Swope Health announces a new edition of its podcast, One on One with Swope Health, featuring a conversation with Dion Lewis, deputy director of Housing and Community Development for the City of Kansas City, Mo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Eric Wesson, founder and publisher of The Next Page KC, a newspaper focused on the Black community, hosts the show\u2019s conversations with Kansas Citians about issues of importance to the community\u2019s health and wellbeing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lewis briefly recaps his education in Kansas City, attending Kansas City Public Schools and schools in Hickman Mills before graduating from Raytown South. He began his career in the Air Force, then worked in teaching at Ruskin Heights, real estate, and then workforce and community development through a Kansas City partnership program.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lewis describes himself as \u201calways having a customer mindset first,\u201d he works to educate people on city processes \u2013 whether that\u2019s gaining MBE\/WBE certification or other steps toward compliance and successful urban development processes. He sees progress in streamlining city processes and making sure ideas grow into actual projects and developments through the Central City Economic Development program, a 1\/8th<\/sup> cent tax to raise funds for urban development,<\/p>\n\n\n\n One example of a successful and important project, he noted, is the KD Academy Early Learning Center<\/a>, a 24-hour child care facility in the urban core.<\/p>\n\n\n\n