Urban revitalization strategy consultant, real estate developer and Peabody Award-winning broadcaster Majora Carter will present the next Hyde Lecture at 4 p.m. Aug. 24 in the Nebraska Union Auditorium.
The lecture, “Community as Corporation,” is free and open to the public.
Carter challenges the notion that the best and brightest talent in small and low-status communities need to leave to succeed. She proposes community self-examination and encourages stakeholders to pay attention to why people want to leave and to learn how to harness education, health care and other programs to keep talented people.
Carter is responsible for the creation and implementation of numerous green-infrastructure projects, policies and job training and placement systems.
At Sustainable South Bronx, Carter deployed MIT’s first-ever Mobile Fab-Lab, a digital fabrication laboratory, which served as an early iteration of the makerspaces found elsewhere today. The project drew residents and visitors together for guided and creative collaboration.
After establishing Sustainable South Bronx and Green For All, among other organizations, she opened a private consulting firm to help spread the message and success of social enterprise and economic development in low-status communities.
Carter co-founded the Bronx Tech Meetup, as well as the StartUp Box software services company, which is rebuilding the entry-level tech job pipeline by using market forces and established business practices to help diversify the U.S. tech sector. Clients include Digital.nyc, PlayDots and GIPHY.
Carter has helped connect tech industry pioneers such as Etsy, Gust, FreshDirect, Google and Cisco to diverse communities at all levels, and she continues to drive resources that value diversity into the communities left out of previous economic growth trends.
A graduate of the Bronx High School of Science, Carter is an advisory board member of the Bronx Academy of Software Engineering High School and board member of the Andrew Goodman Foundation.
She has received awards and honorary degrees from groups as diverse as Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, John Podesta’s Center for American Progress, Goldman Sachs and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. She has been named one of BusinessInsider.com’s Silicon Alley 100, Goldman-Sachs’ “100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs” and The Weather Channel’s “Individuals Making An Impact On Long-Term Global Climate Change.”
The College of Architecture’s Hyde Lecture Series is a long-standing, endowed public program. Each year the college hosts compelling speakers in the fields of architecture, interior design, landscape architecture and planning that enrich the ongoing dialog around agendas which are paramount to the design disciplines and university graduates.
