Next Generation — Raising the Story

Garrity-Blake and West are working on the Next Generation Coastal Communities project with principal investigator David Griffith of East Carolina University and collaborator Sara Mirabilio, fisheries specialist with North Carolina Sea Grant. Ongoing research is focused on identifying current leadership capacity and exploring ways to strengthen that capacity.

The outcome of this research is to build leadership capacity as a renewable resource in coastal communities. Visionary leadership can help convert local knowledge and expertise into broader policy innovations. The most effective and sustainable leadership models are often decentralized, bottom-up and encourage innovations at the grassroots instead of commands from above.

Next Generation Coastal Communities: Leveraging social capital to build leadership capacity is funded by North Carolina Sea Grant.