Jeremy Liu

Jeremy Liu is an artist, community builder, and real estate developer investing in transformative projects, places, people, and ideas as the co-founder of Creative Development Partners. Some examples of his work include One Greenway (Boston), Swan’s Market (Oakland), One Lake Merritt (Oakland), www.communitydevelopment.art, and the film Many Fires This Time.

He invests in, advises, and actively owns a variety of startups and small businesses that all fall under this purpose agenda, including: FwdSlash, a Health-prescribed Housing startup; Sharevance, an ESOP platform for small- to medium-sized businesses; PTG Linen Services, a sustainable laundry services company for the hospitality industry; Hyphae Design Lab, a multidisciplinary ecological practice focused on innovation in the built environment; and O2 Artisans Aggregate, an eco-industrial park. He previously served as the executive director of two nationally-recognized community development corporations that focused on housing and commercial real estate development and management as well as community economic development: the Asian Community Development Corporation in Boston, and the East Bay Asian Local Development Corporation in Oakland. As a Senior Fellow with PolicyLink he designed and led a national initiative to integrate arts and cultures into equitable development and policy change.

He has contributed to the arts field as a writer and researcher, including co-editing the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco Community Development Innovation Review journal issue: Transforming Community Development Through Arts and Culture, and as a contributing author to the Routledge Handbook of Placemaking and a forthcoming publication, Democracy as Creative Practice: Weaving a Culture of Civic Life. He has served on review panels for the National Endowment for the Arts, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Science Foundation, the New England Foundation for the Arts, the San Francisco Arts Commission and ArtPlace. He has received an Artadia Artist Prize, a Visible Republic Artist Grant, LEF Foundation Contemporary Work Fund and Creative Work Fund grants. He has also led participatory arts- and technology-based community development projects in the US and Asia. He is or has been a member of numerous boards and advisory boards including The Center for Neighborhood Technology, the Betti Ono Foundation, The New England Foundation for the Arts, the Interaction Institute for Social Change, I-GO Car Sharing, the Community Opportunity Alliance, and the Boston Public Art Triennial.

He chaired the successful campaigns of Sam Yoon, the first Asian American to run for and win elected office in the City of Boston in 2005 and 2007; he also chaired the groundbreaking Yoon campaign for mayor in 2008. Jeremy is a graduate of Tufts University and holds certificates in leadership, management and community building from University of Massachusetts - Boston’s College of Management, Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, and University of Miami’s School of Architecture. He was a 2009-2012 Barr Foundation Fellow and a 2006 recipient of Boston Business Journal’s 40 Under 40 award. His projects have received funding from the MacArthur Foundation, Ford Foundation, the Atlantic Philanthropies, the San Francisco Foundation, the Boston Foundation, and the Barr Foundation. More about Jeremy can be found on LinkedIn.