Innovation Ecosystem

Redefining the role of The Rhode Island Foundation

Under the leadership of Neil Steinberg, the community foundation has ventured into economic strategy, policy making and community advocacy

Photo by Richard Asinof

Neil Steinberg, president and CEO of The Rhode Island Foundation, in a conference room at foundation headquarters.

Photograph by Richard Asinof

Neil Steinberg, president and CEO of The Rhode Island Foundation, in front of the drawing recording the community conversation at the Park Theatre on Nov. 5.

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By Richard Asinof
Posted 11/9/15
Under his leadership, Neil Steinberg, the president and CEO of The Rhode Island Foundation, has positioned the community foundation to take a more “proactive” role in helping to shape policy and advocacy around civic enterprise. In a lengthy, in-depth interview with Steinberg, ConvergenceRI explored the thinking behind those changes and the decision to take on a bigger role in shaping the future direction of Rhode Island.
How will the connections between health equity and the social and economic determinants of health and the new business model for the state’s health care delivery system connect? How can the conversation around building a collaborative strategy around reducing toxic stress in Rhode Island become part of the strategic initiatives now underway at The Rhode Island Foundation? Is there an over-reliance by those who represent the state’s traditional power elite to depend upon The Providence Journal to accurately deliver its messaging? Why has there not been more discussion about how to build a 21st century model of public transportation as part of the discussion of creating a financial infrastructure to support the state’s highway and bridges? Are we still locked into a 20th century industry mindset when it comes to transportation to and from the workplace?
The willingness of Neil Steinberg, president and CEO of The Rhode Island Foundation, to engage with ConvergenceRI in an in-depth, freewheeling, frank discussion about Rhode Island’s future economic strategies, policies and tools for civic enterprise spoke to Steinberg’s desire to engage in conversation and convergence.
It stands in stark contrast to the stance taken by Stefan Pryor, head of CommerceRI.
It’s now almost a year since ConvergenceRI first made the request to interview Pryor, on the very night in December of 2014 when his appointment was first announced. It’s a request that ConvergenceRI has repeated at least 20 times, in person, by phone, and by email, to the governor’s communications staff, to Pryor’s staff, and even to Pryor himself, without ever getting a response, a yes or a no.
The desire here is not to poke the bear, which is always dangerous, but to point out that Pryor’s lack of willingness to engage and enter into dialogue and conversation reflects very poorly on the Raimondo administration and her economic team. It is not just ConvergenceRI but many others that have voiced similar concerns. Coffee at Olga’s?

PROVIDENCE – It has been a busy few weeks for Neil Steinberg, president and CEO of The Rhode Island Foundation, who is, by his own definition, shifting the focus of the community foundation from being reactive to proactive, in the best tradition of Stephen Covey.

On Oct. 27, Steinberg helped to introduce the initial findings of the $1.5 million Brookings Institute study, “Informing an economic development agenda for Rhode Island,” a study that the Rhode Island Foundation has helped to underwrite, at an event at the Greater Providence Chamber of Commerce.

The study’s goal is to develop a future economic growth strategy, with a short list of interventions. To accomplish this task, Brookings has partnered with Battelle and Monitor Deloitte to perform a rigorous industry cluster analysis. The plan is for the consultants to identify the best opportunities to expand industry in Rhode Island, assess the state’s positioning to grow these industries, and provide action steps for realizing that growth. The client is very much Gov. Gina Raimondo and CommerceRI, the state’s economic development agency.

On Nov. 5, Steinberg served as master of ceremonies of what The Rhode Island Foundation called its Community Conversations 2015 at the Park Theatre in Cranston, detailing the particulars of its investments in economic security, education and health.

“Tackling these complex and persistent issues requires coordination, collaboration and shared vision,” said the email promoting the event.

At the event, 12 different grantees described their work in short, four-minute presentations, in an attempt to give a brief flavor of the cross-sector investments being supported by The Rhode Island Foundation. All the participants and more than 100 people attending then convened, over refreshments, to talk and network.

This week, on Nov. 12, Steinberg will be honored as the state’s top corporate citizen at the Providence Business News awards for business excellence.

The next 100 years
ConvergenceRI sat down with Steinberg for an in-depth interview last week, to talk about the new role that the foundation is playing within Rhode Island, serving as a catalyst for civic engagement, often attempting to bridge the gaps between the public and private sectors, using its power as a convener – and as a funder – to help translate conversations into policies and actions.

