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EMERGE Minnesota

The Farber Fellowship is a consulting-like engagement that gives graduate students the opportunity and autonomy to make a significant difference at a social enterprise in REDF’s Portfolio, over the course of one summer. Learn more and view application details.

I was grateful to spend this summer as a REDF Farber Fellow with EMERGE Community Development in Minnesota. My project focused on developing a pilot program for curbside bulky waste collection, recycling, and reuse with the City of Saint Paul, which will create employment opportunities for individuals impacted by the criminal justice system.

I aimed to apply my skills to drive environmental and economic impact, and I could not have imagined a better match. Through my project, I explored circular models and how to creatively approach problems with a multi-sectoral lens.

Between visits with city officials, tours of waste and energy plants, and volunteer shifts at a furniture repair nonprofit, I gained valuable insights I’ll take forward in my career.

Lesson 1: Don’t lose sight of the big picture.

My project included building a model to project pilot’s impact on EMERGE’s finances, resources, and environmental outcomes. I compiled an extensive list of data points to collect and estimate through expert interviews. But making estimates also required an understanding of what makes a social enterprise unique. For example, it’s important to factor in time for participant training or consider different revenue streams to offset expiring grants.

It was easy to get lost in the weeds. To keep my bearings, I tried to maintain a North Star: to equip EMERGE with the ability to project how changes in the volume of materials processed would impact their costs versus revenues, resource capacity, and greenhouse gas reductions.

This helped me move past the uncertainty of each estimate’s degree of precision and focus on how the pieces fit together.

Lesson 2: Lean on the wealth of knowledge and support within an organization’s community and your own.

I mostly worked remotely from my hometown of Seattle, with one on-site week in Minnesota. In Seattle, I connected with the Seattle Furniture Repair Bank, a nonprofit that helped fill in knowledge gaps and bring insights beyond EMERGE’s existing network.

During my on-site visit, I saw the power of EMERGE’s community in action during meetings with their partners in local government, waste management, and their local furniture bank. The alignment across stakeholders in the community demonstrated the value of EMERGE’s existing programs, and the broad support for launching the new program.

Lesson 3: When faced with many unknowns, go beyond numbers to bring the end goal to life.

Moving forward in uncharted territory can be overwhelming for any organization. Finding frames of reference for scale and new processes can go a long way. I tried to capture what this pilot would look like, not only through numbers, but through images and real examples.

One of my early breakthroughs came when I mapped out a process flow for furniture once EMERGE picks it up. This answered a lot of foundational questions and brought operational clarity for how EMERGE would work with various partners or keep material moving.

Photos and videos are also powerful tools. I photographed their new warehouse and sketched out different stations where the sorting, repair, and recycling work could take place, which helped the team get a sense for scale. I documented different furniture repair workshops I visited, photographed furniture that the Seattle Furniture Repair Bank worked on, and filmed short repair trainings from their staff. All of this helped make the pilot real for EMERGE and bring a greater degree of confidence in tackling this work.

The social enterprise leaders REDF works with are a wealth of wisdom, and time with them is truly a gift. I gained new models for leadership and managing stakeholder relationships. I’m forever inspired by the exemplary ability of EMERGE’s leaders to raise up the team’s achievements as they connect the foundation of what they’ve built with their vision for the future.

The Farber Fellowship further validated my goal and commitment to pursue work advancing both environmental sustainability and community development. I will continue to ask how I can maximize my impact across these twin levers of planetary and human wellbeing. My advice to anyone considering the Farber Fellowship is to come in with clear goals for growth, but stay open to what shape that might take.

— Written by Erica Ng, Kellogg School of Management