Jeanette Pierce
Founder and President of City Institute
Jeanette Pierce is a social entrepreneur and lifelong city resident who grew up on the city’s Eastside. She is a data nerd that loves cities and an engaging storyteller with a passion for providing context around complex issues.
She founded the City Institute to help cities with attraction & retention by ensuring people understand and appreciate where they live and work. She helps cities tell their story so more locals and newcomers feel connected to, and truly care about, their community. When people care about where they live they are more invested in supporting small businesses, volunteering at nonprofit organizations, collaborating with neighbors throughout the city, and building an equitable and thriving future.
Since 2005, Jeanette has used experiential learning and non-traditional tours to help more than 150,000 locals and newcomers in Detroit love where they live and work by teaching them about Detroit’s assets, small businesses, historic neighborhoods, city planning & development policies and innovative solutions to the challenges the city faces.
By providing this deeper understanding, residents and stakeholders are inspired to be a part of building an equitable and thriving Detroit.
Jeanette and her team continue to work with companies in Detroit to help their employees have a deeper understanding and connection to Detroit. They combine observations of current conditions, historical facts and recent statistics with powerful anecdotes and individual stories of Detroiters to help clients understand the complexity and dynamism of the city of Detroit.
Jeanette believes that when more people are informed and engaged in shaping a place’s future, there is a much better chance of that city becoming an equitable and thriving place for all.
She has presented at more than 200 events including Atlantic Magazine’s CityLab Conference, Full Frame Initiative’s Charlotte Summit, Governor’s Economic Summit, Downtown Las Vegas Annual Meeting and the Oregon Main Street Conference.
She was honored as one of the Top 50 Women Leaders of Michigan in 2022, as one of the Top Forty under 40 by Crain’s Detroit Business, as a Thirty in their 30’s by DBusiness Magazine, and was awarded the Shining Light Future Leader Award from the Detroit Free Press as well as receiving many other recognitions and awards.
She serves on the Boards of the Michigan Municipal League Foundation and Detroit Historical Society.
She has a bachelor’s of arts degree in communication from Aquinas College, and lives with her husband and 4-year od triplets on Detroit’s Eastside.
