Place Matters: Learning from the Past, Envisioning the Future

Micah: Cecilia, I’m so thrilled to talk about the power of place with you today! I know you have a lot of expertise and experience with place-based initiatives that focus on creating social and economic opportunity. Could you share why you’ve chosen to work on this topic?

Cecilia: My passion for this work can be broken into two major buckets. First, like many folks in this country, I have witnessed what it is like for some kids to make it out of the poverty they were born into while other kids remain in poverty. For the lucky few who make it out, their family and future generations might benefit. But often, that doesn’t have a ripple effect to create progress in the entire community. I have seen firsthand what that’s like through both my personal and professional journeys. For example, I come from a family with four kids born to a mom who was the first in her family to immigrate to America, relying on public assistance such as Section 8 housing. Our lives have taken different paths despite coming from the same household and community. My two brothers have been in and out of jail for most of their lives, and their families are still immersed in poverty. Yet, my sister and I both have master’s degrees, and our families are now on a trajectory towards mobility. Still, our personal mobility has not changed the circumstances of the broader community from which we came.  

As someone who was deemed worthy of saving, I carry the weight of what that means into every aspect of my life and work, because I know my trajectory could have been the complete opposite. 

Which leads me to the second bucket: I am convinced that if we want to be serious about advancing mobility in vulnerable communities across this country – like the one I grew up in – it will mean investing in the entire community, strengthening the infrastructure, and ensuring all children have access to the same opportunities, not just the chosen few. Like so many folks inspired by Geoffrey Canada and the Harlem Children’s Zone, I began to consider what it might look like to create the conditions within an entire place or community which would allow all the kids living there to access opportunity. As I witnessed the success of other place-based work, it made me realize that I didn’t only want to fund a variety of programs that would create conditions for a handful of children living in the same community to thrive. Instead, I sought to be strategic about serving all children in a particular region and creating a holistic network of support. I asked myself, “What would it take to literally throw everything – the same opportunities and resources offered to children in affluent communities: good schools, music, summer enrichment programs, etc. – at children and families within a specific place so that all residents could climb out of poverty?”  

Micah: Thank you for sharing your personal story. I love how you have pulled from your life and the inspiration of other important place-based work to evolve your thinking. On that note, I know you led a place-based partnership in Miami in a prior role, and I’ve heard you talk so earnestly about how you felt that the children of that community were all your kids. How did thinking about a whole place show up in that work?

Cecilia: It has been seven years since I worked in Liberty City, and I promise you not a day goes by that I don’t think about my children. I care so deeply about them, still. I am passionate about place-based partnerships because in this work I have experienced more “fail forwards” than successes. I think by the time I got to Miami I had learned some important lessons, and I still had more to learn. For instance, like so many other social sector leaders in the work, I effectively lied. We lie about what impact we can create with restricted, smaller-scale grants and the kind of outcomes we’re able to drive on the dime that we are provided. But you cannot solve poverty with fifty thousand dollars. I began to understand: if I want to change one of Miami’s most vulnerable and promising communities, I should start with a single block and I should start with listening.  

The first thing that I did was go to all the public housing units and knock on every door. I introduced myself and spoke to everyone – the residents, the youth, the children, and the elderly. I asked what they needed for their children and for themselves. They shared a lot that informed the work, but one of the things they all referenced was a lack of space for children to play. The playground at the elementary school surrounding public housing was condemned and hadn’t been used for years. Creating a play space felt like an accomplishable, realistic task, but at the same time one I wasn’t yet sure how to achieve. I noticed there was an empty lot surrounding the public housing unit, so I looked up the owner of that lot, called her, and she invited me over to her house. She was Latina, so in Spanish I explained the situation and asked if she would be willing to lease the land to the organization, noting that I planned to apply for grants to achieve the buildout. She said in Spanish, “Aye, Cecilia. I’ll give you the entire property. And, by the way, I have five other lots in this area. Do you want them, too?” It was one conversation that initiated real change. 

I knew if I wanted to get community buy-in, I needed them to see visual signs of change occurring on their block. So, we cleaned up the neighborhood. We had roughly 300 volunteers come and pick up trash, create flowerbeds, and more. I applied for a grant, received the grant, and within six months of the original request for a space for children to play, we had a Kaboom playground built and hosted a huge community event! 

There were other aspects of the work that happened in tandem. During that time, for example, I partnered with a principal to think about key things we would do to turn the local school around. But for those first six months, it was imperative that I demonstrate that I could listen and that I could act. Ultimately, my block-by-block strategy expanded to 24 blocks.  

Micah: What a great story! I can just picture the new playground. That story reminds me of one lesson I’ve learned from you about place-based work in general: the importance of trust, what it can take to build that trust, and how fragile trust is. We can have visionary community leaders, which you were in Miami, but if people don’t trust that you’re really in their corner, it can hinder progress.  

So, let’s fast forward to early 2020. You joined Blue Meridian to help bring to life one aspect of our newly minted strategic plan, which was to go deeper into place-based investing across the country. In your own words, how did the journey lead us to the work and structure of our current Place Matters portfolio?

