About Bordercross

Corinna Moebius | Hector Fernando Burga | Mario Yanez

Corinna J. Moebius, M.A.
President/CEO

A Connector and Social Entrepreneur, Corinna Moebius is dedicated to helping communities, organizations and businesses become more inclusive, creative and sustainable. She specializes in reaching and engaging diverse stakeholders (online and face-to-face), asset-based community development, and building social and creative capital.

She founded Bordercross Communications as a Sole Proprietorship in 1997, with clients represent multiple sectors: government, non-profit, academic, business, civic. After moving to Miami, she renamed and restructured the business as Bordercross Enterprises, LLC.

current work

Corinna is dividing her time between consulting work and growing Bordercross to include two additional business units: Miami.Bordercross.com (an online magazine and guide) and Rhythms of a City Tours and Events.

She is one of the founding board members of the Urban Paradise Guild, an innovative young organization engaged in projects to restore South Florida's native habitat and coastal ecosystems.

Before returning to running her business full time (in January 2009), Corinna was director of Imagine Miami, an initiative to build civic engagement and community involvement in Miami-Dade County, Florida. Imagine Miami is an initiative of the nonprofit Human Services Coalition (HSC), where Corinna also served as an internal consultant for the organization's new nonprofit incubator for social impact. In addition, she was one of a select number of lead consultants participating in the Miami NICE (nonprofit capacity building) program of the C-One Center for Nonprofit Effectiveness.

Corinna was selected as one of the experts profiled in the book Becoming an Urban Planner: A Guide to Careers in Urban Planning (Wiley & Sons) for her community engagement work in the field of planning. She will be a panelist at the 2010 conference of the American Planning Association.

placemaking and community participation

As director of Imagine Miami, Corinna led a series of Changemaker Conferences including one that focused on placemaking and included workshops by Project for Public Spaces and PolicyLink.

Previously based in Washington, DC, she served as a community engagement consultant for a number of city and neighborhood planning projects in Washington, DC, most significantly the 2006 revision of Washington, DC’s Comprehensive Plan, the land use policies that will shape the District over the next 20 years. She developed the core public outreach and participation strategy for the Plan, aimed at reaching and engaging diverse stakeholders in the process.

Corinna also initiated the first-ever collaboration between DC's Office of Planning and Office on Latino Affairs, leading to the city’s first roundtable of local Hispanic leaders and outreach workers to discuss strategies for building Hispanic/Latino engagement in community planning efforts.

In Miami, Corinna leads walking and bus tours of local ethnic business districts (particularly Little Havana) in conjunction with major conferences. Her clients have included LISC (the nation's major community development organization) for their conference on revitalizing urban business districts (2006) and We Media (an international conference on participatory media) (2008, 2009).

Corinna is a regular presenter at conferences across the U.S., such as Partners for Livable Community's Cultivating Creative Communities: Local Solutions for Global Success, the LISC Forum on revitalizing urban business districts, Building Connected Communities and Neighborhoods USA.

As the Chair of the Economic Diversification Committee for the Adams Morgan Main Street in Washington, DC, Corinna launched the business district's first resource-sharing mixers for small business owners. Corinna was also a faculty member for the National Building Museum's Design Apprenticeship (DAP) program and CityVisions program for urban youth.

technology and placemaking

As a consultant, Corinna developed and helped manage a national youth civic engagement program (Youth Visions for Stronger Neighborhoods) implemented in low-income neighborhoods across the U.S. Through the program, youth in after-school programs find and document community assets using multimedia (Web, Powerpoint and video) and propose strategies for transforming their neighborhood through civic action.

For the DC firm Justice & Sustainability Associates, LLC, she also developed and managed Public Space Forum, a Website that made it easy for local residents to find and discuss information on local planning projects.

Internet strategies

Corinna's experience in the Internet industry and digital divide issues dates back to 1996. She was the Managing Editor for a Best of the Web directory, director of interactive media for an international youth news organization (now Children's PressLine), and director of communications at a DotCom aimed at women professionals and business owners.

