You don’t need a Silicon Valley zip code to build world-class tech solutions—you just need the right talent, the right tools, and a community ready to build.

In this extended "Stories from the Road" episode of Site Selectors Are People, Too, Devin drives up to his hometown of South Bend, Indiana, to sit down with his old high school friend turned tech entrepreneur, Alex Sejdinaj. As the co-founder of South Bend Code School and Code Works, Alex is on a mission to democratize technology education and prove that tier-two cities have massive potential as emerging tech hubs.

Devin and Alex dive deep into the intersection of technology, workforce development, and economic strategy. They explore how AI is fundamentally changing the way we work—and why economic developers must look beyond stale BLS data to truly understand their local labor markets.

In this episode, we cover:

• The Grassroots Tech Ecosystem: How South Bend is shaking off its rust-belt history to build a thriving, community-driven tech scene.
• Rollie Jobs: A look into Alex’s AI-native platform that uncovers the "invisible" local jobs traditional data misses, providing real-time, actionable intelligence for economic developers.
• AI as an Economic Multiplier: Why smaller companies are better positioned to adopt AI, and the dangers of using generative AI as a crutch rather than a tool.
• Democratizing Tech Education: The inspiring story behind South Bend Code School and how teaching kids (and adults) to code empowers underserved communities and builds future-proof talent pipelines.
• The Digital Storefront: How targeted tech interventions helped small, minority-owned businesses survive the pandemic and generate millions in new revenue.

Whether you are an economic developer trying to decipher your region's workforce data, or a community leader looking to build tech literacy from the ground up, this episode is packed with actionable insights.

Guest Information:

Alex Sejdinaj, Founder/CEO of Code Works.

Contact: alex@sbcodeworks.com