Mission Forward: Communicating for Change: Recent Episodes
Mission Partners
This season, we are taking you on a journey to meet ten people influencing and shaping how we communicate at scale for social change. From advertising executives to coalition directors, news editors, campaign managers and authors, they're all people who are shaping and challenging the deep power of communication. In each episode, we'll share lessons learned from a career in social impact communications, insights from some of the brightest minds in inclusive marketing and design, and tools to help you practically apply these lessons to your own communications work. If you’re working to become a more inclusive and thoughtful communicator, there’s nothing holding you back—except you.
In the fast-paced nature of time, where it’s all too easy to get caught up in what’s coming next (vs. what’s happening now), where we want to be (vs. where we are), and how we get there (vs. what we’ve accomplished to date), it’s good to pause and remember that life is fast, and it’s short. Wherever you are, may you find something wonderful worth holding onto in this present moment.
This week’s essay comes from the Finding The Words column, a series published every Wednesday that delivers a dose of communication insights direct to your inbox. If you like what you read, we hope you’ll subscribe to ensure you receive this each week.
- (00:00) - Welcome to Mission Forward
- (01:00) - Start Where You Are
So much of the success of any of our DEI work is rooted in our ability to communicate vision through metaphor. It is, after all, a metaphor that connects to emotion, to our human ability to find empathy and build affinity between us. Vision, often, starts with a metaphor built with the heart in mind.
In this rebroadcast episode, we are talking about the role of storytelling in social change. And today’s guest has a natural gift for uplifting powerful and personal stories of impact from some of the nation’s most effective charities to build a more trusted charitable sector.
Art Taylor is president and CEO of the Better Business Bureau’s Wise Giving Alliance. As head of the Alliance, he oversees the organization’s work, which includes setting standards, evaluating charities in relation to those standards, publishing the Wise Giving Guide, and promoting charity accountability, plus a whole lot more. Art led the Wise Giving Alliance to introduce the accredited charity seal, a symbol of trustworthiness used by national and local charities that adhere to the Better Business Bureau standards for charity accountability, and it’s estimated that more than a billion impressions of that charity seal exist in the public domain. This is the bellwether that indicates to donors whether an organization is trustworthy.
At the foundation of all this success, however, is Art’s vision of success. This is the story — the metaphor — that touches us, too. “America is a very competitive place. And there are always ten chairs and 15 people. But I believe that we can take those ten chairs, and if 15 people get together, we can rework those chairs and make a bench, a place for us all to be able to sit down. And that’s how we have to view the world. We keep viewing the world as a zero-sum game. It’s not. There’s always more that we can produce if we work together.”
This is a conversation not about building bridges between communities but building a bench and offering those with opposing views the opportunity to sit together on it in the greater spirit of charity, impact, and trust. We thank Art Taylor for joining us on this show this week.
- (00:00) - Welcome to Mission Forward
- (03:55) - Introdcing Art Taylor
- (13:51) - Institutional Trust
- (17:58) - Standards Revisions
- (20:06) - Presenting Goals around DEI
Earlier this month, I gathered with colleagues to review updates to a brand guide. We were deep in the language preferences section of the guide when the team came upon a point of tension. All agreed to capitalize racial, ethnic, and cultural identities such as Black, Asian, Latino, and Navajo. Still, there was disagreement among those who wished to capitalize White and those who wanted to lowercase white.
This week’s essay comes from the Finding The Words column, a series published every Wednesday that delivers a dose of communication insights direct to your inbox. If you like what you read, we hope you’ll subscribe to ensure you receive this each week.
- (00:00) - Welcome to Mission Forward
- (00:56) - The Letter in Question
Now Available! More Than Words: Communications Practices of Courageous Leaders by Carrie Fox, founder and CEO of Mission Partners, is available. You're invited to join an emerging community of practice and become a positive and powerful agent of change.
——
November 17-19, 2022, thousands of people gathered for Facing Race: A National Conference, produced by Race Forward, to explore new and powerful ways to advance racial justice. It is, in a word, extraordinary in the way this conference offers advocates of all stripes to connect, to learn, and to love the work we all do, in our own ways, furthering the conversations of racial justice together.
In the lead-up to the conference, we hosted our own forum with two very special people in our lives — and in the conference itself. What you're about to hear is a conversation with Glenn Harris, President of Race Forward and host of the Facing Race Conference, and Ashton Lattimore, editor-in-chief of Prism, a valued partner in this year's conference.
This is a timely conversation, not just for its proximity to the conference itself, but for its resonance to the public discourse. We're in the run-up to another election in a contentious political environment. How do we find hope and possibility in the face of what we have lost through division and partisanship? How do we remember the value of speaking truth to power with love in the face of eroding rights in this country? How do we confront the disenfranchisement of public education and the inequality ofour efforts in climate legislation with strength, compassion, and faith that people of good will, will do good things?
We don't offer answers in this episode. But we hope that our efforts to showcase these voices and perspectives, voices of two people we believe offer good faith and goodwill in a marketplace of communication challenged by both, can give you a glimpse of how you might mount your own efforts for advocacy, and find a little hope in a brighter future, too.
Our deepest thanks to Glenn Harris and Ashton Lattimore for joining us this week.
- (00:00) - Welcome to Mission Forward
- (03:19) - About Facing Race
- (05:36) - Why do you believe in this work?
- (10:39) - Painting the Picture of Possibility in the Coming Election
- (16:31) - "Everyone is an organizer"
- (20:06) - Speaking Truth to Power with Love
- (21:20) - Erosion of Rights
- (26:00) - Education Justice
- (32:32) - Climate Justice
Now Available! More Than Words: Communications Practices of Courageous Leaders by Carrie Fox, founder and CEO of Mission Partners, is available. You're invited to join an emerging community of practice and become a positive and powerful agent of change.
——
Last November, Apple released a short film titled "The Greatest," which follows seven people throughout what is considered an average day, with an all-disabled cast, representing the authentic experiences of each cast member as they engage in various daily tasks, showcasing how Apple's suite of accessibility tools enables them to, as Forbes writes, navigate a world that wasn't designed with their needs in mind. It gives us a lot to thinking about.
This week’s essay comes from the Finding The Words column, a series published every Wednesday that delivers a dose of communication insights direct to your inbox. If you like what you read, we hope you’ll subscribe to ensure you receive this each week.
- (00:00) - Welcome to Mission Forward
- (01:48) - All Access
Now Available! More Than Words: Communications Practices of Courageous Leaders by Carrie Fox, founder and CEO of Mission Partners, is available. You're invited to join an emerging community of practice and become a positive and powerful agent of change.
——
In 2020, Mission Partners was exploring the launch of an apprenticeship program to advance leaders in the communications and PR field with a specific and public race equity action plan to invest $2.5 million in Black and women-led organizations over five years.
As we started on that journey, we discovered some troubling data: 8% of agency leadership identified as Black, while 89.8% identified as White. During the period of February to April 2020, there was also a 41% drop in the number of active Black business owners, compared to a 22% drop in business owners overall and a 14% drop in White business owners.
That inspired us to create the Mission Partners Social Entrepreneur-in-Residence Program. This nine-month executive program is open to any Black communications agency leader with five years of business leadership. It provides executive coaching and a five-figure stipend to support their business giving back to the communities most important to them through their leadership and expertise.
Now, as we’re nearing the end of the first year of the program, we’ve invited Ryan to share his experience and guidance as we share our collected insights to those considering a similar program. Our great thanks to Ryan for his contributions and incredible insights as we have learned together on this journey.
- (00:00) - Welcome to Mission Forward
- (06:34) - Introducing Ryan Pintado-Vertner
- (08:58) - Why the Social Entrepreneur Role?
- (14:26) - Kick-starting the Idea
- (18:30) - Seeking Mutual Benefit
- (24:40) - The Win-Win-Win
- (25:42) - Lessons Learned
Now Available! More Than Words: Communications Practices of Courageous Leaders by Carrie Fox, founder and CEO of Mission Partners, is available. You're invited to join an emerging community of practice and become a positive and powerful agent of change.
——
In 2020, Mission Partners was exploring the launch of an apprenticeship program to advance leaders in the communications and PR field with a specific and public race equity action plan to invest $2.5 million in Black and women-led organizations over five years.
As we started on that journey, we discovered some troubling data: 8% of agency leadership identified as Black, while 89.8% identified as White. During the period of February to April 2020, there was also a 41% drop in the number of active Black business owners, compared to a 22% drop in business owners overall and a 14% drop in White business owners.
That inspired us to create the Mission Partners Social Entrepreneur-in-Residence Program. This nine-month executive program is open to any Black communications agency leader with five years of business leadership. It provides executive coaching and a five-figure stipend to support their business giving back to the communities most important to them through their leadership and expertise.
Now, as we’re nearing the end of the first year of the program, we’ve invited Ryan to share his experience and guidance as we share our collected insights to those considering a similar program. Our great thanks to Ryan for his contributions and incredible insights as we have learned together on this journey.
- (00:00) - Welcome to Mission Forward
- (06:34) - Introducing Ryan Pintado-Vertner
- (08:58) - Why the Social Entrepreneur Role?
- (14:26) - Kick-starting the Idea
- (18:30) - Seeking Mutual Benefit
- (24:40) - The Win-Win-Win
- (25:42) - Lessons Learned
Now Available! More Than Words: Communications Practices of Courageous Leaders by Carrie Fox, founder and CEO of Mission Partners, is available. You're invited to join an emerging community of practice and become a positive and powerful agent of change.
——
You probably know the name Craig Newmark. You probably know his name as the founder of Craigslist, a web pioneer, a philanthropist, and—depending on your line of work—a staunch advocate on behalf of trustworthy journalism. (Learn more about that in our conversation on the Mission Forward podcast.) But there’s one equally important part of his bio you may not know: Customer Service Representative.
This week’s essay comes from the Finding The Words column, a series published every Wednesday that delivers a dose of communication insights direct to your inbox. If you like what you read, we hope you’ll subscribe to ensure you receive this each week.
- (00:00) - Welcome to Mission Forward
- (01:36) - Can I Trust You?
Now Available! More Than Words: Communications Practices of Courageous Leaders by Carrie Fox, founder and CEO of Mission Partners, is available. You're invited to join an emerging community of practice and become a positive and powerful agent of change.
——
A couple of years ago, a well-known and well-loved nonprofit organization contacted our team with a bit of a problem. The organization had been sustained by a loyal following of recurring donors, but their leadership had noticed a concerning trail off in contributions. They had lost some of their most important donors and they needed to figure out why.
This week’s essay comes from the Finding The Words column, a series published every Wednesday that delivers a dose of communication insights direct to your inbox. If you like what you read, we hope you’ll subscribe to ensure you receive this each week.
- (00:00) - Welcome to Mission Forward
- (01:32) - Learning from our Losses
We can’t have it all. We can’t expect that strong body without putting in the work, just like we can’t commit to a bold plan or a set of clear values and then decide to compromise them. But how do you know, clearly and definitively, who you are, and who you are not, at your core?
This is week 47 of theFinding The Words column, a series published every Wednesday that delivers a dose of communication insights direct to your inbox. If you like what you read, we hope you’ll subscribe to ensure you receive this each week.
- (00:00) - Welcome to Mission Forward
- (00:29) - Find Your Core
Mitch Album is the author of Tuesdays with Morrie, which, if you have heard of none of his other books, you've likely heard of that one. His collected works have sold over 47 million copies and have been translated into 45 languages and if you've only read Morrie, you owe it to yourself to pick up his others. Check out Have a Little Faith or The Stranger in The Lifeboat to get started.
This week, we present a special live conversation between Albom and Carrie Fox, recorded November 2022, on the heels of the book's 25th anniversary. We've been talking about the power of communications to make change this season, and this week, we invite you to think in terms of simplicity. To wit: "[In Morrie] people substitute themselves into the story. They're me, or they're Morrie, or their person is Morrie. If I had a nickel for every time someone would stop me and take out a wallet and say, 'let me show you my Morrie', and they would take out a picture. A teacher, a parent, a grandparent, or something like that. I think there's a universality to it, and that's why it's been picked up around the world the way it has."
This is one of Albom's true gifts: to tell stories so deeply personal, so easy to project ourselves into, that we can't help but see ourselves in them. And once we're able to see ourselves in a story, or a pitch, or a release, we capture a spark of empathy to light the flame of change.
We're thrilled to be able to share this conversation with you here. Our great thanks to Mitch Albom and Grace United Methodist Church for allowing us to share in the experience.
- 00:00 - Welcome to Mission Forward
This episode of Mission Forward is sponsored by Unit of Impact, a powerful new platform created for small businesses interested in measuring and sharing their social and environmental impact. Listen in for a brief interview with co-founder Polina Pinchevsky at the end of this week's show. For listeners of Mission Forward, visit https://unitofimpact.com and start a free trial with 20% off any annual plan and enter the promo code EARLYBIRD2022 at checkout. Offer good through December 31, 2022.
Michael Gordon Voss is publisher at Stanford Social Innovation Review (SSIR), and this week’s conversation is all about trust.
See, Micheal has spent the last few decades building relationships of trust between his publications and his reading public. That experience has made him an expert in a few key areas we're eager to explore this week. What is the role of curation when it comes to using news and information in building and maintaining trust with your audience? How does the broader social sharing economy impact our ability to impact change? What is the value of a publication in an information economy that is so challenged for trust between publisher and reader right? We explore those areas and more this week.
