Nancy Hooff
COMMENCEMENT EXERCISES, MAY 20, 2018
Nancy Hooff ’75
Doctor of Social Enterpreneurship
Citation presented by Anthony Underwood
Associate Professor of Economics
Conferring of the degree by Margee M. Ensign, President
Ms. Hooff, in an era when urban redevelopment is often synonymous with gentrification, through which poor minority residents are displaced by more affluent white residents, you have pushed back. In 2000, you co-founded Somerset Development Company, with a portfolio now valued at $429 million with over 1,750 multifamily residential units, retail spaces and community buildings. Somerset leverages the powerful incentives toward gentrification in Washington, D.C., and Baltimore to provide more affordable housing—not take it away. By combining the renovation and preservation of historic properties with affordable housing and community outreach, Somerset promotes healthy, mixed-income communities located in transit-oriented locations.
That is social entrepreneurship.
Successful redevelopment requires social dialogue. Community engagement. To me, this has been the key to your success at Somerset. Most recently, in a joint venture you completed a project called Portner Flats in the trendy 14th Street corridor in D.C. You were successful in gaining broad neighborhood support for the redevelopment into a new mixed-income, mixed-use property to preserve the affordability for the original tenants and double the number of affordable housing units. Previously, this site was a distressed 48-unit, Section 8, garden-style housing complex. Redevelopment began in July 2016, but discussions with the existing tenants began as far back as 2008. You offered the tenants several possible options for the development, “affordable units scattered among the market-rate units or having their own building.” Through this dialogue, you found that existing tenants wanted “a separate building with an entrance on V Street, since it’s quieter” and “a playground and an after-school program.” That is community engagement. The former became the redevelopment plan, the latter was funded by using 15 percent of the profits from the development.
That is shared value.
These same residents received support services during their temporary off-site relocation during construction and now again during their return to Portner Flats.
That is social entrepreneurship.
I’m sure some of this entrepreneurial spirit and pursuit of sustainable development came from your time at Dickinson, from which you graduated in 1975 with a degree in history. You then went on to receive a master’s in law and diplomacy from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University. After that, but prior to Somerset, you worked as a foreign service officer and contractor with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), managing programs in local government, democracy, urban development and housing—all experiences that I am sure reinforced the importance of social dialogue in making change.
That is social entrepreneurship
President Ensign, for her entrepreneurial spirit, for her dedication to the creation of social value through community engagement, and for her commitment to Dickinson College and this community, I am proud to present Nancy Hooff, class of 1975, as a candidate for the honorary degree of Doctor of Social Entrepreneurship.
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Nancy Hooff, upon the recommendation of the Faculty to the Board of Trustees, and by its mandamus, I confer upon you the Degree of Doctor of Social Entrepreneurship, honoris causa, with all the rights, privileges and distinction thereunto appertaining, in token of which I present you with this diploma and cause you to be invested with the hood of Dickinson College appropriate to the degree.