Global Action Platform Announces 2018 Class for Young American Leaders at the Harvard Business School

Nashville Leaders Selected to Participate in National Project to Improve Shared Prosperity in American Communities

Nashville; Boston (May 10, 2018) Ten government, business, and nonprofit leaders from Middle Tennessee have been chosen for a Harvard Business School program convening leaders from thirteen American cities who are working across sectors to make their communities prosper.

Dr. Scott T. Massey, Chairman and CEO, Global Action Platform, and Mitch Weiss, Co-Director of the Young American Leaders Program and Senior Lecturer in Entrepreneurial Management, Harvard Business School announced the 2018 Class of Nashville Young American Leaders and hosted the kick-off event for the class at the Global Action Platform at oneC1TY.  Global Action Platform is the local partner and coordinator of the Young American Leaders Program for Nashville and the regional affiliate of the Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness, Harvard Business School.

The ten Nashville leaders selected to participate in the leadership program at Harvard this June are

Andres Martinez, Director of Communications, Conexion Americas

Laura Berlind, Executive Director, Sycamore Institute

Monica Clayton Fawknotson, Executive Director, Nashville Sports Authority

David R. Hanson, Managing Partner, Hillgreen

Henry Hicks, CEO, National Museum of African American Music

Dr. Alex Jahangir, Executive Medical Director, Vanderbilt Center for Trauma

Elizabeth McAlister, Managing Partner, Speak Spanish Nashville

Wendy Thompson, Vice Chancellor for Organizational Effectiveness, Tennessee Board of Regents

Karen Thompson, Assistant Vice President, Strategy and Innovation, HCA Healthcare

Peter Thomson, Vice President Wealth Management, Regions Bank

The Young American Leaders Program (YALP) grows out of a deep concern and a great hope uncovered by Harvard Business School’s ongoing project on U.S. competitiveness. The concern is that the local, shared resources which drive American prosperity are not keeping pace with global standards. U.S. workforce skills, schools, and infrastructure, for instance, are not improving fast enough or, in too many cases, are deteriorating. As a result, an unsustainable divergence has gripped the U.S. economy: working- and middle-class Americans who rely on such shared resources are struggling, even as firms and individuals who can tap global opportunities are thriving. Prosperity is being generated but not shared. Our hope springs from the local level. In cities and towns across the country, we see local policymakers, businesspeople, nonprofit leaders, educators, clergy, and others coming together across sectors to build skills, improve schools, restore infrastructure to build a foundation for economic growth and shared prosperity.

Ten leaders from twelve cities across the U.S. are selected by senior community leaders in those cities to go to Harvard each June for an intensive case study workshop on urban and rural regional collaborations and strategies for economic resilience.  Other participating cities include Boston, Columbus, Detroit, Miami, Minneapolis-Saint Paul, Salt Lake City, and Seattle, among others.  The program was launched to develop leaders who understand cross-sector collaborations for shared prosperityand can implement them more effectively and spread them more rapidly than in the past.

“Global Action Platform is committed to advancing local innovation cluster economic growth for shared prosperity,” notes Dr. Massey.  “We are pleased to be the regional affiliate of Porter’s Institute at Harvard and to be working with them on the Young American Leaders Program and other projects.  Through this collaboration, we hope to help prepare a rising generation of local leaders who can work together for the shared growth and prosperity of our region in today’s global economy.”  Lipscomb University’s Linda Peek Schacht helps advise the group, which receives ongoing local program support from Global Action Platform.

About Global Action Platform

Global Action Platform is the leading university-business alliance to advance scalable, sustainable solutions for abundant food, health, and prosperity.  Global Action Platform is the resident nonprofit and think tank for oneC1TY, a twenty-acre global innovation hub now under construction in Nashville, and strategic development partner with GPSS on comprehensive rural development projects. The goal is to create a world of abundance for all people, so that every single individual has a chance to thrive. http://globalactionplatform.org.

For further information, contact:

Scott T. Massey or Linda Peek Schacht                                                                                                                      

Global Action Platform         

+ 1 615 200 8897                                                                            

info@globalactionplatform.org