Four St. Louis community leaders will each receive $200,000 from the Missouri Foundation for Health, with no restrictions on how they spend the money.
The four recipients are Blake Strode, executive director of ArchCity Defenders; Jessica Gaines, founder of Kendall Developments and chief construction officer for Dream Builders 4 Equity; Mike Milton, founder and executive director of Freedom Community Center; and Charli Cooksey, founder and CEO of WEPOWER.
This is the second year the foundation has awarded the Spark Prize, which recognizes individuals demonstrating leadership in addressing social challenges that affect health and developing solutions to help communities thrive.
“The Spark Prize is Missouri Foundation for Health’s opportunity to salute and support innovators,” said Dr. Dwayne Proctor, president and CEO of the foundation. “We’ve chosen people who are thinking broadly, differently, and creatively about how to improve their communities. We hope this prize encourages people to spark change where they live.”
“I just was quite overcome with gratitude and excitement,” Strode said of being named a recipient. “It’s a wonderful feeling to know that your work and your contributions are valued, are seen and valued in that way.”
Through ArchCity Defenders, Strode has advanced civil rights litigation and provided legal representation to people affected by the criminalization of poverty and state violence. He said he has spent more than 11 years working to create a more just St. Louis and plans to continue that work.
“We see this as an investment in these individuals and the opportunities it will open up for them into the future,” said Ivory Clarke, vice president of strategic relationships at the foundation. “The Spark Prize is really the starting point. It’s an opportunity to jump-start something more.”
As a real estate developer, Gaines has prioritized building energy-efficient homes powered by solar energy. She praised the foundation’s willingness to think outside the box when considering what contributes to community health.
“They really were intentional about widening their lens and really exploring,” Gaines said. “What does health, or what does it mean to have healthy humans, and who’s working toward that?”
She said although her company is not a health care provider, access to comfortable, stable housing is part of living a healthy life.
“This wasn’t, like, a popularity contest,” Gaines said. “They really took their time and they did their research on us.”
Cooksey said the award will allow her to continue pursuing systems change focused on child well-being and economic justice, including efforts to expand access to child care and close the racial wealth gap.
“This will give me a chance to breathe a little more while doing so,” Cooksey said.
She said she sometimes has to finance her work herself, and the award will provide a financial cushion while she waits for larger investments. She also said policy and systems-change work can be more difficult to fund than direct-service programs.
“We’re excited that this funding is investing in a leader like me that is doing policy and system change work because that rarely gets funded in a region like St. Louis,” Cooksey said.
For the past six years, Milton said Freedom Community Center has worked with survivors of violence and people who have caused harm, using approaches centered on healing, accountability and transformation.
Milton said he plans to use a portion of the award to create time to rest, reflect and document lessons from the organization’s work. He hopes to take a writing sabbatical and pursue research and editorial mentorship to develop essays and a book based on that work.
“This prize would offer me something that this work has rarely afforded me: the opportunity to rest, breathe, and imagine beyond the urgency of the struggle,” Milton said.
Recipients were nominated for the award, then submitted applications describing their work and its impact. Finalists participated in interviews with the Spark Prize committee.
Ciearra Walker, founder and CEO of the Community Health Worker Coalition and a 2025 award recipient, said she has used the funding for both personal and professional investments.
“I invested in my sustainability,” Walker said. “I stepped away long enough to rest, gain clarity, and practice something restorative, because leaders shouldn’t pour from an empty cup.”
Walker also reinvested a portion of the award into the mission of the Community Health Worker Coalition, the organization she credits with helping her showcase her work in Missouri. She said the funding helped provide resources to develop an app designed for its workforce.
“The Spark Prize was exactly that: a spark for long-term change, both in what we’ve built and in opening the door to additional resources so the vision can live on,” Walker said.