A Warm Welcome to Michigan: Meet the Face of Michigan’s Talent Attraction Campaign
As our state looks to showcase the ways in which everyone can ‘Make it in Michigan’, the launch of the state’s first-ever talent recruitment campaign shows off Michigan’s winning combination of great jobs and great places to call home.
Within the first few weeks of launch, the campaign has already surpassed 15 million impressions, bringing nearly 117,000 visitors to TheMichiganLife.org. As the campaign has captured attention across the nation, people found themselves drawn in by a new friendly face – Nando Garza of Ypsilanti, who serves as the warm welcome for folks looking to make the move to the Mitten.
Garza’s charm is instantly apparent as he walks viewers through the opportunities they can find in Michigan – jumping from tech lab to ski hill to sand dunes throughout the 30-second spot. What viewers may not realize is that Garza himself is a Michigan transplant, who only needed one visit to see why Michigan was the place his family should call home.
Garza sat down with Detroit News Editor Chad Livengood to chat about his journey to the Great Lakes State and his new role as the face of Michigan’s talent attraction campaign.
Q&A: Meet Michigan’s new pitchman in ‘You Can’ ad series | The Detroit News
This partial transcript has been edited for clarity
Question: Tell me a little bit about who you are and how did you come to Michigan?
A: I’ve had a very strange ride that I’ve enjoyed very much. I was born in Texas, lived there my first two years and then grew up in Puebla, Mexico, until I was a teen, then attended college at California State University, Chico, where I studied audio production. After that, I moved to Los Angeles to pursue composition for film and video games. Then moved to Austin for a while with my wife and did a few random things like 2D animation for a startup. Then moved back to Mexico for a while to help my dad with his company. I was an information security manager out of all things. Very random. My daughter was born there. Then we moved back to the states, but we moved to Idaho first … because my wife’s family had all moved there. We spent the pandemic there, which was nice to be with family.
Q: Nice scenery for the pandemic.
A: Yeah, it made things very interesting, to say the least. But we just didn’t mesh with the people there, the culture there. So we were looking for somewhere else that we could raise our daughter in that we felt comfortable. I just looked up a bunch of places. And Ann Arbor kept coming up for multiple different reasons. So we checked it out. We came one January to see if we can withstand the cold that everybody talks about. And sure enough, with some gear, it should be fine. We absolutely fell in love with Ann Arbor. So it was like, OK, that’s where we’re moving. We didn’t know anybody here. We just grabbed our stuff and moved. And I’m very happy we did. We’ve been here for a year and three months and in that short amount of time our lives have completely changed for the better. It’s been absolutely incredible how beneficial it’s been for us to move here.
Q: What was the selling point of the Ann Arbor area versus other areas you were looking at?
A: Several factors. The first thing that struck me was walking down Main Street in Ann Arbor and hearing all of these different languages, hearing all of these different accents, seeing people from all over the world, and everybody just kind of doing their thing. I remember seeing this one dude who was almost like seven feet tall — humongous dude — wearing a bright pink sports jacket with bright green pants that just stood out a lot. And nobody cared. He was just chatting with somebody else and everybody was going about their business. In previous places I’ve lived, that would call a lot of attention and some weird looks. So people are just able to live their lives and it’s very nice.
The other factor was nature. I’m an amateur mycologist, basically a mushroom hunter. And I’ve always wanted to live somewhere close to a forested area. Living here is just absolutely perfect. There’s a great mushroom club that I joined where we’re currently collecting specimens to do DNA sequencing to map out what’s in Michigan. It’s a dream come true for me and my family.
Q: I’m a Washtenaw County guy, I grew up in Chelsea. So I was intrigued by you moving to Ypsilanti. Talk a little bit about that because Ann Arbor is becoming less and less affordable for people in the middle.
A: Absolutely, yeah, that is one of the reasons. We wanted to be close to Ann Arbor because we really fell in love with Ann Arbor, that general area, the restaurants and everything, just the vibe there. So we looked just outside (Ann Arbor) and we happened to land in Ypsilanti … right at the border of Ypsilanti and Ann Arbor. … It was just a perfect place. … The (finished) basement was a huge thing for me because I need an audio studio for composition, though not as a career. There’s not enough opportunities for that. … We also wanted to find a place that allowed us to have a fence.
Q: I’m guessing you got a lot more real estate than you would have when you lived in LA.
A: Absolutely. My wife also worked in LA for like six months and neither of us really liked it for many reasons. The affordability of living is much, much more affordable here than it would be in LA.
Q: So you do voice work and acting. Talk a little bit about your work and how you do it now remotely. Do you travel? How does that fit in with living in Michigan?
A: For the last five years, my full-time job has been voice acting. I didn’t have any intention of being behind the camera, to be perfectly honest. I was happy to be behind a microphone. Something that really helped me as a weird silver lining from the pandemic was the normalizing of people working from home. Because of the pandemic, you couldn’t go to studios. So it became pretty standard to just do it from your own (audio) booth, however that might be. I can basically do my work wherever I want. So moving to Michigan wasn’t an issue at all. I still work with people from LA, New York, even internationally.
