This spring, some of Seattle’s brightest leaders began their journey as Cohort 4 of the WTIA Ion Collaborators. The program has undergone many evolutions since it was launched in June 2017, but its core mission remains the same: incubate cross-sector collaboration in order to ultimately make Seattle a better place to live and work.

With three cohorts under our belt, we have had three opportunities to hone in on and refine what exactly that should look like. We’ve realized that all of our past cohorts’ civic projects can be boiled down to one thing: accessibility. Seattle is full of resources, but they’re being underused. Understanding the communities these resources are meant to serve is a crucial step to increasing access to them. That’s why Cohort 4 is exploring the concept of “belonging” in three local neighborhoods. Our goal isn’t to attempt to solve these neighborhoods’ problems for them, but rather to listen, learn, and understand what it means to them to belong to a greater community—an essential precedent to increasing access to resources.

For the first time in Ion’s history, we’re partnering with an external organization – We Belong Here. As a part of Seattle Foundation’s Civic Commons initiative, We Belong Here bridges the growing divides in our region by changing the way we work together to address our greatest challenges. The program develops relationships between people and institutions from all sectors, nourishing bonds that fuse existing power with the expertise of lived experience. These relationships are sustainable, helping communities adapt beyond addressing a single issue and expand their reach to reduce inequities region-wide.

With the assistance of We Belong Here, each Cohort 4 team will focus on one of three neighborhoods: Skyway, an unincorporated part of King County with thirty religious organizations and one grocery store; South Park, an already hard-to-reach area that became isolated from the rest of the city during the four-year South Park Bridge closure; and Crossroads, a Bellevue neighborhood with a large immigrant population and a shopping mall that is thriving while most malls across the country are dying. On each team, there are two members who either live or work in the neighborhood.

We asked a representative from each team to describe why they joined and what their hopes are for the project.

Crossroads team – Marc Lambert, Financial Service Specialist Lead Worker at the Department of Local and Health Services: “I’ve never done something like this before. With my job, every person is working in government and there’s not a lot of knowledge on how different sectors work, so it’s nice to work on a team that has different sectors in it. I also just got placed into leadership role, so I’m looking forward to getting leadership experience out of this. Right now we’re in the exploration process, and it’s been really interesting talking to different agencies and subject matter experts regarding different things that are happening in our area. I feel blessed that our team jumped into everything really quickly. I think working within a small group at the community level will have a bigger impact.”

Skyway team – Paul Patu, Executive Director of youth-serving organization Urban Family: “Because of the nature of my work, in order for it to be successful it has to be collaborative. We work with youth and families whose biggest challenge is not having socio-economic mobility. They very much have been relegated to the margins of our community and because of that the greatest challenge is access and being able to collaborate outside the neighborhood. The answer to both local community issues as well as issues on the national scene have to do with the need for collaboration and the need to know other people in our community. I think collaborative projects are greatly needed…I came onto the team finding other people who were curious about what it would look like to work with people outside of our field.”

South Park team – Edwin Hernandez Reto, Warehouse Manager of NW Compete Contracting (translated from Spanish): “I’m currently developing some community-based projects in South Park and I thought it would be interesting to go through the Ion experience since the program is on its fourth cohort and should now have a very good methodology for developing community projects. Right now we’re in the process of interviewing organizations, businesses, and community leaders in South Park. It’s fascinating to listen to their experiences as people and professionals, and the vision they have for South Park. I want the community of South Park to know there are many organizations working toward equity, social justice, and improved control of our environment. The goal is to centralize all these efforts in order to have the greatest impact on our neighbors.”  

These collaborators have first and foremost been selected for their desire to learn from other people. What we’ve discovered in the last two years is that letting go of assumptions and individual agendas in order to learn from others and reach a collective goal is much easier said than done. We’re still figuring out exactly how to tell during the application process who is truly capable of doing this, but looking out for characteristics of natural collaborators like curiosity, flexibility, and personal accountability has been extremely helpful in guiding our choices.

We’re pleased that 16 out of 18 of the Ion Collaborators come from organizations that were not represented by the first three cohorts. New government departments and agencies represented include the Department of Social and Health Services, the City of Tukwila, WA Small Business Development Center, and the Federal Aviation Administration. A representative from King County Sheriff’s Office dropped without providing a replacement. New participating tech companies include Microsoft and Crowded Cloud Inc. New non-profits represented include Social Justice Fund, Urban Family, Compass Housing Alliance, and African Community Housing & Development. We also have several non-tech companies representing the private sector for the first time in Ion’s history: Dayspring & Fitch Funeral Services, Pointe3 Real Estate, and NW Complete Contracting. Organizations that have had representatives in previous cohorts include Synapse and the City of Seattle’s Department of Neighborhoods.

Cohort 4 of the WTIA Ion Collaborators will stay together through August 28. The Ion Program team includes Dr. Julie Pham, Dr. Judy Lee, Cole Hoover, Vera Zhong, and Eva Dunn. Ion Collaborator alums Sara Bromling (cohort 1) and Vonzell McDowell (cohort 2) returned as facilitators.  

Cohort 4 Ion Collaborators:

Bilan Aden, African Community Housing & Dev.

Sid Benavente, Crowded Cloud Inc.

Victor Fitch, Dayspring & Fitch

Alexandra Flores, Microsoft

Rahel Gaguro, Social Justice Fund

Edwin A. Hernandez Reto, NW Complete Contracting

Marc Lambert, Dept. of Social and Health Services

Kate Marshall, Synapse

Amy Nguyen, Dept. of Neighborhoods, City of Seattle

Brittny Nielsen, Compass Housing Alliance

Paul Patu, Urban Family

Jose Perez, Pointe3 Real Estate

Susannah Peterson, YMCA of Greater Seattle

Joseph Todd, City of Tukwila

Jenefeness Tucker, WA Small Business Dev. Center

Chenelle Tyack, Federal Aviation Administration

Elisebeth “EV” VanderWeil

Cohort 4 will have their final presentation on Aug 28. Register here.