Garnesha Ezediaro leads Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Greenwood Initiative, an effort to accelerate the pace of wealth accumulation for Black individuals and families and address systemic underinvestment in Black communities.

Ezediaro has worked across the public, private, and philanthropic sectors to design, direct, and scale mission-focused programs, brands, and content that inspire change. She previously served as a senior program officer for the Government Innovation program at Bloomberg Philanthropies and also led global leadership development programs at Verizon Media, delivering training and targeted development programs for over 12,000 employees. Prior to that, she was the communications director for New Orleans mayor Mitch Landrieu and director of marketing at Brick City Development Corporation in Newark, New Jersey, under the leadership of former mayor Cory Booker.

Philanthropy News Digest asked Ezediaro about the long-lasting effects racism and violence have had on the Black community’s ability to achieve generational wealth and its impact on Black philanthropy, how Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Greenwood Initiative seeks to address racial wealth inequities, the initiative’s mission of reducing wealth disparities in Black communities, its investments and plans for future funding, Ezediaro’s role in the decision-making process, her background working in government innovation and communications and marketing for the mayors of two large urban cities, and her experiences discussing economic mobility for the Black workforce and closing wealth gaps.

Philanthropy News Digest: The 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre that occurred in the neighborhood of Greenwood, once known as “Black Wall Street,” took hundreds of lives and stymied the growth of wealth proliferation in the Black community. What impact do you think it also had on Black philanthropy?

Garnesha Ezediaro: Throughout U.S. history, deep-seated racism and violence have shown up and disrupted thriving Black communities. A horrific event like the Tulsa Race Massacre not only immediately robs a neighborhood of life but simultaneously seizes invaluable community assets. In order to recover from such tragedy and to respond to the persisting inequity in housing, health care, education, and employment, Black communities donate their time, talent, and treasures. From places of worship to community groups to local giving circles, we have seen the Black community consistently find ways to restore dignity within their communities and to give to a range of causes and organizations. According to a report from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, Black households give 25 percent more of their income annually than white households, and nearly two-thirds of African American households donate to organizations and causes, and their contributions total $11 billion each year.

PND: Since racism is a component in the prevention of Black families acquiring wealth over time, unlike the Rockefellers and the Carnegies of their generations, how does the Greenwood Initiative seek to right this wrong?

GE: Moving toward racial equity requires that we increase the pace of wealth accumulation for Black families while simultaneously disrupting the extraction of wealth from Black communities and institutions. Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Greenwood Initiative is prioritizing both outcomes as we fund programs and efforts that help Black people earn more, keep more, and pass it down.

Over the past two years, the initiative has formed partnerships and made investments designed to have a far-reaching impact. These include creating a $150 million initiative in partnership with Johns Hopkins University to address underrepresentation in STEM PhD programs, committing $100 million to the nation’s four historically Black medical schools (HBMS) to reduce the debt burden of Black doctors and contributing an additional $6 million to these medical schools to expand their mobile-unit COVID-19 vaccine operations in Black communities. We have also supported Cities for Financial Empowerment Fund (CFE Fund), which is partnering with mayors from Cincinnati, Ohio, Mobile, Alabama, and South Bend, Indiana, to help them address the financial empowerment needs of residents and prioritizing the financial stability of Black residents. And just last month, we helped launch the Local Infrastructure Hub—a national effort focused on ensuring that small and midsized U.S. cities and towns can access federal infrastructure funding to drive local recovery, advance racial equity and climate goals, improve communities, and deliver results for residents. We’re very excited about these investments—and we’re just getting started.

PND: Why is increasing economic and social mobility to fulfill the Greenwood Initiative’s mission of reducing wealth disparities in Black communities an important mission for Bloomberg Philanthropies?

GE: Racial wealth inequity is a problem for our entire county—not just Black and Brown communities. Black people have been systematically denied the ability to build and keep wealth. Black people still hold just one-eighth of the wealth that their white counterparts hold. The exclusion of Black people from full economic participation continues to have a significant and quantifiable impact on the entire U.S. economy. Over the last 20 years, racial wealth inequity has cost the U.S. economy about $16 trillion, and the GDP could be 4 to 6 percent higher by 2028 if these racial disparities are addressed. These wealth disparities are a true economic crisis for our country, and the divide between Black and white families continues to widen. According to the Institute for Policy Studies, if no action is taken to address this calamity, median Black household wealth will fall to zero by 2053, while median White household wealth will increase to $137,000. This is unacceptable and should raise a sense of urgency on this issue.

