About Sean Reiss

Sean received his Bachelor of Arts in History with a minor in Philosophy for the University of Florida. After attaining his Bachelor’s degree, Sean held several positions that involved land-use policy and environmental and rural planning work as he worked on his Master’s degree in Urban and Regional Planning. Now with RARE-Resource Assistance with Rural Environments, Sean hopes to enrich his professional experience and improve his skills so that he can advance his career. After his year with the RARE AmeriCorps program, Sean hopes to use his degree and experience to make a difference in the world.

About RDI

Rural Development Initiatives (RDI) has been working to build capacity in Oregon’s rural communities for the past 30 years and is well positioned to put some of that capacity into practice through the realm of economic development. As a result, RDI is employing the national WealthWorks model in Oregon under the WealthWorks Northwest (WWNW) program. WWNW is a holistic approach to economic development that seeks to leverage existing and/or emerging community assets and sectors of the local economy to build community wealth via investments in all eight forms of capital: built, cultural, financial, individual, intellectual, natural, political, and social.

WWNW is broken up into two phases: 1) exploration phase (July-October), which the six WWNW communities will explore and develop a value chain, and 2) the construction phase (January-December 2016), where two of the six communities are selected to construct their value chain and begin the implementation process. Acting as Program Coordinator, Sean will assist with both phases, providing general project support, assisting with networking and convening value chain team members and stakeholders, providing research support and information dissemination, assisting with market demand interviews, and assisting with wealth capitals measurements and evaluation.