Name: Sheena Wright
Organization: Abyssinian Development Corporation (ADC)
Title: President and CEO
Age: 42
What makes her an effective President:
Under Wright’s leadership, ADC has created a permanent site for the Thurgood Marshall Academy for Learning and Social Change, which is the first high school built in Harlem in over 50 years. Wright also manages a Displacement Prevention campaign to address the needs of low and moderate-income families through civic engagement and preservation purchases of at-risk buildings.
My advice for President Obama:
“The key elements necessary to rebuild and restore America are the same keys needed to rebuild and restore community. Instead of a ‘race to the top,’ we have to build a collaborative community approach where everyone is invested in creating better educational and developmental opportunities for all of our children. While we are rightly focused and invested on job creation we need to be equally focused and invested on making sure our workforce is skilled and prepared for the jobs that are being created, particularly in the Black community. By 2020 only 50 million Americans will be qualified to fill 123 million highly skilled jobs, according to the Institute for a Competitive Workforce. Also the collapse of the housing market is at the root of much of the problems in the economy today. The way to correct this precarious situation is to provide more access to affordable, quality housing with responsible financial products. Regulation is needed in order to hold banks to higher standards to prevent the predatory lending practices that plagued our communities recently.â€