Celebration for Resilience

Commemorating past achievements and future initiatives as a model for how to adapt.

Gathering a room full of nearly 300 people passionate about communitychange and resilience is always exciting. Throw in a beautiful location like theDesert Botanical Garden and you have the recipe for an unforgettable night.

The 2019 Celebration for Resilience featured a keynote address by Dr. Judith Rodin, author of the book The Resilience Dividend: Being Strong in a World Where Things Go Wrong, poster presentations by the 2019 Resilience Fellows, and the ceremony for the inaugural Resilience Prize to the city of Scottsdale’s Indian Bend Wash Greenbelt.

KER director and principal investigator Elizabeth Wentz, left, speaks with Sybil Francis, president and CEO of the Center for the Future of Arizona during the 2019 Celebration of Resilience.

Rodin’s address highlighted five characteristics of resilient communities — aware, diverse, integrated, self-regulating, and adaptive — which were used as inspiration when developing the Resilience Prize awarded to the City of Scottsdale.

“ASU has the power to be a great agent of change and must serve as a model of civic engagement for students and its neighbors... in today’s dizzyingly complex world, universities have a tendency to isolate everyone in their ivory towers. Over the past decades, a host of universities like ASU have breathed new life into their communities.”

— Dr. Judith Rodin, author, The Resilience Dividend: Being Strong in a World Where Things Go Wrong

2019 Resilience Fellow Adonias Arevalo, left, describes his fellowship project to guests at the Celebration of Resilience.