when my mood shifts, it's like the wind cut out and the rug falls down and you're not flying on the magic carpet anymore. it takes a lot of faith to stay on the path of believing that harnessing it is in some way possible. it takes a lot of faith and perseverance to go through this path of loss and reclamation, and loss and reclamation, and loss and reclamation, and not give up.

it seemed like the pieces of my life were completely irreconcilable. there were so many things i wanted to hold on to, and so many pieces of my existence that i wanted to give. there's a piece of art i made called, "training for the surface of the moon," it's a series of collages. i wanted to take every fragment of anything that was beautiful in my life and not forget it. and the act of sewing them together was a very literal way of trying to make things meet that didn't meet; the beauty in them and the pain in them. something about the possibility for wholeness and the reality of destruction, and that these coexist at the same time. and this feeling that there is something more transcendent,

something that smacks of grace. and most of my work has a real tension in it between forms and images that remind me of the grace of existence, whether it's seeds that are sprouting or roots that are going into the ground, or light, or circles, or sacred geometry. but things that, for me, involve small glimpses of hope and regeneration. there are stages in the formation of our identity where it's extremely empowering to own the part of us that society marginalizes, and say there's nothing wrong with this part. and then i think there are also times when we can

move beyond those definitions. i'm less and less identified as a mad person, or a liberated mad person. and i'm identified more as a person who is traumatized by her life experience, just like so many other people. i don't want to think that i carry around this thing, this madness... i think that i go through extreme states of consciousness. sometimes that journey can look to people like it is descent in and out of madness... but fundamentally, i don't see myself as a person who is carrying around my madness. i see myself as a person who is in a process of change.

>> this is the first in the market. it is a city that has a number of challenges, despite -- in terms of -- despite it being a strong real-estate market, as strong economy in terms of businesses. there are neighborhoods that have real challenges here, so today, we're going to hear from a year lee as well as from supervisor jane kim, in context to the city that is hosting us today. i am going to introduce mr. henderson, a president, who will give some opening remarks and introduce the mayor. thank you. [applause]

>> ok, so we will let you behind the curtain. the mayor is a few blocks away, so i am going to talk extra slow. [laughter] you know, when you invite people in political office, they have a lot more to do rather than speak to folks from across the country who really think this is a great opportunity, and we have always had great welcoming, and we appreciate the may for joining us, and when he comes in, i will introduce him, and in the meantime, i would do some song and dance -- and we appreciate the mayor joining us. it is really an exciting opportunity for us. we do not do this as a routine matter for the other areas of focus. we do not have an annual event with our grantees or our arts and culture grantees.

but we do do another. many of you were with us when we call this the community revitalization program and have been with us during the switch to a more economic focus. that switch to a more economic focus, for those of you who do not spend all of your time thinking about this, i will provide a little bit of context. this was really because we change more broadly for the foundation of communities, and we understand the economy was an important piece of that, as was an virus, as was culture, and we really want as we do this to look for this, and that is why we have spent -- it is really hard to get the staff to appear all in the same place at the same time. i can guarantee you, to have all of them fly across the continent to be here in san francisco to meet all of you and to learn not only about your work but to be thinking about how the work that you are doing in communities every day, the work that you are

doing to stimulate economic opportunity to create connections, particularly among low-income folks, to opportunity over the long haul, the folks from our culture program and the folks from our sustainable program, are trustees are looking at that through the lens of how that affects what i am doing it and my expertise, so this is very rewarding for all of us, and i want to repeat what sean said, and that is to thank you very much both for coming to spend a few days with each other, not so much with us but with each other, and we do hope you will let us know how valuable this time is, whether valuable or not valuable, because ultimately, we are doing this for you, not for us, but we also benefit enormously from being in your presence, and we want to thank you for taking the time to get us learn, as well, and we want to say a quick word

of thanks for the actual work that you do, because we identify areas of interest. we identified areas of focus, and we have some ideas, but ultimately, any success we have in impacting the issues we care about is completely dependent on the skills and the leadership and creativity and the really hard work that all of you do, so we want to say thank you from the foundation's point of view for being such terrific and innovative and effective leaders, and it was great. i like the shout out. i know you did not plan that, but having you all identify where you are from is an example of the pride in where you live but also a demonstration of the breadth of the sort of geographic region of the grantees. we are a national funder based in new york city. we try to balance the work in communities, the investments we make and work that is happening in real communities in the u.s.

