Meet Jill Arrington, new Executive Director of Groundwork Atlanta!

Jill Arrington comes to Groundwork Atlanta with over 20 years of nonprofit leadership experience; she has spent most of her career working in community and economic development, with a focus on adaptive re-use, asset management of real estate, affordable housing, infant and teen health care, youth education and mentoring, and community activism and engagement.  In addition to her degrees in law and history, Jill also has a B.A. in Music and experience in the cultural arts and entertainment arenas of choral societies, symphonies, and rural arts. In her time as an Atlantan, Ms. Arrington has seen Atlanta grow and morph from a large sleepy southern city to a bustling international city, filled with many opportunities and challenges for communities working to strike a balance with their history, as well as the needs of residents and desires to continue to grow and prosper.

Jill is "Thrilled to work closely in the arena of clean air and water, Brownfields, urban gardening and food scarcity, and youth development". Ms. Arrington believes there are a few key factors that can make or break a society. She said, "History has shown that when resources are threatened, particularly natural resources, society is stressed... The best way to address a problem is by finding and addressing the underlying cause of the issue. If resources are threatened, it takes a holistic approach to address it." With regard to Groundwork Atlanta's efforts to improve livability and economic opportunity through initiatives that address various threats to community and natural resources, Jill looks forward to "bringing stakeholders together to re-imagine a holistic approach to how resources are used to benefit everyone".

As the Executive Director of Groundwork Atlanta, Jill works to build community collaboration to produce concrete future-forward results. She stresses a holistic approach to community development, which brings all parties to the table to find consensus and collaboration opportunities. Using her legal background and training, reinforced with her work in corporate America, Ms. Arrington uses active listening and communication as key strategies to garner and sustain trust, and to move initiatives forward. As a student of Servant Leadership, Jill emphasizes trust, integrity, and accountability as key principles in her approach to this work.