As Steinberg described it, referring back to the strategic plan developed some six, seven years ago when he first became president and CEO at the foundation: “We saw the opportunity to not just be a traditional foundation that works with wonderful donors who are very philanthropic and give out grants to the community,” he said. “There was a third leg that we saw in civic leadership, using our convening [capability] to get into a little more policy and advocacy, to supplement the money.”

The interview with ConvergenceRI, which lasted more than an hour, was freewheeling, but often framed by the realization around how much the nature of conversation is changing in the digital world we live in. That sense of change was also reflected in Steinberg’s thinking about the foundation’s history, which will turn 100 years of age next year.

To be fully transparent, the Rhode Island Foundation is a subscriber to ConvergenceRI, and Steinberg says that he is an avid reader on Monday mornings, particularly liking the three sidebars that accompany each article: why is this story important, the questions that need to be asked, and under the radar screen.

Here, then, is the ConvergenceRI interview with Neil Steinberg, the president and CEO of the Rhode Island Foundation.

ConvergenceRI: The Rhode Island Foundation is at the center of so much of what is happening these days, changing the vector of policy development in Rhode Island. How do you define your role?
STEINBERG:
We did consciously decide, when we did our first strategic plan, six, seven years ago. We’re going to be 100 years old next year. So we have a wonderful opportunity, and, I believe, a responsibility, as a kind of permanent institution, we’re built as being grounded in perpetuity, as an endowment. We’re a community foundation, which, by definition, we were place-based and committed to the community.

The major [shift in the plan] was going from what I would call being a little more reactive to be proactive.

If you look at what our mission statement that we crafted at that time [said], it’s to be a proactive community and philanthropic leader, to meet the needs of all the people of Rhode Island.

It’s fairly ambitious, but we have a broad charter; we are a community foundation, focused on the community.

We saw the opportunity to not just be a traditional foundation that works with wonderful donors, who are very philanthropic and give out grants to the community. There was that third leg that we saw, [we weren’t the only ones, there were peers of ours in other places that have done this], in civic leadership.

[We had the] opportunity to bring people together, using our convening [capability] to get into a little more policy and advocacy, to supplement the money.

ConvergenceRI: It sound as if you had been reading Stephen Covey and “The 7 habits of highly effective people,” the way you use the term proactive, going from reactive to proactive.
STEINBERG:
Well, what I actually read was Covey’s book specifically for nonprofits.

It’s not just [about] the money; it’s how the money is used. It’s about the leadership that goes with the money to actually get things done.

There have been many cases where money has been thrown at an issue, and hasn’t worked, because money unto itself won’t get it done.

We saw this opportunity to get more involved, to provide leadership in the community, to work with the existing leadership in the community. But, if there were opportunities where we need to step up, we stepped up.

ConvergenceRI: One of the ways that you have stepped up is your involvement in bringing the Brookings Institute here to Rhode Island to do a study of the state’s future economic agenda, contracting with them. I never know exactly how the public-private partnership works here. Who’s the contractor, and who’s the client?

I forget where we ran into each other, and we talked about whether or not there was a biomedical innovation industry sector in Rhode Island, and you said the study would determine if there was a “there there...”
STEINBERG:
Yes, that’s right.

ConvergenceRI: Not surprisingly, from my standpoint, Brookings, in their initial findings, saw that yes, indeed, it does exist as a potential targeted opportunity. Can you talk about the change in perspective from what had been done before?
STEINBERG:
Yes, sure. The Brookings study is an effort that builds on what has been done before. There is [often] the common critique: Here’s another report, and this and that.

But, if people really look at what’s been done, these things build upon each other. The real test is whether they turn into action. Not whether the report was brilliant, or new, or whatever.

But, can we get, collectively, from analysis to recommendations to action. I think that’s what we’re hopeful the difference is, this time.

When we [funded] our Make It Happen initiatives, and we had The Fourth Economy do [an analysis] here, that work wasn’t all thrown out the window; it has helped build [the current effort].

This time, Brookings is working with Battelle and Monitor-Deloitte; this is a heavy weight group.

The other difference is that they are able to benchmark this, nationally and globally.

The terms all get used differently; there’s health, there’s health care, there’s biotech, all of these different things.

What I meant is, when I talked about whether “there is a there there,” is to [understand] what has actually developed, how big the sector is, what is the potential, who’s working on what, where do the universities cross with industry, and with government.

That’s where it’s really exciting.

So, you have some exciting neuroscience investments; URI just hired [an executive director for its new neuroscience research institute] who is involved in the Alzheimer’s field. Tom Ryan gave a big contribution there.

