Downtown Framingham Inc. Hires New Executive Director

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FRAMINGHAM – Downtown Framingham Inc. (DFI) will get its third director since 2021.

In spring of 2021, Courtney Thraen resigned from her position as head of DFI, a non-profit organization that promoted downtown and its businesses.

Anthony Lucivero was hired to replace Thraen. He resigned in fall 2022.

SOURCE has learned the DFI Board of Directors has voted one of its own Board of Directors to be the next Executive Director starting in 2023.

The Board is expected to publicly announce Reyad Shah as the new Executive Director next week.

Shah joined the DFI Board in March of 2020, just as the pandemic began.

In July of 2020, Shah worked with Thraen to launch Clips for Confidence program. The crowd-funded program, allowed 78 students to receive hair cuts from downtown’s black-owned barbershops.

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Thraen and Shah also partners on a community mural project at a supermarket downtown.

Shah, who grew up near downtown Framingham, was employed with the Framingham Public Schools until May of 2022.

First hired by the public school district as a special education teacher assistant in September of 2015, he then became the secondary out of school time coordinator in 2018, and was promoted to the manager of the district’s out of school (OST) program in February of 2021. He was also the Framingham High girls junior varsity coach from November 2016 through March 2022

Shah graduated in 2019 with a Bachelor of Business Administration from Northeastern University.

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Downtown Framingham Inc. has struggled since Thraen departed in early 2021.

The organization did not participate in the largest downtown event of 2022, the Noche De Fiesta sponsored by the City of Framingham’s Public Library and the Framingham Public Library Foundation. And DFI’s events drew small crowds in 2022.

UPDATED: The salary for the DFI director has been funded in previous years by a Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) that comes from the City of Framingham. The City gave DFI $70,000 in CDBG funding in the most recent fiscal year.

There has been discussion of the City not funding the salary for DFI via CDBG.

CDBG grant funding for fiscal year 2024 has just begun. A vote on funding is expected later this spring.

Some City leaders have commented that many of the Board of Directors do not own businesses in downtown or even live downtown.