Vanessa R. Williams: A Vanguard Visionary
The humility and grace of Vanessa R. Williams covers her presence with an unassuming posture. It is a closer look at her vision and work that will reveal the global influence of the 35-year-old Executive Director of the National Conference of Black Mayors (NCBM).
As Executive Director of the National Conference of Black Mayors, Ms. Williams assists more than 650 African American Mayors across the United States and the 48 million citizens that they collectively represent. Under her leadership, NCBM has been positioned as a leader in the redevelopment of our most vulnerable communities. Founded in 1974 with the mission to enhance the executive management capacity of its member mayors, NCBM provides technical and management assistance, articulates the public policy positions of its members, and serves as a clearinghouse on information pertinent to municipal development and financing. Ms. Williams retains an intense focus on providing mayors with redevelopment tools, cutting-edge research and essential best practices to challenge and overcome the grappling issues that have eroded the vitality and sustainability of our nation’s cities. Ultimately, she empowers leadership on the local level to effect positive change in the quality of life in communities across our nation.
While her goal is to enhance the ability of mayors to engage the public and private sectors in this process in their respective administrations, her vision has transformed this non-profit organization into an international institution. The global reach of NCBM has allowed Ms. Williams to organize over 18,000 mayors abroad, establishing partnerships with mayoral associations, presidents and heads of state in Africa, Colombia, China, Haiti, Brazil, Jamaica, Martinique and the Bahamas. As a result of these partnerships, international development has been spurred through the exchange of information, technical assistance, critical resource building and training. The tremendous fruit of this international labor was exemplified in the NCBM Haiti Disaster Relief Fund that was immediately opened after food riots engulfed the country of Haiti in violence, this past summer. Mars Corporation partnered with NCBM to donate a shipment of Uncle Ben’s Rice to NCBM’s Haitian member mayors’ communities, which in turn fed over 300,000 people in Haiti. Whether NCBM member mayors represent populations of 2,000 or 2 million people, through her efforts, mayors have now become beacons of light and ambassadors of hope for foreign governments with vulnerable populations, developing economies and embattled infrastructures.
In their hour of catastrophic need, the Black mayors of Gulf Coast cities fell under the radar of the federal government and its relief agencies but it was a call to the cell phone of Ms. Williams that delivered critical immediate attention to the mayors of impacted cities. With limited resources, NCBM staff galvanized and distributed essential relief items to the suffering municipalities. Shortly after Hurricane Katrina, Ms. Williams demonstrated her financial savvy by securing more than $125 million in New Market Tax Credits from a major banking institution to assist with the redevelopment and restoration of the impacted Gulf Coast communities.
NCBM member mayors knew they could depend on Ms. Williams because they were well acquainted with her heartfelt diligence and commitment long before the levees broke. As a technical assistance provider serving as a liaison with the Washington (D.C.), Los Angeles, San Francisco and Phoenix Offices of the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Ms. Williams was sent into cities where the agency was threatening to rescind funding. With her acumen and efficiency, she assisted these identified cities in retaining critical development funding. This work in her early career days paved the way for the synergy that she is leveraging in her current position.
“The lack of knowledge is universal, be it Jamaica or Jackson, Mississippi; Tanzania or Tallahassee, Florida; Colombia or Columbus, Ohio; South Africa or Sacramento, California. Our communities are the last to know about the abundant funding tools and resources available to them to develop their communities. God has allowed me to gain this information both domestically and internationally, in both the public and private sectors. It is imperative that this information is used where the rubber meets the road: to empower people throughout our global communities,” says Ms. Williams, of her impact on the progress of our communities.
