Team NEO Partnership Targets Racial Wealth Gap

CLEVELAND, Ohio – The Minnesota-based Center for Economic Inclusion and Cleveland-based Team NEO are partnering to help close the racial wealth gap and create a more just, inclusive and equitable economy in the northeastern Ohio region.

The partnership, called the Northeast Ohio Equity Trust, will create a collaborative learning and action network with access to the Center for Economic Inclusion’s proprietary racial equity tools and analytics, a news release states.

The Northeast Ohio Equity Trust will bring together more than 20 regional employers and policymakers, providing data-informed strategies that support anti-racist actions to transform the outcomes and experience of their employees, supply chains and communities.

“The northeast Ohio region is a community rich with talent, diversified industries and tremendous assets that position the region well to compete in the global marketplace,” said Tawanna A. Black, founder and CEO of the Center for Economic Inclusion. “The region’s ability to make inclusion a verb and produce equity that changes the lives of its Black and Brown residents will be the sustaining competitive factor.”

Among the tools that the Center for Economic Inclusion brings to the partnership is its Indicators for an Inclusive Regional Economy, a data disaggregating tool designed to support communities seeking to make key data more widely available as a means of holding all employers accountable for accelerating inclusive economic mobility.

“We sought the opportunity to work with the Center for Economic Inclusion to bring added capacity and expertise to the work that we are doing to build a talented, equitable, innovative and resilient economy that offers opportunities for everyone in the northeast Ohio region to participate in the prosperity we create,” said Bill Koehler, CEO of Team NEO.

Published by The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.