Emily Trenholm

We're proud to bring Emily Trenholm to the (virtual) stage for a 2020 Mojo of Midtown Award. After all, she's been in the audience almost every year since the first were handed out in 2015. That's Emily's way; applauding and supporting others while keeping her eyes and ears open to what's making Memphis and Midtown better. In an interview on Storyboard with Mark Fleischer, Emily said she was "surprised" to get the Mojo. But how can that be. A native of Connecticut, Emily Trenholm moved to Memphis in 1992 when her company relocated. A few years later she was "made redundant' in her marketing and communications job. But by that time she had married a Memphian and so Emily was invested here. Our city was the winner all the way around. She noticed, in Memphis, something to which many of us never pay attention. "It's very easy in Memphis to not see the distressed neighborhoods. You can drive up and down Poplar Avenue or Union or Walnut Grove and those streets don't take you through South Memphis, North Memphis, Orange Mound. Through the neighborhoods in Memphis that need a lot of attention" she realized then that neighborhoods were her passion. In graduate school at the University of Memphis she became, at age forty, "the world's oldest intern and the intern who never left" at the Community Development Council. She later became Executive Director and held that job for twenty years, advising community organizers all around the city, including Midtown. We all know the problems Community Development Corporations face; neighborhoods with decades of disinvestment, "people and small businesses left behind.” She helped CDCs focus on physical and economic improvements, work force development, helping residents purchase their homes, trying to get grocery stores in to anchor communities. All the things it takes to build sustainable neighborhoods. Emily recently took us on a walk around Cooper Young, one of the communities that had an active CDC, but which, through the process, eventually put itself out of business. Today Cooper Young is known throughout Memphis for busy storefronts, successful restaurants and homes undergoing renovation. But with that success Emily cautions about the need to maintain affordable housing for an economically diverse population. The CD Council became BLDG Memphis (Build, Live, Develop, Grow) and Emily moved on to another venture; High Ground News, where in 2017, she became Community Engagement Manager and Publisher. And she hosts a podcast. What High Ground News is trying to do is to counter what she calls the "traditional media narrative of blight, failing schools and poverty." High Ground News tells stories about entrepreneurs, community leaders, about parks and community centers. All the great things in neighborhoods that just don't get the kind of news coverage that they deserve.