Heidi Romer: The Bridge Builder and Truth Teller (Part 2)

Heidi Romer (she/her/ella) spent most of the last 12 years in Buffalo as a passionate change-maker, focused on improving social determinants of health, healthcare access, and food security. She is a proponent of community-based participatory program development. In case you missed it, scroll down and read Part 1 of my interview with Heidi before reading our continued discussion here.

JK: I think there is an over-reliance here in Buffalo on the nonprofits to be the community safety net instead of the government. It's been trauma after trauma the last three years. First, COVID. Then the TOPS massacre. Then the blizzard. There is no space to just address one crisis before the next one comes and there is no safety net but the one created by the people.

Mutual aid networks were convened to respond to COVID. And when the TOPS massacre happened, they were convened again, following the playbook of what was learned. So the activists are doing the work. They are the ones making the emergency preparedness plans and then they analyze what worked and didn't work so they are ready when the next crisis comes along and when it does, they activate. It was mutual aid that saved people's lives in the blizzard but we don't provide resources for mutual aid. It's mutual aid with band aids and on a dime and it's people doing the work. What do you think?

HR: When you work within a community and are embedded within the community, you meet and work with so many different people - - good people doing good work. You get to know about all these moving parts, how things work, who is real, and who is offering nothing more than lip service. I bet if you asked yourself what you thought you knew when you came into the job as the Executive Director at Grassroots Gardens WNY versus when you left...imagine all the things you learned along the way. It's all connected, an ecosystem. Leadership needs to look at our community, our neighborhoods, our landscape and the environment as an ecosystem. They need to see how everything is interconnected and dependent on each other. It's like the analogy of how many people are one check away from losing it all? Or the weights balancing the scale and if you move one, the other flips the scale. That's what its like in Buffalo. We are one catastrophe, one event, one snow storm from getting flipped over and set back.

JK: I didn't see any proactive leadership in the spaces I was in, which is why we started the Vacant Lot Task Force. We (the community) independently convened the people to do the policy work and we spent a year talking to other cities about what they do with their vacant lots. We talked to folks in Philly and Chicago and Cleveland. And you see what the possibilities are. And in some way that creates more despair but also more momentum. Like, if they are doing that in Baltimore, why can't Buffalo have that? What's stopping us?

HR: I have heard that from many community leaders like you. Seeing models in similar cities that really improved and changed things for the better. And it’s difficult replicating things here. I wonder if we are that arrogant that we think we got it figured out? Because we don’t, the recent events and the responses have proven that. One thing that makes me crazy and I see this in the health space and maybe you do too, there is so much data. We have become numb to the data and numbers. Oh, this zip code? Yeah, they're at 47% poverty. This zip code over here, 72% of those under 18 years old live in poverty. I want to pause for a second. These are real numbers. These numbers represent our community. Those numbers translate to your people, your community are suffering. What are we doing about it? Like really doing about? Is our leadership looking at this data as a talking point? Has it gotten lost in translation that there are faces behind these numbers?

Because it's a tale of two cities.

Ask someone that lives on Highland Avenue, Vermont Street, and Doat Street, their current views and future outlooks would be completely different. So let's circle back to your first question: what is community-building? First off, everybody has to be present. Everyone has to matter. Everybody has to care. How are we moving together? It has to be solution-based. Spend energy and brain power on the solutions.

JK: And action right? Implementation of change. Not just having the same conversations over and over. OK, I want to shift from a focus on the big picture to your life now. You also recently left a beloved job in the nonprofit sector to make a change. Tell me about your new venture!

HR: I'm at a place in my life where I've been asking myself a different set of questions. How do I want to live my life now, right now...not when I retire. How do I want to spend my time on earth now with the time I have? How do I want to help people and add value differently? The answers to these questions are what prompted me to make big life changes - new location, new job, new outlook. In terms of my career, I am very excited to share that I am the new managing director for Work Renewed. Work Renewed is a woman-owned and Black-owned boutique firm specializing in executive search, talent and team management solutions, and advisory support for organization leaders. Part of my role is helping leaders enhance workplace culture and foster a greater sense of belonging for their boards, teams and communities. This is how I can continue to help people and be part of meaningful and purpose driven work. It’s an incredible opportunity.

JK: And one of the first things you've done at Work Renewed is convened a webinar series on aligning people, purpose, and action. I was so grateful to be a part of this inclusive culture of consultants that you want to recognize and build up. Why did you want to feature women consultants and their work this past month?

