2024 LIFETIME DEDICATION TO COMMUNITY BUILDING AWARDEE, SUNDY WHITESIDE!

In loving memory of Sundy Whiteside, Co-Founder of the St. Louis Vacancy Collaborative, recipient of our 2024 Lifetime Dedication to Community Building Award.

The Lifetime Dedication to Community Building Award recognizes a person who:

• Has demonstrated a long-standing commitment to community building work.

• Has exhibited leadership, vision, and a commitment to action and results.

• Has catalyzed outstanding impact in community building policy, investment, and/or community change.

• Has worked to challenge the status quo in the St. Louis region.

CBN staff met with Haley McKenzie, Sundy’s daughter, to learn more about Sundy and her passion for the community. Here’s some of what Haley had to say about Sundy and her life’s work.

"Sundy was very much a dreamer, but she also executed her plans relentlessly and gracefully. She was very assertive, a voice for the voiceless. She had a degree in electrical engineering and once worked in that field, but I believe that she was most fulfilled in life by the passion-driven work that she dedicated herself to within the community. I loved seeing her delight from the growth, development, connections, and positive change she influenced and witnessed. My mother was a force. She never took no for an answer, and she always sought out ways to aid others. Her work brought awareness to the need for revitalization within blighted areas suffering from disinvestment. She sought out and applied for resources and funding, teamed up with others, and spearheaded initiatives to provide the services that the community needed then and continues to benefit from today.

As the Board President of St. Louis Association of Community Organizations (SLACO), my mother founded the Keeping it Clean Initiative as a way to clean up neglected communities of debris, trash, and overgrown shrubbery, and SLACO and volunteers will continue to host cleanups in multiple St. Louis neighborhoods throughout the summer and early fall for years to come. On a daily basis I saw her preparing for community events, embracing neighbors in the community, attending community planning meetings, and being an advocate. I learned from her that fearless pursuit is necessary when taking action for the greater good. I’ve never known anyone to outwork my mother, not in a competitive way or for recognition. She had a friendly, passion driven energy that made it happen. She had an intense love for St. Louis, each and every neighborhood. She’d organize groups of individuals from all walks of life to come together for real change. She didn't allow anything to sway or compromise her efforts, and I will carry forward her example of being the change you want to see. Along with being a community advocate and leader, she was an amazing mother and grandmother. She was mine and my family's whole world. We are most proud of her accomplishments and outstanding legacy."

Sundy with daughter Haley, son-in-law Demetri, and grandson DJ

We hope you can join us to celebrate community builders like Sundy at our 12th Annual Community Development Family Reunion event on April 25th!

2024 LIFETIME DEDICATION TO COMMUNITY BUILDING AWARDEES, GLORIA & TOM BRATKOWSKI!

Congratulations to Gloria and Tom Bratkowski, neighbors and charter members of Old North St. Louis Restoration Group, recipients of our 2024 Lifetime Dedication to Community Building Award!

The Lifetime Dedication to Community Building Award recognizes a person who:

• Has demonstrated a long-standing commitment to community building work.

• Has exhibited leadership, vision, and a commitment to action and results.

• Has catalyzed outstanding impact in community building policy, investment, and/or community change.

• Has worked to challenge the status quo in the St. Louis region.

Tom Bratkowski was born and raised in the Old North neighborhood before briefly journeying away to pursue his higher education. It was on this journey that Tom met his wife and lifelong collaborator, now Gloria Bratkowski. In the early 1970s, Tom and Gloria returned to Old North and a few years later, inspired by the need in their community and the work of other neighborhood groups around the city, became founding members of Old North St. Louis Restoration Group. Motivated by passion and rich experience in Old North, Tom and Gloria have worked with the community for the betterment and preservation of the neighborhood for roughly 50 years.

Gloria and Tom’s impact on Old North has stemmed from decades of showing up building community in the most relational sense. “We rely on each other. We have a lot of people who are fully invested, so we’re not alone.” Their collaboration and community-building efforts helped launch the Coalition to Stop the North-South Distributor, led to the establishment of the Ames School Butterfly Garden which tags around 100 monarchs per season, and led the fundraising effort to preserve three community gardens in the neighborhood. Mutual relationships of community support have been a key to Gloria and Tom’s success and continued efforts, and they hope that passionate individuals continue to show up for Old North for years to come. “Old North has always been a work in progress, and it still is.” Gloria and Tom’s sustained efforts to show up for the work of community building one day at a time for so many years serve as an inspiration for the entire St. Louis community.

We hope you can join us to celebrate community builders like Gloria and Tom at our 12th Annual Community Development Family Reunion event on April 25th! 

2024 GROWING IN EQUITY & ANTIRACISM AWARDEE, DARA ESKRIDGE!

Congratulations to Dara Eskridge, CEO of Invest STL, recipient of our 2024 Growing in Equity & Antiracism Award!

