Parallax

Harris Steinberg is Executive Director of the Lindy Institute for Urban Innovation at Drexel University.

Drawing inspiration from the university’s commitment to becoming one of the most civically engaged colleges in the country, the Lindy Institute was created to shape innovative strategies to equitably advance cities and provide experience-based training to a new generation of urban leaders.

Among many initiatives, the Institute houses the Nowak Metro Finance Lab, runs a Masters Of Science program in Urban Strategy, and fosters emerging urban leadership through its fellowship program. Locally, the Lindy Institute is focused on engaging more Philadelphians in the decision-making processes that are shaping the city’s future.

In this episode, Steinberg discusses his work at the Lindy Institute, his deep appreciation for Philadelphia’s urban innovation heritage, and the integral role that inclusive planning strategies must play if the city is to uncover equitable long-term solutions to the current challenges it faces.

[NOTE: This conversation was recorded in February of 2020, prior to the onset of COVID-19 in Philadelphia.]

Alan Greenberger is a Distinguished Fellow at the Lindy Institute for Urban Innovation and Chair of Architecture and Interior Design at Drexel’s Westphal College.

He began his career practicing architecture at MGA Partners, before co-founding the Design Advocacy Group, an organization of community-driven volunteers with shared interests in design, development and planning in Philadelphia. That civic work eventually led Greenberger to become the Executive Director of the City’s Planning Commission, then Deputy Mayor for Economic Development and Director of Commerce, under Mayor Michael Nutter.

While working in city government, Greenberger helped rewrite the Philadelphia Zoning Code and develop Philadelphia 2035, a comprehensive plan for the future of planning and development in the city. He was also instrumental in the launch of the entrepreneurial support program StartUpPHL and led a successful effort to make Philadelphia a World Heritage City, the first and only city to achieve that designation in the United States.

In this conversation, Greenberger discusses how a life-long passion for cities has propelled his career, ways in which Philadelphia can enhance opportunities for its small business community to thrive, and his work to help Drexel University fulfill its commitment to become one of the most civically engaged universities in the country.

Entrepreneur Shannon Morales launched her startup Echo Me Forward out of a frustration born from her own experiences navigating the employment landscape in the male-dominated field of finance.

Echo Me Forward offers an SaaS software tool that enables employers to streamline their outreach process to find and hire diverse tech talent with greater ease. The company also provides digital content, professional networking opportunities, career coaching, and mentorship to ensure that Black and brown professionals are equipped with the tools they need to succeed.

In response to the surge of support for the Black Lives Matter movement against racial injustice in this country and around the world, countless employers have pledged support and committed to more equitable hiring practices — Morales wants to ensure they follow through.

“Right now it’s Echo Me Forward’s time to be out there helping all of the companies that are saying that they want to be intentional about these hiring strategies and making sure that we’re helping them get there,” she says.

In this conversation, Morales discusses the experiences that prompted her to launch Echo Me Forward, her work with the Latinx tech nonprofit Techqueria, and another project that she started to promote safe social-distancing in response to COVID-19, called Stealth.ify.

Kiera Smalls made the exciting announcement this past week that she’ll be transitioning from her current role as the Executive Director of Philly Startup Leaders (PSL) to take on a leadership position with Bloc Delivery — a new e-bike service that makes it easier and faster for local businesses to deliver online orders to customers, without using cars.

Smalls has been a community-builder and advocate for equity, entrepreneurship, and wellness in Philadelphia for quite some time now.

Since March of 2018, she has served as the Executive Director of PSL, working to provide local founders with the educational tools, financial resources, and networking connections necessary to take their startups to the next level. Although she is stepping away from her Executive Director position, Smalls will continue to serve as a board member for the organization and help advise the Founded in Philly accelerator that she helped establish.

Prior to joining PSL, Smalls co-founded City Fit Girls, a health and wellness community for women, alongside Takia McClendon. She also worked at Bicycle Transit Systems — the team that kick-started Philly’s Indego bike share campaign and is currently supporting the development of Bloc Delivery. While with Bicycle Transit Systems, she was instrumental in setting their industry leading practice standards in equitable marketing and outreach for bike share programming.