HR: I've had many conversations with new consultants and I'm hearing a similar theme. There is no support for consultants - for networking, connections, and opportunities. It feels as if the seasoned consultants are acting as gatekeepers and are keeping the gates sealed shut instead of taking the gates off the hinges and letting people in- with open arms. There is enough work out here, there is opportunity to collaborate. And when I would connect with consultants - particularly people of color and women - there is no sense of belonging, and just another set of challenges. And it just pisses me off. So, how do we create a space where we can all win? Where we could highlight our talents and expertise and create the opportunity? For me these community conversations are a way to do it, a way to start, a way to bring people together - collectively and creatively. You said it best, it’s not about competition but collaboration. I saw a comment the other day by a women entrepreneur in the tech space and she said, “decentralizing power from gatekeepers and putting it back in the hands of our community.” In this case, we are putting it back in the hands of our community of consultants.

This past week, we just highlighted women consultants in a celebration of Women's History Month. There will be more impact hours for Aligning People, Purpose and Action on Monday, June 26th at 6 p.m. celebrating PRIDE month and in October for Hispanic and Latino Heritage month. And lastly the impact would be creating a directory of consultants where organizations could easily tap into vetted talent within their communities.

JK: Heidi, I am always honored to share space and time together. I appreciate you inviting me into this consultant network and I have always admired your work across communities and projects. Thanks for taking the time to speak with me so deeply.

Check out Work Renewed's Newsletter for more information about what they have been up to in this first quarter of 2023.

Photos graciously provided by Heidi Romer: Photo 1 is of Heidi and the staff at Jericho Road preparing for Project Ramadan. Photo 2 is from the recent webinar presented by Heidi and Work Renewed on building a collaborative community of consultants.

Heidi Romer: the Bridge Builder and Truth Teller (Part 1)

Heidi Romer (she/her/ella) spent most of the last 12 years in Buffalo as a passionate change-maker, focused on improving social determinants of health, healthcare access, and food security. She is a proponent of community-based participatory program development. We sat down for a conversation about where Buffalo goes from here. It was such a good conversation that I'm breaking it up over two posts! We go deep into what change looks like for Buffalo, speak some truth to power, and consider why we all need to care. Here's part one of our discussion:

JK: Heidi, you've been in these same circles with me and I know you've been doing this longer than I have. Tell me what community building means to you.

HR: I've dedicated my work to community building and bridge building. I truly believe a conversation can save someone's life. There are so many different ways community can be defined. Community includes the people that live in these neighborhoods. They are your workforce. Your patients. Your clients. It is an ecosystem where people are included, where people have a voice, and where people can thrive. We are better together, I believe this. There is not enough collective support, enough walking alongside each other. So community building, to me, is about bringing people together, it's an opportunity to learn from each other and move forward together. You can bring together people for anything but community building is bringing people together for a purpose!

JK: You've done so many different kinds of community work. What's been nearest and dearest to your heart?

HR: Most recently, I'd have to say the Summer on Super Street Placemaking Initiative. I really loved that. Can you believe there is a corner, Clark & Kent Streets, within the Broadway- Fillmore neighborhood, which we dubbed Superman Corner? These streets are where we held free daily programming from May through September for the community....all the neighborhoods in Buffalo are very unique and there are 14 neighborhoods that make up the East side. Broadway-Fillmore is unique for so many different reasons. It's past culture, it's current culture. Summer on Superstreet provided a variety of free programming for the whole family on greenspace next to 1021 Broadway. You walk into that building and have access to medical care, dental care, physical therapy, a gym, and 10 + behavioral and mental health organizations under the Care Management Coalition. The vision was to create a safe space, a place-making initiative, in the heart of the neighborhood that would benefit those who live, work, play, age, and worship in this community. And attract folks from outside of the neighborhood to all come together to this destination for better health.

JK: You should be so proud of the work you did at Jericho Road Community Health Center. One of the things I'm interested in talking with other activists in Buffalo about is what needs to happen for Buffalo to thrive, given how much trauma Buffalo has been through in the last three years. What do we, and I'm talking the big WE (the government especially, but also the nonprofits and everyday residents) need to do to change Buffalo to a place where people are thriving and not just surviving?

HR: I appreciate that question because when you work in conmunities that are in need, and there are different kinds of need, but when you are working with people face-to-face and hand-in-hand with them, in solidarity with them, I'll say this...

poverty is big business in Buffalo.

I'm sick of it and angry about it! Buffalo is a small city and when I think about all the resources and the brain power in this city, I don't know why we are not the model. The centralized poverty in Buffalo is mind-blowing to me. It is! In 2023 to be walking and working in some of the neighborhoods that are in such crisis, I just don't understand. We have incredible people leading incredible work, well-known companies, and a ton of educational institutions, I could go on listing all of the resources.

