Neighborhood Partnerships is excited to announce the internal promotion of Holly McGuire to Director of Economic Opportunity (DEO). Our former DEO, Carlos García, was selected to be NP’s Executive Director in September of 2020. NP engaged in an internal hiring process, reviewing and updating the DEO position to best meet the opportunities and challenges we face as seek to lean in to our Economic Justice work and contribute our energy and resources to building an Oregon where we all have access to opportunity, stability, and what we need to thrive.
Working in a deeply collaborative model, Holly, as DEO, will lead NP’s work to increase the equitable distribution of resources to help reduce the racial wealth gap. Centering race equity, together with NP staff and external partners, this position will work to build the capability to navigate barriers and inequitable structures among BIPOC and low income communities, while advocating for the deeper systems change that can address historical harms and eliminate the poverty that leads to such disparate outcomes for Oregonians living on low and moderate incomes. The DEO and NP’s IDA Team will continue to work with Initiative partners, OHCS, and savers to maximize the positive impacts of our state’s powerful asset building matched savings program, the IDA Initiative. Together we will work to meet savers where they are at, and support community-based, human-centered programs that leverage all available resources to have the most impact for savers and their communities.
Holly has been with Neighborhood Partnerships since November 2016, when she was hired as an IDA Program Coordinator. She became the IDA Program Manager in June of 2019. She reports feeling deeply honored to have been able to learn and co-create among so many skilled, motivated, and generous staff from the breadth of IDA providers, gaining insight and critical cultural context about communities across Oregon. In addition to being a passionate advocate for racial and economic justice both at and away from work, Holly lives in North Portland with her tween-aged daughter, camps—mountain or ocean—as much as possible, cooks from Oregon’s bounty of locally grown food, and practices art to find grounding amidst the deep change and transformation our world is experiencing.