Current and Recent Priorities

Recent neuroscience research has shown that 80% of the foundation of a child’s brain development occurs in the first 1000 days of life. These first three years impact a child’s health, learning, and executive function for the rest of their life.

There is not enough housing being built in the Twin Cities and existing housing is too expensive for many residents. This lack of housing affordability puts at risk the vitality and prosperity of the region and will make existing racial and economic gaps worse, and the COVID-19 pandemic has only made the need to act more urgent.

Nomination and applications for the 2025 Minnesota and National Young American Leaders Program (MYALP and YALP) are officially open! Nominations are due October 15th, and applications are due on November 7th.  

Since 2015, the Itasca Project has sent cohorts of ten rising leaders to Harvard Business School (HBS) for the Young American Leaders Program.

The Itasca Project has conducted several investigations into the return on investment in regional transit infrastructure, which it has found to be well over 2x in several scenarios. In 2010-2012, a task force sought to understand the expected economic return on regional transit investments in order to inform the regional conversation on transit expansion that was occurring at the time.