Katrina Adams pours all of herself into the community she serves as a philanthropic program officer, entrepreneur and nonprofit executive
Her POC Collaborative project at the former Calvin Memorial Presbyterian Church site at 24th and Wirt is much anticipated.
by Leo Adam Biga
Katrina Adams is founder of POC Collaborative, a nonprofit dedicated to providing access to resources that support and elevate voices in North Omaha. Photo Credit: Lasha Goodwin
A North Omaha renaissance is underway and bound up in it are people like Katrina Adams: committed to making a difference. The Omaha native describes herself as a “community advocate with a vision and a plan.” While most of her advocacy comes as a Community Investment program manager with the Omaha Community Foundation and founding board member for the House of Afros, Capes & Curls, she’s added a new point of entry via her nonprofit, POC Collaborative.
Though she prefers staying out of the limelight, Adams made the news last year when it was reported that an unnamed investor helped her purchase the former Calvin Memorial Presbyterian Church at 24th and Wirt for $90,000. She plans to convert the 20,000 square foot historic landmark into the POC Collaborative Resource Center, where an array of services and programs will be offered.
The community center project, for which she’s seeking funds to cover the $2.1 million needed for repairs and renovation, encompasses her vision for North O revitalization and transformation. “We’re a point of connection for Black, indigenous and people of color to leverage the power of community, protect our historic neighborhood, organize our common goals and create the community of our dreams,” Adams said repeating “the four cornerstones” of her organization’s work.
Like others, she long eyed the potential of the facility, last occupied by the Church of Jesus Christ Whole Truth, for serving a community hungry for more activated spaces. Her vision is to make its offices, classrooms and chapel a hub for technology and entrepreneurship, training and community discussions. Its commercial kitchen can incubate emerging food businesses.
“It was such a cornerstone of community and that’s something I really want to preserve, amplify and restore,” she said. “I want to create a space where people can come as they are and know that they’re worthy regardless of where they’ve been and in complement to their experience.”
Championing North O comes naturally to Adams.
“I want to create a space where people can come as they are and know that they’re worthy regardless of where they’ve been and in complement to their experience.”
- Katrina Adams
Photo Credit: Lasha Goodwin
“You pour back into the community that brought you up,” she said. “The adage ‘it takes a village’ really resonates with me. I don’t think any one of us can do the things we’re meant to do on our own. It’s about creating the social uplift needed for all of us to achieve.”
Adams was an Omaha Central High School honors student when an out-of-character physical altercation jeopardized her academic future. She felt the sting of being branded a trouble-maker and having people give up on her. Then, with help from mentors, she “started over” and bloomed.
“The beauty that emerged from that experience was a more resilient network of support – people that saw my potential and encouraged me to lean into it,” she recalled. “That was the seed that set me on my current path.”
She earned a business leadership degree from the College of Saint Mary while working for InfoGroup/YesMail. Then she got transferred to Atlanta, and she says living in America’s epicenter of Blackness changed her perspective.
“That was really inspiring for me because it opened my eyes to what’s possible, what it could be like in Omaha if only... And what the ellipsis means is really up for interpretation for the community of Omaha because it’s gotta be unique to this place – just like Atlanta is unique to its geographical location and cultural stew.”
She brought back a Black-centric sense of individualism and collectivism she feels Omaha could do more to embrace.
“Something I saw in Atlanta is this idea and encouragement to be present how you are and to bring what your skills and talents are to everything you do,” she said. “It’s something people are striving to do here. There just needs to be a system of support for people to be exactly who they are and to connect with other like-minded folks to elevate the activities and the vision they see for their community.”
Talent and treasure leaving Omaha for more progressive pastures is an old story, and Adams flirted with being an ex-pat, too.
“Every time I tried to leave I found myself coming back. It wasn’t until I got a bit older I realized the reason I keep coming back is that this is home and it always will be home. It’s a comfort zone. There’s a sense of familiarity and respect that I owe to my community to stay and pour back into it what I feel was poured into me.”
“There’s a sense of familiarity and respect that I owe to my community to stay and pour back into it what I feel was poured into me.”
- Katrina Adams
Photo Credit: Lasha Goodwin
Upon returning to her hometown for good, she worked as a Union Pacific Railroad train dispatcher. In 2016, she joined the Omaha Community Foundation. She’s since earned a certificate in Emerging Nonprofit Leadership from the University of Nebraska at Omaha, where she’s working toward a master’s in public administration-nonprofit management.
A seminal moment she witnessed, Barack Obama’s 2009 inauguration as the nation’s first Black president, marked a turning point for her. She traveled to the nation’s capitol for that historic event with a group of Omaha residents on a UNO Department of Black Studies bus trip.
