When Eloisa Klementich started writing a book about equitable economic development five years ago, “equity” was not yet a dirty word.
Klementich, president and CEO of Invest Atlanta, , the city’s economic development agency, wrote a book based on her observations of how government and civic entities can ensure their programs and policies foster greater equity in communities with significant wealth divides.
At the book launch of “An Equity Blueprint: Actionable Strategies for Empowering Communities and Closing Opportunity Gaps” on April 17, she spoke about her journey in realizing her self-published book, which provides insights on how to make economic development more equitable.
“I had to find a way to write this down, to keep this issue — equity — at the forefront. Then this president happened,” Klementich said during the book launch at Village Books on Mitchell Street in downtown Atlanta. “Equity was now on the ‘do not say’ list.”
Fearing repercussions from the current administration, universities quickly began scrubbing the words “diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI)” from their websites, policies and classrooms.
Klementich’s first thought was to revise her book by removing the word “equity” everywhere it appeared, a nearly impossible task.
Then her middle daughter, Maggie Herrejon, challenged her by saying it was important “to say something right now” by fulfilling her desire to make the world a better place.
In an interview on April 24, Klementich called her daughter’s reaction “an a-ha moment.”
“I literally was trying to think of another word to say,” Klementich recalled.
But she had one more hurdle to jump: getting her boss, Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens, to give the okay.
Klementich approached the mayor and said: “The book title has a bad word in it. Equity.”
“Eloisa, do what you’ve got to do,” the mayor told her. “He kind of rolled his eyes as if to say go for it. I’m grateful he did. If the mayor had said no, I probably would have not published the book.”
Atlanta is a petri dish for the nation when it comes to injecting equity into its economy.
During the 1960s, Atlanta’s own Martin Luther King Jr. advocated for economic integration alongside the integration of lunch counters and public places.
The first Black mayor of Atlanta, Maynard Jackson (elected in 1973), made equity a hallmark of his administration by requiring majority-minority joint ventures in city-financed projects, especially in the building of what was then the new Hartsfield International Airport, later renamed Hartsfield-Jackson.
By requiring city contracts to include minority vendors and suppliers, Atlanta became a national model for greater economic equity.
Every mayor since Jackson (Andrew Young, Bill Campbell, Shirley Franklin, Kasim Reed, Keisha Lance Bottoms and Dickens) has continued to focus on equity in Atlanta. The city has had 53 years of Black leadership, and equitable economic development has been a priority for every administration.
Several people describe DEI as being part of Atlanta’s DNA, so one could assume the city would fare well when it comes to economic inclusion.
“Atlanta is a beacon for equity,” said Michael Halicki, president and CEO of Park Pride and a civic leader. “It defines who we are.”
But the City of Atlanta continues to be a city of inequities. Dickens calls it a tale of two cities. The city has the greatest income inequality of the nation’s top 100 cities.
On a regional level, the Atlanta region now ranks 50th out of 50 in economic mobility, going from 49th to 50th, while Charlotte went from 50th to 38th.
The reasons are complex. The city, which represents 8 percent of the region’s population, is divided between the wealthier areas in the north and east, compared to the less affluent parts of the city, south of I-20 and neighborhoods in the northwestern parts of the city.
Dickens has proposed the Neighborhood Reinvestment Initiative for seven priority communities to address the economic inequalities in the city.
At the same time, Dickens also chairs the 11-county Atlanta Regional Commission, so he is quite familiar with how the city and the region rank nationally.
“We all unanimously don’t want to be that city with this much economic immobility,” Dickens said in a recent interview after the Atlanta Committee for Progress. “People get it now. It’s not just in the city, but in the region. Regional leaders, business leaders, political leaders all get it – this region has an economic mobility challenge.”
During the book launch, Klementich invited two Atlanta leaders, Jay Bailey, president and CEO of the Russell Innovation Center for Entrepreneurship (RICE), and Lakeysha “Key” Hallmon, founder of the Village Market and Village Books in South Downtown, to discuss the challenges of creating an equitable city.
“Have we ever known equity in America?” Bailey asked at the top of the panel discussion. He then referenced the wisdom of his Aunt Dot, when asked how to change the world. She responded: “I do know you can change the three feet around you.”
Hallmon picked up on the theme, saying we all have to decide what we’re going to do with our three feet.
“Entrepreneurship humbled me real fast,” she said, before adding that “entrepreneurship is a great way to economic mobility.”
Village Market is now 10 years old, and it has access to “120-million-foot customers across three locations.”
Bailey is also a big believer in entrepreneurship, but running a business or a nonprofit takes great responsibility and perseverance.
“If you haven’t been on your back, you haven’t seen the sun,” Bailey said. “I was homeless for two years. I lived in a 9×9 storage unit.”
Bailey was asked why Atlanta, where equity has been on the agenda for 50-plus years, still scores so low in national rankings.
“We are trying to unpack 150 years of inequity in 45 years. I still wrestle with this,” Bailey said. “I give Atlanta a tiny bit of grace.”
Hallmon agreed. “We are trying to undo something,” she said. “I’m not without hope.”
But she added that creating more millionaires and billionaires is not the answer, because it only widens the gulf between the haves and the have-nots. “For people who amass wealth, they have a deep responsibility. We have to hold them responsible.”
For Klementich, the book is to provide a guide for how to make communities more equitable. It’s a “how-to” guide for economic development agencies to use data to implement the most successful strategies.
As the daughter of two U.S. immigrants (her mother from Mexico and her father from Yugoslavia – now Serbia), Klementich worked in Los Angeles, San Bernadino and Washington D.C. before moving to Atlanta in 2011 to join Invest Atlanta. She was named CEO in 2016.
“I love it here. There’s a lot of history, a lot of institutional knowledge. The history of Atlanta has impacted the entire nation and the entire world,” said Klementich, adding that she still gets “chills” when thinking of how Invest Atlanta was able to help with the restoration of the Prince Hall Masonic Lodge on Auburn Avenue, where King and the SCLC were based.
“I truly love this work,” Klementich said. “I’m very passionate about this.”
