Bellwether Consulting

Bellwether Consulting is partnering with the Minnesota Management and Budget and Abdullahi Abdulle from #HumanizeMN to co-facilitate the 2024 Senior Leadership Institute (SLI), a leadership development program for 32 executive leaders in state government. We kicked off SLI last week and are looking forward to guiding the new cohort through the next 9 weeks of discussions and learning around creativity, innovation, and leadership for equitable systems change.

As we wrap up the summer, don’t miss the latest Bellwether Consulting newsletter for some updates from our team. ☀ The August issue includes a rounded up some articles from around the web that are packed with insights on transportation-related policies, how they impact communities, and how community members can make their voices heard. https://lnkd.in/gvtC8VTN

For community members looking to get involved in transportation decision-making processes, the U.S. Department of Transportation published Transportation Decision-Making: A Guide to Getting Involved to help people voice their ideas in transportation decisions that affect their communities. This is a comprehensive and easy to follow how-to guide to help people learn how to influence planning, funding, designing, building and maintaining transportation projects. Whether you're a community leader, a concerned resident, or a transportation professional engaging community members, this guide can help you navigate the decision-making process or improve transparency and communication around how transportation decisions are made. https://lnkd.in/e-J8jcJB

Today, on the ninth annual #CityHallSelfie Day, I'm dressed as a famous fictional public servant, Dog Man. Like Dog Man himself, our public libraries are unique treasures in our communities! These amazing institutions and our public servants should never be taken for granted. Thanks to ELGL: Engaging Local Government Leaders for organizing this day, which highlights local government and the great work of public servants in our communities. You can participate by taking a pic with a local government building, and tagging #CityHallSelfie on your post! Hennepin County Library System Saint Paul Public Library Friends of the Hennepin County Library Friends of St Paul Public Library City of Minneapolis City of Saint Paul #herocrats  

Bellwether Consulting recently completed two projects that were about helping our clients foster an equitable and inclusive workplace culture. This work emphasized a few fundamentals that we've been practicing with leaders for many years: ✅ See Bigger: Inequities are the product of disconnections -- siloed teams, murky processes, broken trust -- all of which are bigger than personal identity or individual behaviors. ✅ Share the Power: Give employees the time, authority, and resources to prototype and pilot their own solution together. ✅ Follow the Energy: Give employees regular opportunities to connect with each other, learn new things, and build useful stuff together. Read more about our best practices in the latest newsletter: https://lnkd.in/gvtC8VTN

We're proud to be part of this study that explored how planning for connected and automated vehicles can advance #TransportationEquity. Shout out to Rebecca Lieser and the rest of the study team for presenting at the Transportation Research Board Conference on Advancing Transportation Equity earlier this week!

The USDOT recently released an update on the distribution of funding and investments to disadvantaged communities in FY 2022 and FY 2023. The Justice40 initiative aims to deliver 40% of federal investments to disadvantaged communities, and the USDOT not only met but exceeded these goals. In 2023, 55% of Justice40 benefits, and in 2022, 61% flowed to disadvantaged communities. Visit Justice40 Baselines StoryMap for more information on how these investments are helping communities address transportation burdens: https://lnkd.in/gQT-S743

Check out the latest Bellwether Consulting newsletter for a framework on community-driven planning and engagement and a timely roundup of articles and strategies from around the web on addressing chronic absenteeism in schools. https://lnkd.in/gvtC8VTN

Bellwether Consulting was part of the Minnesota Department of Transportation, HDR, and #Storyslices project team that developed a Community-Driven Planning Framework, which helps community leaders and local government agencies explore connected and automated vehicle (CAV) technology through community-driven planning and engagement. Whether you're implementing a CAV-related study or another kind of planning process, this framework could help you center community in every step of decision making. This framework will guide you through: ✅  Identifying community strengths and opportunities through a community asset inventory ✅  Addressing power and influence imbalances on a community advisory committee ✅  Tailoring community engagement activities depending on the needs and interests of your target audience ✅ And more! Check out the Community-Driven Planning Framework on the CAV Resource page:  https://lnkd.in/e6mJkNcU

Elise Trail-Johnson is our new Bellwether Consulting summer fellow. She is working on communications and marketing as well as research for several of our current consulting projects. You may get a chance to work with her on one of our projects this summer! Originally from Saint Paul, Elise is a rising senior at Luther College, in Decorah, Iowa, where she is studying visual communication, with minors in environmental studies, museum studies, and art. At Luther, she sings in choir, hosts a weekly radio show, and is the sustainability representative to student senate. Last summer, she explored peace studies and human-centered urban planning at the University of Oslo in Norway. She is passionate about using good design to illuminate the stories of mission-driven work.