our team

New Solutions Group's three partners have decades of combined experience planning, launching, leading, and supporting nonprofit organizations and programs dedicated to improving life in cities.

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Sloan Herrick

Sloan is a master in organizing teams, managing work flow, and designing programs for successful implementation. 

As a consultant to Global Detroit, Sloan optimizes operations performance, leads employees to encourage maximum performance and dedication, ensures goals are being met and programs adapted/adjusted as needed. She plans for for sustainable growth, develops the infrastructure to scale programs, identifies talent/capacity gaps, and spearheads staff development. Sloan is a key thought partner to the Welcoming Economies Global Network, a project of Welcoming America in partnership with Global Detroit. In this capacity Sloan recently authored Seeds of Growth a tool that introduces practical ways to leverage the opportunities that exist when you include immigrant entrepreneurs in local economic development strategies and programs.

In addition to her leadership at Global Detroit, Sloan provides strategic direction to the Build from Within Alliance, a multi-city collaboration that is adapting the Neighborhood Development Center's approach to place-based entrepreneur-focused economic development for low and very-low income people of color and immigrant communities. 

Sloan led much of our work for the Community Development Advocates of Detroit--especially helping to increase its relevance again by creating a membership system that worked and reengaging its constituency to inspire confidence and trust in the organization's capacity to spark transformative change in Detroit neighborhoods.

Before joining New Solutions Group, Sloan did large-scale project management in the private sector. But what prepared her most for a results-driven career was campaign management. In 2010, she led a State Senate Campaign in an all Detroit district comprised largely of low-income and minority residents. While raising over $60,000 for this effort, Sloan organized and implemented a direct voter contact strategy that touched over 10,000 households, refined the candidate’s policy platform, and built strong, strategic partnerships with block clubs and grassroots advocacy groups, which gave her a solid background in political relationships and constituents’ needs.  

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Sarah Szurpicki

Sarah specializes in working with youth-serving organizations, as well as urban policy and placemaking. She's most passionate about improving life outcomes for kids. She loves a well-designed process and a well-facilitated meeting (and can provide both).

Sarah enjoys handling projects where two types of experience--local and community-based knowledge and expert policy or systems analysis--need to be blended together for project success. She is skilled in layering quantitative with qualitative research to reach strategic directions that make sense.  Sarah led or leads our work for:

  • Connect Detroit
  • Pew Charitable Trusts
  • Michigan Future, Inc.
  • Detroit Children's Fund
  • Let's Save Michigan
  • Michigan Future Schools
  • Michigan Municipal League

Before joining New Solutions, Sarah ran GLUE, the Great Lakes Urban Exchange, a network of young leaders committed to revitalizing the cities of the Great Lakes region (an organization she co-founded). In 2009, Sarah was recognized as one of Crain’s Detroit Business’s “20 in their 20s”, and chosen as a Next American City“Vanguard,” a designation of young urban leaders. In January 2010, Sarah was a member of a coalition that released the Detroit Declaration, a set of 12 principles and a call to action that will set Detroit on a path to prosperity. She is a 2012 graduate of the Great Lakes Leadership Academy Leadership Advancement Program.

She graduated from Harvard University with a BA in Environmental Science and Public Policy. Her honors thesis focused on public participation and activism in environmental science.

 

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    steve tobocman

    Steve has launched innovative nonprofit enterprises in community development, immigrant economic development, and other arenas, with vision, creativity, and passion. Since 2009, Steve has led Global Detroit, a regional economic revitalization strategy mobilizing Metro Detroit’s immigrant potential, as a consultant with New Solutions Group. Global Detroit is nationally recognized as an innovator and expert in leveraging international talent to fill regional businesses’ unmet talent needs, catalyzing the growth and development of immigrant entrepreneurs, and building a global region with competitive advantages in job creation, business growth, and community development.

    Steve led the creation and growth of the Welcoming Economies (WE) Global Network, a ten-state regional network of 20+ local immigrant economic development peer initiatives is helping to make the Rust Belt a leader in immigrant innovation. Steve also helped to develop the Building from Within Alliance, a national network of local micro-enterprise initiatives targeting immigrants and low-income communities of color.

    In addition to his leadership in the nonprofit sphere, from 2003-2008, Steve served in the State House. In his last term served as the Majority Floor Leader, the second-ranking position in the Michigan House.

    Steve also co-directs the Michigan Political Leadership Program, a bipartisan political leadership training program.