A little about Michael: before joining SSIR, Michael was Vice President, Associate Publisher, Business Development & Marketing for Scientific American, based in New York City, where he drove commercial marketing and brand strategy, strategic partnerships, sponsorships, and new product development. His career in digital and traditional media has spanned nearly two decades and a wide array of titles and companies, including Newsweek, Meredith Corporation, and George magazine.
Over the course of the show, we make reference to a few stories that make for appropriate follow-up from the pages of SSIR.
- "Change is Worth the Risk" by Mauricio Miller
- "The Four Principles of Purpose-Driven Board Leadership" by Anne Wallestad
- "The Next 10 Years of Impact Investment" by Yasemin Saltuk Lamy, Christina Leijonhufvud & Nick O'Donohoe
- "Coming Together from a Place of Strength, Not Weakness" by Carrie Fox
If you've never had the opportunity to hear from Michael directly, we're honored and thrilled to bring him to you this week. His work is the foundation for thought-provoking exploration for our growth as communicators while guiding organizations to move their missions forward. Our great thanks to Michael for joining us this week on the show.
- 00:00 - Sponsor: Unit Of Impact – Promo Code EARLYBIRD2024
- 00:42 - Welcome to Mission Forward
- 02:17 - Introducing Michael Gordon Voss
- 08:09 - Understanding Social Innovation
- 11:00 - Weighing in on "Expertise"
- 13:57 - Innovation Across Communities
- 20:51 - Communications Challenges
- 26:40 - Measuring Impact
- 31:36 - Finding Hope
- 35:33 - Learn More
- 36:56 - Special Interview: Unit of Impact
If you’re a regular listener to this show, you know that our conversations run the gamut; from interpersonal communications to corporate communications, we’re interested in communications that change lives. Today on the show, we’re going even bigger.
Jeff Caporizzo is Senior Partner and Executive Creative Director at ICF Next, an agency dedicated to “Next-level participation.” That sounds like a big promise in today’s connected communications economy, but take a look at some of their work, and you’ll see just how action backs the language.
Jeff joins Carrie Fox today to talk about the power of mass communications and advertising to inform viewpoints, behaviors, and narratives and even disrupt false or negative narratives. No time like the present, right?
Jeff is a creative storyteller. He has used his craft for good over the years, and in campaign after campaign, he’s helped his clients grow through challenging — even uncomfortable — lessons about how they use language, image, and spokesvoices to tell the stories of their brands for the better.
So, welcome to this conversation about messaging, power, and justice, all seen through the lens of the ad. Thanks to Jeff for his time and contribution to this conversation. We can’t wait to see what he creates next.
- 00:00 - Welcome to Mission Forward
- 01:18 - Introducing Jeff Caporizzo
- 10:42 - Understanding Design and How it can Change Narrative
- 13:54 - Designing Across Cultures
- 17:30 - Finding Your Spokesperson
- 25:38 - Power of Real Voices
- 27:38 - Finding Hope
If you’re a regular listener to this show, you know that our conversations run the gamut; from interpersonal communications to corporate communications, we’re interested in communications that change lives. Today on the show, we’re going even bigger.
Jeff Caporizzo is Senior Partner and Executive Creative Director at ICF Next, an agency dedicated to “Next-level participation.” That sounds like a big promise in today’s connected communications economy, but take a look at some of their work, and you’ll see just how action backs the language.
Jeff joins Carrie Fox today to talk about the power of mass communications and advertising to inform viewpoints, behaviors, and narratives and even disrupt false or negative narratives. No time like the present, right?
Jeff is a creative storyteller. He has used his craft for good over the years, and in campaign after campaign, he’s helped his clients grow through challenging — even uncomfortable — lessons about how they use language, image, and spokesvoices to tell the stories of their brands for the better.
So, welcome to this conversation about messaging, power, and justice, all seen through the lens of the ad. Thanks to Jeff for his time and contribution to this conversation. We can’t wait to see what he creates next.
- 00:00 - Welcome to Mission Forward
- 01:18 - Introducing Jeff Caporizzo
- 10:42 - Understanding Design and How it can Change Narrative
- 13:54 - Designing Across Cultures
- 17:30 - Finding Your Spokesperson
- 25:38 - Power of Real Voices
- 27:38 - Finding Hope
In 2020, the video game world learned something special about Marvel’s newest Spider-Man character, Miles Morales. Turns out he’s pretty good at American Sign Language (ASL). Superfans already knew the character to be bilingual from the animated film “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.” But trilingual?
This is week 39 of theFinding The Words column, a series published every Wednesday that delivers a dose of communication insights direct to your inbox. If you like what you read, we hope you’ll subscribe to ensure you receive this each week.
- 00:00 - Welcome to Mission Forward
- 00:30 - Watch for the Signs
There's a superhero origin story in all of us. We're convinced of it. But it's not the story you might think — learning how to fly, or figuring out how to lift cars over our heads. No, the real superhero story is the story we each carry in our hearts that reminds us of the first time we learned compassion, the first time we learned how to feel for another human being, and the first time we learned to love unconditionally.
This week, we present Schroeder Stribling, President, and CEO of Mental Health America. She's with us to talk about mental health, the narrative we've written around it as a society, and why it's time to get serious and teach one another to approach trauma with compassion. Along the way, you're going to hear Schroeder's superhero origin story. We hope it triggers something for you that reminds you of your own.
Because we contend that it's only by reminding one another — and ourselves — of our ability to love that we'll be able to reduce barriers and increase access to mental health care that is increasingly critical to so many of us. Achieving practical, boots-on-the-ground success in meeting the mental health needs of our peers, colleagues, and strangers alike will require us to believe in our ability to bring change to their lives and our own in so doing.
Schroeder is an incredibly powerful individual and if you have never crossed her path, we're thrilled to be the show to do it for you today. Our deepest thanks to Schroeder Stribling for her time and friendship.
- 00:00 - Welcome to Mission Forward
- 02:07 - Introducing Schroeder Stribling
- 11:05 - A Trauma-Informed Approach to Communications
- 15:57 - Post-Covid Communications
- 20:22 - Assessing the Time We're In
- 31:07 - Leading Mental Health Awareness from the Top
- 33:19 - Parting Thoughts, Finding Hope
This November 17-19, 2022, thousands of people will gather for Facing Race: A National Conference, produced by Race Forward, to explore new and powerful ways to advance racial justice. It is, in a word, extraordinary in the way this conference offers advocates of all stripes to connect, to learn, and to love the work we all do, in our own ways, furthering the conversations of racial justice together.
In the lead-up to the conference, we thought we'd host our own forum with two very special people in our lives — and in the conference itself. What you're about to hear is a conversation with Glenn Harris, President of Race Forward and host of the Facing Race Conference, and Ashton Lattimore, editor-in-chief of Prism, a valued partner in this year's conference.
This is a timely conversation, not just for its proximity to the conference itself, but for its resonance to the public discourse. We're in the run-up to another election in a contentious political environment. How do we find hope and possibility in the face of what we have lost through division and partisanship? How do we remember the value of speaking truth to power with love in the face of eroding rights in this country? How do we confront the disenfranchisement of public education and the inequality of our efforts in climate legislation with strength, compassion, and faith that people of good will, will do good things?
We don't offer answers in this episode. But we hope that our efforts to showcase these voices and perspectives, voices of two people we believe offer good faith and goodwill in a marketplace of communication challenged by both, can give you a glimpse of how you might mount your own efforts for advocacy, and find a little hope in a brighter future, too.
Our deepest thanks to Glenn Harris and Ashton Lattimore for joining us this week. Please check out the Facing Race conference and join us in Phoenix in November!
- 00:00 - Welcome to Mission Forward
- 02:31 - About Facing Race
- 04:48 - Why do you believe in this work?
- 09:51 - Painting the Picture of Possibility in the Coming Election
- 15:43 - "Everyone is an organizer"
- 19:18 - Speaking Truth to Power with Love
- 20:32 - Erosion of Rights
- 25:12 - Education Justice
- 31:44 - Climate Justice
Our words and our actions matter. This week, if you’re serious about what you say, make sure your actions reflect it. Otherwise, you may be the one apologizing.
This is week 38 of theFinding The Words column, a series published every Wednesday that delivers a dose of communication insights direct to your inbox. If you like what you read, we hope you’ll subscribe to ensure you receive this each week.
- 00:00 - Welcome to Finding the Words
- 00:31 - No Apology Needed
Our words and our actions matter. This week, if you’re serious about what you say, make sure your actions reflect it. Otherwise, you may be the one apologizing.
This is week 38 of theFinding The Words column, a series published every Wednesday that delivers a dose of communication insights direct to your inbox. If you like what you read, we hope you’ll subscribe to ensure you receive this each week.
- 00:00 - Welcome to Finding the Words
- 00:31 - No Apology Needed
As of this writing, 5,852 companies, representing 471,095 workers across 85 countries, carry the “Certified B Corporation” badge. Our firm, Mission Partners, is one of them. But broadcasting this label is more than just surface branding.
This week on the show, our Chief Operating Officer, Bridget Pooley, sits down with Carrie Fox to discuss purpose. Why does purpose matter? How does a business build a culture that embraces the question, “What If?” And for all the challenges that achieving B Corp Certification may pose, is it worth it?
Before Mission Partners, Bridget worked at the Center for Social Impact Communication at Georgetown University. The Center works to advance the field of social impact by educating and inspiring marketers and communicators, fundraisers, and journalists. She served on the corporate partnerships team at Share Our Strength, which many listeners might know by their No Kid Hungry Campaign.
Ours is an organization that has embraced the objectives of the B Corp Certification wholly; we wear this accomplishment with pride, including how we intentionally use our business as a tool to advance communications. Bridget’s incredible experience and leadership as a B Corp champion have taught us much about how we present ourselves to our clients, peers, and the world. This week, we dig in on that intentionality and share how we at Mission Partners lead through our core values.
Thank you, Bridget Pooley, for joining us for this week’s conversation.
- 00:00 - Welcome to Mission Forward
- 01:46 - Introducing Bridget Pooley
- 03:38 - Exploring the Power of Purpose
- 06:55 - What if?
- 13:26 - About the B Corp Model
- 15:36 - Uncovering what you stand for
- 24:59 - Finding hope
The stories we pass down need not limit the stories we are capable of writing for our future selves. Two little words have the power to change HOW we communicate and HOW we connect with and understand one another as a result. Those two words? This week we offer a lesson in what if.
Thanks for listening. This is the 29th article in a year-long series called Finding the Words. If you liked this week's essay, we hope you'll forward it along. And a reminder that your family, friends, and colleagues can subscribe to Finding the Words too — along with every episode of our podcast — simply by clicking this link.
The stories we pass down need not limit the stories we are capable of writing for our future selves. Two little words have the power to change HOW we communicate and HOW we connect with and understand one another as a result. Those two words? This week we offer a lesson in what if.
Thanks for listening. This is the 29th article in a year-long series called Finding the Words. If you liked this week's essay, we hope you'll forward it along. And a reminder that your family, friends, and colleagues can subscribe to Finding the Words too — along with every episode of our podcast — simply by clicking this link.
This season, we’re looking closer at you how you can use communications as a tool for systems change and social justice. Our first guest, Mark Miller, along with his colleagues, has just written the book on the power of public health communications, Talking Health: A New Way to Communicate about Public Health. Carrie Fox sat down with Mark at an event hosted by the University of Nebraska Medical Center and, with our great thanks to that amazing organization, we offer the interview to you, listeners of the podcast.
Mark Miller serves as Vice President of Communications at the de Beaumont Foundation. His career started in public and civic service before moving to children’s health and now public health. To all these roles, he brings a rich perspective to the challenges that face many front line communicators, including those who are needing to relay critical communications in real time, even as the science is still informing the message. This conversation includes Carrie and Mark in conversation, plus the insightful questions from an audience of invested communicators honing their craft. Our great thanks to Mark Miller and the team at the University of Nebraska Medical Center for making this conversation possible.
- 00:00 - Welcome to Mission Forward
- 01:36 - Introducing Mark Miller
- 03:42 - What drives your passion for public health?
- 04:56 - What is the value of talking about public health, in light of a global pandemic?
- 06:20 - Challenging ... and embracing ... the assumptions of public health?
- 09:07 - How did the book come about?
- 10:52 - Trust and Clarity
- 12:49 - Finding a shared understanding of public health
- 18:23 - What are the essential elements of communications that everyone should practice?
- 20:55 - How can practitioners evaluate effectiveness?
- 22:58 - What jargon traps should we avoid?
- 25:16 - While writing the book, did you have any epiphanies?
- 26:49 - What clever solutions have you seen for engagement?
- 28:42 - What tools do you employ to visualize complex data successfully?
- 30:41 - What is the fine line between tailoring messages and making it clear?
- 34:01 - How do I talk to professionals who want to use jargon?
- 36:01 - To tailor or not to tailor?
- 38:56 - Inclusion and "Us vs. Them"
- 41:50 - How long should an infographic be?
- 44:44 - Learn more... and buy the book!
This season, we are taking you on a journey into the craft of communicators who have each shaped their work in a way that pushes boundaries, challenges complex systems, speaks truth directly to over-charged power, and bridges divides toward healthier, stronger lives. We're incredibly proud of this season's story and we can't wait to share it. New episodes begin September 22, 2022.
- 00:00 - Welcome to Mission Forward
How do you define power in your brand’s social media? In this climate of mis- and disinformation, navigating a brand's path across the internet means facing difficult conversations head-on. How do you forge ahead, craft an image and perspective that is authentic to the culture of your team, and place it online in a way that aligns with your values?
