(Unedited) Podcast Transcript 544: Technical Assistance for Equitable TOD

This week we’re joined by Emily LaFlamme of the Center for Neighborhood Technology in Chicago. Emily chats about the Elevated Works technical assistance program that helps developers bring equitable TOD to life.

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Below is a full unedited AI generated transcript of the entire episode:

Jeff Wood: Emily Laflamme, welcome to the Talking Headways podcast.

Emily Laflamme: Thank you so much for having me. It’s great to be here.

Jeff Wood: Yeah, thanks for coming on the show. Before we get started, can you tell us a little bit about yourself?

Emily Laflamme: Sure. I am based here in Chicago. I work for the Center for Neighborhood Technology. We’re a nonprofit that’s been around for about 40 years. We focus our work on supporting community-based organizations and local governments really to create neighborhoods that are sustainable, thriving, and resilient.

Jeff Wood: So tell me, how did you first get interested in cities, transportation, urban planning, that type of stuff?

Emily Laflamme: My background is actually in public health. I have a master’s degree in public health, and as I was working in the public health space, I realized pretty [00:03:00] quickly that one of the things that impacts our health the most is where we live, and it’s how we get around if we have access to safe and affordable housing and the environments.

We live in. And so my work started increasingly creeping towards urban planning, and now I find myself sitting at this intersection between how we design and plan urban spaces, thinking about that as a tool to improve health and health equity. When city design works well, you don’t have to think about it.

And when city design doesn’t work well, then you notice exactly where it doesn’t work well. So I think as I grew up, I had the language or to understand, you know, here are the parts of city design that allowed me to live a healthy life and here are the parts, that I wanna continue to work to improve.

Jeff Wood: So it’s interesting. I mean, Dr. Minnie, full of love has been on the show before and I was [00:04:00] just writing recently about, you know, the bio-psychosocial model versus the biomedical model. And I find that very fascinating from a public health perspective, but also from a planning perspective, thinking about how the social determinants of health throughout a whole neighborhood, determine your wellbeing.

Like you just go to the hospital to get treated for that specific item. It starts way before that. In the neighborhood you live, the people you’re surrounded by, the social networks you have, and so that the root shock idea that she put together really kind of is stuck in my head, but also, you know, thinking about those two models and how they, you know, they compliment each other, but also there’s a lot of folks that only think about the one biomedical model and they don’t necessarily consider the biopsychosocial model.

Emily Laflamme: Yeah, that’s right. Everything in your neighborhood impacts your health, and we can prevent a lot of illness and disease by investing upstream and in what we call the root causes of health. Things like transportation and housing and mental health, food access, social connection, all of that.

Jeff Wood: Well, so we’re here to talk about e Todd, but first off, for those who may not be [00:05:00] familiar with the jargon we are jargon filled here on the show, but e Todd, where did it come from?

Emily Laflamme: It’s an acronym stands for Equitable Transit Oriented Development, and the concept of transit oriented development has been around for a long time, or TOD and TOD is a concept. Quite simply, you should build close to public transit, and there’s many benefits of doing that. Connects folks across neighborhoods, takes advantage of a great.

City resource and it’s good for the environment, gets folks outta cars and using an accessible and environmentally friendly mode of transportation. What we’ve seen in Chicago, where I’m based and in many other cities, is that TOD without the E or the equity. Focus or the intentional connection to equity is that TOD follows a lot of the same [00:06:00] historic patterns of investment and disinvestment.

In Chicago, we saw what after our TOD ordinance was passed many years ago, that incentivized development near transit, a lot of it happened in very wealthy, predominantly white neighborhoods. And that got folks talking about the need for this intentional equity lens. So ETOD is this concept where. We are trying to make sure that development near transit benefits everyone, not just in wealthy communities.

And that can look a bunch of different ways. There’s not one way that ETOD. Looks like, but it can really, at its root, be for the people who live in the neighborhood serving them, not displacing them. So that can be a grocery store, that can be a daycare, that can be affordable [00:07:00] housing, that can be community space, it can be small businesses.

But the point is that the. Process includes some acknowledgement of what communities need.

Jeff Wood: It’s so interesting because for the last, you know, 20 years I’ve been focused on, on trans oriented development, the conversation has changed to a certain extent. And even before I started thinking about it, there were many others, uh, obviously that started out with Peter Calthorpe and, and the folks that did, did work in Oregon and other places.