The Growing in Equity & Antiracism Award recognizes a person who: 

• Demonstrates a deep and honest commitment to transforming work being done in the St. Louis region so that it is more equitable, just, and antiracist.

• “Walks the talk”—goes beyond verbal commitments to ask hard questions, embrace and push through discomfort, work to rectify inequities where they exist, and take action.

• Actively works to dismantle systems of oppression.

Exploring who and what makes and holds community has been at the core of Dara’s personal and professional pursuits. Supporting people in waking up to their own power and accountability to create communities that work for and honor their needs, desires, and brilliance is what motivates her– even in the complexity and chaos that comes with collective people endeavors. As an urban planner, architect, and philanthropic leader, Dara works to advance opportunities to build wealth and power in Black and other racially and economically marginalized neighborhoods through equitable development and investment practices. Since 2019, Dara has been proud to serve her incredible team and board as the first CEO of Invest STL. Prior to Invest STL, Dara served in various design, planning, policy, and senior leadership roles in places including Urban Strategies, St. Louis County and St. Louis City governments, and the Housing Authority of the City of Bridgeport, CT. Currently, Dara serves as a member of the St. Louis Federal Reserve Community Development Advisory Council and as a board director for the St. Louis Economic Development Partnership and Art Place Initiative St. Louis.

Dara earned her graduate degree in Urban Planning from Columbia University in New York and her Bachelor of Architecture from Tuskegee University in Alabama. She is a LEED Accredited Professional for Neighborhood Development and a 2023 Aspen Ascend Fellow. Dara and her two children are proud residents of Hyde Park in North St. Louis City. Her rituals and interests include reading the heavy and the hilarious, being a secret economist, and trying her best to get on a tennis court at least once a month.

We hope you can join us to celebrate community builders like Dara at our 12th Annual Community Development Family Reunion event on April 25th! 

2024 RESIDENT LEADERSHIP AWARDEE, PAMELA EMRICK!

Congratulations to Ms. Pamela Emrick of the Clinton-Peabody Tenant Association Board (TAB), recipient of our 2024 Resident Leadership Award!

The Resident Leadership Award recognizes a person who:

• Has shown incredible volunteerism and involvement in their community and/or community initiatives.

• Goes above and beyond typical resident action to sit on boards, head committees, and/or encourage the engagement of other residents.

• Works to challenge the status quo in the St. Louis region.

A resident of Clinton-Peabody since she was four years old, Ms. Pamela Emrick was born into a life of volunteerism and community-building work. Ms. Pamela’s parents were “always the parents that helped anyone”, giving out lunches, helping people obtain jobs, and getting young people out for activities in the community. Caring and service are deeply embedded in who Ms. Pamela is. “Love is all I was ever taught. I was taught nothing but to love.” 

Ms. Pamela has an impressive list of service projects and accomplishments as a resident leader for Clinton-Peabody. From starting the Girl Scouts troop in 1987 and serving as a leader for young girls, serving on the Tenant Association Board (TAB), and serving as an advocate for Clinton-Peabody on several issues, to offering low-cost or free tutoring to young people, securing donations and distributing Christmas gifts to families, and organizing bingo nights, Ms. Pamela dedicates her time to caring for her community. Ms. Pamela’s efforts have been instrumental in securing funding for the Clinton-Peabody’s redevelopment plan, and she has garnered community support and engagement in the process. Ms. Pamela’s “passion for people” has kept her motivated through her decades of service to Clinton-Peabody. Ms. Pamela exemplifies resident leadership from the heart, and her service goes beyond volunteerism into the relationship-building that is at the core of community-building work: “I’m willing to have an open ear, a leaning shoulder…I feel that's what I can do.”

We hope you can join us to celebrate community builders like Ms. Pamela at our 12th Community Development Family Reunion event on April 25th!

2024 COLLABORATION & COALITION BUILDING AWARDEE, CONSTANCE SIU!

Congratulations to Constance Siu, Executive Director of North Newstead Association and recipient of our 2024 Collaboration & Coalition Building Award!

The Collaboration & Coalition Building Award recognizes a person who:

• Demonstrates incredible commitment to working through partnerships, even when it’s more challenging than “going it alone.”

• Forges new connections that bridge gaps between people, organizations, and places that don’t normally interact with each other in the St. Louis region.

• Shows up for others and participates directly in their work; does not only ask or expect that partners and collaborators come to them.

• Approaches difficulty and conflict with understanding, compassion, and an open mind.

Constance Siu has always been involved in community work, starting in her high school and college years. While working towards her MSW from the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis, Constance came to Community Builders Network as a Practicum Student. After hearing and noticing that St. Louis organizations tended to struggle as a result of working in silos, Constance found inspiration during her time with Community Builders Network working on the Social Policy & Electoral Accountability Collaborative (SPEAC), a group of leading St. Louis area organizations that strive to hold elected officials accountable to the communities they represent—or are seeking to represent—both prior to an election and afterward. This work demonstrated the power of cross-industry collaboration and inspired Constance’s future path.

