ABOUT CORINNA MOEBIUS

A Connector, visionary and Social Entrepreneur, Corinna has more than a decade of experience planning and developing strategies focused on achieving her three life goals:

1) to help places and communities become inclusive, just and sustainable;

2) to help restore respect and honor for tradition-bearers worldwide -- the elders and "Griots" with generations of cultural wisdom, and to help find means to re-connect them with our younger generation;

3) to build empathy, understanding and awareness of our inter-connectedness, particularly through "collective joy" -- celebratory times/places where people feel complete connection with others, regardless of differences.

She is an expert on civic engagement/public participation, asset-based community development, intercultural communication and Internet strategies, who has run Bordercross Communications since 1997. Her clients have included city planning and transportation agencies, grassroots non-profits, foundations, universities, community development corporations and both small and large businesses. Please see the Services section for more information about her experience as applied to the different specialty areas of Bordercross.

Formerly based in Washington, DC, Corinna developed the core public outreach and participation strategy for the revision of Washington, DC ’s Comprehensive Plan – the policies that will guide the city for the next 20 years. She managed outreach and partnerships with community organizations citywide. She also initiated the first-ever collaboration between the Office of Planning and Office on Latino Affairs, which led to the city’s first roundtable of local Hispanic leaders and outreach workers to discuss strategies for building Hispanic/Latino engagement in the Comprehensive Plan and future planning issues.

As a consultant, Corinna also planned, developed and helped manage an acclaimed youth civic engagement program (Youth Visions for Stronger Neighborhoods) that has had a significant impact on low-income neighborhoods nationwide. Through the program, youth in after-school programs find and document community assets and come up with strategies for transforming their neighborhood through civic action. As a volunteer, she has served as faculty for the National Building Museum's Design Apprenticeship (DAP) program and CityVisions program for inner city youth.

Corinna also has extensive experience with the Internet industry and "citizen journalism" -- dating back to 1996. She is the former director of interactive media for an international youth news organization (now called Children's PressLine), and co-produced the nation's first symposium on Internet opportunities for African-Americans (1997). She has long been an activist for bridging the digital divide.

She developed and taught the first-ever course on strategic Web site planning (and a course on Internet marketing) for Georgetown University's Center for Professional Development, and has also conducted trainings for the Women's Business Center, the Women's Information Network and the U.S. Department of Justice.

Prior to working for Imagine Miami, Corinna was the executive director of Viernes Culturales/Cultural Fridays, the much-loved monthly community arts festival in Little Havana. In Washington, DC, she also planned, directed and coordinated DC's largest and most popular street festival (Adams Morgan Day), a celebration of the city's most diverse neighborhood. (See photos of the festival). This free cultural street festival brought a diverse crowd of nearly 24,000 attendees to enjoy music, dance, art, crafts and food. The 2005 festival she directed was widely considered the most successful Adams Morgan Day in the last 12 to 15 years! Corinna is also a long-time advisor and board member of Miami's IFE-ILE Afro-Cuban Dance Festival.

Corinna has also initiated her own community arts projects. For instance, she produced concerts in local parks featuring Afro-Cuban folkloric music and dance and is a founding member and former singer/dancer with the DC area's first Afro-Cuban folkloric dance ensemble, AshéMoyubbá (currently Alafia Dance Company). She is a former board member of the Latin American Folk Institute. As a youth and young adult Corinna was a semi-professional and award-winning French horn player who attended the prestigious Tanglewood Institute of the Arts and performed on tour in Yugoslavia, Austria and Hungary.

Corinna is a regular presenter at conferences across the U.S., such as "Cultivating Creative Communities: Local Solutions for Global Success," the LISC Forum on revitalizing urban business districts, "Building Connected Communities" and "Neighborhoods USA." She is a recently appointed member of the Miami-Dade Sister Cities Coordinating Council, and is also a member of the newly formed Creative Industries committee of the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce. In DC, she worked with small businesses as the Chair of the Economic Diversification Committee for the Adams Morgan Main Street.

Education

Corinna earned her M.A. in Communication Studies, with Distinction, at California State University, Northridge. She focused the relationship between community, communication, place and identity, and her thesis described how people create, maintain and contest particular ideologies of community in their everyday verbal and non-verbal communication. It focused on a campus gathering place -- a safe haven -- popular among African-American students. Corinna earned the university's Spirit of Educational Equity Award in recognition for her scholarship.

While finishing her self-designed undergraduate degree in Communications and Anthropology (minor in Geography) at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Corinna was a researcher and cartographer for the Historical Atlas of Massachusetts.

Corinna is a graduate of the well-respected Summer Institute for Arts Management offered by the University of Massachusetts Extension in Amherst, and also the recipient of a Certificate in Visionary Leadership from the Washington, DC-based Center for Visionary Leadership.