Meet our members! AFN’s greatest asset is our members—a diverse network of national, regional, and community-based foundations, financial institutions, and grantmakers—investing in advancing equitable wealth building and economic mobility. Check back each month and meet your peers!
1: What’s your main interest/focus on asset building in 2021?
One of our main interests has been focusing on financial tools and structures that align to the current way that low-income communities interact with systems. We are thinking about how we empower a case manager or home-visiting nurse who are working with our community members with financial tools to advance their practice and help their folks obtain well-being, financial or otherwise.
2: What’s the most “ah-ha” provoking new book or research that you’ve read in the past year?
“Collective Courage” by Jessica Gordon Nembhard on black cooperative economics. It discusses the art of “sugar-sharing” and how communities can advance themselves by utilizing the resources of their communities.
3: What advice would you give to a colleague starting out in the asset building field?
“Shut up and listen” – community voices will always be right, always. As a funder, the power dynamic will easily propel you to want you to impart a perspective – don’t do that. Philanthropy is at its best when it is listening to find the threads that bond all the voices we hear together.
4: What was your first job?
Folding pizza boxes when I was 10 and I was a golf caddy when I was 12.
About Dr. John Brothers, President, T. Rowe Price Foundation
Since 1981, the T. Rowe Price Foundation has supported the communities in Baltimore and across the U.S. and abroad where T. Rowe Price associates live and work. Our three key areas of focus are to advance Youth Empowerment, Creativity & Innovation, and Financial Well-Being. The Foundation aims to be a strong collaborator in community and we believe partnership is the most effective way for our communities to realize positive change, and that our community partners are best equipped to decide how their resources and assets should be utilized.
Through the corporate philanthropic arm of T. Rowe Price, I am fortunate enough to work with a team of folks that lock arms with our communities to help them realize their own self-determinations.
