What I Believe
NOTES FROM the district
Notes on DC's economy, mission-driven business, and what it takes to build things that work.
Stop Asking Permission: A Good Girls’ Guide to Doing Good
DC's rule-following women did everything right, and it isn't working. From Tracy Flick to the 1888 matchgirls, a case for good trouble and building together.
Caring for our Steel Magnolias
DC isn't known as a creative powerhouse — but that may be part of our power, just as Dolly was never seen as the economic leader she actually was. I spent much of my career building in the creative field with women-owned factories, centering the women in supply chains at home and around the world, and I've seen firsthand what honoring women's economic agency does for an economy.
DC, we need to find our Dollys — and build them a stage.
The good news: it's already happening. We just need to see it for the powerhouse it is. We have NMWA. The Anacostia Arts Center opens in February. And this very week — as the world mourns Dolly — the first FEMME Art Fair is running in downtown DC, centering women artists from across the country, with 100% of sales going to the artists themselves and the Guerrilla Girls on the walls. Their tagline says everything: Not a movement. A market correction. Women artists are 70% of the talent and receive 3.3% of the money — a pattern I saw firsthand in my own career in sustainable fashion, an industry where women are the workers and the consumers, yet men and extractive practices sit at the top. That's not a culture problem. That's an economic development opportunity hiding in plain sight.
DC's Next Economy Is Already Here — It's Us
In May, I wrote about a friend who left DC — a family this city should have fought to keep, priced out not by rent but by the absence of the right job. That piece was about what DC should build: the industries that match our values, the neighborhoods that match our lives, the once-in-a-generation opportunity sitting in plain sight.
This piece is about something I've become even more convinced of since: who builds it. Because the answer isn't a corporation we recruit or an industry we import. The answer is already here. It's us.
DC Has a Once-in-a-Generation Opportunity. Here's How We Build It.
DC has advantages no other city can replicate: proximity to global institutions, national power, and world-class universities and healthcare. We are a city of highly educated, hardworking problem-solvers with experience tackling major challenges.