Economic Development Secrets

My guest this week is Telly Tucker. Telly is the Director of Arlington Economic Development (AED) for Arlington County, Virginia, where he currently leads an economic development team with more than 50 employees. As many of you in economic development may know, Amazon selected Arlington Virginia for one of its HQ2 locations in 2018. Amazon is moving forward with its hiring and investments in Arlington and Telly gives us an update on Amazon’s activities in the community and talks about the region’s tech talent that helped attract Amazon. In this episode we also talk about how Telly joined Arlington in January 2020 and, like many other economic developers, pivoted the organizations’ role amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. And be certain to listen at the end where we turn to one of the most fascinating topics in economic development the wider economy right now – remote work. Telly discusses the trends he sees in Arlington with the return to work and how business are rethinking their use of office space.