TULSA, Okla. — Tulsa’s Remote Program is celebrating its 2,000th remote worker that’s moved to the city.
The Tulsa Remote Program offers a $10,000 stipend to people willing to move here for at least a year. Although participants in the remote program are being paid to move here, they have generated $62 million in our local economy.
2 News spoke to one man who recently moved here who says Tulsa may actually become his permanent home. Shawn Gaetano is from Pennsylvania and graduated from college in New York. He had never been to Oklahoma but decided to move here after being accepted into Tulsa’s Remote Program.
“I had made a spreadsheet of places I wanted to look at and on that spreadsheet, there was a column for incentives. I had seen Tulsa remote was giving $10,000 to people to move there,” says Gaetano
But it was also the opportunities in Tulsa.
“This is definitely a bustling ecosystem for tech entrepreneurs especially if you identify as an underrepresented founder," he says. "So that was really what drew me in here, was really this felt like the ecosystem to be in.”
Gaetano is one of 2,000 people who moved to Tulsa as part of the remote program. It launched in 2018 by the George Kaiser Family Foundation. Gaetano says if it weren’t for the program, our city wouldn’t have even been on his radar. Gaetano says, “I do credit Tulsa remote for really bringing that shine out of Oklahoma and showing it the world, like hey this is an awesome place that’s being built right now.”
And Tulsa is benefitting from the new residents too. Justin Harlan, the managing director for Tulsa Remote, says although those moving here are being paid, they’re bringing millions of dollars into the area.
“For every dollar that we have spent on the 10 thousand dollars incentive, there’s been a more than 14 dollar return on the investment to the city,” says Harlan.
Harlan says 90 percent of people are staying in Tulsa, after their one year in the program. And Gaetano says he will be one of them.
“It feels like I’ve only been here for a month, but it feels like I’ve found my home. And I have plans to stay here for a long time."
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