The ISD Academy: A Commitment to Our Communities

By Stephen Jordan, CEO, Institute for Sustainable Development (ISD), and David Dodd, CEO, International Sustainable Resilience Center (ISRC)

We have stared down America's breaking points—not from textbooks, but from the rubble. For Stephen, it was Superstorm Sandy causing trees to crash in the backyard leaving the family huddled with neighbors during a week-long blackout. Housing repairs took months. David is so committed he lost a leg working on the economic recovery of Puerto Rico after Irma and Maria.

The ISD Academy is our attempt to equip the leaders of today to build up and protect communities tomorrow. The Academy is based on everything we’ve learned, experienced, and thought about how to improve. We're committed because we've lived the fragility, and we refuse to see communities keep on repeating the same mistakes we've seen so often. With ISD's practitioner firepower and ISRC's global lens, we're doing what we can, but we can’t do it alone. Communities are not about individuals, they are about all of us.

What It Takes to Ignite This Fire—and Why We're Uniquely Ready

Launching the Academy demands more than vision; it requires people. Bricks and mortar? Secondary. With our partnership with StateBook, we hope to grow into a world-class data and research center. Right now, we need to share what our people know.

That's ISD's edge. Our people have seen the worst and the best and know what they are talking about. We mentor with scars, not just slides. Our faculty is made up of experts with real world experience: Lynn Knight, our economic recovery powerhouse, who’s plans have affected millions of people across the U.S.; LC Clemons, driving direct-action housing innovations to shorten the displacement of low and moderate income families; Steve Cauffman, whose insights on infrastructure and engineering predate 9/11; Jolie Wills, weaving mental health strategies into recovery so survivors don't just rebuild homes, but heal souls. Plus, because of our networks, we are able to bring in CEOs, high-ranking government officials, and renowned experts to guest lecture and take questions.

ISRC supercharges this with international firepower, importing wins from Singapore's seamless prosperity to the Netherlands' defiant dikes—strategies we've piloted stateside. Our shared commitment? Relentless innovation, taught through hands-on cohorts, like ISRC’s Dr. Alessandra Jeollerman, who guided the first forced relocation in the United States with the care and understanding of someone who survived Hurricane Katrina.

But we can't scale without you. Seed funding to institutionalize the Academy is critical and urgent. Warming oceans have led to an onslaught of some of the most violent storms in history, tech upheavals are clearly looming ahead like the headlights of an oncoming train, and polarization festers and threatens to divide communities deeply. Without this hub, we're improvising and repeating the mistakes of the past, while fundamental changes are happening all around us. We must build this platform now to move beyond improvising and reacting.

Why This Fight Is Yours—And Why It Can't Wait

You know what we are talking about if:

• You are afraid to go to certain neighborhoods or areas.

• You have gone to places that have never recovered even after years have passed since they were hit.

• You’ve probably lost track of the number of disaster relief efforts you’ve donated to.

• You are frustrated that amazing cities seem to have given up on some of their residents, and that so many young people have given up on their hometowns.

At ISD and ISRC we share your concerns. We keep seeing the same mistakes, the same tragedies happen over and over again, and we’ve seen too many communities lack the capacity and support to rebuild, when they should never have been destroyed in the first place. We cannot keep doing what we’ve been doing. That’s why so many senior experts and practitioners have agreed to share their knowledge with us. We all see it, but it’s a hard sell, because we’re asking people to think and do things differently. Dealing with entrenched interests and ways of thinking is very difficult, but we can't change the path we are on if we don't try.

Join Us—Your Action Today Changes Tomorrow

If you share our concerns, let’s band together. Donate now—$50 seeds a lesson, $500 funds an expert mission trip to a vulnerable community, $5K buys a workshop. Spread the word: Spot successes in your community (tag us—our partner StateBook's econ tools thrive on real data); amplify our calls for resilient policy (share this post, rally your network); advocate locally—push councils to learn about innovative housing fixes or mental health integrations. Help spread ISRC’s capability to benchmark global best practices in enabling, and financing, more resilient infrastructure, and other things that could help Americans here at home. Sign up as a movement ally: volunteer insights, host a virtual session, or connect us to funders.

We're committed; all we ask is to share our vision. Our community problems are not inevitable, let’s fix them by sharing what works and developing new solutions. The Academy is our spark. On this Giving Tuesday, will you fan the flame?

To give or get involved, visit www.isdus.org. Time's ticking—let's rebuild before the next break.