Thomas Yu hadn't planned on a career in community development. But as an immigrant growing up in lower Manhattan, there was something about it that felt right.
 
"My family lived in affordable housing, so that theme runs throughout my life," says Yu, who serves as co-executive director of Asian Americans for Equality (AAFE) with Jennifer Sun. "There's a strong belief in my family that the pathway to security and economic mobility starts with a safe and affordable place to live."
 

In February, just two weeks after Kamala Harris was sworn in as the first female vice president, a portrait of her stood on display near the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. The installation, created by Simon Berger, used broken glass as a medium. It was an homage to the latest shattering of the "glass ceiling." 

Maria Garciaz came to NeighborWorks Salt Lake as a volunteer. She’d been working in juvenile court as a probation officer, sometimes with gang members, and the organization asked her to offer advice on a youth program to help teens build life skills. “I fell in love with the work,” she says. When YouthWorks finally came into being, she submitted an application to head the program. That was her path to community organizing.
 

When she needs inspiration, Chrystel Cornelius looks to her grandmother. A member of the tribal nation of The Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians, Mary Cornelius was the victim of assimilation, sent to boarding school to learn to be someone else's idea of "American."But after she graduated, she became a founder of the American Indian Movement, a civil rights organization.

Leslie Reid was born into a family of two: It was her and her mother, alone in New York, in need of better prospects. Reid spent time in foster care while her mother went to find them a home. Her family grew exponentially when she rejoined her mother, who had found work in Boston with a community of social workers. They'd started an organization for homeless youth, Reid says, and they lived together and worked together, providing shelter and services. 

A Puerto Rico leadership initiative, sponsored by NeighborWorks America and its partners, is helping leaders tap into larger networks of support to help them in their work managing nonprofits and supporting residents on the island.

Julie Porter grew up as the youngest of nine children. Her older brothers and sisters were raised in a country farmhouse with no hot running water, but Porter was born in town, where the family moved when they bought a rambling house in McPherson, Kansas, for $11,000.
 

Angela Bannerman Ankoma wanted her mother to have peppers, yams, and other foods she missed from her native Ghana. A 30-year resident of the densely populated, culturally diverse West End in Providence, Rhode Island, the community where she grew up, Ankoma says she knew immigrants in her community who would travel as far as New Jersey to find or sell produce and specialty items that were native to their diet. And she felt for the people in her neighborhood who just needed access healthy food that was culturally responsive.  

Don Gilmore, CEO of Community Housing Development Corp. (CHDC), is keeping his community green. In California, where the environment is first on a lot of people's minds, his NeighborWorks organization is putting energy into green buildings and a transportation assistance program that helps low-income individuals buy or lease "clean" cars.

Carrie Davis, president and CEO of Wealth Watchers, Inc., a NeighborWorks organization, began helping Black farmers during the 2008 housing crisis, encouraging them to use their land to grow food to keep families and neighbors fed – and to provide extra money to offset job losses when factories shut down. In 2020 and 2021, during the pandemic and the economic crisis that accompanied it, she is again encouraging backyard farmers to let the land help with both food and finances.