“Action-driven optimist, abundance thinker, simplicity-seeker, and weekend wanderer.”
“Action-driven optimist, abundance thinker, simplicity-seeker, and weekend wanderer.”
Risa Wilkerson is Executive Director of Healthy Places by Design, a nonprofit consulting group serving philanthropy, nonprofit, and community-based organizations across the United States. Risa provides overarching guidance and strategic vision to fulfill the organization’s mission of advancing community-led action and proven, place-based strategies to ensure health and well-being for all.
Risa’s nearly 20 years of proven leadership in the healthy communities’ field places a focus on equity, integrity, and collaboration. She brings extensive experience coaching and providing technical assistance to multidisciplinary community-based partnerships across the country who are improving health and equity through policy, system and environmental change strategies. Risa combines her knowledge of nonprofit management, coalition building, community assessment, and systems approaches in order to address social determinants of health. Risa holds an M.A. from Michigan State University. Risa is an action-driven optimist, abundance thinker, and simplicity seeker.
When I was hit by a car at 15, I had no idea then that I’d go on to build a career promoting walkable communities, and, ultimately, healthy places. Thankfully, I was only bruised; but over time, I’ve seen parents grieve for children who died while trying to cross dangerous roads to get to and from school. I’ve also lost a member of my own family, who was killed while walking along a road with no sidewalk. Her three children will grow up not knowing their mother.
In my early career, I connected at-risk youth to new activities, community partners, and advocacy skills. In the early 2000s, I organized a community coalition of partners who, working together, made it possible for people to walk and bike in their neighborhoods. And as a project manager during Healthy Places by Design’s early days (known then as Active Living by Design), I gained an unparalleled sense of community with social change peers around the country.
Now, with nearly 20 years’ experience working with people who have different backgrounds and identities, I have expanded my insights not just on walkability, but also on institutional racism and systemic oppression, and what it takes to truly create healthy places. Because of the people I have known, and the dozens of community partnerships and leaders who’ve taught and inspired me, I’m determined to help create a more inclusive and compassionate world—one where all people feel they belong, reach their highest potential for wellbeing, and live in healthy places.
If we are ever going to address the most pressing issues of our day, it will require collaboration and community-centered approaches that our nation hasn’t yet fully embraced. I am proud to lead an organization that is changing the paradigm.