Upcoming Community Conversations
To be announced soon!
Past Community Conversations
As a follow up to our 2019 Competitive City Report:The Flow of Community Investment, the GLP is holding a series of open community discussions on each of the sector areas in our report. We encourage those interested to join us online to learn what’s behind the data and how to leverage the data moving forward. We also look forward to hearing from you.
BLACK WEALTH CONVERSATION
As a follow up to the release of The Greater Louisville Project report on Black Wealth a Community Conversation was held to share what the data says about Louisville, what else we need to know, and what is being done in our community to shrink the gap.
Expert Panelists
- Cynthia Brown, Louisville Urban league
- Tawana Bain, CEO of TBAIN & Co and Founder of GEDDI & DDBS
- Stachelle Bussey, Founder and Executive Director of The Hope Bus Inc.
- Kevin Dunlap, Executive Director at REBOUND, Inc.
Data Presenter
- Harrison Kirby | Data Scientist | Greater Louisville Project
Moderator
- Monica Unseld, PhD | Director of Community Engagement | Greater Louisville Project
Bellow is a recording of the conversation that took place on June 23, 2021. . We are trying to continuously improve our programs and data. To that end, after you watch the video, we would greatly appreciate if you would fill out the very short survey at the link below, so that we might get your feedback about this program.T
o participate in the survey, click here: https://forms.gle/BakdJedtj3XN1vyG6
EARLY CHILDHOOD CONVERSATION
The GLP Early Childhood report shows that there are several factors that influence gaps in kindergarten readiness, positively and negatively. One of the biggest drivers is prior setting, and the data dives deeply into barriers to accessing high quality early childhood experiences, alongside adverse childhood experiences and food insecurity.
As we continue our effort to create open dialogue on a variety of important topics, we hope you will join us for a brief presentation and an open discussion about early childhood, the data, and what Louisville can do to help.
Expert Panelists
- Dr. Joshua Cramer | Nebraska Children and Families Foundation (Former Executive Director of National Center for Families Learning)
- Kish Cumi Price, PhD | Senior Policy and Advocacy Director, K-12 Policy | Kentucky Youth Advocates
- Ashley Brandt | Senior Manager, Early Care and Education |Metro United Way
- Kristen Williams | Executive Director | Play Cousins Collective Inc.
Data Presenter
- Harrison Kirby | Data Scientist | Greater Louisville Project
Moderator
- Monica Unseld, PhD | Director of Community Engagement | Greater Louisville Project
After you watch the following recording of the conversation, please come back to take this very short survey.
HOUSING CONVERSATION
HOSTS
- Greater Louisville Project
- Metropolitan Housing Corporation
MODERATOR
- Dr. Monica Unseld | Director of Community Engagement for Greater Louisville Project
EXPERTS
- George Ecklund | Education and Advocacy Director | Coalition for the Homeless
- Cathy Kuhn | Executive Director| Metropolitan Housing Coalition
- Celine Mutuyemariya | Community Health Coordinator | Shawnee Christian Healthcare Center
- Clare Wallace | Executive Director | South Louisville Community Ministries
- Cassandra Webb | Director of Research and Innovation | Cities United
- Ben Reno-Weber | Director | Greater Louisville Project
- Theresa Zawacki | Executive on Loan | Russell a Place of Promise
PRIVATE SECTOR CONVERSATION – October 23, 2020
Learn what’s behind the data about the private sector in our 2019 Competitive City Report:The Flow of Community Investment and participate in an in depth discussion about how the private sector can invest in Louisville more equitably and effectively.
The following topic experts will provide context and be available to answer questions:
- Facilitator: Sarah Davasher-Wisdom, President & CEO, Greater Louisville Inc.
- Eboni Edwards, Supplier Diversity Manager, LG&E
- Audwin Helton, President, Spatial Data Integrations, Inc
- Scott Koloms, President/CEO of FMS pbc and Founder of Canopy
- Christopher Johnson, Director of Inclusion and Diversity, Humana
- George Tinsley, President and CEO, Tinsley Family Businesses
This event took place on Oct. 23, 2020. Watch a recording of the conversation below:
DIGITAL DIVIDE CONVERSATION – October 6, 2020
Louisville is facing a digital divide. Community members in lower income brackets have less access to internet, tech devices, and skills to use than their their wealthier counterparts. This has implications for their ability to access distance education, apply for jobs, and utilize telemedicine.