Our guest this week is Anthony Shop. Anthony is co-founder and Chief Strategy officer of Social Driver, an agency dedicated to building brand image online for their clients. He's also Chairman of the National Digital Roundtable, a DC-based group whose mission is to educate and inform professionals about the technology, trends, and tactics that are transforming how society interacts with the world around them. In short, Anthony Shop knows of what he speaks on this subject.
This is a conversation about trends, but not the trends defining what we're wearing or listening to. We're talking about the choices brands are making as they choose how to show up online, to live their values on digital channels, navigating the heated rhetoric that dominated so many spaces this election year. Are brands stepping back, or digging deeper into their social strategies?
Anthony's answer may surprise you. It all starts with people. "If CNN calls, you can't send your logo, you have to send a person! More companies are embracing using their people," he says. "Social media policies used to be about what not to do. Now, companies are helping leaders to build their presence," as individuals.
Agencies are carrying heavy baggage right now. Shaking free of white-dominant norms and toxicity can go a long way toward allowing more individuals the freedom to share new ideas for their clients, but our field has a long way to go. Taking Social Driver as an example gives us a light, a model that Anthony and team have created together of an intentional culture built on values and partnership inside the agency and beyond it. We're so grateful Anthony is here to teach us today.
Links & Notes
- Driver Foundation
- The Book of Hope by Jane Goodall and Douglas Abrams.
- Think Like a Monk by Jay Shetty
- 'Yeti’s Billion-Dollar Strategy: No Celebrities, No Pandering' • Wall Street Journal
- 00:00 - Welcome to Mission Forward
- 01:27 - Introducing Anthony Shop
- 05:31 - Where does power come from?
- 11:12 - Re-thinking Teams
- 14:22 - National Digital Roundtable
- 16:40 - The Digital Landscape: The Underinvestment in People Profiles
- 20:05 - Broadcasting vs. Narrowcasting
- 22:35 - Platform vs. Values
- 27:05 - Inspirations
Two little words have the power to change HOW we communicate, and HOW we connect with and understand one another as a result. Those two words? What if?
Thanks for listening. This is the 32nd article in a year-long series called Finding the Words. If you liked this week's essay, we hope you'll forward it along. And a reminder that your family, friends, and colleagues can subscribe to Finding the Words too — along with every episode of our podcast — simply by clicking this link.
- 00:00 - Welcome to Mission Forward
- 00:39 - Dare to Ask
Two little words have the power to change HOW we communicate, and HOW we connect with and understand one another as a result. Those two words? What if?
Thanks for listening. This is the 32nd article in a year-long series called Finding the Words. If you liked this week's essay, we hope you'll forward it along. And a reminder that your family, friends, and colleagues can subscribe to Finding the Words too — along with every episode of our podcast — simply by clicking this link.
- 00:00 - Welcome to Mission Forward
- 00:39 - Dare to Ask
Our guest today is someone who is actively rethinking, rewriting, and redefining the status quo media landscape. Ashton Lattimore is Editor-in-Chief at Prism, an independent, nonprofit newsroom led by journalists of color, and as she says, “Prism was founded because mainstream media wasn’t reflecting enough of the truth—and it wasn’t bringing us closer to our vision of collective liberation and justice.”
Through in-depth and thought-provoking journalism, Prism reflects the lived experiences of people most impacted by injustice. Journalists tell stories from the ground up at Prism: to disrupt harmful narratives, and to inform movements for justice. Prism launched in August of 2020 and has quickly provided an important lens through which to report on issues such as electoral justice, racial justice, economic justice, gender justice, climate justice, and more—all through an essential and intersectional lens of racial justice
Prism is, as you’ll hear her describe it, a newsroom with a point of view, but one with a keen eye on the center of the story: the subject with the most at stake. And in a media ecosystem in which stake is too often defined by wealth and power, re-defining the concept in terms of justice and equity is a refreshing turn.
Lattimore is a former lawyer and accomplished writer and editor. She’s also a Maynard Institute Fellow whose work focuses on this intersection of race, culture, and law. We thrilled to have her on the show this week.
- 00:00 - It's Summer at Mission Forward!
- 00:22 - Welcome to Mission Forward
- 01:44 - Introducing Ashton Lattimore
Our guest today is someone who is actively rethinking, rewriting, and redefining the status quo media landscape. Ashton Lattimore is Editor-in-Chief at Prism, an independent, nonprofit newsroom led by journalists of color, and as she says, “Prism was founded because mainstream media wasn’t reflecting enough of the truth—and it wasn’t bringing us closer to our vision of collective liberation and justice.”
Through in-depth and thought-provoking journalism, Prism reflects the lived experiences of people most impacted by injustice. Journalists tell stories from the ground up at Prism: to disrupt harmful narratives, and to inform movements for justice. Prism launched in August of 2020 and has quickly provided an important lens through which to report on issues such as electoral justice, racial justice, economic justice, gender justice, climate justice, and more—all through an essential and intersectional lens of racial justice
Prism is, as you’ll hear her describe it, a newsroom with a point of view, but one with a keen eye on the center of the story: the subject with the most at stake. And in a media ecosystem in which stake is too often defined by wealth and power, re-defining the concept in terms of justice and equity is a refreshing turn.
Lattimore is a former lawyer and accomplished writer and editor. She’s also a Maynard Institute Fellow whose work focuses on this intersection of race, culture, and law. We thrilled to have her on the show this week.
- 00:00 - It's Summer at Mission Forward!
- 00:22 - Welcome to Mission Forward
- 01:44 - Introducing Ashton Lattimore
Have you ever told yourself that you were going to do something — maybe launch a new initiative at work, make something of that hobby you’ve always loved, or take on a lofty personal goal — but found that something gets in the way of your progress?
Thanks for listening. This is the 28th article in a year-long series called Finding the Words. If you liked this week's essay, we hope you'll forward it along. And a reminder that your family, friends, and colleagues can subscribe to Finding the Words too — along with every episode of our podcast — simply by clicking this link.
- 00:00 - Welcome to Mission Forward
Have you ever told yourself that you were going to do something — maybe launch a new initiative at work, make something of that hobby you’ve always loved, or take on a lofty personal goal — but found that something gets in the way of your progress?
Thanks for listening. This is the 28th article in a year-long series called Finding the Words. If you liked this week's essay, we hope you'll forward it along. And a reminder that your family, friends, and colleagues can subscribe to Finding the Words too — along with every episode of our podcast — simply by clicking this link.
- 00:00 - Welcome to Mission Forward
According to this week's guest, "the word community has been co-opted to something that is a lie." While we might have a shared convention of community, when we use the word, our differences begin to rise to the surface. Our language is littered with words like this — family, culture, and yes, community — words that require us to stop, reflect, and ask: "when you use these words, to whom are you referring?"
We're talking about Mia Birdsong: pathfinder, community curator, and storyteller, who steadily engages the leadership and wisdom of people experiencing injustice to chart new visions of American life. You may have seen her TED Talk ('The Story We Tell About Poverty Isn't True'), or read her book (How We Show Up: Reclaiming Family, Friendship, and Community), or listened to her podcast (More than Enough), but if you haven't, you will surely want to after listening to this week's conversation. She has an extraordinary gift for leveraging the brilliance of everyday people so that our collective gifts reach larger spheres of influence, cultural and political change, and create well-being for everyone.
We take on the concept of community, and the challenges and lack of clarity in the words we use. We talk about how a culture of self-reliance and a system of oppression have become hurdles for forming community. We talk about the differences between independence and interdependence. We talk about the dangers of whiteness in society, and why now, more than ever, we need a new white culture to prevail.
As much as this is a dialogue about the disparity between bodies, it is also a celebration of potential. The pandemic has done much to pull back the veil on the inherent lack that exists in communities adjacent to privilege. As Mia says, while there is a pull to revert to whatever we experienced as "normal" before the pandemic, we have an opportunity and an obligation to one another to test our understanding of our language of community, of family, of culture, of friendship, all in an effort to balance the scales long tilted against color and poverty.
Our thanks to Mia Birdsong for her courage, her activism, and her time to share with us this week.
Links & Notes
- 'The Story we Tell About Poverty Isn't True' — Mia Birdsong, TEDTalks
- 'More Than Enough: An exploration of Guaranteed Income' — Mia Birdsong, The Nation
- How We Show Up: Reclaiming Family, Friendship, and Community by Mia Birdsong
- 00:00 - Welcome to Mission Forward
- 02:11 - Mia Birdsong
According to this week's guest, "the word community has been co-opted to something that is a lie." While we might have a shared convention of community, when we use the word, our differences begin to rise to the surface. Our language is littered with words like this — family, culture, and yes, community — words that require us to stop, reflect, and ask: "when you use these words, to whom are you referring?"
We're talking about Mia Birdsong: pathfinder, community curator, and storyteller, who steadily engages the leadership and wisdom of people experiencing injustice to chart new visions of American life. You may have seen her TED Talk ('The Story We Tell About Poverty Isn't True'), or read her book (How We Show Up: Reclaiming Family, Friendship, and Community), or listened to her podcast (More than Enough), but if you haven't, you will surely want to after listening to this week's conversation. She has an extraordinary gift for leveraging the brilliance of everyday people so that our collective gifts reach larger spheres of influence, cultural and political change, and create well-being for everyone.
We take on the concept of community, and the challenges and lack of clarity in the words we use. We talk about how a culture of self-reliance and a system of oppression have become hurdles for forming community. We talk about the differences between independence and interdependence. We talk about the dangers of whiteness in society, and why now, more than ever, we need a new white culture to prevail.
As much as this is a dialogue about the disparity between bodies, it is also a celebration of potential. The pandemic has done much to pull back the veil on the inherent lack that exists in communities adjacent to privilege. As Mia says, while there is a pull to revert to whatever we experienced as "normal" before the pandemic, we have an opportunity and an obligation to one another to test our understanding of our language of community, of family, of culture, of friendship, all in an effort to balance the scales long tilted against color and poverty.
Our thanks to Mia Birdsong for her courage, her activism, and her time to share with us this week.
Links & Notes
- 'The Story we Tell About Poverty Isn't True' — Mia Birdsong, TEDTalks
- 'More Than Enough: An exploration of Guaranteed Income' — Mia Birdsong, The Nation
- How We Show Up: Reclaiming Family, Friendship, and Community by Mia Birdsong
- 00:00 - Welcome to Mission Forward
- 02:11 - Mia Birdsong
Years ago, my dear friend and mentor Don Foley shared a story about Isaac Stern that I’ve never let go. The great violinist (1920-2001) was often asked why the music sounded so different when Isaac played it on his violin versus when the same song sheet was followed by others.
“Anyone can play the notes,” he would tell students; “music is what goes on in between the notes.”
Thanks for listening. This is the 15th article in a year-long series called Finding the Words. If you liked this week's essay, we hope you'll forward it along. And a reminder that your family, friends, and colleagues can subscribe to Finding the Words too — along with every episode of our podcast — simply by clicking this link.
Linda Villarosa is a brilliant storyteller. In addition to her work as a journalist, author, editor, and educator, she's a New York Times Magazine contributing writer where she covers race, inequality and health. You may have come across her 2018 cover story for the magazine titled 'Why America's Black mothers and babies are in a life or death crisis,' which was nominated for a national magazine award.
It was that article that first prompted us to reach out with Linda to participate in a Mission Forward. She returns to us today because of a story she recently published called 'Black Lives are Shorter in Chicago: My family's history shows why.' Reading that story, a very personal account of her own family's journey through Chicago transports the reader through time, while reinforcing some of the most essential public health issues of our time.
As you'll hear in this episode, this country has turned an important corner on the fight against COVID, a fight to return some semblance of life as we once knew it, with an approach of equality. But we do not suffer, nor do we heal equally. This is a fight which must be waged equitably, acknowledging the decidedly unequal contributions to our collective suffering shouldered by Black and Brown people in this country.
Linda Villarosa is uniquely experienced to help Carrie Fox and Natalie S. Burke navigate this conversation, confronting just how far our public health system has to go on issues of equity and inclusivity.
Have you ever been given an assignment so daunting that it made you wonder, “How in the world will I ever do this?” Those responsible for communicating during the most uncertain times of COVID-19 surely know the feeling.
Thanks for listening. This is the 16th article in a year-long series called Finding the Words. If you liked this week's essay, we hope you'll forward it along. And a reminder that your family, friends, and colleagues can subscribe to Finding the Words too — along with every episode of our podcast — simply by clicking this link.
Amira El-Gawly believes love is making a comeback at work.
That's a pretty heady statement, and one you might be tempted to dismiss. What's love got to do with work? you might say. We're about engagement and KPIs and customer data you might say. Here's the thing: Amira El-Gawly co-founded her first company at 27 and across the arc of her myriad careers — journalist, marketer, designer, speechwriter, operations executive — she has focused a keen eye on her people, their relationships, and what leads to better results.
As it turns out, work has changed. Our people have different expectations of one another and their leaders today than they did five years ago, and the last twelve months has only accelerated the trend. Her firm, Manifesta, specializes in helping organizations unleash potential through the relationships and experiences of their people. Collaboration across the workforce thus becomes an exercise in "alignment, joy, and humanity." Today, as Amira says, "investing in people is investing in performance."
This week on the show, we're talking about the nature of work, how work has changed in the last twelve months, and how those expectations of stronger, richer relationships can bring more love back to the workplace. People who love their work, and love the people they work with, love succeeding together.
Thanks to Amira El-Gawly for her participation on the show this week. She's an aspirational figure and a dear friend of Mission Forward.
