I have before me resumes of two great candidates. One is about to graduate from UC Davis with a Master's Degree in Molecular Biology; the other with an MBA from Sac State. Both have amazing undergraduate degrees - one has a Bachelor of Science in Cellular Biology and the other a Bachelor of Science in Biotechnology and minors in Computer Information Systems and English - both graduates of UC Davis. In addition, they will both soon be graduates of the Sacramento Entrepreneurship Academy, an amazing non-profit organization in Sacramento that through a year long program mentors and coaches young entrepreneurs. One of them spent last summer at a program at Oxford University and had an internship at a London, UK-based venture fund.

So, one would think that potential employers would be fighting each other off to get to these two multi-talented individuals. But, no, they are worrying about what they are going to do for a career when they graduate.

As a region, we need to figure out a much better way of steering this next-generation of senior management and potential new business owners into supportive companies here in the region. And these two are representative of hundreds of more just like them that will get sucked out of this area, their talents lost forever to Sacramento. And we keep saying Sacramento is going to be the center of biotechnology. How is that possible if we let emminently qualified candidates leave the area?

Is anyone ready to step up? Can one of our readers start with helping one or both of these bright, smart, hard-working candidates? If so, I have their resumes and I am very happy to make introductions.

Gillian Parrillo
The Sacramento Executive