About Clif
Educator, Activist, Advocate, and Leader
Clif is the only candidate working with the people, for the people, and tirelessly advocating for change while following through on promises. For two decades, he has worked behind the scenes fixing public education, repairing our mental health divide, and advocating for better housing and better options for those suffering.
By trade, Clif is a change management specialist — this requires entering unknown organizations and departments and quickly assessing the entire operation to repair failures and improve and document the successes.
His advocacy in the community is a continuation of this, working with city and state agencies, public safety organizations, and nonprofits to remove inefficiencies and help them succeed. These improvements don’t happen easily and only happen with a fight. Most agencies believe they are right and that continuing to do the same thing over and over the same way every time will eventually result in success without examining their failures critically.
Education
By training, Clif is a mental health clinician. He studied at both Indiana University and Martin University, both in Indianapolis. Martin is Indiana’s only predominately Black higher education institution. While performing his graduate studies at IU, he realized his home institution focused on educating students to serve a primarily white clientele with only lipservice towards diversity, equity, and inclusion within the field. While on scholarship at IU, he changed institutions to better understand the needs of the entire community.
In 2010, he received a Master of Science in Community Psychology, a degree similar to clinical psychology differing only in the addition of seeing societal influences as the main driver for most of the ailments that we as a people suffer. And this is the lens he focuses on with his advocacy and outreach.
Public Safety
Clif is passionate about public safety — having experience with police violence as a youth with lasting physical ailments as a result — he has worked to rebuild the trust he and so many others have lost in agencies that are supposed to protect us.
Sitting on the board of directors for both NESCO — the Near Eastside Community Organization — and the Citizen’s Alliance for Public Safety (CAPS), he has sought to repair these relationships. Within CAPS, Clif serves as a liaison between the community and Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department to improve relationships with the community and bring the community’s issues to leadership. Within NESCO, he co-chairs the Crime Reduction Team, bringing community-based solutions where the politicians demand authority-based ones.
Beyond all this, he is the president of the Quality of Life Public Safety Community Action Team and a partner with Overdose Lifeline, focusing on harm reduction strategies.
Personal
Clif is a former musician focused on music technology, having run an internationally recognized business for twenty years. He, along with his partner Amy Noel, is a homeowner in Holy Cross, Indianapolis, and has worked to create changes in the near east side of Indianapolis. An avid cyclist, Clif commutes to work and volunteers with the Bike Party, an inclusive community biking organization. He is a dog-father to Indigo, a goofy German Shepherd, and most recently, he has been trying to be the best role model to his pre-teen children with moderate success.