Links & Notes
- Learn more about Manifesta
Our words and our actions matter. The effect they can have on others is enormous. This week, a reminder to come at your conversations — with your employees, your colleagues, your children, your neighbors — with love.
Thanks for listening. This is the 20th article in a year-long series called Finding the Words. If you liked this week's essay, we hope you'll forward it along. And a reminder that your family, friends, and colleagues can subscribe to Finding the Words too — along with every episode of our podcast — simply by clicking this link.
Edgar Villanueva is a southerner. He’s a North Carolinian. He was raised in the church. He’s also a member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina, and as such, was the only Native American in his K-12 education experience.
“When I got to the University of North Carolina, I was so hungry to connect with other native students. I began to understand there that there were things about my world view and my perspective that were unique to being Native American.”
Somewhere between his Native heritage and his disarming Southern charm, Edgar has developed a muscle for speaking truth to power with love (his fantastic words, not ours), and no where is that more apparent than in his work in institutional philanthropy, an industry ripe for change.
In his best-selling book, Decolonizing Wealth: Indigenous Wisdom to Heal Divides and Restore Balance, Edgar takes us on tour of the philanthropic industry that carries the baggage of colonial structures designed to stifle the voices of equity through a veneer of altruism. Philanthropy is an exercised of "dividing Us from Them and the haves from the have-nots," says Edgar.
This week on the show, Edgar shares with us 14-year exploration of Big Philanthropy, and his healing and compassionate solutions to an industry mired in systemic imbalance. He shares the experience of grappling with issues but not having language to have the conversations we need to have, and his work to help others develop vernacular to help and to heal.
Most important, he offers us insight to his efforts not just to discuss these issues, but to change an industry through Liberated Capital: A Decolonizing Wealth Fund.
Rooted in relationships of mutuality and equity, Liberated Capital gives through a reparations model that trusts and supports the leadership of those most impacted by historical and systemic racism. The fund welcomes support from individuals at all levels of giving who are committed to collectively healing the wounds of colonialism and white supremacy by using money as medicine to shape an equitable future.
Anyone can join and take part in the mission of Decolonizing Wealth through Liberated Capital, and we here at Mission Partners are proud to be a part of this movement through our own donation this month. Our great thanks to Edgar for his time and support of this show. We’re proud to be in orbit of the work of this organization.
Links & Notes
- Decolonizing Wealth
- Decolonizing Wealth: Indigenous Wisdom to Heal Divides and Restore Balance — by Edgar Villanueva
- Liberated Capital
- Follow Edgar on LinkedIn
Have you ever experienced a moment that made you feel strong, maybe even capable of great things? Perhaps it was a big goal accomplished, an affirmation from someone you admire, or a time when you helped someone who really needed it?
Thanks for listening. This is the 21st article in a year-long series called Finding the Words. If you liked this week's essay, we hope you'll forward it along. And a reminder that your family, friends, and colleagues can subscribe to Finding the Words too — along with every episode of our podcast — simply by clicking this link.
Ryan Pintado Vertner is founder of Smoketown, and a brand strategy expert. We had him on the Mission Forward podcast a year ago, but his message is as powerful today as it was then. It is one of our favorite episodes and we’re glad to be able to serve it back up to you today as a part of our summer session.
It was his experience in the consumer packaged goods industry that taught our guest this week how to channel his empathy. He found it by way of the institution’s appreciation for Design Thinking in product development. “One of the things that you do in design thinking very explicitly is that you obsess over the problem that you’re solving in people’s lives. ... They name that empathy.”
For Ryan Pintado-Vertner, that experience connected a new vernacular to something he’d known all along. Empathy — that sensitivity to others’ experience — described both his expertise in product development and his desire to change the world through his activism.
And thus, Smoketown, LLC was born. The name? A callback to Louisville’s oldest African-American neighborhood founded by emancipated slaves after the Civil War. To Pintado-Vertner and team, “it represents extraordinary potential hiding in plain sight.”
This week’s show goes straight to the heart of the dynamics in entrenched business processes that serve to stifle innovation through diversity and limit opportunities for marginalized communities. The opportunity, says Pintado-Vertner, lies in demography.
“They are more likely to lean into progressive expectations for how the economy should work better,” he says of recent generations. “What that means for us, how we think about this moment, is that this is not a moment at all. It is a building up of increasing power and influence of generations who do not share our expectations of the corporations they interact with; what we’re seeing right now is simply going to accelerate.”
Smoketown is an incredible operation with a powerful team shepherding its legacy. Ryan’s insights on that legacy and the historical events that shape our collective outlook today make him the perfect guest to take on such challenging conversations.
Links & Notes
- Learn more about Smoketown Strategy, LLC
- Connect with Ryan Pintado-Vertner on LinkedIn
- Subscribe to the Brand New Blueprint Podcast by Smoketown
Learning, practicing, and excelling at anything requires that we start somewhere. This week on Finding The Words, Carrie explores the journey from there... to here.
Thanks for listening. This is the 23rd article in a year-long series called Finding the Words. If you liked this week's essay, we hope you'll forward it along. And a reminder that your family, friends, and colleagues can subscribe to Finding the Words too — along with every episode of our podcast — simply by clicking this link.
We spent this season talking with a great mix of nonprofit and foundation leaders, and we can think of no better guest to wrap up our fifth season than our guest today: Nadine Gabai-Botero, President of Focus Fundraising.
Nadine has an incredibly diverse background in fundraising. Prior to establishing Focus Fundraising, she supported culture and arts organizations toward community development, and led capital campaigns and branding projects for clients across the spectrum. Her firm is only the latest chapter in a career dedicated to leading innovation in donor engagement and results.
Along the way, she earned her credentials as a Certified Fundraising Executive and serves as the Secretary of the Board and Development Committee chair of the Catalogue for Philanthropy in DC. Originally from Lima, Peru, she is a proud Latinx fundraiser and brings her diverse background to our conversation as we try to pin down trends driving nonprofit giving after a tumultuous few years.
Nadine is a cherished member of our community and we're honored to have her on our last show of the season to help us set the stage for what's to come.
Nicole Engdahl is a park person.
In January of 2015, Nicole joined the National Parks Foundation charged with formalizing the organization’s planned giving department. By 2016, she was tapped to lead the efforts of three major fundraising groups all under one big umbrella including direct response giving, mid-level giving, and estate gifts. That means her department is responsible for all park giving from the nickle in the point-of-sale jar to bequests.
See? Nicole Engdahl is a park person.
She’s been practicing her nonprofit fundraising craft for over twenty years having helped grow the domestic estate giving program for Special Olympics International and planned giving for the National Geographic Society. It takes an extraordinary set of communications skills to navigate nonprofit giving in our current global context. How do you communicate your mission in such a way as to inspire and connect with donors, motivating them to generosity and benevolence for your organization when there is so very much need in the world all around us?
We love Nicole’s exuberance for her work, her passions for the parks and all the things we do there, and her love of telling the National Parks Foundation’s stories in a way that inspires us all. Thank you, Nicole, for sharing your wisdom with us this week.
Did your workplace offer paid time off for the first time on election day in 2020 so that you could be free to navigate the polls without worry? Then you have today's guest to thank.
Stephen Levine is co-founder of Meteorite, a social impact firm that builds coalitions and campaigns that drive social transformation. Among those coalitions is the Civic Alliance, which together with its 1,200-plus member companies, rallied to champion civic participation leading to historic engagement in the 2020 elections.
Steven is a bona fide expert in social impact and corporate communications. He's held prominent positions at the White House where he as the White House Associate Director of Communications under President George W. Bush, where he was responsible for executing every single presidential media event held on White House grounds.
This week, Steven introduces us to his work, and how he channels his experience in media toward driving participation, access, and pride in every American's access to free and fair elections at every level. Their efforts have brougt about the Civic Alliance and the Corporate Civic Playbook, and tool to help every company and organization empower employees and customers to be active and engaged in civic life.
Thank you Steven, for joining us on the show and sharing your work with our community. Connect with Steven on LinkedIn to learn more.
Jim Knight has led Jubilee Housing since 2002 and joins us this week to share their commitment to building compassionate communities for everyone to thrive.
This week, we’re talking to someone with big ambition who recognized the greatest change started small.
Temi Bennet, Esq. is Director of Policy for if: a foundation for radical possibility, where she is responsible for engaging local government in the DC metro region in developing racially equitable policies that enable Black people and people of color to thrive.
It was her influence and leadership at if that moved the organization to take a distinctly different approach in their own branding. What was formerly known as the Consumer Health Foundation evolved into a new, provocative name and brand, bold and explicit in its mission to eliminate systems of oppression in favor of racial justice.
Temi is in a position to make big change, and if is an example of an organization working diligently, showcasing the impact of brand in clear and powerful advocacy. But we hope you’ll take another message from our conversation with her, too. She went to Washington looking to influence change from the top. What she learned is that the real power to make change started locally, right where she was. Thinking small to make big waves. And today she’s moving a big mission forward, removing barriers all along her way.
We’re taking a break from our longer-form interviews for reflection. This week, we offer a selection from Carrie’s column, “Finding the Words,” in which we explore the space that emerges when there are no words to be found.
We’ll be back next week. Until then, we hope you find peace in the quiet.
Welcome to this 50th episode of the Mission Forward Podcast! It's been a true joy sharing these conversations with you all on the power of communcations, this field we love so much.
Our guest this week is Kerry-Ann Hamilton, a communications strategist with decades of experience in media relations, cause communications, and crisis management. She serves as principal consultant at KAH Communications where she brings her experience to bear for nonprofits and cause-related organizations and, for us, her work is a shining example of the balance of ideals, values, goals, and mission.
In fact, we want to amplify this statement — which you'll hear when you listen to the show — because we've been repeating it like a mantra all week. When asked why she started her own firm, she replied, "I was excited to work at scale with organizations and bold change-makers who want to create the world they want, and are restless about the world we have."
We create the world we want because we're restless about the world we have.
Kerry-Ann's experience in nonprofit communication is extensive, and you'll hear how easily she's able to disabuse us of our misunderstandings about the work and power of the nonprofit in the hands of the passionate and engaged leader.
She shares her own inspirations this week: Atlas of the Heart by Brené Brown and The Trusted Advisor by David H. Maister.
You can learn more about Kerry-Ann Hamilton and the work her team is doing at KAH Consulting. We're honored to amplify her experience and expertise on the show this week!
"Joy can be a matter of life and death."
So says our guest this week, Justin Pasquierello. You could say his career started as a child, in a townhouse, meeting a team of paramedics on his stairs. His birth mother had a reaction to her medication. That was the last night he had lived with her, and the night that set him off on his career working in nonprofits on behalf of children.
We first met Justin Pasquierello when he was serving as executive director of Children's HealthWatch working with leaders around the country to improve children's health in America. From there, he's moved to East Boston Social Centers, taking the reins as Executive Director serving not just the diverse residents of East Boston, but the powerful legacy of 104 years the organization has served its community.
And Justin has done it all with joy.
"Joy lives in community," he says. "It is literally contagious, and so we can most effectively pursue our own happiness, and that of our society, together. Recognizing when all give, all gain, we can collectively make the world a better place by pursuing what matters most for joy: long and strong relationships, purpose, physical fitness, meditation, and fun."
He is a relentless and visionary thinker, working tirelessly to make the world a more peaceful, joyful, and sustainable place. We're honored to have Justin with us today to talk a bit about his work, his love, and some of our past work together.
Learn more about the work of East Boston Social Centers, and if you haven't had the opportunity, make sure to watch his TEDx Talk, "Why Joy is Not a Solo Sport", today.
When we started this season, we told you we would be talking to a mix of our favorite leaders in our field who are facing our challenges and barriers to moving their missions forward. This week on the show, we're talking to someone we can only rightly characterize as a leader of leaders.
C.Marie Taylor is a role model and mentor to us, a leader herself with a distinguished CV as executive director of respected non-profits. In 2018, she started her own consulting practice, Equity Through Action, leveraging her skills as a leader and communicator to build her own team dedicated to helping clients transform their environments into safe, inclusive, and people-focused spaces.
Anyone in agency space will know: accomplishing anything near that sort of goal requires a leader unafraid to speak truth — sometimes uncomfortable truth — to entrenched power. And that is not just C.Marie's great gift, it is her passion.
This week, we'll be specifically tackling the challenges of entrenched power in non-profit boards and offer solutions toward resolving conflict, overcoming obstacles, and generating action. We're thrilled that C.Marie has so generously given of her time and expertise to join us for this conversation.
How do you define power in your brand’s social media? In this climate of mis- and disinformation, navigating a brand's path across the internet means facing difficult conversations head-on. How do you forge ahead, craft an image and perspective that is authentic to the culture of your team, and place it online in a way that aligns with your values?
Our guest this week is Anthony Shop. Anthony is co-founder and Chief Strategy officer of Social Driver, an agency dedicated to building brand image online for their clients. He's also Chairman of the National Digital Roundtable, a DC-based group whose mission is to educate and inform professionals about the technology, trends, and tactics that are transforming how society interacts with the world around them. In short, Anthony Shop knows of what he speaks on this subject.
This is a conversation about trends, but not the trends defining what we're wearing or listening to. We're talking about the choices brands are making as they choose how to show up online, to live their values on digital channels, navigating the heated rhetoric that dominated so many spaces this election year. Are brands stepping back, or digging deeper into their social strategies?
Anthony's answer may surprise you. It all starts with people. "If CNN calls, you can't send your logo, you have to send a person! More companies are embracing using their people," he says. "Social media policies used to be about what not to do. Now, companies are helping leaders to build their presence," as individuals.
