Here & Now

African American Alliance Fosters Upward Mobility

Frederica Freyberg:

Next, what to do about Milwaukee, where a new study from a financial news site ranks the city worst in the nation for African-Americans. The study points to disparities between black and white people in the way of income, unemployment and home ownership. But hope may be on the horizon as the African-American Leadership Alliance there actively seeks solutions, including developing and supporting African-American leaders. Antonio Riley is Board President for the Alliance. He joins us now from Milwaukee and thanks very much for doing so.

Antonio Riley:

Thank you for having me.

Frederica Freyberg:

Now, your Alliance, I’ve read, was founded in 2017 and its members are ready now to activate your mission goals. Goals stated on your website to within five years redefine Milwaukee as top-ranked for African-Americans, ensure African-American leaders want to live and work in Milwaukee and enhance a thriving and growing pool of talented African-American leaders there. What are your action steps to reach these goals?

Antonio Riley:

Well, first of all, let me thank you for the opportunity to be with you today to talk about our vision and goals, not just for Milwaukee, but for the entire southeast and for our region here in Wisconsin. But our goals have been real clear that we really focus on the fact that we need to work hard at changing some of the demographics, deficiencies that we see for African-Americans here in Milwaukee. One of our goals is to make Milwaukee by 2025 a place where African-American leadership can thrive. And another one of those goals as you mentioned earlier, it is about a talent pool also. Now, as part of those efforts, we are engaging with allies, the business community and the like with actual deliverable strategies on how to achieve that goal. When it comes to making sure that we are a community. And by 2025 where African-Americans can strive and that we have that talent pool as well. We work with the Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce to come up with what we’re calling the region of choice, which is setting some really clear, measurable goals about how we are going to get there in terms of, one, doing two things. One, it is to increase the number of African-Americans and Latinos in management positions by 25% by 2025. And it is to increase African-American and Latino employment by 15% by that same time. In order for us to achieve those goals, we’re going to have to make sure that people who are here in Milwaukee, in the metropolitan area, are getting the skills they need by which to climb that corporate ladder. When we recruit people into this region, make sure they can live, work and play here. That means they would have to stay here. So all those goals are very important to us achieving that benchmark by 2025.

Frederica Freyberg:

Why are African-American leaders in Milwaukee important to turning the city around for all people of color?

Antonio Riley:

Well, you know, it’s very important. And I’ll just put it to you, answer your question this way. At the end of the day as a community, we have to take responsibility for ourselves. And we really do. And a lot of us do. And we have to simply say that leadership within our community, not just in the corporate area, but if AALAM consists of folks in corporate Wisconsin, Milwaukee as well as folks from the neighborhood, from not-for-profits and all sorts of other groups and it’s not just AALAM doesn’t just consist of strictly African-Americans. So we want to make sure that African-Americans’ voices are being heard and they are a part of that conversation and thus a part of helping us to achieve the opportunity to build a stronger region. So that’s important, that we lead for ourselves as well.

Frederica Freyberg:

Why has Milwaukee in your mind languished and ranked so poorly for disparities historically?

Antonio Riley:

Well, that is a very large question that has lots of different nuances to it. And we know of the racial segregation that exists within not just the city of Milwaukee, but throughout the entire region. One of the other policy — one of the other areas of AALAM as you know from our website, it is to be a leader on public policy, engaging with elected officials and the like, talk about those strategies that build also the African-American community, but also talks about how do we transform the entire region. But we have lagged behind. And it’s unfortunate, for a host of different reasons. It comes to housing, the segregation, the transportation issues. All those things. And our school systems. And let me also say our criminal justice system as well. And so we have to talk about all those symptoms of what exists in our community. Now let’s talk about how do we work with allies to figure out measurable strategies to begin to address it.

Frederica Freyberg:

Briefly and finally, describe how committed your group is toward these goals for Milwaukee?

Antonio Riley:

Oh, we are very committed to it. I mean, this came out of the AALP, which has been for the last ten years one of the premiere leadership training programs to develop African-American leadership in corporate Milwaukee, some 200 alumni. We gathered–we went from that effort and we then called together about 80 folks, African-American leaders and corporate folks, to do a session back in May. And that’s how we then went forward and launched AALAM publicly and established a board, established a not-for-profit status. Next year we are going to be retooling the African-American leadership program. That’s going to be retooled and relaunched in March of 2020. We will also be hiring what we call a lead champion catalyst, which means our new executive director, who will then hire additional staff to further the mission. So we are committed to it and we thank all of our allies and partners out there for all of their support. We’re looking forward to getting this work done.

Frederica Freyberg:

All right. Antonio Riley, thanks very much for joining us.

Antonio Riley:

Thank you.