How I Started Fighting Greediocy
I developed Economic Peacemaking after managing $7 million in federal workforce funds for the City of Lakewood and watching the same families cycle through our programs year after year. The pattern was clear: we were connecting people to $16/hour jobs when housing required $29/hour. Their motivation wasn't the problem. Our economic systems were.
This gap sent me to Gonzaga University for a PhD in Organizational Leadership, where I researched how servant leadership principles could reshape nonprofit work. I wanted to understand why organizations with good intentions kept producing insufficient outcomes. The answer was that we were treating symptoms while ignoring the economic structures that created the need for our services in the first place.
Before Lakewood, I spent 3 years as a Peace Corps Community Economic Development Specialist in the Dominican Republic. That experience taught me that economic development without community ownership creates dependency, not peace. Real change happens when communities build their own economic solutions with technical support, not when outsiders impose predetermined programs.
I've carried those lessons through 20+ years of work including founding Just Dads (a workforce development nonprofit for fathers facing barriers to employment), serving as Director of Financial Empowerment at Sound Outreach, and managing strategic initiatives at WorkForce Central. Each role reinforced the same truth: you can't build peaceful communities on poverty wages.
Now I direct the School of Global Studies at Northwest University, where I teach graduate courses in Community Economic Development and serve as an elder at Trinity Presbyterian Church in Tacoma. I also chair the Economic Development and Land Use Committee for East Tacoma's Neighborhood Advisory Council, working directly on the housing and wage issues I write about.
