Don Williams at the DRT

Don Williams, Chairman Emeritus of Trammell Crow gave an excellent presentation to the DRT on the state of the Dallas ISD and his work in improving the school system through Dallas Achieves.

Don Williams is Dallas’ social conscience.

In the last 12 years, the 65-year-old has led five major community task forces, including his current assignment to fix the Dallas Independent School District.

The former chief executive of Trammell Crow Co. started the Foundation for Community Empowerment in 1995. Its mission is to help Dallas’ forgotten low-income neighborhoods better themselves.

“I’m a real oddball in Dallas: a Democrat in the business community,” he says with a laugh.

He’s also an establishment guy who often sounds anti-establishment.

An example: “The North Dallas voyeurism of taking a turkey to ‘po’ folk’ at Thanksgiving and then going to a cocktail party at the Dallas Country Club to talk about it is profoundly offensive to the poor.”

Yet I’ve never heard anyone speak disparagingly about the guy.

“When it comes to altruism, I’ll put Don Williams up to anyone,” says social entrepreneur Todd Wagner.

Mr. Williams grew up in a lower-middle-class family in the multicultural community of Roswell, N.M.

“I don’t know if this qualifies as an epiphany, but I remember it as clearly as the day it happened,” Mr. Williams says.

His All-Star Little League team stopped at a roadside diner on its way to the playoffs. The sixth-grade rainbow coalition of Anglos, Hispanics and blacks was thrilled to be eating out. Nearly everybody ordered chicken-fried steak.

But as the owner was about to serve the meals, he told the coach that the black boys had to eat in the kitchen.

A heated argument ensued, and the hungry group got back on the bus. “We found a restaurant where the whole team could eat,” Mr. Williams says.

“From an early age, I was sensitive to discrimination against ethnic minorities and to women’s issues. That has shaped my whole life and career.”

Early in his nonprofit life, he made “every mistake conceivable of a well-intentioned white boy going into the ‘hood. I got off on the wrong foot, with the wrong ideas and the wrong people – which is a bad mix.”

That’s because he tried to tackle it like a business problem, from the outside in.

“The long-term sustainable answer is community empowerment.

“Every community has the most remarkable, heroic people who know the problems and are already doing good work, but they lack resources. We identify those people and help them do their thing.

“You ask me deep in my heart what motivates me. That’s what it is.”