Constance has been a coalition builder and leader in several collaborative efforts, from the Vacancy Collaborative and the Home Repair Network to the Strategic Land Use Plan of the St. Louis Comprehensive Plan. As the Executive Director of North Newstead Association for the past two years, Constance has brought her skills and presence to coalition building efforts within the organization as well. Constance develops sustainable collaborations by “ensuring that everyone sees the common goals, the bigger picture, and how they fit into accomplishing the bigger picture”, bringing individuals and organizations together through the maintenance of a shared vision. Her hope for the future of St. Louis is to see more people both involved in community work and aware of how the work that they do impacts community work, how “everyone has a part to play”. Constance is grateful for the efforts of all of the people who collaborate with her who make the work possible and emphasizes the need to “show up and listen” in order to succeed in the work of collaboration and coalition building. “It doesn’t get simpler than that. It doesn’t have to be very complicated. Show up and listen.”

We hope you can join us to celebrate community builders like Constance at our 12th Annual Community Development Family Reunion event on April 25th! 

2024 TRANSPARENCY & TRUST AWARDEE, COLLEEN HAFNER!

Congratulations to Colleen Hafner, Interim Executive Director of Rise Community Development, recipient of our 2024 Transparency & Trust Award.

The Transparency & Trust Award recognizes a person who:

• Works with honesty and openness and isn’t afraid to be vulnerable, especially when things don’t go as planned.

• Co-creates work with the people and partners they serve and works to build shared trust so that all at the table feel supported and valued as part of the process.

• Embraces mistakes and weaknesses in the open as opportunities to learn and grow.

In her career, Colleen Hafner has touched nearly every side of the community development landscape, serving on multiple boards and committees, executing advocacy efforts for affordable housing policy change, working directly with property managers, and now serving as Executive Director of Rise Community Development. These experiences and many more have all shaped Colleen’s holistic approach to leadership within the field which emphasizes the importance of collaboration, relationship building, and trust. “We are only successful when we collaborate. There’s so much more positive momentum when we collaborate than when we compete.”

With heart and integrity to match her expertise, Colleen has seen a number of successes in her career, particularly in the 2021 creation of Rise CDFI which continues to grow in its capacity to fill the need for flexible access to capital for community development. “The CDFI is a way to address economic justice in real time. It can break down a lot of barriers for people and propel them to a much greater scale.” Colleen’s open and vulnerable approach to this work has been a powerful force for bridging the gaps in trust that create barriers to achieving shared goals. Colleen envisions a St. Louis “where we don't live our lives on one side or the other of a dividing line, where we flow throughout our community, physically and socially,” and her transparent and thoughtful approach to this end serves as a reminder that “rebuilding trust is always worth it, and establishing trust is never a waste of time.”

We hope you can join us to celebrate community builders like Colleen at our 12th Annual Community Development Family Reunion event on April 25th!

2024 RISING STAR IN COMMUNITY BUILDING AWARDEE, FARRAKHAN SHEGOG!

Congratulations to Farrakhan Shegog, President of Young Voices with Action, recipient of our 2024 Rising Star in Community Building Award!

The Rising Star in Community Building Award recognizes a person who:

• Demonstrates strong dedication to and passion for community building work.

• Exhibits leadership, vision, and a commitment to action and results.

• Shows promising potential to catalyze outstanding impact in community building policy, investment, and/or community change.

• Works to challenge the status quo in the St. Louis region.

Farrakhan Shegog’s community work really began in 2012 when a close friend of his lost her life to gun violence. It was around this time that Farrakhan made two decisions: first, that he would finish his Bachelor of Science in his friend’s honor, and second, that he would found Young Voices With Action, an organization which builds community power and leadership capacity among young people in St. Louis. When Farrakhan realized just how many young people in the community were without access to the resources and opportunities needed for a high quality of life, he was inspired to take action to build those opportunities himself.

From his efforts with Young Voices with Action, to organizing marches, to the founding of #BlackWallStreet314 which brings together around 100 Black vendors each summer to celebrate Black culture and to support Black businesses and residents alike, Farrakhan works towards a holistic vision of a future in which the community can recirculate “dollars, ideas, skills, talents, and passions.” Farrakhan’s work asks, “What if the entire community was a safe space? What if the entire city of St. Louis or St. Louis County was a safe space?” Through education, engagement, and empowerment, Farrakhan’s work encourages young people in the community to continue to reinvest in the community by building a space where young leaders can thrive. “Our communities are dictated by the leadership we have, and also by how we respond to that leadership.” Farrakhan’s transformative work serves as a source of empowerment for young people to get involved in shaping the future of St. Louis and truly challenging the status quo.

