Susan A. Gust

Community Development Consultant

Biographical Abstracts

Susan Gust, a community activist and small business owner, co-founded, along with a University of Minnesota physician, a ten-year community and academic partnership named the Phillips Neighborhood Healthy Housing Collaborative.  This decade of mutually beneficial partnership resulted in transformations at the personal, community and institutional levels with numerous contributions to scholarship.  Susan’s scholarly products of papers, chapters, presentations, and course development have advanced the understanding of partnership formation, governance models, power-sharing, building trust, managing privilege, and working across differences – cultural, socio-economic, and epistemological.  She has earned a reputation at the UMN as a go-to community member for consultation on a variety of community engagement scholarship issues by university groups such as the Program for Health Disparities Research, the Clinical and Translational Science Institute, and the Office of Public Engagement.  Susan’s community engagement scholarship and her deep commitment to lifting up community knowledge has helped to bridge the polarization and harnessed the diversity of thought needed to address society’s pressing issues.