 You know, I know there's been a lot of networking going on here these past couple days, and basically this I like to consider one of my earliest networking opportunities. I'm on the phone with Santa Claus, you know, telling him that the Easter Bunny says I've been a really, really good girl, and that he should really, like, hook me up at the end of the day. So that's it for me there. But honestly, this is the kind of things that I grew up with. You know, the landlords were basically torching their own buildings to collect insurance money. This was pre-Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, as I think you all know. But this is what I saw pretty much every day. There wasn't a lot of financing and dollars coming into communities like this. And though I saw my neighborhood on the nightly news as the poster child for Urban Blight, I was often told that, you know, that these were the playgrounds of our youth. But we knew it to be otherwise because it did sometimes feel like a war zone. My brother, in fact, who had served two separate tours in Vietnam, came home only to be gunned down in the neighborhood right next door to ours when I was seven. But this, but that community was not the community that my parents moved into back in the late 1940s. They were part of that great American migration of black folks, you know, coming from down South up North, looking for their great American dream. They settled in Hunts Point, which is in the South Bronx in New York City, which was at the time a white working class community, literally a walk-to-work neighborhood. People walked from the residential area into the industrial section. We did so much steel, it was called Little Pittsburgh. And then other black and brown folks from the South and the Caribbean followed suit. White flight happened. The highway construction boom added to that mess. And so we had the economic, you know, problems that led to many of the social problems, which also led to many of the environmental issues that we are dealing with in our community from waste and truck traffic, et cetera. And then it's not that they're just not nice things to be around. They, of course, have a pretty big impact on our health. In particular, we have one of the highest childhood asthma hospitalization rates in the entire country. Diabetes and obesity absolutely related to how a community is planned or how the land is used. So if a parent's feeling like their kids are going to get hit by a truck, they're not going to likely going to let them run out and get outside and play, you know, and get all sorts of physical activity that way. And there also, since there's very few chances for healthy and affordable produce around, that's also another issue as well. But the worst thing was something that we absolutely had some understanding of was that an understanding that was conclusively proven by Columbia. Proximity to fossil fuel emissions causes learning disabilities in young children. And where do you find these fossil fuel-emitting sources? You find them in poor communities, right? And we know, statistically in this country, poor kids who do poorly in school statistically go to jail. It's like we were creating a pipeline of poverty directly into prison. So you might imagine, you know, that I was a smart little kid. I ended up going to the Bronx High School of Science. Education was my ticket out. I went to Wesleyan University. And I had no intention of going back to my neighborhood except to visit my mom and dad because my mom made the most amazing fried chicken in the world. But that was just that. But honestly, I really had no intention of going back. But I got into graduate school and I was broke and I had to move back in with mommy and daddy. Fortunately, for me, I got to see my neighborhood in a completely different way. I did have a little education and some distance. So what I did was see that the neighborhood that I thought I had left and was really tired of because that's just the way it was, was actually kind of targeted because it happened to be a poor community of color and thus politically vulnerable. And therefore, it was politically expedient to put the kind of horrible environmental and economic burdens that we dealt with in our community. It just reminded me that there are things that I wanted to do. So I was absolutely a part of the big solid waste campaigns to help the city encourage to do it more sustainably. But quite frankly, I was really more interested in fighting for something rather than against it. And so at the same time we were in that fight, I kept getting these notices to do, to think about doing Bronx River restoration projects from this organization. They were offering little seed grants. I found this little dump with my dog and basically to realize that this was the beginning of our neighborhood's waterfront transformation. And after taking that seed grants and leveraging it hundreds of times over, we got this park. Thank you. And it's become this really amazing thing that really speaks to what the community is. And yes, I got married there and that is the dog that helped me discover the park. But what it also did was really help us think about what else we can do in our community. So I wrote the proposal for the South Bronx Greenway, which is a federal transportation grant that was designed to literally work with projects that reduced congestion and improved air quality. CMAC is what it was called. And so we got $1.25 million to design and plan the South Bronx Greenway, which is a pedestrian, a friendly bike and pedestrian path, but also provides opportunities for stormwater management as well as air quality improvement and of course economic development too. And so this is what we're looking like as we start to spend nearly $50 million worth of that investment, which is really kind of fun. And I'm happy to say that we're the only community initiated project that got transportation project non-vehicular base that got funding through the economic stimulus package. So from the boogie down, all right? So there we go. But all that to say that, oh, and my absolute favorite, we were able to really support people in our own community by helping them to have both an economic and a financial stake in the betterment of their own communities. So we started one of the countries first and actually still pretty gosh darn successful. Green College of Training and Placement System, where we worked with folks to do things like