18. Sam Chang on revitalizing America's post-industrial cities and recruiting top talent back home

Sam Change is the co-founder at Midstory, Toledo's Media Thinkhub. A nonprofit that examines, researches and reports on the issues of brain drain, community, and the historical intersections between environment, industry, and technology.

In this episode, we spoke with Sam about why he returned to Toledo after attending Princeton and beginning his career on the East Coast, what exactly is a thinkhub and how their work can help cities like Toledo across the country.

Sam started Midstory with a group of similar-minded people to cultivate the many narratives from the Midwest, to challenge, uplift, restore, clarify, and empower this region through creative multimedia storytelling and solutions-oriented research, to be a magnet for more individuals like me to also find the courage and boldness to return.

Midstory is dedicated to retain, cultivate and attract youth and the public to post-industrial cities — beginning in the city of Toledo — through creative storytelling and solutions-oriented projects.

As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit nonpartisan thinkhub, Midstory works toward revitalizing the socio-cultural infrastructure of the Midwest region by bringing together researchers, creatives, students and other young people from all over the nation to work on research, docket creation, creative storytelling and public media creation. Past and current topics include demography, the Lake Erie water crisis, higher education, and more.

For more information on Midstory: https://www.midstory.org/

Connect with Sam on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samuel-chang-68178989/