“That trip was my first real experience leaning into my own voice,” she said, “It’s something I haven’t looked back from – learning how to use my voice, being proud of the voice I have and the power it has if used wisely.”
Further anchoring her to making a difference here is her “close-knit family.” “My mom has been the bedrock for our family. She’s been a social worker with the State of Nebraska for years. My older sister is a school psychologist for the Omaha Public Schools district,” said Adams.
“There’s something in our blood about giving back, being connected to other people, and providing for other people,” she said, “whether that be access to services or connecting to resources, that’s just what our family does.”
In addition to relatives, she said other amazing Black women have positively impacted her life.
Some of those women serve on the POC board, including Ashley Kuhn, president of Blair Freeman Group, a construction-development firm that will transform the church into a community center.
Ashely Kuhn is president of Blair Freeman Group.
“Katrina has a vision that is inspiring,” Kuhn said. “I love that the end result will be a space that will address so many areas of need in our community under one roof, which organically will spark unseen collaboration.”
Another ally of Adams is Tahnee Markussen, program officer with the Lozier Foundation, which helped fund sealing the roof of the former church to prevent further damage over the winter. She is a big believer in Adams and her project.
Markussen said she’s encouraged that people like Katrina who are sincere, smart, and capable are getting opportunities, “I hope they are supported throughout the community for their endeavors.”
Like the professional women she intersects with, Adams is strategic. She calls herself a “process thinker,” driven by understanding the “why.”
In addition to her Omaha Community Foundation and POC Collaborative work, she has her own consulting agency.
Much of her focus is on enhancing her community’s quality of life by “providing access to things we deserve to have, should have, and need to have in order to reclaim the vision of North Omaha and bring it back to prominence.” Assessing the landscape, she said, “got me thinking about what resources do we need so that we can keep our money in our community.” It’s all part of a larger effort to grow community-based capital within Northeast Omaha.
Her vision aligns with current best practice approaches.
“There’s some shifting thought on how we revitalize communities and one way we do that is focusing on community wealth, which is a broad-based effort to grow incumbent assets of neighborhood residents to grow the collective assets of neighborhoods. There’s also a need to infuse communities with private equity-capital to give the synergy that’s needed to grow a neighborhood and to bring back small businesses and cultural spaces.”
Letting community residents determine what development happens is vital, she said, “so that our community reflects what we want it to be, not necessarily what someone else tells us it needs to be.”
She believes the community has what it takes to rebirth so long as its players work collaboratively together.
“If we’re able to bring in the resources we need, we have the people, we have the energy, we have the power to create what we need to. But so many times people operate in silos and not by choice – just by circumstance. We have a way to break those silos down, come together, and move forward collectively, then even if each of us is doing something differently, if we have the same goal, we have more impact.”
Where there are gaps, she sees opportunities. Closure of the Omaha Small Business Network at 24th and Lake “was definitely a blow to our community,” she said, “but what we want to do at POC Collaborative is offer small business and entrepreneur training from the ground up – from vision to scaling. We want to provide training classes in partnership with other organizations at our culturally aware space. It’s about giving residents access to these resources.”
Christina Long is founder of CML Collective, a nonprofit dedicated to strengthens marketing strategies for brands that recognize inclusion as a business necessity.
Fellow community-builder and entrepreneur Christina Long, founder of the CML Collective in Wichita, Kansas and author of For the Greater Success, is impressed by what Adams is doing.
“Katrina is a dynamic and thoughtful visionary who is planning to advance Omaha's entrepreneurship community through intentional and inclusive programming. To watch her carefully craft her vision so she's able to execute in excellence is, not only a joy, it's an honor. Inclusive entrepreneurship work is difficult. It requires working methodically and quietly … to create systems, processes and practices that do not currently exist or, if they do, are underperforming. I commend her for the work she's undertaking and applaud her efforts because they will come together to make a tangible and visible impact in Omaha and beyond.”
No More Empty Pots CEO Nancy Williams of Omaha echoes Long:
Nancy Williams is CEO of the nonprofit No More Empty Pots, a nonprofit dedicated to connecting individuals to improve food security and economic resilience of communities through advocacy.
“Katrina Adams is a committed community advocate. She has a big vision for renovating this historic structure on North 24th Street. She has made a huge first step in securing the property and is now building the infrastructure to help support the work that lies ahead. Katrina is dedicated to engaging neighbors in this process of rejuvenation. We are fortunate to have her eagerness to showcase and build good things for the benefit of all of us and our kids.”
POC will remain ready to pivot as conditions change.
“The beauty of a project like this,” Adams said, “is that it will evolve with the needs of the community.”
She decries the notion North O doesn’t need another Connect Lab or Culxr House when the need for tech and convening space is so great. “There is a narrow perspective often of what’s needed for our community to thrive,” she said, “One of everything still isn’t enough because one of one everything can’t provide for the needs of an entire quadrant of our city.”
