Dear Lou,

My family is proof that you don’t have to be from a city to love it. My wife and I are native New Yorkers, and we didn’t know much about St. Louis before we relocated to the region a decade ago.

All it took was one immersive weekend at places like Grant’s Farm, the Saint Louis Zoo, the Gateway Arch, and restaurants on The Hill for us to fall hard for St. Louis. And after we moved here, the more we discovered, the more we found to love. Our kids’ school. The sports. The food. I’m Italian and my wife is Chinese, and we are just in awe of the restaurants here that speak to our hearts through our stomachs.

We’re big believers that you can’t just live in a community and take from it; you need to give back. So my wife and I joined boards and volunteered. I started a chess nonprofit in North St. Louis County in collaboration with the St. Louis Chess Club and inaugurated the Ascension Charity Classic PGA golf tournament at Norwood Hills Country Club.

On the East Coast, St. Louisans have a reputation for working hard and being valuable employees, but they tend not to stick around out there. Now I understand why. I’m humbled to be able to contribute to all the things that are wonderful about this region through my energy and optimism.

I tell people all the time that when you choose to live somewhere, you love it even more. Because I’m not from here, I have a different lens for viewing all the things that make St. Louis special. I’ve become an unofficial brand ambassador for the region—it’s the best-kept secret in the United States. Through my vocation as a marketing professional, I have a great platform to share that message.

When I’m not working, my avocation is writing books about big-stakes decision-making. I’m especially passionate about the study of leadership at the presidential level. I look at how and why presidents made big, bold decisions—like Theodore Roosevelt and the Panama Canal or Lyndon Johnson and civil rights. I study the things that motivate and inspire people to take on big challenges.

I apply what I’ve learned authoring those books to day-to-day life by thinking about how to motivate and inspire stakeholders to achieve big things locally. In St. Louis, we need bold, forward-looking leadership that doesn’t turn a blind eye to challenges but tackles them with hope, optimism, and solutions.

I’m a big believer that as a region, we’re only as strong as all the communities within it. It’s incumbent upon all of us to make each community strong for all its residents, because we’re competing with other strong metro areas—and it’s an intense competition—for jobs, young people, investment, and tourism.

The key is public-private partnerships between local government, businesses, and nonprofit. We need to come together and work toward the same goals without getting distracted. We all have the right intentions. We just need to get aligned on a couple of critical things to flourish.

First, we need to have an equitable and inclusive growth that fosters economic opportunity for everyone. Toward this goal, I’ve championed things like the Ascension Charity Classic, which raised more than $2.5 million in 2.5 years for the Urban League and other nonprofits.

While the money is important, I’m even more excited about how the tournament has played out as a love letter to the St. Louis region that’s live on the Golf Channel for three days, eight hours a day. It reintroduces St. Louis to the rest of the country—because we don’t always put our best foot forward in the news.

Second, we need to strengthen our urban core and ensure it’s a destination for people to work and live. This means addressing safety, infrastructure, and transportation.

Third, transportation across the whole region needs to improve so there’s easy access for businesses and other travelers. Plans to expand and renovate the airport are a good step toward this goal.

All three of these goals are interlinked and reinforce each other—and that’s key. We have to keep trying to create things in a very focused way, not trying to boil the ocean. If we can’t focus, we’re going to lose ground to other cities. I want to make sure St. Louis doesn’t just survive but flourishes.

My children were both very enthusiastic about moving to St. Louis a decade ago. Now my son is a freshman at the University of Chicago, but he’s already talking about his life after graduation and his plans to move back to St. Louis. I love that his roots here go deep, and I hope every other newcomer also finds their connection to this wonderful region I’m proud to call home.

Sincerely,

Nick Ragone, EVP and Chief Marketing and Communications Officer at Ascension

Dear Lou,

You can be a tough nut to crack.