We hope you can join us to celebrate community builders like Farrakhan at our 12th Annual Community Development Family Reunion event on April 25th! 

INTRODUCING CBN'S NEW PARTNERSHIP COORDINATOR!

We are thrilled to announce that Megan Arnett has join the CBN staff team as our Partnership Coordinator on July 5th!

The Partnership Coordinator will be working directly with our membership to build their capacity to deliver impactful place-based initiatives in their community. This position is responsible for building relationships with the private and public sector to achieve equitable community building efforts, strategically steering and supporting the growth of place-based organizations in the St. Louis community, providing technical assistance to member organizations, and creating and facilitating marketing communication activities that increases awareness to the community building efforts in the region.

Please help us give Megan a warm welcome. Here’s a little more about her:

As a long-time resident of the St Louis Metro East region, Megan Arnett has been driven by an unwavering commitment to social justice and an unshakeable belief in the power of community engagement. She understand that true change can only be achieved through collective efforts and meaningful partnerships. By leveraging her expertise and passion, she strive to empower communities to unlock their full potential and create lasting positive change. Megan’s educational background includes a Bachelor's degree in Sociology and a Master's degree in Sociology and Integrative Studies. This educational foundation has equipped her with a comprehensive understanding of community dynamics and the complex interplay between individuals and their environments.

Before joining the CBN family, Megan served as a Professor of Sociology at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, educating and inspiring the next generation of community leaders. Through her academic position, she has develop a deep appreciation for the power of knowledge and its ability to drive meaningful transformation within communities. Throughout her career, Megan have actively engaged with diverse community partners and resources, utilizing a community-centered approach to address individual and community-based needs. This experience solidified her belief in the transformative power of community engagement as a catalyst for positive change.

In Megan’s spare time, she enjoys exploring nature, advocating for social causes, and spending quality time with her family and friends.

2023 Transparency & Trust Awardee, Dana Malkus!

Congratulations to Dana Malkus, JD, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Director of the Entrepreneurship and Community Development Clinic at Saint Louis University School of Law, recipient of our 2023 Transparency & Trust Award!

The Transparency & Trust Award recognizes a person who:

• Works with honesty and openness and isn’t afraid to be vulnerable, especially when things don’t go as planned.

• Co-creates work with the people and partners they serve and works to build shared trust so that all at the table feel supported and valued as part of the process.

• Embraces mistakes and weaknesses in the open as opportunities to learn and grow.

Richard Rothstein had been working on the book The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America when Michael Brown was killed. He didn’t have it done yet, but so much happening at that time aligned with his research. So he put out an article in 2014 called The Making of Ferguson: Public Policies at the Root of its Troubles. And when I read it, I found it really compelling because there’s a lot of deep research on St. Louis and segregation here. He weaved together much of St. Louis’ long history, explaining how we got to where we are. Well, a few paragraphs in the piece talk about the Shelley v. Kraemer case and racially restrictive covenants. He tells the story about how there was a neighborhood group called the Marcus Avenue Improvement Association that tried to enforce the covenant and that they were sponsored by the Cote Brillante Presbyterian Church, which at the time was an all-white congregation in an all-white neighborhood. In that case, the covenants were struck down. After the decision, the neighborhood experienced a lot of change and white flight. The church closed. Eventually, it came back to life as a new congregation. And when I read about the association and the church, it was really striking to me because I didn’t know that piece of the case. And it was overwhelmingly sad to see that the church had been involved in that way.

Dana: I Googled the church, wondering if it still existed, and that’s how I found Reverend Clyde Crumpton. So I emailed him, told him about the class I teach at SLU Law, and how I thought it would be helpful if my students could see the church, hear the story, and see the Shelley House to make it more real rather than just reading about it in an article. So we came several years ago and we’ve kept coming most semesters since. Rev. Crumpton talks to my students about the neighborhood, the church, and his involvement, and it’s a really powerful eye-opener. Many of my students are from St. Louis, but they don’t know the history. Even for the ones who aren’t from here, the story of St. Louis is, unfortunately, the story of many cities all over the U.S. So it’s relatable whether you’re from here or not or you practice law here or somewhere else. I’m a law professor. And part of why I think it’s important for my students to understand this history is because if you’re going to be working in community development, you have to understand your client, a bit of the background, and how we got to where we are today. It deeply saddens me that the Church is segregated and that it has been throughout its existence in the U.S. I am part of the Church. And it bothers me that the problem of segregation even affects the Church. That it was involved in enforcing racially restrictive covenants is wild but true. It’s important we face that.

