Welcome to Together in Public.

Between us, we’ve spent decades at the intersection of cities, capital, and civic life. Sara in New York and San Francisco, inside the financial institutions and civic organizations and government transitions that shape what cities become. Christine in San Francisco and New York — where she grew up — at the overlap of public finance, urban planning, and the work of standing things up from scratch. She’s also run for office in San Francisco, which tells you something about how seriously she takes the civic side of this.

We’ve both been in the room for the hard moments. And we’ve both spent years wondering why the places that matter most — the commons spaces that make belonging among strangers possible — are so chronically underfinanced and underloved by the capital system.

We looked around. We didn’t see what we knew needed to exist. So we decided to build it.

Commons + Company is an investment fund nested in a nonprofit, building the asset class for commons infrastructure. We’re early. We’re learning. And we’re doing this because it’s the work both of us have been preparing for our whole careers, even when we didn’t know it yet.

This is where we write about it.

We’ll share what we’re seeing in the field, the people and projects we’re getting to know, the questions we can’t stop asking, and the behind-the-scenes of what it actually takes to build something like this from scratch. No paywalls. No polished thought leadership. Just two people trying to do something hard and thinking out loud about it.

We’re glad you’re here.

Sara + Christine