My Focus

I am working with courageous leaders across the nation to revive America as the land of opportunity–to reclaim the American Dream for all. The systems that influence overall life outcomes — that result in better education, more income, increased wealth, and greater access to opportunity, –are deeply interrelated, broken and must be fixed. They fail to position millions of Americans of all races for success but fail spectacularly when it comes to citizens of color who are fast becoming the Nation’s ‘New Majority’ population. To realize this vision, we must disrupt a system that now generates extreme financial insecurity for many and great wealth for few and harness capitalism and private capital in new ways to close those gaps and.

We must unravel the pernicious legacy of slavery, unjust policies and practices that have given us extraordinary racial gaps in income, wealth, health and more.

I know that this vision of America it is possible because I saw it happen over and over again, in my job as president and CEO of Living Cities for the last 14 years. My recent book, Reclaiming the American Dream: Proven Solutions for Creating Economic Opportunity for All, documents these stories from across the country, urban and rural. The book, together with the articles, blogs and other media linked in the sections below, provide examples of how, working together, we can fix broken systems, center racial equity to get to the root causes of the problems and transform capital and capitalism so it can work for all Americans, especially our New Majority populations.

I founded Reclaiming the Dream LLC in 2021 to work closely with courageous leaders in the public, private and philanthropic sectors for the long term, structural change needed to close racial gaps in income and wealth.  I’m helping local leaders to build solutions commensurate to the true nature and scale of the challenges they face in their communities and as a nation, overall. These answers include, but are not limited to, developing new, multi-sector models for changing long-broken systems; adopting proven, race-centered solutions that benefit all; and harnessing public, private and philanthropic capital both to transform capitalism and achieve results at unprecedented scale.

I also teach, lecture and serve on boards.  I have been a Lecturer in Urban Planning and Design at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design (GSD) for the past three years—having co-created and co-taught a seminar where a dedicated team of students works with an American city to develop a blueprint for solving their affordable housing challenges in ten years.  I also serve as Chairman of Duke University’s Center for Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship (CASE) Advisory Council. CASE, part of Duke’s Fuqua School of Business, prepares leaders and organizations with the business skills needed to achieved lasting social change.