Realizing North O projects, including her own, relies on a mix of investment from both within that community and outside it. As a foundation professional, she has no qualms about outside investment as long as it’s sensitive to community needs.
“I think how it’s done, that is of great import. I’m not going to discount the work philanthropic organizations or individuals have set out to do because I think the intent is good. But it’s understanding the impact can sometimes vary from that intent,”
Click the image for more information on the grants listed. Photo Credit: Lasha Goodwin
“In those programs,” she said, “we have people from those distinct communities serve as volunteer panelists that read the applications and make the decisions on funding.”
Big bucks get distributed.
“The African American Unity Fund and Future Latino Fund were created in 2008 and 2009, respectively, and since then AAUF has distributed almost $2 million and FLF has distributed $1.4 million.”
Dispersing these community interest funds is more democratic than one might think, she said. “It’s a really interesting and dynamic process because you’ve got people who may have not ever had any interaction with grant-making or philanthropy coming in and informing the process – deciding what characteristics are most important of a project and then having the autonomy to act on that.”
Applications for the grants are open annually from January 1 through March 1.
Adams would like to see more organizations take advantage of the opportunity,
“There is so much room for these grant programs to grow,” she said. “In 2020 we had 42 applicants for the AAUF – that is a small fraction of the organizations led by or serving the African American community in Omaha. So there’s definitely a lot more work we can do, but I can’t do it alone. I need the support of folks in the community, including past grant recipients, to spread the word about the impact these dollars make.”
“The more fundable applications we can get, the more I can request to grow them and thereby infuse more dollars into the community. If we can get the numbers up then we can make the case for more support, and I definitely want to do that. There are organizations out there struggling and even if we can’t provide a grant we have other resources, including training, that might help them be better prepared to seek funding.”
She wants it known “there are opportunities for people who have great ideas and there are ways to get funding for those ideas.”
Among other things, POC Collaborative will be a safe, nurturing space for ideas to be shared and blossomed.
It may be a while yet before her organization can do in-person programming at the former church. A campaign to fund the building’s reuse is on hold while the pandemic rages on.
“We’ve been in conversations with different philanthropic organizations and other support agencies but right now due to COVID capital campaigns are just not a top priority. Eventually, we’ll be on the other end of COVID and we will need to be with each other physically convening in spaces. But for now, we’re focusing on developing digital virtual programs.”
Her nonprofit will leverage “mutually beneficial” partnerships. Two natural partners are as near as Heart Ministry Center next door and Culxr house across the street.
“I love meeting with people to get together and say, ‘Hey, what should we do together in our little corner of the world? How can I support what you’re doing, how can you support what I’m doing? And how do we make sure we’re using the resources we have access to have the greatest impact.”
Katrina’s mission is to connect communities through collaboration. Photo Credit: Lasha Goodwin
Revitalization in North O is evident at the Metropolitan Community College Fort Omaha campus, Highlander Village, Union for Contemporary Art and Fair Deal Village Marketplace. More is coming in North 30th Street transformations, 24th Street Business Improvement District improvements and updates to the historic Goodwin’s Spencer Street Barbershop and Carnation Ballroom.
Adams is bullish on the community’s future.
“I’m hopelessly optimistic about it. I think believing with heart, mind, body, and soul is the kind of commitment required to make happen what needs to happen, That, plus hard work and luck.”
Keeping a low profile remains her MO.
“I like to be behind the scenes and understand how things work, and if I can make things work the way they’re intended or better. I do feel like that’s the space I want to continue to operate in – behind the scenes bringing things to fruition.”
Her efforts continue amid the COVID-19 crisis and social unrest. Asked how she’s coping, she answered, “Honestly I can’t say I am coping because when you cope you’re acknowledging everything – and right now I don’t have the capacity to fully let myself hurt and process all the things going on. Yes, I’m aware of them. I’m aware of the heartbreak in the Black community. But I was aware of that before. It’s more evident now and it’s still so tragic. But I’m doing the best I can to keep my eye on the prize and to keep moving forward in supporting the movements happening and the people risking their lives every day to make life for the rest of us possible.”
Taking care of herself is a work in progress.
“My mom’s the caretaker of our family and something I’ve learned from her is putting other people first, and so I am not great at self-care. But it is extremely important to step back, to take a breath, to take whatever time is necessary so you can keep fighting the fight. Admittedly, I am not great at taking that advice.”
Her sisterhood encourages her to make time for herself.
“It’s good to have people like that because they remind you when you forget, like, ‘Hey, you need to take care of yourself. You deserve just as much kindness and patience and grace as the next person, and you may not get it from anybody but yourself.’”
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