Detroit Hires Its First Director of Digital Inclusion

Detroit has hired its first director of digital inclusion, making it one of a growing number of cities to have a full-time employee within its government tackling issues of digital equity. The city tapped Joshua Edmonds to fill the new role. Edmonds comes to the city from Cleveland, where he previously worked in the digital inclusion space. In Cleveland, Edmonds helped lead the deployment of more than $1.5 million of investments related to digital equity through The Cleveland Foundation, an influential community foundation in the Ohio city. Before working with the Cleveland Foundation, Edmonds was with the Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority. In that capacity, he participated in President Obama’s ConnectHome initiative, which fostered partnerships between localities, private companies and government at the federal level, all in the service of increasing the number of households nationwide with high-speed Internet.