NICHOLAS LALLA
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Author of Reinventing the Heartland: How One City’s Inclusive Approach to Innovation and Growth Can Revive the American Dream (2025)
Executive strategist & entrepreneur
Fellow at Heartland Forward
Nicholas works at the intersection of economic development and emerging technology. His career as an urbanist has earned him national recognition for building solutions to inclusive growth, innovation, and workforce challenges.
Nicholas Lalla
Nicholas Lalla
TYPE
TYPE
Nicholas Lalla is an executive strategist and team leader, working at the intersection of economic development and emerging technology. His career as an urbanist has earned him national recognition for building solutions to inclusive growth, innovation, and workforce challenges.
Nicholas founded Tulsa Innovation Labs, a nonprofit deploying over $215 million in programmatic capital to grow northeast Oklahoma’s tech economy. Previously, he launched Cyber NYC at the New York City Economic Development Corporation, which The New York Times called “among the nation’s most ambitious cybersecurity initiatives.” And, earlier in his career at the Urban Land Institute, he built a national resilience program for cities combatting the effects of climate change. He is currently a visiting scholar at UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs.
Nicholas is the author of Reinventing the Heartland: How One City’s Inclusive Approach to Innovation and Growth Can Revive the American Dream (2025).
Born and raised in a working-class New Orleans family, he completed his undergraduate studies at Northwestern University and, as a Sage Fellow, earned a master’s degree in African American studies from Cornell University. Drawing upon urban planning and critical race studies, his graduate research investigated post-Hurricane Katrina New Orleans revitalization efforts. More recently, he completed executive leadership training at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business.
Nicholas's writing has appeared in Newsweek, Fast Company, Urban Land Magazine, Next City, and Stanford Social Innovation Review, among other publications. He has been invited to speak at conferences around the world, including South by Southwest EDU, Fast Company’s Innovation Festival, Stanford University’s Nonprofit Management Institute, the Aspen Institute’s Festival of the Diaspora, Cyber Tech-Tel Aviv, Smart Cities-New York, Working Nation, and MIT’s Solve.
He is a member of the International Economic Development Council, the Urban Land Institute, and the Fast Company Impact Council. In January of 2025, he joined Heartland Forward, the Walton Family Foundation's think tank dedicated to economic vitality in middle America.
Nicholas is currently based in Los Angeles with his husband, Dr. Christopher Chandler.
Speech topics
Speech topics
Reinventing Cities: How to Achieve Growth and Innovation in the 21st Century
Reinventing Cities: How to Achieve Growth and Innovation in the 21st Century
Every city in America wants to become a tech hub, yet so few succeed—and that’s the problem. Tech jobs, venture capital, and R&D are concentrated in a handful of big coastal cities, while the broad middle of the country is left out. But to thrive in the twenty-first century, cities must create innovation economies of their own and grow in more inclusive ways. In January 2020, Nicholas Lalla founded Tulsa Innovation Labs to help Tulsa, Oklahoma transition from its oil and gas legacy to tech. Lalla’s organization would go on to build the first tech-led economic development strategy in northeast Oklahoma’s history, raise over $200 million, and create thousands of tech jobs. This success catalyzed a massive, city-wide endeavor—the first time in American history a city has dedicated itself in such a concerted way to becoming a player in the innovation economy.
In this talk, Nicholas will tell the the story of one Heartland city’s efforts to reinvent itself for the innovation age and it serves as a powerful example of the change America needs.
Books
Books
Reinventing the Heartland: How One City’s Inclusive Approach to Innovation and Growth Can Revive the American Dream
The story of one Heartland city’s efforts to reinvent itself for the innovation age is a powerful example of the change America needs.
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