ED Careers

SRDI’s strategies include: building strong state CDC associations; promoting CDCs through developing state specific marketing and educational tools for legislators, funders, government, and the public; and strengthening local CDC staff and boards through skills training and peer networking.

As executive director, Warren’s responsibilities include fundraising, administrative duties, supervising staff and consultants, and working on specific strategies, such as growing philanthropy in the South to benefit poor rural communities, building CRA capacity in Alabama and Arkansas, and strengthening CDFI capacity.

After graduating from DCRP, Warren worked on employment and training issues for MDC, a nonprofit organization based in Chapel Hill. She next worked as co-editor of a rural weekly newspaper in Chatham County for several years. After that, Warren worked for two years in state government, first working on federally-funded employment and training programs and then on a $40 million welfare reform demonstration. She then returned to MDC for three years, focusing on rural economic development initiatives across the country.

After leaving MDC, Warren worked for 12 years in legal services, first as Community Economic Development Specialist for the state, then as acting director of the North Carolina Legal Services Resource Center, then as co-director of a new entity called the North Carolina Client and Community Development Center. Warren says that legal services was a great venue for building community economic development capacity across North Carolina.

While a student at DCRP, Warren was very interested in southern grassroots movements for economic justice. DCRP didn’t have an economic development concentration then, so she focused on housing, labor market issues, and regional development. One of the skills that Warren learned at DCRP was the ability to use data analysis for policy work.

When asked about the future of the economic development field, Warren questions whether it is a field. From her perspective, "it still seems bifurcated — one stream focusing on industrial development and the other stream (mine) focusing on community based development strategies such as microbusiness, CDC development, and small business incubators." Although Warren works to support community-based economic development across the South, she questions whether these strategies really make a difference in terms of impact on local economies. For community-based strategies to make a difference, Warren believes that small and micro business, human development, and natural resource based development strategies should be coupled with industrial recruitment strategies. "With a focus on long-term wealth building and sustainability, this is a much stronger path than either path taken separately," she says.

Warren hopes that the economic development field can mend the current schism and recognize that both approaches are necessary and can complement each other: "I think common ground is the path we need to follow. Folks in the community-based development arena need to be sitting at the table with the industrial recruiter — to have some power as well as influence strategies for building a local economy."