It is my honor to now invite for our keynote presentation. I'd now like to call upon Mr. Dharan Chandrath, the director of Southeast Asia at NEPO Partners to give us an understanding of the global gamer. So thank you so much, Mr. Dharan. Thank you for joining us and thank you for waiting by, I know we are over scheduled by 10 minutes. We hope to catch up with you on your session. Thank you and over to you, please. Thank you, Babana. Thank you. I will share my screen real quick. I hope everyone can look at it right now. Yes, we can, please. All right. Okay, thank you so much. So first, thank you for E4M for having me today. As mentioned, my name is Dharan Chandrath and I'm the director for Southeast Asia Research at NEPO Partners. We are a market research and consulting firm covering video games, e-sports and streaming in Asia and the Middle East. Since 2002, we have been exclusively researching and analyzing the digital games market in Asia. And this year marks NICO's 20th anniversary and our experience in conducting custom and syndicated research on gaming, both in terms of consumers and the markets are our greatest strength with all that being said. Today, I would like to share with all of you NICO's data on the global gamer with a focus on Asia. So a big number to begin this presentation. So yeah, in 2021, we estimated that the games revenue for PC and mobile in Asia reached 81 billion US dollars with around 35 billion dollars came from Asia 10, which is our term for India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam and Chinese Taipei. And the rest are around 46 billion US dollars are from China. The number of gamers in Asia is also astounding with the total number of PC and mobile gamers in Asia reaching 1.4 billion people. And around half are from Asia 10 and then around 700 million or the rest are from China. We expect that the number of gamers will also grow at a five-year compound rate at 8.1% to reach around 949 million in Asia 10 alone. So that's around like 400 to 500 million in India alone and then 400 million in the rest of Asia. And then around 700 to 800 million in China. So game industry in Asia, both in terms of revenue and in terms of the players are amazing and it's very big. And one of the main reasons is that because Asia dominates the world's game market, the Asia video game market compresses 55.1% of the total global games revenue. We estimated that there are around 140 billion US dollars worth of a video game market and 81.5 billion of it came from Asia as mentioned before. And Asia has more public game companies than any other regions on earth with five out of the top 10 biggest game companies in 2021 by market value are from Asia with companies such as Tencent, Sony, NetEase, Garina and Nintendo. And if you look at the top 50 biggest game companies in the world, Asia is home to 26 out of the top 50 game companies by market value. And one of the main drivers of growth and components of market revenue is female gamers. According to Nikos research, we found that female gamers make up around 35% of the total gamers in Asia. And the number is always growing. Last year alone, female gamers grow at around 7.6% while the total growth of gamers, both male and female are 5%. So female gamers are growing faster than the gamers in general. And then female gamers spending are also always increasing with around 10 billion US dollars spent by mobile gamers in Asia 10 who are female and then 13 billion US dollars by female gamers in China who play in mobile. And in general, Asia is a mobile-first region. Mobile games have more revenue than PC games in Asia and console is very niche. It is big in several countries such as Japan or Korea, but then in other countries it's not as big. And then we can move on to Nikos Asia 10 markets. As I've mentioned the Asia 10 markets you can see on the top right corner of the screen. These are the markets that we cover. And in these 10 games market, Japan and Korea are slated to remain the largest markets in Asia 10 accounting for 80% of total PC and mobile game revenue. So out of all of this amazing revenue, 80% are from two countries alone only from Japan and Korea. While the rest of the Asia 10 markets they are very high in terms of players but not really in terms of revenue because all of them are still growing. India especially and the Southeast Asian countries are the largest markets by gamers accounting for 44% of players for India and then 40% of Southeast Asia respectively in Asia excluding China. Other fast growing markets by revenue that I can mention are in Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam with the fastest growing markets by players include the Philippines and Vietnam as well. But the fastest growing in Asia is India with 29% growth rate for the number of players and then more than that for the number of revenue. And it should be noted that more than 90% of gamers in Asia 10 are playing on mobile. And in 2025, we estimated that almost 97% of them will all be playing on mobile with India leading the way. This slide will show you some of the summary of our reports such as the combined PC and mobile games revenue which reach 35 billion in Asia 10. The total number that I already mentioned of mobile gamers and PC gamers that will be estimated to be around 714 million people in 2021. And then mobile gamers in India are more engaged in any other markets in Asia 10 laying 14 hours of mobile games each week on average 40 hour survey. And mobile gamers in Asia are also more likely to pay for in-app purchases when their friends are playing and paying as well. So communities are very important when talking about gaming in Asia. Discounts and special offers are also interesting because they're all offering key driver of in-app purchases spent. And a quarter of mobile gamers in Asia 10 are also willing to watch ads if it can help them discover new fun games or if they get rewards and bonuses from watching those ads. These are some examples of our research in general when we were talking about in-app purchases for gaming in Asia. Skins and cosmetics lead the way with 12.3% of mobile gamers in Asia pay for skins and cosmetics. So all across the markets that we cover skins and cosmetics are the most popular followed by equipment. And then loot boxes or battle passes. Those are the main three in-app purchases that gamers prefer when playing mobile games. And in terms of ads, most players that we asked, they said that they will only watch the ads if it helps them discovering more fun games. Although in China, the number is different because most of them will close the ads as soon as possible because probably because there are just too many ads in the market. Some people also said that they would watch ads as I mentioned that if they get rewards or bonuses by watching the ads, the players in India especially said that they really want to watch ads if it can help them discovering more fun games at around 30% one of the highest in the region. And if we zoom in into India's video games market itself, India is the fastest growing market in Asia 10 by both revenue and players. And it is set to break the record of $1 billion of revenue within our forecast period. So in the next four to five years, we expect that Indian game market will reach more than $1 billion US dollars. However, India has the lowest ARPU or the average revenue per user in Asia 10. And the market requires a unique approach for monetization. As I've mentioned, ads and in-app purchases are different in India compared to the rest of Asia. And we also expect the growth to be driven by an increase in smartphone users, primarily as infrastructure investment increase in India. We also expected the rollout of 5G technology across the region including in India will increase the focus on gaming and eSports across the country. We also see that in terms of players, India is the second highest in the world with the first being China, obviously. And then the rest of Asia only cover like around 25 or to 24% of the total gamers in Asia. So if you look into like the graph on the bottom left, you can see that 50% of gamers in Asia are from China. Around 24% are from India and the rest are from the rest of Asia. So India is a giant in terms of gamers in Asia. And we can't talk about the world game market without talking about China because it is the giant that we know is always growing. China's mobile games market in 2021 reached 32 billion US dollars with around 700 million mobile gamers. And it's PC games revenue is also high at 13.6 billion US dollars with 300 million gamers. It should be noted that there are a lot of cross play and then a lot of intersections between the gamers. So a lot of mobile gamers are also PC gamers and vice versa. Although not all mobile gamers are PC gamers. And console is also interesting because China banned console for decades. They just opened it in the past few years. So when we talk about console in China we will always be talking about both the legal console hardware and then the gray market or consoles that are sold from Hong Kong or Macau. And then the number is also astounding at around two billion US dollars with around 15 million gamers playing console games. However, this is very small compared to mobile or PC. And one of the main drivers of gaming in Asia is eSports. As you all know, eSports that are popular in Asia have taken the global lead with the dominance of Asian eSports is becoming apparent on global scale. Last year, the most watched tournaments globally for titles of eSports are mostly from Asian popular titles mostly mobile titles such as Free Fire, PUBG or Battlegrounds Mobile India and then Mobile Legends as well. And then we have titles just like Dota 2 and League of Legends, all of which are also popular in Asia. And Mobile Legends, Free Fire and PUBG Mobile now draw a larger audience than traditionally popular Western PC titles like Counter-Strike or Dota 2. As you can see in this chart most of the most watched eSports tournaments last year were Asian-based tournaments or Asian-based titles such as Free Fire, PUBG Mobile or Mobile Legends. And Asia is also home to the largest audience of eSports players and fans in the world with around 658.5 million eSports gamers. eSports viewership boom during COVID-19 lockdowns and eSports titles saw a surge of new players. So COVID-19 lockdowns brought a high growth to the eSports market. And while tournament ecosystem struggled in the move to online play in the past two years in some markets the value of eSports content was at all time high by year and last year because of steady increase of eSports audience and streaming. Now we are seeing an increase in new events as tournaments return. And we think that the next few years we will see the market reconsolidate and then tournaments will be more and more fascinating to watch as tournaments return offline. And these are like some numbers about eSports in Asia. We estimated the global eSports revenue reached $1 billion last year and then more than half of it or 543 million US dollars of it is based from eSports revenue in Asia. And it is around 5% increase from 