Last year, the Neighborhood Alliance of Central Oklahoma named Myron Mayberry its new executive director, replacing Georgie Rasco, who worked for the nonprofit for 24 years.
Mayberry and his wife have lived in Oklahoma City for 30 years. He recently spoke with Oklahoma Gazette about his career and new work at NACO.Oklahoma Gazette: After moving to OKC, what type of work did you do?
Myron Mayberry: I always knew that I never wanted to sit in an office all day, and so finding different things to do was key for me. I did a lot of volunteerism. I worked at Oklahoma City Community College for about three and a half years. At the same time, I was on the South Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce and did volunteer work with them. I did some work with the Latino Community Development Agency and got to meet some folks in the juvenile justice space.
That’s when I figured out what my true calling was. I knew I didn’t want to be a teacher in a classroom all day, but I wanted to make sure that those kids are still supported, that those families have appropriate resources. Maybe we couldn’t provide them with every resource they needed, but I wanted to at least provide some quality resources and opportunities.
And so my wife and I set up a behavioral health clinic. We had an after-school program and did a lot of juvenile justice work. We did workforce development for youth. A lot of our work was trying to be preventative, reach kids before it was too late. Writing grants and setting up contracts became my side, and I let my wife handle the actual hands-on work with the kids and a lot of the families. I would work with the adults a little bit more.
What brought you to NACO?
They were looking for someone to come in and help them revamp the organization, take its strong background and history and build upon it. And so I was called by a dear friend, and he said, “Can you talk to these people,” I came last year and talked to them, and I did consulting work with them through the end of September. In October, they offered me the job of executive director.
One of the things I found was that everything I had learned previously works here and is needed here. For example, maybe a neighbor says, “The kids keep messing up our fence.” Well, let’s sit down, let’s negotiate, let’s figure it out and let’s be good neighbors. I can also help them with homeowners associations and writing up bylaws and understanding Robert’s Rules of Order so that your meetings can be functional and effective. I get to use a lot of my tools working here, and it’s been a pretty good place.
What are the biggest challenges neighborhoods face?
We’re seeing neighborhoods change and the needs change with it. For example, when you see a neighborhood’s average age of 65 becomes 32, there’s a difference in needs. It might be, “Hey, we’re about to start having kids in this neighborhood again, and we need a better park.” Well, how do you get a better park through the city of Oklahoma City? And how do you get it successfully? And so that’s some of the things that we can help our neighborhoods with.
We also have a lot of renters. This is the first year Central Oklahoma has more renters than actual homeowners. So what we’re looking at now is in neighborhood associations, if half of the neighborhood is renters and they’re not invited into the process of making a better neighborhood, then you can’t complain about them. You have to invite them, allow them positions of leadership.
We are trying to help neighborhoods handle these types of transitions and be in a stronger place.
Is there a particular NACO program you’d like to highlight?
We have one program I would love to highlight, and it’s called donor designated funds. We have different types of neighborhoods, neighborhood associations and homeowners associations. Some are voluntary, and then you have some that are mandatory. Many have a project that they want to spend money on, but for many neighborhoods, they have to raise the money.
We are 501(c)3, and these neighborhoods can send the check to us. We keep track of what the money is for, and when the’ve reached the threshold of, you know, having enough money to take care of whatever they need to take care of, we will write that check back out to them. This allows them to get donations and give a tax write-off. It is a very cool opportunity for folks who are trying to improve their own neighborhoods. What I’ve tried to do is make sure folks really understand the benefit.
It really does seem like this new position really fits your background.
Oh yeah, this has been a natural progression for me. I went from working with parents one at a time to now working with groups of parents. How can we get groups of neighbors together to improve their own situations?
One of the big adages here is everyone deserves to live in a great neighborhood, and you shouldn’t have to move to find it. You do have to work to make it a great neighborhood, so I stress that work side of it.
This article appears in Alcoholmanac 2025.