We have two engineering schools being built in the state; those are major commitments and major opportunities that we need to now leverage.

I think the point about the Brookings study – as well was what others are trying to do, including the governor – is to boil it down to where there are strengths, where there are opportunities, to really leverage best in class.

It doesn’t mean that we don’t have a lot of other good things here…

ConvergenceRI: The next billion-dollar company in Rhode Island is probably going to be IlluminOss, and they weren’t on anyone’s radar screen; folks at CommerceRI had not engaged with them. I can tell you that the Brookings Institute didn’t know much about them until they read the article I wrote recently.

The firm’s business projection is to capture roughly $1.5 billion of the $3 billion market for bone fracture repair in the U.S., and they’re a company headquartered in East Providence.

In terms of the traditional cluster analysis, nobody knew who they were, what they did, or how they fit in. Are they med-tech? Or, are they biotech? Or, biomedical innovation?

I think it raises questions about how the traditional metrics of measuring industry clusters may be changing.

In analyzing data, I think that there is a similar change underway, in the continuum of data-policy-data, and the role that data analysis can play in making better decisions.

Can you talk about the nature of the way that data is changing the equation?
STEINBERG:
Data is key, both in the beginning, when it informs decisions, and later on, when it tests how things work.

But data, unto itself, as you know, in this Age of Information, can be overwhelming. I think, to us, it’s not just the data, but how it’s used, how it’s presented, how it’s interpreted.

There’s the old [story] about someone saying, “We doubled our penetration.” But there’s a difference if that penetration means going from two customers to four customers, or from 2,000 to 4,000.

I think that data without the story, data without the practicality of how it’s being applied, doesn’t do the trick.

That being said, however, there have been times where there has been a shortage of data.

[Not] longitudinal data; it’s not hard to [measure] a point in time, we can all go out and survey, we can count.

But, rather, looking at where we’ve come from and where we’re going.

And, looking at the problems and challenges, many of which you address in ConvergenceRI, they’re not overnight issues.

They took a long time in getting created, they will take a long time to address; even overnight successes seem to have a history to them.

I think data is critical, but I think, more critical is how it is understood and how the story is told with data.

ConvergenceRI: Let’s talk about health equity, which I think has rightly begun to attract some more attention.

If only 20 percent of a population’s health is determined by what happens in the doctor’s office or in a hospital, and 80 percent happens outside, based on community and behavior and social determinants, and if the money flowing into the health care delivery system doesn’t reflect that, it creates a real imbalance on how things get invested.

Can you talk broadly about health equity and how you see that playing out, from the Rhode Island Foundation’s perspective?
STEINBERG:
When we did our strategic plan, [the three areas we identified], one was primary health care, one was education, and one was economic security.

And, with primary care, when we honed in on that, it was really to address in broad terms accessibility and affordability.

It was a recognition that there were populations that were not getting access to health care, as opposed to health, but it did try to start to address the equity issue.

In my limited experience, the preventive side is very challenging.

We know that if we go to the gym more often, if we stop eating bacon and hot dogs and all that, [we will be healthier], but it’s hard to make those changes.

The toxic stress topic, because the term was new to me, I actually didn’t now what it meant, when I first saw it.

I thought, maybe we’re all working too hard. But I learned that isn’t what it is [about].

[It’s about] can we get to kids early enough, as I interpret it, to address those behavioral changes, before they are ingrained. So, trying to get a 28-year-old to stop smoking is not as fruitful or as good an investment as making sure those 10 year olds don’t start smoking.

ConvergenceRI: That’s a part of it. [It’s about how our brains get rewired when infants and children encounter continued adverse events, and how that influences future behaviors and outcomes, and how we can prevent it, diagnose it, and treat it].

I found, in having conversations about toxic stress with any number of people – neuroscientists, early childhood experts, healthy housing advocates – the conversations were occurring in silos.

Kevin Bath in the neuroscience department at Brown was doing extraordinary research into toxic stress and brain development, but few people knew about it.

There were doctors developing a new definition of toxic stress, to enable pediatricians to identify, diagnose and treat toxic stress.

There were healthy housing initiatives to remove lead and other environmental toxins from the homes of families.

Elizabeth Burke Bryant and her team at Rhode Island KIDS COUNT were beginning to look at toxic stress as a category of children’s health and well being.

There were efforts underway to look at interventions in family and home visiting, at the R.I. Department of Health.

