The Power of Place
Investment, Innovation, and Impact
Where businesses invest, hire, and build partnerships can have a lasting impact on the communities around them. How can companies deliver economic growth in partnership while ensuring that local communities help shape the future and share in the benefits?
The Baumhart Center for Social Enterprise and Responsibility explores this question in a recent article and a Crain's Chicago Business opinion piece, both co-authored with EY, Just Act Partners, the Corporate Coalition of Chicago and Social Responsibility Chicago. These articles share place-based investment models currently happening throughout Chicago neighborhoods that saw far less investment than their population and economic potential warranted.
The Baumhart Center brought these ideas to life at a recent event in partnership with Social Responsibility Chicago, which spotlighted Xchange Chicago—one of the models connecting business priorities with local talent, strengthening neighborhoods, and creating lasting economic opportunity.
Moderated by Tovah McCord, Executive Director of Nicor Illinois Community Investment and Chair of Social Responsibility Chicago, the panel conversation featured Brad Henderson, CEO at P33 Chicago; Greg Mooney, President at Comer Science and Education Foundation; Hardik Bhatt, CEO at SDI Presence; and Shana Hayes, Senior VP, Chief Social Impact Officer at Northern Trust.
Building a Business Case for Place-Based Investment
Xchange Chicago is an initiative in Greater Grand Crossing bringing together businesses, community organizations, philanthropy, and other civic partners to expand tech and IT career opportunities in the south side neighborhood.
Mooney kicked off the panel by telling the story from the beginning. This project grew out of conversations during the COVID-19 pandemic, when businesses and civic leaders began exploring how successful corporate investments in local communities could inform a broader, more collaborative model. At this time, Discover established an operational presence in Chatham that demonstrated how a company's location and hiring strategy could support local economic development while also serving its business needs.
As Bhatt shared, Chicago businesses collectively spend millions on technology each year. Even redirecting a small portion of that spending toward hyperlocal projects could create meaningful opportunities for residents.
Xchange Chicago builds on Discover's approach by connecting corporate demand for tech and IT talent with training and career pathways for neighborhood residents. Residents are trained for these roles and then placed directly into part-time or full-time apprenticeship with SDI Presence after completing the program.
How Everyone Plays a Role in this Partnership
Each of the partners on this panel played a pivotal role in this model, demonstrating how individual sectors could work together on a shared, place-based goal.
Through Xchange Chicago, participating companies can access untapped talent while also helping residents enter and advance in tech and IT careers.
P33 identifies business needs and develops projects with corporate partners, serving as a front-end management consultant to the IT delivery project in partnership with SDI Presence.
Comer Science and Education Foundation focuses on relationship building within the community and the technical training residents go through. They work on sourcing candidates from the local community and building trust between the community members and the initiative.
SDI Presence supports employment pathways for the cohort members. Once they finish their training, SDI Presence hires them—first, on a project; then, full-time with a competitive salary and benefits.
Northern Trust contributes to the community relationship building, resources, and partnerships that help make this model possible.
The result is an approach that connects business needs with community investment, creating opportunities for companies to meet their goals while expanding access to well-paying careers. But none of this could be done without trust.
Building Trust Through Shared Investment
"'Trust me' doesn't work in business," said Bhatt. "It starts with some work and a real business case. Then, we earn the trust."
Building on the panelists' prior relationships and similar ethical beliefs, coming together to work on Xchange Chicago was a ripe business opportunity for all companies to get involved. Henderson shared that this year will be $6.1 trillion invested in technology in the world, and unless intentional action is taken, "it's just going to happen where it happens."
Doing something like this as a team gets complicated; each partner has their own stakeholders that are asking different questions with specific incentives in each moment. "The trust question is extremely important because figuring out these risks requires deep personal commitments to all parties involved," Henderson said.
Collective mission and hope for impact doesn't hurt. "We are focused on the mission all the way through. We want to be better together," said Hayes.
Measuring Impact Beyond the Numbers
The panelists also considered how to evaluate the success of place-based investment.
Traditional measures, including the number of people trained, apprentices placed, wages earned, and homes purchased, provide important evidence of progress. Yet the conversation highlighted the need to look beyond immediate outputs.
For residents, success can mean building a lasting career, gaining financial stability, and developing the confidence to mentor others that go through the program. For neighborhoods, it can mean increased foot traffic, greater economic activity, and pride that companies are choosing their neighborhood to set up anchor.
Hayes emphasized the value of staying close to the people who benefit from the work. Data can reveal important trends, but direct engagement with community members is more impactful; it helps partners understand how investment is experienced at the ground level.
Together, these perspectives point to a broader understanding of impact: one that considers business performance, individual advancement, and neighborhood-level change.
An Opportunity to Build Together
Xchange Chicago offers an example of what can happen when businesses, community organizations, philanthropy, and other civic partners align around a shared opportunity. Its approach connects corporate demand for tech and IT services with local talent, while building partnerships designed to support both business performance and community prosperity.
As Chicago continues to navigate questions of economic growth and equitable opportunity, place-based investment offers a practical framework for bringing business and community priorities together.