On his Inauguration Day in 2011, Greg Fischer turned heads when he announced an experiment to make Louisville "the nation's first compassionate city."

"Nobody disagrees with the concept of compassion. But the question is, how do you operationalize it in a city?"

In the last seven years, the city has worked with local businesses and nonprofits to help answer that question. The Kentucky city's work has helped to forge a model that other cities are watching closely. On this episode of "In the Arena," a podcast about public leadership, Fischer discusses how.