December 5, 2022
2022 Innovators Issue
2022 Innovator: Williams promotes social equity, economic mobility to shrink CT’s wide wealth gap
PHOTOS | STEVE LASCHEVER
Jay Williams is the CEO of the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving.
By Tom Condon
To paraphrase George Orwell, it can be hard to see what is right in front of our noses.
In Connecticut, what many people don’t see is that the state has two sub-societies: poorer, core cities whose residents are predominantly people of color surrounded by wealthier, whiter suburbs.
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Melding what has been called the “two Connecticuts” into one community may be the state’s most daunting challenge. Jay Williams has taken it on, with some new approaches and ideas.
Williams is the president and CEO of the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving, a post he has held since 2017. He has focused the 97-year-old foundation on breaking down structural racism as well as promoting equity in social and economic mobility.
Under his tutelage the foundation has made grants for everything from improved police training and youth mental health services to food security, from entrepreneurs and artists of color to reentry programs for people returning from incarceration and neighborhood financial literacy.
He isn’t reinventing the wheel — the foundation has had strong leadership and programs for many years — but somewhat changing the direction of the cart. While keeping longstanding commitments in other areas, he’s steering as many resources as possible to programs and activities that promote equitable opportunity.
“We are the community foundation for 29 towns, and we want to serve all of the towns. But when data shows that part of the community is being underserved, in job opportunities, housing, health care, then attention must be paid,” he said in a recent interview in his Hartford office.
“He’s the man to do it, the right person at the right time,” says JoAnn Price, former chair of the foundation’s board of directors and a member of the search committee that selected Williams.
He certainly has the background.
Smaller, nimbler
Williams, 50, a tall, sturdy, engaging man with a ready smile who enjoys the give and take of policy discussion, grew up in Youngstown, Ohio, and graduated from Youngstown State University with a degree in finance.
He became a banker, then a bank examiner. In 2006 he ran for mayor of his hometown as an independent, winning 55% of the vote in a six-person field, a remarkable feat for a political newcomer. He was the first African-American elected to the post, and at 34, the youngest.
Youngstown is one of the cities that gave birth to the term Rust Belt. Once a steel-making powerhouse with a peak population of 180,000, it now has about a third that number, just over 60,000 (Hartford also peaked at about 180,000 but has “only” dropped to about 120,000). As in Hartford, some suburban leaders blamed Youngstown for its own demise.
Part of the new mayor’s challenge was to align the mindset with the new reality. Though some pined for it, “we were not going to reinvent the Youngstown of the past,” he says. “We needed to be smaller and nimbler, rooted in pragmatism and do-ability.”
His administration acquired and remediated former industrial properties as part of an effort to diversify the local economy. Williams began a conversation with the region about economic development, arguing that a healthy core city would benefit the suburban communities as well. (Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin has made a similar case to the burbs, with modest results).
Williams helped create a Joint Economic Development District with suburban Girard. The district’s biggest success was attracting a mill that produces steel pipe used in oil and gas drilling and employs 350 workers.
The ‘Car Czar’
President Barack Obama brought some bright young mayors to Washington to join his administration, including Jerry Abramson of Louisville and Anthony Foxx of Charlotte. Jay Williams, then in his second term and now a Democrat, got the call in 2011.
One of his jobs was “Car Czar,” the head of a program that directed federal resources to communities such as Detroit and Flint, Michigan, and Kenosha, Wisconsin, which were staggered by the decline in the auto industry. One recollection: Auto plants are very hard to repurpose as something else.
“There’s not much you can do with them besides make cars,” Williams says.
When that program wound down Williams was appointed assistant secretary of commerce for economic development, where he was charged with leading the federal economic development agenda.
This position brought him to Hartford a couple of times, once to promote a program for community colleges to teach manufacturing skills. He liked the community and its people and was impressed with its resources.
“People bemoaned the corporations that have left,” he says. “I’d have killed for the corporate presence that was still here."
When Democrats lost the White House in 2016, Obama appointees began looking for other jobs. Williams considered running for lieutenant governor of Ohio, among other options. But he learned that the Hartford Foundation was looking for a new leader.