Now poverty is poverty, whether we are talking in the city or rural areas. But when I sit back and look at what is happening here, in the city of Buffalo, how could we not say poverty doesn't discriminate? Here, it's too much of doing things the same way. It is a band-aid approach because the crisis is just so much, all of the time. When you work in the health space, you hear things, buzz words like upstream. Upstream, upstream...I'd hear it all the time. And then one day I'm sitting in a meeting and on the wall is a quote by Nelson Mandela and it says,

"There comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they're falling in."

That was a moment of realization for me. We do not have that enough in Buffalo. All the programs and resources aren't enough in the world and why is that? These programs are meeting the crisis at the moment. It's not uplifting, it's not empowering, and it's not helping to pull people out of poverty! Buffalo has so many resources. So many nonprofits. There is a ton of money being poured into Buffalo. We need to be asking the right questions. The question isn't, "why isn't the east side getting money?" but "where is the money going?" And I can argue that the need is so great, that a visible and noticeable change won't be easily seen because the needs are so great but that's bullshit. We have to ask the right questions. There has to be more accountability, more shared goals, more collective impact, more movement!

Collective impact cannot be on the shoulders of nonprofits. Neighborhood businesses have to be brought into the conversation. New people have to be brought into the conversation. I see the same people at the same meetings and I ask myself, how can you be the expert on all these things? You're one person but you are the expert on food access, housing, and everything else in between...nah! New people have to be brought in. What about cross-sector partnerships? I don't know if the businesses understand they could be the anchor institution in their community, the heart of their neighborhood, the spark to lead change. We need to make room for them at the table. That was a super long answer to your question!

JK: Well, it was a super big question so it deserved a super big answer! From my perspective, having worked in the food justice space, I agree with you that the same questions are being asked. And people in that space, our community experts, have been providing the answers but they get ignored, and the powers that be just go back to asking the same question they've been asking. If food security in the city can only be answered by how to connect city residents to rural farmers, we are not paying attention to the power and possibility of urban agriculture.

HR: You and I were talking about systems earlier. And I was part of that band-aid approach, right? People need food? Ok, let's organize a food drive. People need coats? Ok, let's get them coats. The storm in December exasperated it. I was in Buffalo, trying to help as much as I could for the Jericho Road patients, staff, and clients because there was no way to find current comprehensive and relevant information in real-time.. It reminded me of when COVID happened. The fear, the stress, the mourning and grieving, the what's going to happen"? But when I can sit back from moving from issue to issue, I can see, like, damn, this isn't getting any better. Nothing is getting better. And the storm made me think of it like this: there's struggling, there's surviving and there's suffering. And I feel like our community is suffering.

JK: And has been suffering!

HR: Right, I can't stop thinking about that. And I don't even know. I don't know how to help. I don't have a solution. And I see a pantry open here and there. And five years ago, I would have been like, yes, people meeting the need! But now, when I see another pantry open and I look at these maps created for food resources and I see hundreds of these dots where people can get food assistance when I look at that now, my view has changed. I'm no longer seeing it as Look at these great resources! Now I'm on the other end and I'm like, What are our leaders doing differently to help pull people out of poverty? How are we going to make sure these generational curses end now?

So when we talk about what needs to change? EVERYTHING. The conversation needs to change. The questions need to change. Being proactive instead of reactive. Thinking about the next generation.

I've never lived anywhere like Buffalo, where you have 6 or 7 generations living in the same neighborhood. It's part of what makes Buffalo such a friendly and welcoming place. But if we look back and ask those folks going back a generation or two about the struggle, it's the same or worse. Our current data will show our health, our life expectancy, and our quality of life isn't getting better.

And so go forward two generations. Are my kids going to be living this same way?

We have to change.

Photos graciously provided by Heidi Romer: Photo 1 is of Heidi sharing the news that she got Habitat for Humanity to build 6 houses on one street! Photo 2 is of the Super Street partners at the corner of Kent & Clark Streets in Buffalo's Broadway-Fillmore neighborhood and Photo 3 is of the Comfort and Joy Giveaway.

Come back next week for Part 2 of my conversation with Heidi Romer.

You can also join Heidi, me, and a group of other fabulous women entrepreneurs on Monday, March 27th at 6 pm for a webinar led by Heidi and Work Renewed to discuss aligning people, purpose, and action in the consulting sphere. You can register here.