Rev. Crumpton: We, the Black community, were not surprised that the Church supported the Kraemer family. Even today, the Church is divided among conservative, liberal, and racial lines. One of the reasons I applaud Dana’s work is because she continues to expose some of those divisions. And a lot of them are fabricated for the potential to control the public and the narrative of the nation. In addition to her classroom and coursework, I’m glad she’s given me and her students more exposure to the Shelley vs. Kraemer case. It’s also a segue to where we are today, socially and ethically, and touches on the importance of having our story told. Bringing Dana and her class in helps us tell the story. And the more you tell the story, the more you know the story.

One of the reasons I applaud and am so happy to have met Professor Malkus is because she’s helped us understand better and better tell our story. This is also social studies, psychology, and biblical — when people are aware of their ancestry, there’s a responsibility to that ancestry to teach it, to protect it, to build their lives on it. And with that comes pride, self-esteem, and value. A lot of that’s missing from our community, which as a result, in the streets of St. Louis, we see on the 5, 6, and 10 o’clock news. And I’m saying, in order for us to change that behavior and mindset, we need to teach them who they are, from where they’ve come, the responsibility that is within their history and culture, and why they’ve been deprived of it to formulate the behavior we see. To prevent us from teaching that, we now have legislation that says we can’t teach Black history because it’s Critical Race Theory, which it’s not. But, behind that, what’s being said is, “We want to continue to control the narrative, Black community.” We want to keep you oppressed, we want to keep you ignorant, we want to keep your behavior the way it is because we don’t have to come in and lynch you no more. You can kill each other. We have just tricked you to believe you are your own enemy and not your brother’s keeper. From a biblical standpoint, who do we trust? God or legislators?

Dana: We learn through stories. A lot of the work I do with my students involves legally forming neighborhood groups like the one Rev. Crumpton is involved in. So we’re the lawyers that do the paperwork and help our clients understand how to operate. Because to get access to funding and resources, you’ve got to be able to check some of these boxes. So as lawyers, we provide help with nonprofit formation and help groups know how to function so they can fulfill their missions. Still, it’s important that my students understand, from the community side, the purpose of the groups we help legally form is to create a vehicle for taking collective action and building on assets. We help build a structure to make that happen, not to tell the group what they need to do or judge what they need to do but to help allow them to do what they need to do. Coming here every semester, I hear the Shelley vs. Kraemer and the church’s story, and it helps me remember what we’re doing. We’re transactional lawyers, so we don’t go to court. But our work isn’t simply about drafting or filing documents. Yes, those are lawyering tasks. But to be a good lawyer you actually need these other pieces. You need to understand your client.

Rev. Crumpton: What Dana’s brought to us with her students has been so valuable. Learning all about how we can operate as a nonprofit… We had the name but needed to register with the State. And the attorneys helped us to continue our formation by meeting with us biweekly over the past few years. Even though they change students every semester, the process continues. It’s a learning experience for them as much as it is for us when it comes to our effectiveness in how to better serve this neighborhood. This relationship from the beginning has evolved and transitioned into more than just a Shelley vs. Kraemer thing. It’s moved into hands-on work that’s action-oriented. It’s really a blessing.

When the students and I come here and it’s not raining, we walk down the street to the Shelley house and almost every time there will be people also walking or sitting out on their front porch and Rev. Crumpton knows every one of them. He’ll say hi, they’ll have a brief conversation, and he’ll introduce us. That makes me tear up because it would be easy for the neighbors and Rev. Crumpton to see us as outsiders and not welcome us in. They would have every reason to do that, so I’m just really thankful they don’t. My clinic works a lot with vacant and abandoned properties because they’re a big challenge for our region. The work we need to do to deal with this challenge happens through neighborhood organizations, so my clinic helps strengthen those groups. The perception of neighborhoods that experience a high degree of vacancy is that the neighborhood is empty or abandoned or people don’t care. And when we walk down the street and everyone comes out to talk, it’s an antidote to that. It’s a reminder that a neighborhood is made up of people. And it’s the connections between people that really matter. That’s why having strong neighborhood groups is so important because, legally, it’s the way neighbors can take collective action.

We’re not trying to rewrite the story, we’re just trying to get the truth be told. The rest will take care of itself. Kingsville developed because the area where our church sits was part of Kingsway East and the Greater Ville Neighborhoods. Hence the name. So Professor Malkus and her student lawyers helped us form the Kingsville CDC. We are still an organization. We organize. And we have structure. We also needed to form our identity, to better address our mission to improve our neighborhood and be able to function legally. It has helped the church be the church and be more intentional with our neighbors and neighborhood. Kingsville started from the church. Before COVID, we were meeting once or twice a month. For example, we have a community garden. Some neighbors wanted to start it, they thought the property belonged to the church, so I just said okay. We started gardening and found out the land belonged to the City. We negotiated a price and now we own it. That helped the church members help out the neighbors. One of the responses from the neighbors was, “You church folks aren’t so bad after all. We usually see you come and go on Sundays and you’re good folks.” So that's the relationship. And the church is doing what it’s supposed to be doing. Within the last year, we were also able to reactivate the church bells. They sound every hour from 8 AM to 8 PM. So I asked the neighbors, “What do you think about the bells?” “Aww, man, that’s awesome. It helps us realize the presence of the church.” And that establishes pride in the neighborhood. This isn’t just a church. It’s an active well-maintained church. And a component of the neighborhood.

