Marvin Nesbitt Jr
President
Focused Community Strategies (FCS)
Marvin Nesbitt, Jr. serves as the President of Focused Community Strategies (FCS), bringing over 20 years of dedicated experience in community development and social services. Since joining FCS in February 2023 as the Senior Director of Community Development, Marvin’s leadership and deep commitment to neighborhood transformation led to his appointment as Interim President in June 2025, and subsequently, his unanimous selection as permanent President on September 3, 2025.
Throughout his career, Marvin has been a steadfast advocate for society’s most vulnerable, focusing on creating thriving communities and healthy systems. His vision for FCS is rooted in expanding affordable housing options—including single-family and mixed-use developments—to ensure longtime neighbors in Historic South Atlanta and Thomasville Heights can stay and flourish.
Before joining FCS, Marvin held several key leadership roles, including Director of Resident Wellness & Empowerment with the Virgin Islands Housing Authority (VIHA), VP of Development & Community Engagement with the Atlanta Center for Self Sufficiency (ACSS), and Senior VP & Chief Program Officer with Action Ministries, Inc. He also spent 12 years with the Atlanta Housing Authority (AHA) overseeing human development and resident engagement.
Marvin holds a Bachelor’s degree from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and an MSW from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
10:15 am - 11:30 am ET
Community of Practice Workshops I-VI: Small Group Breakouts @ 2nd Floor
Good Food, Good Jobs, Strong Neighborhoods: Peer-Led Approaches to Healthy Food Access & Prosperous Neighborhoods
Room: Grand 6
Learn from practitioners from within and beyond the Purpose Built network about community designed approaches to healthy food access—and the economic pathways they create. Presenters will offer brief overviews of their locally-built models: a food co-op in South Atlanta; a commercial kitchen incubation in Grand Rapids; and an urban farm developed in the heart of Houston that supplies affordable, fresh and culturally significant produce to a local neighborhood grocery store while also generating job opportunities and community centered gathering space for residents. After that, participants will move into small group conversations for honest, practical discussion about implementation, partnerships, and lessons learned.
You’ll learn from peers who are doing the work, explore what’s transferable to your context, and leave with concrete, right sized next steps. A simple reflection tool will help you anchor insights to your neighborhood’s realities and identify actions to take when you return home.
11:00 am - 12:30 am ET
Workshops I-VI: Block II
Shifting and Sharing Power: Co-Governance Strategies for Centering Residents
Room: Grand 7
Race Forward defines co-governance as: a collection of participatory models and practices in which government and communities intentionally aim to share power to drive fair and just outcomes. A crucial component of the Purpose Built model is that residents must be central to neighborhood transformation efforts – as visionaries, co-designers, and decision-makers. But how do you bring together a diverse set of collaborators across sectors, experiences, and institutional power while remaining focused on what benefits neighbors the most? Highlighting the amazing work happening in Atlanta’s Thomasville Heights neighborhood (one of seven communities part of the new Atlanta Neighborhood Reinvestment Initiative), three practitioners will share what it takes to move co-governance from theory to action and impact.
