Community Economic Development

Carl Flipper is a Community Economic Development Practitioner specializing in neighborhood revitalization and anti-displacement strategies. Flipper provides training and management counseling for small business and micro-enterprise emphasizing equity financing, leveraging and managing debt, and management team building. He has worked in both inner-city urban and rural settings, and across America's racial and digital divide.

He served for many years as Steering Committee Member of the National Economic Development and Law Center, and is former Economic Development Council Chairman for the National Urban League.

''If we focus on business ownership, home and property ownership, and related wealth-creating strategies, we'd find that health care, education, transportation and other indicators of quality of life would start taking care of themselves,'' Flipper maintains. It is unconscionable to focus only on the symptoms and never on the root causes of poverty.''

Neighborhood Link to the World

Flipper serves as Coordinator of the Humboldt Target Area Project -- a community-based initiative to stimulate commercial development, youth enterprise and home-ownership -- in one of Oregon's most economically distressed and highest minority populated neighborhood. He also serves on its board of directors.

Humboldt is located in Northeast Portland's Albina Community, redlined for many years and among Oregon's most racially diverse neighborhood. Humboldt is 60% minority and 50% African American according to Census 2000 data. Figures confirm the extent of displacement occurring since Humboldt was ''rediscovered'' a decade ago. The neighborhood has experienced a drop of nearly 18% Black and 23% Indian residents displaced since 1990.

Flipper serves as a Senior Consultant to the Oregon Native American Business & Entrepreneurial Network, Chairs Portland's Interstate Urban Renewal Economic Development Committee, and is a Director of Just Growth, an emerging economic and environmental justice consortium.

Flipper is an amateur historian with interest in African American military history. He is a Director of the Buffalo Soldiers Historical Society, a member of the 9th & 10th (Horse) Cavalry Association.

Flipper's favorite collaborations include 1) developing an econometric model to identify the sub-state determinants of Idaho's economic growth, 2) formulating small business strategies that rekindle the spirit of enterprise in the African American community, 3) working to help Portland attract a Major League Baseball franchise through his work with the Portland Baseball Group, and 4) organizing USARSA, an Oregon-Africa International Trade Initiative promoting exchange with the Republic of South Africa.

Community Enterprise Financing

A former Senior Business Analyst with Deloitte-Touche in Chicago, Flipper was President and Executive Director of the MIT Enterprise Forum™ in Oregon, worked as Trade and Economic Advisor to Oregon's first Black Woman State Senator, served as a Director of publicly traded Willamette Valley, Inc., and held adjunct business faculty posts at Portland State and the University of Idaho. Flipper received a BA in Economics and an MBA in Finance and Marketing from the University of Illinois.

He has experience in business, government, higher education and community development.

One goal advocated by Flipper is a neighborhood enterprise fund to make equity investments in community-based businesses. ''Too many small and minority-owned companies lack equity capital against which they can leverage other debt,'' Flipper says. A community venture capital fund -- plus much-needed management assistance -- can provide investments, rather than oppressive debt or short-term grant opportunities to develop the neighborhood economy.''

Email us:
CarlFlipper@comcast.net