New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman praised the 15-year-work of the Itasca Project in approaching challenges, from increasing Minnesota's economic competitive to closing the skills-and-employment gap of minorities.
Itasca, started in 2003, is a business-education-foundation collaboration that studies big issues and transcends boundaries in seeking solutions with partners.
Friedman, 63, a St. Louis Park native, has written "Thank you for Being Late: An Optimist's Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations."
It is a fairly optimistic examination of large forces shaping the 21st century: technological advances, globalization and climate change. These forces, which can threaten, also pose enormous opportunity as they transform the workplace, politics and community. But we're going to have to slow down, think things through and collaborate across racial, economic and other divides if we want to succeed and spread the benefits.
Friedman, who returns this week to address the Westminster Town Hall Forum, dedicates a chapter to the work of Itasca, particularly how business leaders took to heart understanding racial disparities. He looks at how they have moved to support training and diversify their work forces and also at how they have rallied to the work of CEO Sondra Samuels, a business veteran who in 2008 launched the Northside Achievement Zone (NAZ).
Samuels, who lives on the North Side of Minneapolis, calls it "ground zero for the racial disparities that have made Minnesota dead last in the nation" for gaps in academic achievement, home ownership and household income.
Samuels and the Wilder Foundation, which has studied the effort, report progress with the work that Samuels and 43 "partner" schools, nonprofits, businesses and others are having in slowly reversing the corrosive, generations-long trends.
Samuels this year exhausts the last of a multiyear federal "promise zone" grant to NAZ. But her $11 million annual budget will survive the $5 million loss in the budget next year because business and philanthropic interests have stepped up.