But it’s interesting that at the beginning it was trying to get people to realize that the development near transit was a thing. At all. And now it’s evolved into something that’s even more important, which is the equitable part. And I’m wondering about that kind of evolution because the discussion has changed over time.

And so I’m, I’m curious about your thoughts about how that happened and you know, what’s the importance of the change in discussion since, like I said, at the start, we were only trying to get people to realize that it was okay to develop in your transit. And now we found out what happens when you only allow certain developments in certain [00:08:00] neighborhoods along certain transit lines.

Emily Laflamme: Development near transit starts from acknowledging that transit is an asset and an important part of how folks get around a city. And I think research over time has shown how beneficial it is to live close to transit and the job access and access to other amenities that brings. When transit oriented development happens without an equity lens, folks notice and we see these patterns where investment is happening only in some neighborhoods, and what happened in those neighborhoods is that this kind of development then can raise prices.

Can lead to displacement of folks who have lived in those neighborhoods for a long time. And on the other hand, in areas where there has historically been [00:09:00] disinvestment, when there are all of these incentives that are coming to encourage development near transit, but that development is not happening in certain neighborhoods, we see a lot of community response to that.

And. eTOD is part of that community response that when we’re incentivizing development across our city and when we’re trying to maximize the benefit of a publicly owned and invested in asset, like public transit, that should be for everyone. And so eTOD. Comes out of that, you know, the evolution of how we’re thinking about transit oriented development and now equitable transit oriented development is coming from this, you know, ground up, community led idea that investments in our cities should benefit everyone.

Jeff Wood: So back in 2019 we talked with Kendra Freeman about E taught in Chicago, and it’s something that’s been the focus of the group, elevated Chicago, [00:10:00] but a lot has happened since 2019. So I’m wondering if you’d give us kind of a catch up of like what’s happened since that time period. Obviously we had a pandemic in there.

Um, but I imagine that your group and others have been focused on advancing the cause.

Emily Laflamme: That’s right. So Elevated Chicago is a coalition of partners, including the Center for Neighborhood Technology, other nonprofits, community-based organizations and representatives from our local government and Elevated Chicago has been around since 2017, advocating for equitable transit oriented development since 2019.

One of the major. Policy efforts passed the Connected Communities ordinance, which passed in Chicago in 2022, and this was an update to Chicago zoning code to make it easier to build near transit. So there were density bonuses, parking requirement reductions, [00:11:00] and other zoning related incentives for transit oriented development.

Then speaking of the pandemic and the American Rescue Plan infused a bunch of funding into the recovery from the pandemic, and the City of Chicago did a great job in recognizing that ETOD could be one of the tools to help Chicago recover from the pandemic. And through that program, set aside $5 million in grants to ETOD.

Developers and funding as well for a technical assistance program to support those developers.

Jeff Wood: So let me hear more about the technical assistance program. ’cause I found that one of the most interesting things about what you all been doing

Emily Laflamme: for the last two and a half years, we’ve been running a technical assistance program in partnership with the City of Chicago and the ETOD grants that I just mentioned.

And if they were selected to participate, they received a grant from the city and they were eligible to participate in our technical assistance program. Many of these developers, this was their first time ever doing a development and our TA program brought together 18 professionals with expertise in.

Real estate development, zoning, community engagement, architecture, urban design, transportation planning, communications, and we were able to work with these developers through [00:13:00] the last two years to. Address any challenges that came up and support with system navigation is kind of moving through Chicago’s development project process to ensure the success of these projects.

Jeff Wood: Why were these developers wanting to get in when they were newbies? I mean, that’s a hard thing to do, right? Getting in on the ground floor of development, it seems like something that’s very gate kept and hard to start,

Emily Laflamme: right? It’s a really complicated process. Maybe not everyone, but many of us I think, have walked down the street and seen a vacant lot or a vacant building and thought, oh, wouldn’t it be cool if something was there?

Or you’re a small business owner and you’ve operated out of your basement and you’re thinking, you know, it would really be great to have a physical location. And I think many people get to that point and many people stop at that point because. You [00:14:00] just don’t have the connections or the resources to even know what your next step might be.

And so this program was really trying to be the support to help people jump over that hurdle and demystify the whole process and connect folks who may not have the connections to these various professionals.

Jeff Wood: Development is a very capital intensive thing. And I mean, I did that in when I was in college too.

