Group effort: Blair Taylor becomes the new chief executive of the Urban League with an agenda of 'scalable solutions' to inner city problems.

NEXT week, Blair Taylor takes over as chief executive of the Los Angeles Urban League, the local affiliate of one of the nation's oldest and most influential civil rights organizations. Taylor is succeeding John Mack, who held the post for 36 years and was long considered a leader in supporting job training, job placement and business development programs. Taylor worked in marketing and sales for IBM Corp. and PepsiCo Inc., and ran his own retail franchising company before shifting to the public sector in 2001, when he became senior staff member for then L.A. Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas. He also made an unsuccessful congressional run. Most recently, Taylor worked for College Summit, a Washington D.C.-based non-profit agency that provides admission counseling services for low-income students. During his tenure, College Summit quadrupled its outreach to more than 6,000 students in 2005.

Question: A lot of the ethnic tensions that exist in this city over the years have their origins in economic disparity. How do you ease those tensions?

Answer: What I aspire to is economic parity--having all groups working together to raise the boat of those who may live in the neighborhood adjacent to yours, both because it's the right thing to do and because it's economically in your own self-interest. If we can get to that point, a lot of the other issues melt away. One thing I really want to do here is open lines of communication with local Asian business leaders and others who have figured out some of the things about how to be economically successful while other communities in our city haven't. We do that right and it becomes a model for the rest of the country.

Q: What do you mean?

A: My hope is that the Asian community, the African-American community, the Latino community and, quite frankly, the greater Caucasian community come to understand that in this century, like never before, we all are collectively tied together. The labor pool for the new millennium has to come from the inner cities, because that's where all the untapped resources are.

Q: How does the Urban League stay relevant beyond offering job training and placement services?

A: The Urban League over the years has done some phenomenal things, both from a training perspective and from an education perspective. We run a massive Head Start operation here, we do vocational training through things like our automotive center, which is a joint effort with Toyota. What I think the Urban League needs to do in this new century is to become the fulcrum for change throughout the Los Angeles community, not by necessarily becoming the program expert in every one of these things, but by bringing together the experts and outside resources that will see this and say "I want to fund that."

Q: Does that mean the Los Angeles Urban League becomes less a group strictly addressing needs in the African-American community?

A: This organization will always have as its core service to African-Americans, increasing the prosperity and success of African-Americans in the city. That will never go away. I think that in this new century, the organization also has to be a bridge builder to other communities, not only to the majority community but also other minority communities. African-Americans can't live in isolation in this city any more than America can in the global economy.

Q: You grew up in upstate New York, but have spent most of your adult life in Los Angeles since coming here to attend UCLA. What attracted you to this city?

A: I think the opportunities out here are phenomenal for people who want to be entrepreneurs, better than anywhere else in the country. Just by the nature of the economy out here, the number of small business owners, the burgeoning population centers that we have, the underserved markets that we have here. But while we have tremendous opportunity here, I'm not convinced that we have some of the other elements that would allow communities that have long been disenfranchised to play in that game and succeed.

Q: What are those missing elements?

A: Many of the same ones that hold us back around the country: lack of education and support services for those in disadvantaged communities. If you look at countries like China or India, which are emerging as economic players, you see that they've committed themselves to a fully educated workforce. They realize that their economy is only as strong as the weakest link in their human infrastructure. We have all these dormant resources, assets we haven't tapped yet, and that is our inner city communities.

Q: What is L.A.'s role in this?

A: We should be on the leading edge of creating scalable systemic solutions to inner city problems. Maybe it starts by us picking one area, a definable neighborhood, apply our solution and then work to replicate that. We need to bring together scalable solutions and then figure out then how to roll that out. I think Los Angeles is poised to lead the nation in that.

Q: Why is that?

A: Two reasons. The number of new residents who are open to change and not bound by tradition is a strategic advantage. In addition, there are the advantages that come from our diversity. When you bring diverse viewpoints to the table, if you can focus them on a problem instead of combating each other, you come up with a better solution. That's the real advantage of diversity in the workplace.

Q: How important is increasing access to capital?

A: Access to capital only works when somebody has the training and capability and support and infrastructure to be able to make a run for it once you give them the capital. One of the big differences between someone who succeeds and someone who doesn't is that the person who ultimately succeeds had fallback plans, a great college education that they can fall back on, a family structure where someone could make calls for them if they were in trouble. What we lack quite often on our inner city communities are fallback plans.

Q: L.A. has a new mayor who says he wants to reach out to all ethnic groups. What opportunities does that present to you?

A: I am extremely excited about the prospects of working collaboratively with Antonio Villaraigosa, not just because he's a Latino, but because I believe that he is ready and willing to accept any reasonable idea that comes forward that can be realistically executed.

Q: Are there groups within the African-American community whom you believe should become more involved in the Urban League?

A: There's an untapped resource in our community: the 35-to-50 year olds, who have benefited greatly from the advances of the last few decades, who got their advanced degrees, but may not feel fully tapped into the civil rights issues and may not see the relevance of organizations like the Urban League today. I'm committed to figuring out ways to make this organization relevant to their own lives.

Q: You come from a mostly business background. What led you to the non-profit sector?

A: I'd always been doing it throughout my career, thinking of ways to give back to my community, When I was at Pepsi, I was the one working to create adopt-a-school programs. When I had my own business, I was on boards, driving community change. I think I always knew I would end up in the social change space, either in a not-for-profit type of situation or serving in public office.

Q: Did you have some role models or mentors growing up that led you in that direction?

A: My parents, both of whom were very active in the Urban League in New York. My mother was the first African-American elected to the town board in Newcastle, N.Y.--that's a city council type position in the town where I grew up. My father ran for the school board in New York City--didn't win, but stayed very active in organizations. I worked in the office of Assemblyman Mark Ridley-Thomas when he was on the Los Angeles City Council, and ran for office myself, in the 32nd Congressional District.

Q: What are your ties to John Mack?

A:. when I was in business school at UCLA, I asked John Mack to come in and speak to fellow students at the Anderson School and he gave a wonderful speech. That was my first introduction to John and we've been friends every since.

Blair Taylor

Title: Chief Executive (as of Nov. 14)

Organization: Los Angeles Urban League

Born: 1963, New York

Education: B.A. in economics from Amherst College in Amherst, Mass.; MBA in marketing and entrepreneurial studies from UCLA's Anderson Graduate School of Management

Career Turning Point: Becoming executive vice president of a non-profit agency that provides admission counseling services for low-income students

Most Admired People: Parents Nell and Tim Taylor; civil rights era leaders Martin Luther King, John Lewis and John Mack

Personal: Wife, three children

Hobbies: Biking and endurance races