Brilliant Detroit's Cindy Eggleton Recognized with Local Awards

Cindy Eggleton, co-founder and CEO of Brilliant Detroit, a nonprofit dedicated to building kid success families and neighborhoods, was honored with a pair of awards recently for her work to systematically change the cycle of poverty and educational performance in Detroit.

Crain’s Detroit Business, Detroit and southeast Michigan’s premier business news and information website, named her this year’s Notable Women in Nonprofits in Michigan.

She also was awarded the Best of the HealthNet award by Authority Health, a nonprofit health organization created in 2005 to address unmet health needs in Wayne County.

Crain’s Detroit Business’ Notable Women in Nonprofits build endowments, programming and relationships for the organizations that they help lead. These women secure donors, advocate for change and search nonstop for new and creative approaches to fundraising. Winners were nominated by their peers at work and in the community.

Authority Health’s Best of the HealthNet award is the organization’s highest recognition. The award distinguishes the outstanding partners who contribute to the organization’s efforts to improve access to health services for the medically underserved population, expand services to fill critical gaps in the safety net, and cultivate a new public health workforce.

Eggleton has overseen tremendous growth at Brilliant Detroit since July 2017. She co-founded Brilliant Detroit in late 2015 with partners Jim and Carolyn Bellinson to truly move the needle on education in Detroit and create a model that will transform lives. This model builds kid success neighborhoods by partnering with organizations that provide evidence-based programming and coordinating these programs through homes in the middle of child-dense, high-need neighborhoods. In this way, families can access quality programming for free by walking down the street.

Brilliant Detroit programs address education, including school readiness and grade level reading; health; family stability; and neighbor-to-neighbor connections and impact children continuously from birth through third grade. This model works “with, for and by” neighbors, who invite Brilliant Detroit into their communities and provide ongoing feedback through Advisories at each house.

When Eggleton joined Brilliant Detroit as the CEO seven months after the organization was founded, Brilliant Detroit had one site in the Cody Rouge neighborhood, five organizational partners and 50 participating families. Today, Brilliant Detroit has four established homes, three additional homes slated to open soon and seven on a waitlist. Through these homes, Brilliant Detroit coordinates more than 75 organizational partners that delivered 18,000 hours of evidence-based programming in 2017. Eggleton’s program expertise, relationship building skills and leadership have seen Brilliant Detroit touch more than 1,300 families with many more on the way.

About Brilliant Detroit

Established in 2015, Brilliant Detroit provides a radically new approach to kindergarten readiness in neighborhoods and create a unique delivery model for early childhood development by using underutilized housing stock to create early child and family centers in neighborhoods. Brilliant Detroit homes – complete with signature orange-colored front doors – provide holistic services for children ages 0-8 predicated on evidence-based programs around health, family support and education. Brilliant Detroit was born to create kid success neighborhoods. In each location, neighbors come together for fellowship, activities and learning to assure school readiness and provide needed support for families. For more information, visit http://brilliantdetroit.org/.