I saw a property in Austin that I was like, oh, you know that that would be a really cool place for A TOD. But I went around asking people like, well, how do you do this? How do you, how do you get money? Like how do you put together a capital plan? And, and I talked to an architect and I was like, ah, I’d love to do a development on this property.

And he is like, oh, okay. He is like, how much money do you have? I was like, I don’t have any money. Like, so it’s one of those things that, that’s kind of the gate. That you have to walk through is like getting money to do these projects. And so I’m wondering if you could talk a little bit about that too is like access to capital, but also what brings a developer in who wants to do a [00:15:00] development, who might want a grocery store or something along those lines on the property, but also to think about equitable TOD or seek you all out to want to do something different than the status quo.

Emily Laflamme: The way we think about what it takes. For an ETOD project to be successful is that you need a policy environment that supports this kind of work. And the connected communities ordinance in Chicago got us closer to that. You need capital and for many of the small emerging developers that we worked with, that is a combination of personal savings grants from government.

Grants from philanthropy, donations from friends and family, small loans from banks. It’s a whole cobbled together capital stack. And also then this technical assistance piece, which is the system navigation and support to [00:16:00] help get those projects going and part of the technical assistance. Support on the capital, and it’s both finding the capital and the timing of the capital because those sources that I just mentioned don’t all come in together and many of them are reliant on each other.

And so one of the things that was really important about this project, many of these projects were pre-development, which meant they were at stage one. Some of them were. At the ideation phase, the fact that the city of Chicago had equitable TOD pre-development grants and put that money in was a flag for other funders to say, this is a project that we’re backing and that can help.

Find additional capital sources. And then on the technical assistance side, we did a lot of work with developers reviewing their pro forma, reviewing their [00:17:00] sources, reviewing their costs, and revising them as things changed and providing coaching on the timing of, when to approach various potential funders.

Jeff Wood: What kind of technical assistance did developers ask for? What types of specific things did they need to know more about?

Emily Laflamme: One of the things that I think worked really well with this program is that we partnered with the Real Estate Solutions team at IFF. They are experts in understanding real estate development, and they served as a hub for all of our technical assistance services.

At the beginning of the program, they met with each of the developers to understand more about the project and what their needs might be, and then. They were able to answer questions that came up, and they were also able to identify. Whether or not their questions could be answered by one of our technical assistance providers.

So it was a little bit of a two-way [00:18:00] conversations. Sometimes you don’t know what you don’t know, so a developer can be describing their project plan, and someone from IFF who has done this work for years could say, you know, have you thought about this? And if not, we can connect you with someone who.

Works in zoning to help you think through that process or, you know, on the flip side, a developer could say, I know I’m coming up to permitting. I’ve never done this before. Can you help me understand what permits I need and who I need to talk to? So it was a little bit of both. And the things that came up really depended on the project.

So we really tried to meet developers where they were. Check in with them often, and for some that was help with understanding the zoning code and incentives that were available through the connected communities ordinance. For some that was reviewing architectural drawings, [00:19:00] for some it was thinking about transit connectivity and how can we actually maximize the benefit of being located close to public transit.

For some it was we want to engage with some local artists, but we’re not sure where to start or we know we need to do a better job with community engagement and talking to our alder, but we’re not exactly sure how to do that.

Jeff Wood: How much did people wanna know more about? You mentioned a second ago, but how much more do people wanna know about transit and the connectivity issue?

Obviously half of it is development and then the other half is transit, and that’s an important part of it, but it’s also something that maybe developers wouldn’t be as as soon as they have their site, they’re like, well, we can’t control what buses or trains go by here. Maybe that’s not something they focus on, but did they ask much about it?

Emily Laflamme: A lot of developers chose their site because of the transit connectivity in the first place, when we talked to them about how they made their decision about, you know, what site to [00:20:00] pursue, a lot of them did mention, you know, one of the first things we looked at was, is it close to a bus or train once you’re located there?

We had. Some of our technical assistance providers help think about being close to transit is different than fully maximizing the proximity. And so are there strategies? And some of these are outlined in Chicago’s. Transportation Demand Management plan, that was part of the connected communities ordinance.

But what are some ways that we can think about maximizing that benefit? And that was a conversation too. Some, some had thought about it a lot. Some were new to this concept of ETOD. So it was a conversation about, you know, if maybe you haven’t thought about this, but there are some things that you could think about incorporating into your project.