The Greenwood Initiative is working to ensure future generations have access to opportunities that will give them a chance to develop wealth for their families and communities, whether it’s through education, homeownership, small businesses, or other important resources. It is long overdue to address racism and systemic underinvestment to build a new economic reality, a more prosperous country, and clear paths to intergenerational Black wealth.

We will also work with other Bloomberg Philanthropies programs already addressing and solving problems in public health, environment, education, local governance, and the arts to scale solutions for Black communities.

PND: In September 2020, Bloomberg Philanthropies announced the Greenwood Initiative’s first major investment, a historic $100 million gift to America’s four historically Black medical schools. Why did the initiative choose to focus on HBMSs first, and what does it mean for the initiative’s future commitments?

GE: In September 2020, the country was still in the darkest days of the COVID-19 crisis—a crisis that hit Black communities particularly hard. We know that Black patients have better outcomes when treated by Black doctors, yet today only five percent of practicing physicians are Black. Our goal was to increase the number of Black doctors in the United States by significantly reducing the debt burden of approximately 800 medical students, many of whom were facing increased financial pressure due to COVID-19.

The impacts of historically Black medical schools are far-reaching; over the past decade, these four institutions—Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science in Los Angeles, Howard University College of Medicine in Washington, D.C., Meharry Medical College in Nashville, and the Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta—have produced as many Black medical school graduates as the top 10 non-HBMSs with the highest number of Black graduates combined. It’s also important to note that while HBCUs make up only 3 percent of the country's colleges and universities, they enroll 10 percent of all Black students and produce almost 20 percent of all Black graduates, according to UNCF. We wanted to be intentional in our investment to reach Black medical students and are proud to support these bastions of higher education.

PND: In your role leading the Greenwood Initiative, how are you directly involved in the decision-making process about which types of wealth gaps the initiative seeks to mitigate with direct funding, and how do current events affecting the Black community come into play?

GE: In my role, I am responsible for developing and executing our economic equity strategy under the leadership of our amazing CEO, Patti Harris.

Together with the Greenwood Initiative team and in consultation with other program leads, we are consistently looking for opportunities to invest where we will have the biggest impact on improving racial wealth equity in the U.S. We will continue making intentional investments in Black people, families, and communities and sharing research and data with the field that will allow more organizations and individuals to better understand where the gaps are and how best to meet those demands to bring about real change.

PND: Your background includes working in government innovation and communications and marketing for the mayors of two large urban cities, New Orleans mayor Mitch Landrieu, and Newark, New Jersey, mayor Cory Booker. How did these roles prepare you for taking on the Greenwood Initiative? 

GE: As someone who grew up in Atlanta and has lived and worked in Newark, New Orleans, and New York City, I am painfully aware of the critical roles community and economic development play in the lived experience of Black communities. I also recognize and respect the leadership of great mayors like Maynard Jackson, Mitch Landrieu, Cory Booker, and Mike Bloomberg—all of whom, in their own way, have set forth bold visions for a better quality of life, expansive economic growth, and dynamic public-private partnerships during their administrations. What I have learned from observing their leadership that I take into my current role is a dedication to innovation, rolling up your sleeves to operationalize big commitments, and the power of being mission-focused.

PND: You’ve also participated in an Asana panel and an Apple podcast that discussed economic mobility, especially for the Black tech workforce, and navigating equity in those spaces and beyond. What are the important takeaways from those discussions on closing wealth gaps?

GE: Both the Asana panel and the Apple podcast presented opportunities for diverse sets of people tackling diversity in different ways to share their approaches and personal strategies to navigating their own racial wealth equity journeys. What’s exciting is that there’s an increasing community of Black leaders working in similar roles to mine that are able to personally contribute to creating intergenerational wealth for communities across the country.

—Lauren Brathwaite