Jill Miller gives keynote at Civic Leader Summit in Pensacola

In her keynote session, Jill guided attendees through strategies for addressing complex challenges facing communities—”wicked problems” like infant mortality, poverty, and health disparities. She shared the key ingredients to IGNITE community-level change, along with actionable tactics that civic leaders can put into practice:

• Innovation: You must be willing to take risks and try new ideas and approaches to solve old problems.
• Guide: Let the data guide your way.  Challenge assumptions, figure out what your most pressing problem really is by getting to root cause.
• Narrative Change: Make the problem everyone’s problem and appeal to hearts and minds.
• Influence: Find your champions who have influence and engage in advocacy.
• Trust: Learn how to build trust with community members so you can co-create solutions with those who are most affected by your wicked problem.
• Engage: Engage those most impacted by the problem to build movements and co-design solutions.  People know what they want and need.

Jill also provided a walkthrough of the framework that she and Cradle Cincinnati Executive Director Dr. Meredith C. Smith wrote about in Infant Mortality and Other Wicked Problems.

In total, more than 400 people attended the summit in Pensacola, Florida, to focus on creating vibrant, resilient, and thriving communities.