Jeff Wood: I imagine some folks are getting worried now about what’s happening at the state level with funding from the state of Illinois. It’s kind of what’s [00:21:00] happening around the country, right? SEPTA is having the problems, Philadelphia and Pennsylvania, state of California. Obviously we’ve had some issues here, cities around the country having transit issues, but Chicago I’ve heard a lot about more than maybe some of the other ones.

Emily Laflamme: Yes. Is an understatement. I would say there are some incredible organizers that are really fighting for the funding that we need to keep our public transit system working, and I am very, very hopeful that we’ll see some good news, either some point this summer or into the fall. But like we always say, there’s no ETOD without.

So I, I hope it, hope we get some good news.

Jeff Wood: Do you also get a little frustrated by how, you know you need the technical assistance? Maybe what if there was a system there, you or you didn’t need technical assistance because it was so transparent and easy and not overly complicated. Development seems to lend itself to being complicated in cities ’cause of the past and history and things like that.

But [00:22:00] is there a time and place where you wish that, you know, I, I wish that this wasn’t even needed.

Emily Laflamme: Yes. I think technical assistance in some cases can be a bandaid on a broken system, and we don’t want to just keep slapping bandaids on a system. We want to improve the system in a way that it works for the developers that we’ve been serving, which is, new developers, black brown developers.

And so one of the things we’ve been intentional about is. Listening to what common barriers are that folks have been encountering, and then using our relationships with folks at the city to talk about what are some of the systems change solutions, policy solutions or process solutions that could help address those common barriers so that in the future it is easier for new developers to enter [00:23:00] into.

And I think this is both a policy question and a process question. And an access to information question. So I, I think there are policy solutions. Chicago just made further changes to its parking requirements to make it easier to have reduced parking and put that money into affordable housing or other things.

So there’s a policy solution, there’s a process solution. So how do we. Disperse grants from the city. Is that process easy? And then there’s the access to information piece, which is, there’s a real disparity in how much information. You may have about the system if you’re an established developer versus a first time developer.

So how do we make that more equitable too?

Jeff Wood: Yeah. Going through the process is something that if you’ve [00:24:00] done it a few times, you get better at it, and so you can beat all comers. When it comes to that. Are there any specific systems that you found during this process that like, I, we need to take this down, or we need to like, figure out how to reform this policy or this, you know, roadblock.

Emily Laflamme: I think one of them, one of them actually was parking. So it’s really exciting to be sitting here talking to you today after having made some progress in that area. And then the other I would say is coordination between all of the parts of a development project. It’s a lot, especially for a new developer who is.

Probably a team of one who probably also has a full-time job to navigate the different departments that you interact with, within your local government as well as all of the pieces on [00:25:00] capital and funding. So I think one of the, you know, the broader system. I saw was that a lot of this information is held in silos and it would be great if this was a more streamlined and easier to navigate process.

Jeff Wood: What happens when you get a bunch of developers in the room together?

Emily Laflamme: That’s a great question because sometimes. You could get a bunch of developers in a room together and they wouldn’t say anything because they are competitive, because they don’t wanna share who they go to to be their general contractor because they want that general contractor to work for them, or they don’t wanna share, you know, their tricks for doing X, y, or Z.

One of the things that I am the most. Proud of through this technical assistance program is that [00:26:00] we intentionally built community amongst developers, and it was really amazing to see that relationships could be built between developers and they trusted each other and they found that they could talk to each other and realize I’m not the only one who’s.

Been faced with this challenge, and if I have a question, I can call somebody who’s gone through this before and they can share their experience and what worked for them. And we had so many fun stories that came out of this after two years of all working together. Like for example, one of the developers that we worked with built a co-op grocery store.

And they opened about a year ago and shortly after they opened. One of their freezers broke and they were at risk of [00:27:00] losing, you know, all of their food. And they turned to one of our other developers that operates a food pantry. They had met each other through this technical assistance program. And so they called them up and said, we don’t want this food to go to waste.

Can we donate it to your food pantry? And so they were able to accept the food, distribute it, and I think, you know, small little connections like that. Ultimately, developers feel less alone. And the impact on the community over time, just by building this network, I think is really great.

Jeff Wood: Building the network and building the housing for folks too.

I mean it’s, it’s really important.

