In a move reminiscent of Ted Lasso, in which an American football coach is hired to take the helm of an English soccer team, the United Kingdom government is looking to recruit American talent to head overseas.
Boston is one of three cities identified in the UK’s Global Talent Network, which will offer opportunities for top scientists, researchers and mathematicians to bring their skills and research to the UK on a global talent visa.
This visa program launched last year and coincided with the UK government’s public commitment to invest $400 million in experimental and imaginative mathematical sciences research in the UK over the next five years. The other two cities in the program are San Francisco and India's Bengaluru.
“There’s just a huge amount going into trying to attract the best and the brightest minds in business and in academia,” said Peter Abbott, British consul-general to New England.
During his nearly two-year tenure in Boston, Abbott said his team has focused on building relationships with academic institutions and commercial businesses. This has meant doing things like promoting British universities and research centers and helping UK companies set up in New England.
This new program is a push to bring more American talent and companies to the UK. Abbott said it’s an easy transition for most, especially considering the relative closeness of the UK to the East Coast, shared language and similar cultures.
He also highlighted the UK’s established role as a large tech ecosystem as a draw for companies. The UK has more unicorns — privately held companies with a valuation of more than $1 billion — than France and Germany combined, Abbott said, and last year the UK tech sector captured more than a third of all venture capital investment in Europe.
“We also have the National Health Service in the UK, (which) offers big pharmaceutical and biotech companies in Boston access to huge amounts of clinical data,” Abbott said. “Because the U.S. health care system is so fragmented, it’s very difficult to get that kind of clinical data. So trials are done in the UK in ways that can’t be done elsewhere.”
Abbott said he expects recruitment in Boston to prioritize individuals working in AI, the future of energy, cybersecurity and defense technology.
To launch this new talent network, Abbott said additional staff members will come from the UK. He hopes they will be based in the consulate at One Broadway in Kendall Square. The ambition is to kick off the group’s work this year.
People selected to work in the UK will do so under a global talent visa. The visa is intended for individuals like startup founders and researchers, not the CEOs of large companies.
“There’s no cap on the number of people that can come. My understanding is that if you come to … do research, for example, and then you decide you want to set up a spinoff company from that research, you can do that within the same visa,” Abbott said. “It’s just very flexible. I think there are provisions to allow you to bring family with you if necessary.”
The staff members running these talent hubs will provide concierge services to help people secure visas and manage the move to the UK.
Abbott said the UK isn’t looking to permanently steal U.S. talent. Rather, they see a partnership developing in which individuals come to the UK for several years to work and benefit from the government’s recent investments in science and technology.
“They start up their company. They scale up their company or they do postdoctoral research at one of our universities, and then they come back to Boston,” Abbott said. “What you’ve developed there is a partnership model where these people who are going to be the CEOs of the next huge startup have that connection to the UK … and it deepens that trading relationship.”