2019. eSports plays an important role at internet cafes as well. So in Asia, especially in East and Southeast Asia internet cafes are very important for eSports because players watch eSports tournaments or playing at local amateur tournaments as the main reason for fisting iCafes especially in like China, Korea and Indonesia. It's not as big in India but it is something that is growing in East and Southeast Asia. And also 9.2% of mobile gamers in Asia compete in amateur or professional eSports tournaments according to our survey with iCafes again being the most popular locations for amateur eSports tournaments to take place. We have seen the number of eSports viewership increased by 21% since 2019 with due to the pandemic. With in 2019 we estimated there are around 510 million eSports viewers but then in 2020 it increased into 618 million and then now we expected it is increasing even more in 2021 to around 650 million eSports viewers and eSports gamers as well. When we say eSports game players it doesn't mean that those who play in tournaments it means that those who play eSports games. So maybe people will play Free Fire or Battlegrounds Mobile India or Valorant or Dota 2 or League of Legends but they are not taking place in the tournaments they just play eSports games. And also we see an increase of around 7.3% since 2019 mostly because of the lockdowns. And then the revenue generated by the eSports industry that we cover in the co-partners includes sponsorships, licensing, franchising, ticketing, merchandising and some other revenues but does not include the game revenue because that is something different that we cover for the game industry revenue not the eSports revenue. Asia also sets the pace for international competitions. Asia is the hub for world's top eSports events driven by the size of Asian eSports audience the maturity of eSports infrastructure and by national, regional and local incentives for eSports tournament organizers. We have seen that the catered eSports venues and event infrastructure being built in Asia that support large scale eSports competitions and simplify production logistics. Governments across the region including in India also compete for eSports tourism. Cities and countries compete to host international eSports events by offering incentives and subsidies. This ecosystem is also drawing more international tournaments to Asia each year with several interesting tournaments to note including the international Dota 2 championship at the Mobile Legends World Tournament and then the League of Legends World Championship all of which are happening in Asia. In Southeast Asia, we also have the Southeast Asia games or also known as C Games in 2019. It became the first and the largest internationally sanctioned sporting event to include eSports as a medal event. C Games is officially held under the Olympic Committee of Asia and it's also returning this year as well in Vietnam. Some titles that are played in C Games include Mobile Legends, Dota 2, Tekken 7, Starcraft, Arena of Valor and Hearthstone. The international Dota 2 tournament was held in Shanghai and it corresponded with Shanghai's efforts to establish itself as an international hub for eSports and competitions through a lot of infrastructures and incentive support by the Chinese government. Another tournament that is interesting is the League of Legends World Championship in which Asian teams have been successful in the last four years and it became one of the strong driver of eSports growth across Asia. In Seoul in 2018 in South Korea, the League of Legends World Finals set a global audience record with almost 100 million people turning in over the course of the event as well as 30,000 people in the stadium. eSports is also a complex system. The ecosystem flowchart, as you can see here, include many, many moving points, more streaming platforms are included as well, not just the games itself and the game publishers. We have seen eSports tournaments organizers cooperating with sponsors, cooperating with franchises, with a League profit sharing with the eSports teams, also with ticketing and media licensing and merchandising. So a lot of stuff flows in eSports. An increasing competition between platforms are also interesting to note because in Asia, although we have YouTube and Twitch and Facebook gaming as in other parts of the world, but Asia also has a dynamic market for live streaming platforms. So in India, you have local, which is also behind me. And then we have Africa TV in Korea, for example, we have Niko Niko, which is not related to Niko Partners, but it is a live streaming service in Japan. And then increasing competition between platforms for key markets are interesting to note. In Asia, we have seen deeper platform segmentation as each of these platforms seek to establish its niche. And it also generates competition for eSports media licenses and broadcast exclusivity becoming one of the major revenue streams for eSports. As you can see, China has their own platforms, such as Toyo, Huya, and Billy Billy. Southeast Asia has Garuna Live, Buya, Nimo TV, and Cube TV, and Vigo Live. Korea has Africa TV, Neighbor TV, Kakao TV, and V Live. Japan has Open Rec, Niko Niko, and Mildom. And in India, we have a local and Rio to name a few in the eSports streaming industry. And then what about future trends? I talk about eSports and gaming in general, but Asia-made games are also spreading out of Asia and into the Western markets. In the US alone, Asian games cut out 52% of the market. So this is something that if you're a developer or a publisher, the US is a big market for Asian-made games. Although for now, most of them are from China, Japan, and Korea, but then other parts of Asia are also taking part in this race. With strategy games, RPG games, and shooter games being the main popular genres for Asian games in the US, in the United States. According to this data from Sensor Tower, we have seen that the Asian-made games in the US worth around $1 billion. And then Asian game revenue keep on increasing from just $500 million in 2020 first quarter to around $1 billion in the last quarter. So almost double the size in just two years because of the pandemic. Some interesting titles that should be noted including Ivo Nido King's Return, it is a Chinese game, but it even made its promotion of advertisement in Super Bowl 2017. And they have studios across Asia as well. So this is something that should be noted that Asian-made games are also popular in the US. That means developers in Asia, they have the chance to go toe-in-toe with the Western publishers. Another interesting development that we have seen in Asia is also the cloud gaming with around 1.5 billion gamers in general in Asia. It is a high number of people that can be tapped into cloud gaming, especially as most of them play on mobile and with 5G rollout ongoing, we forecast that most of these 5G users can also be tapped into cloud gaming users. Asia is of course a mobile first market and this is where most gamers will experience cloud gaming for the first time. With cloud gaming mobile only gamers will be able to play high-end console and PC games for the first time. Existing console and PC games will also be able to extend their existing player reach into mobile. However, much of the interest around cloud gaming in Asia is being driven by telecoms. And there are some issues with the infrastructures that we have in Asia. Some countries such as China, Japan and Korea, they have their own cloud gaming services that built on top of their existing platform strategies and it will work even better in those three countries while some other countries, they still have less developed infrastructure for cloud gaming. So it will be a different experience across Asia. So for example, in this slide, you can see the viability of cloud gaming in Asia. We found that Korea, Japan and China of obviously are the more developed countries with cloud gaming technology in terms of overall viability because of their infrastructure and network, content capability and then value and cost. Countries with darker shades here, they have lesser viability in these different categories. And for example, India, it is very good for value and cost but for infrastructure and content generation, it's still quite low. However, it doesn't mean that there are nothing, there are no hope for cloud gaming. It is something that's still ongoing. And we think that as long as 5G plans and cloud gaming services will be priced at relatively affordable ways when compared to other markets, cloud gaming can also grow in these countries. And next, what will we have? Metaverse blockchain, all of these jargons. We don't know because this is something that's still ongoing but we can say some of our thoughts. Metaverse itself became a hot word in 2021 due to numbers, tech and gaming companies embracing the concept. We in the co-partners believe that live surface video games have been building towards the Metaverse concept for decades. I mean, I've been playing MMORPGs in 2001 with Metaverse style experience and immersion better than a lot of today's Metaverse even. But then with the advent of Metaverse in the world, we see that game development, media platforms and other companies will have an advantage when entering the space. We expect a game focused on Metaverse will reap the initial benefits of the strength while tech first companies will struggle to overvalue to their users compared to game-based companies. However, we don't expect to see a true Metaverse experience soon, maybe like in a decade based on the currently accepted definitions. About blockchain and cryptocurrencies, we are still investigating it. Blockchain-based games they made headlines last year to their success such as XC Infinity across Southeast Asia and venture capitals, they have invested billions in blockchain-based games and NFT games. However, the first year we have seen the rise of play-to-earn model as well. And we expect to see new innovative game projects to increase the adoption of blockchain games. But this is still a very tight rope to walk. There will be still a lot of regulatory hurdles and evolution of the terms that we don't expect this to be becoming mainstream anytime soon. Challenges may also occur, especially because of the instability of the technology and the instability of the regulations. And out of the 14 markets that we cover, Japan, South Korea and China will be the leaders for these new trends. However, we also note that Southeast Asian and South Asian companies and publishers, they will have the upper hand in terms of users because of the high number of gamers living in these countries. All right, and that is everything from me. Thank you so much for attending this session. My name is Darang and you can see that you can contact me at darangethnicopartners.com. You can visit our website at nicopartners.com. We have some free stuff as well, such as the Nikon News Free Weekly Market Intelligence. We have blog posts and articles, as well as data at both free and paid reports. Okay, and thank you for tuning and I'll give it back to E4M. Thank you.


