November 2000 · City Council 1999-2007
Presenting an Award to Archbishop Desmond Tutu in Hong Kong
In November 2000, I traveled to Hong Kong to present an award to Archbishop Desmond Tutu on behalf of People to People International.
If you do not know who Desmond Tutu was, here is the short version: he won the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize as a leader of the nonviolent campaign against apartheid in South Africa. He is one of the most consequential moral leaders of the twentieth century.
I stood on a stage in Hong Kong and presented an award to that man.
How A Kansas City Councilman Got To Hong Kong
People to People International was founded by President Eisenhower in 1956 to promote international understanding through direct citizen-to-citizen contact. I served on the PTPI Board of Trustees, which gave me a platform for international engagement that most city council members never access.
The invitation to present an award to Archbishop Tutu came through my PTPI involvement. As a member of People to People International's worldwide Board of Directors, I joined other board members in presenting the Eisenhower Medallion, the organization's highest award, to Archbishop Tutu.
Standing on that stage, presenting that award, was one of the most profound experiences of my life. Not because of the ceremony itself, but because of what it represented. A kid from Section 8 housing in Kansas City was honoring a Nobel laureate in Hong Kong. That trajectory was not accidental. It was the result of decades of work, education, and a refusal to accept limits that others imposed.
The International Dimension
I have traveled to over 50 countries. That is not a vacation log. It is an education. In every country I visited, I studied housing systems, urban planning approaches, community development models, and governance structures. I brought those lessons back to Kansas City and applied them to real projects.
The Hong Kong trip and the Tutu presentation were part of a broader pattern of international engagement that included leading a delegation to Cuba, participating in trade missions to Mexico and Costa Rica, and engaging with municipal leaders across multiple continents.
This international experience gives The Nash Group a perspective that most domestic development firms do not have. We understand that the affordable housing crisis is not uniquely American. Other countries have developed innovative approaches to housing finance, community development, and transit oriented planning that are directly applicable to the challenges we face here.
What Archbishop Tutu Represented
Tutu's life was proof that moral clarity and strategic action can dismantle unjust systems. Apartheid seemed permanent until it was not. The system that sustained it seemed too powerful to challenge until people challenged it anyway.
I have carried that lesson throughout my career. When people told me that 39th and Prospect could not be transformed, I stood at that intersection and proved them wrong. When people said that firefighters' working conditions could not be improved, I slept in the fire stations until voters approved a fire sales tax projected to raise $276 million. When people said that a kid from Section 8 could not build a national development firm, I built one.
The connection between Tutu's work and mine is not a comparison of scale. It is a shared conviction that unjust conditions are not permanent and that individuals who refuse to accept them can create change.
Kansas City's Missouri State Post and Kansas City Globe both covered the trip and the presentation. Multiple outlets covered the story because it was remarkable by any standard: a sitting Kansas City council member on a world stage, honoring one of the most respected moral leaders in modern history.
That is who we are. Not just local developers with local knowledge. Leaders with a global perspective and a local commitment.
This is what we mean by community engagement.
Not a meeting series. Presence, on their schedule, until something changes.