In terms of acting, that kind of came as a surprise to me. Once the actors strike came along … I decided to take some actual acting classes. So I went to Michigan Actors Studio and took a class there. The acceptance and safety of a space to explore and find your craft was truly life-changing. That gave me the confidence to try camera acting. I tried out for a few student films, which I didn’t get. It was my first introduction to auditing. Then I saw an ad for this thing for Michigan and said, ‘Oh, I live in Michigan now. I would love to do something like that.’ So I applied and I suppose the rest is history. It’s really bizarre because my first experience being in front of the camera was that commercial, was the ‘You Can In Michigan’ campaign. It was very surreal.
Just yesterday, I did a digital commercial for Chrysler. So apparently that’s going to be a new thing for me, being in front of the camera. It’s a digital ad for the holidays. In one of them, I’m going to be a Santa and the other I’m going to be a dad of two kids with Halloween costumes and stuff.
Q: So unlike Tim Allen, who had a longstanding TV show and career, you’ve come in here and become Michigan’s pitchman right out of the start.
A: Yeah. It’s absolutely bizarre and surreal. I never imagined it. I keep a journal of what I do everyday and on the pages when I was filming (the ads), it’s like, ‘What is happening? This is so bizarre? What am I doing here?’ I absolutely loved it, but I never expected, especially being so new to Michigan. But it makes sense with the whole idea of the campaign, to bring people here. But it just speaks to the wonders of Michigan. If I hadn’t moved there, I wouldn’t have taken that (acting) class, I wouldn’t gotten this thing and I wouldn’t have gotten the opportunity to try it. Just being in that commercial itself is such a testament to the awesomeness of Michigan. And I’m very, very proud to be part of the campaign.
Q: I don’t know how much you can reveal. Are there going to be more commercials? Are there other sets and scenes coming forward?
A: Well, I sure hope so. I would love to work with the MEDC again and everybody involved. It was such a pleasant experience. I don’t know of anything that would be coming. I hope this becomes a long-running campaign with multiple ads.
Q: What kind of response have you seen just in the few days that the ads have been airing in other states?
A: The only response I’ve really had is just from people I’ve showed it to or have been shared to. It’s been overwhelmingly positive. Everybody has said it’s a very fun and inviting ad, feels very welcoming. A few people have said, ‘Oh, we should actually try going to Michigan, just to visit.’ I’m personally inviting everybody to come to Michigan. I would love for them to experience it. Something that will be fun in the future is during the press conference (state officials) mentioned that one of the cities they want to target is Austin, which is where my sister happens to live and my parents happen to live part-time. So it’s going to be fun to see the messages, ‘Oh, we saw your commercial live!’ I’m very excited to see what it brings.
Q: What do you think people in Michigan maybe are not appreciating or are missing about this state? We get down on ourselves sometimes. What’s your impression as the new guy?
A: I feel like a lot of the people I’ve met do take pride being from Michigan. I do see them enjoying a lot of the things, like the freshwater coastline, the lakes, nature and things like that. Something that’s been great is every time I’ve gone foraging for mushrooms, inevitably I’ll come by somebody and I’ll be there with my basket and I’ll be like, ‘Hey, have you found anything good?’ and they’ll say, ‘Oh, I found a good Chicken of the Woods (mushroom) over there.’ And they’re like, ‘Oh, yeah, I found a whole bunch of chanterelles there.’ So they just know that kind of stuff, which is so awesome to me, which is something I’ve never experienced before. There’s just so much to experience. Since moving here, I feel like I’ve been able to live a life, not just focused on business or work or anything like that. We’ve been able to experience fun things, fun events and just the beautiful nature. My wife and I recently celebrated our 10-year anniversary … and we went to Mackinac Island for the first time and just driving through the fall leaves as they’re starting turn was just absolutely magical.
Q: What do you think people in Michigan maybe are not appreciating or are missing about this state? We get down on ourselves sometimes. What’s your impression as the new guy?
A: I feel like a lot of the people I’ve met do take pride being from Michigan. I do see them enjoying a lot of the things, like the freshwater coastline, the lakes, nature and things like that. Something that’s been great is every time I’ve gone foraging for mushrooms, inevitably I’ll come by somebody and I’ll be there with my basket and I’ll be like, ‘Hey, have you found anything good?’ and they’ll say, ‘Oh, I found a good Chicken of the Woods (mushroom) over there.’ And they’re like, ‘Oh, yeah, I found a whole bunch of chanterelles there.’ So they just know that kind of stuff, which is so awesome to me, which is something I’ve never experienced before. There’s just so much to experience. Since moving here, I feel like I’ve been able to live a life, not just focused on business or work or anything like that. We’ve been able to experience fun things, fun events and just the beautiful nature. My wife and I recently celebrated our 10-year anniversary … and we went to Mackinac Island for the first time and just driving through the fall leaves as they’re starting turn was just absolutely magical.