Racial Equity and Multisolving: A Conversation With Nathaniel Smith of Partnership for Southern Equity

Join Multisolving Institute Founder and Director Beth Sawin on Wed., May 4th at 12pm ET for a conversation with Nathaniel Smith, who serves as Founder and Chief Equity Officer of the Partnership for Southern Equity (PSE). PSE advances policies and institutional actions that promote racial equity and shared prosperity for all in metropolitan Atlanta and the American South. Nathaniel is also a member of the Multisolving Institute Advisory Board.

In the webinar we will explore Nathaniel’s definition of racial equity, why racial equity must be a central focus of multisolving, and learn more about PSE’s approach to advancing racial equity in health, energy, economic opportunity, and land use. This webinar is the first in Multisolving Institute’s series of conversations about multisolving with leaders in the US and internationally.


Register for Webinar

Read below to learn more about Nathaniel Smith and the work of PSE.

Nathaniel Smith, Partnership for Southern Equity, Founder and Chief Equity Officer

Nathaniel Smith serves as Founder and Chief Equity Officer of the Partnership for Southern Equity, which advances policies and institutional actions that promote racial equity and shared prosperity for all in metropolitan Atlanta and the American South. PSE does this through the lenses of energy equity, economic inclusion, equitable development, health equity, youth leadership, and fee-for-service contracts. Under Smith’s leadership, PSE created the South’s first equity-mapping tool, the Metro Atlanta Equity Atlas, and led a coalition of diverse stakeholders to support a $13 million transit referendum that expanded MARTA into a new county for the first time in 45 years.

PSE continues to support the racial equity ecosystem through the COVID- 19 pandemic through its COVID-19 Rapid Relief Fund, which distributed more than $200,000 to more than 30 organizations because of the initial investment of the Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta and the United Way of Greater Atlanta. The fund has now grown to more than $400,000 and additional rounds of funding. Smith’s endeavors through PSE and as a racial equity champion throughout the American South has earned him numerous distinctions including being named to the Grist 50 by Grist Magazine in 2018 and the Atlanta 500 by Atlanta Magazine 2019-2021 and designated one of the 100 “Most Influential Georgians” by Georgia Trend magazine 2018-2021. His work was also featured in the U.S. News and World Report, Chronicle of Philanthropy, Nonprofit Quarterly, The Hill, Christian Science Monitor, Atlanta Journal-Constitution Atlanta Voice and others.


Register for Webinar

+ posts

Share:

Related Posts

That opened a new front of research at Climate Interactive: what else would improve around the world if countries truly transitioned away from fossil fuels? From improvements in air quality to energy security we documented many co-benefits of climate action, and incorporated some of them into Climate Interactive’s well known computer simulation, En-ROADS.

But, the multiple benefits of actions to protect the climate remain mostly theoretical without ways of overcoming the obstacles to multisolving. That’s why, from the beginning of our work we have collaborated with others to understand the bright spots of multisolving around the world and to pilot multisolving approaches. First in Milwaukee in partnership with the Milwuakee Metropolitan Sewerage District and then in Atlanta, with Partnership for Southern Equity, we began to see what was possible by bringing the different parts of a system together in pursuit of actions and investments that lifted up many goals at once.

From this action research, along with a series of case studies of multisolving projects, we began to see attitudes and approaches that are in common across a wide diversity of multisolving projects, a topic we wrote about in Stanford Social Innovation Review.

Then came 2020. Pandemic. Escalating climate change impacts. Dire warnings about biodiversity loss. And more and more folks connecting the dots between each of these issues and structural inequity. Invitations to write, speak, and teach about multisolving came fast and furious and with it the possibility that what we’ve learned from multisolving bright spots could help support leaders around the world to respond to crises with multisolving. That spark led to the launch of the Multisolving Institute and our mission of supporting leaders as they pursue multisolving approaches