Interview with Amber Woodruff, Director of Strategy & Research at the Greater Baltimore Committee
The Greater Baltimore Committee (GBC) is a private-sector initiative working to shape our region’s reputation, economy, and quality of life. Its 300 members are a Who’s Who of Baltimore-area businesses and institutions. Amber Woodruff leads several cross-sector initiatives at GBC, including its recently formed Public Safety Committee. YRSH spoke with Amber about her work at GBC and its relevance for young people living in and around Baltimore.
Why was GBC’s blended public safety committee formed?
Amber Woodruff: When you think about economic opportunity and a thriving economy, safe communities are a key part of that. Over the last couple of years, we had a gun violence reduction committee and a police recruitment and retention committee, and we decided at the end of last year to move to a broader public safety umbrella to think more holistically about how businesses and how people interact with their surrounding neighborhoods.
Who is on the committee?
Amber Woodruff: We have a number of committees across the organization. On this specific committee we have about 55 different partners—private sector partners, higher education representatives, as well as our community partners and nonprofit organizations. We host convenings to help our general partners better understand the landscape of public safety, but also to hear from them. What challenges are they having with their businesses? What makes their employees feel safe? What makes them feel safe if they’re residents?
I imagine GBC is a very big tent. How do you manage the different perspectives among your members?
Amber Woodruff: It is a strength to be able to bring people with different perspectives together. Understanding different viewpoints helps us to navigate solutions that we could put forth. When you have a number of different voices who all are working towards a common goal, the barriers may surface early. So we don’t get too far down any one road because we are in a siloed room.
Gun crime is down across the nation, but there seems to be a lingering narrative about kids—not just here, but everywhere. What’s the perception of youth crime among your members?
Amber Woodruff: That’s a good question. Research shows that people’s feelings about safety often lag behind the numbers, and I would say that we’re no different as a city. But there’s an opportunity within that for education. We try to support that education by having conversations with folks that are actually leading the work. And so GBC globally hosted a conversation with the incoming secretary at the Department of Juvenile Services. You can hear one thing and see some other things, even in your own neighborhood. But let’s talk directly to the folks who are making decisions. What are their priorities and understanding?
That is helpful information to think holistically about where the business community can lean in as a supporting factor.
Can you give an example of how this works?
Amber Woodruff: Sometimes we are the lead on different things across our organization’s agenda. Sometimes we’re partners, sometimes we’re supporters, and that will look differently based on the issue. In the example I want to highlight we were working with the Police Recruitment and Retention Committee and the Baltimore Police Department as they were undergoing significant revamps of their recruitment strategy.
They were analyzing some of the policies and thinking what are some of the bottlenecks to recruitment and one of the things that came up was that there were barriers to young folks getting drivers licenses. We had a partner that was willing to support a pilot say, “If this barrier is removed, are we able to place more cadets in training?” So having different perspectives and voices at the table can highlight a challenge, but then also illuminate some potential solutions.
Baltimore’s reputation is still shaped by David Simon and The Wire. What public safety perception does GBC want the world to have about Baltimore, the Baltimore region, and the young people who live here?
Amber Woodruff: The Baltimore that we see is a thriving one. It’s a city of innovators and entrepreneurs, artists, researchers—very talented, resilient young people who are living and working in our communities every day. I also think that it is a city of opportunity and possibility. That’s the story that we believe and are working to build our regional brand around.
You guys are leaders of the business community. But you’re also leaders within the Baltimore region. Is there any ambition to become more active publicly, beyond GBC?
Amber Woodruff: I can’t speak to the role of the whole organization. I will speak to just the benefit and importance of clearly focusing on what we do well, which is working to create the conditions for a healthy and thriving regional economy, which includes finding ways to understand and partner so that our communities are safe. You cannot have a thriving economy if people don’t feel safe going downtown, if people don’t feel safe putting their business on a main street, or workers don’t want to take the late shift.
Well, one thing we know about young people is they want jobs if they can get them. Are GBS and its members supporting that kind of effort?
Amber Woodruff: That is work that I’m leading under our local talent initiative BLocal. There are two areas that are specific to this conversation. One is increasing employer opportunities around work-based learning experiences. The other area is thinking about local talent retention. We have a number of strong institutions here, how are we keeping that talent in Baltimore? But then, also—and this came out through a series of conversations and talking with our partners—there was a strong push to think about the kids who were born and raised in Baltimore and go to college elsewhere and want to come back home. What are the opportunities for them? And so we’ve brought in that local talent retention piece to not only include folks who come here for college but also our homegrown talent base. What are the opportunities, incentives, connections that we could be making there?
Where would the general public learn about these initiatives?
Amber Woodruff: This is a relatively new body of work for us. Our role in the workforce ecosystem is really to amplify, connect, convene and advocate for any policies or funding that either remove barriers or support pathways to work.
The general public could sign up for our newsletters. There are a number of different ones on our website. This one will be, I think the title is, BLocal Hiring and Procurement newsletter.
The business community loves innovation when it’s caused by the free market. But they’re not always so keen about innovation—what we call reform—in youth justice, even when research and best practices show newer ways can produce better outcomes. How do you get the business community to say, “Hey, that might actually work. Let me be open to that idea.”
Amber Woodruff: Our members represent a number of different perspectives, and our role isn’t necessarily to suggest any particular viewpoint.
We believe as an organization that the decline in gun violence is a result of a coordinated collaborative effort among many entities—including the mayor’s plan and group violence reduction, including the frontline community violence specialists that do this work day in and day out, including the work from the state’s attorney’s office and the police department. All of the different factors have contributed to where we are today.
Does GBC have any activities that are specifically youth focused?
Amber Woodruff: There are not presently any that are specifically youth focused.
One of the things that we presented to the committee was just knowing that the youth justice system, both in how the data is collected and reported, looks very different and is reported on a different cadence than other types of data.
We are wanting to have a conversation with the committee about what it is that they want to know and better understand about youth data and then internally going back and making sure that we can bring folks who can speak to that knowledgeably back to the group or the larger general membership. Because justice-involved youth is something that comes up when we have conversations about public safety, and we want to ensure that we’re having conversations with the data in front of us. Not any conjectures or feelings or thoughts, but what is the data? There’s an acknowledgement that sometimes data for that particular population can be a little hard to ascertain.
Learn more about GBC and its initiatives by subscribing to their newsletters.