Emily Laflamme: Yeah. Yeah.

Jeff Wood: Five completed projects, 24 side acquisitions, 350 million invested. What are you all most proud of from this program?

Emily Laflamme: I’m proud of where these projects are located. When I mentioned earlier that. Under Chicago’s first TOD ordinance projects, were located mostly in wealthy white neighborhoods.

These projects are all over the [00:28:00] city. The developers that are leading them do not look like the typical white male developer, and that’s super cool. Most of them, this is their first or second project. And then the types of projects that we built. It’s, you know, it’s a grocery store. It’s housing for folks returning from prison.

It’s intergenerational living. It’s affordable housing, community centers, theaters, dance, you know, artists studio space. I think. The impact of these projects on their surrounding neighborhoods and the fact that they’re being led by people who live work, you know, have raised their kids in the neighborhood.

I, I think it’s just really cool.

Jeff Wood: One of the frustrating things to me always about this since I’ve started working on all this, was just like how much good stuff is happening, but there’s just so much sprawl [00:29:00] still happening at the same time as you kind of compare that to the smaller good projects that are happening.

So how do you scale something like this? Like how do you make it so that it’s actually like flipped so that the sprawl developers are having trouble? Getting projects and they’re having to have their own technical assistance. And the OD projects are ubiquitous and easy to do and they’re just popping up everywhere.

And all the people that care about sprawl are complaining. Dang, those OD projects.

Emily Laflamme: I love imagining this world.

It’s great. You know, it’s a good question. I think one of the things that we have to be real about is development. Oftentimes is driven by profit, and the impact of many of these projects is. Not necessarily always profit as, the driving factor. A lot of times the driving factor is community need and community [00:30:00] impact.

We can’t measure that as well, so it’s a little harder to equate them, but we can really feel that impact. You know, if you don’t have a grocery store and one opens near you, that’s. I measurable impact. And so I do think that the way we talk about this, the storytelling helps to reinforce and build the way that we think about success of these types of projects and the importance of having them in our neighborhoods.

Jeff Wood: Then you all have talked with other folks around the country that have started thinking about these things. How much have you all influenced other places? Obviously there’s the report that just came out, a national movement for equitable TOD. That was for me, a fun trip down memory lane and some of that history section.

But what do you take from the experiences in Chicago and then export them to other places, or even import stuff from say, uh, Austin or a Los Angeles?

Emily Laflamme: Great. I think one of the things is that each. [00:31:00] City and every community will have its own needs, and part of the way that we do our work is we’re trying to support community driven priorities and community driven development.

But at the same time, there’s a lot of shareable lessons learned. There are a lot of ways. We can share different policies that are important to support. ETOD and Chicago has been part of National tables focused on ETOD for a long time. Thinking about what are the policies that have worked. How do we get those passed and what tools can we bring from our experience in Chicago to Atlanta or to Los Angeles and vice versa?

And how can we show the success in one city to support change in another city? So I think that this type of [00:32:00] cross collaboration across cities is very helpful while at the same time. Continuing to honor the uniqueness of each city and what each city might need.

Jeff Wood: Was there anything specific you wanted to take away from Atlanta or, or Los Angeles or Austin, or any of the places that you looked at?

Emily Laflamme: I think we’ve been focused a lot on parking here in Chicago, and parking is one of those topics where. You’re never going to have enough research to convince the people who are against removing parking requirements. And so a cult hero

Jeff Wood: could write a book and nobody would, nobody would know to read it.

Right, right.

Emily Laflamme: So I think, one of the things that we found most helpful is just the gathering of stories about places that have done this. You know, have. Implemented these policies and one the world didn’t end. And number two, it’s actually [00:33:00] more about what you’re adding to the fabric of a community than what you’re taking away.

And so the more that we can look to other cities for these types of examples, it helps us and vice versa.

Jeff Wood: You guys have a number of recommendations in the national Movement report. Is there anyone that stands out to you in terms of what you need to change at the federal level, at local levels? You

Emily Laflamme: know.

Jeff Wood: I know you wanna have all the things, right? Like I ask these questions and I get this response a lot because I want people to pick.

Emily Laflamme: You know what I’m going to say right now because of the moment that we’re in, is to continue to fund public transit to think about public transit as an asset. Across the country, no matter how big or small your city town jurisdiction is, public transit is necessary for transit oriented development and ETOD.

