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Introduction I was sixteen when I first understood that neighborhoods could steal childhoods. I had grown up in a quiet suburban...

Introduction I was sitting in my driveway in 2017, car packed for a road trip with my son, when the call came. It was our key funder, and...

Every time I mention my neighborhood development work at a conference or community meeting, I can predict the first question with the...

Introduction I'll never forget the conversation that stopped me in my tracks during a neighborhood meeting. A high school senior,...

The phone call came on a Tuesday afternoon, and I knew immediately that the disruption to our work would be huge. Our local school...

When Scale Becomes the Enemy of Transformation The Day Everything Changed Picture a neighborhood where everything was finally working....

The silence was deafening. I was facilitating a nonprofit leadership retreat when I posed what seemed like a straightforward question to...

Introduction The conference room fell silent as I projected the colorful dashboard onto the screen. Fifty community leaders, funders,...

Introduction Wind-driven rain pelted the library meeting room windows as I watched residents file in for what would become a pivotal...

Introduction It was a standing-room-only affair at the foundation's annual gathering. The evening's keynote speaker—a nationally...

Introduction The summer air hung heavy as I walked down the cracked sidewalk of our neighborhood in Tulsa, dodging familiar potholes...

Introduction The rain-soaked community meeting I attended back in 2007 wasn't supposed to be revolutionary. Thirty neighbors crowded...

Introduction: More Than a Metaphor—Why Neighborhoods Need Quarterbacks Let me take you back to a neighborhood meeting on a muggy Tuesday...

The work of neighborhood transformation is complex. But too often the organizations and people charged with advancing the work day-to-day...

Social cohesion is defined as "the strength of relationships and sense of belonging among members of a community." In my 25+ years of...

In my work of leading social impact efforts for the past 20 years, I have received numerous comments about the diversity and...

For twenty-five years as my family and I were living alongside our neighbors in a historically disinvested neighborhood in our city, we...