with a national perspective, with work at the policy and network an idea moving level, because we really believe it is that kind of activity between the real work happening on the ground and the actions happening at this sort of national and regional areas that makes real change happen. what else can i say that will interest you while we wait for a couple of extra blocks? [laughter] i want to say something about the program. this is kind of interesting, and i saw brent earlier today, and he is with a former employer of mine, and what i learned was the importance of good programming at an event like this, and one of the ideas we had at the marshall five years ago was the idea of doing sessions late at night, because after a long day's work, after a dinner, after thinking hard all day, you

all just want to go to bed, but what we found is that people like to stay up late and talk about issues, said tomorrow night, we have our first experiment with what we are calling the night our experience, -- night owl experience, and one person will be talking about some of the work we are doing in a different way of looking at success. i have seen the mayor just appear here, and i am going to do this crazy thing where a person from maplewood new jersey and who works is going to welcome the mayor to a meeting in his own town, but it is really terrific to have edwin lee join us. it is good anytime you are running a big city like this. i think you know that when major league took over, -- when mayor lee to go when gavin newsom was

appointed -- sorry. he was elected to statewide office as the number two person in the government of california. i think many of us met gavin newsom and was impressed by his leadership. it is good to have the newly- elected mayor with us, it elected a few days ago as the first chinese-american mayor of the city. a great city. many of us do not get here as often as we like. we are often in awe of this place. i think what he brings to the city is an important thing in the time of this city's growth, and as sean said, as all big city in america does, we have pockets of poverty, pockets of trouble, and i think the mayor is really looking at this with fresh eyes, and it is terrific

to welcome you. [applause] >> thank you. well, thank you very much. it is my pleasure to be here. philip, thank you for that introduction, and as many of you may have heard, we just had a recent election here, the voters have asked us to step up for another four years. i do not know if you know this -- i have been a very reluctant politician. i think the real story is that i would never have been in the position i am in today of my cell phone had not worked in hong kong. [laughter] literally a year ago. but it is a government and a city i have had the pleasure of working in for the last 22 years. it has been a wonderful experience to do this public

service. i also do not know if you know a little bit of my history. i used to not really like government. [laughter] in fact, i sued san francisco three times before i worked for it. led a rent strike back in my earlier years as an attorney, right out of berkeley. [applause] i hope those years are over, but you really still have to change government, even if you work for it. you still have to pretty much needed change, and that is what i am prepared to do. i do need that change. i think we all need this changes in our city and make sure it is serving and deliberate things and making sure it is really representing our people. i still feel that way. i felt all along -- the last lawsuit we did was against the fire department, and we ended up with a 10-year consent decree.

one of the nice things i was able to talk about during the campaign but even before the campaign started was just being very prideful to be able to serve alongside the first female fire chief in the history of san francisco and knowing -- and knowing -- [applause] thank you. that is good. and knowing that she came from the very first classes we created after we sued them and knowing that you did the right thing then and, gosh, you know, 22 years later, you are literally serving with the people that you knew were qualified but did not have the chance to serve government. my approach to now running this government is to also change the way we do things. it should not surprise you back my back of the and in housing, we are really going to do a lot more housing development, but very differently. we are not going to be begging as much, i think, about resources. we are going to actually be able to put resources together and put different funding things

together. it is an excitement that i know a lot of people who work with me in the communities for many years had expected that someone who is not as political as may be past mayors gets to do something from the heart but also something relief from the community. i wanted to talk to you tonight about something that i felt was one of the best programs ever put together by my predecessor, but it is something i inherited, and that was hope sf. it is a public/private partnership. i know all of you are seeking some of the best ways you can do this, and know this -- and i will say this over and over again -- those of you who have good community work and want to do good housing and want to build good neighborhoods in san francisco, you will find in there that will welcome public/private partnerships. as we know, we cannot do it alone. government is sometimes the worst answer. you know you are in trouble when the government is proposing some

solution, but i think that the solutions are in public/private partnerships, and that is why the foundations that you are representing and the experiences you have in the communities are so valuable because we can really be good partners if you continue advocating, if you continue prodding people who work in the government and hold us accountable to the things that we said that we were promised to do. with us in san francisco, we learned very quickly about the great program that was had back in the early hud days. i talk in the past since because i predict they will not be around in the future. they have been chopped off at the knees so much. but we learned that we can actually take a program, redefined it a bit, and then build it from the community perspective so that hope sf is our hope to our public housing