We spoke with Smalls a few weeks back — prior to her announcement — to discuss her work at both Philly Startup Leaders and City Fit Girls, the importance of self care in the midst of COVID-19, how she’s keeping active and staying positive during these challenging times, and her continuous work to help build a more inclusive and equitable startup ecosystem in Philadelphia.

Omar Woodard is the Executive Director of GreenLight Fund Philadelphia, a nonprofit venture capital firm that works at the intersection of community need and social innovation.

GreenLight Fund Philadelphia is a member of the national GreenLight Fund network. In each of the nine cities where the firm serves, a local team seeks to understand the most urgent challenges facing low-income children and families.

“In Philadelphia, we spend the first three months of the year having conversations with individuals experiencing poverty,” says Woodard, “and we’re very clear that the needs that we’re solving for are for individuals that are experiencing poverty.”

Once priorities are identified, GreenLight Fund surveys the country in search of nonprofits that are best suited to make a transformative impact around those needs. They invest funding, time, and strategic assistance to ensure the organizations that they select develop strong community connections and are aptly positioned to produce meaningful change.

GreenLight Fund’s support continues over time and they measure the effectiveness of their investments, sharing that information with investors, partners and the local community.

Currently, GreenLight Fund Philadelphia supports a portfolio of local initiatives, which includes: The Center for Employment Opportunities, Compass Working Capital, ParentChild+, Year Up, and Single Stop.

“We feel confident that as long as we continue to focus on what’s important, which is framing the needs, engaging with individuals experiencing poverty, and authentically synthesizing what those needs are, we think that is an increasingly powerful deliverable for the City of Philadelphia,” says Woodard

Prior to his work with GreenLight Fund, Woodard was a principal at Venture Philanthropy Partners (VPP), a philanthropic investment firm where he co-managed a $20M portfolio to achieve social impact across education, youth development, and health. In addition to his leadership work at GreenLight Fund today, he also teaches at the Temple University's Fox School of Business and serves as a board member for the Philanthropy Network of Greater Philadelphia, the Global Philadelphia Association, the Maternity Care Coalition, and the Girard College Foundation.

In this episode, Woodard talks about GreenLight Fund Philadelphia’s model and approach, how early life experiences guided him towards a career in philanthropy, how COVID-19 is impacting the community that GreenLight Fund Philadelphia serves, and what Philadelphia needs from leadership to pull itself through the distress of this current moment.

James Johnson-Piett is the Principal and CEO of Urbane Development, a development initiative which cultivates innovative solutions and hyper-local analytics to build dynamic neighborhoods and positively impact underserved communities.

Urbane places focus on deep local knowledge as the lever to generate real, lasting change.

For Johnson-Piett and his team, the revitalization process begins with identifying community anchor institutions, small businesses and meeting places where people convene, trust is key, and informal transactions take place — like bodegas.

“The bodega owner is way more than just giving you food,” Johnson-Piett points out, “When you walk in the door everyday, you’re establishing a credit relationship with that owner.”

If invested in, and supported, these anchor institutions can become hubs for local development, enabling micro-scale changes to occur within a community, and larger-scale transformation to happen over time.

Additionally, a network of these businesses can provide a significant data set of informal and formal market information, layered with demographic, ethnographic, and cultural data. This kind of deep community profile is not available to financial institutions at present, but can be a game changer.

“If we could understand the dynamics of a neighborhood and the various data points that come from it ,” says Johnson-Piett, “ we could show what the future of investment, analytics, and place-making could all look like and scale.”

These data sets start at the micro scale, with deeply personal relationships, but add up to systemic knowledge, through which opportunities for neighborhood growth can attract investment.

In this conversation, Johnson-Piett talks about Urbane Development's approach in further depth, his deep Philly roots, and how COVID-19 has increased insecurity for many Philadelphians, but possibly opened new opportunities for local innovation.

Tina Wahl is the President of the Barra Foundation, a private foundation that invests in innovation in arts and culture, education, health, and human services in the Greater Philadelphia region.

“We’ve evolved over the years, but always have had innovation really at the heart and soul of the foundation and its mission,” says Wahl.

