Lighthouse (Building Back Better)
LIGHTHOUSE was focused on Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI). The Center of Excellence worked with leaders across industries and sectors to create a relationship-based ecosystem that supported a Silicon Valley economy where all families could sustain and thrive. Lighthouse aimed to provide expertise, research, backbone infrastructure, and a framework to convene stakeholders for regional efforts in close partnership with the original Bridge to Recovery (B2R) Network, now known as the Lighthouse Network.
Lighthouse Silicon Valley cultivates pathways and ecosystems development that lead to economic mobility for all. Providing regional leadership, the network includes Santa Clara and San Mateo counties.
Lighthouse focused on:
- Developing an integrated workforce and safetynet partnerships
- Coordination of regional collaborative funding opportunities
- Developed regional JEDI Councils, sector-based councils to establish family-sustaining wages
- Created a JEDI dashboard: regional dashboard to report, assess, and align equity principles in key impact areas
- Community well-being, establishing a regional Maslow’s Pyramid to engage anchor institutions, landowners, and cities in equitable development
The Lighthouse Network is a network coalition of private, public sector, and not for profit leaders united to place every individual and family on the path to economic freedom. The network has over 125 stakeholders from over 60 organizations and is organized across safetynet and workforce development pillars. The network organized strategic initiatives for:
- Guaranteed Basic Income
- Clean energy/electrification
- Workforce and adult education partnerships
Regional Sustainability and Coordination Group is a collaborative of leaders involved in regional recovery that convene to drive connection, collaboration, sustainable and equitable solutions across San Mateo and Santa Clara counties. The COVID-19 pandemic has had devastating public health and economic impacts in Silicon Valley. It has also magnified and exacerbated the immediate needs of Silicon Valley communities and long-standing structural inequities that have led to a persistent housing crisis, financial instability, and uneven economic mobility for residents of color and undocumented status. The Lighthouse Building Back Better initiative provides an answer to the regional need for not only an equitable economic recovery but an equitable future where individuals and families have the opportunity to thrive.
Lighthouse: Building Back Better Team
- Quency Phillips, Executive Director
- Elaine Alvite, Director of Economic Mobility
- Teresa Ong, Director of Workforce Development in Partnership with Foothill DeAnza College
- Maria Vans, Youth Liberation Movement Fellow
- Zainab Garba-Sani, Harkness Fellow, Stanford University
