The expression goes, "Think globally, act locally." Peggy Hutchison thought and acted in both places. Her global work focused on the Middle East, North Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean. In 2004, she felt the pull back to local community development with Primavera Foundation in Tucson, Arizona. "I thought: This feels right," says Hutchison, who worked at the helm of the NeighborWorks organization for nearly 20 years. She retires in September.
"I think what I learned from working globally was how informed, organized, resilient, and steadfast people in different regions of the world were, people experiencing tremendous depths of poverty, violence and injustice," she says. Whether they were living through war or in refugee camps, they kept working together. In the U.S., she wanted to see and foster that same spirit. Primavera Foundation is a social justice organization bringing dignity to communities through safe affordable housing, workforce development and neighborhood revitalization. "Community building and engagement is critical to everything we do," Hutchison explains. "We have to make sure participants and community members are always leading and driving the change and that we're partnering with them."
As the board interviews candidates for her replacement, coworkers and partners describe Hutchison as a "force" who helps new leaders come into their own. "She is always generous with her time and counsel," says Danny Knee, executive director of CIC Tucson, who has worked with Hutchison on eviction prevention. "I consider her one of my mentors and I know I'm not the only one."
"She invites and expects leadership across the board," adds Tanya Moreno, Primavera's grants manager. "She invites people into a process, and we walk that process together: staff, the community and partners."
Under Hutchison's leadership, Primavera has built a strong property management portfolio and asset management plan. The organization also developed its first ground-up rental housing project designed by and for "kinship families" – such as grandparents raising grandchildren. The project includes a community center, the county's first net-zero property, meaning the property generates as much energy as it consumes. During the past two years, Primavera demolished its distressed Resource Center and constructed a new building twice the size, creating a "one-stop center" with community partners to help families address a variety of crises. At the same time, Primavera expanded its eviction prevention and rapid re-housing services and provided access to COVID-19 vaccines and testing in disinvested neighborhoods.
"The staff understood that if we want greater equity, we have to do it together while also making sure that we're taking care of each other and ourselves," Hutchison says. "The work is exhausting. It's overwhelming. But people step up – they're here because they choose to be here, to create the community we want to live in, and that's a gift."
The importance of adapting to changing situations is one lesson Hutchison learned early on. Other lessons learned include:
- Build a diverse staff that represents your community. For Primavera, that's meant that some of the staff members have faced barriers in their lives, similar to some of the organization's program participants.
- Listen to your staff. Primavera's REDI initiative, for Race, Equity, Decolonization and Inclusion, began several years ago, after staff members said they were worried about increased violence against low-income people, people of color and immigrants. "In our diversity, we can celebrate and learn from each other, but with our different life experiences, how do we practice bringing greater equity and justice to our community? That's what we have to figure out."
- Change = dissatisfaction times vision times process. The formula is one Hutchison gleaned from NeighborWorks Achieving Excellence Program. "I love it when staff are dissatisfied," she says. "Because it means they care and we can get to the root of the challenge and solve problems to really address what's going on."
- Make sure that community members, program participants, rental housing residents and neighborhoods have opportunities to bring their voices forward. "To me what's most valuable, especially in this work of comprehensive community development, is that when someone asks, ‘How did this all come about?' the residents will say, ‘We did this together,'" Hutchison shares.
Did you know that NeighborWorks offers a course in succession planning? "Organizational Leadership Succession" will be a part of the upcoming NeighborWorks Training Institute in Kansas City.
