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New Urban League president to focus on career training, youthBy Henry Sanders, Jr.
I sat down with Gray to learn about his past experiences, his goals, and his vision for the Greater Madison community. Q: Tell us a little bit about your background. A: I have spent most of my career, about 14 years, in nonprofit work in Milwaukee. My responsibilities ranged from work as a community organizer, evolving to work in job development, economics and business, and later I moved into the housing realm as well. I feel that I am well versed in non-profit development, as I have been involved in so many facets of it. It takes some experience in a number of areas to be able to create a non-profit model that really empowers folks. I've been blessed to have those types of opportunities. My last position was with Habitat for Humanity Inter-national. That was a different experience than what I've been used to in working with neighborhood based nonprofits. I was working on a regional scale with them out of Chicago but managing 250 affiliates across seven states. That was a challenge but it also gave me an opportunity ... it gave me a chance to look at different communities of different sizes and shapes and how they were focusing on housing issues across a seven-state region. Q: I know that one of your top priorities as president and CEO is economic development. Why is that a priority to you? A: In all my years of experience, it is the one thing I have seen that nonprofits have not been as successful with as they have been in other areas. And to me when you look at the wealth gap in this country, white families have 10 times more equity than African American and Hispanic families. That is something we need to focus on so that we can start building wealth in our community and building equity for the future so that our future generations will not have the same type of issues that we are dealing with. From my own experience, to plan and build what you want to do in this country, you have to be about building equity. As an entrepreneur, I've been able to start a housing development company and build a small business franchise with Cousins Subs. I'm building equity for my family so that my son will be able to go to college. But we need to start, in the non-profit realm, helping folks in our programs build equity so that they can create the same kind of formats and road maps for their families. That way we can work to close the wealth gap that we have currently. Q: What types of things can the Urban League do to help foster the entrepreneurial spirit that leads to economic development? A: There are three things that need to happen. One is that we need to develop more customized training and opportunities for folks that are underemployed and unemployed in our community to get them into career ladder opportunities. Once they are in those career ladder type positions, making the type of income that they need to support and raise their families, they can start thinking about what's beyond that point. The second thing is we need to really start working with youth to show them the types of career opportunities they can be involved in. We need to ask ourselves how we get them prepared now at the middle school level or even earlier. Since the Urban League focuses on middle schools, how can we get those schools and those children those types of career exploration opportunities? What is it going to take to run their own company? What is it going to take to be able to work one day for a global company as a computer programmer? The third realm is creating a way for the Urban League to become entrepreneurial itself where we can reach economic independence. If you are going to preach that to the folks that you work with, then you're going to have to be about that as well. So will the Urban League become entrepreneurial in creating its own businesses? We think those are opportunities that we should start pursuing. And maybe partnering with someone who has the dream of becoming an entrepreneur and one that doesn't have the wherewithal to raise the resources that are needed to do it. Maybe the Urban League can partner with those folks to help them create an opportunity. At the same time we will be fostering opportunities for folks of color in Madison. We need to uncover Madison and find out what the opportunities are for folks of color and then we can advertise around the state in Milwaukee and other places that have a large concentration of minority businesses and talk with them about expanding their opportunities to Madison. ... One of the issues in Madison is that the home ownership rate for African Americans in Madison is about 2 percent, and for Hispanics it's even less. The way I started my business is that I bought a home and then used that equity to do some more things. It's problematic if you have a 2 percent rate for people of color that are in home ownership. We need to increase home ownership opportunities so that folks are building equity. Q: Historically, the civil rights movement, the Urban League and the NAACP have been more about social justice. It sounds like there has been a shift to focus more on economic development and economic empowerment. Why the change? A: It's simple. If you look at the numbers again, if you look at the wealth gap numbers, if you look at the number of African American businesses across the country, you look at the incarceration rates, you look at the underemployment issues - if there was ever a time where we needed to move ahead in this country and move our agenda ahead, the time is now. When African American males are still making 70 cents on a dollar to their white counterparts, that's a problem. When there is 50 percent unemployment in most inner city neighborhoods for African American males between 18 and 30, you have a real problem. If you have a literacy problem in your community and you're not building a model to make sure those issues do not plague future generations in your community, then you're going to be behind the curve. And I think at this point we are. I have to be honest. In looking around Madison, I don't see a lot of African-American businesses, but I see similar things that I would see in (larger) urban areas plaguing the Madison community. I see pockets of poverty that seem to go unnoticed in Madison. This is why our strategy is about economic development and economic independence. Q: In Milwaukee you were one of the first African Americans to establish a Business Improvement District. As someone who did business in Milwaukee tell us how the business community embraced and supported some of the things you wanted to do there, as compared to the reception you've gotten from the business community here in Madison in regards to your economic development ideas. A: That's a good question. What's different and pretty obvious is that in Milwaukee there is a higher concentration of minority folks. Milwaukee is a minority-majority city, so you have that as a charge to really look at offering business development opportunities and getting more folks of color interested in entrepreneurial activities. Madison does not have a high concentration of minority folks, and there's a real gap between professional blacks in Madison, who seem to be a little older (age 50 or older) and the young professionals (age 24-40) who are the folks that to me would probably be more entrepreneurial or be willing to take the chance to be more entrepreneurial. You still see some of the pockets of poverty you would see in Milwaukee but there is a real opportunity with the health care industry there that seems to be booming and global. There are also a number of insurance agencies there that are regional or national companies. Q: I know the Urban League wants to build a center for economic development and it may be your number one priority. Tell me about what that is and why it is important for Madison. A: Well at the end of the day, it is our flagship for what I call building equity. It will house our new headquarters, it will have the workforce solutions center, it will have the career youth center, and it will have the social entrepreneurial center. When you put all that together you have what we are calling our center for economic development. But more important than the building, it's the programs that have to be strong to build that facility. We have to have the type of programming that will build equity in all three of those tracks. Q: When do you anticipate the center for economic development will be up and running? A: I'd like it to be up tomorrow because we are bursting at the seams in our location now and this community needs a model that is focused towards it. ... We're meeting with folks to see what their interest is and we're hoping to launch a capital campaign starting in the fall of 2006 that we hope will be a two-year campaign. madison.com ©2009 Capital Newspapers. All rights reserved. |
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