Georgeanne Huff Labovitz
Chair of the Board of Trustees, Tacony Community Development Corporation, Philadelphia PA
Donna Ann Harris has been a consultant to the Tacony Community Development Corporation in Northeast Philadelphia since we began our commercial corridor work in 2009. In that time, she has helped our organization grow far beyond our expectations.
Most recently when our longstanding Executive Director left for a new position, she helped us organize a search for his replacement. Over four months, Donna helped guide our Search Committee of Trustees as they updated the job description, identified a salary range, and sorted through 65 resumes to find six highly qualified candidates for first interviews. Donna worked collaboratively with the committee to select questions for our first interviews, and further written questions of our candidates. She helped us hone our reference check questions. Upon Donna's advice, we asked our top three candidates to make brief presentations to the full TCDC board, about their vision of the future of our corridor Torresdale Avenue. We ended our search process with one lead candidate. Donna advised me on the negotiations on salary, benefits and start date with our top candidate, who took the job in Spring 2022.
We have turned to Donna several times in the past to help us plan for our future through two five-year Strategic Plans. Each of our two previous Strategic Plans have been highly ambitious, and we have managed to implement more than 95% of the tasks we have set for ourselves. We are about to begin a third Strategic Plan and have asked for Donna's help again, to propel our far more mature organization into more complex projects.
Donna has been our trusted advisor for more than a decade, and we highly recommend her to our colleagues in the downtown revitalization field.
Jo Ann Desper
Board President, Roxborough Development Corporation, Philadelphia PA
We have worked with Donna Ann Harris on several projects over the past few years and recently engaged her services to help us recruit a new Executive Director. She worked with us in 2021 to identify our needs and write a job description that resulted in finding several qualified candidates. She walked us through an extensive interview process and developed questions and topic discussions that focused on our needs. Donna's guidance and advice were crucial to selecting and hiring the right person. And we did so one month sooner than expected!
Kelsey Howard
Executive Director Main Street Siloam Springs Inc.
"Donna is a tenacious advocate for downtowns across the country. Thanks to her consultation services, we now have a 5-year plan that will help keep our organization accountable and focused on intentional strategic growth. Her experience in the Main Street network and years of interfacing with multiple communities at different stages of growth provided invaluable wisdom and confidence to guide our Main Street program forward. The thing I appreciated most about her consultation style was how she worked alongside us and guided us through the process; she allowed us the freedom to make final decisions and take ownership of the purpose and content of our strategic plan. The strategic plan was not a cookie-cutter document, but something organic that we built together that will give us an anchor as we evolve the next several years."