Upisode 41: Organizer and real estate strategist Bo Zhang talks about how her experience in rural Japan shaped her sense of community — and how lack of community creates trauma. Bo fills Ian in on her family struggles and how they impacted her decision to enter a technical career; they discuss the difference between “free market” and “capitalism,” what Bo thinks was a major political failure on her part, and the Bramble Project, a group focusing on the corners of the real estate industry that intersect with community development and neighborhood-level social structure.
About Boting Zhang
Bo Zhang, a real estate strategist for the Seattle city government, conducts what she calls “little experiments in collective belonging” and writes in search of healing truths about the relationship between public and private life at The Bramble Project, through which she recently oversaw a voter reconciliation project called Between Americans. Beyond government, she has served in community groups and in both non-profit and private development. She’s also part of the inaugural Build Art Space Equitably cohort, which brings together people of color from the artist and development communities to cross-pollinate and help each other’s ideas manifest into physical form.