Agencies are carrying heavy baggage right now. Shaking free of white-dominant norms and toxicity can go a long way toward allowing more individuals the freedom to share new ideas for their clients, but our field has a long way to go. Taking Social Driver as an example gives us a light, a model that Anthony and team have created together of an intentional culture built on values and partnership inside the agency and beyond it. We're so grateful Anthony is here to teach us today.
Links & Notes
- Driver Foundation
- The Book of Hope by Jane Goodall and Douglas Abrams.
- Think Like a Monk by Jay Shetty
- 'Yeti’s Billion-Dollar Strategy: No Celebrities, No Pandering' • Wall Street Journal
Welcome to this first episode of season five of the Mission Forward podcast. We come together this week in the spirit of love, with a provocative conversation on the love we have in our work, shared with one of our favorite people.
May Medallada Robinson is a communications and marketing consultant and she has spent her career at the intersection of communications and equity. She is a professor at Towson University, a Senior Strategist here at Mission Partners, and she is a deeply involved and engaged member of the community.
Let's set the stage with May's purpose: "to use communication, education, and multiracial experience to bridge gaps and increase empathy, humanity, and love in the world."
Notice any words in there that you might not find on the standard comms CV? We did, too. And those words are at the heart of why May starts the season with us this Valentine's day week.
We ask each other — and each of you — what does it mean to show love in the work we do, the work of our agencies, and for those who come after us in our field? What does it mean to employ our love of this work toward love of one another in such a way that nurtures those around us, that lifts those beneath us, and heals divides rather than creates them?
We are navigating challenging seas together as we help our clients to tell their stories and educate our communities through our words, our pictures, and our campaigns. If there are better ways to operate that contribute to a more inclusive and multiracial society, we're lucky to have May with us to share her experiences toward that end through her own love of the field, with lessons we may use to lift all our boats together.
Last season, we took you on a journey to meet 10 people who are influencing and shaping how we communicate at scale, for social change.
This season, we’re bringing you into the conversation.
This season, we invite nonprofit executives, communications directors, and development directors to explore some of the most common challenges and barriers to moving missions forward. We’ll talk through topics that you’re likely experiencing too, and share insight into how you and your organization can harness the full power of communication; the power to tackle tough conversations; the power to challenge stereotypes in your marketing collateral; the power to build bridges between established and new donor sets, the power to deepen your impact.
We have a lot ahead of us this season and we hope you’ll join us on the journey.
This is your conversation, too.
Until we get underway, head over to missionforward.us to check out past episodes, subscribe to become a Mission Forward member, and join our community of inclusive communicators.
On that point, let’s be clear: this is a new community. It’s a place for us to try new things, to share lessons learned — the easy, and the hard ones — to build norms and expectations of one another, and to call home for this show. If you join us now, you’ll be in on the ground floor in our community of leaders and learners, shaping a space for us. We value that, and we hope you do, too. Click here to join our new Mission Forward TruStory FM Podcast Hub on Discord. And, once you’ve had a chance to check out the place, we hope you’ll become a supporting member, which will get you access to even more resources and channels in Discord, too.
If you’re working to become a more inclusive and thoughtful communicator, there’s nothing holding you back—except you. Join us as we move from mission to impact.
Way back in season one, we introduced you to Natalie S. Burke, founder of Common Health Action. This week, we want to amplify that conversation.
Natalie has a way of incisively approaching the most challenging questions that fuel her advocacy. She is a leader in an incisive, aware, and focused journey toward equity, diversity, and inclusion. But it is a disruptive journey, and wherever we’re going, we have to reckon with a central question: how does racism harm us all?
We reference this episode often around Mission Partners with our clients and colleagues, and given how relevant it remains in today's world, and just how precise Natalie is in her approach to the work ahead for all of us, we thought you might appreciate hearing it with fresh ears, too. Natalie’s efforts to create what she calls “constructive discomfort” go a long way toward helping us all adapt to the pain that can come through learning and change. When we can face our discomfort in trust, we all win through transformation.
New for 2022
You will find all past episodes and new opportunities to become founding members of Mission Forward, along with early access to future shows at missionforward.us. You can also find us sharing highlights and some cool behind-the-scenes content from shows over on Twitter @missionfwdshow.
Links & Notes
- Common Health Action
- Follow Natalie S. Burke on Medium
We're just a few weeks out from releasing our first episodes of season five of Mission Forward. Until then, we're continuing our tour of past guests in an effort to elevate a few of our favorite conversations to welcome new listeners the best way we know how. This week we bring you Ed Young and Liz Neely in our 2018 conversation live on the Mission Forward stage.
Ed and Liz are two of the smartest and sharpest minds in science, communications, and EDS reporting on COVID earned him a Pulitzer Prize for explanatory journalism in 2021. Back in 2018, Ed had just written a story in The Atlantic titled, "I Spent Two Years Trying to Fix the Gender Imbalance in My Stories Here’s What I’ve Learned, and Why I Did It." The lessons he and Liz articulate in this conversation continue to be relevant as we continue to crest this pandemic wave. We hope you enjoy this conversation and learn as much from it as we did.
Since starting the Mission Forward conversation series in 2014, we’ve had the opportunity to interview some amazing folks: Pulitzer Prize-winning writers, MacArthur Genius grantees, media entrepreneurs, and philanthropists. One of our favorite conversations to date has been with Ed Yong and Liz Neeley. It took place in 2018, shortly after Ed wrote a story in the Atlantic titled: “I Spent Two Years Trying to Fix the Gender Imbalance in My Stories Here’s What I’ve Learned, and Why I Did It.”
As an acclaimed author and science writer, Ed was a big deal then, but he’s had quite a run these last few years. This past September, his story on the COVID-19 pandemic, “How Did it Come to This?” took the cover spot of The Atlantic magazine, and since that time, he’s published several other articles on COVID 19 including his most recent: “America Is About to Choose How Bad the Pandemic Will Get.”
Given how much we value Ed Yong — and how straightforward he can make even the most complex science story — we decided to resurface this great conversation from a few years back, about building equity and breaking bias in storytelling.
In that 2018 story about gender imbalance in his reporting, Ed found that only 24 percent of his last 23 articles quoted sources that were women. And of those stories, 35 percent featured no female voices at all. As Ed shared in his article:
“I knew that I care about equality, so I deluded myself into thinking that I wasn’t part of the problem. I assumed that my passive concern would be enough. Passive concern never is.”
Yong’s heartbreakingly honest revelation, and several others like it, spurred our desire to dig in on ways that writers, marketers, and communications directors can build equity and break bias in their storytelling, and his story has stuck with us for many years.
But it wasn’t just Ed who we spoke with back **in 2018. We were joined by his partner, the brilliant Liz Neeley, founder and principal of Liminal Creations, where she focuses her time and talent on science communication. Liz served as Executive Director of The Story Collider through August of this year, shepherding real and deeply personal stories of science and living through on-stage events and their eponymous (and extraordinarily popular) podcast. Together, they had a lot to say on the topic of equity in storytelling.
Liz Neeley and Ed Yong are extraordinary people and exceptional journalists and communicators. We love this conversation and we’re sure that you will, too.
Links & Notes
- Building Equity and Breaking Bias in Storytelling — by Carrie Fox
- What Bias is Hiding in Your Writing? — by Carrie Fox
In honor of Martin Luther King Day, we want to highlight one of our favorite conversations and past episodes featuring Dr. Robert Kelly of Loyola University Maryland. He shares how putting the students at the center of every decision he makes and rising to meet the hunger that these students have for connection is what drives the charge for him, the faculty at the University, parents, and other engaged adults to create a culture celebrating reconciliation, curiosity, joy, and hope.
This is a conversation about responsibility; taking responsibility for crafting the future for those in our care. Rob shares how he is helping Loyola to build according to their mission: pressing forward on issues of culture, climate, race, and inclusion in the face of obstacles of our own creation.
Listen now wherever you get your podcasts, subscribe, leave us a review and share the podcast with family and friends. We'll back in February with new conversations and episodes to help you keep moving your mission forward.
When we started this season of Mission Forward, we wanted to go back to our roots. We are, after all, a communications firm. It seems only right that we spend a little time talking about communications.
And so, we began our journey to meet ten people influencing and shaping how we communicate at scale for social change. Authors, journalists, and designers sat down with us to share their journey against the headwinds of change, illuminating how they use the tools of their craft to change minds and influence markets for action.
This week on the show, producer Nimra Haroon joins Carrie Fox to review lessons learned over the course of this season, distilling for you the highlights of ten interviews that plumb the depths of our field. It is a bittersweet close to this chapter of the podcast as we break the holidays and the new year, but we will return in 2022 with season five, and a new collection of conversations to help you move your mission forward.
Our cup runs over with gratitude to Ashton Lattimore, Tim Hykes, Najma Robers, Greg Galle, Grady Powell, Houston Kraft, Eleni Stamoulis, Rae Oglesby, and Dan Buettner, along with each representative of their teams who helped to bring this season of interviews to fruition. Thank you to all — guests, production partners, and listeners alike — for making this podcast such a rewarding journey for us to undertake.
Dan Buettner is a National Geographic Fellow and multiple New York Times best-selling author and joins us this week to share his work researching and documenting Blue Zones around the world.
A Blue Zone is a geographically-defined and confirmed area of extreme longevity. Specifically, Okinawa, Japan; Sardinia, Italy, Nicoya, Costa Rica; Ikaria, Greece; and Loma Linda, California, boast populations that live the longest and are the healthiest people in the world. What makes them live so long? Dan and his team of demographers have spent years researching these Blue Zones, documenting how these populations live and work.
“We're spending $18 trillion a year on largely avoidable diseases. That number just keeps going up,” says Buettner. “We know these populations have a fraction of the heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and dementia. “Why don't we focus on trying to set up our cities and our workplaces so they look more like a Blue Zone?”
That’s precisely what he and his team are doing now, working to create healthy communities across the United States, beginning with Albert Lea, Minnesota, where they built the foundation for the Blue Zones Projects.
The Blue Zones books are inspirational for crafting better, healthier homes and workplaces, and we're thrilled to have Dan Buettner on the show this week to talk about his latest book, The Blue Zones Challenge: A 4-Week Plan for a Longer, Better Life.
This week on the show, we welcome a storyteller with a passion for social justice, equity, and service. That makes her a triple threat with a particularly astute eye on how the stories we tell can unintentionally move to separate us. Rae Oglesby started her career in broadcasting, working at CNN producing stories across Atlanta and South Carolina, before transitioning to non-profit marketing and communications.
Today, Rae is VP of Communications at UpTogether, a poverty-focused non-profit dedicated to lifting those in underrepresented communities in poverty into the middle class by helping families to invest in themselves. It is a movement, a platform, and most importantly accelerates the initiative that people in historically undervalued communities are taking to improve their lives and to move up together.
“It’s not about us as, as an organization,” says Rae. “It's not about what we are doing, but it is about the community. It is about our members. We're very much focused on relationships and not transactions. We understand that we need to take the time to get to know people who we are engaging with. We need to talk to them. We need to also recognize that communication is a two-way street, which means that we need to listen as well.”
This is not a story about charity. It’s a story about empowerment, about allowing communities to stop seeing themselves as others, but as valuable contributors in the effort to lift one another out of poverty. Rae offers powerful insights into how other non-profits might paint a stronger picture of those they serve by communication with intention. We’re honored to have this time with her and to share her story with you this week.
We welcome one of our own to Mission Forward this week: inclusivity advocate and graphic designer, Eleni Stamoulis. She joined the Mission Partners team in 2017 and since that time, she has been involved in an extraordinary array of client and partner projects. In brand refreshes and rebrands, website redesigns, and all kinds of mission-critical campaign elements, her voice has become welcome counsel for ensuring that the projects that we take on at Mission Partners are as inclusive and accessible as possible.
We talk about Eleni’s journey as a designer and the traumatic brain injury that sent her on her path of growth and life-long learning. We talk about the power of design to transform ideas and beliefs. As she says, design isn’t just about what’s on the page. It’s about everything around us that is designed to affect change. We’re grateful that Eleni is using design to affect change for good.
She is deep into the final stages of her own MFA, where her thesis is focused on the experiences of Black, Brown, and Latinx students in design education. As such, she’s currently performing a research project that aims to understand the role race plays in the educational experience of graphic design students in the United States. Are you a design student or educator? Visit EleniStamoulis.com today and submit your response. She promises it won’t take more than 10-15 minutes of your time. Click the link to learn more!
Along the way, Eleni recommended some fantastic resources we’d like to amplify:
- The Black Experience in Graphic Design: A Diasporic Anthology of Design Practices & Experiences by Anne H. Berry on Kickstarter — The project has just reached its goal, but the resource will be incredible and we encourage support of the work!
- extra bold: a feminist, inclusive, non-racist, non-binary field guide for graphic designers — You can get it from the usual places, but buy from your local bookstore if you can!)
- Design Explorr — “DesignExplorr’s goal is to create opportunities that allow underrepresented youth to participate in design activities.”
- Creative Reaction Lab — “Our mission is to educate, train, and challenge Black and Latinx youth to become leaders in designing healthy and racially equitable communities.”
Houston Kraft is a professional speaker, author, curriculum designer, and kindness advocate whose book, Deep Kindness: A Revolutionary Guide for the Way We Think, Talk, and Act in Kindness, has inspired millions to examine the difference between nice and kind and why specifically deep kindness is not only a revolutionary act, but a necessary one.
Kraft is also the co-founder of Character Strong, which develops training programs and curricula for effective, sustainable school culture change. To date, his work has reached more than 1 million students and their teachers.
