My friend, Bill Traynor, lives and works in the community where he grew up.
Lawrence, Massachusetts has the sad distinction of having the highest rate of unemployment (17.3%) in our state and its foreclosure rate is appalling but Lawrence is nothing if not a city of spirited, aspiring people. Often acting as a landing place for newcomers to the U.S. it has traditionally been dubbed “city of immigrants.”
Bill’s job there is with Lawrence Community Works which engages residents in planning and action and, as you can well imagine, he has been challenged by the task of keeping that organization constantly welcoming new and seasoned leaders, along with all of their ideas, opinions, perspectives, hopes and dreams.
So when we received this article from him “Vertigo and the Intentional Inhabitant: Leadership in a Connected World,” we read it with interest and were rewarded a frisson of intrigue and excitement about the future of community building work in particular and nonprofit work in general.
This article is so thought provoking and enormously timely that we scrambled to free up the space to publish it sooner rather than later. The often visionary Barr Foundation which has long been interested in evolving ideas about leadership in the social sector can be thanked for helping make this schedule work.
We would be interested in your thoughts on and aspect of this extraordinary article. It will be front and center on the home page of our Web site today, so don’t delay reading this important piece and adding your own thoughts in the comments.
