| Phyllis Betts is the founding director of the Center for Community Building and Neighborhood Action at the University of Memphis. She has over ten years experience working with community development organizations and agencies, including both practitioners and grassroots stakeholders, with a special emphasis on how activists can work with researchers to create “actionable knowledge” and design locally meaningfully interventions. Her work revolves around sustaining neighborhood housing markets and enhancing quality of life in low-moderate income neighborhoods. Dr. Betts is the research partner for the Community Development Council of Greater Memphis and the Shelby County Anti-Predatory Lending Coalition on mortgage lending and foreclosure and the Problem Properties Collaborative on strategies for dealing with blighted and vacant properties; the coordinator of the SouthEast Memphis Initiative, a public-private comprehensive community initiative working to stabilize neighborhoods of choice in a recently annexed part of Memphis; the evaluator for four HOPE VI redevelopment projects in terms of their impact on neighborhoods; a pilot site partner for The Brookings Institution Urban Markets Initiative; and the lead organization partner in Memphis for The Urban Institute’s National Neighborhood Indicators Partnership. She has a PhD in Sociology from the University of Chicago, with a special emphasis on urban and community studies and poverty and social inequality. |
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