Three weeks into his new job, William O. Generett Jr. still doesn't have an office -- but that's not stopping him.

The new executive director of the Pittsburgh Central Keystone Innovation Zone is making do with his makeshift mobile digs: his Honda Accord, a cell phone and a laptop computer.

Launched earlier this year, the latest economic development zone aims to fuel parts of the Hill District, Downtown, Uptown and the North Side with new economic energy by transforming them into hotspots for up-and-coming tech businesses.

To tackle the task, Mr. Generett is backed by a board that includes such local power brokers as PNC Bank, UPMC Health Plan, the Heinz Endowments and the R.K. Mellon Foundation, and is armed with a budget of $500,000 in public and private matching funds.

	Darrell Sapp, Post-Gazette Bill Generett, the new director of the Central Pittsburgh Keystone Innovation Zone, will lead efforts to create jobs for residents of some of the most underserved areas in the city. Click photo for larger image.

Attracting new business to the area is one tack, but another is to spawn local companies -- two a year at least -- launched by entrepreneurs with roots in the area or spun off from one of its four university partners: the Community College of Allegheny County and Duquesne, Point Park and Carlow universities.

The mission, Mr. Generett says, is to create jobs for residents of some of the most underserved areas in the city.

"Having a good job is the first step to curing a lot of [societal] problems," he said. "If you can raise the economics of a community, everybody does well."

That's what led the 36-year-old Point Breeze native to boomerang back to his hometown three years ago after a 15-year hiatus.

In 1989, Mr. Generett bid farewell to Pittsburgh and headed south to Atlanta's Morehouse College followed by law school at Emory University.

"I didn't think I was ever going to come back to Pittsburgh," he said. It wasn't that Pittsburgh was bad, he added, but that it just didn't have much to offer.

"I didn't see it as one of the fun, hip [places] for young people," he said.

Not like Japan anyway, where after law school, he spent a year outside of Nagasaki, teaching Japanese students about the American legal system.

Or Atlanta, where he practiced corporate and real estate law at a firm he helped found, Johnson Freeman Perkins-Hooker & Associates.

Or Washington, D.C., where he worked as a vice president at legal staffing firm Compliance Inc. until 2004, when he realized, he said with a quiet laugh, "The thing is, I'm not so hip."

That's when his hometown trumped the capital city's allure as a happening haven for ambitious wonks.

At the suggestion of his wife, Gretchen, a native of Richmond, Va., the couple returned to the region, settling in Fox Chapel to raise their 5-year-old son, William III.

After years lending his legal expertise to help fledgling entrepreneurs get their firms off the ground, Mr. Generett realized that "maybe one day I wanted to be one," he said.

So he did just that, launching Blawnox-based Comforcare, a nonmedical home care staffing firm that employs 35.

Now serving only as adviser to the business, he has focused his efforts on what he calls his "passion." -- helping budding businesses blossom. It's "like seeing a kid grow," Mr. Generett said.

One of his first tasks was guiding the Hill House Economic Development Corp., a member of the KIZ's board, through the purchase of the Hill District's Hope Square office building this month.

Mr. Generett, who previously served as the Hill House Association's director of economic development, hopes to entice local and out-of-town tech firms to set up shop there -- alongside the KIZ's new office, which is finally scheduled to open in August.

Pittsburgh lacks good, affordable space close to the research centers, said Mr. Generett. Preconceived notions have left the nearby areas to be overlooked as options, he added, even though they often are $10 to $15 cheaper per-square-foot than Oakland.

Having survived starting his own business and helping others through the process, the "quietly energetic" Mr. Generett is aware of the issues and understands the community he's serving, said Stephen Schillo, the Duquesne University finance chief who serves as president of the KIZ's board.

For Mr. Generett, trading Washington's rat race to help bolster his hometown's slow pace has had its downsides as well. In Washington, Mr. Generett was frequently greeted with "What do you do?" But in Pittsburgh, he said he's often met with "Wow, you're a lawyer?" or "I've never met a black lawyer before."

But Mr. Generett shakes off the awkwardness of such situations because Pittsburgh and its people "strike a chord in me." Plus, he added, "I like challenges."

Especially juggling his frenzied schedule of strategy sessions, property tours and meetings from his Japanese-made mobile office -- sans air conditioning.

Too busy to get the car fixed right away, Mr. Generett sweltered during last week's heat wave.

"I was suffering for a couple of days," he said.