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Meet Our Team

RESEARCH

STUDIES

Philanthropy for CED Impact
 
Public Entrepreneurship Pathways

Policy Briefs

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Practitioner Takeaways

Managing Triple Bottom Line Enterprise
Board Governance
Governance in associations and federations

Infographics

Public Entrepreneurship
How Credit Unions Emerged Out of Philanthropy
   
[THE CREDIT UNION SECTOR - Infographics]
[THE FOUR PILLARS - Infographics]
Scaling Local
The Economic Impact of Associating: The Veterinary Purchasing Co-op
[THE VETERINARY COOPERATIVE - Infographics]

Education

PROGRAMS
Community Economic Development (CED)
 
CED 101
  • Understanding Economic Development Policies and Practices
  • Innovating Community Economic Development
Resiliency
  • Aligning Our CED Values with Business Development: Embracing a Triple Bottom Line Strategy
  • Strategizing Around Entrepreneurial Support Systems for Triple Bottom Line Firms
Capitalization Strategies for Public and Triple Bottom Line Firms
  • Philanthropy, State Assistance, and Leveraging Existing Community-Based Enterprise  
Utilities Extension
Electric Utilities: UC Davis’s Keith Taylor has teamed up with the University of Minnesota’s Gabe Chan to create the Electric Cooperative Innovation Center (https://www.cooperativeinnovationcenter.org), a national center seeking to coordinate researchers and Extension professionals around the United States to further the energy transition and community benefit. See our recent work with students, here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeXef43JnXI&feature=emb_logo). And see our forthcoming National Science Foundation supported effort, here.
  • Capturing Wind Energy Development for Community Economic Development Impact
 Broadband Utilities
  • Why Is There a Digital Divide?
  • Overcoming The Digital Divide
  • How to Start a Community Broadband Entity: Learning from the Electric Co-ops
  • Operating Your Community Broadband Entity
Water Utilities
 
Agriculture
                Cannabis
                Regenerative Animal Agriculture
                    Dairy
                    Meat
Food Systems
Workforce Development
Housing Development
Small Business Development
  • Connecting to Support Infrastructure: Understanding Purchasing Co-operatives and Buying Groups
Triple Bottom Line Firms: Innovations in Public Benefit Corporations (PBCs)
  • Unique Governance and Management Needs of PBCs
  • Strategic Planning
  • Effective Meetings
VIDEO
INTERVIEWS
WEBINARS
DOCUMENTARY

 

OUR TEAM

UC LEADERSHIP

PROFILES
Dr. Keith Taylor, Assistant Professor of Cooperative Extension & Community Economic Development. I’m “The Peoples’ Professor.” But really I’m just Keith-from-the-Midwest.
               
Location
Based in Davis, California. Available in-person statewide, and digitally everywhere.
                   
Professional Profile & Bio
Economic systems, the health of our democracy, and the wellbeing of everyday people are inextricably intertwined. Two simple propositions underlie this:
  1. Everyday people should have the essential resources and tools necessary to improve their economic livelihoods on their own terms, and;
  2. The types of institutions we build and leverage for economic development should be structured to bring out the best in individuals and our communities.
My Cooperative Extension educational work seeks to inspire communities to act in cultivating their individual capabilities, developing these institutions, and enhancing those organizations vital for individuals and communities to thrive. To that end, I am an expert in:
                       
  • Community Economic Development policies and practices;
  • Triple Bottom Line business forms and hybrid enterprise, such as co-operatives, nonprofits, B-corps, small businesses, and associations, and;
  • The governance and management of communities and Triple Bottom Line enterprise.
 
I bring the UC’s renowned classroom experience to California communities, translating evidence-based social science to practice. I work directly and co-create with changemakers, urban planners and economic developers, and a range of business development interests to build community solutions. I leverage agile strategic planning approaches and connection to real-world resources -in the form of practitioners, knowledge, and networks- for rapid implementation.
 
I am originally from rural Central Illinois. I hold a PhD in Human and Community Development from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, am affiliated with Indiana University’s Ostrom Workshop, and am the first in my family to go to community college, get a PhD, and become a professor.
                   
Work With Me
Economic Development Professionals
UCCE Advisors
               
Interests & Industrial Expertise
Practice
  • Research translation
  • Community Economic Development
  • Entrepreneurship & startups
  • Governance & management

Institutional Development & Capacity Building

  • Government
  • Corporate form and relation to strategy
  • Small business scaling and franchising

Industrial Domains

  • Utilities
    • Electric
    • Broadband
  • Agriculture
    • Cannabis
    • Wood and cellulose
  • Food
    • Value chain
    • Animal
  • Housing
    • Workforce/Missing Middle
  • Cannabis
               
When Im Not Working, You Can Probably Catch Me…
  • Still working (I love my job)
  • Traveling. Likely to work with my communities
  • Powerlifting and meal prepping
  • Drinking too much coffee and tea
  • Walking Davis, listening to music, meeting with friends
 
Publications & Media Appearances
Books
Taylor, Keith. 2019. Governing the Wind Energy Commons: Renewable Energy and Community Development. West Virginia University Press.
               
      Peer Reviewed Publications
Kavousi, Parisa et al. 2021. “What Do We Know about Opportunities and Challenges for Localities from Cannabis Legalization?” Review of Policy Research: ropr.12460. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ropr.12460(March 17, 2022).
 
Plakias, Zoë et al. 2021. “On the Money: Characterizing Banking and Lending in the California Cannabis Industry.” Agricultural Finance Review ahead-of-print(ahead-of-print). https://doi.org/10.1108/AFR-06-2021-0075 (December 17, 2021).
           
