#5: Mansfield Frazier (Chateau Hough & Neighborhood Solutions)

On our fifth episode, we’re speaking with Mansfield Frazier, founder of Château Hough - the country’s first inner-city vineyard located in the historic district of Hough, where he resides. 

Our conversation spans growing grapes and selling wine in Midtown Cleveland, triple-bottom line businesses, conscious capitalism, institutionalized racism, combating recidivism, and lots more.

Mansfield is a native Clevelander and a product of the Cleveland public school system. He left Cleveland in 1969, and for the next 30 years lived all over the United States, pursuing activities that can best be described as checkered at best, an experience he feels greatly shapes his perspectives as a writer and journalist, primarily focused on social justice issues.

Self-taught as a writer, he returned to Cleveland in 1995 and began his career as the associate editor of an urban news magazine, The Downtown Tab. He served briefly as the editor of the minority-focused weekly, The Call & Post before moving on to edit CityNews, a startup urban weekly. His writing is currently featured nationally on Newsweek/The Daily Beast, and locally on both CoolCleveland.com and The Cleveland Leader.

He currently serves as the executive director of Neighborhood Solutions, Inc. a non-profit that publishes Reentry Advocate, a national magazine that goes into various prisons, libraries, county jails, halfway houses and prison ministries around the United States.

Learn more about Chateau Hough: https://www.chateauhough.com/

Follow Fiveable on Neighborhood Solutions: http://www.neighborhoodsolutionsinc.com/

Connect with Mansfield on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mansfieldfrazier/

Follow Lay of The Land on Twitter: https://twitter.com/PodLayOfTheLand