There were efforts at the community level, to address issues around issues around the social determinants of health, such as the Sankofa Initiative, building affordable housing in partnership with an urban farming center.

The conference, held on Oct. 28, was extraordinary, in the way that people began talking with each other, not at each other. It was a convergence and a conversation.

I’ve digressed; let me get back to the questions.

What comes first? Investments in industry, which then creates the jobs and the opportunities, or does it come from investments in place and community?

Does Rhode Island need to have a quality of life index? As a way to measure what’s great about living in Rhode Island, in comparison to other states, as the first part of an innovation index, similar to what Massachusetts has been doing for the last two decades?

[Something] different from the “All in our backyard” campaign, creating actual metrics and benchmarks around the quality of life? The presenters from Brookings talked about it last week, about how when you’re in Rhode Island, you know it’s Rhode Island – as differentiated from Buffalo.
STEINBERG:
The challenge of those is always: what are the components of it?

Some will, when you ask them about what’s great about Rhode Island – some will immediately say, the beaches and the restaurants.

That’s certainly part of it, but quality to whom?

When you talk about health equity, it makes me think about the whole, broader conversation in the country about income inequality, social determinants, and that awful determination of your destiny by zip code. Which is more than a gimmick, it’s true.

I may be getting too deep on this broad quality of life aspect. But, if I don’t know if I’m going to be able to have breakfast tomorrow, that’s a little different than I can go tour someplace in Rhode Island, so I don’t know what “quality of life” means.

ConvergenceRI: It’s exactly that, as a quality of life metric, if you can measure food insecurity in Rhode Island. And, I know there is data available about food deserts and food swamps, in addition to where are the beaches, where are the good restaurants.
STEINBERG:
I think it has merit. I think it would be nice, if someone such as Gallup or somebody had established their quality of life indices, if it were already being done in Maryland or Nevada, and we could bring it here.

I don’t know if we came up with one on our own that we could compare it with other states.

ConvergenceRI: Mary Burke, a researcher with the Federal Reserve Bank in Boston, she suggested that a quality of life index would be a really good “visualization” point for Rhode Island.
STEINBERG:
I know it’s not what you are suggesting, but it can’t be just a marketing tool. If the quality of schools don’t get better, it’s hard to tout your quality of life.

ConvergenceRI: I’ve heard you say, any number of times, that if we in Rhode Island have the best primary care and the best public school education in the nation, then people and companies will flock here…
STEINBERG:
[interjecting] That’s our campaign.

ConvergenceRI: But, in the same way that you benchmark economic indices, until you can benchmark that growth in health and education… Massachusetts has developed the Index of the Massachusetts Innovation Economy, they published it since 1997. Is that something that’s missing from the analysis of Rhode Island’s economy? I’ve heard that the chamber has been doing something...
STEINBERG:
The chamber started something, I can’t remember the initials, I thought they were trying to do some kind of index.

ConvergenceRI: Perhaps you should ask Mark Muro from the Brookings Institute about the value of creating a similar index. There might be a role that the Rhode Island Foundation could play in its development.

Switching gears, you’ve been very involved in the development of a health care compact, looking at the entire health care delivery system in Rhode Island, in particular, the move away from fee-for-service to accountable care organizations. You’ve chosen to be right in the middle of it. Why is that?

Is it similar to what happened in other industries, such as the banking industry? Does the business model of hospitals work efficiently anymore?
STEINBERG:
Interesting questions. Our involvement was at the request of Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, who, at the time, in talking with him, said one of the industries he looked at, for comparison, was the banking industry.

The concern was that we would wake up one day in Rhode Island and, [similar to what happened to all our local] banks, they would have been acquired, and we would lose control of them.

That was the impetus of getting that group together, and the value of the compact, in my opinion, was in getting a group, a representative group – was it all inclusive, no, nothing is ever all inclusive – to get on the same page.

Literally, to sign on a page, to say that we all agree to work together, not to solve an issue, but to be headed in the right direction.

I thought it fascinating, being the least knowledgeable person in the room, about the industry, there was this overwhelming consensus [that it was not sustainable].

Gone were the days, if they were ever hear, where you could have the debate, well, maybe this can work…

And, that there was a minimum of 30 percent excess expense in the system that could be taken out.

The challenge was: everyone thought it was the other guy who was responsible for that 30 percent.

ConvergenceRI: The hospitals and the insurance companies?
STEINBERG
: And the pharmaceutical companies. What that [said to] me was that it was everywhere.

