Meet Dr. Jamee Rodgers of Urban Neighborhood Initiative

Today we’d like to introduce you to Dr. Jamee Rodgers

Hi Dr. Jamee, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
Being the product of a pastor father and an educator mother, you could say that service to people is in my blood. I was raised in a home where people came first. As a student who knew what it felt like to have great teachers who invested in you and what it felt like to be ignored, I learned at an early age that no student should ever feel that way. As I matriculated through school, I always found time between sports and academics to volunteer and serve others. After graduating, I began my career in banking and finance, where I found great success. But it was there that I realized that you could make a great living and never make an impact. After deep diving into what made me happy and discovering my purpose, I decided to leave the comforts of my corporate job and pursue my purpose of helping others. I taught for a few years while working on my master’s degree. After completing my studies, I transitioned into the nonprofit sector, where I had the privilege to serve 13 communities in Dallas. Fast forward to 2021, I have completed my PhD and successfully navigated the newfound world of covid. I began reevaluating how and where to leverage my unique experiences and education to serve others best. At that time, I received an email from a recruiter asking if I would be interested in discussing a position in Kansas City. After several phone calls, zoom interviews, and two in-person interviews, I packed up and moved to Kansas City.
Moving to a city where I didn’t know anyone was exciting and daunting. Sure, I had met some people who lived here through networks and conferences, but the life I had known and my family were back in Texas. This was the best decision I could have ever made. Since moving to Kansas City, I have found new, exciting, and challenging ways to make both impact and change. Serving as the CEO of The Urban Neighborhood Initiative, I have the pleasure of living each day as if it were on purpose. Our mission is to build communities with purpose on purpose where every individual is engaged, encouraged, elevated, and educated through quality housing and impactful programs. I get to serve with a fantastic board and team of genuinely wonderful people who get it! Whether it’s a day on a construction site as we fulfill our mission to continue building quality, affordable, and attainable homes or at one of the five community schools we serve tutoring a student, I get to be a blessing while being blessed. Let’s be honest; most of us work for a paycheck… I get to clock in every day for my purpose. Getting a paycheck is a bonus. Working in communities that for far too long have been overlooked and underserved allows me to leverage every opportunity to share with others all of the riches the east side of Kansa City has to offer while investing my time, talents, and treasures in the same communities. They are some of the most dynamic, dedicated, resilient, and kindest people you will ever meet. There are many great places to eat and so many places to discover rich history, arts, and culture. I’m both forever humbled and grateful for the many blessings Kansas City has afforded me, and I look forward to continuing to serve for years to come.

We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Life has been beautifully challenging. I have learned many valuable lessons from the challenges I have faced head-on. Some of the most significant barriers I faced were learning about a city, its history, and its rich culture while navigating the unknown terrain of leading an organization and continuing the legacy of a prominent and impactful leader who still lived in the city. The one word that stuck out the most was grace. I had to remind myself to extend grace to myself as I tackled so many new challenges. Even though I like to think that I can at times, I have to remind myself that I can’t do everything, and I can’t be all things to all people. I live my life aligning with the principle of doing the most amount of good for the most amount of people most of the time.

We’ve been impressed with Urban Neighborhood Initiative, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
UNI is a community development corporation. We build, rehab, and invest in affordable real estate spaces on the east side of Kansas City. We have two sides of our business: the hard and the soft. The hard is the bricks and sticks, which is the real estate development work that we do. The soft side is community engagement and youth services. We are on a mission to add 500+ new doors to the Urban Core of Kansas City. We serve five community schools with before, in-school, after-school, and summer programs. It’s where we serve 16,000 students and their families. We have programs tailored to each student’s learning style and diligently work to provide meaningful, impactful, and relevant education experiences. We teach from a STEAM-e2 curriculum model, which we developed. This stands for Science, Technology, Arts, and Math as standard, but we added Equity and Entrepreneurship to our programs, making our program unique to us. We also have a one of its kind M-Lab, which stands for the Mobile Leadership & Arts Building, which is a 40-foot engineered trailer that comes equipped with 3- 75 inch tv’s, 9-40 inch TVs, 2-55 inch TVs, X-Box gaming systems for each station, and a full suite of core curriculum lessons that can be taught on location. The M-Lab is designed to be a mobile classroom that can be brought to any location; it also has been engineered to be an expanded classroom/ sound stage where the entire side folds down, creating a 12×20 platform that can be a multi-use space. It also comes equipped with bounce houses, games, snow cones, and popcorn machines to round off the experience of our communities. We heard from the communities that access to transportation was a barrier, so we decided to eliminate that and bring the classroom/ health clinic/ party to them. I’m most proud of how innovative our team is in approaching systemic issues that plague our communities.

Any big plans?
We are excited about the redevelopment of an old school site into a mixed-use community center that will include community meeting spaces, a performance arts theater, event spaces, a health clinic, youth enrichment spaces, housing, a culinary arts program with a café, outdoor greenspaces and plenty of arts and culture. This will be a must-see for residents on the East Side and beyond. We are also working on several development projects that will add housing options for those who want to live the American dream of home ownership and those who desire a nice and affordable place to rent.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.uni-kc.org
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/urban_neighborhood_initiative?utm_source=ig_web_button_share_sheet&igsh=ZDNlZDc0MzIxNw==
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/UrbanNeighborhoodInitiativeKC
• Twitter: https://x.com/UNI_KansasCity