And indeed, Rickell pays close attention to how systems interlock. Dramatis Personae:Ī boss once told Rickell Howard Smith that she thinks like an architect. In their voices, we can hear their frustrations but also their hopes for what Cincinnati and Hamilton County can yet become. These four leaders form a kind of Greek chorus.

The transplant who committed himself and never left the hometown girl who saw the wider world only to return with her talents as an adult.įor this article, I spoke to Mike, Rickell, and two other local nonprofit leaders to understand what drew them to their work and how, obstacles and all, they try to implement their theory of change. Mike and Rickell, singular though they are, represent familiar types in the Cincinnati story. A fifth-generation Cincinnatian who went east for college and law school, Rickell felt called back to her hometown.

Mike Moroski, an outsider himself twenty-five years ago, says he fell in love with the city because he “could wrap his arms around it and maybe do some good.”Īlthough similar to Mike in her commitment to the civic good, Rickell Howard Smith’s Queen City roots run deep. Since moving to Cincinnati four years ago, I’ve engaged in the transplant’s favorite parlor game of trying to make sense of the place.

All for strings theory