Jaslyn Ferguson was seeking a change in her life, and at 3 a.m. one morning she came across an opportunity with an organization that is paying full-time remote workers $10,000 to move to Tulsa for one year.
Jaslyn lived and grew up in Orlando, Florida. Her entrepreneurial spirit led her to accept the opportunity with Tulsa Remote in May of 2021.
She had never been to Tulsa and had no friends or family, but its history intrigued her and propelled her to move there. She mentioned that she felt secure because of the community in Tulsa and knew she had people who knew she lived there.
“What really got me to come here was once I dug deeper and saw, okay, there’s a history of Black Wall Street; it looks like they’ve got a push towards helping entrepreneurs in that town. Okay, great,” Jaslyn told The Black Wall Street Times.
Bridging History and Technology: The Birth of Reality Trail and Historifi
In 2019, Jaslyn and her mother co-founded Reality Trail, an augmented reality company focused on historical storytelling. Inspired by Pokémon Go, Historifi, a mobile app that allows users to interact with historical characters, was born. Jaslyn and her mother created the app to bring the stories of towns and cities to life and bridge the gap between history and technology.
Since relocating, Jaslyn has become immersed in Tulsa’s entrepreneurial community, finding support and inspiration from the city’s network of innovators and creatives. In the spring of 2024, she was accepted to the Tech Stars accelerator program to help grow Reality Trail.
In early November, she partnered with Build In Tulsa at the First Friday Founders Market to host her first Virtual Reality experience of Historifi. In this experience, users could time travel to the early 1920s to learn about Greenwood as if they were there in real-time. Her character, Jeremiah, narrates his firsthand experience of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, providing historical and cultural context.
Jaslyn Ferguson: A Tulsa Remote participant staying for the future
Tulsa Remote has provided her with a platform to grow her business. Still, she desires to help develop the city and be a conduit to it, allowing her to contribute to its ongoing efforts to highlight its historic significance. Her passion for the Tulsa community inspired her to stay long after her one-year commitment with Tulsa Remote.
“I see that you still have North Tulsa, which has so many needs, right? I almost feel in the sense of like, this, can’t, I can’t just benefit from this, even though I’m a Black woman, I’m not a Black woman from this community,” she told The Black Wall Street Times.
She continued, “It’s like part of me that wants to stay, to help now that I’ve been invested in, in that way. I want to stay so that I can now reinvest that into the community that’s here.”
Jaslyn reflected on the importance of community and the role of her business in preserving history and creating opportunities. She wants her businesses to have a trickle effect and wants to partner with people who are from Tulsa and have already put in the work.
“Now I’ll be intentional to hire people who are from here. I’ll be intentional to partner with people who are from here, who are already doing things here, that just means that those dollars could go that much further,” she said. “They’ll never right the wrongs that happened here, but at least, creating a pathway forward.”
Related Stories:
- First Friday Founders Market by Build in Tulsa
- Program offers remote workers chance to “try out Tulsa” for a week
- Build in Tulsa lifts up Black entrepreneurs
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