After opening as a one person office in Duluth and leading its work for 25 years, Pam Kramer is retiring from her role as Executive Director. In honor of her work, Duluth News Tribune took a look at the tremendous impact Kramer and the LISC Duluth office has had in the communities where it works. Kramer’s expertise and leadership will be greatly missed as she moves on to a new chapter. Congratulations Pam!
The excerpt below was originally published by:
Pioneering Duluthian ties up a career devoted to making things better
By Brady Slater, Duluth News Tribune
A week after she announced her upcoming retirement, Pam Kramer recalled the first workspace she had for the organization she’s led now for nearly a quarter-century.
“I was at a bank, and they gave me one of their cubicles,” Kramer said. “It was hard at first, because it was a lot to take on.”
Kramer found out early that leaving the city of Duluth offices, as manager of what was then a community development and housing office, would mean not having any of the built-in support of the local government.
But she also knew she’d made the right move in opening Local Initiatives Support Corp., or LISC — a national body with 39 metropolitan outposts, including one of its smallest locations in Duluth.
In one memorable moment as LISC's pioneering executive director, Kramer, 66, took a group of Duluth leaders on a trip to Cleveland to look at programming there. The trip illustrated for her the gap she was intended to fill.
“I was so surprised that some of the people I was taking along didn’t know each other,” Kramer said.
LISC aims to connect private sector interests with community and economic developers and nonprofits doing the work to strengthen neighborhoods and improve the overall quality of life of residents.
“It just felt like a new tool, and a new resource that could help grow beyond what the city’s able to do,” Kramer said.
It'd be hard to argue with the results of LISC and Kramer's work in the city. To date, LISC has been responsible for investing a total of $106.38 million locally.