Annie Milli never thought — not “in a million years” — she would lead a nonprofit.

More than a decade ago, Milli asked to be considered for a leadership role at Live Baltimore. She wanted to make sure Live Baltimore, a nonprofit that promotes the benefits of city living, continued to thrive.

She joined the organization as its marketing director in 2013 because she was passionate about the importance of choosing to live in the city, where her family has lived for four generations.

Becoming the executive director of the nonprofit “turned out to be the best decision of my life,” she said.

But now Milli is moving on to become the sole program officer at the Goldseker Foundation, Live Baltimore’s “longest supporting and largest philanthropic partner,” according to a press release. She will start at the foundation in October. (The Goldseker Foundation is a donor of The Baltimore Banner.)

“I think Baltimore is in a great position for the future. I can’t wait to see what the next few years are going to bring here for our city,” she said. “And I think everybody should come visit our neighborhoods and see what all the fuss is about. It’s a beautiful place to live.”

Matt Gallagher, the CEO of the foundation, said Milli brings a wealth of experience to Goldseker.

“Annie [Milli] is going to be a force multiplier for the foundation. She is very well established. She’s going to be a very credible ambassador for the foundation, and she is really going to extend our reach pretty much in every direction in the city,” Gallagher said in an interview with The Baltimore Banner. “We feel like that we picked up an absolute all-star to kind of join our team.”

Here’s what Milli had to say about Baltimore:

The Baltimore Banner: You were with Live Baltimore for 11 years. How were things in the city when you started compared to how they are now?

Annie Milli: Right now, we’re in a really amazing time in Baltimore. We have so much momentum. People are talking about the issue of vacant housing, and I feel like 11 years ago, that wasn’t something that people were really talking about openly and broadly. There’s so much development taking place. There are new homes being constructed in places where, just a few years ago, we had unused industrial sites. We have the exciting development taking place at Harborplace. We’ve come a long way in 11 years.

Tell me more about how you sell this city, how you get people to move here and stay.

We know that people want to hear about Baltimore’s affordability. We are the most affordable big city on the East Coast. This is a place where people of all incomes can afford to purchase a home. They are not house-poor — they can still have a life. So that’s a really amazing benefit.

This is a convenient city. People want to hear about our walkability. They want to hear about the transit that’s available to get them quickly to D.C. They want to hear about proximity to other locations up and down the East Coast.

We have amazing architecture, beautiful, unique homes, unique landscapes, a unique waterfront. And then on top of that, we have these communities that are tight-knit — they call it “Smaltimore” for a reason. It’s a big city, but it feels like a small town, and we love that.

This is a place that is very come-as-you-are, whatever it is, whatever identity you have, whatever it is that you want to express about yourself. You can do that here freely, and you’ll be welcomed and accepted just as you are.

What are some of the neighborhoods that are up-and-coming? Where should people be buying a house right now?

I’ve been telling people for years that my favorite neighborhood that I don’t live in is Hunting Ridge. Hunting Ridge is in Southwest Baltimore, just below Gwynns Falls Park, and that entire part of town in last year’s housing market data really showed up as a very hot housing market.

Those are places where I think people are really excited to be investing, largely because of some of the new development that’s happening in the current phase of the Uplands development and then the renovation to the Edmondson Village Shopping Center. It’s a place where there’s a lot of investment happening, and I think a place where people should really take a look.

But I could go on about neighborhoods all day, so I’ll stop there.

I actually have a few more questions about neighborhoods. What are some of the most popular neighborhoods?

Canton is always a popular neighborhood. It’s a very large neighborhood and a very dense neighborhood, and every single year has the most housing market activity because of its density and size and walkability and all of the neighborhood amenities that are there.

If you’re talking about a neighborhood with single-family detached homes, the neighborhood I just mentioned, Hunting Ridge, is definitely a popular neighborhood. The communities in Northeast Baltimore, where I live, are very popular for people who are looking for detached houses. And then if you’re looking for an apartment, there is our downtown, which has lots of rental availability, and also South Baltimore.

So really it just depends on what you’re looking for in terms of what the most popular neighborhoods are. But the best thing about Baltimore is that we offer something for everyone.

And what are some of the hidden gems in the city?