What are some of the obstacles you’ve had to work through together?

Rev. Crumpton: Making biweekly meetings. We have different schedules and are involved in activities. The Kingsville leadership team has jobs. Some people have moved but remain active. Others are business owners and stay busy. Still, others don’t want to leave their house since COVID. So it’s difficult to get everyone to a morning meeting.
Dana: That highlights a bigger point which is challenging in almost all the work my students do with neighborhood groups and nonprofits and it has to do with privilege. If you’re fortunate enough to have time, maybe you can volunteer more easily. A lot of people don’t have that privilege. And oftentimes the same people seeing the needs and who have the energy and drive to see changes are people working full-time jobs or more already. They’re also most likely already taking care of someone or doing something in their community. They are doers and they are doing. So it’s a challenge, but one I use as a teachable moment for my students because you can’t come in as a lawyer expecting the client to bend to your schedule. We’re here to help the client. So sometimes that means thinking creatively about how and when we have meetings. What information do we need and how do we get it? Helping the students think through that is an important lawyering skill because whether you are doing pro-bono work or you go on to work at a big law firm and charge a lot of money, being able to get around barriers and figure out how to keep a thing moving forward is an essential skill.

Every semester, I have eight students who work in pairs and each pair has two to four clients they are responsible for. About a quarter of our work is working with small businesses and entrepreneurs. When we’re talking about community development, the lawncare and beauty shops are important to the fabric of a place. So we work with businesses like that who can’t afford market-rate legal services but need legal help with formalizing. Another quarter of what we do is with other kinds of nonprofits that might be working across the City, City and County, or State. And then the other half of our work is representing particular neighborhood groups like existing CDCs and neighborhood associations that need help updating their bylaws, understanding what they can and can’t do, or entering into an agreement of some kind. And some of that work also includes forming new entities and helping them get off the ground. Overall, we are working to increase the capacity of neighborhood groups. Neighborhoods are stronger when they can act collectively. So we want to support the structure for residents to be able to work together. The St. Louis Vacancy Collaborative created a map to show where neighborhood associations and other groups exist so we can see what’s being done and what can be done. And we’ve made progress on building the whole ecosystem.

I am thankful to have the job I have because I get to work with students all the time. They go on to do great work after they graduate and they pop back up. Part of how we keep this work going is to bring others into it to work on it together. And then we can better avoid the temptation to think that somehow it all depends on me. What you want to do is set up structures and systems that keep going no matter who is there. Building trust and doing the work is slow. The more I have done this work I just see trust as foundational to everything else. I don’t see how you can move forward on things without having trust. When we talk about community development especially, there’s so much history that is the basis for a lot of distrust. And acknowledging that, understanding it, and being able to sit with it can go a long way toward building trust. From a legal perspective, structures can also make trust happen a little better. For example, in places where there is not a lot of existing trust among residents— you know, “My block is not getting as much attention as yours and the community garden should go here…” — there can be some division and difficulty moving toward collective action. And in the paperwork of these neighborhood associations, we can build structures that reduce some of those barriers. So we can set up rules, like if there are eight board seats, then two people from each quadrant will be elected for representation. Sometimes I’ll suggest things and neighborhoods aren’t there yet. That’s okay. It’s that slow work we often see that doesn’t happen quickly sometimes.

In academia, you spend a lot of time reading things, talking about ideas, proposing solutions to problems — which is all good. I enjoy doing that. But I think this neighborhood, this church, this place is a concrete reminder. It reminds me of why we’re doing this work and that building trust is possible and worth doing. It’s slow work. And there is a richness here. Some of it for me is also just that I’m fascinated by history, especially stories about people, and there’s a lot of that here. That adds a layer of richness you can’t get from just reading an article or a book. It also reminds me that relationships are really important. As a lawyer, you can get caught up in filing paperwork, completing tasks, or drafting things. But you can’t forget that it’s the relationships that matter and that’s how things really get done. So I appreciate the reminder when I come here.

- Dana Malkus, JD, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Director of the Entrepreneurship and Community Development Clinic at Saint Louis University School of Law

We hope you can join us to celebrate community builders like Dana at our Community Development Family Reunion on April 20th!

Together We Are Stronger: Inclusive Economic Development to Move the STL Region Forward

Jason Hall, CEO of Greater St. Louis Inc., sits down with Humans of St. Louis storyteller Lindy Drew to share the work he and his organization is doing to bring together the business community to help drive economic growth and create opportunities for all with a focus on inclusive growth.

