Born and raised in New Orleans, Nicholas Lalla is reimagining how American cities create opportunity in an age of technological transformation. He has spent his career creating strategies and investments that empower cities and regions to build inclusive innovation economies.
His approach challenges the conventional wisdom that innovation clusters emerge only in a handful of big coastal hubs. Instead, Lalla has demonstrated that mid-sized cities can engineer pathways to prosperity by making data-driven decisions and building on local assets to identify their tech niche.
He founded Tulsa Innovation Labs, an economic development organization deploying more than $200 million to build northeast Oklahoma's innovation ecosystem. Earlier, he led Cyber NYC at the New York City Economic Development Corporation, an initiative The New York Times described as "among the nation's most ambitious."
Lalla's 2025 book, Reinventing the Heartland (HarperCollins), synthesizes years of practice into a comprehensive framework for urban reinvention. He argues that America's future depends on moving beyond winner-take-all geography toward a more distributed model of prosperity so that all cities can thrive. Through Urban Reinvention Strategies, the consultancy he founded, Lalla helps civic leaders turn these ideas into action.
His writing has appeared in Wired, Fortune, Newsweek, and Fast Company. He holds degrees from Northwestern and Cornell.
