At a moment of inequality and division, who is advancing the vanguard of economic and social progress to bolster under-served communities? Whose work is fostering the inclusive growth that ensures every individual thrives? Who will set the ambitious standards that mobilize whole industries, challenging their peers to reach new altitudes of social impact? 

In 2025, Impact Next — an editorial flagship series from NationSwell — will spotlight the standard-bearing corporate social responsibility and impact leaders, entrepreneurs, experts, and philanthropists whose catalytic work has the potential to shape the landscape of progress amid urgent need for social and economic action.

For this installment, NationSwell interviewed Dreama Gentry, president and CEO of Partners for Rural Impact.

NationSwell: What brought you to the field that you’re in right now? Was there a moment, a relationship, or an experience that galvanized your commitment to driving bold action?

Dreama Gentry, President and CEO, Partners for Rural Impact: I grew up in Appalachian Kentucky and have never wanted to live anywhere else. My home region is too often portrayed through a lens of deficit and stereotypes. What I see are people with deep connections to the land and to family. I see the people and the community and that shaped me and provided me with opportunity. No one in my family had gone to college, and while I grew up in a community that I now realize was poor, I never felt lacking. My Mom and Dad surrounded  me with love and opportunity. 

There are few pivotal folks that come to mind.  The first is Ma, my grandmother. She encouraged me to dream and was always there for me. From the time I was little she would take me to the public library when she was in town visiting her mother who was in a nursing home. The library opened the world to me. I was a voracious reader and I knew from an early age that I wanted to go to college. I planned to be either a teacher or an archaeologist.

Pat Hurt was my guidance counselor. With a caseload of 450 students, she made time to see the quiet girl from the part of the county that many discounted. My junior year, Ms. Hurt encouraged me to apply to the Governor’s Scholars Program and to Upward Bound, both were six-week summer programs on a college campus. Accepted into both, I attended Governor’s Scholars and that experience set me on a path to Berea College — where most students were low-income and first-generation — and then to law school at the University of Kentucky. Practicing law, though, I realized I was not my passion.

Education and connections to caring adults had changed my own trajectory, I returned to Berea College with a vision to raise aspirations and provide pathways to college in my home community. The work I do today started in an office in Rockcastle County High School thirty years ago. I worked alongside the guidance counselors, teachers and parents to build partnerships that encouraged kids and families to see college as an option. With the support of Larry Shinn a forward-thinking college president, I was able to grow that work from a direct service program in a single school to a regional initiative that served 50,000 children and youth across Appalachian Kentucky. In 2022 I created Partners for Rural Impact to create a movement of rural leaders across the nation committed to moving outcomes for rural youth. My team activates resources to support schools and communities, strengthens local capacity to implement what works and amplifies the bright spots in rural America.  My goal is a Nation where demographics do not determine destiny. And my contribution is to ensure that in rural communities there is the capacity to ensure that all rural young folks thrive.

NationSwell: When you look back on the scope of your career thus far, how have your thinking, your leadership style, or your philosophies changed over time?

Gentry, Partners for Rural Impact: My own life has been shaped by summer and out-of-school programs that gave me the chance to step onto a college campus. Coming from a small K–8 school where only six of eighteen classmates graduated high school, the few of us who made it to college all had that program experience in common. So, at first my work focused on creating and scaling strong programs that work across Appalachia — programs like Upward Bound, GEAR UP, Promise Neighborhood and Community Schools.

Over time, I saw that programs are essential and that they alone are not enough. Rural communities need a place-based approach where there is a backbone organization and someone that wakes up every morning thinking about aligning cross-sector partners, using data, and moving outcomes to ensure that every child in the community is getting the supports they need to thrive. It is only through this place based partnership approach that we can break the cycle of generational poverty and ensure all rural students are on a path to success.  

NationSwell: Is there a particular facet of your work, or the field more generally, that you think is not getting enough attention right now?

