What do you love most about your city?
What I love most about Dayton are the people — the people who’ve chosen to move here, or who’ve grown up here and decided to stay. In the course of any given day, I get to interact with so many different people with incredible stories about why they’ve made Dayton their home. We are a community of creative, determined and resilient people — I am constantly in awe at what we can accomplish together.
What issue in do you feel needs more attention in our communities?
I think we are at a very interesting point in history where many of the institutions and systems that have served us up until now are undergoing transformation or are poised for transformation. This is not unique to Dayton, but I see so many signs of this change underway — whether it is our education systems, how and where we do our jobs, healthcare, social services… the list is long. Change, even necessary change, can be painful, and I’m hopeful we can approach some of the changes coming down the pike without declaring “winners” or “losers”, but with a mindset of curiosity that allows for mutual flourishing.
What’s your Big Idea for the Dayton region?
I’m more of a proponent of a 100 small ideas that move the needle, rather than one big idea, but if I had to choose, it would a greater joint effort to get our young people in the region more deeply engaged in the community, not only from a workforce perspective, but from a volunteerism and social perspective as well. We’ve been doing some of this work at the Dayton Chamber through our Generation Dayton program and tapping into the early-career professional demographic, but I’d like to start even earlier in high-school and post-secondary programs. It is crucial that we help our young folks build social capital, and to show them what a connected, engaged life looks like for them in the Dayton region.