Recent data posted on the Greater Louisville Project website shows that our community as a whole is also behind our peer cities as well. This divide will limit the growth and success of our community as a whole and have a dramatically negative affect on those left behind.
Industry Experts
- Dave Christopher, Founder & Executive Director, AMPED – working to educate students and families how to use technology
- Randy Franz, Assistant Executive Director, TARC and Leadership Louisville Bingham Fellow working on the Digital Divide Project
- Kent Oyler – Former CEO of Greater Louisville Inc. and current Leadership Louisville Bingham Fellow on the Digital Divide Project
- Michelle Pennix, owner, Principled Pennix, LLC and working on remote learning hubs for JCPS students
- Marty Pollio, PhD, Superintendent, JCPS, workin on the NTI Initiative
- Grace Simrall, Chief of the Office of Civic Innovation and Technology for Metro Louisville, working to increase internet access and spread access to digital devices
- Kish Cumi Price, PhD, Director of Education Policy and Programming at the Louisville Urban League and contributor to the Digital Divide section of A Path Forward
Civic Data Meet and Greets
Greater Louisville Project’s Quarterly Civic Data Meet & Greets are a great way for data aficionados to hear about the data collection and analysis efforts underway throughout our community with the intention of finding ways to collaborate.
In addition to bringing you speakers and programming related to the latest data efforts for our community, every meeting we invite all attendees to introduce themself and answer the following two questions:
- What’s the coolest thing you and/or your organization is working on currently?
- If you could magic the answer to any data question in our community, what would it be?
Upcoming Civic Data Meet and Greets will be held virtually via Zoom Conference from 11:45 a.m. to 1:15 p.m. click on the date below to RSVP for that event.
November 11, 2020
NOVEMBER MEETING SPEAKERS
Dr. Jonathan Schwabish specializes in communicating information through data visualization and presentation design. He is a senior fellow at the Urban Institute‘s Income and Benefits Policy Center, and he also runs the PolicyViz blog and podcast. He recently published an article called Applying Racial Equity Awareness in Data Visualization that outlines several ways for data users to make visuals with equity, inclusivity, and accessibility in mind.
Kris Stevens is the Strategic Data Fellow for the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University and a Data Scientist for the Kentucky Center for Statistics (KYSTATS). He will be sharing current data that is available or coming available at the state level as well as how you can access and leverage it.
February 10, 2021
FEBRUARY MEETING SPEAKERS
Amy Swann, Research Director for Kentucky Youth Advocates, will share the Jefferson County profile from the KY KIDS COUNT Project, which was released in November. And, she will briefly discuss their essay on the dual pandemics of COVID-19 and systemic racial injustice.
Dr. Roderick Jones, Statistician for KCTCS, will discuss why understanding the relationships between education production (graduates) and workforce demand (jobs) is an important issue that education and workforce leaders throughout the country are attempting to address. He will explain the need, purpose, and development of an innovative geographic information system (GIS) application and will highlight important insights for both Kentucky and the Louisville region.
Natural Breaks Algorithm
For each indicator, Greater Louisville Project assigns cities into one of three groups (high-performing, middle-of-the-pack, and low-performing) based on how they compare to other cities. The assignment is based on how cities naturally cluster on that indicator. Sometimes, the differences between cities are very small, and the difference between a city ranked 5th and 6th could simply be a matter of the sampling error that arises from using survey data. Thus, rather than always make a division that declares the top 5 to be the top tier, we use a natural breaks algorithm to look for a cluster of cities that is outperforming the rest, a cluster that is about average, and a cluster that is lagging. This clustering gives us a better indication of where Louisville is thriving and where Louisville has room to learn from cities that are doing better.
Z-Scores
Z-scores (or standardization) is a way to combine data with different units of measurement into a single index. The z-score is a measure of how far away a city (or census tract, etc.) is from the average city. In order to be comparable across different units of measurement, the z-score is the distance from the mean measured in standard deviations (e.g. if Louisville has a z-score of 1 it means Louisville is 1 standard deviation above the mean of its peer cities).
Data from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's County Health Rankings use z-scores and all z-scores are relative to the mean of Louisville's peer cities. (On the County Health Rankings site z-scores are relative to all the counties in each state - thus z-scores reported by GLP will be different, because we are using a different reference group). The Greater Louisville Project also uses z-scores in our multidimensional poverty index, which compares each census tract to the mean of all census tracts in Louisville.