Tim Tramble to head Saint Luke’s Foundation

Veteran community leader to head major area foundation

Timothy L. Tramble Sr., who has championed economic and community development for the past two decades in the Central and lower Kinsman neighborhoods — Cleveland’s most impoverished communities — was announced today as the new President and CEO of Saint Luke’s Foundation. Tramble will assume his new role on June 1, 2020.

Timothy L. Tramble Sr.

Tramble is well known and widely respected for his mission-driven leadership in empowering local citizens who have been most harmed by society’s racial, social and economic inequities. Among the highlights of his twenty-year tenure as executive director of Burten Bell Carr Development Inc. [BBC] are new housing development, the creation and launch of the low power community radio station WOVU-FM/95.9 [livestreamed here], and several economic development projects, including a new strip mall along Kinsman at East 72^nd St that houses BBC’s headquarters, Cornucopia Place, and a Cleveland Public Library branch; and BoxSpot, the innovative small business incubator that opened last year at 8005 Kinsman.

BBC grew under Tramble's leadership from a fledgling organization with an annual budget of $120,000 to a comprehensive community development corporation with a $3.1 million annual budget. He successfully built a coalition of allies and partners to support BBC’s community revitalization initiatives, projects, and programs that facilitated community transportation without displacement or gentrification. BBC stands today among the most highly regarded CDCs in Ohio and is nationally recognized for its work.

“Tramble’s energy and passion for finding innovative solutions for neighborhoods and communities is an inspiration. We are thrilled to have him join us as the new President and CEO of the Saint Luke’s Foundation,” said Colleen Cotter, SLF board chair and executive director of The Legal Aid Society of Cleveland.

Tramble was chosen following a national search process that included input from partners, grantees, and the community. A national firm specializing in nonprofit organizations, Sally M. Sterling Executive Search, supported the Foundation’s process.

We listened closely to representatives from the Saint Luke’s neighborhoods and across Cuyahoga County. We heard what qualities were most important in the Foundation’s next President and CEO,” said Tania Menesse, SLF’s board vice chair and community development director for the city of Cleveland, who chaired the search committee.

The Foundation is expected under Tramble to sharpen its focus to ensure that the vision and mission guide its strategic work in the pursuit of health equity in the neighborhoods surrounding Saint Luke’s and throughout the county.

In accepting the position, Tramble said, “the opportunity to lead the Foundation is one I have prepared for my entire life. I grew up in a low-income neighborhood of Cleveland and spent my entire career supporting the overall health of our communities. My pledge to the board, staff and broader community, is to serve with a listening ear and a humble heart in steadfast support of work that successfully mitigates social and economic disparities impacting health outcomes in our communities.”

The Foundation’s former CEO, Anne Goodman, announced her departure last September. She remained in her role until April 3. She will serve as a consultant to SLF to ensure a smooth transition.

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Now is the time

The need for the emergence of new forms of black civic leadership in Cleveland has been demonstrated yet again by the continuing implosion of the local NAACP chapter.

In a show of staggering incompetence, fueled by the illusory pursuit of “little p” personal power and the continued abandonment of principle, the reigning potentates failed to follow their own rules in conducting the biannual election of officers, forcing the national office to call a time out.

Many people ask, with good reason, why this desiccated mess of a once powerful civil rights organization is worthy of any note when decade after decade it has engaged in self-dealing, credibility-destroying ways to render itself irrelevant?

Clearly, the Cleveland NAACP no longer resembles the mid-20^th century juggernaut that had 10,000 dues-paying members. Still, it stands in the gap, like an abandoned fort, between the tens of thousands of ordinary black people just trying to get through the month, the week, and sometimes the day, and those whose control of institutions — state offices, the legislature, the public safety and criminal justice systems, the schools and workplaces — allow them to ignore and devalue black life.

The poster event for black impotence is the impunity with which more than 100 Cleveland police officers disregarded departmental rules and procedures to chase two people across town at high speeds and when the prey was cornered, 13 police fired 137 bullets into one car, killing its two unarmed occupants.

The community response to this outrageous police misconduct has been muted. To some extent this can be attributed to the fact that Cleveland mayor Frank Jackson has adopted his usual calm stance. But we are approaching the second anniversary of “The Chase” and who in our community is monitoring the monitors in the Jackson administration?

The lack of effective organizational leadership is manifest in other areas as well. We may be at a moment when self-interest on the part of general contractors, property owners, and labor unions offer opportunities for real gains for black contractors, laborers, and neighborhoods. Some black business and leaders — Dominic Ozanne, for one, but there are others, including Natoya Walker-Minor of the Jackson administration — have helped drive a process where sizable business projects can be impacted by the views and wishes of area residents. But there is too often no community organization ready to sit down with affected parties to negotiate a Community Benefits Agreement even when the framework is already in place.

This is not to say that there are no effective black organizations or agencies here. There are scores, including the Black Professionals Association Charitable Foundation; Delta Sigma Theta; Sigma Pi Phi [the Boule]; Burten, Bell, Carr Development Inc.; to name but a few. But there is not one with the portfolio, the history, or the name to eclipse the NAACP.

If the NAACP were a public school, it would be ripe for reconstitution. Throw out all the officers and start anew. Try and keep the executive director, Sheila Wright. She is bright, passionate, innovative, and young. But she hasn’t been paid in five months, and we know what happens to romance when there is no finance.

Cleveland’s establishment has coasted on the inclusion tip for a very long time. One might say that coasting parallels the weakness of the local NAACP. The old boy network that runs this community needs to be broken up before it consigns us to eternal mediocrity. Black Cleveland needs to be in the vanguard of the modernization of our political, economic and social structures. That process has to begin at home, and it ought to begin with a thorough housecleaning at the NAACP.

Black Vines

Special Bonus for Real Deal followers* [this post will not be emailed!]:

End your work week and begin your weekend with Black Vines, a free wine tasting event tonight between 5:30 and 10PM in one of Cleveland’s up and coming neighborhoods. No, not Detroit Shoreway; not Ohio City. CENTRAL.

Yes, that’s right! Cleveland’s Central neighborhood has been undergoing a quiet transformation for at least a decade, thanks in large measure to the quiet but effective leadership of Burten Bell Carr Development Corporation.

Come get a taste and an eyeful tonight at Bridgeport Café, 7201 Kinsman Road. See the flier below.

I know, you didn’t even know there were African wines.