Large-Scale Shifts: Coda Societies' Garance Choko on Leveraging Vast Experience to Redesign Societal Structures
Garance by Anthony McCray.
Garance Choko is the Founder and CEO of Coda Societies, a strategic advisory firm implementing equity-based solutions to reshape social and physical infrastructures. Her clients include foundations, large non-profit organizations, corporations, and governments. Garance is a member of the Board of Directors at Sing for Hope and the Association of Corporate Treasurers (ACT) and sits on the Advisory Council of the Center for Sustainable Finance and Private Wealth North America. Garance lives in New York and hosts A Propos, a podcast in English presented by the Consulate General of France in New York.
JG: You have an incredibly unique background in piano performance! Tell me about studying this and the lessons you take away from piano performance for what you do today.
GC: I started getting rigorous musical training when I was three years old; I remember hearing some Beethoven and deciding to dedicate my life to music. Since then, the piano has been integral to my identity and lifestyle. My continued training has taught me commitment and discipline, all in the name of beauty and self-expression. It’s a purpose-based approach to life that still informs my work and how I navigate the world. Music pieces and their interpretations result from various theories, practices, structures, coordinations, and sensibilities. This combination is very similar to systems thinking and design, and I transpose this process in my society-building work.
Coda Societies’ projects center around creating economic development plans for cities and countries, shaping strategic plans for large non-profits and foundations, and launching new policy-focused centers and programs. How we tackle each project is very similar to approaching learning and performing a piece of music — we are purpose-focused since our goal is always to promote equitable social and economic outcomes, and then we diligently apply our public policy, urban planning, social science, and organizational management expertise to achieve the most beneficial outcomes possible.
Garance at the Consulate General of France in New York leading a conversation about "Gender equity in a post-covid world" with Sarah Ziff and Jessica A Neuwirth.
After focusing on piano performance, you went to Cornell for a Masters in Public Policy. Tell me about this step and the decisions behind it.
Similarly to the piano, social impact and promoting public good have always been part of my life mission. As a child, I understood that societies were man-made and not innate. Public policy, public administration, and urban planning were among some practical tools to design and redesign societal structures, and it was important to me that I honed these techniques. It felt crucial to me that I honed robust technical knowledge and obtained it from a world-renowned university. Being a Black woman immigrant, I felt that to achieve my ambitions, I needed a stamp of approval. It’s unfortunate and unfair, but it is undeniable that competency is often valued based on elitist signifiers such as attending a top university.
Anyway, in the late 2000s, I believed that attending an Ivy League school was the only path forward to achieving my goals, and I was thrilled when I was accepted into the Cornell Institute for Public Affairs (CIPA). The incredibly supportive faculty of the University of Miami accompanied me through my application to Cornell University. I’m forever grateful for their education and belief in my potential. At the time, the President of the University of Miami, Donna Shalala, endorsed my application, which gave me the extra confidence to step into my new policy and public administration path. Once at CIPA, the program's multidisciplinary nature allowed me to take classes in any school aligned with my interests and goals. I spent most of the program in the School of Urban Planning, learning from incredible professors such as Nancy Brookes and Lourdes Benerias.
I'd also love to hear about your experiences leading up to starting Coda.
Finding the proper context to apply my thinking and practice took me some time. My experience ranged from the US Congress to the non-profit world, the for-profit innovation industry, impact investing, placemaking, international development, and management consulting. I realized that the combination of all these fields, working in tandem, was the key to generating the level of ethical and scalable social change I wanted to promote.
Sadly, these industries were hardheadedly working in silos, and the power structures of each organization meant that it would take me a long amount of time before being able to apply my vision and theory of change. My only way forward was to found Coda Societies, a company dedicated to delivering social and economic infrastructures for equity, leveraging urban planning, culture, management consulting, public policy, and social sciences.
“I learned quickly that institutions evolve at their own pace and that substantial change takes time. Expecting immediate and linear impact is too idealistic.”
How did you start Coda and what are you focused on these days?
Starting Coda was my obvious next step at the time. In New York City, entrepreneurship is widespread, and building a structure from scratch was exhilarating. I also had incredible advisors who believed in me and supported me from the very beginning. It’s important to note that I was responsible only for myself and was in a phase of life when it felt comfortable to take risks.