So I think one of the core things for us at Justia, and I think with law.gov as well, is that it's not just getting the information out there just to get information up. I mean, we want to get it out there so people can see what the government's doing, can sort of see how the government operates, and really start participating with the government, both on either sort of new legislation that's taking place, which I think the government's done a pretty good job on. But also how past decisions have been made or sort of what rules were looked at to make decisions, especially in things like court cases, which is one of the segments of information that we're looking at getting online for free. You know, I sort of break down what we do. You know, we do a lot of aggregation of stuff. It's not our real revenue part of our business, but we are trying to build up a lot of free information both here in the United States and abroad in, you know, Mexico, Central and South America as well. And there's a lot of sort of different steps that we have to look at in terms of trying to get this information and, you know, putting up and, of course, sharing it with others. The first sort of big thing that we always face is, is the information even available electronically?  And there's lots of things you'll find that aren't available. For example, the U.S. Supreme Court briefs. You can't get online right now or get them all available. Every once in a while, the ABA will get some back in the day when Mike and I used to work at fine law. We hired someone to actually go down to the court and make copies of those and we put them online. They're no longer doing that now.  Things like the California Code. You know, Rob's done a great job with the Oregon laws. But as he pointed out, you know, he liked to do California as well. But California doesn't even have the headings on the section numbers of the California Code that you see online. Or they're missing certain sections. Like the building codes just don't show up.  Although sometimes they'll tend to put that back up later. Different things like just getting the official text of the opinions of the Court of Appeals decisions. I mean, if we could just get the actual final text of these sort of very high level decisions, that would be great. I mean, forget about the citations and all the page numbering. Just the final version of the text. Which is, again, something that we can't get right now. And which is, you know, I think Ed spends quite a bit of time making sure it's right on FASTCASE, you know, for the Bar Associations, as well as PLOL, his free resource that he has at FASTCASE. And then some separate sort of secondary items, which will periodically show up. But things like, you know, the Congressional Research Service Reports, which the government pays for, puts online. And that, you know, like other government documents information that appear every once in a while, you have to wait for WikiLeaks to put up. And someone puts that up and then you can get them that way. But ideally the government would put that, you know, put that information up itself. Great secondary materials of very high value research. Which, you know, we're paying for as tax payers the marginal cost of putting up electronic copy when it's already electronic version, you know, zero. The second item I would say is the copyright item. Copyright and sort of different legal issues, licensing issues. You know, one thing I think, you know, we faced, again, I'm going back with Rob Stuff in Oregon, is that some states are claiming copyright to their codes or their revised statutes, saying it's not the same as session laws. And, you know, I understand the difference there. But even just, even if that copyright is not going to be enforced in a court, it still puts a sort of, you know, entry-level barrier of entry. Because a lot of people are just afraid to go ahead and grab it or to challenge the state like Carl did up in Oregon. So that's one issue. And that's really sort of a state-based type of thing. The second one is sort of licensing restrictions that are placed. A lot of states will have free information online, but they'll partner with a private publisher like Lexus. And you'll see the California cases will be up online. So it's the 1850s, but there's really a licensing agreement for you to actually use them. And you're not allowed to republish them in different items like that. So that's sort of a secondary restriction that we face. Different items, which is, you know, slightly different, is there's some private groups, such as building codes that are claiming copyright on codes that they're actually pushing the states to adopt or pushing different municipalities to adopt. And yet they're sort of trying to get this, you know, it's certainly helpful to get these codes in place. But they're also doing it as a way to produce revenue. They know once they get it into a state or once they get it into a municipality, they also have a brand new revenue source of all the contractors and all the developers out there that need to get a hold of these codes. And then the sort of side issues, which is, you know, periodically pops up are things like legal briefs or legal contracts. So, you know, legal briefs, you'll see some lawyers now claiming copyright on the briefs that they're filing with the courts. And again, it's sort of an up-and-the-air issue. And some of them were just actually upset that West and Lexus are selling these briefs, which is probably one of the things that's driving them on it. But there's also, you know, a question, you know, who owns that copyright on those materials? Or, you know, just attachments to certain filings. For example, the first Superman comic was actually an attachment to a filing in a case in the Federal District Courts. So, I mean, that's, there's obviously a copyright in the Superman comic. Or, you know, you could do the same thing. You could put the whole Harry Potter series, right, and make an attachment. Is it, you know, then part of legal proceeding or is there a copyright in it? And then things like contracts and like SEC documents. You'll often will see major contracts filed there, which some of the companies or corporations have claimed copyright on, even though it's part of an official government filing. And then, sort of stepping back, so, you know, can we get it, can we get through the legal restrictions? Then we sort of come to the technical issues in terms of grabbing stuff, you know, the XML bulk downloads. And that's really sort of a third type of issue.  There's, you know, a lot of times it'll be up there, but it'll be very hard to crawl. For example, New York State Code. You want to get the New York State Code, they have a little JavaScript. It'll stop every once in a while. They'll lock out your IP address. Look, we can figure out how to get it. That's not that hard to do. But it is an additional barrier of actually getting this. Be nicer if they just put up a large XML file and say, hey, it's gonna be up there for free.  They could just do that ahead of time. There's no reason not to. Things like just getting the Pacer stuff. It'd be obviously nice if Pacer was consistent among the courts. It'd also be nice when the Pacer updates the individual court that they actually tell you they're updating it and that the documentation actually matches which is up there. So it's just trying to get some systems in place, which is much, much harder to do when you're running 98 different district courts and a bunch of bankruptcy courts and sort of standardizing on a core system for all the courts. And I think that, as Stephen mentioned, that we'd be much better off, well, I think that both the courts and the people would be better off if they sort of pull the resources together and really tried to work on standardizing the overall Pacer system, the overall court filing system. But it is an issue. We spend at least one person a day a week just fixing Pacer scripts that have been changed by different courts. And we have to triple check the data because we can't trust the sort of what we're told that's coming in place. It doesn't always match up in order to bring it into our system. And I know we've had some issues with the recap where we put in bad information before because we weren't quite checking stuff enough, but we've obviously been spending a lot of time putting those things in place. And then to, again, a sort of a separate item is obviously if we can get the documents down, can we get them in a nice format that we can sort of scan and get them nicely marked up and sort of clickable in a way so we can sort of click and sort of link between documents. That sort of always a nice thing. And then, given all that, I think one of the stuff, one of the items that we're really working on at Justia as well as with Stanford and the ABA and a bunch of other folks is trying to allow different third parties start annotating this. So whether it's students in classes or whether it's bloggers wanting to sort of use cases linked to them. And again, this I think is relatively important because you've got a lot of people that will produce a lot of really good secondary materials if they can have access to the primary materials. And I know a lot of people say, well, the primary materials are here. The secondary materials they could still use. But you see situations where this doesn't happen. And again, there was a blogger recently who had access to some cases and those cases were withdrawn from him from his use and he actually took down his whole blog. It was a relatively high rate blog by the ABA. So there are certain things where if we can actually work together to make these things available to people, they will build on top of it. And I think we see the engineering and sort of the tech folks here from you know, GovPulse and Rob and the folks down in the government. There's a lot of people that will work hard on this but we need to get just sort of that baseline set of materials so they can sort of use that and sort of make that part go. And the final thing I'll quickly mention is I do think there are certain privacy issues especially when it comes to cases and briefs. And one thing is I don't think the courts can just push it onto lawyers because this has been mentioned a few times in these seminars. A lot of the people filing these briefs are individuals. They aren't lawyers and they're gonna put in their social security number and they're gonna put in their driver's license number and they don't know any better. And so just punishing lawyers and saying it's your issue is not gonna solve most of the situations. But more importantly, cases and lawsuits and briefs, they're really sort of stories and they're very much about people, about situations and you know, you'll see court cases, citing briefs, you know, assuming these facts are true but then people think those facts are true but it's really just for a point of law. And I think if these things get indexed by Google especially, what you're finding is that a lot of people aren't even searching for legal materials or information. They're just searching someone's name and the only thing that shows up for that person's name is this particular story, which may or may not be true as part of a lawsuit. And so that's something I think we need to think about going forward. I mean, you wanna do certain things and make it open for everybody. But there are other places where people don't have, 100 pages about them like Carl does or a million pages on Google. So something you mentioned, one more thing you mentioned about Carl in a lawsuit, no big deal. But for a lot of these individuals, this is all that people know about them. This is it. So that's just something I think we need to think about going forward as a group. Thanks.


