Cycles in Creating Community Spaces
After three years of storytelling on the city’s vibrant community of social entrepreneurs, my final article is fittingly with Pres Adams, General Manager of Communitas America and Co-Founder of Impact Hub Baltimore. Pres previously served as Impact Hub’s Director of Operations, as well as my supervisor when I first joined the Hub through the Johns Hopkins Community Impact Internship Program. As the remaining core team looks inward this August to prepare for the fall, Pres shares lessons learned in his nearly decade-long run supporting social entrepreneurs.
In 2010, Pres Adams entered a post- housing crisis economy with a newly earned graduate degree in real estate. Available positions requested work experiences that were few and far between. Increasingly, he began to ask the following question: “Why don’t I just create my own opportunities?”
At the time, Pres didn’t know that he asked himself a question that the social entrepreneurs he would ultimately support — for nine years and counting — contemplated on a regular basis.
In the absence of available work in real estate, Pres began researching the emergence of shared spaces nationwide. These spaces were providing value for artists, creatives, and tech professionals seeking community. He became interested in what it might look like for Baltimore to create collaborative hubs too.
As part of his process, he consciously chose to grow his network beyond the real estate industry. Pres found in his research that the real estate developers he admired most had connections with individuals working across diverse fields. This observation inspired Pres to do the same, and gradually, his days became filled with conversations with Baltimore’s vibrant community of artists, urban farmers, grassroots organizers and more.
He eventually crossed paths with Rodney Foxworth, future Co-Founder of Impact Hub Baltimore and current CEO of Common Future. A Technical.ly article written about Rodney on the need for a social enterprise incubator in Baltimore provided a catalyst for conversation. Although they had different professional backgrounds, they recognized a potential alignment that could contribute to a stronger and more collaborative city for all.
From Cultivating Community to Launching Space: The Origins of Impact Hub Baltimore
The development of their relationship served as a model for what they hoped to facilitate in Baltimore through SocEnt Breakfasts. Started in September 2012, these breakfasts were originally designed to facilitate conversations and create spaces for new relationships to form.
By convening these conversations in various neighborhoods around Baltimore, Pres and Rodney hoped to highlight ongoing initiatives and attract attention and resources for these efforts to grow. They maintained a monthly meeting schedule to enable the time and space needed for authentic connection and dialogue to unfold.
Word of mouth helped SocEnt to quickly grow their following. What began with a group of 20 people grew to 80–120 attendees consistently in a three-month timespan. Soon enough, the next phase to scale and sustain these efforts presented itself organically: to provide a physical space that would support the city’s changemakers on a day-to-day basis.
In 2014, Pres and fellow co-founder Michelle Geiss established a prototype space for the SocEnt community before joining the Impact Hub global network. By December 2015, Impact Hub opened in a beautiful space on the ground floor of the historic Centre Theater in the Station North Arts & Entertainment District, which was previously vacant for more than three decades. Located in the geographic heart of the city, Impact Hub has provided workspace, event space, and expansive programming for more than five years.
New Cycles and Lessons Learned
When Impact Hub Baltimore was first founded, Pres served as various iterations of their Director of Operations. In August 2019, Pres relocated to New York City, but remained with the Impact Hub global network to coordinate partnerships for hubs located in the North America region. “It was a nice way to stay in the network and zoom out and see what this work looks like at a different level,” Pres says.
Nowadays, Pres shares best practices with other organizations seeking to stand up supportive spaces for entrepreneurs. He currently serves as the General Manager of Communitas America, “a social impact non-profit organization focused on developing impact ecosystems in under-resourced communities.” Pres is leading the organization’s effort to open an innovation hub in the South Bronx.
Joining this organization crystallized the importance of fostering authentic relationships for Pres. Although there might be certain similarities between Baltimore City and the Bronx, he emphasizes that “there isn’t really a shortcut” to launching community-driven spaces — regardless of how much experience one may have doing so elsewhere.
I’ve learned a few things in Baltimore that have probably saved me sometime, but you can’t just copy and paste. To be successful, you still have to spend time building authentic relationships on the ground, and that takes time and care. I’m also particularly grateful for my colleagues and our partners who have lived experience in the Bronx.”
Everyone on the Communitas team has a wealth of knowledge to contribute toward launching the space. Asked what key lessons have surfaced in this process so far, Pres opened his reflections by alluding to the importance of dedication and resourcefulness:
“When you’re building something new, it takes a lot of work within a short amount of time to make something from nothing. There’s a building period that has to happen, a window of opportunity where you have to get a bunch of stuff built in that timeframe with deadlines, only so much money, and more.”
At the same time, Pres emphasizes that entrepreneurial burnout is real. Both increased proximity to entrepreneurs and the rapid nature of running an innovative space helped Pres recenter his well-being and the well-being of others. Pres would find himself asking, “How do you take care and nourish the whole entrepreneur?” His answers often humbly reminded him that being embedded in a supportive, trusted network can make all the difference — that he was still human and was allowed to lean on others for support.
For Pres, stewarding the process of building community to founding spaces remains as exciting as his earliest days. He describes the process as “more of an art than as a science.” It entails an intricate balance between building enough structure for entrepreneurs to feel stable and supported, while cultivating conditions for the flexibility needed to fuel innovative solutions and provide tailored support.
Asked what keeps him going, Pres recalls a conversation when a peer reminded him that, by the time Impact Hub Baltimore opened its doors, he had been talking about launching an innovation hub for more than five years. Unsurprisingly, this comment stuck with him.
“Building something that will provide meaningful support to grassroots projects doesn’t happen overnight. Ultimately, meaningful change comes with persistence and some trial and error and progress is often marked in years, not weeks or months.”
Having lived in Baltimore for a decade, and having witnessed multiple challenges and setbacks firsthand, Pres also saw a remarkable amount of progress and change for the better across the city. “[Witnessing this progress] reassured me that committing myself to longer term goals was worthwhile,” Pres says.
These days, the passing comment continues to keep Pres grounded, even as he lays down roots elsewhere, and is immersed in a new cycle of establishing a homebase for the Bronx’ social entrepreneurs.
Want to read more like this?
- If you enjoyed this story and want to learn more about Impact Hub Baltimore’s ongoing work, check out our Designed to be Connected Series written by Ryan Aghamohammadi.
- Curious about how our members are integrating lessons learned into their future visioning? Check out the VISION 2021 Series!