learning how to clean up contaminated lands, wetland restoration, urban forestry management, green roofing, and really giving them these skills, these kind of hard skills, but also they were able to support themselves because we also worked with the soft skills. Most of the folks we worked with were actually folks generationally impoverished or people coming in and out of the criminal justice system, which meant that they didn't have, although they might have had really successful businesses, they didn't really have the kind of skills that really made them good employees. So we helped them do that and really understand that, and that's why we were able to boast that kind of success rate. But so now, and since I left the San Diego South Bronx back in 2008 and started doing my own consulting firm, and so I've been around the country and around the world, actually doing advisory services, speaking, blah, blah, blah. And what I realized that the same kind of work that I did when I was back at home, I wanted to do it again, real project-based development and really come, but take it to another level. And so I'm starting a new organization called Hometown Security Laboratories as my own research and development lab back in the South Bronx. But the whole goal is to take these things and take them outside of the community. And so one of the beautiful things that I discovered when I was traveling around was that there's really only two kinds of real estate development in poor communities. There's the kind that assumes that the neighborhood is going to get better. But guess what? It's going to mean that the poor people are going to be priced out. The other kind of real estate development is an assumption that that neighborhood is going to stay poor and only poor people are going to want to live there because that's the only thing that's in there. So you'd see things like super-highly subsidized affordable housing. You'll see things like instead of real institutions that could help people build equity, you'll see things like check-casting stores and payday loanplaces and things of that nature. Instead of the kind of stores that you actually want to shop in, you'll see things like 99 set store liquor stores, the kind of places that sell produce that you wouldn't buy even on a bad day. So with that said, I was like, you know what? There's got to be a better way. And I also started thinking about how did it happen in the first place? And it was really because I started thinking about, oh my God, there were some unintended consequences of integration. Because if you think about the fact that way back in the day, when segregation was quite legal, it was not uncommon for a black doctor per se to be living right next door or nearby, at least a black janitor. But when integration happened, guess what? The ones who could left those places and it left these concentrated pockets of poverty and all the things that are associated with it, the high unemployment, political vulnerability, you name it, it is all there. And I was like, there's got to be a way to do something different than that. And then lo and behold, I'm walking, the same way that I walk every single day from my house to my office. And I see this building, which I've seen every day for my life. Okay. And it's a former Spofford juvenile detention facility. It was actually one of the most notorious facilities in our community. People, criminal justice advocates and also children's aid advocates had been trying to close the site down since it was pretty much open in the 1950s because it was known as a college for criminals. Kids came in and they came out worse. Period. Not rehabilitated. My dad was actually a janitor there back in the 60s and the 70s. And I remember these conversations that he had with my mom, wishing that our house was bigger so that we could take in more kids. And believe me, we actually, we were one of those houses that took kids and people in, which was tough being the youngest of 10 kids to begin with. But life went on, I suppose. But anyway, so I'm thinking amazing because this site had just been closed as a jail. And so it was sitting there empty and on five plus acres of land. And I thought, oh my gosh, that's the site. That is a place where we can actually prove out a model for real economic diversity and real economic improvement and show that if you created mixed income housing and mixed use commercial development in a way that was designed by nature to make it so that people of different incomes wanted to be in the same place because the quality of the area was that cool and there were awful, really beautiful places to spend money and to be employed in so you're actually helping to make poor people less poor then you've got something going on. And I thought, oh my gosh, this is so cool. And then I realized that even though this is just my neighborhood and of course I'm really attached to my neighborhood clearly, there's a, this, that, the actual, the situation was actually very similar to so many places in, around this country in many post-industrial cities where you have a formerly, where you have a residential section that's the orange place and then the blue, the former industrial area. And then you've got that place where they connect, that hinge area. And I thought, oh my gosh, this is, I think I'm onto something. And so then I started thinking about, well, what is this site? I mean, it really is this kind of catalyst that I think is such a smart thing for us to be thinking about, right? And so the whole idea of mixed income housing, you really, you know, poor people, if all they see is other poor people, it's hard for them to imagine a life outside of that. Okay, you have to understand that. Please understand that. There are people in my own community who see me, who know me, who see me in the news, who see me all the time and you know what they'll say to me? So Majora, where do you live? I'm like, down the street, same place I've been. And they're like, you didn't move out? Like, no. But just understand that we need to see more, we do need to see more people like me in my own community and communities like it around this country. That's what economic diversity is. I want people to grow up and think that they don't just have to be poor all their lives. So I spent way too much time on that, I'm sorry. But, and so this is how we help make people not so poor. You look at the economic trends that are going on in a region