It’s necessary for us [00:34:00] to meet our climate goals, and it’s necessary for us to have the kinds of vibrant, thriving communities that we want.

Jeff Wood: Yes I’m, it’s been a frustrating kind of journey, since people started talking about TOD, about transit itself, right? And we’ve seen all of these cities start to build things like new light rail lines and bus rapid transit, and even improving their bus networks and those types of things.

But it’s always frustrating to see how little investment that transit gets, and then what that means for movements like yours. Which, you know, Charlotte builds one light rail line, you know, in over a 10 year period. All the development happens along that corridor. The displacement pressures are high, the cost of housing goes up partly because they’ve only funded one corridor, right?

Instead of funding a bunch of corridors. And so I think that’s one thing that’s been frustrating to me from all this is that we could talk about TOD all day, but part of the problem is that we’re just not funding the transit to where we can build more TOD near it.

Emily Laflamme: We’re not funding the transit. [00:35:00] 100%. We also think about transit and development in two completely different worlds most of the time, and I think it’s exciting to see some transit agencies start being more interested in.

ETOD, and that’s one of the pieces of the work that’s happening in Illinois actually, is to strengthen the ability for our transit agencies to do their own development and explicitly equitable transit oriented development. So I think you’re right. We have to think about this as a whole system that includes a transit system that is comprehensive and workable and is more than.

Piece by piece, and it’s the housing and all of the community development and the transit that has to be built up and coordinated together.

Jeff Wood: What surprised you from this whole process? [00:36:00]

Emily Laflamme: I love this question. I think what surprised me most was how much it all made sense. Like you said it, it actually is a little magical that.

So many people wanted to do this kind of development. It’s a huge undertaking for someone. So each developer cared so much about the project and felt so excited about the work that they were doing, and to have grants from the city support this and to have a group of incredibly talented technical assistance providers participate.

Everybody jumped in the minute we asked, do you wanna be part of this? I said, of course. This is really cool work. And back to our earlier conversation, the fact that developers were willing to talk to each other, share their stories, share their ideas, share [00:37:00] their tips, it really pushed back against the idea that of what a developer.

Who is a developer, it’s not always a corporate developer. It really can be a small business owner, a resident with an idea, and that there’s a whole network of support that’s out there, you know, including city government and everybody played their role.

Jeff Wood: How does this play into kind of larger discussions about policy that are happening around the country?

You have YIMBY movement, you have the abundance Movement. You have Equitable Communities movement. You have all kinds of ones, and sometimes they’re with each other and sometimes they talk past each other. But how does this fit into that larger constellation of groups that are just trying to figure out how to improve housing, to build more transit lines, to do more things that are positive.

Some of them might wanna do things that are negative as well, but I’m curious how it fits into that larger group of people who are trying to move the discussion forward about development [00:38:00] and cities in the United States.

Emily Laflamme: I will say I completely agree with the idea that. We need to remove barriers to development, especially community development.

That’s where I’m coming to this from. I don’t think that should be at the expense of some of the other principles that I and the folks I’ve been working with value. And so I don’t think we should move so fast that we get rid of our intentionality around equity or certain types of regulations coming from a public health.

Background. Some of those are there to protect our health and are there for a reason, but I think we can all agree that. There are systemic barriers that are preventing the types of development that we want to see happen and that those barriers are inequitable themselves because people get around them when they have money and when [00:39:00] they have access.

And so even caring about being especially intentional about the equity lens, we need to think about where those barriers are working. Against us. And I think, the neighborhoods that we’ve been working with, they’re better off by having these projects succeed. So I’m all for, you know, making it easier for this type of development to happen.

Jeff Wood: Where can we find out more about the Elevated Works Technical Assistance program, elevated Chicago? Some of the reports you all have at what’s going on at CNT? Where can we find out more?

Emily Laflamme: Find information about [email protected]. You can find information about our technical assistance program there. And then I would love for you to go to elevated chicago.org as well to find about the broader movement for ETOD in Chicago.

Jeff Wood: Awesome, and where can folks find you if you wish to be found?

Emily Laflamme: I’m on LinkedIn. Emily left Lamb and would love to connect with other people who are doing this kind of work. [00:40:00]

Jeff Wood: Awesome. Well, Emily, thanks for joining us. We really appreciate your time.

Emily Laflamme: Thanks so much, Jeff,