When you ask someone in affordable housing and community development to talk about Stuart J. Mitchell III, CEO emeritus of PathStone Corp. and recipient of the 2024 NeighborWorks Founders Award, the answer is usually "Where do I start?" Mitchell's career spans more than 50 years, and his impact is long and deep.

Marietta Rodriguez presented this speech at the 2024 National Interagency Community Reinvestment on March 7 as part of a session entitled “A New Landscape for Community Impact.” 

Imagine a neighborhood. ANY neighborhood. A neighborhood that you live in, a neighborhood that you grew up in or a neighborhood you've visited. 

For 45 years, NeighborWorks America has strived to make every community a place of opportunity. Each year, different projects and initiatives work their way into the spotlight. As 2023 comes to a close, we look back on a successful year – and some of the initiatives that made it that way.

Native partnerships

"Why do you do what you do?" This is the question that we posed to a few affordable housing and community development leaders in and around NeighborWorks America. 

"I work at NeighborWorks America because the work we deliver for our network and our communities improves the lives of people!" 

—Marietta Rodriguez, President & CEO, NeighborWorks America

Financial readiness for homeownership is a topic that’s always on my mind. So I was happy to join Zillow Group and National League of Cities for a panel last week that addressed that very subject, especially during a time when homeownership feels out of reach for so many people.  

It's been 30 years since the Eastern Shoshone Housing Authority (ESHA) built brand new homes on the Wind River Indian Reservation in Fort Washakie, Wyoming, the seventh largest Indian reservation in the country. 

 A partnership between GROW South Dakota (GROW SD), a NeighborWorks network organization, and  the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate tribe, is helping grow businesses in South Dakota. For the past few years, GROW SD has assisted the tribe's economic development arm in helping set up business plans for tribal members.

On the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, an Oglala Lakota Indian reservation in South Dakota, the schools were aging. The only building that didn't need a rehab was the Oglala Lakota County School District Virtual High School — and that's because it only existed in cyberspace.

Our Native Partnership Gathering, held during the NeighborWorks Training Institute in Chicago, was a chance for network leaders working with Native communities to learn from each other, to build relationships, to share strategies and – perhaps most of all – to talk story. One of my goals in the 15 months I've been director of Native American Partnerships and Strategy (NAPS) has been to help expand our investment and deepen our impact in Native communities.