At Coda Societies, we were lucky to start working on large-scale and significant projects with renowned partners very early, providing the company with deep field experience while validating our expertise. Throughout the years, Coda Societies has built a beautiful portfolio of exciting projects with incredible partners. We keep growing our portfolio, addressing complex social and economic issues through our engagements with governments or public and private institutions who appreciate their potential to positively impact their ecosystems. Through our projects, we had a chance to collaborate with incredible leaders such as Uzo Iweala, Hannah Tsadik, Charlotte Allgritt, Joana Vincente, Melissa Beggs and Courtney Cogburn, to name a few. These individuals are all dedicated to pushing society in an ethical direction through their various fields.
Looking back at it all, what have been the biggest challenges? How did you both manage through perceived disappointments or setbacks?
Coda Societies doesn’t have investors, and we don't want any. This independence is highly freeing, but being bootstrapped means that you can experience some very stressful weeks. Some of the biggest disappointments have been seeing, on occasion, some of our partners not committing to the scale and depth of impact we had defined together. However, I learned quickly that institutions evolve at their own pace and that substantial change takes time. Expecting immediate and linear impact is too idealistic.
Do I get disappointed? Of course! Worried? Of course. These are formative experiences, and they force me to remember why I do what I do. It motivates me to level up and work with partners who are as ambitious, innovative, and enthusiastic as we are.
Garance at Nexus Europe Summit sharing practical tips to build regenerative communities with Lynn Zeneba and Christian Jochnick.
What have you also learned in the last six months?
The big 2023 lesson is that the bigger the project, the more disciplined and precise you must be about contracts. A strong legal team is crucial to protecting your work and intellectual property and shaping long-term revenue streams.
What are you most excited about right now?
On a personal note, I’m excited about getting married to Richard Murray this September. Professionally, Coda Societies is evolving, growing, and more established. We have some incredible projects under our belt that have proven the efficiency and impact of our approach to social impact. We have built policy institutes, departments and programs dedicated to inclusive growth and social impact. We have helped top organizations shape their futures. We have shaped economic development initiatives for cities and regions. We have carried out placemaking works that aim to increase the quality of life of low-income communities. These achievements have propelled us to the forefront of the social impact industry.
Because we work with institutions, governments, and the private sector in helping them articulate and implement their social impact goals, the permutations and combinations of how we can keep promoting social justice and equitable economic outcomes for all are endless. At the moment, we are excited to deepen our partnerships with cultural institutions, private equity funds, and national governments.
Looking at it from a thought-leadership perspective, we attended a conference called TransCap at MIT last fall about systemic investing. I have been applying systems thinking to achieve social change since the early 2010s. Seeing it becoming more mainstream in urban planning, economic development, policy, investing, and philanthropy is very rewarding. This multisectoral appreciation of systems thinking makes our engagement with partners more straightforward. We no longer have to convince and advocate, we can just do the work.
“The biggest luxury is defining and doing what one is enamored with. If you can afford to work in a field that you intentionally chose based on your interests and not directed by necessity, then appreciate your privilege, commit to the discipline of doing it to the very best of your ability and every day find a way to improve upon what you do.”
Who are you admiring now and why?
At the moment, I’m admiring Khady Kamara, the Executive Director of the Perelman Performing Arts Center, and Gina Duncan, the Executive Director of the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Both women are leading major and vibrant cultural institutions in New York City, promoting the cultural expressions and dialogues needed in our current divided world. Both of them also appreciate how their institutions shape NYC's physical environment and their power to positively impact the city's social and economic dynamics.
What is the impact you’d like to have on the world? What is your core mission? And what does success in that look like to you?
I founded Coda Societies to promote the evolution of societies in a positive and equitable direction that benefits the many. My core mission is to help build social and physical infrastructures for communities to prosper. Coda Societies is successful each time we unlock the potential of private and public institutions to promote large-scale impact within their ecosystem. It's so satisfying to witness institutions appreciate and leverage their power to improve society positively.
Finally, what advice do you have for those starting their career? Would your advice be any different for women?
The biggest luxury is defining and doing what one is enamored with. If you can afford to work in a field that you intentionally chose based on your interests and not directed by necessity, then appreciate your privilege, commit to the discipline of doing it to the very best of your ability and every day find a way to improve upon what you do, and keep assessing if your professional activity still aligns with your values and aspirations. If not, feel free to recalibrate your path because only you are responsible for your true north.
While we have developed more robust vocabulary and frameworks to call out misogyny and racism, they are still social woes that will slow you down, take away your energy, and aim to hinder your success. Structural change is happening, which is great, but in the meantime, you still have to learn how to navigate these waters without letting them discourage you.