Jeremy Nowak honored in three new Reinvestment Fund initiatives
Upholding Nowak'south Vision
Reinvestment Fund launches 3 initiatives in Jeremy Nowak's accolade that marry the belatedly Citizen chairman's singular commitment to thinking large—and doing even better
Sep. 24, 2019
"I first met Jeremy xx years ago. He was a remarkable leader. Hardworking, resourceful in finding opportunities to practise proficient, intelligent beyond all imagination," says John Summers. "He truly was someone who was brilliant at thinking through new strategies, and executing them."
Summers, a lawyer with Hangley Aronchick Segal Pudlin & Schiller, was formerly board chair at Reinvestment Fund, the organization Nowak founded 30 years ago to improve the quality of life in underserved neighborhoods.
Using analytical and financial tools, Reinvestment Fund brings high-quality grocery stores, affordable housing, schools and health centers to communities that need ameliorate access—and, in and then doing, attracts farther investment—to aid families atomic number 82 healthier, more productive lives.
In the wake of Nowak's untimely death last summer, Summers says the Reinvestment Fund thought long and hard about how to memorialize his legacy. "We wanted to exist prospective, not just retrospective, thinking nearly initiatives that would movement things forward."
Nowak, every bit anyone who encountered him knows, stood for many things: the commutation of ideas; people; the arts; getting stuff done. It is in that spirit that the Reinvestment Fund announced today the launch of 3 initiatives in Nowak'southward accolade.
Showtime, there's the Jeremy Nowark Memorial Lecture, a series in partnership with Penn Institute for Urban Inquiry (PennIUR). The outset lecture, to be held in January 2020, will focus on the new localism work that Nowak and Bruce Katz, a Citizen contributing writer and manager of the Nowak Metro Finance Lab at Drexel, championed.
The second initiative is a creative placemaking fund—a seed capital fund for customs-based arts and culture projects.
"We wanted to be prospective, non just retrospective, thinking about initiatives that would move things forward."
"Creative placemaking was really one of Jeremy'due south strongest passions at the end of his time at the Reinvestment Fund," says Don Hinkle-Brown, president and CEO of Reinvestment Fund. "I recollect how excited he was when Rocco Landesman took over NEA (National Endowment for the Arts), and when he and Linda Ronstadt testified in front of Congress about the importance of arts in communities."
Reinvestment Fund has been supporting arts and cultural institutions since its primeval days, including one of the outset loans Hinkle-Brown worked on with Nowak, to Painted Helpmate Arts Center. "That has always been a part of our piece of work," he says. "It would be an easy thing to eliminate if you lot're looking for efficiencies, if y'all're looking for calibration. But we want to cement that it stays part of our work."
The 3rd endeavor is the Nowak Fellowship, a year-long fellowship based at Reinvestment Fund supporting a pre-graduate school swain who'due south interested in building strong, salubrious and more equitable communities through capital, analytics and expertise.
"Over time, there will exist Nowak fellows sprinkled in our region and across the state who have been able to spend a yr that is formative in their development," Summers explains.
The honors in Nowak's name add together to a itemize of such remembrances since final year, including those at The Denizen, where he was founding board chair.
This twelvemonth, Foodizen columnist Jason Wilson is The Denizen's outset Nowak Fellow, exploring the intersection of food, civilisation and community. And this year, The Citizen gave its first Jeremy Nowak Urban Innovation Award, a $fifty,000 prize to the Women's Community Revitalization Project for community-centered development work that is in the spirit of Nowak'southward life work. Both initiatives are funded by Bound Signal Partners.
At Reinvestment Fund, the lecture series, the placemaking fund, the fellowship—Summers says these touch on ideas, capital and people, three pillars that Nowak approached with endless thoughtfulness, and a tireless commitment to improving lives in Philadelphia and beyond.
Photo via Federal Reserve Banking concern of Philadelphia 
Source: https://thephiladelphiacitizen.org/jeremy-nowak-reinvestment-fund-initiatives/
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