do so, in efforts to preemptively
Among Global Detroit's recent proactive measures in the last five months:
- A newly-launged Businesses and People for Immigration campaign, one of, if not the only, state campaign to engage business and others in promoting the economic contributions of immigrants, which has gathered more than 400 endorsers thus far.
- A new research report with Public Policy Associates on the hundreds of millions of dollars of lost economic activity in following an executive order to pause refugee entry into the United States.
- An Employer Toolkit training, which deploys 25 employment and immigration attorney volunteers to help employers understand that they can still hire immigrants, refugees, international students; how to ensure they comply with immigration laws; and how to prepare and respond to a potential ICE raid.
Program officers say the organization is keeping a cool head, if nothing more than to preserve the work of the last 15 years — though they have had increased conversations with stakeholders about the “what-ifs.” Those what-ifs range from “what if funding is cut to this particular source” to “what if visa programs will be permanently closed to prospective hires.”
“There are a lot of unknowns,” says Andrew Johnson, a program officer in the Grand Rapids office. “Fortunately, I work with a crop of folks who join our program through well-defined legal pathways established through the H1B visa.
“If anything, in terms of our work, we can highlight the amazing contributions that our folks are making and motivating in Michigan,” Johnson adds.
Johnson credits Global Detroit’s staff for building a solid foundation ready to withstand whatever comes down from on high.
Data and numbers-crunching to predict future outcomes regardless of who holds what office is a cornerstone of Global Detroit’s operations. Working with an ecosystem of Michigan universities, chambers of commerce statewide, economic development corporations and elected officials, much of Global Detroit’s programming revolves around external marketing where Michigan outperforms rival states, and internal thinking about bringing up stats where the state is lacking.
“Once [startup founders] are in the program and their startup starts to grow, they’re raising more capital — and we don’t have as much venture capital in Michigan as they do in Boston and elsewhere,” Tobocman says, underscoring one of Global Detroit’s more recent calls for greater awareness and action. “That is a real concern, that the state doesn’t have a mature venture capital system to meet the ambition that we all have.”
Global Detroit trades on Michigan’s strengths in the meantime.
One pathway to startup success, as an example: Collectively, more than half of STEM majors at the graduate level are made up of international students. One of Global Detroit’s initial tasks is to keep those students in the state after they’re degreed. But why Michigan, and not, say, warmer Silicon Valley in California or startup-friendly economies in Seattle or Austin? That’s where Global Detroit works with local and state agencies to market Michigan’s strengths to would-be startup founders: Lower cost of living compared to rival cities, natural resources in the form of Great Lakes shorelines and acres of parkland (“Places like West Michigan are appealing to folks,” Johnson pipes in); an international airport in a central part of the country, existing immigrant populations across nearly every major metropolis statewide.
After convincing someone to stay in Michigan, Global Detroit remains a support system long after the startup is founded. This includes facilitating resources toward obtaining visas for international hires, networking them with other likeminded entrepreneurs and founders across the country, and keeping checks and tabs on the ecosystem around immigrant-founded startups — particularly with local lawmakers addressing anything related to economic impact, and especially with colleges and universities on aggressively recruiting international students. (Another closely analyzed stat for the record: Michigan has the eighth-largest international student population in the country.)
“We don’t speak for immigrants; we’re not an immigrant-led organization,” Tobocman said. “We focus on the economics, and what’s in it for Detroiters [and] for Michiganders.”
Tobocman looks back to Global Detroit’s inception in 2009, when the country’s economy was in freefall but Detroit had hit rock bottom before everyone else. “From the economic challenges that Michigan faced, that adversity creates opportunity.”
The tangible successes that opportunity has bred includes a net gain of dozens companies launched under Global Detroit’s purview and thousands of jobs added. A more abstract take on the net gains in the last 15 years would be adding new layers to a long-held, tried-and-true value system.
“These guys are chasing the American Dream here, and they want to be here, to contribute to the economy, and to be successful.” Johnson says.
It seems to be working for Folley, who’s been wooing once-skeptical Euro friends to give the pleasant peninsulas a try.
“I was the always that person: the ‘American’ guy. I was always saying, ‘I’m going to America, I’m going to America,’ and I was always saying, ‘America is for hustlers.’ The first moment I came here, I was right, we are hustlers.”