Aditi Vashist

The Business of Community: Reflections on my Pivot 314 Fellowship at Delmar DivINe

Aditi Vashist

Organizational Behavior Ph.D. (2023), Olin Business School

Delmar DivINe is a place unlike any other in St. Louis, likely without comparison even in other cities deemed attractive destinations for entrepreneurs. It is the brain-child of Maxine Clark, made possible with the help of many others driven to community-centered collaboration through shared space, expertise, resources and a concern for others. Over the summer of 2022, I worked on a project for the Center for Human Service Leadership (CHSL)—Delmar DivINe’s joint venture with the Brown School and the Clark-Fox Family Foundation. My task was to lay the groundwork for Delmar DivINe’s capacity to match tenants and other nonprofits with qualified, ambitious, civic-minded young professionals in St. Louis to serve on boards.

As part of this work, I interviewed more than a dozen nonprofit executive directors about their board needs. Our conversations also revealed how local leaders straddling the business and civic sectors conceptualize their organization’s mission and their personal calling. I learned a lot from the interviews—about how budding nonprofits make massive contributions to their local communities, often with small staff on shoestring budgets. The most rewarding and exceptional part of my summer, however, was the insights I gained from simply watching people from different organizations interact and support each other in the Delmar DivINe offices.

The renovated hospital campus is now home to more than 30 local nonprofits, and an archetype of collegiality and collaboration in service of a greater good. Individuals find social support by being in community with their peers and instrumental support from pooling resources. Even if they are not in the same industry, Delmar DivINe tenants share a mission to empower communities and individuals often overlooked by large systems. This common goal, and the interconnected nature of social problems, means that previously isolated nonprofits that had to work hard to uncover synergies are now able to find them easily within the co-working space.

As I developed the survey instrument for collecting data from board candidates, Brittany Hogan (the Manager of the CHSL) or Jorge Riopedre (the CEO of Delmar DivINe) would often walk by giving tours of the offices to potential tenants. These community-leader/entrepreneurs frequently end up in conversation with existing tenants. One such interaction led an organization distributing reproductive health materials to girls in schools to realize they could work with another tenant focused on supporting parents to effectively navigate the public school system, increasing their reach and usefulness to parents. At Delmar DivINe, there is no shortage of generous intentions to connect seemingly disparate ventures.

Although much of this happens serendipitously around Delmar DivINe, the CHSL is actively curating the social space necessary for community collaboration within the updated physical spaces. Every two weeks I attended the CHSL Lunch & Learns where tenants introduce their organization and showcase their work among peers. Presentations are followed by robust discussions of the ways in which different nonprofits can work together. Maxine Clark models the generosity needed for successful collaboration by unrelentingly connecting people and resources, helping undo some barriers to the flow of ideas and information that can otherwise elude nonprofit startups. The result is an intellectual hub where a community health organization can give a presentation about their work and instantaneously connect with a nonprofit serving unhoused individuals to provide medical care to a larger population that had been hard to reach. This stuff does not happen just anywhere.

A common refrain heard from civic-minded students at business schools is the lack of integration with local communities. The Pivot 314 fellowship provided me with the resources to engage with a unique hub of community-focused startups that will always be one of the most cherished experiences of my time at Washington University in St. Louis. Everyone in the startups world is excited about co-working spaces, but Delmar DivINe is an entirely revolutionary space for organizations doing the hard work of improving communities at the local level. As a PhD student focused on the study of persistent inequities in organizations, I often come up on the ways in which these inequities are reproduced from within, with societal explanations used to shield institutions and organizations from honestly accessing the role they play. Delmar DivINe presents a model for rethinking the relationship between businesses, communities and local institutions in a way that is profitable yet generative—I am lucky to have been a part of it.