There is something special at the intersection of Houston Kraft’s initiatives, something we’ve forgotten along our journey toward building bigger, better, faster organizations and teams. To us, it appears that Houston has given us a profound reminder that social-emotional learning benefits the whole person; at Character Strong, it’s for the school kids, and with Deep Kindness, we realize it’s for us big kids, too.
Thanks to Houston and his team for creating the time for this conversation. We’re honored to offer it to our Mission Forward community.
This week we welcome Grady Powell, founder of Openfields, a social impact consulting firm committed to helping leaders imagine and implement a more creative and just future. He is also co-founder of Capita, a nonpartisan think tank working to build a better future for children and families.
Following up on last week’s conversation with Greg Galle about communicating the impossible, this week, we take on the world of what’s possible in communications and strategy. We talk with Grady about what it means to work in social impact, how he helps leaders think differently about the actions of their organizations, and how to take ideas to the next level for a more just business environment.
Grady’s work at Openfields and Capita sits at the intersection of research, public policy, social innovation and design and we’re thrilled to be able to bring this conversation to you all this week. Our deepest thanks to Grady Powell and his team for making this conversation happen.
Greg Galle comes to us this week with an approach to addressing culture that begins with our brains. We live with certain neurological realities, he says, “these are how we learn things, the synaptic connections that are created, and that has sort of trapped us.”
In his book Think Wrong, Greg argues that the way we solve problems is broken. The extent to which they’re broken depends on our cultural realities. “How do we disrupt culture?” He asks. “Because cultures are self-preserving and that's great if you have a good, healthy culture, but if you're trying to create change, or even trying to improve or strengthen a culture, there will always be a natural resistance.”
Greg is the co-founder of strategy firm Solve/Next. As author of the book Think Wrong, he celebrates over 30 years of experience thinking wrong about leadership, planning, and decision-making. His book is used around the world and across all sectors, from global corporations to individuals running local non-profits.
This week on the show, we talk to Greg about how we trick our brains, and how we trick our cultures and our communities, into exploring new possibilities and departing from the status quo. We’re so grateful to Greg for his participation this week as we all continue to move our Mission Forward.
On this week’s show, we are thrilled to introduce you to Najma Roberts, Senior Director of Communications and Equity at Democracy Fund, a private foundation that champions the people and organizations who defend democracy, while challenging our political system to be more open and just. Najma joined the organization in 2018 and ever since, she’s been guiding this powerhouse philanthropy to be even more intentional and direct in its own commitments to justice and equity, while helping advance the organization’s mission and vision. But Najma brings more to the conversation than just her last several years. She’s well aware of the responsibility that a communicator has to speak truth to power, with love. Having worked with her now for more than 10 years, I can say honestly that leading with love is one of her greatest strengths.
In every stage of her career, Najma has been strong advocate for communications and the role that communicators play in how organizations demonstrate collective values, commitment to equity and justice. She is an expert when it comes to engaging institutional leaders, created trusted and open spaces, and challenging the status quo in favor of fresh thinking. And this week on Mission Forward, she’s going to help the rest of us do the same. We’re honored to welcome her to the show.
Design “is an art form that allows us to tell stories,” says Tim Hykes. “These stories allow us to connect with each other and allow us to see the other side.” It is with that spirit that Tim performs his craft as a UX designer at WorldWide Technology and visual scientist. Tim joins us this week to help us unravel how design can be a tool for justice and equity.
Want to know how serious Tim is about his work? Look no further than his conference, Design+Diversity, where Tim and team bring together professionals across industries to push the boundaries of design and communication toward change with a keen strategic eye on social justice, equity, and inclusion. As a matter of disclosure, Mission Partners was an Industry Sponsor of the conference in 2021.
As you’ll hear Tim say of the conference, “this is a safe space. This is the area. This is the place where you ask all those questions, because the best thing that could ever happen to you, is you could be corrected.” At a time when so many organizations are looking out for tools and strategies to sell, to engage, to communicate to their assorted publics, there is no better resource than Tim Hykes to demonstrate the power of bringing communicators together to for good.
We are honored to have a bit of his time on Mission Forward this week.
Our guest today is someone who is actively rethinking, rewriting, and redefining the status quo media landscape. Ashton Lattimore is Editor-in-Chief at Prism, an independent, nonprofit newsroom led by journalists of color, and as she says, “Prism was founded because mainstream media wasn’t reflecting enough of the truth—and it wasn’t bringing us closer to our vision of collective liberation and justice.”
Through in-depth and thought-provoking journalism, Prism reflects the lived experiences of people most impacted by injustice. Journalists tell stories from the ground up at Prism: to disrupt harmful narratives, and to inform movements for justice. Prism launched in August of 2020 and has quickly provided an important lens through which to report on issues such as electoral justice, racial justice, economic justice, gender justice, climate justice, and more—all through an essential and intersectional lens of racial justice
Prism is, as you’ll hear her describe it, a newsroom with a point of view, but one with a keen eye on the center of the story: the subject with the most at stake. And in a media ecosystem in which stake is too often defined by wealth and power, re-defining the concept in terms of justice and equity is a refreshing turn.
Lattimore is a former lawyer and accomplished writer and editor. She’s also a Maynard Institute Fellow whose work focuses on this intersection of race, culture, and law. We thrilled to have her on the show this week.
That’s the voice of Nimra Haroon, senior strategist at Mission Partners and a partner in the production of the Mission Forward podcast. Nimra brings a set of foundational insights that help us to set up the key themes we’ll be talking about this season. She’ll be back with us at the end of the season to reflect on what we learned.
Here’s what we’re looking forward to exploring this season:
- Themes like the role of power in communications…the role of the storyteller, and the main character in how we interpret and understand the world around us.
- Themes like the role of communication to close gaps, across digital divides and the need to explore some of the ways we communicate by default through an ableist lens. What would happen if in every communication we developed, we asked 'how accessible is my message?' This season, we’ll take that on.
- We’ll explore themes like communications as a tool to advance social justice, and how inherently the more inclusive a message, the more socially just it is.
- And we’ll touch on the importance of specificity in our words and messages, and that a lack of communication, especially in heightened moments, is still communication.
There is so much good conversation ahead, and it’s clear in this first episode that we’re just getting started. Join us next week as we sit down with Ashton Lattimore, editor in chief of Prism, an independent, nonprofit news outlet led by journalists of color who together are challenging the way we get our news and the perspectives in which it’s told.
Just a few more weeks!
Season four of Mission Forward is right around the corner and we can't wait to share the slate of guests we have on deck. This season, every conversation is designed to help you learn the tools to be a communicator for change. But, since we're a few weeks out from releasing this new season, we wanted to share a bonus episode with you today featuring an awesome communicator in his own right, Timothy Hykes.
Carrie joined Tim on his show, Unconference by Design + Diversity, earlier this year we loved hearing these two talking about the power of communication. Tim graciously agreed to allow us to re-post this episode for you, our Mission Forward community. And rest assured, we will absolutely have him back on to keep this conversation going later in the season. Make sure to head over to Tim's show and subscribe for more great conversations just like this one, and learn more about the Design+Diversity event!
When we set out to produce season three of Mission Forward, we wanted to document this season of what we called perspective-shifting conversations. We wanted to touch on faith. We wanted to touch on media. We wanted to touch on the economy and the role of philanthropy in building back from a period of such damage from the impact of COVID-19. Right now, we're seeing members of our own communities acting out, engaging in behaviors that are disheartening, partly as a manifestation of what we have all had to sacrifice to the pandemic, partly in fearful anxiety of sacrifices yet to come.
And yet, through it all, we leave this season in a spirit of optimism. It's the same optimism that comes from having conquered a hard thing, having wrestled with difficult ideas and made it to the other side. We have we have explored such difficult ideas this season and we are buoyed with the energy our guests bring to their own efforts for change.
This week, we share a review of lessons learned from each of these guests as reflected by hosts Carrie Fox and Natalie S. Burke. If you haven't had the opportunity to listen to these conversations in full, we encourage you to do so, and to share with your communities broadly.
Our deepest thanks to Natalie Burke for her participation this season, leveraging her experience as a leader in public health to guide and frame our discussions in this space. She is a tireless advocate and we are exceptionally lucky to be in her orbit. Please click through to learn more about her and the work of CommonHealth ACTION — this is an organization worth knowing.
To all, thank you for subscribing, downloading, listening, and sharing this show. It is our great honor to produce it and to play even a small part in your podcast universe and we'll be back next season for more Mission Forward.
We've talked at some length this season about the role of the media — all kinds of media — in fostering hate and division, and the massive opportunity that exists in our communication spaces to lift one another, to repair, to rebuild. Our guest this week is someone whose steeped in a major movement to rewrite media's story in our society.
Alicia Bell is director of Media 2070. What started as a research essay detailing the role that media has played in anti-Black racism and harm has grown into a growing consortium of media makers and activists, collectively working toward media reparations. What does Media 2070 say about themselves?
This work is an effort to radically transform who has the capital to tell their own stories by 2070 — 50 years from today. This work is an idea, welcoming critique and feedback. It is liberation work within a lineage of civil-rights activism, racial-justice organizing and calls for reparations.
This work makes visible the ways in which the media have taken part in and supported state violence and harm against Black people.
Anti-Blackness is a global issue and we will never build the critical mass to transform our culture if we don’t marshal the political and cultural resources required to address it in our media, first. Alicia and her team are not just talking and writing about the need for reparations, they're actively working on that change. They partnered with more than twenty lawmakers to call on the FCC to examine how media-related policies have harmed black communities and other people of color. They’ve created tools for newsrooms and journalists to assess their own cultural norms, and pledge to build more radically inclusive practices. They’ve presented the need for culture change in a way media itself never could have done.
Alicia is at the heart of this reckoning, one designed to move newsrooms to a place that can care for and support all people in the community and finally address the issue of anti-Blackness that has been present in our media for hundreds of years.
We can't wait to introduce you to this powerful force standing up for the future of a free and just press, Alicia Bell of Media 2070.
Links & Notes
- Media 2070
- Read the original research essay: Media 2070: An Invitation to Dream Up Media Reparations
- Follow @aliciacbell on Twitter
According to this week's guest, "the word community has been co-opted to something that is a lie." While we might have a shared convention of community, when we use the word, our differences begin to rise to the surface. Our language is littered with words like this — family, culture, and yes, community — words that require us to stop, reflect, and ask: "when you use these words, to whom are you referring?"
We're talking about Mia Birdsong: pathfinder, community curator, and storyteller, who steadily engages the leadership and wisdom of people experiencing injustice to chart new visions of American life. You may have seen her TED Talk ('The Story We Tell About Poverty Isn't True'), or read her book (How We Show Up: Reclaiming Family, Friendship, and Community), or listened to her podcast (More than Enough), but if you haven't, you will surely want to after listening to this week's conversation. She has an extraordinary gift for leveraging the brilliance of everyday people so that our collective gifts reach larger spheres of influence, cultural and political change, and create well-being for everyone.
We take on the concept of community, and the challenges and lack of clarity in the words we use. We talk about how a culture of self-reliance and a system of oppression have become hurdles for forming community. We talk about the differences between independence and interdependence. We talk about the dangers of whiteness in society, and why now, more than ever, we need a new white culture to prevail.
As much as this is a dialogue about the disparity between bodies, it is also a celebration of potential. The pandemic has done much to pull back the veil on the inherent lack that exists in communities adjacent to privilege. As Mia says, while there is a pull to revert to whatever we experienced as "normal" before the pandemic, we have an opportunity and an obligation to one another to test our understanding of our language of community, of family, of culture, of friendship, all in an effort to balance the scales long tilted against color and poverty.
Our thanks to Mia Birdsong for her courage, her activism, and her time to share with us this week.
Links & Notes
- 'The Story we Tell About Poverty Isn't True' — Mia Birdsong, TEDTalks
- 'More Than Enough: An exploration of Guaranteed Income' — Mia Birdsong, The Nation
- How We Show Up: Reclaiming Family, Friendship, and Community by Mia Birdsong
Our digital universe was intended to close divides between time and space, to allow us to communicate more clearly and more often. But there is a situation in this digital universe that actually limits our ability to connect. External forces make us question what is true and false. We are at the mercy of algorithms created to shape our opinions and actions online.
Our guest this week has done extensive work on these issues and is here to help us understand the landscape, and the implications of our actions. Andre Banks is the founder and CEO of A/B Partners. Andre works at the top of his field on political communications and digital organizing and serves as the current chair of the board at Color Of Change.
This season, we continue to dig in to all the ways that we come together as a society. But we can’t speak authentically about people in connection to one another without talking about the role that social media plays in how we come to understand one another, and how we push each other apart in the process. Our conversation today takes on the role that mis- and dis-information plays in activism online and in the media, and how it is weaponized to further disenfranchise marginalized communities.
For many, we are inseparable from our digital connections. What role do those connections play in our physical and mental well-being? And how do we build a space for authentic, constructive dialog in the face of external forces? We are grateful for Andre this week, for sharing such extensive experience and giving us all a foundation for our own work as we reclaim and grow our digital universe.
Links & Notes
- A/BPartners
- Color of Change
- Connect with Andre on LinkedIn
"COVID-19 is not just a medical issue. It is also a social justice, economic, and political issue. That makes it hard to figure out how best to share information about it, especially since messages come from a range of communicators—including elected officials, journalists, scientists, physicians, and community leaders—and are delivered to diverse audiences."
