By Cate Fox, Ambitio US Program Director
From November 6–8, Nyia and I were in Boston to attend a gathering of four cohorts of Boston Impact Initiative’s (BII) Emerging Fund Manager program. Ambitio US supported this convening because it offered us an opportunity to hear directly from leaders from community-led and governed place-based funds about their experiences and needs, which is valuable for our sectoral infrastructure work. The convening also connected and reconnected fund managers from all over the country with each other. Leaders from funds like Kheprw Institute located in Indianapolis, neighborbuilt located in Kansas City (MO), and Impact Ventures located in Dallas, often feel isolated in their work, so being together to process the election and its potential effects on structures like theirs and the communities they are working hard to serve felt timely.
Nyia and Ico-facilitated small working sessions on Thursday afternoon and joined the cohort for a joyful dinner at one of BII’s first investments — the Roundhead Brewing Company . At the dinner, I got to know the couple behind Kheprw (Imhotep Adisa and Pambana Uishi), which we have been watching for years; catch-up with Elaine Rasmussen of ConnectUp! Institute; and meet the team at EntrepreNorth (focused on Indigenous populations in Canada).
On Friday, we went to the Law Offices of Morgan Lewis , where funders and investors gathered to receive a State of the Cohort briefing based on the research conducted by Elaine Rasmussen. In her summary of the report, Elaine shared highlights and grounded them in her own experiences of the struggle of making a living and having a life while she builds infrastructure that will benefit so many.
In Ambitio US , we call a gathering like this relational infrastructure-building. Bringing people together, especially in person, reminds our builders that they are part of a larger movement that is full of wisdom and experience and that can help those building now and guide the next generation.
We left feeling inspired and hopeful about what is happening in communities all over the country. The time for investing in projects and people like these, in other words those building new systems, is right now. A true multiracial democracy is not going to build itself.
This article was originally published on Medium. Read it on Medium →