If we arrived here today, like Roger Williams, and somebody told you, this is going to be the size of Rhode Island, it’s always going to be a million people, plus or minus, what would it look like?

I think people would agree, it wouldn’t look like it does now.

[In terms of the health care delivery system], where are the beds and where do you need the beds? What are the expectations for the delivery of health care? What really is urgent care these days? And, what if something’s an hour away, is that OK?

I go back to my banking days, a long time ago. We funded a lot of hospitals, and I remember the certificate of need process, which was very stringent [at the time].

I remember having a bad back and having to go for an MRI at 3 a.m., because there weren’t many MRI [facilities] around. They were scarce; they didn’t approve that many.

Now, it just seems like there is a proliferation of [places to get] MRIs.

ConvergenceRI: Imaging is one of those [procedures] that gets reimbursed very well.
STEINBERG:
The technology part is yet to play out. Are we going to be sitting here, talking to a doctor on a screen? I don’t know. Am I going to be wearing stuff, stuff that already exists, that can tell somebody when my blood pressure goes up?

ConvergenceRI: Those are good questions. In many ways, it’s similar to what is happening with banks now. Do you bank in person at a branch? Or, do you bank online?
STEINBERG:
One of the differences, and I’m not the expert, that I’ve observed with health care, compared to some other industry sectors, is that it’s very personal.

It’s easy to talk about the stats. When you would tell me, all the stats related to end of life care, so we could rationally come up with policies and protocols and procedures for end of life care to manage costs, until it’s my family, until its something that is very personal, a lot more personal than my banking relationship.

And that’s hard, I think it’s really hard, Richard.

ConvergenceRI: Part of that is the abiilty to make the decisions, I think, that within health care, there’s still a lot of room, about how the money gets spent, and where the competition is, [and how much the patient gets to decide].

There are now ongoing discussions now about the potential merger between Lifespan and Care New England. It often seems like they are Siena and Florence, battling city-states, and they are very much aware of where they agree and where they disagree.

I think that the threat of a larger system coming in from Boston is very real.
STEINBERG:
That’s part of a larger discussion, about whether we are part of a regional economy, and how do we fit in.

We’re place based. It’s one of the strengths of Rhode Island.

One of the first things we all say about our wonderful location is that we’re an hour from Boston and three hours from New York.

Which puts us on this corridor, that is real in terms of population and opportunity.

In terms of the economy, the question is: how do we get it to go back and forth, and not just forth, that’s a challenge.

Being 45 minutes away is either a pain in the neck or right next door, depending on how you look at it. It’s less than Dallas to Houston.

So, whether it’s entrepreneurial activity, whether it’s health care, whatever you can name, there are some areas where convenience and personal connections mean more, and some areas where expertise and experience mean more.

There’s not reason why we can’t have those pockets here that draw from outside the region, but it also means that it’s a little more porous than people acknowledge.

ConvergenceRI: One of the real values of living in Rhode Island is that if I want to sit down and talk to you, I can do that. But if I wanted to sit down with the head of the Boston Foundation, Paul Grogan, it may take me six to nine months or even a year – and Grogan is someone I knew from a previous lifetime.

What is the value of connection and accessibility here in Rhode Island, and how do we measure that?

As much as the Brookings Institute has talked about improving the frequency of train transportation to Boston in its initial findings, what about intra-city connections here in Rhode Island, in terms of mass transit and not just highway infrastructure?
STEINBERG:
I think that Brookings is looking at that as part of the broad business ecosystem idea.

You’re right, if Electric Boat needs a lot of new employees, and you just took a welding course, and you live in Woonsocket, it’s tough to get there.

It’s hard. I don’t know how the millenials look at it. But, selfishly, for myself, I could take a bus in the morning to go work from where I live. But most days I need my car; I like the convenience. If I want to leave at 6:20 and the bus doesn’t leave until 6:40, I can leave [when I want]. Nobody’s really more than a half-an-hour away, 45 minutes away. I think that Rhode Island’s strength, our size, pushes against that.

I go back to the dream of starting with a blank piece of paper – here are where the population centers are, different from where they were, and here’s where people need to go to.

ConvergenceRI: With all the increasing dialogue about race and what it means in Rhode Island, and the fact that Rhode Island is an incredibly diverse place, with a strong mix of cultural inputs, why do you think that diversity has not yet come up as part of the Brookings economic study, as a crucial way to look at what Rhode Island has to offer, both in term of the economy, as a place to locate a company, and as a place to live?
STEINBERG:
It’s one of the areas that we feel strongly about at the Rhode Island Foundation. It’s [the reason] why we decided to get into civic leadership, because there aren’t a lot of voices of the diverse population.