He was intrigued. He’d worked with foundations before and found them effective and more flexible than government bureaucracy, “though bureaucracy is necessary.” With $1.1 billion in assets, he felt the Foundation could make a serious impact, so he applied.
The board wanted to get the Foundation more involved in issues of racism and equality. To that end, the search committee was looking for a “change agent,” says Price, “a good listener with solid executive skills who could relate to all communities.”
Has Williams been that person?
“Absolutely,” says Price, who is the founder and managing partner of Fairview Capital Partners Inc., an investment firm based in West Hartford. “Jay is confident but open to taking constructive criticism. He is never intimidated, and he doesn’t get overly frustrated. He is a great shepherd of his organization.”
And he has pointed the Foundation toward the problems of social and economic mobility and structural racism, that is, policies such as housing and job discrimination and disinvestment that have put urban and predominantly minority communities behind the eight ball. As Williams says, the data bear this out.
Citing census data, the Foundation reports that one in five Black and Latino children in Greater Hartford live in poverty, compared to one in 100 white children. The region’s median income for white households ($84,000) is twice that of Latino households ($42,000) and more than 1.5 times that of Black households.
Some 27% of Latino residents and 22% of Black residents of Connecticut experienced food insecurity at some point in 2020, compared to 9% of white residents.
Williams and the Foundation staff have responded with investments targeted at economic development, better housing, community involvement and basic needs, such as food.
Balancing and partnering
Two words that could describe Williams’ tenure at the Foundation are balance and partnerships.
For one, he has to balance the needs of, among others, the arts and cultural organizations that are vital to the region with the push for equality and mobility.
Of course, when he can do both at once — such as creating the Artists of Color Unite Advisory Committee, which as the name suggests promotes artists of color — all the better.
Another balance he must strike is between the needs of urban and suburban communities which, he hastens to add, aren’t mutually exclusive.
Jay Williams (right) and Hartford Mayor Luke Bronin (left) visit Hartford’s ProStyle Barber Shop to announce emergency small business microgrants.
In 2018 he and his staff did a listening tour of all 29 towns the foundation serves. From that came the establishment of 29 separate community funds, independent of town government, for each town. Town residents have used the funds for a wide variety of social, cultural and recreational needs.
Williams also is quietly encouraging towns to work together. He argues, as he did in Youngstown, that a strong core city benefits the region. Supporting businesses owned by women and people of color enhances the broader economy. The U.S. economy is made up of regional economies; the strongest regions work together.
“Some town leaders have come to us and said they were interested in partnering with two or three other towns on a particular project. We said ‘Great, we’re interested in funding it,’” he says.
Williams seeks to partner with whomever can help move a project along. Since day one, and particularly during the pandemic, the Foundation has partnered with the City of Hartford, on everything from providing food to aid for small businesses to Wi-Fi expansion.
The Foundation and the City just partnered on a Love Hartford initiative, which involves activating vacant spaces, cleaning up litter and other activities to strengthen neighborhood pride.
“From the beginning Jay has been an active, creative, collaborative partner, and I am really grateful for that partnership,” says Mayor Luke Bronin. He says as a mayor, having a partner that understands the challenge and needs of running a city is a real plus.
It’s the nature of this kind of philanthropy that most grants promote incremental improvements across a wide spectrum of activities.
But, says Williams, “I still keep an eye out for the transformative project,“ the major enterprise that can change the region’s direction for the better. Though Hartford hasn’t always been lucky with mega-projects (see Constitution Plaza), Williams and others, including U.S. Rep. John Larson, think there is a plan now on the table that can change the game for Hartford and the region.
It’s part of a regional planning effort called Hartford 400, initiated by the iQuilt project in Hartford. Among other things it would remove or cover the highways in downtown Hartford, reconnect Hartford and East Hartford to the Connecticut River and reconnect the North End of Hartford to the rest of the City.
It’s the kind of innovation, albeit on a larger scale, that Williams has been trying to promote across the region.
“We’re supporting it,” he says.
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