Like many of those born here, to understand you, I had to learn about you. About your history, your policies, and the forces that shape your economy. That zip codes can exist within miles of each other, but the residents of each might as well live in different worlds. It wasn’t until much later that I understood how you became that way. You’ve gotten in your own way, sometimes, St. Louis, and blocked your own progress by keeping people locked out of opportunity.

My family experienced the impact of your racial segregation up close, and I knew the isolation it imposed as one of the very few Black children at my school and in our neighborhood. And now, I have devoted my life to helping you build equitable health outcomes for all—not just the few in privileged zip codes.

What would it be like if we lived—not in different worlds—but in the same equitable world? I don’t think it’s as complicated as some make it out to be. I’ve talked about you so much and for so long that I can quote myself now: you don't have an innovation problem. You have a distribution problem. You are not at a loss about how to develop healthy residents who enjoy safe living environments, jobs, and schools. It’s not rocket science. We make up stories about how people can make it out of your darkness with hard work. But your structures are rigged.

You can’t wait anymore to change it. Don’t wait. If we wait to change a critical mass of hearts and minds, we’ll be waiting another century. No single person, family, politician, or business can do it alone.

There's so much to love about you, and your vast reservoirs of goodwill. You have brilliance, talent, and potential. You are often named one of the most charitable cities in the country.
But ask yourself: why is your charity necessary in the first place? It’s not enough to just be generous. The rules of the game have to change. We can’t just program and social service our way out of inequity.

I encourage you to grow. It's easy to get complacent, comfortable, and unwilling to change or accept external ideas about how we could be. It’s almost like you have an “allergy” to outside methods or ways of being sometimes. “Where did you go to high school?”—what could be more provincial than that?

I have hope. Your major institutions, many of which have announced commitments in the right direction, are leading change—like the 2030 jobs plan. I am encouraged by your St. Louis Anchor Action Network, comprised of 16 large organizations devoted to improving economic outcomes in a 22-zip code geography that has faced disinvestment for too long. They understand their collective power, and are banding together in service, not just of their individual ambitions, but for our region, our home, as a whole. Not every city has that.

I am also encouraged by your Once and for All effort from Beyond Housing which is opening hearts and minds to why investing in your most under-resourced communities is the key for moving the entire region forward and creating stronger, more equitable, and prosperous St. Louis for all.

I am heartened by your people, who are willing to have conversations about reorganizing the logic of our systems and structures to ensure the health and well-being of everyone, regardless of race or zip code.

Sincerely,

Jason Purnell
President – James S. McDonnell Foundation

Dear Lou,

You have the most generous heart. So many of your residents put their energy, time, and money toward something positive, something they believe in. Per capita charitable giving in St. Louis County is the highest in the state and earns top scores on rankings of our nation’s most generous places.

Collectively, we’ve invested in world-class cultural amenities, outdoor attractions, places of worship and healing and gathering spots where we can come together to enjoy good food and good fun.

I’m an optimist by nature. I disagree when people say there’s not enough investment in St. Louis. If anything, there is so much generosity. We are such a generous region. But we’re not always efficient, and our efforts are often duplicated.

It would be great if we could be more strategic and unified in our objectives, otherwise we will never move the needle for our region to advance.

I believe it’s possible for us to come together around a common goal. Early in my career, I was a lobbyist in St. Louis City and St. Louis County. I had the opportunity to truly get to know our leaders, their interests, and their values, regardless of their party. I learned that while we may disagree about the best path to accomplish our goals, at the end of the day, we all want the same things. We want people to feel safe. We want crime to go down. We want businesses to thrive. We want newcomers to move here and longtime residents to stay.

When we operate from our shared interests, it’s impressive how many stakeholders can move something forward, no matter how big the goal. I acknowledge that there are real challenges on the ground, but I believe we can work together to foster opportunities for all.

