WWW.SHAKER.LIFE | SPRING 2022 47
With Mark Joseph, professor of community development, Case Western Reserve University.
While Moulthrop didn’t set out to become a leader, he hasn’t shied away
from the challenges and opportunities.
“What I’ve come to understand about leadership is that it’s a matter of
recognizing that there’s an opportunity and saying yes to that opportunity.”
It’s also about the realization that change requires action. “When you hear
yourself saying something like somebody ought to do something about that – it’s
you that ought to do it.”
So how do the most important conversations make it onto the schedule? The
programming is influenced by community members, City Club committees, and
ideas from local and national media.
“We also spend a lot of time just thinking about what’s going on in the
community and the kinds of conversations that we should be having and leading.
When we have an idea we run it through a set of filters: Does this advance
a conversation the community’s already having? If it doesn’t, will it catalyze
a conversation that is bubbling under the surface? And does the panel or
speaker help us to meet the kind of diversity and inclusion goals we have as a
community?”
Moulthrop says the issues around diversity, equity, and inclusion have always
been important, but they became a lot more important after the summer of 2020
and the murder of George Floyd.
“We’ve been pushing those conversations for a while, but after George
Floyd there was certainly more interest in the mainstream community than there
had previously been. This question of how we become a stronger community,
how we become a more just community, is at the heart of everything we do.
So when we’re having a conversation
about public education, or community
development, economic development,
workforce development, or criminal
justice reform, it’s all about how we
become a more just society.”
Moulthrop and his family have
called Shaker Heights home since
moving to the area in 2005. “I finished
grad school, we moved, and I became
a father – it all happened at once.
But within the span of one summer,
I made better friendships with my
neighbors than I ever had in my life,
anywhere. It’s partly about a stage
of life, but it’s also this community.
There’s something really wonderful
and welcoming that I really value and
appreciate.
“Shaker has never shied
away from the issues. Shaker has
consistently faced the challenges and
strategized and created and tried to
implement solutions.” SL
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