Blogs

When we talk about access to capital for small businesses, the conversation often starts with money: loans, grants, credit, and investment. During my FUSE Executive Fellowship with Baltimore City’s Mayor’s Office of Small & Minority Business Advocacy & Development (SMBA&D), I learned that capital readiness extends far beyond financial readiness and that the broader ecosystem of support businesses need to successfully access and deploy capital is too often overlooked.

The Taylor Yard Equity Strategy (TYES) is a community-driven initiative in Northeast Los Angeles that emerged alongside plans to transform a former contaminated industrial rail yard into green and open space. This transformation was aimed at ensuring benefits for local residents and businesses through housing stability, economic opportunity and workforce development, cultural preservation, and environmental improvements, while preventing displacement and green gentrification. At TYES, we made a deliberate choice early on: Equity would not be an aspiration. It would be operationalized through structure, process, and accountability.

The City of Phoenix Office of Sustainability has already taken important steps, including adopting ambitious 2050 Sustainability Goals and completing its first Residential Energy Access Plan, which includes six goals focused on participation, increased access, and resilience. But having a plan and living it are different things. Moving from a strategy document to tangible, household‑level change requires focus, coordination, and a shared sense of what “success” looks like for low‑ and moderate‑income (LMI) residents. That gap between plan and practice is where my FUSE Innovation Lab—and my fellowship—came in.

In January 2026, city leaders, agency partners, and community-minded innovators convened in Salt Lake City for the FUSE Innovation Lab to explore how the City’s transportation vision can be translated into real-world implementation.

The current energy and infrastructure transition in the United States might seem incremental—even slow. But considering the breadth of plans emerging from cities across the country, the work ahead represents an incredible shift. According to the NRDC, “Achieving net zero by 2050 [a goal in line with many city and regional energy plans] will require generating 84 to 95 percent of the U.S. energy supply from renewable sources.”

Serving on the City of Cincinnati’s Energy Team as a FUSE Executive Fellow, I have contributed my federal climate policy expertise and aided in connections with diverse community stakeholders and organizations as a member of the Cincinnati Green Bank (CGB) Steering Committee.

Most people don’t think of local government as fast-moving. But when cities and counties bring in the right partners, they can tackle big problems with surprising speed.

As a FUSE Executive Fellow, I work closely with the Bureau of Street Lighting (BSL) to enhance its community engagement initiatives. With FUSE's support, we recently held an Innovation Lab to ensure community relations continue to be at the forefront of BSL's current and new initiatives.

As a FUSE Executive Fellow, I had the privilege of leading the Innovation Lab for the Community Taylor Yard Equity Strategy (TYES), an initiative by the 100 Acre Partnership and the Los Angeles Regional Open Space and Affordable Housing (LAROSAH).