In this week’s Fellow Spotlight, we are checking in with Corissa Leveille. She fills us in on what she enjoys most about living in the city, and her host company, the Eight Mile Boulevard Association!

Corissa, growing up in the greater Detroit area, and now living in Detroit, what do you enjoy most about living in the City?

Since moving to the city of Detroit 7 years ago, there are quite a bit of things that I greatly enjoy about living in the City, but the number one things that I enjoy is that Detroit is by far the biggest small town you can ever live in.

Growing up in the suburban city of Woodhaven, with a population just under 13,000 people, the whole city essentially revolved around one intersection full of big box stores and fast food/chain restaurants.  In the past 7 years alone the city has continued to bring in more and more chain establishments while pushing out the last of the mom and pop shops. This breeds an environment of competition, with frequent turnover and very little loyalty from its customers, because everything’s the same.

Conversely, in Detroit, the box stores have left and what has filled its place is an environment full of small businesses and entrepreneurs who care about making Detroit a great place to live, work, play, give and lead. Additionally, everyone in the community takes note when new places open and flood to give their support, because everyone in Detroit works together to give a helping hand and make sure that Detroit is a great place to be. The best part is that even though there are over 700,000 people in the city of Detroit, I always run into friends and familiar faces, whether I am going to an art gallery opening, eating dinner with friends, cleaning up a vacant lot, attending a networking event or just buying groceries. Nowhere else can you live in such a large city, with so many people and feel like you are constantly surrounded by familiar faces.

What are some of your favorite things to do in Detroit?

There are so many amazing things to do in the city, I don’t know if I could possibly pick (I could have a blog about just that!) Here we go:

One of my favorite things to do is to introduce new people to the city of Detroit. I love giving people tours that have never been here before and seeing the look on their faces when I show them the amazing and sometimes quirky things that happen in this city everyday. These tours typically include the off the beaten path attractions that you won’t typically see on a tour bus and always include the positive stories of the city that you don’t find in the news.

After the tours, I will typically take the new comer to one of my favorite restaurants in the city.  However, since I have Celiac Disease, it makes it a little tricky to find places to eat, so when I do, expect to see me there at least once a week!! A few of my favorite [Celiac approved :)] places to eat in Detroit are:  Woodbridge Pub, Mudgie’s Deli, St CeCe’s Pub and Socra-Tea (which is actually a cute little tea shop but they serve tasty treats from local gluten free bakery Ethel’s Edibles).

Tell us about your host-company and what you do?

My host company is the Eight Mile Boulevard Association (8MBA) and they are the number one organization that is helping to revitalize and promote the Eight Mile transportation, business and residential corridor [between I-94 to I-275]. 8MBA was formed in 1993 by a coalition of the 13 adjacent local municipalities and 3 counties as a way to combat the reputation of 8 Mile Road as being a “dividing line.”  In the past 20 years, 8MBA has accomplished an unbelievable amount of social and economic wins along Eight Mile, including projects such as:

• helping to bring the first Meijer into Detroit at 8 Mile and Woodward,
• providing design and funding assistance to improve over two dozen facades along 8 Mile,
• cleaning up the corridor during annual clean up projects which typically brings in 500+ volunteers
• assisting local businesses with code enforcement and property maintenance issues by cutting through municipal red tape [Just today, we helped a business owner get his water fixed after a municipal pipe burst!]
• hosting an annual leadership luncheon that brings together the Wayne, Oakland and Macomb County Executives, plus the Mayor of Detroit to talk about making our region stronger.
• planting and maintaining 36 perennial gardens along the boulevard
• and more!!

Now that I have started working there, I have been helping to provide design assistance. One of the major projects that I have worked on involved redesigning and building their new website. I have also been able to work with Facade Improvement Projects, which has been really exciting!  It has been great to work with clients to help them improve their building and businesses.

What is it like working for a non-profit like the Eight Mile Boulevard Association (8MBA)?

The most impressing thing about working with 8MBA is that before I came into the office, there were only 2 staff members (plus me makes 3)!! That means that 2 people were coordinating an annual leadership luncheon, directing 500+ volunteers to clean the corridor, driving along Eight Mile to investigate code enforcement issues, attend city council, planning and zoning meetings and much much more.  We are constantly busy! I get the opportunity to do a little bit of everything and meet everyone who has a stake on Eight Mile and the region.

What do you enjoy most about the challenges?

The day of the presentations are by far my favorite part about the challenges. Presentation day is the final culmination of all of the hard work that my fellow fellows have pulled together and it is great to see everyone shine as they share what they have been working on. Additionally, it is a great opportunity for the Non-profit to gain recognition from an audience that might not have known what they did before the Challenge started. After the presentation it is great to see people in the audience come together and bounce ideas off of each other to see how they can help the non-profit accomplish their goals and hopefully use some of our suggestions.

What are you looking forward to most in Detroit?

I look forward to growing old with Detroit. Detroit is such an integral part of my life that it feels like family and I want to be here to not only see it’s life changing moments, but also to experience my own.  From birthdays to baby steps, graduations and weddings, Detroit will and has experienced it all and I cannot wait to continue experiencing it as well.  I feel so proud of this city that I cannot wait to see what it does next!

Check out Corissa’s personal blog here, and her spotlight video.