NFBPA’s Forum 2025

The National Forum for Black Public Administrators (NFBPA) will host Forum 2025: “Today’s Choices, Tomorrow’s Impact,” in San Francisco, CA, April 9-13, 2025. NCRC’s Chief of Institutional Accountability and Community Engagement Catherine Crosby will be speaking on the panel: Place-based strategies: Leveraging private capital to meet local needs on April 11 at 11:45 am PT.

Place-based strategies: Leveraging private capital to meet local needs

Are you wondering how to better leverage institutional investments to ensure that current residents can benefit? This session will share examples of place-based economic development fueled by partnerships between community organizations, private investors and local government. A key focus of this session will be showcasing how the interests of the people living in the neighborhoods where projects are located are included and not compromised in the process of meeting the municipalities and private sector community and economic development priorities. Panelists will share how they navigated challenging conversations to get to desirable results for community members, local government and private institutions.

Moderator:

Catherine Crosby, Chief of Institutional Accountability and Community Engagement, NCRC

Speakers:

Erika King, Senior Vice President of Economic Development and Lending, African American Alliance of CDFI CEO’s

Shanelle Smith Whigham, Senior Vice President and National Community Engagement Director, KeyBank

Nikki Beasley, Executive Director, Richmond Neighborhood Housing Services

Odie Donald II, Chief of Staff, Office of Atlanta Mayor