How do we see the sacred in everyday living? It's a matter of seeing insofar as we are able as God sees. In Genesis, God creates and then witnesses to the goodness of that creation. God sees its goodness. And it says in 1 Samuel, God does not see as human see. God sees with the heart. It's a matter of what eyes we choose to see with. That makes all the difference. Because when we see as God sees, not by human standards, but with the heart, the sacred will be made known to us in the everyday encounter.


to Germany, from Alaska to Puerto Rico. All over the world, the United States Army is on the alert to defend our country, you the American people, against aggression. This is the big picture. An official television report to the nation from the United States Army. Now to show you part of the big picture, here is Sergeant Stuart Queen. How do you do? A knowledge of terrain and battlefield conditions is essential to the military commander. That's why high ground plays an important part in battle. It enables the commander to see what is going on and direct his troops accordingly. This is one reason for the importance of Army aviation. It gives the commander his high ground whenever and wherever he needs it. When we say Army aviation, we do not mean the Air Force or even a separate air branch of the Army. Army aviation is an integral part of the ground forces. It consists of light unarmed planes attached to units in the fighting zone. And its mission is strictly the direct aiding of ground fighting. Here on the big picture you will see some of the jobs that Army aviation performs in carrying out this mission. Army aviation has come a long way since the early days of World War II when the few planes the Army had were used almost exclusively for artillery observation. Today the Army has many types of aircraft. Light versatile planes like this L-19 are standard equipment in most branches of the Army. They play an important part in the combat operations of all the ground forces. Here an infantry commander checks the location of his L-19. A short distance away his troops are attacking enemy positions. One of his companies is pinned down by enemy fire. They call for help. The commanding officer tells his aerial observer to locate the enemy gun. It doesn't take long to spot the gun and report its location. The commanding officer passes the information on to the artillery and they go to work. The troops finish the job with grenades and flamethrowers. It's results like this that have sold the Army on and convinced them of the important part Army aviation can play in ground fighting. These rugged little planes don't require an airstrip. In fact almost any open ground serves as their landing field. That's important in ground operations. It means they can be faced in forward areas near the combat troops they will be working with ready for any need or emergency that may arise. Their base of operations is usually close to the command post. Often only a few hundred yards from the actual fighting. Pilot and the aerial observer are both familiar with the problems of ground fighting and the commander uses them to help gather the information he needs to plan his operations. While a battle is underway they supply him with valuable up to the minute report on the progress of the fighting. However he still relies heavily on ground reconnaissance because it's usually more thorough but it's slow and dangerous and it's limited by natural obstacles such as hills and trees. That's where aerial reconnaissance has the advantage. If the visibility is good there are no obstacles. From his high vantage point the aerial observer has a clear view of the entire combat area. In the air the observer serves as the eyes of the ground commander watching and reporting any sign of enemy activity. Whatever their mission may be the pilot and the observer working as a team accomplish it in a fraction of the time it would ordinarily take. The observer spots a bridge that the enemy failed to destroy. He can't determine its strength or capacity from the air but he reports it. If it turns out to be important the commanding officer will have the bridge carefully checked by ground reconnaissance. Flying on the observer continues his appraisal of the road network. He's traveling at better than a mile a minute but he can judge the condition of the road and estimate the traffic it will carry. Further on he spots a road block on one of the routes his unit is planning to use. He locates it on the map and reports it. The information is passed on in time to warn a scouting party in the area. They'll take a new route now one that's been carefully checked from the air. With the little L-19 hovering in the sky above them there's less chance of our troops being trapped or surprised by the enemy. The aerial observer has a clear view of the entire area and he's watching for any sign of the enemy. An advanced column moves forward. They're moving slowly because they expect trouble up ahead. The commander wants to find an alternate route for them. The observer is notified of the situation and he goes to work. It doesn't take him long to find one. He also locates a river forward that looks suitable for tanks. He lays up a new route, locates it on the map and notifies the commanding officer. The commanding officer checks the route and decides to try it. He relays the information to his advanced column. The column heads for the river. They reach the forward and cross without losing valuable time and without delaying the advance. When the need arises for the commander to join one of his forward elements he can do it quickly and easily and without the serious loss of time by using an army plane. Today's army is a mechanized and highly mobile one. It has to be. Speed is important and battles are being fought on increasingly large fronts. Today relatively small combat units guard in patrol areas that once would have required forces many times their size. The control and direction of these widely scattered combat units could be a serious problem to the ground commander. The fact that it is not is a tribute to the part played by army aviation. Often the detailed information a commander requires may only be obtained from the study of aerial photographs With the expansion of army aviation he now has both the equipment and personnel under his command to take and process photographs immediately. Ordinarily it would have taken days to get them. In a matter of minutes they are in the air and on their way to carry out their mission. The great value of aerial photography is the detail it can supply. It often makes extensive reconnaissance by ground elements unnecessary. Army aerial photography is intended to care for the immediate needs of ground units at company to regimental level. It supplements the general reconnaissance work of the Air Force which is primarily equipped to serve the photographic needs of the larger ground headquarters. When the mission is completed the film is dropped near a portable field laboratory in the combat area. Here it will be developed and printed and quickly delivered to the command post which is located nearby. Another important job that army aviation has taken on is the delivery of official mail and messages. In the combat area the roads are usually poor and the distances often great between units. Normal delivery could be slow and uncertain. Over terrain like this it would be virtually impossible. But it's no problem for the little hedge hopping army planes. They make their deliveries with ease and speed. Speed is particularly important when the normal means of communication such as radio or telephone break down or are not available. By plane rush messages can be delivered to isolated units in a matter of minutes or if necessary picked up and returned to the command post just as quickly. The panels on the ground guide the pilot in for the air pickup in less time than it would take to make arrangements for the normal emergency delivery the army plane completes its mission and returns to its base to await another assignment. Since light aircraft have become an integral part of the ground forces they've been tried at many new jobs. One of these is wire laying. Laying miles of telephone wire over wild and trackless terrain is a tough job or at least it was before someone got the idea of trying to do it by plane. It could take a ground crew days to lay the wire a front line unit required for its communication system. Skimming low over the trees at 70 or 80 miles an hour this little plane can do it in a few hours. Supply by air has always been the job of the Air Force. However, if one of his units is suddenly cut off or isolated and in need of supplies the ground commander can use his own plane to take care of them. They can't carry much of a load but distances by air are usually very short and they can make many trips if necessary. In areas up north where snow, ice and severe cold make vehicles practically useless supply is a critical problem for a combat unit. Large areas have to be patrolled on foot and the troops must carry their own supplies or at least they would if it were not for the army plane and its regular drops of food, ammunition and other essentials. In the past few years under the pressures of war Army aviation has taken on many new jobs but directing ground fire still remains one of the most important. Here the aerial observer directs the motor fire on enemy positions that can't be seen from the ground. The techniques of aerial observation have improved steadily over the years along with weapons and equipment. Artillery batteries with an aerial observer to direct their fire have developed a high degree of accuracy. Here's an example of the pinpoint accuracy they achieve from several miles away. Light army planes have little in common with the fast heavily armed jets of the Air Force but there are times when they are called to work with them. If the air controller is unable to guide the planes onto their target the job is given to an army plane. Communicating with the jet pilots by radio the army observer locates the target and directs their fire onto it. He helps them correct their point of attack. Army planes perform many important functions but none is more inspiring than the job they have done in the evacuation of wounded. Their prompt and speedy evacuation of casualties from front line positions to hospitals in the rear saved thousands of lives. Much of the credit for this must go to the helicopter which proved to be much more versatile than small fixed wing aircraft. The awkward looking helicopter with its ability to land and take off anywhere has been enthusiastically adopted by the ground forces. It is already responsible for many changes in ground fighting and it may well turn out to be the most important development to come out of the Korean War. Modern warfare depends on firepower and plenty of it and highly skilled soldiers trained to make full use of their abilities but the modern army must possess another all important quality mobility and plenty of that too. In recent army field forces exercises held by the 6th helicopter transportation company and a battalion of the famed 82nd Airborne Division the battalion commander flies ahead in his bird dog the army aircraft to reconnoiter a river which his troops are rapidly approaching. He carefully selects an assault site. The modern army must be geared so that everything contributes to the continued and relentless forward movement of the basic element of the army, the infantrymen. In the exercises we find the battalion moving forward rapidly against light aggressor resistance. As the attackers reach the riverbank they set up a base of fire opposite the assault site. Simultaneously, a preparatory barrage of artillery fire is laid down on the aggressor held shore. This is then followed up with a heavy curtain of smoke designed to screen the movement of the attacking troops at certain selected landing areas. This is the time for mobility, helicopter mobility. Now to take advantage of the artillery barrage and the smoke screen, the attacking battalion's reserve company is quickly loaded into the helicopters of the newly organized helicopter transportation company. The idea is to get their fustas with the mostas. Each helicopter company has 21 H-19 cargo or troop carrier helicopters which can carry six to eight combat-equipped men or nearly a ton of cargo. Each company also has two small utility H-13 helicopters. The chief purpose of these aerial trucks is to augment the traditional ground transportation system which once again proves that armies need not be chained to the ground. The battalion commander issues a ceasefire order when he observes that his assault company is riding the whirlybirds. Yep, chum, there are. Part of the army's equipment designed to do everything possible to assist the combat man. When he boards his little H-13 the battalion commander will fly to land directly behind his assault troops across the river without losing precious minutes in jeep transportation. Here they come. Copters land easily and effortlessly. The first men out are engineers to help build a bridge crossing followed closely by the assault infantrymen who pile out ready for action. In four minutes the entire assault company is landed and is fighting the aggressor forces. Screams from aggressor observation by a heavy curtain of smoke the troops advance to route the aggressor forces. Artillerymen are landed to prepare to receive the guns which are being ready for delivery by the copters. Here they go. Firepower with a plus. Mobility.  