The Urban League of Essex County, New Jersey reached out to Deidre for advice on how to talk to PSE&G and the public service commission to move the interaction on a pending switching station from adversarial to collaborative in a way that protected and advanced community interests. As a result of their discussions with PSE&G, the switching station was smaller and the community received direct funding and other resources for its development plan.

Deidre’s outside-the-box thinking guided PG&E’s Workforce Development Director to funding resources beyond the company that created partnerships with the company’s workforce training program, the California Department of Veterans Affairs, local community colleges, and veterans and labor that resulted in an innovative, federally recognized program that got military veterans into high paying utility trade jobs.

Developing practical, actionable policies and protocols means integrating community considerations into project planning in ways that are likely to enhance project success. Realizing project success with few community concerns, rather than reactively seeking to “overcome community resistance” is often a matter of good planning and a willingness to do things differently.

Deidre’s research found that how poverty is defined and identified has resulted in policy blindspots in addressing poverty in high cost of living regions like the Bay Area, which means that programs and policies intended to address and alleviate poverty are likely missing many because they are invisible to tools used to identify poverty.