What makes Memphis great?
Memphis is a city with Soul. You can feel her Soul through her people, their kindness, their spirit of giving, their energy. Memphis is a great city because within its Soul lies the opportunity to make a difference. Memphis is still evolving. In a city the size of Memphis, anyone can be as engaged as he or she wants to be. I have a list somewhere of all the great things about Memphis. It’s a lengthy list, from the blues on Beale to the hum of the FedEx hub in the middle of the night. Better than rattle off what’s in between, come to Memphis and see for yourself. Let us show you what makes Memphis great. And when you’re headed home, you can take that list with you, but you’ll have to leave our Soul behind. So accept this as my invitation for you to come for a visit. Who knows? You just might come on back and try to claim a piece of our Soul for yourself.
What are your grandest ambitions for Memphis?
I want Memphis to be the kind of city in which t the next generation wants to live and lead into the future. My hope is to connect young and ambitious Memphians with older Memphians – those who already have worked hard to build a great city. It is an ever-evolving task to connect our young citizens with my generation so they can build upon our city’s traditional values of trust, understanding and ownership, while encouraging the youngest among us to create their own vision for their future. Everyone in every community has likes and dislikes about their community – things they hope will never change and things they wish could be changed tomorrow. Memphis’s challenge is to accelerate the process of holding on to our strengths and embracing change, all the while making sure that the process is inclusive, transformative and rooted in the community.
What do you consider your greatest achievement?
I can’t say that I have a single ‘biggest’ achievement. However, I am continually motivated by the collective impact of what I have done in the past, as well as what I plan to do today and tomorrow. I see myself as a connector. In other words, I enjoy connecting people to people, people to information, people to our community. I don’t see achievement in terms of a single program or project that has been highly successful. Rather, all achievements together result in the legacy of what I work to accomplish. Hopefully, as a ‘connector,’ I have multiplied individual achievements into success. That also means I may never know my “biggest” achievement. I may never know how one of my connections caused the big one to happen for someone else. I’m okay with that.
Why do you do the great work for Memphis that you do?
My answer is simple: I love Memphis. And I work hard every day to help make Memphis a better city. And while I think Memphis already is great, we can’t just rest on the good things about us. We must always try to improve on what we have. Lucky for me that loving Memphis and working to make it better is my full-time job and my full-time passion.
What is important to the future of cities?
Connectedness, Innovation, Talent and Distinctiveness. Seems like CEOS for Cities has framed this up nicely and I can’t think of any way to improve on that. Of course, the challenge is determining what that means for your respective city – and that is why we need the connectedness at a national level through this organization. We can and should learn from each other and together we can make sure that cities are recognized for the increasingly important role they play in America and around the world. Bottom line – what is important to the future of cities is that we make sure everyone understands why cities are important and how to focus on the right things to make them thrive.