Now with the way prepared by the assault company which has pushed the aggressor forces back part of the battalion moves down to the riverbank and prepares to cross. Casualties would be light if any. The riverbank has been cleared of aggressor sniper fire. Here comes the firepower. Easy does it. As a training measure in these army field forces exercises part of the battalion prepares to cross the river in engineer assault boats. In the meantime the copter delivered engineers have helped build a footbridge across the river. After the artillery lays down a protective barrage of fire to cover the crossing to cross over. The modern infantrymen has to be able to move not only on foot but in the air and in boats. Up and back the copters go. The assault mission completed. The copters shift gears and shuttle back to the rear supply areas to go into logistical support of the men on the ground. The remainder of the battalion then pushes across the river. They continue the momentum initiated by the copters as they land on the opposite side of the river. They go rapidly forward in the advance to throw back the aggressors. Up and back the copters go. In no time they're windmilling their way back with the supplies needed by the advancing assault way. The loads are slung externally for speed and handling to avoid possible aggressor fire. At other times when not operating close to the battle line the loads would be carried internally and would be considerably heavier. The copter is a true aerial workhorse in transportation in addition to bringing in men and materiel. These flying trucks can also double as ambulances to evacuate casualties. Thousands of critically wounded men in Korea have been saved by helicopters and from almost inaccessible mountain peaks the rescue was once an impossibility. Now the beachhead has been firmly established this time with a heavier bridge which can support tanks, heavy artillery and more men. Only 10 years old Army aviation provides a third dimension of mobility to already powerful ground forces. Slow, odd looking? Yes, but what a job the helicopter can do. It can do the rough job, the tough job. Like a bird, it can really land on a dime. It can even fly backwards. It can contribute spectacularly to making the American Army a highly mobile, powerful force in an already fast moving work. We hope this has given you some idea of the increasing importance of Army aviation in our Army of today. It's still relatively new but it's expanding rapidly. And if its impressive record of achievement is any indication of the future role it will play we can safely say the sky's the limit. Now this is Sergeant Stuart Queen inviting you to be with us next week for another story in The Big Picture. The Big Picture is a weekly television report to the nation on the activities of the Army at home and overseas. Produced by the Signal Corps Pictorial Center. Presented by the U.S. Army in cooperation with this station. You can be an important part of The Big Picture. You can proudly serve with the best equipped, the best trained, the best fighting team in the world today. The United States Army.


My name is Dana Linane and I'm a Policy Communications Officer here at Kellogg Foundation monitoring today's conversation and I'm standing in for Humera Fez, one of our investment managers here at WKKF. But I have supported our mission-driven investment communications work for about a decade, so I think we'll be okay. It's an honor to be host this transformational conversation about place-based investing with a racial equity lens. So our conversation, our goal for today's conversation is threefold. We want to better understand how to approach place-based investments with a racial equity lens. Next, we want to inspire investors to get involved with fund managers who are reaching entrepreneurs of color and communities of color in place-specific ways. And last, we want to explore how these elements of philanthropy, venture capital, municipal financing work together to make a more racially equitable economic environment. A little bit about the Kellogg Foundation. Children are at the heart of everything we do and we know that children live in families and families live in communities and for all children to thrive and be successful, we've learned over our 90-year history that those communities need to be equitable. So our mission-driven investment work at the Kellogg Foundation seeks to make that happen by increasing capital and widening financial systems for entrepreneurs of color. And we do that not just through participation, that's certainly part of it, but what we ultimately and fundamentally want to do is reshape capital markets. And that means we're challenging deeply held and deeply misinformed narratives about entrepreneurs of color and about risk. We're figuring out what types of financial supports create the most supportive and wraparound structures for entrepreneurs of color. And we're creating networks of entrepreneurs, fund managers, institutional investors, all of those committed to advancing racial equity. But today, we're going to do some dives and place-based investing and we're going to go a little bit deeper. We'll talk about several places, but we'll go a little bit deep on Michigan today. And as folks may know, Michigan is the home state for the Kellogg Foundation and it is one of our priority places. In Michigan and in all of our priority places, we're trying to build a more equitable economy for all. And I just want to share a little bit of data fact. So the Michigan Business Case for Racial Equity, we found through some economic modeling that by 2050, if we close those racial inequity gaps in our systems and our structures, the state stands to realize 92 billion gain in economic output. And I want to be clear that report was conducted before the pandemic. So we really look at that as a floor. The opportunity is huge here. Because of the demographic shifts and other conditions, you know, we know people of color will power Michigan's fiscal future. So today, today we're joined by a couple of our partners in our portfolio, all of whom are unleashing capital, engaging in innovative research and changing policies to create new pathways for opportunity. So Chris, Chris Rizak, CEO, Renaissance Venture Capital, Chelsea McDaniel, Senior Fellow, Activist, and then my colleague Yazid Moore, who's a program officer with the Kellogg Foundation. As a reminder, please use, drop your comments, questions in the chat. We'll be monitoring. We'd love to get some dialogue in there as well. But I am going to ask our panelists to kind of kick it off, introduce yourselves and talk about how you're working in Michigan and how it advances racial equity in the state. So, Chris, why don't I kick it off to you? And if you're not speaking, would you guys mind muting? And that's great. Wonderful. Thanks, guys. Thanks, Dana. Yeah, it's really great to be here. Thanks for inviting me and glad to be on this panel. So we started Renaissance 13 years ago because we understood that access to capital is one of the one of the huge drivers for economic growth around the country. And yet in the world I've lived in for 27 years, venture capital, more than 80% goes to three states and one of them is not Michigan. And so the idea behind Renaissance is how can we attract capital from around the country into Michigan? Because we saw great opportunity here for startup companies, for new industries, et cetera. And we just weren't getting our fair share. So the idea behind Renaissance was we created the fund of funds. So that means we don't invest in startups. We invest in the venture capital funds that invest in startups. We invest around the country and venture capital funds under the condition that they come here to look at Michigan startups. Understanding our check alone wouldn't do that. So we then created sort of this more holistic new where we said, we're going to help find the startups. So we'll work with community groups, with universities, with accelerators, and we will gather information. We will help coach up startup companies ultimately to present them to venture capital funds around the country. And we created something we call the hot list, which at any point identifies here the 50 or 60 hottest young companies in Michigan that are looking for capital. But we also looked and said, once we make this introduction, what is the other thing the startup needs, and that's customers. And so we started Renaissance actually reaching out to major corporations in Michigan who agreed ultimately to not only invest in our fund, and we've raised about $300 million to date, not only to invest in our fund, but to agree to look at becoming customers of startups that come out of this. And what we found is that quite often there were major needs that these companies had that could only be solved by a startup. And so we'll talk later about some of the ways we do this. But that was the idea behind Renaissance. We're really the place based piece of what we talked about. But what we found over time is if entrepreneurs in the Midwest are in the shadow of venture capital, tough to find, entrepreneurs of color in the Midwest are absolutely invisible. And you look at whatever measurement you want and it's pretty dire. So what we then had to do was look at how can we take and bring up entrepreneurs of color to at least get them at the table. What we do as a fund is we get entrepreneurs at the table and get venture capital funds to look at them. And what it meant is we had to help find new sources of capital at the very earliest stage to bring entrepreneurs up, but also had to look at what are the other things they need from the standpoint of mentorship and tools and infrastructure. And again, we'll talk later about how we do that, but with the idea of ultimately making it so that we're bringing up all entrepreneurs and they are all beside each other at the table with access to venture capital from around the country. So that's a hopefully a short explanation. And by the way, it's worked really well here. We've been able to attract to Michigan about $2 billion worth of capital. And we've helped about 150 startup companies to get contracts with major companies in the region. Thank you, Chris. Chelsea, why don't you kick it over to you? Introduce yourself, please. Great. Thank you. I'm Chelsea McDaniel. She her pronouns and I'm a senior fellow with activist. A little bit about activists. So we are a municipal investment research firm that focuses on something we call fiscal justice. And we believe that communities and cities that treat their residents fairly will realize strong financial outcomes. So we're a black owned firm started in 2016 and we're a collection of activists, finance professionals, social policy folks and a few other folks thrown in there. And we really built kind of the framework for activist and fiscal justice in the wake of Michael Brown's killing in 2015 in Ferguson. And