right now, we know that technology and in particular food processing locally are big economic drivers. So increasing those opportunities there as well. Public space, great democratizer. You don't need money to enjoy it, but it certainly makes the community a much better, safer place to be in. And commercial and retail, people, you want them to understand that they've got opportunities to spend money in their own community. So going back to the whole tech thing, you know, we partnered with MIT to bring a rapid prototyping facility into our community a few years ago. And basically it's where you connect personal computers with fabrication machines. We did this as a way to help people become creators and inventors in their own right. And then some of the kids actually noticed that there's these kind of pallet boxes which were often just thrown away and land-filled in someone else's neighborhood. When you pulled them apart, lashed them together, that they could actually become furniture. So this was actually a really cool, very legal side hustle for a number of young people in our communities. And this is the kind of entrepreneurism that I'm talking about. So, and we just helped create the ability to do that. We also helped understand that there's some great possibilities, you know, for doing things. When you change the dynamic of literally a street, like right now, this is a street that's known because it's so lonely along the side of that facility because nothing was ever built there, that this was a great place for a trucker to go pick up a prostitute. But the second you start changing the ground plane of that area, then what you have is a completely different area where economic developments can thrive, where people can be happy, and all that good stuff. And so the idea for all this stuff is not that I'm trying to figure out a way to create, you know, yet one other little diamond in the rough. That, you know, no, what I'm trying to do, literally, is raise the bar for what passes for real estate development in poor communities nationally, okay? And so it is intended to flow out from there in this really beautiful way that helps people understand that yes, they can become economically empowered. Yes, they can understand that the environment includes them and that they need to be a great advocate for it. And yes, as they grow, that they can become the kind of social activists for their own lives and for their kids' lives and for future generations to come so that they can empower themselves to understand that. That's the kind of stuff that I'm talking about. And you can only do that, really only do that when people start to understand and feel economically empowered when you're putting them in the kind of places that are important for them. And so with that, you know, so here I am. So look, I've got some really cool visions, clearly, you know? And I'm excited about them. No, it's true, you know? I mean, that's why I'm here and I appreciate it and thank you for the love. But I really do believe that this approach to real estate development really could be transformative for this country and around the world. But the bottom line is, you know, I am this great vision chicken. I've done some pretty cool projects, but I didn't know how to financially, you know, sustain a model like this. I mean, we're talking hundreds of millions of dollars. Did I get that? And then I went to this conference, just not that long ago, and met this really groovy guy who is my doppelganger, you know? He's taller, he's wider, and he's male, but, you know, he is my doppelganger. This is a guy who grew up not too far from here in the tenderloin section of San Francisco, you know, worked on Wall Street and really wanted to figure out a way to create, you know, a financially, a really innovative financial model that put money investments right back, you know, into the heart of places and community investment where people needed it. And it is such a powerful thing and really understands that, you know, poverty, you know, it's not a disease, but it is a condition. And there are things that can help make people feel better and really do things to support them to move up and out of it. And you do that by creating the kind of communally revitalization projects that are powerful in every single way from environmentally sound and sustainably built to having the kind of the economic developments that will actually move people up and out of poverty. The kind of innovative financial tool that the Center for the Greater Good, which I'm an advisor on right now, it has done that. And they've already put $240 million to work for 1.7 million Americans, poor Americans. And I'm really, really proud of that. And I'm so excited. So when you get a chance to see John, you should definitely just take a look and just wave hello. I don't know where I'll be somewhere in the audience. But these are the kind of things that we're interested in seeing happen with this fantastic model. And so it's not just about the ability for us to understand that creating this kind of model is all about, it's about people. It is about putting your investments where your values are. It's about seeing them work in a way that you understand that things are going to change if we really want it to make them happen. And the fact that John, his team, and all the partners that are associated with it develop this way of really being open and transparent, and it really is an open source tool as well, to help make it happen. It takes the kind of work that I do, and I've never done anything quite this big. But it takes the work that I do and literally helps create a way to support it because we understand that it's now is the time to help make this thing happen. This quote, this is Martin Luther King Jr. who's from a letter from a Birmingham jail. And he wrote it as a direct response to a group of white ministers who wrote to him, and I think they were just trying to tell him to chill out on this integration thing, maybe you're moving a little bit too fast. And I'm sure they were just concerned also about his physical well-being as well, but this and the whole letter was his response. I am that impatient. John Bellamini is that impatient. I know we are all that impatient trying to figure out a model for sustainably investing in communities in the way that they will work. And I am so looking forward to working with you to help make sure that that happens. Thank you very, very much.