Gentry, Partners for Rural Impact: Since January, the focus has shifted dramatically. With so many safety nets and federal supports for children and families being dismantled, much of our energy is consumed by trying to slow or halt that erosion. That’s the elephant in the room right now. Before this moment, I might have answered differently, pointing instead to how often rural kids and families are left out of the equation — not by intent, but because decision-makers’ perspectives are shaped by urban and suburban experiences that overlook rural realities.

The challenge of the moment is supporting families and children during this moment. We must strengthen local capacity and support local organizations that are on the ground ensuring that families in rural places still have real paths to upward mobility. We must get serious about addressing poverty in America. I can focus my work on rural communities because I have colleagues leading organizations like StriveTogether, the William Julius Wilson Institute and Purpose Built communities that are primarily focusing on non-rural communities. 

NationSwell: There’s a stubborn narrative that rural communities are all the same, but rural America, like anywhere else, is complex and varied. What do you think people most misunderstand about rural places or the people who identify as rural? How does that misunderstanding impact policy, philanthropy, and the national conversation generally?

Gentry, Partners for Rural Impact: People often assume rural America is monolithic, when it’s as diverse as any city. Just as New Yorkers understand the differences between boroughs and neighborhoods, rural places vary widely in culture, history, and connection to land. That’s why Partners for Rural Impact refuses to define “rural” rigidly—if a community identifies as rural, they are part of the movement. 

Corporate and philanthropic leaders are often guided by policies or practices that limit giving to places where they have employees or where they have a presence. This results in limited giving to rural places. Only seven cents of every philanthropic dollar goes to rural areas—and even less to rural areas with the deepest need. These policies and practices are short sited and not designed for the world where we are now living. We all need this Nation to thrive. Each and every community is part of our ecosystem. What happens in Owsley County Kentucky impacts Washington, DC, New York City and Silicon Valley just as much as what happens there impacts Appalachia, the Delta, and our Native Lands.

NationSwell: Of the socially motivated leaders you consider your peers, are there any whose work has inspired you and whom you hold in high esteem?

Gentry, Partners for Rural Impact: I will focus on four who have supported me as I created Partners for Rural Impact. First, Geoffrey Canada has been a mentor since 2010. The way he created the Harlem Children’s Zone to focus on Harlem and the William Julius Wilson Institute to inform the nation informed Partners for Rural Impact’s structure.  At Partners for Rural Impact we focus intensively on three places — Appalachian Kentucky, East Texas, and Mexico, Missouri — and they are our places of learning that ensure we convene, coach and support rural places across the nation with a proximate lens.

Jim Shelton’s strategic thinking, tenacity, and trust impresses me. We met when Jim was leading a portfolio at the Department of Education that included Promise Neighborhoods. Now at Blue Meridian Partners, he is committed to a nation where all have a path to economic mobility. He invests deeply in the place based partnerships and trusts local leaders to chart their own solutions. Here in Appalachia, Jim King of FAHE showed me the power of a network to unite rural places across Appalachia and his thinking led to Partners for Rural Transformation which unites rural regions of persistent poverty. 

Another pivotal influence has been Jennifer Blatz of StriveTogether. After the 2016 election, most inquiries I received about rural America were focused on “what’s wrong” and “how to fix it.” Jennifer was the only person who asked how we could work together and StriveTogether could better serve rural communities. Her spirit of authentic partnership informed my decision to take Partners for Rural Impact national. Jennifer also shared her connections with philanthropy and took the time to introduce me and the work to others. Jennifer models what it looks like to enter the room with humility and true collaboration, and I try to bring that same approach into every partnership.

NationSwell: What is the North Star of your leadership?

Gentry, Partners for Rural Impact: The North Star of my work in general is creating a nation where all young people have a real path to upward mobility, with my organization focused specifically on ensuring that rural kids and communities aren’t left behind. In thinking about my leadership, I am often asked what my “superpower” is — because we all have superpowers, and I think real progress comes when superpowers are activated.

My superpower is seeing patterns and connections. I can listen across multiple conversations and places, then weave them together into a web of relationships and strategies that solve more than one problem at a time. I thrive when I have put the right people, at the right moment, in the right place, together with the right problem. My ability to connect and align has become my biggest contribution to the work.