Welcome

Owner/Principal

A native Memphian, who is an urban planner and community development practitioner, launched a small-scale community and economic development company that takes on projects and programs to achieve community and economic development goals’, specifically in Black urban neighborhoods.

"I want encourage Live, Work and Wealth inclusion opportunities in urban core neighborhoods through the work of this company.", she said

As a native Memphian, when you ask her where she's from, she answers--"Frayser." The Frayser neighborhood, for Charia, is a place where she grew up and is rooted as a resident; it is now a neighborhood of choice for her to raise her 2 children, where she has built a professional career working for a community-based organization in the same neighborhood, where she has been working alongside its residents and stakeholders to develop plans, policies, and programs to address housing challenges. 

And now, through the work of Real Urban Concepts, a community and economic development firm she can work with urban neighborhoods to achieve and implement community and economic development objectives. 

Professional Experience

Since 2005, Miss Jackson has been a grassroots practitioner within the local community development sector. Her career not knowingly began when she began volunteer her time and gave service to a growing community-based organization, The Frayser CDC. As a volunteer, she worked with the agency's leadership to understand the Frayser community's housing market conditions. Soon after developing a volunteer relationship with the agency, she entered an internship through the University of Memphis to work for the agency. As an intern working for the agency, she spent time researching the impacts of foreclosures and bankruptcies in the Frayser community as a whole and its impacts on the residents; the property values; the property conditions, etc. This data-driven research guided the work and vision of the agency's policy and advocacy work in affordable housing development programs. Miss Jackson grew within the agency by designing and implementing its HUD-certified Housing Counseling programs. She became trained and skilled in housing education and counseling, focusing on Home Buyer's Education, Pre-purchase, and Foreclosure/Mortgage Default counseling services. Beyond her program developing skills, she also has experience developing housing for sale/rental units. While managing many single-family developments, she grew to understand site selection and acquisitions, project proforma building, construction management, and property marketing/lease-up, priming her to become a real estate developer. She has various skills packaged and ready to grow Real Urban Concepts, LLC into an emerging minority woman's owned community and economic development firm devoted to creating spaces of economic opportunity in urban Black communities.