About Elwood Hopkins

Elwood Hopkins is a national expert on place-based initiatives, funder collaboratives, and urban policy. He is the Founder and Managing Director of Emerging Markets, Inc. and Executive Director of its nonprofit counterpart, Emerging Markets Development Corporation. For nearly two decades, the double-bottom line hybrid organization has assisted major banks and financial institutions in carrying out place-based initiatives in low-income neighborhoods across the nation. Elwood is often called upon by philanthropy and civic leaders to build coalitions and create strategy for urban revitalization, perhaps best reflected in his founding and stewardship of the Los Angeles Urban Funders collaborative after the Los Angeles Civil Unrest. Recently exploring various models of neighborhood investment trusts as a Kresge Presidential Fellow, you can read some of his thinking in an article recently published in the Stanford Social Innovation Review.

An urban planner by training, Hopkins graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelors degree from Harvard University, where he was named a John D. Trustman Fellow; and a Masters in urban and regional development from the UCLA School of Architecture and Urban Planning, where he was valedictorian. He interned with the New York City Housing Authority and City Planning Department and was honored as a New York Government Scholar during Mayor Koch’s administration.

From 1990-1995, Hopkins was a Research Scientist at the New York University Research Center. During that time, he conducted fieldwork and held short-term research positions at urban policy institutes in Bangkok, Jakarta, Tokyo, Bombay, New Delhi, Calcutta, Lagos, Nairobi, Istanbul, Cairo, Rio de Janeiro, and Mexico City. He has served as an advisor to the World Bank, United Nations, and Organization of American States, as well as other international donor agencies and foundations, including the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations. He has presented at major international gatherings including the UN Summit on Environment and Development, UN Summit on Social Development, and UN Summit on Cities.

In 1996, Hopkins was appointed Executive Director of Los Angeles Urban Funders, a twenty-one member foundation consortium that supported major community development initiatives in low-income neighborhoods in Los Angeles. He also held a two-year appointment at the UCLA Center for African American Studies, where he researched and provided technical assistance to grassroots groups in South Central Los Angeles.

Hopkins regularly speaks at conferences and university lecture series, and he publishes on the subjects of cities, urban poverty, philanthropy, and public policy. He is the author of Collaborative Philanthropies (Rowman and Littlefield, 2005).