We thought that it was role that we could play. I think it’s in two forms: one is embracing this wonderful cultural diversity that we have, whether it’s different food from town to town, the history or the art; then there’s also the practical reality that the demographics have changed. They are not changing; they have changed.

If you look at the workforce of the future, there’s a very large, growing, young Latino population. It [will be] a population of color, we know that.

If there are disparities, health care disparities, educational disparities, the zip code disparities in opportunities, it doesn’t take a lot to connect those dots.

You’re not going to have the same basic workforce that you did before.

I think, from the plus side of embracing out cultural diversity, in all of the wonderful attributes, but then [embracing diversity] from the opportunity, the need side, is critical.

ConvergenceRI: How does that get integrated into both economic planning and into policy, if it doesn’t show up, say, as an attribute of an industry cluster?
STEINBERG:
The institutions of government are a little slower to react – if you look at consumer companies like Coke or Frito-Lay, they know how to market.

Different products in different neighborhoods, they understand and track the demographics, [more so] than those who are chartered with dealing with it every day.

ConvergenceRI: In terms of promoting what I call conversation and convergence, can you talk about how the nature of conversation has changed, and the role that the news media play, or no longer play?
STEINBERG:
One of the most disturbing things to me is to find people – I’m generalizing here – more uninformed. It usually comes out in the negative. Someone will make a negative comment, and you say: do you know that’s being worked on, or did you know that there’s legislation to address that. They didn’t know.

There are multiple news sources, multiple blasting at everybody, and I don’t mean to do ads for The Providence Journal, but on the other hand, I get annoyed when people don’t know what was in the headlines yesterday.

ConvergenceRI: The reality is [and it may be a disliked reality] that not as many people read the Providence Journal anymore; the circulation keeps falling.
STEINBERG:
A bunch do.

ConvergenceRI: What I’m saying is, large segments of the population, particularly those under 30, no longer read [the print edition].
STEINBERG:
So somebody says [to me,] I don’t read The Providence Journal, I say, how do you get your news, and I get a blank stare.

ConvergenceRI: Many get their news online, from what’s shared on Twitter and Facebook or other social media. They get in from online sources, because that’s the way that they connect digitally with their networks.

In turn, it’s often about face-to-face conversation, as the recent event on toxic stress demonstrated, that makes the big difference.

Too often people tend to talk at each other, or past each other, but not with each other.

What you have is an incredibly angry group of people, who often feel left out of the conversation – something that’s playing out in our politics now. People who do not feel heard.
STEINBERG:
I think there’s an interesting intersection. With leadership from the top, that everyone always looks forward to – what do the leaders say, what can be supported – and coming together, a convergence.

I remember when we did “Make It Happen” a few years ago; it really transformed The Rhode Island Foundation. We did something radically different. And, we consciously got people who were not all the usual suspects. Half the people didn’t know the other half of the people. We didn’t have any sages on stages. We talked about the different issues, and stuff came out of there.

Then, we have, by definition, the political infrastructure, where we have a governor and the legislative leaders.

What I am getting at is: what’s the role of the public sector and what’s the role of the private sector? We did “Make It Happen” not to exclude the public sector, but not to rely on the public sector.

So, that’s what we’re looking at now. Can Brookings, can the Governor, set the table, and jump start enough things that the private sector will step up to the plate?

ConvergenceRI: Will it work? Will it change the perception of Rhode Island?
STEINBERG:
I do think that there’s more action going on now; I do think there are more things being tried. Are all of these things going to work? I don’t know. But we’re going to do more than what we did before.

I got a copy of The Greenhouse Compact. I read the summary again. It’s not whether all those ideas were right, or brilliant, or wrong.

We didn’t do anything; it had this terrible political fallout.

Nothing was done. What you hear from Brookings, and what you see in the data and the research, the biggest issue is that we’ve had decades where we didn’t take enough action steps.

That’s what we need to do. And, that’s what I’m hopeful for with the Raimondo administration. It will be action oriented.

But, if we’re doing 10, and five work, that’s five more than what we’ve done in the last few years.

ConvergenceRI: I leave you with the last word. Is there anything I haven’t asked, that I should have asked, that you want to talk about?
STEINBERG:
I will tell you that you’ve been more optimistic than I though you would be. You talked about what a great state Rhode Island is, that we have these opportunities, and how we can leverage them.

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