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Impact through purposeful action

The promises we keep today lay the foundation for tomorrow — the journey starts now.

latest impact posts

Myrlande Constant’s Paintings with Beads

Myrlande Constant is a Haitian textile artist born in 1968 specializing in Vodou-themed flags. Constant was born in Port-au-Prince, where she learned the art of beading while working with her mother in a wedding dress factory. After quitting that job because her employers wouldn’t pay her, she took a severance pay of knowledge and bags filled with beads – and went on to become one of the most celebrated artists for making Drapo Vodou. Constant started making Vodou flags in the 1990s in an entirely male environment and ultimately became the first woman in Haiti to apply the tambour technique in her work. She radically shifted her nation’s traditional religious art by using glass beads instead of sequins. Constant also prefers constructing large-scale tableaus, describing her work as "painting with beads."

Delmar DivINe Bridges Community Gaps

Throughout history, art has always played key roles as an escape, challenge, or medium to allow people to process their emotions and creatively navigate change. The power of art and its ability to foster human connection is evident in every community, including my hometown of St. Louis. Delmar DivINe serves as a centerpiece for advancement and allows St. Louis to turn the tide of history and reimagine life for its residents and the entire country. It is a once-in-a-generation project that aims to help bridge the racial divide by providing a place where people from all walks of life can gather, connect, and make lasting memories. The building is a catalyst for change and houses nonprofit organizations, sponsors innovative programs, and provides affordable housing for young professionals and social leaders.

Penn Medicine's RVCL Research Center

The Clayco Foundation is committed to supporting meaningful research to find treatments and a cure for Retinal vasculopathy with cerebral leukoencephalopathy (RVCL), a rare genetic disease. We have made great strides and progress over this past year. Illumination 2022 was an incredible record-breaking gala for The Clayco Foundation in October, where we raised $1.1 million to help support the search for a cure for RVCL and to help pave the way for cures for all genetic orphan diseases.

Grand Opening of Delmar DivINe

Great things are happening in my hometown of St. Louis! Clayco hosted a ribbon-cutting ceremony to mark the grand opening of Delmar DivINe. The 310,000-square-foot building is now home to 150 apartments, space for 33 nonprofit tenants, and retail storefronts along Delmar Boulevard. The development is devoted to social change and cultural legacy and aims to strengthen the nonprofit sector in the St. Louis region among health, education, and human service organizations. The “IN” in Delmar DivINe stands for INvestment, INnovation, and INclusion which are top priorities for our team at Clayco and the incredible organizations that use this transformative space. I believe in St. Louis and care deeply about it reaching its full potential, and not just for those who already have privilege and opportunity. St. Louis is a city that can enable everyone to prosper, and projects like this help turn this vision into a reality.

Clayco supports Architectural Engineering Scholarship Program at Penn State

Clayco is supporting the next round of students in the Architectural Engineering Scholarship program at Pennsylvania State University. Sending warm congratulations to the outstanding Clayco Design-Build scholarship recipients – Raida Abdoellah, Nicholas Griffin, Joe Ricci, and Sophie Zheng!

Newest Fellows for the Opera Theatre of St. Louis Program

The Clayco Foundation continues to reinforce the Art and Science of Building through our support of the Opera Theatre of St. Louis Fellowship program and its third class of Future Leaders! Congratulations to Linda Holyoke (advancement fellow), Jhané Perdue (artistic fellow), and Jenna Pieper (administrative fellow) for being named the 2022 to 2023 recipients. Pieper and Holyoke are also the first Fellows to join the program from my hometown of St. Louis.

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The key choices we make in this life

Some of the key choices that we get to make in this life are the things we prioritize, both with our finances and with our energy and efforts.

Over the course of my life, my priorities have shifted immensely, and I now spend a large amount of my time focusing on the work that our foundation is doing, as well as being engaged in impactful community efforts. The majority of the work that we are a part of is aimed at issues directly affecting my family and the Clayco community.