Janet Topolsky is executive director of the Aspen Institute Community Strategies Group, where, since 1993, she has helped rural and urban community leaders, organizations, and policymakers across the country find, create, and spread community and economic development strategies that work. She has become a specialist in peer-learning techniques, family asset-building, connecting low-wealth places and populations to regional economic development and better livelihoods, and community development philanthropy. Before Aspen, Topolsky worked as a development policy analyst and writer; communications director for the Corporation for Enterprise Development, where she edited its Entrepreneurial Economy Review; special assistant to the director of the Michigan Department of Commerce; and a youth policy advocate and organizer.
Previously
Rural America has come to the nation’s attention. But much discussion in the media and coffee shops, at conferences and dinner tables, relies on incorrect or no data, largely...