Please interview someone living and/or working in the social impact space in Detroit. Write a piece about them that you can share.
This week, I had the pleasure of speaking with Paul Riser, a pillar of the social impact community. Paul’s deep knowledge about the city of Detroit comes from decades in the social impact and entrepreneurship space. In many ways, Paul is the model social innovator. After starting a non-profit in college, Paul knew he wanted to kick off his career in Detroit to continue his work in social impact. Paul has a background in information technology and spent the early parts of his career at a biomedical startup. Later, he transitioned to TechTown where he started as the head of business development. In this role he helped small neighborhood businesses grow and leverage state-based resources. Today, Paul serves as the head of Detroit Urban Solutions. Paul’s current role stems from Detroit’s complex economic history. After the municipality filed for bankruptcy, the government sought to imagine what innovation and entrepreneurship would look like in the city. Paul and D.U.S. are continuing this work by helping to attract and keep innovative talent in the region. They look at community challenges and bring together partners and stakeholders to address the problem across multiple verticals. What unites Paul’s diverse set of experiences is his constant adherence to his holistic approach to social entrepreneurship and desire to improve the quality of life for the people of Detroit. He uses his personal ties to his hometown a community-level perspective to drive his efforts. Moreover, recognizes the importance of bringing people together, arguing when that you think you are working in one space in social impact, you are really working in all of them. 
    Having spent 95% of his life in the city, Paul and Detroit grew up together, learning to see challenges, not as obstacles, but opportunities for radical change. According to Paul, Detroit’s challenges are what make the city a unique hub for innovation. He describes Detroit as an “underdog” as its often under-resourced forgotten. That said, there is immense opportunity for growth, making the city the ideal test bed for innovation. Keeping with this mentality, Paul sees Detroit as a potential magnet for talent and ideas. His ideas are exemplified by his recent project Erie Hack which focuses on partnerships and technology to improve Detroit’s “blue economy.” Paul predicts that the water industry is an existing asset that should be leveraged and preserved as it directly relates to community issues. What excites Paul most about this work is that it offers him the opportunity to work with people focused on the “triple bottom line: people, plant, and profit.” My conversation with Paul has shifted my perspective on the power of location and the importance of personal connection. As I consider where I want to be after college, I hope to mirror Paul’s approach: choosing a location where your personal drive has room to flourish and help those around you.

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Please interview someone living and/or working in the social impact space in Detroit. Write a piece about them that you can share

This summer my partner Evan and I are taking part in a Storytelling Project with ProsperUS Detroit. For the project, we have reached out and participated in interviews with some of Detroit’s most interesting and inspiring entrepreneurs to hear about their journeys and businesses. Last week, we interviewed Dhafir Hasan, founder of Krispy Addict, a street stylish clothing brand. Hasan is originally from the West Side of Detroit and graduated with a degree in business management. Since being a child, Hasan has had goals and aspirations of owning his own business. Hasan had the idea for opening his clothing brand for a long time, always interested in the clothing industry, but revamped his business plan, fine tuned his work, and named his concept while working with ProsperUS Detroit. The name of the company, Krispy Addicts, holds a deep meaning to Hasan. First, the name is in part inspired by Crispus Attucks, the first American, specifically Black American, killed in the American Revolution. Hasan spoke about how Attucks’s name is not one that is prominent in our classrooms or widely known, and Hasan wanted to bring recognition to him. Crispus Attucks was also at the forefront of the Revolution, and that is where Hasan wants his company to be, at the forefront of the new revolution by using fashion. Hasan pays detailed attention to the products he sells and the images he puts out, and wants to help his community remember and combat the issues that plague his community, and wants to do this through fashion. In addition to the tribute to Crispus Attucks, Krispy is also a term that is used to describe something that is fresh and new, and Hasan wants his brand to be for people that are passionately addicted to living a lifestyle and dressing in a way that is krispy. 