The Barra Foundation was founded in 1963 by Robert L. McNeil Jr., a chemist and chairman of McNeil Laboratories, known best for the creation of Tylenol. As a scientist, McNeil was keen on supporting innovative practices based in the scientific method, which could be empirically evaluated, and used to strengthen communities and drive transformative impact.

As Wahl explains, the Barra Foundation believes in a community-driven approach to innovation, one that's about, “testing something, evaluating it, and then disseminating the lessons learned." They also believe in giving their grantees the space needed to experiment and invent.

In this conversation, she discusses how innovation can be leveraged to build stronger and healthier communities in the Philadelphia region. She also talks about the local impacts of COVID-19, what long-term effects the crisis may have on local philanthropy, and how the region might rebound.

Latinx entrepreneurship is a force of growth in the City of Philadelphia.

There are over 22,000 Latinx-owned small businesses in the region. These businesses range across a variety of industries and provide services and jobs that are essential to the health and economic prosperity of our city. 

But the COVID-19 economic shutdown has put the future of many of these Latinx small businesses at risk.

In this conversation, Greater Philadelphia Hispanic Chamber of Commerce (GPHCC) President Jennifer Rodríguez discusses the impacts that COVID-19 has had on Latinx business-owners in Philadelphia, how they are adapting and innovating in response, and how local community can step up to help them pull through this crisis stronger than before.

Jenn Richards is the Interim Director of the Community Design Collaborative, a team of Philadelphia designers that provide pro bono preliminary design services to local non-profit organizations and raises awareness about the importance of design in revitalizing communities.

The Collaborative was founded in 1991 by a group of architects that shared belief in the importance of design’s role to build healthy communities with strong futures. Nearly 30 years later, the Community Design Collaborative continues to promote equitable development and strengthen Philadelphia neighborhoods through design.

Richards was named Interim Director of the Collaborative in the fall of 2019 after long-time Executive Director, Beth Miller, accepted a Loeb Fellowship at Harvard Graduate School of Design.

When the COVID-19 epidemic hit Philadelphia in March, the Community Design Collaborative launched their ‘Design SWAT Team,’ a rapid-response service for front-line organizations responding to the outbreak.

“Where as our volunteers might not be experts in contagion control, they know a lot about how to make the best use of physical spaces,” Richards points out, “that’s what we’re all dealing with now with social distancing.”

The Collaborative connected with the Sunday Breakfast Rescue Mission, a local non-profit that serves Philadelphians experiencing homelessness. Due to increased need and multiple location shutdowns, the Mission was in search of creative solutions to help maintain safe social distancing measures, while continuing to provide meals and other essential services to residents at their 13th Street location.

The Design SWAT Team toured the site virtually, spoke with staff about their experiences, and responded with proposals in just one week. These ideas were iterated and improved during two virtual design reviews and are now being implemented.

The Community Design Collaborative hopes to provide similar support to other local non-profit organizations and businesses in coming weeks. If your organization may be in need of support, visit cdesignc.org for more information.

In this conversation, Jenn Richards discusses how the design of built environments can strengthen communities and what role design can play in addressing the challenges posed by the COVID-19 crisis.

Brian Murray is CEO and co-founder of SHIFT Capital, a social impact urban real estate group and Certified B-­Corp, headquartered in the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia.

Prior to starting SHIFT, Murray spent much of his career outside of the real estate industry, starting at Pricewaterhouse-Coopers as an auditor. He then moved into the technology space and helped found two start-ups, before joining the Peace Corps, and receiving an MBA from the Yale School of Management.

SHIFT invests in neighborhoods and creates projects that the community has a real say in — with access to the process and equity in its outcomes.

The real estate group uses mission-oriented capital, collaborative resources, and inclusive strategies to work towards solutions at the intersection of society’s most difficult urban challenges — inter-generational poverty, revitalization, access to opportunity, and community displacement.

“Our theory of change,” Murray points out, “is to invest in catalytic projects in underserved communities and then to invest all around that real estate in a holistic, at-scale way in which we feel like we can tip the scales of community wealth building and community development.”

In this conversation, Murray discusses SHIFT's comprehensive approach to neighborhood development. He also talks about how impacts of COVID-19 are being felt by Kensington’s small business community and what can be done to help those businesses pull through the economic turmoil of this epidemic.