Ron Hick has over 25 years experience working with community based organizations in a direct staffing, intermediary or consulting role. He has developed significant strengths in the areas of community organizing and engagement; issue campaigns; strategic planning; project development and implementation; alliance building; board and organizational development; and grant writing. Through his work, Ron has cultivated a broad network of relationships across different sectors and communities; demonstrated an ease in working with people of diverse racial and cultural backgrounds, political persuasions and operating styles. He is often sought out to assist with broad based community engagement efforts, especially for planning and issue identification.

Examples of his recent relevant experience and skills are:

• Assisted local a community development corporation in forming a cross neighborhood, multi-sector, multi-cultural alliance for community engagement in a major land development initiative. This was done through a series of small and large community meetings and discussions that resulted in the successful revitalization of deteriorating industrial/warehousing area of the neighborhood.

• As a Program Officer for the Minneapolis Foundation, Ron planned and executed seven major conferences, each attended by over 300 hundred people, and more than 50 training workshops aimed at increasing the capacity of community-based organizations. He also convened a working group to look at creating a training program for community organizing that resulted in the formation of the Organizing Apprenticeship Project (now Voices for Racial Justice).

• Assisted the State Council on Black Minnesotans (COBM) with planning and implementing a community engagement effort employing community discussions and targeting areas throughout the state with a significant Black population. This effort culminated in a large community meeting that brought people from each of these population centers to discuss their concerns and agree on a set of issues for the COBM to pursue.

• Along with 3 colleagues, planned, organized and implemented a series of community discussions among underrepresented communities (people of color, immigrant communities, seniors and youth) to identify issues and concerns to assist the Dakota County Parks Department in revising their Visitor Services Strategic Operations Plan.