The remarks below are excerpted from my address at the March 29, 2018 Annual Meeting of the Kendall Square Association. The meeting featured a conversation with members of The Boston Globe Spotlight Team discussing racism in Boston.
I don’t think I need to explain to any of you why I was drawn to the opportunity to help write the next chapter for Kendall Square and its community. But I do think that it is worth explaining for a moment how I view the Kendall Square Association (KSA) and our role in the evolution of this special place.
Organizations like the KSA occupy a unique place in an ecosystem. We are the connective tissue that does the vital work that no other single organization would — or perhaps even should or could.
The KSA does the crucial work of building relationships throughout this community, listening hard to what’s working well and what isn’t. We gather input and provide research, perspective and fresh thinking so that we can build a shared vision for greater possibilities for us all.
Then we look for the actions we can take that have the greatest impact, and best leverage our resources, that will respond effectively to these needs of the community, and that will realize the opportunities that our driving vision and this particular moment in time afford us.
In the months ahead, you will have many opportunities to gather with us, and to share your views on work that makes sense for us all to be doing together. I hope and trust that you will experience the KSA as one of the most deeply curious, engaged and user-centric organizations that you’ve known.
So, what do I wish for Kendall Square?
I believe that the future of Kendall Square is one of shared prosperity, of broad inclusivity, and of open access.
I believe the future is one where the extraordinary activity that happens everyday inside Kendall Square’s research labs and offices, migrates from them into the streets, and throughout the digital world to offer access and inspiration for residents in East Cambridge and Mattapan, for entrepreneurs and innovators worldwide who travel here to find what they need to make their dreams real, for those who come here to learn from every corner of the world. We have an opportunity to be a household name the world over. We are well on our way, yet we have much work still to do.
In the months and years ahead, we’ll be working with every one of you that we can recruit to make Kendall Square a center of public art, and of unique gathering spaces for greater Boston’s and the world’s citizens to connect. We must signal to the people we want to draw in that we are a place where they can learn, partner, innovate, and create. And we must also go out into the world to share what we are seeing and learning and, in turn, to learn from them.
Alongside that work, we will up our public policy game and push hard for things that make all of our lives better, such as vital improvements to the MBTA — more ambitious plans to address deferred maintenance and service advancements — along with creative new mobility solutions, so that all of us can move into, out of and around Kendall Square more easily.
In the meantime, today marks an important step on our journey to partner with all of you, our members, to take a long hard look at ourselves and ask what we must do to develop best-in-class strategies for building truly diverse and inclusive organizations.
Inviting the Spotlight team here today was a carefully considered choice. The follow up discussions you’ll hear more about after the panel were also thoughtfully considered. We are on a journey toward being a community that chooses to reckon with racism and sexism and homophobia and all of the other ways in which potential goes unrealized in this city and in other places. Although, we are not going to get it right 100% of the time, we are going to harness our very best intentions and deepest commitment to our vision for the prosperous, equitable, welcoming place we all want to call Kendall Square.
In Kendall Square, innovation is not a buzzword. It is what we do every day. And it is what you can expect from the KSA.
Thank you again, and I look forward with great enthusiasm to working with every one of you to make our collective dreams a reality.