Cecilia: It feels like a tremendous privilege to be a part of Blue Meridian and to be able to provide right-sized capital to social sector leaders. I am humbled by the opportunity and feel an enormous responsibility to invest the dollars in leaders who have demonstrated a commitment to advancing mobility for all children in promising communities across this country. 

In regard to the Place Matters strategy, when I first joined Blue Meridian, it was pre-COVID. Our initial thinking was that we would fund one or two places, learn something from those investments, and then leverage that learning to evolve the strategy down the road. Then, COVID hit. We quickly decided to pivot to provide more support to more places. We started by looking at nearly 250 place-based partnerships across the country, at both the region and neighborhood levels, and we narrowed in based on a set of investing criteria – which was challenging because there are so many incredible leaders across the country doing essential work who are worthy of an investment. We launched the Place Matters portfolio in the summer of 2020, and within six months committed more than $90 million to 12 place-based partnerships throughout the US.  

We also sought to integrate lessons from past efforts by thinking beyond supporting a single partnership to drive this work locally. We asked ourselves, “What are the enabling conditions that will make this work actually thrive?” and “What would all places need to support their work?” And that thinking is what led us to the three-pronged approach of our Place Matters portfolio: invest in place-based partnerships, invest in catalytic supports, and unlock significant funding for this work to succeed.  

Micah: I hear you: we can’t just invest just in a place alone. We need to consider the surrounding conditions, tools, and resources and bolster that set of supports. What kinds of supports are these and why are they so critical for place-based partnerships to truly succeed? 

Cecilia: That’s exactly right, Micah. Leaders of places need technical assistance. They need data to inform what’s successful, where they pivot, and what’s working for some kids and not working for others. They are also all deeply wrestling with attracting and retaining talent for the long–term – this work requires someone to stay with a child and their family for the entirety of their cradle-to-career experience. Furthermore, leaders should be able to learn from and share success with one another all across the country, but they need a network to do so. We call this set of resources “catalytic supports,” and they offer the tools place-based partnerships need to be successful. As part of our Place Matters approach, we have invested in a set of catalytic supports in order to drive real change. 

Micah: Let’s change gears a bit. At Blue Meridian, we strive to learn from our experiences and constantly evolve. What would you say are the main Place Matters learnings so far, three years into this portfolio? 

Cecilia: Despite the collective years of experience as organizational leaders ourselves, the team and I have learned so much, and we continue to reflect and pivot. Two lessons come to mind immediately. First, I think we’re clearer now that there are some key stakeholders that are needed at the table if our investees – and thereby Place Matters – are to be successful. You cannot drive a successful place-based partnership effort without the K-12 system at the table from the start, without the city and county government thinking about how they’re going to drive or redirect resources to a place, without the churches and the residents and the other community leaders. We have seen the vital importance of working across sectors.  

Second, having a concrete strategy to aggregate capital is a game-changer for this work. And beyond the funding that Blue Meridian provides to a given community, we believe in helping those communities figure out how to unlock even more dollars. This resonates for me, personally, given the moments early in my career when I made promises about what I could do with fifty thousand dollars: we cannot nickel-and-dime what it takes to drive mobility at scale in a place. And in order to unlock additional capital, you need to be able to articulate a vision that folks can get behind.  

Micah: These are some really substantial but actionable lessons! How have you applied them to the Place Matters strategy as it’s moved forward? 

Cecilia: Recently, we went to three place-based partnerships to say, “We are willing to invest an additional $50 million, and we’re asking you to aggregate capital – from local and regional philanthropy – to raise another $50 million.” I’m sure that felt impossible to these local leaders, and internally we had a lot of doubt. But each place created a visionary, community-wide, investable plan that articulated the outcomes for children and the community that were tangible and placed thousands of children on a path to mobility. And they led with that plan, with that vision, and galvanized the philanthropic and public sector to invest. Leading with the plan proved that raising funding was possible and allowed the local leaders to focus on implementing the five- or seven-year plans they’d assembled.  

Still, we acknowledge that life happens. COVID happened! There are going to be a lot of unknowns and a lot of setbacks. There are also going to be some things in each plan that are not actually impactful for children. And so, these partnerships may have to pivot. Blue Meridian is approaching the work with an understanding: we are going to try, we’re going to do all we can, and when it doesn’t work out as we expected, we’re going to use that learning to continue to galvanize and figure out how to drive mobility at scale. The thing that I wake up every morning excited about is being a part of a team of individuals who are committed to helping lift people out of poverty in a way that is scalable, in a way that others can follow. 

Micah: I imagine that your personal excitement is a large reason you have been able to build the necessary trust required for this work.  

That being said, if Blue Meridian’s place-based investments were successful beyond your wildest dreams, how do you see that changing place-based work at large and social and economic mobility in the US?

Cecilia: In my wildest dreams, there are more than 20 places across this country all demonstrating significant impact at scale in accelerating mobility for children and their families. While each solution set is different because communities need different things, these partnerships all have the same underpinning, and they all have the same hope and the same commitment to outcomes. Then, place-based and public sector leaders around the nation would have the ability to pick and borrow from these examples to create or supplement their vision for expanding economic and social mobility in their specific context. For mayors, for governors, for presidents, these would also serve as models and real proof points for change. In this way, local leaders could have the ability to truly transform an entire place, not just impact one or two children in that place.