Team

Executive Director

Dasjon Jordan

Dasjon Jordan is an organizer, designer, and planner from New Orleans. He has worked with public agencies, cities, community-based organizations and the private sector on place-based economic development strategies in the U.S., South Africa and Mexico. Dasjon specializes in commercial district  revitalization focusing on small business financial and marketing ecosystems, restorative design strategies, and neighborhood cultural planning.

Prior to returning to BCC, Dasjon was the Strategy and Development Officer for the Ujamaa Economic Development Corporation. Also, Dasjon was a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) CoLab (Community Innovators Lab) post-graduate fellow. His work focused on growing the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT, student engagement in racial and economic justice in practice and pedagogy through CoLab. Dasjon returns to lead BCC, after working as the Commercial Revitalization Coordinator at Broad Community Connections in 2016. He holds a master’s of city planning from MIT and a bachelor’s of architecture from Louisiana State University.

Dasjon believes in people and trusting relationships to forge civic power and make things happen. BCC’s future with Dasjon is rooted in relationships and driven by bold imagination.

Executive Assistant

Sonali Fernando

Sonali’s experiences as a brand director, restaurant owner-operator, and cultural curator enable her to  create uniquely memorable projects and brand identities for businesses and organizations. She specializes in co-creation and activation of organizational values. Sonali believes these values are expressed equally through standard operating procedures, communication methods, and workflow design as well as front-facing events, services, and marketing. She holds a BS in Music Business from Loyola University New Orleans.

Sonali joins BCC after serving as the inaugural Brand Director to Ace Hotel’s New Orleans location. Before that, she owned and operated a whiskey-focused gastro pub in the Marigny neighborhood of New Orleans. Both ventures gave Sonali extensive experience in managing large teams of diverse stakeholders. Most importantly,  she deepened her appreciation and knowledge of local economies and their relationship to and impact on physical neighborhoods, individual residents, and culture-at-large.

Sonali believes in the power to transform the future through a radical and collaborative imagination paired with discipline and integrity of process.

Project Manager

Chris Daemmrich

Chris Daemmrich is a designer and organizer raised in Austin, Texas, on Tonkawa land.  He has worked in architectural, development, advocacy and political organizations in New Orleans, across Louisiana, and throughout the US. Chris studied architecture and political science on Chitimacha, Choctaw and Houma land at Tulane University, graduating in 2017 with a master's degree in architecture and a bachelor's degree in political science.

Chris is a National Organization of Minority Architects (NOMA) Project Pipeline mentor, serves on the boards of NOMA Louisiana and of the Association for Community Design, co-coordinates Architecture Lobby's Racial Justice Working Group, and co-facilitates the design education activist collective Emergent Grounds for Design Education. In his teaching at Tulane and through his company, the Collaborative Design Workshop, Chris prepares students and professionals to challenge unjust systems. A resident of New Orleans since 2012, Chris has lived in the Broad Street neighborhoods since 2018.

Chris is inspired in his work by his grandmother, Ellen Loeb, a public schoolteacher in Montgomery, Alabama, and by her father, Isidore Green, owner of a retail clothing store in downtown Bessemer, Alabama in the early 20th century."

Our Board

Broad Community Connections’ board deliberately brings together the diverse set of interests and stakeholders on Broad Street and in the surrounding communities, including the businesses and property owners, residents, organizations, and institutions.

Our Partners

Other Partners

  • Kresge Foundation
  • W.K. Kellogg Foundation
  • Greater New Orleans Foundation
  • New Orleans Redevelopment Authority
  • Louisiana Main Street  
  • JP Morgan Chase Foundation
  • Foundation for Louisiana
  • Newman’s Own Foundation
  • Emeril Lagasse Foundation