Illustration by Melanie Snead
Cynthia Newbille grew up in Whitcomb Court, part of the East End community where she has served as 7th District representative on Richmond City Council since 2009. Newbille, who has dedicated her career to solving challenges in areas such as education and public health, is one of nine recipients of this year's YWCA of Richmond Outstanding Women Awards, to be presented on April 27. On a drizzly Saturday, Newbille points at construction near North 25th Street and Nine Mile Road, a site that will be transformed into the Church Hill North retail center by year’s end. Soon, a grocery store, culinary school and health center will be within reach of residents in an area currently defined as a food desert. It’s a sign of progress, Newbille says.
The city’s most urgent priority is education, as well as public safety and public health — and they’re intimately intertwined.
The biggest challenge I face on City Council is while we’re a phenomenal city … one out of four persons who reside in our community is in poverty. That’s a challenging backdrop, but therein also lies the opportunity to work together to figure out how to ensure we have the revenue to address this myriad of challenges, and how do we prioritize.
I live in the East End. I could walk here, to Front Porch [Café]; I live right off Nine Mile Road on 27th [Street].
Something people should know about me is I’m a vegetarian.
I never get tired of listening to and trying to resolve citizen and community concerns and challenges.
The book I’m reading now is “Just a Sister Away: A Womanist Vision of Women’s Relationships in the Bible” by Renita J. Weems.
I ran for public office because it’s truly an opportunity to serve a community and city that I grew up in, attended school in, worked in … I went off to college and had the opportunity to work in different places, but coming back home in ’96, and coming back to work in the district — the opportunity presented itself when [former council member Delores] McQuinn went on to serve in the General Assembly.
I find inspiration in so many people whose shoulders I stand on from the past and the present who were tirelessly, fearlessly, with so few resources, making sacrifices to accomplish so much. … There’s so many of them: sheros, heroes, I could go through a list of them, but we’d be here until tomorrow.
One of my proudest moments is being one of the six founders of the SisterFund giving circle. It’s the Community Foundation’s third giving circle, where we decided to pool our resources so we could have greater impact, in terms of supporting nonprofit organizations that really work to empower and elevate African-American girls and women throughout the city. We were established in 2015 and made two annual grants — $20,000 each year — and we’re gearing up for our third grant process this year.
When all else fails, I pray, I plan, I proceed.