It’s also possible to focus on region-wide priorities while also impacting lives on a day-to-day basis. As a representative of construction contractors, our industry provides pathways into life-changing careers that provide generational wealth. While we focus on industry-wide priorities, we also dedicate time and resources to educate young people who might not know of these opportunities.

The footprint Beyond Housing serves will always be near and dear to my heart. My father was an immigrant from Sicily who owned a union cabinetry shop in Pagedale for 35 years. Through his hard work and the community’s support of his business, he was able to provide for our family well and send seven children to Catholic schools.

My hope is focused through my lens as a man of faith, a father, a husband, and an uncle. I hope everyone in the entire St. Louis community will have access to secure housing, a safe living environment, quality education, fulfilling careers, thriving families, and economic growth.

My vision is that we will continue investing in St. Louis as a global brand. We must be smarter and more strategic to impact lives and change our region’s trajectory for the future.

Sincerely,

Anthony Lancia
Vice President of Labor Relations at AGC of Missouri

Dear Lou,

Like many other St. Louisans, after college I moved away for work. After my husband and I had kids, we moved back to be near family and friends and because you are our home. Since doing so, I have been fortunate to able to make a difference in the world right here in the city I have always called home—and I hope I can make a difference that leaves you better than I found you.

I have so many hopes and dreams for your success which I know are shared by so many other St. Louisans. We all want to see you succeed. You have so many wonderful people, neighborhoods, and institutions that truly make you one of America’s most hidden gems.

Of course, you also have more than your share of challenges.

I’m particularly concerned that very few young people move to St. Louis. So many people that move here are from here originally and, like me, decided to move back.
I hate to say it, but hardly anyone graduating from college says “I want to move to St. Louis” unless this is where they are from.

At the St. Louis chapter of the Association for Corporate Growth (ACG), we are focused on fostering greater corporate growth in St. Louis and creating a network of opportunity for professionals and businesses. A big part of doing that is attracting and retaining more young talented professionals to St. Louis.

If St. Louis is going to grow and succeed, we need to fill our pipeline with the next generation of talent who will contribute to our region’s success. Young people are also naturally more open-minded, more diverse, and think more innovatively. These are qualities our region needs.

This is why ACG St. Louis created Emerging Leaders, a young professionals peer group, and given it a major focus going forward. People need a community to support others and be supported, and there is a lack of this within the business community, particularly for young people and especially for outsiders.

But this is only one of St. Louis’ many challenges.

I have learned that if you ask people what the solution is to creating a better St. Louis, you will get a myriad different responses—everything from reducing crime to improving education, greater equity of opportunity, a more unified structure of government, and dozens of other answers.

What I’ve come to realize is that there is no one simple answer to our problems. The real answer is that, if we want to really move forward, we have to come together and address all of our major challenges—but in a more unified, cohesive way than what we have ever done before.

It’s amazing that we have roughly 19,000 nonprofits in the St. Louis area. We are such a charitable community and are fortunate to have so many organizations working to address our various problems. With all of these resources, why can’t we coordinate more of these organizations to work together in a collective effort to really make the change our region needs?

Better yet, imagine if more of our nonprofits, our businesses, and our civic organizations and leaders began working together to address St. Louis’ challenges as a unified force for change.

If we want to attract more younger and innovative professionals, we should go even further to embody that spirit within ourselves, be open to new ideas to create change, and show the world we embrace the future more than the past.

We have seen in other metropolitan regions that change is possible. Milwaukee, Detroit, and Pittsburgh have had similar struggles but have managed to make significant strides forward. I believe the biggest reason is because enough people and organizations have come together to create a critical mass.

I realize that I am just one voice in more than two and a half million. I wonder if I am the person qualified to say these things. On the other hand, I think that, for the good of our region, more of us need to stop waiting for others to lead us.

It’s time for new voices to help lead in creating the change we desire. The future of our city depends on it.

With love and optimism,

Amy Ruebsam
CEO, Midwest Region at Association for Corporate Growth
Executive Director, ACG St. Louis