Hosted by Build It Green in partnership with Healthy Black Families, Inc.
Questions? Contact Mia Arter, our Network Stewardship Director, at [email protected]
About the Hosts
Build It Green
Build It Green sees a California where all communities are regenerative places where people and the environment thrive together. We connect and nurture changemakers to craft actions that transform California’s communities into affordable, equitable, and healthy spaces.
The California Housing System Innovators Network
Build It Green’s California Housing System Innovators Network brings folks from across the housing system together to build collaborative relationships, generate ideas to holistically address our many housing challenges in California and partner together to work on those challenges. The Gathering is a major offering of the Network, which offers a space for sensemaking across our programs and the greater field of housing and community development. We host this intimate event in different communities throughout California roughly every year or two, and they balance opportunities for deep peer learning and sharing, relationship building and open space to brainstorm, play with and project plan around shared big ideas in housing. Additionally, a Steering Committee – a diverse group of Network members – advises on the direction of the Gathering. The Steering Committee is composed of members of the California Housing System Innovators Network who have attended past Gatherings. We thank them for their commitment and contributions to the Network.
Our Local Host Partner
Healthy Black Families, Inc.
To authentically ground the Gathering in 2025, we have partnered with an organization that is deeply rooted in their place. Healthy Black Families, Inc. — a community-based public health organization based in South Berkeley and a longtime thought leader in the network — has graciously offered to host the 2025 Gathering. They offer wisdom, insight, and vibrant connection to the community.
Healthy Black Families, Inc. (HBF) engages people to determine the most meaningful challenges, develops programs to address those needs and moves forward policy to create more just and equitable communities with a particular focus on maternal, adolescent and child health and the social determinants of health. Based on community-led priority setting, HBF has made housing central to their work. They have a long standing history of advocacy and organizing in unity with community partners to support housing equity and justice in South Berkeley, including as a partner to the City of Berkeley through the Partnership for the Bays Future, an initiative of the San Francisco Foundation. Through this initiative, Healthy Black Families, Inc. documented and carried the community’s voice around displacement, right to return, and equitable development of the Ashby BART Transit Oriented Development.
In addition, Wilhelmenia Wilson, HBF Executive Director (left) and Ayanna Davis, HBF Strategic Advisor (right) have been part of the Innovators Network for several years and generously given their time and wisdom to guide the Steering Committee and lead at Gathering sessions. They’ve also participated in our Regenerative Communities Program and are recipients of an Innovation Fund grant award for their work on the Adeline Corridor.
California Housing System Innovators Network
2025 Gathering
June 2-4, 2025 in Berkeley, California
Alex Coba
Communication Associate
As a proud California native from Stockton, Alex brings a wealth of experience and a versatile skill set. He has a solid communication background with a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism and Public Relations from California State University, Chico. Alex is adept at strategic communications and media relations, with experience gathering and sharing stories from his local communities that uplift the unique spirit and values of those places. He is excited to join Build It Green, where he can apply his talents to further BIG’s mission to help communities across California thrive