About the Author

Eric Hoddersen is a thirty-year Cleveland resident who dedicated much of his career to Cleveland’s community development and strengthening its neighborhoods.  He was formerly a Job Corps Counselor; Teamster Union organizer; Founding Director of Union-Miles Development Corporation; Project Manager of Gordon Square Arcade; Director, Cleveland Neighborhood Partnership Program, and most notably, CEO and President of the Neighborhood Progress, Inc., Village Capital, and New Village Corporation, where he retired after 21 years in 2010.   Mr. Hoddersen was also the Vice Chair of the Ohio CDC Association and of the Community Development Partnership Network (national).  He served as a Board member on St. Luke’s Foundation, ShoreBank Cleveland, and the Cleveland School Board Bond Accountability Commission.

He received his BA in anthropology from the University of Washington. He studied political economy at the New School for Social Research and earned a CMN in Non-Profit Management at Case Western Reserve University.  His Fellowships include: Fannie Mae Fellow at Harvard Kennedy School; and Senior Urban Planning Fellow at the German Marshall Fund, MIT School of Urban Planning, and Cleveland State University’s Levin College (now known as Maxine Goodman Levin School of Urban Affairs).

The author lives with his wife Carolyn Platt in the Buckeye-Shaker neighborhood.

To contact the author, please email him at erhod45@gmail.com.