just in brief about that, what kind of was that what played an important role in that for us is that we when we went down to do some rapid grant making and talk to folks on the ground about what the situation was there that kind of created this couple of things that the community lifted up to us that were really significant and really honed in on the significance of kind of this community driven insights and analysis. So those two things were that we saw increasing policing of the majority black population there to do basically one thing and that was to kind of enact the city's policy of taxation by citation. So extracting wealth from that community to help make up the significant revenue shortfall in the budget. And so that was increasing police interactions and ultimately creating the environment where this really tragic police killing happened. As we dug into that and other cities, we kind of expanded this view of municipal finance being an avenue for engagement on a lot of the justice issues we see in cities. And so our work focuses just like that very first time we went down there, our work focuses on bringing in two main things. One, we're bringing in and I think at the core of it is what organizers on the ground, folks who know the story of the place, elevating that insight and research, which isn't currently looked at in the municipal market and where they're identifying risk and problems and then bringing in our own data set of things that are currently not considered and combining the two to paint a different picture of the fiscal and the financial health of cities. I'll talk a little bit later about how we engage with community members and what we do about that. I think the last thing I'll say on the introduction because I talk a lot about municipal bonds and sometimes I get those blank stares from my family too. Municipal bonds, when we're talking about that, I'm really just thinking think of them as like I use to municipal to governments, to cities that go to pay for everything from schools to police settlements. And so that covers a lot there and I think what I'm going to talk about a little bit later but what's significant about that is who has power in that. And I think right now what we've seen with municipal bonds is that the power oftentimes is with the municipal bondholders and the credit rating agencies and there's a lot of embedded biases and racism in that that ultimately ends up supplying providing money that supplies these bad practices that have negative outcomes for folks on the ground. And the piece that we feel like is missing and we're trying to elevate is the folks on the ground who are most impacted by that using this as sort of just another lever to help push for substantial change for folks on the ground. Thank you Chelsea. Yazeem? Thanks Dana. Yazeem Moore, program officer at the WK Kellogg Foundation. Glad to be a part of this conversation. So you know we know that small businesses are a key driver you know of the overall economic vibrancy you know the financial security and health of family communities here across the state of Michigan. As an established anti-racist organization we understand that in order for everyone to thrive in today's economy we must address racial inequities. So along those lines we're making at the foundation intentional and long-term investments in partnership with grantees and investees to deploy capital to entrepreneurs and communities of color which have been locked out of. So some examples in Detroit we partnered with the JP Morgan Chase to launch the Entrepreneurial Colors Fund in 2015 to date. That fund has loaned more than 10 million dollars to entrepreneurs throughout the city. 97% of those bars are people of color and 55% are women. The loans have helped create and retain more than 1,100 jobs. So when you talk about the impact of the work that's what the impact of the work. You know for us that Entrepreneurial Colors Fund was in many ways kind of like our launch pad investment in this space in Michigan because it helped us do a couple of things. One it helped us kind of identify lessons, learnings, pain points you know when considering other investment opportunities and some of those things included the importance of TA technical assistance, pre and post, flexibility and thinking about putting together loan funds and packages. You know the piece about you know being explicit and we can't leave that out and can't be understated but being explicit about racial equity and building on ramps to create those opportunities and wealth for communities of colors in the ways that Chris kind of mentioned earlier if Michigan was being locked out of venture capital opportunities what do you think communities of color are being locked out as well too? So when we take a look at the work that we've done in Detroit you know as I said kind of our launch pad investment you know we begin to kind of sprinkle those learnings to other places so and Battle Creek you know our hometown or our mothership is located. You know we brought together local partners to launch a 10 million dollar small business loan fund to spur economic development. That fund was led by Northern Initiatives, a community financial development institution who provides that capital and TA that we talked about early to small business owners who are deemed too risky for funding by traditional lenders. So as we know COVID-19 had a disproportionate impact on impact on black, brown and women-led businesses. Lack of access to PPP or in many cases being exclusively locked out of it showed us the challenges for these entrepreneurs with traditional banking. Even before the pandemic we knew that access to capital was a trouble spot for groups like black business owners as they were denied loans at twice the rate of their white counterparts per findings from groups like the center of responsible lending. So taking those lessons we talked about looking in Grand Rapids right of working with a group called Run Day Progress Capital who's a racial equity-oriented community development financial institution and addressing the relief funding gap by deploying flexible loans. Again talking about the learnings that we've gathered from Detroit about the flexibility in creating these loan packages and funds and actually being able to you know provide that capital entrepreneurs. But one of the things that Run Day did that was really helpful throughout this process is that you know looking at the technical assistance piece and actually bringing community a part of that conversation to talk about what they need right and the work that we did in Grand Rapids was really in response a direct response of looking at what COVID-19 had done in terms of looking at the rollout of the PPP and particularly us hearing fears early on that you know maybe 90% of businesses owned by people of color would be locked out of that process for opportunities for several reasons whether that was they didn't have relationships with banks or whether some other things that really made it difficult for the communities that we care about to be able to kind of help them to develop in that wealth and opportunities. You know another bright spot in 2019 you know more than 260 million dollars was raised or leveraged by WKKF grantees focused on women and people of own businesses. During the pandemic you know those grantees utilized that funding made available through our foundations a grant making process and leveraged those opportunities through CARES Act to ensure that equitable access to employment opportunities continues across the state again building on the learnings that we've kind of looked at and looking at that launch plan investment in Detroit and then beginning to kind of go deeper and sprinkle some of those lessons and opportunities in places like paddle creek and Grand Rapids but also being able to spread those lessons across the state as well too as we think about creating opportunities for communities of color businesses owned by communities of color to be able to kind of access the capital and resources. Izzy thank you and thank you all so let's dive in with some questions so Chelsea you talk specifically around community voice and community driven and the data and the research right I mean even as simple as just aggregating by race right and looking at those numbers talk a little bit more about the community voice looking at that data how why do you do it and how do you do it? Great thanks and I think I'll use the example of we did a kind of deep dive research into the Flint the recent Flint settlement bond so I'll try to use that as an example for for kind of how we work so our work with on and our research on that really began with kind of standing relationships with some academics in the area who worked in that area other activist investors and then actually Izzy put us in contact with some other great folks on the ground there who do amazing work who kind of raised the issue now obviously no there's no issue with there being a settlement but there were a lot of concerns that came up around substantial or the lack of rather policy changes and substantial behavioral changes in in conjunction with this so our process for that kind of went with like started off talking to some of those folks on the ground and and figuring out what where was what was the status of things right now obviously there was there was a community call for some some sort of financial restitution but there were other things that that weren't that hadn't been thresholds that hadn't been met or means that hadn't been met as well at one point we spoke to someone at Flint Rising New York who framed it up as as basically what would it cost to to make Flint whole and it and it wasn't it wasn't just this settlement and so I think our job as you know investment researchers and change there sorry my screen just went a little weird you can still see me okay great it might just be the chat popping up thank you um so we we kind of worked um we start with kind of measuring the risk uh and we kind of do our deep dive into that with our own data sets we kind of did this in conjunction this time because we had such great community partners that were sending us stuff at the same time and so that's really the the next part of is this community sourced intelligence you know this is the picture we're getting from a traditional finance analysis adding these fiscal justice indicators um and then what the community source intelligence is telling us of the story of how we got here which many of us know in the case of Flint but the story of really how folks are living on the ground right now and what their asks are in response to this municipal bond um and how the state might show up differently and to meet some of those very um real needs of the people um and then our third step kind of with that is is releasing this research and elevating ways that bondholders might get engaged so when I say bondholder engagement if you think um if you think of like the traditional shareholder activism or engagement it's along those lines it just doesn't happen very often in bonds uh in the bond market but we're trying to change that in municipal bonds and so it's lifting up the specific ass of um of the community and particularly in Flint that was around um lifetime health care um that was looking at um the pipes that were actually in people's homes that were still leaching particularly led and the concerns there um those were also some of the people that bought up um what's going on right and what's not what's been going on in Benton Harbor but it is now finally getting national attention and I say that just because I can't stress enough how important that that local insight is you know we can um we we like to add in and add what the financial risk um is of that and try to make the argument to investors on this is this is a uncompensated financial risk and and doesn't make sense socially or financially and that's you know there's a reason and a case a business case there um for advocating for change for that but I think we you know we really rely on the folks on the ground who have that tremendous insight um and I think the final goal there is really then to to shift that capital and power back to communities so use our