Alpharetta, Georgia

5 CIVIL AND MUNICIPAL VOLUME 3, ISSUE 6 here and get credibility by just being founded here.” Alpharetta also has some of the best public schools in the country through the Fulton County School System. That includes the new Innovation Academy, which is a public school focused on STEM education and innovation training. The city is also home to a campus of Gwinnett Technical College. Both educational streams offer programs to train the next generation to join Alpharetta’s tech industry. “We partner with the North Fulton Chamber of Commerce and the Alpharetta Chamber and other organizations to keep that pipeline and communication to help build workforce development, because that is critical,” Gilvin says. “Corporations right now, it’s all about talent. How do you find the talent? How do you retain the talent? And that’s part of what we do as a city. We work with the Fulton County School System and networking opportunities. “The mentors they have in place, the different classes, seminars, the speakers that they put on in-house, these are all pieces that you get just by being part of the incubator,” Perez says. Tech Alpharetta and the city’s reputation as a technology hub are what attracted Perez to found his company within the city. “There’s a rich history of tech companies being founded here and when we started looking at options, we wanted to go where we were going to be able to attract talent, to have the right connections, mentorships, companies, and resources to be able to grow our company with the least amount of effort,” Perez recalls. “As a founder of a company you’re always looking at ROI, whether it’s on dollars or whether it’s on people or time or anything that you do. Alpharetta just made sense. And so we’ve benefitted from the hard work of Lance and the Mayor to be able to come