By David G. Latimore, President and CEO of ICIC

Dear ICIC Members and Friends:

Welcome to the first edition of ICIC’s newest newsletter. 

This newsletter represents our ongoing commitment to inform and inspire new initiatives that can dramatically alter the economic landscape in America’s inner cities.  As a thought leader, ICIC is committed to providing a platform for the dissemination of the intellectual capital of this firm and its many partners. By serving as a primary distribution point for the many ideas that have been born through our research, we ensure that best practices and innovative solutions addressing the most difficult challenges of the inner city are shared among those who are most engaged on this issue. 

As is true of most of ICIC’s work, this newsletter’s success is driven by active participation and partnership with you. The newsletter is a highly collaborative product meant to be populated and read by industry practitioners, including both business and civic leaders. For ICIC, this communication effort is the result of both mission and mandate. Our mission is to promote economic prosperity in America’s inner cities through private sector engagement that leads to jobs, income and wealth creation for local residents. Our commitment to the mission drives all that we do. However, we are also driven by the mandates of our many partners. In 2004, at the Inner City Economic Forum’s Summit in New York, Forum members articulated the urgent need for success stories, best practices, and research in order to develop the theory and practice of inner city economic development. We listened to you, and in January 2005, we launched the Inner City Economic Forum Newsletter which has since been disseminated every month to Forum members. Many of you have contributed to this newsletter and over time, our email subscribers have increased to more than 1,500 leaders across the nation.

The time has arrived to strengthen the newsletter by intensifying its impact, broadening its reach, and increasing its influence to an audience that encompasses not only business and civic leaders who are already members of the Inner City Economic Forum, but also the other key stakeholders in inner city revitalization: inner city businesses, academics, researchers, and of course, the media. For above all, one of the key missions of the new ICIC newsletter is to market the business opportunity of America’s inner cities and to continuously surface the urgent need to bring about sustainable economic development in low-income urban neighborhoods.

The success of the newsletter remains dependent on you, our partners and fellow stakeholders. To make this newsletter a success, we need to hear from you. Tell us your experiences—successful or not. Share your solutions—even if they seem local, they might have national implications. Ask difficult questions—and together we will try to find the answers. Let the newsletter become an open, collaborative mechanism for talking with each other, identifying problems, and implementing solutions to transform urban America.

We have a tremendous opportunity to help residents in the inner city by laying the groundwork for sustainable urban economic development. We must look at the market as a potential vehicle to more efficiently create economic vitality. Together, we can and will make a real and tangible difference in America’s inner cities. I’m delighted by the opportunity we have before us and can’t wait to see what we can do together…