By Bree Jenkins, Haas MBA Class of 2019
Have you ever had the distinct feeling that you were standing in a snow globe? Surrounded by large beautiful flurries in a world blanketed in white, just waiting for your entire world to be shaken so that you could once again change perspective? This is how I felt during my stay in Salt Lake City, where even a powerful winter storm could not stop the 2019 Winter Innovation Summit. The event promised to bring together social entrepreneurs, policymakers, nonprofits, and funders and succeeded in their goal of connecting changemakers. Set up as a series of deep dive group sessions that followed mainstage introductions of the topics, the conference promoted collaboration, enabling me to share my own thoughts and experiences while receiving key learnings from the outstanding participants and speakers that attended.
Two discussions in particular caught my attention, one called “Building Entrepreneurial Ecosystems in Rural Communities”, and the other from Michael Tubbs, the young and innovative mayor of Stockton, California. Starting with his keynote address on the first day, Mayor Tubbs blew me away when discussing why he started a universal basic income program in Stockton. He emphasized that empowering community members is key, saying “People most directly impacted by the problem have the tools and insight to solve their problems.” Having worked in education and been absorbed in social impact at Haas, this concept was not new to me. I was impressed, though, by his ability to push back on investors and funders who believe that they have the answers to solving systemic issues in low-income communities or in opportunity zones without realizing that “there’s no opportunity zone without the people who live in that zone.” This was the first time I was able to explore the concept of opportunity zones, which are defined by the IRS as “economically-distressed communities where new investments, under certain conditions, may be eligible for preferential tax treatment.” Created by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in 2017, opportunity zones have the prospect of spurring economic development by incentivizing funders to invest in these locales. While this program seems admirable, I believe that the legislation is a good step forward but the implementation of it is key. In describing how his constituents think about the development of Stockton, Mayor Tubbs recounted an individual who reminded him that “Nothing about us can be for us without us.” To ensure that the investment is in the interest of the community, we must think about who is building in opportunity zones, who will benefit from the investment, who will profit from the investment, who asked for the investment in the first place and the motivations behind each one of them. The Sorenson Impact Center is now working on developing best practices for investing in opportunity zones.
The conversation about including the community in the development of a region was also prominent in a deep dive I attended named “Building Entrepreneurial Ecosystems in Rural Communities”. I was in a group led by Stephanie Gutierrez, the co-founder of Hope Nation LLC. The organization exists to assist Indigenous and rural communities in turning their hope and determination into positive change. I loved our discussion, as Gutierrez discussed how she works to develop and encourage an entrepreneurial mindset among the groups that she partners with. Not only do marginalized communities have less access to resources like capital, many times they have not had the experience or background in building businesses. This limits their opportunities to invest and build where they live. The solution, though, is not to introduce western education on what it means to grow an organization. Our group discussed the need to identify the strengths of that particular group, which could be to focus on community-based entrepreneurship which reflects the cultural values and linkages that have already been created and nurtured by that community. In moving the snow globe, one must remember that things look completely different from a new perspective and that each perspective is valid in and of itself.
