Four years ago, Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyles launched the Mayor’s Racial Equity Initiative, an effort to raise $150 million from the private sector to help the city in four different areas, including bolstering Johnson C. Smith University and bridging the digital divide.
The program is now winding down, and hasn’t received much attention in the last three years. The website for the initiative doesn’t appear to have been updated recently, and the contact email is no longer working and bounces back.
But recipients of the funds say they are doing important work, even if there aren’t headlines about their efforts.
Lyles, who is focused on getting voters to approve the transportation sales tax increase, said the businesses that donated have taken the lead.
“Our corporate partners have leaned in and done even more of this without having to say: ‘This is an initiative that we must write and we must do all of this,” said Lyles when asked about the lack of attention the MREI has received. “I think people have taken it and made it their own.”
The initiative focuses on four areas: The two biggest two are the six so-called “Corridors of Opportunity” in low-income parts of the city and bolstering JCSU. There are also two much smaller areas: workforce development and bridging the digital divide, a program that is being run from Queens University.
The mayor’s original plan was to hire an administrator, Kimberly Henderson, to run MREI. But she stepped down in early 2022 after media reports linked her to problems in her previous job, leading a state agency in Ohio. An audit found the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services had a “lack of controls.”
The mayor then went in a new direction and directed the private donations to be held by the Foundation for the Carolinas, which acts as an informal bank for the MREI funds. To oversee the funds, the four focus areas now have their own advisory boards, made up of private donors, including the Duke Endowment, Ally Financial, and Bank of America.
Trying to get JCSU into the top 10
The effort to lift up JCSU is perhaps the most visible.
For details, visit here: https://www.wfae.org/politics/2025-10-28/vi-lyles-250-million-racial-equity-initiative-is-winding-down-how-has-it-performed