Well, I’m partial to Northeast Baltimore because I live there, but the neighborhood of Mayfield is one that maybe flies under the radar for many people. Mayfield is adjacent to Lake Montebello and Herring Run Park, and those are some amazing community assets. If you like to hike, if you like to run, if you want to be outdoors and you love to exercise, I would definitely recommend that area to anyone.

A neighborhood that should be on people’s radar: the neighborhood of Cross Keys. That’s a great place for people who might be looking to downsize or might be coming to Baltimore as newcomers and exploring the city for the first time. The Cross Keys community is undergoing a major, major redevelopment, and it’s getting all kinds of new restaurants, and all of the retail spaces are being reimagined and revitalized. So that’s definitely a place where you can still get something affordable, but I don’t know how long that will last.

I’m really excited about what’s happening in Baltimore Peninsula, there’s a brand-new housing development called Locke Landing, where you can buy a brand-new townhome on the waterfront in a major American city. I mean, that’s really unheard of. So those homes are beautiful, and I would encourage anybody to go check out what’s happening there on the Peninsula as well.

What are some of the challenges you face when selling the city?

I think that people who aren’t familiar with Baltimore, they often have a perception of what the city is like by what they see in the media. And I think some of those very wonderful television shows that aired decades ago continue to shape folks’ perceptions of what it’s like here.

Across the board, when people get here and they experience our communities firsthand, they quickly see that is just a piece of what the urban experience is like, but it certainly isn’t the full story of our city.

Let’s talk about you. Why are you moving to this new role?

When I first started in my role at Live Baltimore, I was a part of something called the Grow Baltimore Committee, which was convened in the Stephanie Rawlings-Blake administration as a way to look at how to grow the city’s population. And that was a committee that was supported by the Goldseker Foundation. There was a program officer at the foundation named Laurie Latuda Kinkel, who was incredibly influential. She was such a mentor to me, and a lot of the programming that I developed at Live Baltimore really came from her thinking and her strategy at the Goldseker Foundation. So, I feel close to the foundation.

I am really grateful for the foundation’s work to support Baltimore communities. And these kinds of opportunities are very rare. These jobs open up, once in a decade, if you’re lucky. And so, when this presented itself, it was something that I just couldn’t pass up.

You have a pretty lengthy resume. What one experience prepared you most for this role?

I think that the experience that prepared me the most for this new role is probably when I had the opportunity to chair the mayor’s office’s Middle Neighborhoods Work Group. That was a really exciting time in the city where we were thinking about middle neighborhoods, ones that are sort of the backbone of Baltimore City, those communities where most of our homeowners live or most of our residents live, but neighborhoods that could really go either way. They could improve or they could decline.

We were thinking about those neighborhoods strategically as a city for the first time, and I was appointed chair of that work group. I got the opportunity to bring together leaders of community development corporations, neighborhood associations, funders, a wide variety of stakeholders.

If it were up to you, where would you invest public money to improve Baltimore?

I spend a lot of time taking walks in the city, and I spend a lot of time in city neighborhoods. One of the things that strikes me is we have so many assets that are like 90% of the way there. When I think about our public parks, for example, I think our parks are such a tremendous asset. And there’s spaces and places in our parks where I think if we could just, you know, give that extra 10% and maintain the trees a little bit better, or add a new public bathroom — I think that those things could make a huge difference.

I would look for probably those assets that are about 90% perfect, and I would try and take as many of those as I could, the extra 10% to get them to 100.

Why should people move to Baltimore?

Choosing to live in Baltimore, it matters. It doesn’t matter whether you choose to live in one of our surrounding counties. It doesn’t make a huge difference. But choosing to be in Baltimore, it means something. It means that you want to be a part of supporting our neighborhoods. It means that you want to be a part of our communities, of making our communities strong and healthy for everyone who is here.

No matter what, we have 570,000 residents who wake up every single day and they count on us to win. And so choosing to be here is important, because over the years, many people have chosen not to be here, and that’s been incredibly harmful to those who have stayed. So I think, I think that it’s an important choice. ... I love raising my daughter here. I love walking to my neighborhood restaurant. I love running through our parks. I love knowing my neighbors. I love being at my community pool that I’m at right now. So I think people will find a lot of richness and a lot of value here. And I also think it’s a choice that’s important.

Correction: This story was updated to correct the first name of Goldseker Foundation CEO Matt Gallagher.