Emerson Collective’s History in East Palo Alto
About Emerson Collective
Emerson Collective is a locally-based organization that has been an active partner in East Palo Alto through its work with CollegeTrack, which was founded in 1997 by Emerson Collective Founder and President Laurene Powell Jobs. Since that time, Emerson Collective has contributed to community building in EPA through its support of organizations that provide opportunity and build capacity.
Emerson Collective is a social impact organization, not a commercial developer. We believe deeply in the past, present and future of East Palo Alto, and will work to sustain this thriving community for years to come.
Our story
1997
Emerson Collective and its members have been working in East Palo Alto since 1997 — including an active partnership with College Track, a comprehensive college-completion program that helps students facing systematic barriers to pursue lives of opportunity, choice, and power.
2013
We realized that College Track graduates found minimal job prospects and a limited path to home ownership, even after receiving college degrees and returning to East Palo Alto.
Emerson Collective approached the City of East Palo Alto to see if anything was being done to address the situation. It explained that the Ravenswood Specific Plan had been designed for this exact purpose: to provide housing, employment opportunities, and parks. However, fractured ownership had led to challenges in implementing it successfully.
2014
Emerson Collective secured land within the Ravenswood Business District, intending to unify ownership and to use the land to support the community in advancing the future vision of a thriving East Palo Alto.
2018
Our first project, the Center for Economic Mobility, arose from an understanding of the need for workforce development in East Palo Alto. The possible loss of JobTrain’s location (a community fixture) had become an urgent issue, given that 26% of its clients are from East Palo Alto. We began partnering with JobTrain to design a new, long-term home.
2019
In order to ensure our ongoing engagement and connection with the East Palo Alto community, we opened Bloomhouse in November, 2019, as a center for this work, and as a space for East Palo Alto residents to use for community events.
We started the process to create a master plan for the development of the East Palo Alto Waterfront in partnership with the East Palo Alto community, the Peninsula Conflict Resolution Center, Bjarke Ingels Group, and James Corner Field Operations.
Our commitment to community collaboration
Since December 2019, we have hosted over one-hundred community meetings to listen to and engage with residents. We are intentionally hosting meetings of various sizes so that we can collaborate with community members, city leaders and other stakeholders.