San Antonio possesses advanced manufacturing, defense, cybersecurity and biomedical innovation assets, yet many international companies have never heard of the city. That marketing gap was the central theme of a recent episode of The Building Texas Show, titled The Hidden Giant: Why San Antonio Is The Best Kept Secret, where host Justin McKenzie spoke with Dr. Lina Rugova about the city's visibility problem and the efforts underway to solve it.
Rugova is Operations Chair and a founding member of the San Antonio Applied Innovation Council, founder and president of Emerge and Rise, and co-lead of Founder Institute San Antonio. She was blunt about the challenge: "When we speak to international companies, they never even heard of San Antonio," she said. "The first option is always going to be Dallas, Houston, and Austin." That perception matters because it shapes where global firms locate operations, investment and partnerships.
The Applied Innovation Council is working to change that by connecting industry, public infrastructure, capital and higher education around four focus areas: industrial and advanced manufacturing, defense and cybersecurity, biomedical and health innovation, and applied technology and talent. Rugova emphasized that talent is the city's core strength. "Talent is everything in San Antonio," she said. That thinking shaped Texas Venture Fest San Antonio, which Rugova co-hosted on Oct. 1. The event was planned around arts and culture, media, tourism, hospitality, and innovation and technology, reflecting two issues the group identified: a lack of creative marketing for San Antonio and the need to retain local talent.
Rugova also described work with greater:SATX, the region's economic development organization, on an international soft-landing path. The program helps overseas companies settle in, including through cultural integration, and gives San Antonio's small businesses a way to partner with those companies on procurement and vendor opportunities. She sees a strong fit for European and Asian companies, describing San Antonio as having "a big city, small town mentality" that is more relationship-driven than transactional.
The talent pipeline is already in place, McKenzie noted. Many students come up from the Rio Grande Valley to attend UTSA, Trinity University and the University of the Incarnate Word, and Alamo Colleges is "doing great stuff." He also pointed to UT Health Science Center, data science at UTSA, cybersecurity education and access to wet labs. The challenge, he said, is giving graduates a reason to stay or to return to raise a family in a city known for its outdoors and rivers.
Rugova speaks from experience. An immigrant from Kazakhstan who landed in the Bronx at 16, she holds a DBA, founded Emerge and Rise for underserved entrepreneurs and teaches at Palo Alto College. She moved from New York City in November 2019 after weighing Dallas, Austin and Houston, and chose San Antonio as the better fit. Her advice for the city is to tell its own story. "We should never ever compare ourselves to other cities," she said. "We have our unique opportunity and uniqueness in our city that we should be showcasing." The full conversation is available on The Building Texas Show.
