Maryland veterans' new mission

Mr. Moore goes to Annapolis

Happy Tuesday, Baltimore. I hope you're not mourning the Ravens' playoff botch too hard and got to spend Martin Luther King Jr. Day internalizing Dr. King's passion for true equity.

Yesterday, we released a special report that dove deep into what it actually takes to make a region's tech workforce as diverse as the cities that anchor it. While it uses Philadelphia as a case study, the report's implications for Baltimore and beyond are clear to anybody who cares about using tech, entrepreneurship and startups as a vehicle to fight too-long-entrenched inequities. You can see that report below.

Those of you who care about more diverse and equitable representation in our centers of power will also note that Wes Moore and Aruna Miller (who shows up briefly in our article about a new Maryland Tech Council partnership, also below) are being sworn in tomorrow as Maryland's governor and lieutenant governor, respectively. Their victories are historic firsts: Moore will be Maryland's first Black governor, while Miller will be the country's first South Asian American female lieutenant governor. Given Moore's own history of leading the higher education-focused nonprofit BridgeEdU and serving on Under Armour's board, we can reasonably predict that uplifting Baltimore's economic prospects will become a big priority for him.

To that end, I ask you: What do you expect or want from the Moore-Miller administration? What role can the new leaders in Annapolis play in making our tech and startup ecosystem even stronger? What needs to happen so that any promises his administration makes don't fall by the wayside, the way things so often seem to go in politics?

Let us know your thoughts by emailing baltimore@technical.ly, and thanks.