Across the country, we are seeing elected officials and career-long public servants rise to the challenges of COVID19 while centering the needs of their most vulnerable communities. Its important to reflect on their response and acknowledge the hard work that…
COVID-19 Resources
The reality of COVID-19’s scope and impact is sinking in and in many ways is still unknown. At Living Cities, we are doing our best to hold the complexities that come with racial equity work, particularly in a time of…
Ending White Supremacy Culture: A Resource for Cultivating Abundance Mindset
Living Cities has learned that to do racial equity work with authenticity, we have to embrace a new way of working. It has to start with us, at the level of individual staff and project teams. As we set about…
An Inside Organizer: Brian Smith
At Living Cities, we’ve been interrogating what it means to organize for racial equity and how we and others can leverage that strategy to close racial wealth and income gaps. Lucky for us, we have a wealth of folks in…
Centering Equity, Transforming Systems: A Profile on Ashleigh Gardere
As part of our series highlighting alumni of Living Cities’ cohorts, we spoke with Ashleigh Gardere, who recently completed her service as Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer at the New Orleans Business Alliance where she transformed the public-private…
Covid-19, Difficult Truths and the Urgency of Closing Racial Gaps
The health crisis we’re experiencing is new and acute, but the crises of racial and economic justice that the virus has laid bare have long been brewing. The pandemic has exposed how the forces of structural racism and extreme economic…
Centering Equity, Transforming Systems: A Profile on Daro Mott
As part of our series highlighting alumni of Living Cities’ cohorts, we spoke with Daro Mott, who currently serves as the VP of Process Improvement and Execution at Farm Credit Mid-America. Daro worked with Living Cities when he was the…
#WealthInColor: Navigating the Bay Area’s Entrepreneurial Ecosystem
In 2018, Living Cities, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Surdna Foundation embarked on Start Up, Stay Up, Scale Up [SU(3)], a three-city initiative designed to address gaps in the entrepreneurial ecosystems of San Francisco, New Orleans and Albuquerque for high-growth…
Centering Equity, Transforming Systems: A Profile on Dr. Lomax R. Campbell
As part of our series highlighting alumni of Living Cities’ programs, we spoke with Dr. Lomax R. Campbell, who currently serves as the Director of the Mayor’s Office of Community Wealth Building in the City of Rochester. Lomax worked with…
How 18 of the Largest Foundations and Financial Institutions Are Responding to COVID-19
No one in this country–and few around the world–remain untouched by the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Like others, Living Cities and our members–18 prominent foundations and financial institutions working together to close racial gaps in income and wealth–have been…
Ending White Supremacy Culture: A Resource for Reckoning with History
Living Cities has learned that to do racial equity work with authenticity, we have to embrace a new way of working. It has to start with us, at the level of individual staff and project teams. As we set about…
All in This Together: Ending White Supremacy Culture Starts With Us
Living Cities has learned that to do racial equity work with authenticity, we have to embrace a new way of working. It has to start with us, at the level of individual staff and project teams. As we set about…
Racially Equitable COVID19 Rapid Response from a Front-Line Public Servant
While the realities and impacts of COVID19 continue to unfold, I reflect on past moments in my life that are reminiscent of this time. Prior to working at Living Cities, I worked as a Public Information Officer for the Center…
Practicing Trust and Vulnerability in Partnership: What We’ve Learned from Race Forward
Living Cities is laying the foundations for a new network, Closing the Gaps Network, which will engage city governments in the long-term work of closing racial income and wealth gaps. As we co-design the network with our partners and stakeholders,…
Ideas and Resources for How Cities Can Attack the COVID-19 Crisis
In Kansas City, MO: “People are coming into our office to start businesses because they don’t believe the companies they work for will make it through the COVID-19 shut down. People are preparing to have something to fall back on…
Finding Myself Beyond White Institutional Culture
As a white woman, my anti-racist work is two-fold: supporting people of color, particularly Black organizers, who are working towards new, equitable systems, and doing the internal work required of white people to break down how we have internalized racial…
An Invitation to Center Race in Government Responses to COVID-19
We are asking how to best move the long-term work of closing racial gaps in income and wealth through partnership with city governments, while acknowledging and affirming the immediate crisis that public servants are addressing. We are committed to our…
Turning the Mirror Onto Ourselves
Part of what we’ve learned from looking at the evolution of work in our Integration Initiative cities is that everything ties back to racial equity. The root cause of so many of the inequities we see in cities around the…
Doing the Right Things Right
Living Cities’ new Theory of Change represents our unique position on how to close racial gaps across the country. My colleagues like to joke that no matter what we’re talking about or what meeting I’m in, I’m always asking: Are…
We Were There: Reckoning with Living Cities’ History on Race
Our new interactive movement history timeline lets you interact with Living Cities’ past, including major political milestones and cultural touch points in our history, and envision a future without racial income and wealth gaps. Nearly 30 years ago, Living Cities…