Mariah Williams, MURP

With 10 years of experience in community development, I am a skilled strategic thinker and connector who is passionate about activating people, spaces, and ideas. I have successfully led and planned community engagement strategies in the non-profit sector that have influenced strategic and equitable community investments to historically marginalized and underserved communities in order to increase financial and economic inclusion and to disrupt structural inequality.

Deep Roots

Even as a child, I felt everything very deeply. I think that part of me translated this to how I experienced the places around me. As a young child growing up in New York City, I remember leaving my apartment in Harlem, first with my mother and eventually by myself as I grew older, and taking notice of how my environment changed as I journeyed through the City and to different neighborhoods. My block in Harlem was Black and working class. People did what they had to do to survive.  But as I’d get on the bus or subway and travel farther downtown to school or programs I was in, I’d notice that the neighborhoods got whiter and cleaner, that there were trash cans on every corner, and less check cashing places and more traditional banks. But more importantly, I remember how I felt in these places. Like my visceral reaction. At home uptown, I could kind of breathe and exhale because I was around folks that looked like me. There was a certain liveliness that my community had, that I didn’t always feel when I traversed to these very white spaces and communities (although they were “resource rich”), where I always felt like I was just visiting, but never really belonged. And then there were the summers I spent "Down South.”

I think like every black mother that lived up North, my mother sent me and my brother Down South for the summer where we got to spend time with my nanny and papa, cousins, and aunts and uncles. All of our family was down in Prince George. There were no parks, no playgrounds, there was just outdoors. That’s where we had all of our adventures, down the road, or Lumptown, which was named after my great-grandma who we called Grandma Lump. At least 4 nights out of the week, you’d see cars start to trickle down the road, one by one. And it’d be an uncle with some beer, or an aunt who had cooked and was bringing food for everybody. And before you knew it, there were a dozen people out in the yard, sitting around drinking and telling stories. Us kids would listen in and then go play or go grab a beer for someone out of a cooler. And I remember being so, so full. Not just being around my family, but this community we had. No one had created it for us, we created it for ourselves.

As I got older, I realized that I was doing the work of a placemaker and urban planner long before I ever knew what those terms or professions were. I was just making sense of my Black body in the built environment around me, and what felt good to me and what didn’t. The types of places where I felt good about myself and loved and could just be. My mind remembered them, but so did my body. When I went into planning as a profession, these were the memories that were imprinted on my spirit, and the spirit of my work. And I knew that they were not atypical to the Black experience, that in fact, they were necessary ingredients. I don’t want this to be forgotten in my work, or the work of others working to sustain, create, and build community.