In 1997, she co-produced the nation's first symposium on Internet opportunities for African-Americans, held at Howard University. During the 2003 Congressional Black Caucus, she managed the national awards program for community technology leaders.

Corinna developed and taught the first-ever course on strategic Web site planning (and a course on Internet marketing) for Georgetown University's Center for Continuing & Professional Education. She has also conducted trainings for the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce, the Women's Business Center, the Women's Information Network and the U.S. Department of Justice.

creative and inclusive events

An advocate for building creative and social capital, Corinna created and coordinated Imagine Miami’s Summit on Arts, Culture & Civic Engagement, which Americans for the Arts (a partner) called “groundbreaking” and praised for having "opened many doors of opportunity to grow a strong network that will foster new collaborations …”

Corinna is the former executive director of Viernes Culturales/Cultural Fridays, the much-loved monthly cultural arts festival in Miami's Little Havana neighborhood. Her improvements to the layout, programming and vendor process benefitted residents, participating artists, small business owners and other stakeholders.

In 2005, she also planned, directed and coordinated Washington, DC's largest and most popular neighborhood festival (Adams Morgan Day), a celebration of the city's most diverse neighborhood. (See photos of the festival). Corinna added a "Dance Plaza" feature to the festival, which has since become one of the most popular elements of this annual event. The 2005 festival brought a diverse crowd of nearly 24,000 attendees to enjoy music, dance, art, crafts and food, and was widely considered the most successful Adams Morgan Day in more than a decade.

Corinna has also produced community arts projects on her own, such as concerts in local parks featuring Afro-Cuban folkloric music and dance.

environment and sustainability

Corinna is certified in Permaculture Design: an "ecological design system for sustainability in all aspects of human endeavor." She is active in the local movement to create more sustainable food networks in South Florida.

She was the Producer for a documentary on local food systems, which was screened at one of the Imagine Miami Changemaker Summits she directed in 2009. The film was edited by Devin Browne, a Public Ally. Corinna also introduced the Wholesome Wave Foundation to the Overtown Cookbook Project at Booker T. Washington High School, which sparked a collaboration between the project and a new farmer's market in Overtown where only locally grown food will be sold and where the Foundation will double the value of food stamps used to buy the locally grown produce.

Corinna grew up with an awareness of environmental practices, and as an 8th grader spent an entire semester in an immersive environmental education program (Ecology Box). She had taken courses in Alternative Energy and Environmental Science by the time she graduated high school.

education

Corinna earned her Master's in Communication Studies, with Distinction, at California State University, Northridge. She focused her studies on the importance of place to identity, and on the role of gathering places for marginalized groups.

Her thesis developed a theory of "placing" and examined the role of a key campus gathering place for students of African descent. The "Design" section is required reading for a Cultural Anthropology course at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign; the thesis was also cited in "Difference in Public Relations Research: A Case for Introducing Critical Race Theory." She earned the university's Spirit of Educational Equity Award in recognition for her scholarship.

She designed her interdisciplinary undergraduate degree in Communications and Anthropology (minor in Geography) at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. As a student, she was also a researcher and cartographer for the Historical Atlas of Massachusetts.

Corinna is a graduate of the Summer Institute for Arts Management at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She also received a Certificate in Visionary Leadership from the Center for Visionary Leadership and as mentioned previous is certified in Permaculture Design through The Permaculture Guild.

personal interests

Corinna is an aficianado of Afro-Cuban folkloric dance, and is the creator/manager of the Facebook group "We Love Afro-Cuban Dance." She was a founding member and singer/dancer with the DC area's first Afro-Cuban folkloric dance ensemble, AshéMoyubbá (currently Alafia Dance Ensemble). She is also a former board member of the Latin American Folk Institute.

As a youth and young adult Corinna was a semi-professional and award-winning French horn player who attended the prestigious Tanglewood Institute of the Arts and performed on tour in Eastern Europe.