Anne Whitlock has served as Founding Director of Connect Community since 2015, a holistic revitalization effort in the Gulfton/Sharpstown region of Houston, Texas following the Purpose Built Communities development model. Her organization focuses on building great communities by wrapping around schools to build aligned health and wellness infrastructure, economic vitality, a cradle to career education pipeline, and mixed income housing. She has the privilege of
working with newcomers from all over the globe who have landed in this neighborhood to seek better opportunities for themselves and their families.
Prior to Connect Community, Anne was the Program Director for the Community Clinic Funders' Collaborative at the Harris County Healthcare Alliance working to improve sustainability and collaboration in the Houston healthcare safety net system. She led the America's Project seminar for Young Leaders from throughout Latin America at Rice University’s Baker Institute. She also rode the dotcom era boom and bust in the mid-90s and survived her husband’s congressional campaign in 2008. She currently serves on the boards of the Buffalo Bayou Partnership, UT Children's Learning Institute and Brazos Bookstore and was a past board director at Vecino Health Center and the East End Foundation.
Anne has lived and worked in five countries, starting in the Peace Corps in Mali, West Africa and then moving to Chad, Costa Rica, Mexico before moving back to the U.S. She speaks fluent Spanish, some French and a smattering of Bambara. These experiences gave her a sense of what it's like to be pulled from one’s roots and transported to a new land with cultural and language barriers.
Anne is married with three adult children and lives in a converted fire station in the East End of Houston.