The session will engage social impact investors and visionary national leaders in a vibrant discussion about opportunities to co-invest in an essential yet under-developed arena for impact investing – retail and mixed-use commercial real estate development in underinvested Black and Brown communities – in partnership with community stakeholders.
Speakers will include three visionary developers with a deep commitment to shared ownership of commercial real estate: Ajia Morris, founder of LocalCode Kansas City; Lyneir Richardson, founder of Chicago TREND; and John Haines, founder of Community Investment Trust in Portland, OR. Each of the leaders is actively developing community-serving commercial real estate projects; offering ownership opportunities to community stakeholders – residents, customers, business owners, community-serving nonprofits or a combination of all; and replicating their model in other parts of the country.
The session will be moderated by Ida Rademacher, vice president of the Aspen Institute and co-executive director of the Aspen Institute Financial Security Program (Aspen FSP). The speakers are part of Aspen FSP’s first Wealth Innovators Cohort, a select group of leaders who are developing and replicating models to democratize ownership of commercial and mixed-use real estate in communities across America. The cohort is part of Aspen FSP’s Future of Wealth portfolio, designed to galvanize a tenfold increase in wealth holdings among low-wealth, Black and Brown households in the U.S. by 2050.
