Overview
Sylvie Gallier Howard is Founder & CEO of Equitable Cities Consulting, a practice focused on expanding the field and impact of inclusive, equitable economic development. Sylvie has extensive experience leading organizations and diverse teams in the non-profit, private and public sectors. Sylvie has worked on projects related to digital equity and tech workforce development, best practices for embedding workforce development in innovation districts, building workforce development pipelines between schools and employers for the US Navy supply chain, and building a course for the Federal Reserve targeting small cities cohorts to develop equitable small business recovery strategies embedded in racial equity.
In her most recent tenure as Acting Commerce Director and as a cabinet member of Philadelphia’s City government, she spearheaded strategic planning and implementation processes for the City in areas of inclusive growth, workforce development, equitable entrepreneurship and economic recovery. Just weeks after the COVID-19 shut-downs and the successive civil unrest, she oversaw the creation of two distinct emergency grant programs to support small, Black and brown businesses. Other notable accomplishments include serving as co-lead for the city’s bid for Amazon’s HQ2, spearheading the development of a public-private partnership to develop the region’s global identity and overseeing the City’s first comprehensive incentive analysis. She also initiated the launch of Kiva City Philadelphia, a zero-interest micro-business loan program, and was part of a small team that led the City’s successful effort to become the first World Heritage City in the U.S.
Sylvie serves on the board of directors of the Fund for the School District of Philadelphia. She has a B.A. in International relations from Barnard College of Columbia University and an M.A. in Sociology from Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO) in Ecuador - a graduate school started by the United Nations Development Program to promote development in Latin America. Sylvie is fluent in Spanish and French.