Gerldine Wilson: On Surviving and Thriving

Gerldine Wilson is a self-described survivor, a grandma, a gardener, a poet, and an artist. She is a longtime community-builder, living on the east side of Buffalo. Gerldine is the past president of her block club and the founder of the Victory Garden, a community garden in the Masten district of Buffalo. She spent three years as the Accessibility Coordinator at Grassroots Gardens WNY, leading efforts to make the network's community gardens more accessible. She is also the co-designer and an original facilitator of They That Sow in Tears, a workshop on grief and gardening. This past year, she curated an art exhibit for people with blindness at the Niagara Arts and Culture Center and recently published a literary anthology with them. She is also a certified peer counselor.

Jeanette sat down with Gerldine for a lunchtime interview at their favorite spot, The Lunch Box, to hear more from her about her work in the community, her thoughts on surviving and thriving, and getting comfortable with being celebrated.

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JK: Thank you for making the time to speak with me today, Gerldine. You do so much for so many. I'm curious, who do you consider to be your community?

GW: My family, my neighbors, the businesses that are around me, the people that are in between my house and where I go. My community is not just contained to my street, though. I have a community of women who I call upon when I'm in need. My family is my community. Sometimes we all have to gather to heal each other and celebrate each other. When you say community to me, there's no limit to who or what that is.

JK: When we met, I feel like we had an immediate kinship because you took me to your community garden and told me how it helped to heal you. And my garden has done the same for me. Tell me a little bit about your garden, then and now.

GW: Oh, we've come a long way with our garden! We started with two or three food boxes. We started by thinking that a garden was going to feed people's stomachs. But a month into it, we realized it had to be the kind of place that could heal your spirit also. Which is what gardening has done for me. So naturally, it would be something I wanted to provide for everyone else. The garden now is completely different than what it started out to be. There are not just boxes of vegetables. There are spots now where you can just sit and take a breath. There's our sign, Victory Garden. Because the garden is a sign of victory for me. I've overcome a lot of things since that first day we met, standing there in that garden.

JK: Last year, when we had lunch here, you told me you were taking a step back from a lot of things in your life and you were going to rest. (Gerldine laughs.) And then the next time I got an email from you, not only were you in an art show, but you were curating the art show and now you have a book that just came out, in which you are a contributing author. How do you balance making time for creative pursuits and rest and your community work? Is there such a thing as balance?

GW: Honestly, there are times they are all the same thing. There are times my community is my rest. There are times when the book or the garden is my rest. So I've had to accept a redefinition of rest. Because when we had that talk last year, I had all these intentions of doing nothing but for me, what is nothing? I don't know what nothing is! And I don't think nothing is healthy for me. I have to do something! Art is healing for me. The writing of the book was healing for me. That is rest. Now sometimes they all get jumbled and out of whack. One of the things I'm learning to do is sit for a moment, close my eyes and just be. I don't have to have my hands doing anything. Or my feet doing anything. And that's new to me. I'm still learning how to do that.

JK: This past year you were also recognized as a Buffalo Black Achiever. How did that feel to you, because you are a very humble person, Gerldine, and I know it took you by surprise...

GW: I was so honored but the honor felt so above me. Having the spotlight on me in that way...I struggle with being celebrated. I struggle with accepting being celebrated. But it was truly a great honor. I'm still in awe and shock. Because I don't feel like I did anything to deserve it. Because you just do what you do. I did the garden because it was what I needed and then other people benefited from it. I just live my life doing what I do and not thinking about earning an honor. But I was treated like a queen. They made everything they could do to make me feel celebrated. It has broken ground for me to be able to accept being celebrated. I can celebrate other people, I like celebrating other people, but don't turn a light on me!

JK: One of the things that I've noticed in the community work we've done together is that there is a tension between people's survival needs and people's desire to thrive. What happens when you have that desire but resources have been and continue to be denied to your community...and yet, I still see ALL the things you are doing. What does thriving mean to you?

GW: That's a hard one. First and foremost, thriving is surviving. There are things that I have survived. When I get up in the morning and I can put my feet on the floor and have some semblance of sight, I thrive. For me, I put things into two categories: I put them into life and I put them into death. And when I get up, things that are challenging, I have to put in life or death. And I choose life. When I was diagnosed as legally blind, I had to choose either life or death. I wasn't going to choose death, so I chose life. So that daily choice, of choosing life, is thriving to me. There are things I still struggle with. There are things I need. But I'm glad to be alive. So if I'm alive, I'm thriving. As long as I can put one foot in front of the other and I can do something for someone else, even if it's something little, that's thriving to me.

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For an excellent #longread on Gerldine's work in disability justice, check out this recent story from Civil Eats. Gerldine and other writers with visual impairments have also published a literary anthology that can be purchased on Amazon.