Our FUSE 2017-18 class of fellows have embarked upon their fellowships with healthy doses of excitement, humility, inspiration, and optimism. These experienced leaders are tackling some of the biggest challenges facing our communities today — homelessness, affordable housing, minimum wages, anti-recidivism, criminal justice reform, job training, economic development, healthcare, eldercare, public education, police reform, racial … Continued
When Irene Hsieh started her fellowship in Fresno, one of her mandates was to spark a startup movement in what’s historically been known as the agricultural heart of California through public-private funding partnerships. Hsieh’s extensive background in many different aspects of finance and deep understanding of the startup landscape provided a critical advantage going in. But the true … Continued
Wendy McCulley was clear-eyed about her goal when she started her FUSE fellowship: to give students in Fresno as many options as possible after graduating from high school. “My personal goal is to positively affect as many students as possible by helping to reveal to themselves their own voice, their options, and potential for growth,” … Continued
Sharon Meron is working with the City of Long Beach to create a new, integrated approach to combat homelessness. Here’s what she’s learned about getting stakeholder buy-in when you’ve got new ideas to introduce. Engage the Team to Build Momentum Sometimes it’s a challenge to get people involved in a project when you’re new. To get … Continued
A FUSE fellowship lasts one year. In that time, our executive fellows tackle enormous challenges in cities across the country: addressing a homelessness crisis; getting more students from school to college; integrating autonomous vehicles into city infrastructure; responding to the opioid epidemic; taking action on climate change. So how does a one-year fellowship provide enough … Continued
Autumn McDonald, a 2015-2016 FUSE Fellow, worked with the cities of San Francisco and Oakland on the Bay Area Women’s Summit, a landmark event designed to bring together leaders in government, business, philanthropy, and education to advance policy on equity, empowerment, and opportunity for women. One of McDonald’s goals was to expand the original summit … Continued
Slater Matzke is working with the City of Vallejo on a marketing and communication strategy to reboot the city’s economy. Over the last couple of decades, Vallejo, an industrial city and naval center of 122,000 that sits on the north side of the San Francisco Bay, has faced a number of challenges. With the decommissioning of … Continued
You’ve taken on a super-complex challenge with a basic mission in hand: Devise a strategy for positive and transformational change, and implement as much of it as you can, as fast as you can. You have few resources — no fancy gadgets, no budget, no support team. So how do you survive in this scenario, and … Continued
As the Capital of Silicon Valley, San José is the “center of the universe” for innovation and disruptive technologies powered by the Internet economy. The San José metro area is the most connected region in the United States according to the 2015 American Communities Survey. That same year, Bloomberg cited San José as America’s richest … Continued