Main Street America Weekly (2025)
Throughout my career it has been my pleasure to work with Main Street America. This week I was pleased to see a quote attributed to me at the top of the Main Street America Weekly e-blast that goes out to downtown revitalization leaders nationally. My full quote about the Main Street America Academy follows:
This is a huge gift to the Main Street movement, which I’ve been part of for nearly 20 years. I envy the new director who has these resources at their fingertips.
Over the past several months I had the honor of being on the team to help evaluate the new Main Street America Academy. After reviewing every course that was available prior to launch, I provided extensive feedback on how to strengthen the platform and make it even more effective. Read an article about the academy here.
I was also pleasantly surprised to see the Community Heart & Soul banner on the newsletter. The Orton Family Foundation was a funder of an innovative project I led in Appalachian Kentucky in 2013. We were one of three communities nationally to win their Successful Communities Contest that year. The project we proposed and that they funded was our Better Block project that mobilized over 100 volunteers who transformed a city block over a single weekend. At the Main Street Now conference in Detroit the following year I connected then CEO of Orton David Leckey with then President/CEO of Main Street America Patrice Frey. The connection between Orton and Main Street America has been strong ever since.