This is Community

Warren Buffett has been called a wise and prophetic investor who knows value when he sees it. In this last episode of Season Two, Warren Buffett sat down with CNBC's Becky Quick in 2017 to talk about how America's systems fundamentally misdirect money into the hands of too few to the detriment of the many. He called on philanthropists looking to have the biggest impact for their investments to shed their pretensions and one-upsmanship and look where things are working to attack at the root of the problem.

Building racial, social, and health equity in communities of concentrated poverty is not an unrealistic dream - it's happening in real-time across the Purpose Built Communities network. A group of thoughtful leaders from diverse backgrounds in different cities have moved from talking to leading with equity. Michelle Matthews, Senior Vice President at Purpose Built Communities, moderated a discussion in Orlando in 2018 with the first cohort of Equity Ambassadors.

There's an opportunity cost to separating and segregating people: we're not getting the best ideas, the creativity, the innovation out of discriminated communities that can lift up those neighborhoods and our country. Dr. Katherine Phillips, professor of organizational behavior at Columbia Business School, told Purpose Built Communities' annual conference that, to understand the value of diversity and use it to learn and innovate more effectively, we need to start by making small changes in ourselves.

More Americans are sent to jail than ever before in human history. Most of them are young, African American men living in neighborhoods of concentrated poverty. Mass incarceration devastates the communities where it has removed a generation of residents, with long-term impacts for generations. Dr. Todd Clear, professor at Rutgers University's School of Criminal Justice, presented to the Purpose Built Communities annual conference in Orlando in 2018 about how over-incarceration impoverishes communities.

Institutional racism does not just impact people who are old enough to vote and have a job. It's a lifelong reality from birth to death. It's taught, reinforced, and perpetuated in America's classrooms. Dr. Beverly Tatum, president emerita of Spelman College and bestselling author, talked in 2017 about how people of different ages discuss race - starting as students in the classroom - and how a deeper understanding and servant approach to the discussion can help break down the barriers of segregation.

Two weeks before the 2016 election, Dr. David Williams, professor of public health, African and African American studies, and sociology at Harvard University, shared his research on the clear connection between race, socioeconomic status, and health at the Purpose Built Communities annual conference in Birmingham, Alabama. His work is even more relevant now in the face of public attacks from our leaders and those emboldened by racist rhetoric on communities of color and immigrants in our country.

We are constantly and fundamentally surrounded by racism in how our systems and public institutions have been structured and operate that it can be easy to not see it. To effectively revitalize a neighborhood, we need to look through a structural lens in order to fully understand the meaning of racism in America and how to address it in our institutions. Glenn Harris, president of Race Forward, led a session about racial equity in 2015 at the Purpose Built Communities annual conference in Fort Worth, Texas

Too many communities are failing in America. Millions of people are trapped in poverty, fighting for their American Dream. And racism is at the core of why poverty is concentrated in some neighborhoods and not others, why the American Dream can be out of reach for so many of us. We must attack the underlying discrimination baked into our system throughout America's history to help communities become places where everyone has the opportunity to thrive.

The final episode of Season One tells the story of Jamese Pinkston, who returned to the neighborhood in Charlotte where she grew up to help her neighbors have access to the opportunities to succeed and thrive that she was lucky to have. Hear her describe why she has the "best job in the world."

Find out more at purposebuiltcommunities.org/podcast.

America's demographics will become majority-minority in the coming decades. One neighborhood in Houston shows how to successfully build vibrant communities of diversity - and how to bring all of those different groups together in the wake of a natural disaster.

Find out more at purposebuiltcommunities.org/podcast.