CLEVELAND — Engage Cleveland is set to kick off its 10th Annual Cleveland Young Professionals Week this weekend.
YP Week highlights all Cleveland has to offer young and emerging professionals and attracts over 1,000 attendees annually.
"Young professionals week got started about ten years ago; we were the first nonprofit in the United States to host one. The goal is really to show off what we have in Cleveland. So to let college students, interns, young professionals come here, experience it, and ultimately want to stay here," said Engage Cleveland President Ashley Basile Oeken.
In all, there are more than 25 events and programs that showcase local Cleveland businesses, nonprofits, places, activities and people with the hope young professionals fall in love with their city.
"We have everything from workouts to lunch and learns to behind-the-scenes tours," Oeken said.
CLICK HERE for a list of YP Week events.
As a precursor, Greater Cleveland Partnership put on Wednesday evening its first "Summer in the Land" gathering of several hundred interns from across Northeast Ohio. Pitching "the Land" as a landing spot for them once they graduate.
"Not San Francisco, not D.C., not New York, but come back to the greatest city in America," said Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb.
Many of them are seeing the city this summer for the first time. Folks like Alexandra Jara from Puerto Rico, who is interning in Akron, are feeling it.
"Right now, yes, right now Cleveland is convincing me a little bit," Jara said.
One way of luring and keeping young talent is exposing them to Downtown as not only a place to work but a place to play and live. Back in 2010, in a speech before the Downtown Cleveland Alliance, Cavs Owner Dan Gilbert said that he could offer a young professional a great job, a great place to live with all of the amenities, but if it's "overlooking the parking lot of a COSTCO," he said it's a tough sell. That's one of the reasons he was investing heavily at the time in Downtown Cleveland and Detroit, creating an environment to attract and keep talent.
Oeken sees it.
"We definitely see that the younger professionals, let's say the ones right out of college, love the downtown kind of feel," she said. "They want to be close to the action; they're coming out of college; this is maybe their first time living alone, having a roommate, and they want to experience what the community has to offer."
"The great thing about Cleveland is you can do that when you're 23, 24, 25, but then as you get engaged, you get married, you start a family, we have suburbs that are just a little bit further out that you can then buy a home and still be close enough to Downtown for either commuting into work, coming to events etc."
Malory Sanchez was one of them, a transplant from New York who moved here for a job nearly eight years ago. She discovered Cleveland and what it had to offer through Engage Cleveland and YP week.
"It was a really great way to just explore Cleveland with other people who were in the same boat or maybe people who are from Cleveland," Sanchez said.
She found professional and personal happiness here in this place a decade ago she had never been to, and now would she consider leaving?
"Probably not. It would take me a very strong convincing to move back home rather than staying in Cleveland since it's been home for like I said, for seven going on eight years now."
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