Summerfield, Gale, Keith Taylor, and Keith Taylor. 2011. “Bio Fuels, Food, and Trade: A Comparison of Bio Fuel Development Efforts in Two Communities in Illinois.” In Energy, Bio Fuels and Development: Comparing Brazil and the United States, London: Routledge, 336. https://www.taylorfrancis.com/ (June 22, 2020).
 
Taylor, Keith. 2021. “An Analysis of the Entrepreneurial Institutional Ecosystems Supporting the Development of Hybrid Organizations: The Development of Cooperatives in the U.S.” Journal of Environmental Management 286: 112244. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301479721003066 (March 11, 2021).
 
Taylor, Keith, and Nathan Goodman. 2019. “The Stakeholder-Empowering Philanthropy of Edward Filene.” Filene Research Institute. https://filene.org/learn-something/reports/the-stakeholder-empowering-philanthropy-of-edward-filene (February 10, 2020).
               
Media Appearances
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Advisors

Olivia Henry - Regional Food Systems Advisor

[image of Olivia Henry]

Olivia Henry joined UC ANR on Aug. 15 as regional food systems area advisor for Solano, Yolo, Sacramento, Placer and Nevada counties. Henry will focus issues related to marketing, resilient supply chains, distribution infrastructure, processing infrastructure, financing models and food waste.
                   
Previous to UC ANR, Henry served in various newsrooms – including CapRadio, the Mendocino Voice, KALW Public Radio, SF Public Press and Mother Jones – in community engagement, membership and communications roles. She also worked with Internews, a media development organization, to conduct information needs assessments in the San Joaquin Valley and Inland Empire regions. Henry is still involved with community media, and currently serves as the assistant editor of a bimonthly, bilingual newspaper rural Tulare County.
                   
She earned her bachelor’s degree in journalism from Western Washington University and master’s degree in community development from UC Davis. While at Davis, Henry studied models of community- and employee-owned news enterprises, with a focus on how stakeholder ownership can protect journalism as a public good. She also earned a graduate certificate in extension outreach and communication.
                   
Henry said she is excited to be a part of UC ANR, which she has benefitted from as a certified California Naturalist and candidate California Master Beekeeper. She has previously worked at local farms, including a diversified orchard and targeted grazing operation.  
                   
Henry is based in Fairfield and can be reached at omhenry@ucanr.edu or 707-389-0723.

Alec Dompka, Lost Coast Regional Advisor

Ashley Michelle Hooper, Ph.D., Urban Community Resilience Advisor for the Los Angeles Metropolitan Region

Ashley M Hooper (she/her) is an Urban Community Resilience Advisor

UC ANR Executive Leadership

Glenda Humiston

Tu Tran

Gabe Youtsey

UC CAMPUS BASED AFFILIATES

Ryan Galt – Agricultural Sustainability Institute at the University of California Davis

Contact me to talk about…

Catherine Brinkley – Center for Regional Change at the University of California Davis

Contact me to talk about…

Chris Benner – Institute for Social Transformation at the University of California Santa Cruz

Contact me to talk about…

Mai Nguyen – The Design Lab at the University of California San Diego

Contact me to talk about…

HOW TO WORK WITH US

UCANR PROFESSIONALS

We are all UCANR. And while many peers in the UCANR system do not have community economic development in their title or job description, there remains a great deal of crossover and opportunities for collaboration. 

Maybe you work in Integrated Pest Management (IPM) and your farmer stakeholders would implement your research if you could drive the costs of inputs down. That is an economic development opportunity.

Maybe you work in forestry and you need to responsibly monetize wood products to mitigate wildfires. That is also an economic development opportunity.

 

If you have a research, development, or educational project with a community economic development component, please reach out. We recommend contacting your nearest County or Regional Advisor first, or look through Team [INSERT LINK] roster and connect to one of our team members closest to your interest area.

We are also looking for individuals to affiliate, join our team, and help us establish the foundations of UCANR’s CED programming! We are the Community Economic Development Program Team of the Healthy Communities Strategic Initiative, and will be forming standing Project Teams to focus on CED specializations. We welcome your energy and ideas.

Our goal is to be the nation’s leading community economic development Cooperative Extension team in the US. We do this through team building, agile strategic planning and coordination, regular and appropriate communications, and team co-production. We are motivated by the Land Grant mission to extend the university to our host communities, assist community members in overcoming barriers through public entrepreneurship, and enhance stakeholder quality of life. It is our intent to make this work a labor of love that is incredibly fun.

In affiliating, we seek commitments to

  • Develop and carry out a UCANR Strategic Plan, and seek funding resources for the collective interests
  • Co-produce shared programming in research, development, and education
  • Publish annually a team-authored, peer reviewed publication, addressing state-of-the-art challenges and innovations in CED
  • Lift each other up by promoting each other’s work across our local, state, national, and global stakeholders
  • Serve in Project Team leadership roles
  • Participate in regularly scheduled check-ins
  • Hold rotating open office hours online so local, regional, state, and national stakeholders can interact with our team
  • Impromptu Team Huddles, to help our peers think through the initiatives they are working on in their service area.

Affiliation helps us pool knowledge and resources to development shared services.

  • Staffing
  • Access to student researchers and graduate student researchers (currently located in Davis, but eventually at other UC’s around the state). 

CAMPUS-BASED UC PROFESSIONALS

Dear colleague: Welcome! We are your colleagues. As community-facing faculty, we are your eyes and ears on the ground around the state.

COMMUNITY STAKEHOLDER

We are here to serve you.

[NOTE: I would really like to add language here where we basically pitch ourselves as the anti-consultancy. “Why go to the out-of-touch Big Four when you can have a cheap date with the experts in the UC system?”]