The City of Richmond has begun an initiative to leverage area resources, both internal to City Hall as well as external, to build community support, awareness and involvement at addressing these challenges. Through our partnership with Virginia Commonwealth University, City leadership was able to capitalize on resources not typically available for them to investigate possible solutions to challenges facing our community. Through creating direct yet open ended capstone projects for Master's degree programs, Richmond has been able to capitalize on their educational programs with students that are eager to support creative projects and find actionable recommendations to overcome obstacles and challenges.