Blair Benjamin — Founder of the Assets for Artists program in 2007, Blair believes that managing its collaborative growth is a study in chaos theory. When not hounding artists to plan, save and invest, he manages commercial real estate and renewable energy projects for MASS MoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts. He is also a husband, a father, a writer, and a former Peace Corps volunteer, and can be reached at assets4artists@gmail.com.
Margaret Miley — one of the founders of the Midas Collaborative, a national leader in the “asset-building” field, Margaret has served as its Executive Director for over a decade. Along with her team at Midas, she has played a key role in building the operational capacity of the Assets for Artists program since its earliest planning phase.
Esther Robinson — Founder of the nonprofit artist services organization Arthome based in Brooklyn, NY, and one of the initial architects and program staff of the Creative Capital Foundation, Esther is a national leader in building infrastructure for artists. She has led curriculum development and contributed to program design since the initial planning of Assets for Artists. She is also director and producer of the award-winning documentary, A Walk into the Sea: Danny Williams and the Warhol Factory, has produced numerous other film and television projects, and has taught and consulted widely on asset-building for artists.
Hi Mr. Blair:)
This site is encouraging I will utilize it, to me, it feels good to be a dogooder.
Most Respectful,
Trinna Smith from the Midwest
smithbusinessgrp@sbcglobal.net
Blair,
As someone who recently returned from working in Ghana as a Kiva Fellow, I’ve returned to the U.S to re-dedicate myself to extending the reach of financial services to the working poor here in the U.S. Instead of focusing on microloans, however, I am developing a project based on the increasing inertia behind asset-building. I’d love to talk sometime about your experiences.
Keep up the good work.
Dylan
Dear Benjamin: thanks again for covering CFED’s 2008 Assets Learning Conference as our first-over ‘official’ blogger! Your posts are excellent. I was hoping to meet and talk with you there but unfortunately never connected with you in the crowd. I am working with Andrea, Michael Torrens and others members of CFED’s Innovation Team on our new initiative, innovation@cfed.org. I was wondering if we could possibly get a directly link from Asset Almanac to http://innovation.cfed.org? ALSO, please note that under your section, “Asset Policy & Advocacy Resources,” our name is incorrectly shown as “Center for Enterprise Development” — we are actually “Corporation for Enterprise Development (CFED)” Thanks so much for letting me know about the link to innovation@cfed’s website. Sincerely, Anne Li, Program Director, Innovation at CFED.
Thank you for sharing your work, Blair.
I plan to share your blog with our group doing asset building work in North Carolina. I started in the field as a VISTA volunteer in Tucson, AZ providing financial education to IDA participants and also serving as a VITA site coordinator. Now, I work in the asset building field doing advocacy and education in NC.
Please keep sharing, and check out our latest work in NC at one of our Google Group pages: http://groups.google.com/group/nc-assets-alliance-wilmington-
and on our websites: http://www.ncassets.org and
http://www.ncidacollaborative.org
On Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/North-Carolina-Assets-Alliance/226629211671?ref=ts
and
http://www.facebook.com/pages/IDA-and-Asset-Building-Collaborative-of-NC/196598806158?ref=ts
Thank you!