This is home. I grew up on the Illinois side and then came back. I’m a lawyer. I was practicing downtown. I had just come out of the closet and had been in St. Louis for less than 12 months when Missouri was the first state to have a ballot initiative banning same-sex marriage. Our civil rights were on the line, so I started to get more politically active. I was in my 20s and had all the energy in the world.

I was volunteering for Jay Nixon’s campaign when he ran for governor and he said he wanted to get young people involved in his administration. The Great Recession had hit and my mentors at the law firm I was at were like, “You’re not gonna miss much. If you want to do public service for a while, have fun and go help the State.” So I did. And I loved public service. I was part of a team that committed to creating more jobs and opportunities in communities across the State. In the end, I wasn’t yet ready to return to practice law because I saw the need to improve economic development in St. Louis, particularly, around the emergence of the entrepreneurship movement. So I joined the St. Louis Regional Chamber. I was there for several years focused on expanding support for entrepreneurs, but it became clear a new platform was needed to carry the work forward.

I quit my job, helped organize civic seed capital from a few institutions and foundations, sold my house, and got an apartment to have some financial flexibility in case things didn’t pan out. I just put all my eggs into a basket around January 1, 2017. I’m a first-gen high school graduate. I don’t come from money and I didn’t have a lot of personal resources at the time. It was a real risk and I felt alive. Like many entrepreneurs I’d worked with in my economic development career, you have to believe in something so much that you’re willing to make it work and create value. My team and I didn’t know what this group was going to take on precisely, but the focus of Arch to Park was to connect emerging development we were seeing in the heart of the City closely tied to the rise in entrepreneurship.

At the time, the major civic catalyst was John Dubinsky — the founder of Cortex, a co-founder of BJC HealthCare, and a former trustee of Washington University. He was a young wiz banker and looking to do something else civically that expanded on the core principles of Cortex. John and I visited other cities to see what they were working on, how they organized, and how they were getting stuff done. And we started taking on more work and partnerships when COVID hit. Well, we ended up supporting our healthcare and public partners in standing up with the Pandemic Task Force and with weekly press briefings. And it was eye-opening to say, ‘When it really matters, the business community needs to function as one in partnership with the public sector to get things done.

One of the early projects Arch to Park got involved with, alongside 20 or so community groups, was economic development. And the metro narrative was, how do we tell a better story about our people and the economy? How could we get the energy starting to build in the urban core to be a national story? No single organization had the budget to do it. There was no unified messaging or movement around those issues at the time. So we all agreed to work together. STLMade didn’t exist yet, but Andy Taylor liked that all these groups were working together. So he put some seed capital in to say, let’s try to discover a people-centered narrative to show the economy of St. Louis without being technical or jargony or just showing pictures of buildings. It became about people telling their stories.

Everybody assumed St. Louis was viewed negatively nationally. But, in doing focus groups, a national perception analysis showed people didn’t even know they were supposed to have an opinion of St. Louis. It was pretty humbling. So, doing all this community engagement work, it was clear people wanted a way to talk about St. Louis and bring some of that growth and vitality forward in a unified way. Then on one March 14th, for #314Day, we launched STLMade at Cortex with Venture Cafe to bring people and small businesses together and over 1,000 people showed up! It was just awesome and so important at the time because it was this grassroots and grasstops get-together. St. Louis can get pretty segmented that just getting so many different people in a common space was special.

This was one of those moments of hope that our generation of leaders is doing differently. In our minds, we needed a day in March, 3-14 happened to fall on a Thursday that year when Venture Cafe would have meetups, so we wanted to have that day on the calendar. We ended up discovering Young Dip and Tatum Polk, whose early work as the founders of #314Day had not yet been widely covered in the press. So, we stopped, paused, listened, and weren’t afraid to say, “We didn’t start it, but we’re trying to accomplish the same thing. Let’s work together and support each other towards this goal we all believe in together.”

That’s how their story became part of the #STLMade narrative. We projected the 3-14 Day logo on the Science Center planetarium during the first year of the collaboration and when Young Dip saw it, tears came to his eyes. 3-14 Day became an even more powerful movement and it’s been on display.

What does 314 Day mean to you?

To have a day in this region intentionally set aside to focus on what unites us rather than divides us — that is powerful and critically important. The unexpected element was that it’s become a week on the calendar focused on small businesses in the region, too. People have come up with unique recipes and special discounts. It’s become this day to remind people that entrepreneurs, small businesses, restaurants, and all these St. Louis local businesses — they make us who we are. Our story is best told through people and it’s effective to tell it through the lens of story. Over the past 100 years, there have been about five pushes, #STLMade being the most recent, and the only one we can find that really does center on the people here in St. Louis. The others were building or project-defined, but this one is about telling a story through a broader fabric that might not otherwise be told. And people could relate to it. People understood at that time they were seeing pockets of economic energy in the region but they didn’t know how to connect it, struggled to talk about it, and most often felt connected to it when it was their neighborhood, church, and small businesses that they give their business to. We leaned into that and stay true to it today.