Such is the foundational position in a recent piece published in Fast Company. Our guests this week, authors Todd Newman and Emily Howell (together with Dominique Broussard), present their insights into the messengers and their messages that constellate to keep us unhealthy.
This is a conversation about trust, and it brings with it some extraordinarily difficult questions. Does the public understand the role of public health? Has our model of health broken its promise of healthy communities across racial and economic boundaries? Has the media lived up to its obligation to truth in a public health crisis?
Objectively, the answer has to be a resounding no to these and so many more. Which opens to the door to our conversation this week in which we examine the opportunities before us to build trust, to cement community, to broaden the reach of our most critical messages, and to do so clearly. As Natalie so aptly says, "to engage in the production of the public's health is actually a patriotic act." So how do we make it clear that public health truly matters to private lives?
Our deep thanks to Todd and Emily for joining us this week. Please visit the link below to read the original article. Thank you for listening, and for sharing with your communities, too.
Links & Notes
- 'COVID-19 public health messages have been all over the place — but we can do better' • by Todd Newman, Dominique Broussard, and Emily Howell — Fast Company
"We believe that philanthropy shouldn't be about barriers and bottlenecks." So says the About page of JustFund, the grant platform transforming giving. But removing bottlenecks is just one way that Just Fund is changing the game. Getting resources to organizations truly doing front line work involves challenging entrenched ideologies and engaging leadership often marginalized in philanthropy: people of color. And so it is a group of funders and organizers of color who founded the organization, those who know best how to poke at philanthropy's power problem.
And leading the charge is our guest today: Iara Peng, founder and CEO of JustFund.
JustFund brings a new approach to philanthropic grant-making and challenges existing systems in what she calls, "an intervention into the antiquated systems that grant makers have inherited."
Instead, JustFund offers a trust-based, values-aligned approach that can fuel the movement for social and racial equity and they've done it in a very short time. The platform is already being used by more than three thousand organizations and is coming up on its first major milestone: moving $100 million in grants from funders to organizers.
It's easy to call out what is not working about philanthropy. It's another to build a tool from scratch to address the collective opportunity to transform philanthropy. That's what JustFund is all about, and that's why we can think of no better guest to talk about this big idea, and how leveling the philanthropic playing field is not only better for people regularly marginalized in the conversation, but for all of us.
Links & Notes
- JustFund
- Donors of Color
"Journalist interested in what works and why." So reads the Twitter bio of this week's guest, Tina Rosenberg. She is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, in fact. She is a co-writer of the New York Times Fixes column which, according to the masthead, "examines solutions to social problems and why they work," and she is a co-founder and VP for Innovation at Solutions Journalism Network.
It is through this last initiative that she thoroughly shares her passion for rigorous reporting, educating future journalists, and reclaiming the news as an agent of public good.
"America is actually not that polarized," says Rosenberg. "We think we're a lot more polarized than we are because the media just shows the extremes on both sides. And I think that's had a big effect on turning what should be a straightforward public health issue into a political issue."
How heavily should the media shoulder the responsibility of the erosion of trust in journalism itself as an industry of fact and truth? How significant is the block toward our efforts to heal?
Tina has taken broad steps to change perception of the public in her field. She joins us this week to share her work, and to help us better understand how we can follow in her footsteps in building a healthy foundation of trust in journalism's future.
Links & Notes
- Solutions Journalism Network
- New York Times Fixes
- Follow Tina Rosenberg on Twitter
Linda Villarosa is a brilliant storyteller. In addition to her work as a journalist, author, editor, and educator, she's a New York Times Magazine contributing writer where she covers race, inequality and health. You may have come across her 2018 cover story for the magazine titled 'Why America's Black mothers and babies are in a life or death crisis,' which was nominated for a national magazine award.
It was that article that first prompted us to reach out with Linda to participate in a Mission Forward. She returns to us today because of a story she recently published called 'Black Lives are Shorter in Chicago: My family's history shows why.' Reading that story, a very personal account of her own family's journey through Chicago transports the reader through time, while reinforcing some of the most essential public health issues of our time.
As you'll hear in this episode, this country has turned an important corner on the fight against COVID, a fight to return some semblance of life as we once knew it, with an approach of equality. But we do not suffer, nor do we heal equally. This is a fight which must be waged equitably, acknowledging the decidedly unequal contributions to our collective suffering shouldered by Black and Brown people in this country.
Linda Villarosa is uniquely experienced to help Carrie Fox and Natalie S. Burke navigate this conversation, confronting just how far our public health system has to go on issues of equity and inclusivity.
“It was an experience that we could never have imagined…”
That's been a consistent refrain in and around our country since the early days of this COVID-19 pandemic. "I could never have imagined living through COVID.” “I could never have imagined the number of lives that would be lost.” “I could never have imagined the toll this pandemic would take on Black lives."
And yet, the writing was on the wall. As our world has become increasingly global, the spread of disease has become more likely, and the effects were bound to hit the most under-resourced communities the hardest. Add to that the role that social determinants play in the health of our communities, and we have to ask, “how could we not have seen this coming?”
There’s an old saying that “when white folks catch a cold, Black folks get pneumonia.” It’s often shared in the context of economic health, but in the time of COVID, it is even more resonant. And so this season, we’re digging in to how COVID-19 has affected us; how it’s affected our communities, our relationships, our understanding of the world around us, and of each other.
Along for our journey this season is the brilliant Natalie S. Burke, founder of CommonHealth ACTION and a true equity evangelist. Together, Carrie and Natalie will dig in to issues of public health through the lens of communication, connection, and of course, equity. We’ll explore how COVID has changed us, and where we go from here.
This is going to be a season of perspective-shifting conversations that will touch on faith, media, the economic recovery, and the role of philanthropy. We start this week with a big picture conversation with Natalie.
You won’t want to miss this one.
A few weeks back, we reached out to a group of CEOs and business leaders with a very big request: join Carrie and Alex Orfinger, publisher of the Washington Business Journal, for an honest, on-the-record, uncomfortable conversation about the anti-racist commitments and statements we have made over the last twelve months, and assess our progress against those commitments.
The conversation comes at an interesting moment. Just days after the one-year anniversary of COVID-19 being declared a pandemic, and as hate crimes against the Asian American and pacific islander community and, in particular, hate crimes against Asian American seniors have been on the rise. What’s more, the conversation was recorded just hours before a gunman killed eight people, including six Asian American women in Atlanta, Georgia.
Our framework: We have each carried a unique responsibility during this time; to care for the health of our employees, while managing and protecting the health of our businesses. The intertwined nature of events from this past year have meant that we must consider the culture of business differently. We must think about the weight of the world’s events on our teams in ways we likely haven’t considered them before.
This was an actionable conversation and not a comfortable one. It is not comfortable to be called to grow. It is not comfortable to stretch beyond the habits and tendencies with which we have become complacent. It is not comfortable to go beyond ourselves. Each guest this week came into this space with a spirit of self-examination, accountability, and a willingness to examine how businesses like ours can contribute to more inclusive, and equitable workplaces for all people.
Participants:
- David Simnick
CEO & Co-Founder at Soapbox + Managing Partner at Impact Driven Brands - Lidia Soto-Harmon
CEO, Girl Scout Nation's Capital - Karen Wawrzaszek
Principal, Financial Planning Strategist and Lead Impact & ESG Investment Specialist at SBSB, LLC - - Raj Agrawal
President, Provoc - Tim Wang
Founder and Principal, TDW+Co - Elizabeth Yan
Head of Business Development, 1623 Capital - Michael Akin
President, LINK Strategic Partners - Frederique Irwin
Founder & CEO of Her Corner - Alex Orfinger
Market President and Publisher at Washington Business Journal - Carrie Fox
Founder and CEO, Mission Partners
Here we are, to think about where we are, where our sectors are, and where we must go to ensure that the racial reckoning so many business leaders are engaging isn’t a fleeting moment, but a movement for justice. With that, you’ve made it to the final episode of our second season. We hope this conversation, like others this season, gets you thinking, acting, and pressing forward.
Amira El-Gawly believes love is making a comeback at work.
That's a pretty heady statement, and one you might be tempted to dismiss. What's love got to do with work? you might say. We're about engagement and KPIs and customer data you might say. Here's the thing: Amira El-Gawly co-founded her first company at 27 and across the arc of her myriad careers — journalist, marketer, designer, speechwriter, operations executive — she has focused a keen eye on her people, their relationships, and what leads to better results.
As it turns out, work has changed. Our people have different expectations of one another and their leaders today than they did five years ago, and the last twelve months has only accelerated the trend. Her firm, Manifesta, specializes in helping organizations unleash potential through the relationships and experiences of their people. Collaboration across the workforce thus becomes an exercise in "alignment, joy, and humanity." Today, as Amira says, "investing in people is investing in performance."
This week on the show, we're talking about the nature of work, how work has changed in the last twelve months, and how those expectations of stronger, richer relationships can bring more love back to the workplace. People who love their work, and love the people they work with, love succeeding together.
Thanks to Amira El-Gawly for her participation on the show this week. She's an aspirational figure and a dear friend of Mission Forward.
Links & Notes
- Learn more about Manifesta
C.Marie Taylor is a role model and a mentor. We have to get that out of the way right up front because this is one of those conversations that makes us proud; proud of our place in history that allows us to watch people such as her evolve as thought leaders and mentors far beyond us, our community, but to business and leaders around the country.
Her new company is Equity Through Action and through that organization, C.Marie leads leaders through active coaching, equity training, leadership development and recruitment focused on building equity into the very fabric of those with whom she works.
Talking with her this week, Equity Through Action seems to have been an inevitability. At the same time, it is an artifact of our pandemic; a vessel through which she was able to accelerate her work as an advocate and leader at a time so many businesses have been forced to look inward and see themselves and their organizations in truth for the very first time.
We're honored to have C.Marie Taylor with us on the show today to help us understand what an equity engagement looks like, and how others can raise the bar in their own efforts for change.
Links & Notes
- Equity Through Action: Intentional Work. Long term solutions.
- Thick: And Other Essays by Tressie McMillan Cottom
Marisa Forti is an ultra endurance athlete, entrepreneur, fitness and wellness coach, and certified FST trainer. She’s a two-time Ironman, along with having many marathons and long-distance bike rides in her rear view. She has traveled the country working with everyone from weekend warriors to professional athletes across the NFL, NBA, PGA, Olympic training program, right alongside musicians and television personalities.
Her entire career is based on pressing through obstacles for herself, and with those she trains. She uses the science of movement and the human body to set audacious goals and help her clients crush them. While the work Marisa does is at the elite level, we hope you take away a few key lessons from this episode.
First, the journey is everything. Facing down obstacles is principally an exercise in perseverance and patience. Just keep swimming, so to speak.
Second, inspiration might be closer to you than you think. Case in point: Marisa Forti happens to be our own Carrie Fox’s sister.
There is much we can learn from the mindset of athletes and their trainers that applies directly to our efforts to press forward our initiatives elsewhere. Our obstacles are obstacles up to the point that we overcome them, and no further. We hope you enjoy this conversation with our own powerful Marisa Forti.
Links & Notes
- Find Marisa at Fortified Performance
- Marisa’s new apparel line — Endurfins!
- Dream Big: A True Story of Courage and Determination by Dave McGillvray
- Sponsor: Adventures in Kindness, written by a kid and her mom, for kids and their families. Adventures in Kindness is filled with 52 fun, practical, and world-changing adventures. With big ideas, little ideas and everything-in-between ideas, this action/adventure book has a lot of ways to keep you kind and busy—and nearly all adventures can be completed even while our communities are social distancing. Learn more and order your copy today!
What’s the purpose of events?
It’s a big question, and heavy is the weight on those whose industry shifted overnight in the era of COVID. Opportunity might be too generous a word for the experience, and pivot too slight. What happened in our efforts to understand gatherings during the pandemic marked a transformation in how we as human organisms express our desires to connect with one another. We could have simply walked away when events were canceled. We could have gone into social hibernation.
But we didn’t. Because we need one another.
Our guest today is a testament to that. Corey Briscoe serves as managing partner and chief operating officer for ABCD and Company. Their work is rooted in bringing people together. They’re based in Rockville, MD, and, as it is written on their website, are a “national, award-winning, full-service marketing and events firm specializing in stakeholder engagement and multicultural communications.” That line might be true in practice but in spirit, it serves to minimize so much of the hard work of change Corey and his team experienced in the last year as their entire world shifted.
So, what is the purpose of events? When we gather, we express and engage in our own purpose. We elevate one another toward a higher good. We organize. We transform. We lift and inspire. As you will hear in this conversation, the practical aspects of managing an events business might have changed dramatically. But when we remember why events exist, we weather change, level up, and press forward.
Links & Notes
- ABCD & Company
- @ccbglobal on Twitter
- Connect with Corey on LinkedIn
Essential.
No, says Jackie DeCarlo, her people aren’t front line nurses and doctors, but they’re nothing if they are not essential.
DeCarlo serves as CEO of the Manna Food Center in Montgomery County, Maryland and 2020 was a year to test their vision like no other: Our community is a place where all people at all times have access to safe, sufficient, nutritious food in order to lead fulfilling lives and contribute to making Montgomery County, Maryland a place where all live in dignity.
The pandemic forced a renewed examination of that vision as issues of equity and justice in our national healthcare system put outsized pressure on food distribution. And yet, Manna was already positioned to fill gaps where others struggled.
Leveraging their network of government agencies, corporations, nonprofits, schools, medical professionals, employee assistance programs, and faith-based associations, Manna has cultivated a network capable of responding to the most vulnerable in the community, when they are in the greatest need.