Hasan is so much more than an entrepreneur and businessman. Hasan also serves as an inspiration for his peers and the youth in his area, and is a representative of and inspiration for social impact in his community. He wants others to be inspired by him, a man from inner city Detroit who had a vision from an early age and worked until his goals came to fruition. He is a role model for his community, demonstrating how you can accomplish what you set out to do and achieve your goals when you work hard and pursue your dream. Hasan currently operates two storefronts in communities where he is able to develop relations with the surrounding residents. He showcases other businesses’ flyers and business cards, and is open to local brands coming and doing popup shops in his store to help them grow. Hasan plans to follow through on many of his pre-COVID plans to engage with the community even more, speaking to community members, churches, and students, and giving back to the youth, helping them cultivate their skills so that one day they can fulfill their dreams just as he did.

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Interview someone living and/or working in the social impact space in Detroit. Write a piece about them that you can share. 

I had the pleasure of meeting with Hank Wolfe-Rodriguez, the Community Engagement and Cause Marketing Coordinator of Forgotten Harvest. Forgotten Harvest is a non-profit organization that fights hunger and waste by donating surplus food from community partners, such as restaurants or supermarkets, to emergency food providers in metro Detroit. What makes Forgotten Harvest unique amongst food banks is that it tackles waste alongside hunger, delivers its food free of charge, and focuses on the quality of food delivered rather than the quantity. Hank’s role specifically entails community outreach, as he is behind fostering partnerships between different organizations and Forgotten Harvest. 

During our conversation, Hank shared his perspective on what qualities it takes on a personal and organizational level to ensure that work in the social impact sphere is profound. He particularly highlighted the need to listen to your community and to physically get out there to see the effect of your work. This message resonated with me because we both agreed that in order to build empathy, which is a crucial quality to have in social impact work, you must be able to emotionally connect with the motives that drive your project. In whatever my future work may be, I hope to remain ambitious and compassionate through continually striving to understand the experiences and perspectives of those around me. 

It was also inspiring to hear how meaningful Hank’s work is to him. He mentioned previously working in the private sector, but ultimately feeling unfulfilled because he was not serving any higher, more socially valuable purpose. Serving his community is so rewarding that to a certain point he finds it selfish about how great it makes him feel to give back. This passion to improve society is often what distinguishes social impact work from more traditional, profit-driven work. Society’s biggest challenges require collaboration amongst the most creative and dedicated minds, and it is refreshing to see that there are authentic, genuine people behind the revitalization of Detroit such as Hank. Ultimately, it was moving to hear Hank describe his social impact work as having greater benefits than just making a salary, and I aspire to find similar meaning in my own future career. 

Check out one of the exhibitions at the Detroit  Historical Museum (link below), explore that part of Detroit history, and please reflect on what you learned about that exhibit

This week, I explored Detroit’s role in the “Arsenal of Democracy,” the slogan used by Franklin D. Roosevelt to describe America during World War II. The United States promised to help their Allies fight Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan by selling them military supplies. Roosevelt explained, “For us this is an emergency as serious as the war itself. We must apply ourselves to our task with the same resolution, the same sense of urgency, the same patriotism and sacrifice as we would show were we at war.” The automotive hub of Detroit was a crucial component of this plan. The government encouraged the retooling of Detroit’s main industry, and the city changed over from cars to war machines at a remarkable speed. World War II brought new opportunities and challenges for Detroit. Although job opportunities increased, these changes brought overcrowding, shortages, and emotional loss as the war progressed.

I found this history to be particularly relevant to our work this summer as DukeEngage fellows. Leveraging existing resources to meet emerging needs is a fundamental aspect of innovation. Such innovations have the power to drive social change and create positive (and potentially negative) impacts. The “Arsenal of Democracy” tale also proves that when the right stakeholders get involved, Detroit has immense capacity for growth. However, rather than investing in growth for the sake of international relations and war, powerful voices should encourage innovation to address community needs. The organizations we are partnering with continue to draw on Detroit’s history of resilience and rising to the challenge in the innovation space