Julie Griffith came to the Twin Cities with a fresh MBA from Rice University for a good marketing job at American Express Financial Advisors in the summer of 2004.
 
She barely made it a year before going back to Houston, having lived long enough with what African-Americans call "being one of the onlies" -- the only black person in a department or in the neighborhood.
 
"I really enjoyed the people I met there, specifically the African-American professional community," said Griffith, now 32 and running her own public relations firm in Houston. "But that little piece was just not enough to sustain living there."
 
Corporate Minnesota is increasingly aware that holding onto African-American transplants such as Griffith after firms have invested so much in getting them here is the new challenge in the pale metropolis.
 
While it's an issue for all minorities, it's most evident among black transplants, by dint of their sheer numbers here, recruiters said.
 
"There has been so much work around recruitment that people have mostly - not entirely - figured it out," said Bill Wells, president of W. Wells & Associates diversity consultants in Eden Prairie. "Now comes retention."
 
Corporations are coming up with a new strategy: Quickly connect recruits to support groups, such as the local chapter of the National Black MBA Association. But often more important than professional ties is the lifestyle advice: where's a good church, an ethnic market or preferred entertainment.
 
That's why besides the formal work of the Minnesota Boulevard Consortium - a recruiting group of 17 major companies and two business colleges that show up in force at the National Black MBA Association's big diversity job fair every year - members also make themselves personally available to job candidates or new hires who are looking for someone to talk to about life in the Twin Cities.
 
"It's really important when a diversity candidate moves to the Twin Cities that the company reaches out and introduces them to fellow diversity employees," said Scott Coleman, president of JobPlex in Minnetonka, which has a specialty in diversity hiring. "A diverse candidate who does not feel attached to the Twin Cities or the company will most likely leave within two years."
 
The middle class
 
In its most recent breakdown, in 2003, the U.S. Census Bureau said blacks made up about 6 percent of the metropolitan Twin Cities. That's more than other minority groups -- 3.8 percent Hispanic, for example -- but far below the 20 percent to 30 percent that many black transplants have left in New York, Detroit or Atlanta, for example.
 
There's no good count of the middle class and professionals within those groups, several consultants said.
 
"Most of what we know is anecdotal," agreed Seema Shah, executive director of Twin Cities Diversity in Practice, an association of law firms and companies dedicated to maintaining a diverse legal community here.
 
The numbers are small enough to make dating tough, whether looking for a social life or to start a family, young black women said.
 
"I could easily count the number of dates I had while I was there," Griffith said. "In Houston, the Black MBA Association is a 200-plus member organization. In Minneapolis, it was hard to get 10 or 20 people to show up for a mixer."
 
Jeanine Lewis described her experience as "death by a million duck bites" after she came from Atlanta in 2002 for a marketing job at General Mills. She decamped three years later to take a marketing job at Shell Oil in Houston.
 
The Twin Cities area is beautiful, Lewis said. But it doesn't have the variety of black-oriented radio and TV stations available in the South. It was hard finding the collard greens and salt pork she needed for traditional holiday meals. And she found few salons that could style her hair.
 
"People said, 'I can't believe you'd leave a city because you couldn't find a hair salon,' " Lewis said.  "Well, no, but when you roll up all those tiny things together in terms of quality of life, it becomes a place I couldn't see myself staying."
 
It's not necessarily easier for married black professionals, she said. She knows two couples in the Twin Cities who are looking for jobs in the South, before their children start school.
"They want to be in a place with more black role models and where their children see terrifically brilliant kids who look like them," she said.
 
A place to gather
 
For Lewis, one challenge was finding an African-American church where she felt she fit in.
 
Robert McKinney understands. After moving to Rosemount about 18 months ago with his wife, Sharon, a vendor services specialist at Northwest Airlines, the family longed for a connection with other blacks. "There was no [African-American] church way out here, so we had to drive into the city for fellowship," said the father of two teens.
 
So on April 15, McKinney - who had been a Baptist minister in Memphis - started a rare black-led church in Dakota County.
 
For now, his New Direction Christian Fellowship meets Sunday mornings in the Rosemount Community Center, but McKinney is encouraged by the Census Bureau's calculation that there are now 14,000 blacks living in Dakota County.
 
"I know there is a need for blacks to have a sense of belonging, and not have to drive out of this community," he said.
 
Organized efforts
 
Minnesota employers have developed various retention strategies.
 
At Dorsey & Whitney, for example, the law firm assigns both a mentor in the new lawyers' field of specialty and a sponsor deliberately not - someone far from their supervisors where they feel safe opening up, said partner Cornell Moore in Minneapolis.
 
Also, if African-American transplants decide Minneapolis is not for them, Dorsey can relocate them from this office - with its 5 to 6 percent lawyers of color - to Palo Alto, for example, with its 21 percent, managing partner Marianne Short said.
 
Medtronic created an internal Professional Association Network, said Michael Valencia, workplace inclusion manager. Through it, Medtronic employees who belong to the professional associations where Medtronic looks to recruit - such as the Black MBAs and the National Society of Black Engineers - volunteer to become an instant network for new hires, Valencia said.
 
"We turned to associations that are already near and dear to their hearts," he said.
 
Area business schools, busy with their own diversity efforts, are another asset for Minnesota corporations.
 
While in school, students "have a chance to get connected to the real multicultural community here, survive two winters, and realize it's a great place to live," said Christopher Puto, dean of the Opus College of Business at the University of St. Thomas, a consortium member. "So when a job offer comes, the decision is a simple 'Let's stay.' "