position as researchers and lean on municipal finance to help do that. That's great thanks Chelsea and Yazid how are you how are you lifting up community voice and why is it important? Well you know for us Dana you know community voice and community engagement is is key for us it's a you know it's a key part of what we call our DNA of the foundation right particularly also along with racial equity of that being a part of our DNA because we believe that people you know have an inherent capacity to solve their own problems of yet to become a meet any community that doesn't know what they want and what they need and how they articulated that right. The challenge for us is that how do we begin to kind of enable those conditions to lift and step into that space and so when we think about our grantees and investees here in Michigan you know everyone just deploying capital is also providing that critical non financial support as well so and that's really in terms about how we've engaged with partners on the ground so hearing from them what they need in these spaces right yes it's good about meeting the capital but what are some of the other non financial support that they may actually need just in terms about how they kind of help prepare a loan application coaching business models right and thinking about networks and even scaling the work and so that's always been fundamental to us in terms of centering voice in the work because when you center voice in the work it shows up best and so an example I'd like to probably give around that is kind of referencing back to some of the work that Ronde progress uh progress capital did in Grand Rapids you know very networked and you know did extensive outreach with the business community the chamber other community based groups other you know entrepreneurs support organizations that are kind of working in that space and actually brought them all to the table to say hey how can we build a loan package a loan process right that works for community right that benefits community and so in using that firsthand knowledge to build that under that loan underwriting tool in those processes right you know that really tapped into the lived experiences and resiliency of community of people who've been thinking about how to access capital I think that's been something that's been really understated is that really tapping into and looking at people's lived experiences as they're starting businesses right you know in terms of using that as a value add as a part of that process and so when we you know when they receive a loan application right you know we looked at those looked at the entrepreneur and you know given the issues about what they might have been experiencing from an unconscious bias and discriminations and inequities right and use that as a part of that process to kind of like make sure that we were building a package and a level of supports right that was being innovative but in also some ways maybe disruptive as well too disruptive in the positive sense right to ensure that we're putting together a tailored package that allow communities and business owners to kind of come in here and get the support and resources that they need to actually help and support and run their businesses and that didn't happen if we don't if we don't if we're not asking an engaging community about what they need at the end of the day that's great Izzy thank you and I think that lived experience is so important understanding where people are at and meeting them where they're at so I'm going to jump to a question in the chat here because I was one of the questions I had for folks so you know the Kellogg Foundation we do invest a lot in a couple different places and as Izzy mentioned we think about how we share those lessons and learn and what is applicable what is replicable so in Chris and Chelsea certainly you guys work all uh Chelsea you work all in different cities across the country and and Chris when I uh I do know that you guys are doing a lot in terms of sharing your lessons learned to other places on how to do this and how to do it well I think I I gulied you last night you're the even the Dean of BC in Michigan right now so I think the word's getting out so so what I want to hear from you guys is in terms of what are you know in the chat let's see are these what are the lessons in place-based network um what is the infrastructure that's needed and do we need folks like a WKKF or JP Morgan to make this work so Chris why don't you start that off please yeah there's a lot there I'll try and go out a little bit you know because he was talking about something that's pretty important to us because I talked earlier about how a big part of our goal is to take help local companies find investors from around the country and this hot list we create where we pull from the community and we found in the first couple years you know the hot list was as you would expect in the tech community you know there's a there's a natural sort of organic way that that happens in Ann Arbor you know that's been there for decades but if you're an entrepreneur of color in Detroit or in Pontiac or in Flint you know there isn't a natural pathway and so we actually we started working with the foundation community and helped create something called the first capital fund because we found there was a big gap of the first $50,000 to a company that could ultimately be you know a world leader but that first $50,000 or $100,000 was difficult and so we helped with foundation help we started this first capital fund and then later we actually went to the state it's not through the economic development commission and I wrote a white paper on it about how from a state economic development standpoint a relatively small investment could have an outsized impact and so Invest Detroit Ventures is a fund in Detroit that I chair we started this fund but with a particular mission toward focusing on underrepresented entrepreneurs so you know for instance last year we we invested in I believe was 85 companies and 60% were women or minority entrepreneurs which in the world of venture capital is like a 10x over what you know you typically expect and the whole idea is you know we create capital we create mentorship and then we bring everybody to the table so that when we run our hot list when we bring in hundreds of venture capital funds in Michigan into Michigan now it looks like a much more representative group and everybody is prepared to be at the table so that is a big difference and it was partnerships that we did you know to to do that so that was infrastructure that we were all kind of you know throughout state we're kind of creating as we were as we were going along but now if you look at where the gaps are the gaps are fewer and and in each area you know we're getting there and where I think you were going with this is you know this is replicable so the what we found in Renaissance you know with the data we've received where we're we're getting startup companies capital we're getting them customers and really the important element is and I've spent 13 years convincing other people this this isn't charity I mean our investors are getting better than market returns by doing this and and that was you know I when I'm sorry I'm taking a little bit long but when I first raised the fund there was a CEO of a local company who believed in the mission and so the company invested and then he pulled me aside said by the way I told my CFO this is a grant this isn't an investment and you know that investor now is going to make probably four times their money on that initial investment for something that they thought was a grant so with the success we've had we've been approached by a number of areas of the country we made a pretty fundamental decision early on you know there was some thought of you know we'd like you to create a consulting group and consult with this and what we sort of said is we're just going to open source this we will share all of our learnings with everyone we serve on boards in other regions and all that we don't ask anything for it our feeling is the more funds like ours there are they're not competitive at all the more funds like ours there are the better it is for all of us and we can share data we can share you know learnings and so first place that we replicated this was in Cincinnati which was about eight years ago in Houston two years ago and actually this week Milwaukee was the third location and then the next one that's been announced is Dallas and again a completely open source model run locally because we really feel you have to have local people who understand the region doing it but we've got you know 13 years worth of best practices that we can share with them that you know are probably 90 effective in their region that's great thank you chris and chelsea what are you finding how are you navigating or learning from the different communities you work with yeah um thank you for that i think um i think the thing we we've learned um over time is that framing is a big piece of this that the reason they're well one of the reasons why there are a number of these social and financial risks um and and they kind of exist and um and without having an impact on the financial space it seems like or the market's not responding to them is because they're not seen as that and so we um we actually there's a recent study that was just published um out of the the worton sg lab they used some of our data and looked at um you know the different indicators and if they were were material and predicting the outcomes of these municipal bonds so on the making the financial argument side of it and framing um you know increased policing and and harassment and surveillance of people and the risk that that caused the long-term risk of settlements of whatever many other things or um the risk in the case of a flint of um being allowed to take on additional debt when they had already met their debt cap um they're they're that's um we're realizing that the framing and the urgency behind it behind it is um really important for folks and so we've laid out a fiscal justice framework um that helps people understand these things actually are material even though they're not currently being treated like that at least in a financial way and then i think the second piece is getting this this data together um and so getting that from the the community um we recently launched a credit rating firm to help facilitate that and so um we are training community members and partners on how to um how to integrate some of this data and collect and share this data um and do these types of analyses of their own cities um so that folks own part of that process too and collecting the data um and there's a certain amount of um community authenticity with that as well um but that that is that's taking yeah that's that's an issue that's an area where scaling up is is uh is going to be a process i think um right now this the the data we're collecting in the data the community that members are providing it's not on your regular annual you know your CAF or your report for the city um shoot sometimes the stuff they're supposed to be reporting on is not yet in there yet despite the the new regulations on that so um that's that's where i think the that further infrastructure is needed and we're trying to build that out and i mean more times than not we we go to community members we were just talking to some folks in in louisville and they have done the door to door uh visits to understand the dynamics of evictions and how policing is connected to developments push to try and push people out of a historically black neighborhood there the wrestle neighborhood and so they have that data where they're asking they know the right freedom of information act requests to ask for and they've got those FOIA requests for us um so it's really it's in a lot of ways enabling a platform and helping to give them a framework um and then translating that into the financial risk and and doing our part um to mobilize bondholders to um advocate on behalf of those those community asks thank you chelsea thank you and that both of you shared the importance of that data looking at different data set sharing data so i think that's