MIAMI LEADER:
Rebekah Monson is a Miami Leader working on problems around civic engagement. She is passionate about improving community engagement with our local government in order to solve together Miami’s most pressing issues.

WHY MIAMI?
To me, Miami is what America’s future looks like, and I find it exciting to work here. We are an incredibly diverse, fast-growing city with big challenges to solve around our infrastructure, our economy, and our environment. If Miami can step up and seize those opportunities to innovate and to lead, what we learn and invent here in the next decade can have great impact all over the world. I want to contribute to that.

WHAT IS THE MOST PRESSING ISSUE TO SOLVE ON YOUR LIST? WHY?
I’m working on problems around civic engagement at both The New Tropic and through Code for Miami. For years, civic engagement has been relatively low in Miami when compared to the rest of America. What does it take to get a city of immigrants, a young city, a rapidly changing city to stop “winging it” and start building a more cohesive future together? My business is aimed at getting Miami’s next generation of leaders plugged into the city’s challenges, its opportunities, its politics. My hobby, civic hacking, is aimed at making it easier for residents to get involved with government and to make it easier and more efficient for governments to serve residents.

HOW CAN WE SOLVE IT?
I think we need focused and prolonged collaboration. Problems like sea-level rise and transit are huge issues that require citizens and governments and organizations pushing toward the same big goals. We can bemoan this stuff and fret over it and fight about it, but ultimately, we have to agree on the things that can be done and do them. I am a pragmatist. I want to see progress, and it means we all need to spend some time and energy on stepping up to Miami’s challenges.