This is a part of a series of blog posts amplifying community voices.

Kristin Leiber is Executive Director of Lloyd Eco District, a nonprofit that aims to make Portland’s Lloyd neighborhood the most sustainable community in North America by championing equity, resilience and climate protection at the local level. Her diverse background includes public and private sector finance, community development and sustainable social impact work. She has served as Senior Project Manager of The Better Block Foundation, supporting communities and their leaders in re-imagining more equitable, vibrant neighborhoods through grassroots urban planning efforts. She currently serves on the boards of Go Lloyd and Friends of Green Loop.

You’ve taken what appears to be an unusual path in your career — from corporate finance to grassroots community building. How did that unfold?

I went to college and grad school for accounting and spent seven years as a CPA. I was a staff accountant for a small startup, I did financial reporting at a hospital chain and then auditing as an Securities Exchange Commission reporter. A perfect day in accounting means your office door is shut and you’re grinding away on spreadsheets, so I walked away to pursue a more interactive, field-based career path.

This eventually landed me at an urban design nonprofit in Dallas, The Better Block Foundation, which uses digital fabrication to mockup urban design improvements such as parks, bike lanes or storefronts, and then present them to city council. I spent days covered in paint and I traveled the U.S. to see how neighborhoods are built, how communities respond to built environment changes, and how environment affects wellbeing.

What have you learned about the inner east side of Portland since you began your role at Lloyd Eco District a year and a half ago?

The Lloyd neighborhood has been in a state of flux for two or three decades and it’s been clear for a long time that environmental and racial justice are important for its future development. One thing that’s helping with that is moving from just trying to be a sustainable business district to prioritizing resilience among residents. We’re not just seeing how far we can get with the most-wealthy folks and businesses in the neighborhood. We are serving as a safety net that shines a light on who has the most to lose or gain with any development plan that’s put forward.

How does a neighborhood become an eco district?

Environmental and racial justice are at the heart of it. There is a rigorous international certification process for being an eco district that includes continuing education and supporting community leaders in their development work. We’ve had the certification since 2022. It came from years of collaborative visioning, planning and engagement with hundreds of neighborhood stakeholders to shape the future of Lloyd.

Kristin speaks on a Climate Curious panel in February, alongside Wade Lange of the Building Owners & Managers Association and the Portland Planning Commission.

What would you say the makeup of the neighborhood is now, and where do you think it’s headed?

We work with a lot of nonprofits and small businesses here, such as two residential complexes and two safe rest areas for our houseless neighbors. There is also a tourism component with the convention center, the Moda Center and hotels. There is still vacant first-floor retail, and not as much greenspace as we’d like, but we’re working to change that and strengthen neighborhood resilience. We’re doing this with healthy building strategies that support decarbonization, arts and recreation events and classes that encourage community connections and resources like community gardens, pollinator corridors, graffiti abatement and a lending library.

Pre-pandemic there were 6,000 residents in the neighborhood, and now, there are 10,000. It’s the easiest place to get around Portland on public transportation with its proximity to the northeast, downtown and central eastside areas. There are also a lot of plans underway to make the area even more pedestrian and bike-friendly.

Neighborhood planning obviously has a fiscal component, but there is so much more to it. What would you say to someone who wants to change their career path – as you did, going from accounting to making equitable, sustainable planning and design work for a community?

The college experience is about growing up, gaining adult social skills and finding things you’re passionate about. Your career is going to change. I was drawn to the clear-cut, black-and-white aspects of accounting, but in the long-term, this wasn’t for me. But the skillset opened doors because finance is a big part of strategy and growth, and helps me ground our organization’s goals and performance and the reality of costs and budgets—while also dreaming big.

What does dreaming big around an organization’s mission look like to you, while balancing fiscal responsibility?  

In my case, I can sit with the visionaries and imagine big but also work backward to what it’s going to cost and what the actual ask is, and make both things very clear so we can attract more investment. I can concretely lay out what good, better and best will look like for a given goal, and that has been an important skill set.

What excites you most about your work?

One thing I really like about Lloyd is that we have a solid, long-term core group of property owners who are well-connected and have been here for decades. Having fewer property owners builds consensus; they have a long history of working together.

The neighborhood is also just one square mile, so we have a good grasp of what’s going on with renters, businesses and nonprofits. We can quickly organize to clean up trash or do a pop-up event to energize an area. And I can zoom out and talk to the city or county about what they can do to help.

Kristin at a Portland Block Party in summer 2023, with volunteers from Genentech, a local employer in Lloyd.

It sounds satisfying to be able to knock on doors and know the neighborhood and how interests intersect. It seems like you might be able to get things done relatively quickly.

That’s true. Scaling solutions is a wonderful goal, but not often easy to implement across a city. Neighborhood-level solutions and strategy can be a faster, more customized way to work.

Another cool thing I see at the neighborhood level is the willingness to get creative. It’s being done quietly, but it’s happening with things like small-business incubators, and the many incredible ideas around how to help the Lloyd Center become a connection between different parts of the neighborhood, rather than dividing it, due to the sheer size of the complex.

Does an eco district potentially offer an extra level of attention and care because of its ability to always be in the neighborhood, to listen and convene ideas?

Yes, we are a neighborhood partner and listener, not overseer. Last year, we did 54 events to keep the community connected — things like organizing resource fairs and emergency preparedness for power, smoke or seismic events or setting up cooling centers for heat waves — whatever the neighborhood wants.

Lloyd is also an enhanced services district, where the neighborhood can vote on how certain funds are used in the community. This has led to support for Go Lloyd, Trash for Peace and Safe Rest areas.

In June, Kristin set up shop at a Community Resources Fair with Joshua Baker, Outreach and Programs Manager at Lloyd EcoDistrict.

How does Lloyd Eco District address equity in its mission?

Having the eco district certification has put equity and resilience at the heart of everything we’re doing, from resource generation to living infrastructure like green spaces, stormwater and tree plantings. We look at everything through this lens.

There is a need for representation in our neighborhood planning, certainly, and we need to balance this between people with specific lived experiences and those with professional expertise such as behavioral health and public safety. Demographics are important, and so are age and cultural upbringing in shaping our goals.

We’re also a small organization, which has helped us learn the power of partnership. We’re good at stuff, but others are often better and more knowledgeable about solutions because of their personal and professional backgrounds.