some really good learning lessons there and chelsea i can tell you spent time in louisville i was raised there and uh you said it right so i want to go i want to go back to you know when we look at the opportunities we often try to pull the right levers um to advance our work so i want to understand how do you tap into those levers how do they intersect so i'm talking about policy grant making investment and i'm going to throw in their narrative too because you guys all have talked about that um and even uzi you had mentioned being explicit about racial equity so uzi why don't you start off a little bit please yeah so you know you know you know to achieve racial equity right when we think about this we must take a systemic change approach to the work right it has to be about systems change and so you know at the foundation you know obviously we we deploy you know both crack capital and investment capital but alongside those other tools as you talked about right we talk about things like narrative change right and begin to kind of have intentional conversations about well what are we solving for right and how do we begin to kind of create equitable opportunities for those that we're looking at and so you know when we think about you know the interventions and investments you know that we're making in this space you know i kind of touched on the early it's about really disrupting right the existing policies you know that uh you know that you know push these inequities and as in the case as we saw like in the first rounds of ppp deployment right and so we're making these investments and we're making these intentional conversations and having these conversations around racial equity and there are the change because we're thinking about institutions about the policy failures right that allow things uh you know in terms of like how pp was deployed and and how banks may be a little hesitant and resistant to lend to you know the people that we work on behalf of and so it kind of takes me back to the story you know of uh adrian vinnett uh who's michigan's first female plumber right uh you know and a master plumber at that right and founded her firm called bancari and so you know she secured you know a contract to kind of help you know build that new basketball facility uh in downtown detroit but but you know that project required her to you know invest hundreds of thousand dollars up front and permits you know to be able to kind of get rental equipment and all those other things she didn't have that type of access she didn't have that type of capital but what was there for her to be able to do is that you know we had an entrepreneur's of color fund where she was able to tap into that tap into that fund to begin to kind of like cover some of those things that allow her one not only just to pay her her workers but also to think about the permits and equipment rentals and so you know with that proper funding right uh you know she was able to access that capital right and so all the things that we do you talk about these spectrums right you talk about policy grant making investment you know these are the spaces that we step in right to really try to be disruptive from their positive way right and I think when we're most successful is that when we're being disrupted and we're being pushing in terms about looking at opportunities that really kind of like create these opportunities in space for people who've been locked out of traditional capital needs to be able to kind of access those things that hadn't been available to them in the past thank you and Chris how are you guys kind of leveraging these you know one of the things I'm going to follow something you talked about you know um one of the things we had to deal with is when dealing with large organizations they put things in buckets often and we had to challenge those buckets so when we started doing this and I mentioned a minute ago somebody said well this is this is a grant so it's going to come from this small pool of grant money and what we're challenging was the notion that you can accomplish certain social missions that you have and certain societal missions and it doesn't have to come from kind of this money that's thrown on the side you know that there isn't there's a false choice there between you know doing good for the community and actually you know doing something that makes financial sense for you and that was the big push we had so we were able to draw on you know I would say if you've looked at the money that came into renaissance very little of it would have been money that would have gone toward the kind of social mission that we have it was you know money that would have gone to into a bank account or something else and we were able to use that without pulling from the grant side of the house we were able to use the investment side of the house to accomplish certain goals and that was that was a pretty important development for us and it took us probably five or six years to prove it out so that we no longer had to kind of we no longer had to go into into rooms and hear that choice and try and try and have them unlearn something that had been you know kind of deeply rooted in the organization thank you Chris so I think we want to do I want to I want to ask all the panelists what else is needed you know how do we build a roll bat for others to do this work in places Chelsea why don't you kick it off hmm I think so in addition to what I was saying about the framework in the data I think some more robust understanding of municipal finance and that it really does fuel or act as a supply line oftentimes for these inequities in cities I think for both investors to understand whether those are holdings that they have or even just understanding the bondholder engagement is an avenue to sort of engage with these cities and to push for change I think that's an important piece also with with activists and organizers on the ground I think a lot of folks they tend to know what the issues are and I think educating as well around like municipal finance can also be a tool and helping make it make that accessible and available for them and I think yeah I think those are the main things that the data piece that I keep coming back to and just the the infrastructure around that feels really important so we're addressing the right things when we when we do do the bondholder engagement and campaigns great and easy I'm going to ask you what what what what are the gaps what do we need to do well you know you know Danny you touched on something earlier you know around you know what what the what is right and really what the what is is that we're doing work to kind of reshape uh capital systems for racial equity right that's the work that's the main thing that's the main thing right and so having foundations and other institutional investors right you know who are able to kind of accept that increased financial risk right you know during the startup period to kind of create and help support and grow these promising and innovative business models right to begin to can ensure that we're building those own raps and those pathways for uh entrepreneurs of color and communities of colors to build wealth right and to and to gain opportunity in spaces in in that regards and so I know one of the other things I think that you know can't lose sight on is that you know we kind of talked about this earlier too is that you know knowing that you know I think it's been important around the PRIs but also knowing too that they're complementary things that we can do in addition to a PRI right and thinking about the technical insistence that we can probably provide organizations that non-financial capital right and I think sometimes often people just think well the money's there that's all they need well no we may need some other coaching and guidance and TA and so you know like I say well that's pre-long or post-long right because at the end of the day we want to make sure that people are being set up you know to have sustained success and to grow wealth and things of that nature so I think that's one of the things that I think it's always going to be needed is that we're being intentional about you know what are we actually after right and we're using our platforms and kind of creating those tables to really think about transforming the practices of mainstream financial institutions as it relates to opening up capital and opportunities for communities who are looking for it. Thank you Yazid and Chris I'm going to throw one two questions at you because there's one in the chat I want to make sure we hit but what is needed what are what's the gaps what's needed and then there's a question if you do you know if any other peer initiatives in other states or regions that are doing the work that you're doing yeah um so you we talked about some of the gaps and getting companies to to readiness but I want to flip it a little bit and there's another gap you know we talked earlier about what are the levers you're pulling and there's the other question of who's pulling the levers right and so you know if you look at the venture world it looks like the problem we describe with startup companies it's even it's more entrenched in the venture world and so how do you create a situation where you've got a more representative group of investors under the thesis that a more representative group of investors will invest in a more representative group of companies um and so you know that's been a problem I will say there is since the George Floyd incident there has been more of a recognition it's still not there yet and I there is a fear I have that it's kind of the shiny object right now and that you know it won't last but um the the challenge is there's two ways you can try to address it you can simply play the short game and and say we're going to sell something right now or you can play the long game you know this is an apprenticeship business and the idea of okay we're going to create five venture funds run by um smart underrepresented folks who've never done venture capital is not necessarily the way I don't think it's the way to do it what I'd rather see is a truest apprenticeship business I go back to my first two years in venture capital I was pretty bad and you know if I would have been thrust into running my own fund then it wouldn't have gone well but the idea of creating fellowships you know internships so that folks can rise through apprenticeships and then just go out on the road if they want or take over the firms that they're in um that to me is is the way to do it we've actually started that at invest Detroit ventures we run a fellowship but we were on two or three people a year a typically African American associates with the understanding they're probably not going to stay and that's fine because they're going to get recruited out into something bigger and you know we were bootstrapping this you know we talked to some national organizations who didn't necessarily get it so we just bootstrapped it um but now we're putting people out into the community you know two three at a time that are going to change things and I think that is a big gap that needs to be addressed in a more scaled fashion than what we're doing thank you Chris so I heard a lot of good takeaways I love how you guys technical assistance financial supports coaching up data you know a lot of and being very explicit so we are going to wrap up folks um I'd really appreciate it first one I think so cap for hosting this conversation and being so explicit about the racial equity throughout the conference um you know closing the racial and equity gap is critical to realizing the full creative and economic potential of all Michiganders and in fact people were in your communities where you live you know I do think the models practices examples shared here today remind us of what's possible an urgent call if you will um you know Chris you mentioned you know hopefully not a shining on but hopefully an urgent call for actionable investments in entrepreneurs of color and communities of color so Chris thank you Chelsea thank you Izzy thank you your voices perspectives and work is so important and again thank you to so cap and everyone who joined us here today be well