residents. for us, it, it's in some of -- eight of our worst housing developments of the city and it is an investment from our city. we have under mayor newsom invested $95 million of our own money not to just read build the housing, but to give it the spirit in which people wanted their lives, living along side of the people in mixed income. so we are rebuilding those communities, not just the physical part of the buildings, but in mixed views, mixed income developments. in developments where the residents actually participate in the design and building of those developments and they are actually trained. as we recently received a grant for $30.5 million, when we demonstrated that, residents of alice griffith, in one of the worst housing developments, we demonstrated to the brookings

institute, we demonstrated to the urban institute, we demonstrated to hud that residents can help us build their own housing and stay there on-site when we rebuild it so that we would not do this old redevelopment move of pushing people off and then they would never be able to come back. they get to rebuild that housing themselves, and we spent part of that $95 million commitment training them to evolve with the skill sets needed to have not only the jobs on that project but when it becomes the mixed income project that we desire it to be, those jobs that they have will be sustainable for the rest of their lives. we ought to make sure that their lives do not go back. so we are looking at public/private partnerships that not only transformed a physical nature of the housing but also those very lives that i think are the real essence of your worked is the transformation of

lives and the transformation of whole neighborhoods. that is what we want to do in san francisco. that is what basically i was born to do. when i went to law school, i took a different route. all my friends -- at least a lot of the friends that i knew -- had interviewed for corporate jobs. i just wanted to go work in chinatown. i wanted to talk with immigrants. i wanted to speak in chinese. i wanted to get them off of their fear of law and be able to understand in their own language what they were offered in this new country that they fought so hard to get to and that they could actually withhold their rent because they were paying for decent housing -- not for some basement hole in the wall with no heat and hot water. and i know supervisor kin -- kim just walked in. she and are working alongside many of the other supervisors. the district she works in is really exciting because we see the public/private partnerships

already working when we both got together and talk to a company called twitter. not only did we talk to them in terms of them being a company that potentially would have a lot of money. we also talked to them about what community benefits agreements that they could be part up. when they move in to mid-market, how they could be transformed it in their jobs, in the people that they hired, and in fact in the very building they are rehabilitating on 10th and market, and how the bankers to what we're trying to do in transforming the lives of people who live in the tenderloin and mid-market for many years. our hope sf is an example of what we're doing to transform lives, but that is not the only one wanted to talk to you about tonight because it does represent a lot of years of eve of meant of having done -- of evolvement of having lived

people out of their neighborhoods and realizing that a city cannot do that and try to sustain themselves. we have to rebuild our neighborhoods. we have to rebuild lives in those neighborhoods in order to do it right. that is what we're doing not only in the bayview-hunt is. , nudelman in alice griffith, but in mid-market, the tenderloin, that is what we desire to do. certainly in my administration, we will do this the right way, but we will depend a lot on what you are learning here in these next days. public/private partnerships are invaluable, and you have got to help us. you have got to tell us, remind us how we do it better, and you have got to make sure we are adhering to and being accountable to our neighborhoods. i know that people in government -- all my colleagues will listen to that and develop projects, even if they are just so we're projects. even some of the projects that you would think our basic infrastructure projects like the

ones we're doing with our puc. the head engineer and deputy at our public utilities commission is here. they are redoing the store lines. but what the puc did very smartly -- that is where all our day laborers work day in and day out. that is where they try to get jobs. when you go through that, let's work with the day laborers. let's also redesigned that st. so that you can use the storm water to make sure that we can have landscaping that captures the storm water. then, let's design parklets all along the street so that the community can take care of the streets and not consider them to be another highway that nobody takes care of. all of that got into the whole design of just the sewer replacement of a major street,

and now, it is becoming a neighborhood-designed liveable park looks full of people, including our daily burris, working together to maintain, as we get the infrastructure done, we will leave that in a 10 times better place with the community even more tighter together. so that is how we do projects and that is how you will find a mayor who has been at the home of d p w -- helm of dpw but also the human rights commission making sure that we do the right things and that we work with people and that people always come first. with that, i thank you very much for your days here and i hope you have a great conference. thank you. [applause]

>> hello. during -- i am resuming my mc duties for the evening. we are going to start with the dinner portion of the evening. this is a buffet that is set up in the back behind those closed doors, which will be opening very shortly, so if we can do sort of an orderly fashion, perhaps, starting with the tables in the back, and then we will resume in about 20 minutes. we will have supervisor kim give some remarks. thank you. i have the great pleasure of introducing a friend of mine. supervisor jane kim. i have known her for what seems like probably close to 10 years.