If you want to transform economically and have inclusive economic development, you braid DEI work into it. So many groups try to represent businesses, but how do they all collaborate? Those two things you see in how the community is moving today. There are several manifestations of that and it’s a testament that sometimes you have to go slow to go fast. For example, the partnership between this City and Arch to Park convened a table to plot out the future of the opportunity around geospatial in a community-centered way. The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) was embarking on its new headquarters, which we saw as a catalyst for a much larger economic development effort in St. Louis. It made its decision to build its headquarters in North St. Louis — the largest headquarters in the history of the City — and it was an opportunity. We had inspiration from the work in the biotech sector, but the neighborhood into which the NGA was moving is very different. The Danforth Plant Sciences Center was on fresh dirt in Creve Coeur. The social and historical context of North City in St. Louis required us to say, “Let’s not just be leaders in the industry, let’s use the growth in that industry and link it to racial equity and community development.”

The GeoFutures Coalition was formed to map a regional agenda to become the leaders of the geospatial industry. When you look at the plan we put together, we were told it was the first metro, industry sector growth plan to center racial equity from the start. And we did that in several ways. First, anybody who had a role in shaping the steering committee’s plan had to go through a two-and-a-half-day intensive anti-bias and anti-racism training. Second, we challenged ourselves to put community development and other perspectives around the table with traditional economic developers which created new tension points that led to a stronger plan overall. And, third, we worked with Harris-Stowe State University, which historically had not been included at the beginning of key civic decisions. 

We’re not waiting for the NGA to open in 2025 to seize this moment and implement the GeoFutures Roadmap plan. You can’t drop almost $2 billion into a neighborhood and not change. It’s going to change. The question is, will residents get to participate and do it in an organized way? And with respect to the racial equity component, fast forward to today, Harris-Stowe is now the only Historically Black College or University in the country to have a national education partnership with the NGA. With a shortage of Black talent across tech, we’re working on addressing the systems that created that and expanding opportunities. And working with City and business leaders, St. Louis is now host to a national program for HBCU students across the country to come here and immerse themselves in a discovery process over the summer about what opportunities exist and what they can do to prepare to be a part and even get certified for geospatial careers. We challenged ourselves to say it is too late if we start addressing race and social dynamics after the ribbon is cut on the new NGA.

The thought exercise we often repeated is, “What do we want to say is true when the facility opens rather than after the fact?” We didn't want kids growing up in North City either to say, “I see construction, but that has no relevance to my life.” Community non-profit partners have now organized a full K-12 pipeline going into schools to start exposing young students about what geospatial is and foster inspiration in this exciting new tech sector.

“It’s important to drive people to take action. We want to create enough oomph so people run in that direction and not in the other. Geospatial is an example and we can do it in other industries, too.”

Being a first-generation high school graduate, I realize access to opportunity is everything. I always said, “if I ever have a shot to make a difference, I wouldn’t forget where I come from and I’d stay deeply dedicated to that work.” We live in a country where opportunity is not equally distributed yet. We may not get it perfect in our lifetime, but that’s not the test. The test is, are we affecting the arc of that and are we leading by example? I really believe that leadership has consequences. And I’d like to think our staff, volunteers, and community partners are creating a groundswell where that will put St. Louis on a new trajectory, particularly coming out of COVID. History will prove that there’s a unique opportunity to drive change during those big disruptions. We’re doing something nationally significant here in St. Louis. Oftentimes, in this region, when it comes time to compete for catalytic federal investments we end up beating each other up and competing with ourselves at the expense of winning. I was really proud of this region when we got it around one proposal, it came directly from the jobs plan, we already baked the DEI piece into it, and at the centerpiece of that proposal was North City.

Of all the things you do in the community, what comes easy to you and what is really difficult?

My difficulty is patience, just because this region is staring down a very dangerous decade. If we don’t grow, we’re going to fall from the 21st to closer to the 30th largest metro by 2030. So I feel this sense of urgency and burden every day that the time is now. But I have to balance that intensity. I’m a scrappy kid from Granite City. Finesse is not always my strongest suit. I’ve tried to balance how to use my intensity in a way that is more balanced while not losing sight of the ambition St. Louis needs to embrace now. What comes naturally is taking risks. There have been several — the fight for Medicaid expansion, that was one when I was just frustrated. We denied Medicaid expansion to the people of this community even after voters statewide approved it. We have to take some risks and be uncomfortable from time to time. We have to fight for what’s right. It’s okay. I’m willing to stick my neck out there a little bit. That’s what we have to do.

- Jason Hall, CEO, Greater St. Louis Inc.

We hope you can join us to celebrate community builders like Jason at our 11th Annual Community Development Family Reunion event on April 20th!