Tech Hubs, Talent, and the Power of Place: an interview with Maryam Janani-Flores
The following is a transcription of a Q&A interview, lightly edited for clarity and length.
Q: Can you share a bit of your professional journey before joining FAS?
Maryam Janani-Flores: Throughout my career, I’ve been focusing on economic development and workforce development. I started my career in the field in Kenya, where I supported some international development economists in evaluating a vocational education workforce program. I then worked as a strategy consultant at a social impact firm, serving clients who were interested in a range of economic and technology development topics. And then I went to the Hill to work for a few members of Congress, where I specialized in economic policy – and found my way into political campaigns as well. Most recently, I had the honor of serving in the executive branch, and was the chief of staff at the Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration. There, I helped launch a couple of transformational programs, including Tech Hubs, designed to deliver a huge infusion of funds directly into communities to achieve both national and regional objectives.
Q: What drew you to economic development?
Maryam Janani-Flores: What brought me to economic development is deeply personal. I think about my hometown of San Antonio, Texas—its incredible potential for local economic growth, and the importance of ensuring that growth reaches all parts of the city. With more intentional economic development planning, San Antonio could be even more prosperous. But San Antonio isn’t unique. There are cities and towns across the country and around the world with immense potential; we just need to help them leverage their assets in a structured way. That way, these places can become communities where everyone can thrive, where people want to be. I really believe in supporting people where they are and ensuring no place is left behind. In the U.S., we’ve seen growing geographic inequality. Some places haven’t shared in the benefits of past technological advances. But these are people’s homes, where they’ve grown up, built families, and built lives. It’s on all of us to make sure that the industries we’re growing for national or economic security include communities across the country.
Q: What makes the Tech Hubs approach different from traditional tech or economic development efforts?
Maryam Janani-Flores: [Tech Hubs] help commercialize critical and emerging technologies, the ones we need to stay globally competitive and strengthen our national and economic security. These include semiconductors and microelectronics, quantum, biotech, AI, energy, advanced manufacturing, advanced materials, disaster risk and resilience, cybersecurity, and communications technologies. We’ve learned the hard way what happens when we fall behind in tech innovation and manufacturing. Just a few years ago, the semiconductor shortage exposed deep vulnerabilities in our economy. Even when we lead in R&D, we’re not always leading in manufacturing. That creates national risk. We shouldn’t be dependent on countries that may not want to supply us with critical resources. We need to fix that before the next crisis.
Tech Hubs are meant to do exactly that: advance key technologies in place. They aim to grow industries in specific regions while also building up the communities that support them. It’s not just about building a lab or a factory. It’s about people. Who’s going to be the ones doing the work? Who’s going to make sure these technologies are usable in everyday life or by our government? The answer lies in the local community. This is a comprehensive approach. Tech Hubs require multi-stakeholder consortia to receive funding because it takes everyone: industry, universities, startups, incubators, workforce nonprofits, and community organizations. Some of these Hubs include dozens of partners. You can’t succeed with a narrow vision or a single project. We need coordinated, regional investment strategies across the country to meet both national and local goals.
Q: How has the Tech Hubs program been received by local communities and stakeholders, and what has the government done to encourage broad participation?
Maryam Janani-Flores: I think the executive branch, and I should say Congress when they first passed the CHIPS and Science Act, and the Department of Commerce and Economic Development Administration, when they were designing how to execute on Tech Hubs, did a really great job of recognizing that the application stage is where you can encourage broad participation across a community. What we heard from several innovation ecosystems, even at events I would speak at when I was at EDA that were not at all related to Tech Hubs, was that someone from a consortium would say: “because of EDA, we finally came together, all these stakeholders in the community, to talk about how we could work together.” That is one of the reasons it’s such a popular program. It permeated throughout the country and became a reason for stakeholders within and across sectors to figure out how they could engage together. It was also made clear that this investment strategy coming from government was meant to catalyze funding, it’s not meant to be the end all. Government funding is meant to de-risk some of these investments, but private investment, whether from the community or outside, also needs to be there.
I do think there’s always more work to be done to make sure that, particularly, community-focused organizations, those who you may not typically think are part of this work when you’re thinking about scientific R&D and commercialization, are included. They need to be at the table because they often represent the people who will be doing the hard work to make the investments succeed.
With any new grant opportunity, it will be incumbent on the agencies that house these types of programs plus everyone interested in ecosystem building to get the word out as much as possible to organizations across and deep within communities.
Q: As part of your senior fellow project, you are working to connect displaced federal talent with emerging innovation ecosystems across the country. So what specific opportunities do you see for connecting that talent with the growing needs of innovation ecosystems like Tech Hubs and NSF Engines?
Maryam Janani-Flores: I want Tech Hubs, and I should also mention its sister program, the National Science Foundation Engines Program, which focuses more on earlier-stage R&D of critical emerging technologies, to succeed, because I believe they are fundamental to our country’s future. We can’t rely solely on private market forces and hope to remain globally competitive in these tech areas. As we’ve seen, that doesn’t always work. A national, intentional approach is critical. Because I want these programs to succeed, I’ve been thinking about what it takes to build an effective innovation ecosystem. One key factor is talent. We’ve seen a number of federal workers and contractors leave the government. Many have specialized skills—scientists, engineers, technologists, workforce experts, and project managers, who could meaningfully contribute to these innovation ecosystems. Some already live near Tech Hubs or NSF Engines, while others simply want to return home, to places that, thanks to these programs, are becoming centers of innovation.
There’s an opportunity to help these displaced workers continue doing important work, apply their expertise, and connect with places where they’re needed. In a difficult situation, this could be a win for workers and the innovation ecosystems that must succeed.
And ultimately, many of these individuals have dedicated their careers to public service. They have families to support, and a desire to keep contributing. If we can help ease the shock of unexpected career changes by matching them with opportunities that align with their skills and values, that’s an opportunity we should create. One of my projects at FAS is focused on this: helping match displaced federal contractors with job opportunities in Tech Hubs and NSF Engines. We’ve already learned that there are innovation ecosystems that are eager for the skills these professionals bring, and we are in the process of soliciting specific openings to share more broadly soon.
“There are cities and towns across the country and around the world with immense potential; we just need to help them leverage their assets in a structured way.”
“The first rule of government transformation is: there are a lot of rules. And there should be-ish. But we don’t need to wait for permission to rewrite them. Let’s go fix and build some things and show how it’s done.”
Using the NIST as an example, the Radiation Physics Building (still without the funding to complete its renovation) is crucial to national security and the medical community. If it were to go down (or away), every medical device in the United States that uses radiation would be decertified within 6 months, creating a significant single point of failure that cannot be quickly mitigated.
As the former U.S. Chief Data Scientist, I know first-hand how valuable and vulnerable our nation’s federal data assets are. Like many things in life, we’ve been taking our data for granted and will miss it terribly when it’s gone.