“Being ignorant is not so much a shame as being unwilling to learn” – Benjamin Franklin

It’s hard to believe another month has gone by! Read on below for a quick update on life in Detroit:

Play: I patronized over 20 restaurants this month! And it’s worth noting I was out of town for 2 of the 5 weekends for friends’ weddings back East. (Congratulations Jen and Joe Jones and Meghan and Christian Szcerba!)

In addition to expanding my palate with different restaurants in the city, there were several notable events including Techtown’s annual “Toast of the Town” and Eastern Market’s Beer fest, both of which presented the opportunity to celebrate local culture in addition to networking. I also attended my first Lion’s game which turned out to be their first win of the season!

Through the program each fellow is paired with an alumni fellow for mentoring. This month my mentor and I took a Detroit Experience Factory Tasting Tour for our first meeting. During the two hour walking tour we received coffee from Roasting Plant, cookies at Detroit Wheelhouse, hummus and sangria at John Varvatos, pizza from BamBamz located inside Eye’s Market, and frozen yogurt from Bonnie’s Gifts & Sundries, a small shop inside the Compuware building. What better way than to bond with your mentor than during a local tour with pizza, wine and ice cream?

Work: I planned my first event this month, a legal seminar in partnership with a technology business association and another law firm targeted for small businesses and entrepreneurs. I coordinated posting the press release to our firm’s website as well as our social media and other news outlets; promoting event invitation and attendance using various methods including third party event websites, direct email, and putting together a target marketing list of small business owners; managing the registration process and guest list; ordering food and beverages for the event and coordinating event set up. It was really great to execute something from start to finish and be able to see the end result.

I also attended a Detroit Regional Chamber membership event as a representative of the firm where I learned more about the chamber, benefits of membership including their various events and programs, and networked with other chamber members including Goodwill, another one of the program’s host companies.

In addition to planning events I’m responsible for additional projects such as researching a more effective Customer Relationship Management system, creating a standard procedure for client meetings, and developing the firm’s attorney biographies. I continue to learn each day as I get acclimated to a new job, in a new field, with a new firm.

Give: This month I volunteered with another fellow at the Detroit Free Press marathon. We assisted with set up and passed out food, water and chocolate milk to the marathoners. The event has been gaining a lot of traction over the past few years since it can be used as a qualifier for the Boston Marathon. This year attracted 28,000 registrants and just over 30,000 total people including volunteers and spectators.

I also had the opportunity to attend a farm-to-table breakfast event benefitting the Coalition on Temporary Shelter (COTS) at Eastern Market, sponsored by my firm. At the event I was able to catch up with other fellows and program directors, meet a few of our board members, and learn about the wonderful work COTS does to help residents on the path to self sufficiency. And the food was delicious!

Earlier this month I also attended my first Detroit Soup in the Livernois Avenue of Fashion corridor. For anyone unfamiliar with the concept like I was, Detroit Soup is a crowdfunding gathering where residents share a bowl of a soup at the same time they’re learning about and funding local initiatives. Attendees pay $5 for a bowl of soup, salad, and bread and hear four pitches that are trying to improve the city. At the end of each 8 minute speech and Q&A everyone votes and the winner takes home the funds raised at the event towards their community project. Just another unique way Detroit is rebuilding itself through community support and engagement.

Live: I expanded my cultural experience with the city this month through several events including an In Residence Detroit Symphony Orchestra concert featuring a roaring 20’s theme in the historic Orchestra Place Apartments in Midtown, and a new members tour at the Detroit Institute of Arts where I learned about the various auxiliary programs available, ate cheese and crackers and caramel apples from the museum’s trendy Kresge Court eatery, and explored various exhibits including the featured “Ofrenda” which showcased traditional Day of the Dead pieces.

Through our first challenge, I had the opportunity to explore a new area of the city which I was unfamiliar with in District 2. Whether it was eating chicken and waffles at Kuzzo’s, dining at 1917 Bistro with improv performances, a romantic dinner date at La Dolce Vita, or grocery shopping at Mike’s Fresh Market, I discovered a whole new section of Detroit with trendy shops, delicious restaurants and a vibrant, active, diverse community rich with history.

Lead: We had our first in a series of “Leadership Fridays” which will follow each 5 week Challenge throughout the year. These days are a time for reflection, assessment, and personal development.  During our session we heard from a Wayne State Professor on Detroit’s Water Shutoff, Emergency Management and life after Bankruptcy during which we explored the implications of structural racism. We also spent 3 hours in the afternoon holding an intense discussion on race equity and privilege.

This activity was particularly eye opening for me; growing up in the diverse melting pot of the Northeast where Caucasians were the minority in my mostly middle-class High School, I have to admit I didn’t consider race much. The transition to Detroit has been easy but a cultural shift nonetheless. Through the program I’ve learned about the city’s rich history, both good and bad, and been exposed to its racial undertones and deep rooted historical barriers. It’s particularly interesting to me that while in most ways I’m experiencing this for the first time, there’s a widespread movement going on across the country’s cities and universities. Are other millennials discovering these surreptitious social injustices in the same way as they become exposed to people and places beyond where they grew up? Or is the country at large fed up with burying the issues we inherited from many years ago? Either way the strong call to action and media attention is a promising start on a path for change.

In some ways, these conversations still make me uncomfortable. But then I consider how I feel when a male dismisses gender inequality as if it does not exist. We can’t help what we don’t know or the world we were born into. But we can embrace learning. In the program we often discuss “incremental change” and acknowledge the reality that our ability to make significant changes are limited. However making small but meaningful, incremental changes are still impactful. My biggest takeaway from our leadership day was that simply having the conversation and acknowledging the facts about race inequality with more people is still significant, and that many little talks over time can yield a big change.

Outside the program, I attended Detroit Young Professional’s Vanguard Awards Dinner to network and meet other young professionals in the area and also participated in a sketching workshop at local business accelerator, Techtown with Civilla to further my personal development. Last week I attended Detroit Future City’s final workshop in their Ideas for Innovation series focused on Making a Shared Regional Vision. Panelists discussed the important of the interdependent relationship between the city’s future success and that of the surrounding region’s ability to flourish.

Another month in, first challenge completed, and I continue to feel the more I know, the less I know. October has been an exponential learning curve and while I feel successful and accomplished, I also realize frequently how much I still have to learn. I look forward to continuing exploring the city, future challenges, building personal development, and learning more both about Detroit, the culture, history and myself along the way!