Pulse Check! | The Business of Community Building | Jeanette Nigro, Perch Advisors

What does it take to serve the neighborhoods that big business ignores?

In this conversation, Main Street Assembly founder and CEO Zahra Amanpour sits down with Jeanette Nigro, founder of Perch Advisors, who has spent over two decades supporting economic development and community resilience in New York City's most underserved neighborhoods.

Jeanette's journey, from leading disaster recovery after Hurricane Sandy to building an 11-year consulting practice, reveals the less visible reality of small business today: it's not one catastrophic problem, but a thousand paper cuts. Rising insurance costs that have doubled in five years. Regulatory processes that strangle profitability. A labor market strained by the aftermath of a pandemic. And a growing question about what authenticity means when AI can mimic expertise overnight.

But there's also something else in Jeanette's story: the deep, hard work of actually helping businesses survive and thrive. It's about understanding not just where resources exist, but how communities find them. It's about reputation, durability, and values that can't be replicated by a tool, no matter how sophisticated.

From small business and urban economic development to community resilience and the realities of how neighborhoods function beyond the policy headlines, Jeanette's hard-won insights will challenge how you think about entrepreneurship in America's cities.