Catching up with Christine: 2021 Updates
Catch up with Amplify Consulting founder, Christine Edwards
So much has happened in the past year and if you’re anything like us, you’ve been trying to keep up with the speed at which time seems to move these days. The days are long but the weeks are short. Here’s what we’ve been up to in the past 18 months. But first a quick introduction:
Christine Edwards is a civic firebrand that has immersed herself in helping urban communities reach their highest levels of growth and success. She founded Amplify Consulting in 2018, a company that delivers community engagement, social justice, and equity capacity building for communities of color in growing cities.
In 2020, Christine left her full-time job at the height of the pandemic to address three critical aspects of change in her community; she launched the #AmplifytheVote campaign to address voter education and literacy in the wake of voter suppression and misinformation. She also worked to build bridges between the government and the community regarding Covid-19 awareness. Finally, she encouraged communities to reimagine public safety and policing by partnering with multiple North Carolina communities to reallocate millions of dollars from police departments to other areas of city operations.
Christine worked with the City of Asheville, North Carolina, to reimagine Public Safety resulting in reallocation of $800,000 from the Asheville Police Department and with the Town of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, to reimagine community safety resulting in the allocation of $100,000 for increased public safety efforts based in racial equity. Amplify is also working with the Charlotte Mecklenburg Police Department to address the need for Non-Uniform Crisis Response Teams and equity in the hiring and recruitment of police officers in the wake of George Floyd’s killing and subsequent social upheaval.
Later, in 2021, Christine was honored with the 2020 Crowns of Enterprise Minority Business of the Year Award from the City of Charlotte and Mecklenburg County Government.
And most recently, Christine won the Equity Capacity Building Grant from the American Cities Climate Challenge for $25,000 to implement community engagement strategies for the Charlotte Department of Transportation Strategic Mobility Plan. Black and brown communities are historically excluded from long-term transportation planning efforts, and this grant will allow more people in Charlotte to participate in the process.
In June 2021, her company, Amplify Consulting, landed a multi-year contract to implement community engagement consulting services for the Charlotte Vision Zero Plan to reduce traffic fatalities and injuries in Charlotte where communities of color are shown to have a disparate impact.
Remote Team Illustration via https://www.blackillustrations.com/