DeCarlo’s leadership is a model of adaptability. The COVID-19 crisis called on skills beyond those of daily operations. This week on the show, she joins us from the Manna administrative offices in Silver Spring, Maryland, to share the leadership lessons that helped her guide the organization.
Hers is the story of family, generosity, and hospitality that is modeled with grace for thousands of families each month—tens of thousands of people in need many times over each year. Manna's actions are ripples felt far beyond their community.
Essential, indeed.
*Links & Notes*
- Manna Food Center
- Manna Mission, Vision, and History
- Guest Recommendation: Loretta Ross — Smith College
- Feminist Prof. Loretta J. Ross Is Done With Cancel Culture | Amanpour and Company
- PLU Wang Symposium 2020 Day 1: Keynote Loretta Ross; Calling in Not Calling Out
Eric Meade is a futurist. That’s what he calls himself, at least. But when you get him talking about it, it becomes clear all too quickly that this work as a futurist is far more rooted in the past and present than the actual future.
“In college I studied history, so I think I probably just have an inherently long-term perspective looking both ways,” he says. “That has advantages and disadvantages. One is, I quickly adapt to changes in situations that I can point to precedents for.”
If there was ever a time to thoroughly examine precedent, it is right now.
Today’s show is all about grounding our reality here and now in the footprints of our mothers and fathers, and those of their mothers and fathers before them. Politics, public discourse, and the pandemic? They each have roots in modern history of our planet and that history provides a frame through which we are able to press forward.
Today, that frame is caked with misinformation, mistrust, and misunderstanding. But we have missions to serve and causes to advance. The more quickly we can cleanse ourselves of recent history and rebuild trust and understanding, the more quickly we can get back to doing the work our constituencies count on us to deliver.
That’s why Eric Meade is with us today; his grounding as a historian and futurist, his award-winning authorship of two perspective-changing books, and his work as an organizational facilitator all help us to reframe current issues in a deep well of perspective. We’re thrilled to welcome Eric to the show and deeply grateful for contributions to this work.
Links & Notes
- Visit EricMeade.com
- Reframing Poverty: New Thinking and Feeling About Humanity's Greatest Challenge by
- Whole Mind Facilitation: How to Lead Workshops That Change People, Organizations, and the World by Eric Meade
- Learn about Eric’s Beyond Covid program for community rebuilding
- Subscribe to the Beyond Covid • Apple Podcasts
Dr. Robert Kelly serves as Vice President and Special Assistant to the President at Loyola University Maryland. As we catch up with Rob, he’s doing the deep work of reintroducing students to campus. He does so under the shadow of a pandemic, only just now meeting the tease of a vaccine and a general misimpression that all colleges and universities are potential super-spreading elements of national concern.
The field of higher education is already carrying unchecked baggage. Higher education is expensive. The burden of those costs on families is extraordinary for many, and questions about the use of funds dampens the delivery of services. The digital divide is not closing as quickly as it must, particularly if institutions are genuinely looking to face diversity and inclusion challenges — black and brown students and families are increasingly falling behind. And did we mention the “enrollment cliff” that was already on the horizon? All this was facing our higher ed institutions before the COVID contraction and is still there, brewing, growing.
That’s what makes higher education such an exceptional example of institutions pressing forward.
“Students have a hunger that we need to meet,” says Rob. “We have to hold on to that.”
We open our conversation with Rob with a question that comes to us courtesy of the Masai people who open conversations by asking, “how are the children?” They measure the health of their culture by the health of their children. For Rob, they’re not doing great right now. As you’ll hear from our conversation, this drives the charge for him, the faculty at the University, parents, and other engaged adults to create a culture celebrating reconciliation, curiosity, joy, and hope.
This is a conversation about responsibility; taking responsibility for crafting the future for those in our care. Rob shares how he is helping Loyola to build according to their mission: pressing forward on issues of culture, climate, race, and inclusion in the face of obstacles of our own creation.
Links & Notes
- Sponsor: Today’s podcast is brought to you by audible - get a FREE audiobook download and 30-day free trial at audibletrial.com/missionforward. Over 180,000 titles to choose from for your iPhone, Android, Kindle or mp3 player.
Carol Cone is an incredibly generous person. To hear her talk about what she does from day to day, she says her super power is connecting people, but that minimizes her story by a country mile.
Her brand of generosity has brought to fruition iconic projects and teams to create products and campaigns that have — by all objective measures —changed the world since she started building brands in the 1980s. She was behind Rockport’s Walking Movement, positioning the company for growth and eventual acquisition by Reebok; she created and grew the Avon Breast Cancer Crusade to span 50 countries, raising $1 billion; and with My Special Aflac Duck, she brought a team together to create a social robot that comforts children fighting cancer through their average 1,000 days of chemotherapy. Her accomplishments over her legendary career have well-earned her the industry moniker: “Mother of Social Purpose.”
Even after a career of accomplishment, she’s far from finished. Now at the head of Carol Cone ON PURPOSE, she continues to push the field forward. Her work has built global movements, garnered hundreds of awards, and raised billions of dollars for a variety of worthy causes. This week, we went back to where it all began for Carol, how her values have shaped her career path, and the opportunity she sees as we crest 2020 and move into whatever comes next.
She stands atop a bold mission. We’re honored to have her join us for this first conversation of season two of the Mission Forward podcast.
Links & Notes
- The Purpose 360 Podcast with Carol Cone
- Carol Cone ON PURPOSE
The business of Washington D.C. is government, so the saying goes. But sayings aren't sayings for nothing. And if we take ourselves through the WayBack Machine to the halcyon days at the end of the 20th century, the reputation of the city as the hub of national leadership brought with it the perception that the business community was a distant other. Then, in 1996, Alex Orfinger took on the role of publisher for the Washington Business Journal. Driving to change that perception became his mission.
For over two decades as publisher, Alex worked to develop a strong identity for the region's business sector. After a brief stint away, he is now back at the publication as Market President and Publisher, leading the paper and doubling down on the city that he loves. In the face of great local and national challenges alike, he sees a role for the Journal.
"What we need is to help businesses grow and proper, and particularly give them the tools they need to get through the pandemic," he says. "We need to do that in a way that addresses systemic racism and income inequality ... If we, as a community, can come together and change that trajectory, it'll be a better community for everybody."
Alex's ties to the Greater Washington business community are stronger today than ever. You'll hear him share his experience as chairman of Jubilee Housing, enjoining their efforts to fight for affordable housing for all. He's served as a board member for the Greater Washington Board of Trade, United Way of the National Capital Area, and the Washington Area Women's Foundation. Plus, he's the former chairman of the D.C. Chamber of Commerce. He is home here, and the Journal has a particular role in his care.
"Coming back at this moment for me was different. It's very complicated. What I think the Business Journal's role can be is to show — to lead — the business community and demonstrate that it's in their long term best interest. ... If we increase the economic pie, it is better for everyone."
As you will hear, Alex is passionate about justice, equity, and impact, and the role the business community plays in advancing all three. He works and lives at the intersection of business and community and we know you'll appreciate what he has to say.
Links & Notes
- 'Alex Orfinger named new publisher of the Washington Business Journal' — Washington Business Journal
- Jubilee Housing — What is Justice Housing?
- AlexOrfinger.com
- Connect with Alex Orfinger on LinkedIn
More than 70 years ago, Danny Thomas dreamed the idea of a hospital that would operate in segregated South, where patients of all races would be treated together by physicians of all races. Thanks to that history of radical inclusion and innovation, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital has moved the childhood cancer survival rate from 20% to more than 80% today.
Many organizations have perfected their large annual giving events—usually fundraising galas—that contribute as much as 60% of their annual revenue. St. Jude has proved to be a stunning producer of such events in the spirit of the children they serve. The hospital is funded in large part by its donors who have ensured that no family should ever pay for travel, treatment, housing, or food; that all they should worry about is helping their child live. But when COVID-19 hit and large in-person gatherings became impossible, organizations who were not able to quickly innovate faced major setbacks in recovering from this loss. Stories of stresses on these organizations are legion.
Given the St. Jude legacy of innovation and good work, it should come as no surprise that the institution was named Fast Company’s #1 Best Workplace for Innovators in 2020. Despite the challenges of this year—and years past—St. Jude continues to raise more than $1 billion per year. In full disclosure Mission Partners has been a proud partner and donor to St. Jude for many years.
If there’s one thing that 2020 has taught us, it's that dual transformation is key to sustaining organizations in 2021 and beyond. This week, Ken Zakalik, Director of Innovation at ALSAC/St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, joins us to share how his team looks into the future in the spirit of constant innovation in three core areas—culture, strategy, and opportunities. Listen in and learn more about what has worked for St. Jude to continue service through crisis and discover how innovation has become imperative to driving business into the future.
Links & Notes
- Connect with Ken Zakalik on LinkedIn
- About St. Jude Children's Research Hospital
- 'ALSAC receives top honor on Fast Company’s 2nd annual list of 100 Best Workplaces for Innovators' — St Jude Release
- 'One Hundred Best Workplaces for Innovators 2020' — FastCompany
By title, Karen Wawrzaszek is Principal and Senior Director of Financial Planning at Sullivan Bruyette Speros & Blayney (SBSB). But that’s hardly enough to understand what she does and the impact she’s making in the world.
Karen is an expert on socially responsible and impact-oriented investing and financial planning. She’s led impact initiatives for two privately-held family offices. She’s the former chair of the Washington Area Women’s Foundation. She is the Pomona Society founder, a collective of women in impact who come together to effect systemic change for women and families in the district of Columbia. In full disclosure, she was also our advisor in restructuring the company’s 401K offering to be aligned with our mission and values and remains our closest advisor on all things related to impact investing.
For today’s conversation, we’re building upon the conversation we had with Carolyn Lowery in which we focused on the inner work that is required to understand how privilege, power, and racist systems and structures play out in today’s society. And as Natalie Burke discussed earlier in the season, before we can dismantle those white supremacist systems, we must understand our roles in these systems.
So, to help us along this journey, we’re heading back to June when Carrie interviewed Karen as part of our virtual community conversation series. In light of the wide and growing inequalities across our society, many of which COVID has only further intensified, we wanted to explore the role that business leaders and philanthropists play — in how they use, spend, and save money— that either drive principles of justice, equity, diversity and inclusion forward or perpetuate harmful inequities.
They begin by defining what it means to be an impact investor, and then dig into the issue, by the end having shared some practical tips that we can all take — business owner or not — to drive a more equitable and inclusive economy.
It was his experience in the consumer packaged goods industry that taught our guest this week how to channel his empathy. He found it by way of the institution’s appreciation for Design Thinking in product development. “One of the things that you do in design thinking very explicitly is that you obsess over the problem that you’re solving in people’s lives. ... They name that empathy.”
For Ryan Pintado-Vertner, that experience connected a new vernacular to something he’d known all along. Empathy — that sensitivity to others’ experience — described both his expertise in product development and his desire to change the world through his activism.
And thus, Smoketown, LLC was born. The name? A callback to Louisville’s oldest African-American neighborhood founded by emancipated slaves after the Civil War. To Pintado-Vertner and team, “it represents extraordinary potential hiding in plain sight.”
This week’s show goes straight to the heart of the dynamics in entrenched business processes that serve to stifle innovation through diversity and limit opportunities for marginalized communities. The opportunity, says Pintado-Vertner, lies in demography.
“They are more likely to lean into progressive expectations for how the economy should work better,” he says of recent generations. “What that means for us, how we think about this moment, is that this is not a moment at all. It is a building up of increasing power and influence of generations who do not share our expectations of the corporations they interact with; what we’re seeing right now is simply going to accelerate.”
Smoketown is an incredible operation with a powerful team shepherding its legacy. Ryan’s insights on that legacy and the historical events that shape our collective outlook today make him the perfect guest to take on such challenging conversations.
Links & Notes
- Learn more about Smoketown Strategy, LLC
- Connect with Ryan Pintado-Vertner on LinkedIn
- Subscribe to the Brand New Blueprint Podcast by Smoketown
This week, we invite you into a conversation with someone we admire very much who has taught us a lot this year.
Carolyn Lowry is a racial equity professional with a focus on cultural competence facilitation and relationship-building. We’ve crossed paths many times with Carolyn over the years, but it was this year that we got to learn from her up close. Carolyn has an incredible gift for teaching. She can make people feel at ease, even when the topic is a complicated one.
Carolyn sat down with Carrie Fox earlier this year to discuss race in the workplace as part of our virtual community conversation series. The goal was to model a conversation on race and racism to show that while these conversations may be challenging, they don’t have to be intimidating.
If you’ve been following our work, you know our team has been engaging in conversations like this one for a few years. We do this work in the spirit of continuous learning and then thoughtfully applying those learnings to build and maintain an actively anti-racist workplace.
We have all made our share of mistakes on this journey. We will make more in the future. But those mistakes are a crucial part of the fabric we create as we learn together, moving together toward a more just and equitable future.
We start this conversation with three questions inspired by our friends over at leadership Montgomery: why did you show up for this conversation? Why does this moment in history feel different? And what will you do about it?
As you listen to our explorations on these issues, we hope you lean in and answer each for yourselves.
Links & Notes
- About Carolyn Lowery, M.S.W
- Connect with Carolyn on LinkedIn
Edgar Villanueva is a southerner. He’s a North Carolinian. He was raised in the church. He’s also a member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina, and as such, was the only Native American in his K-12 education experience.
“When I got to the University of North Carolina, I was so hungry to connect with other native students. I began to understand there that there were things about my world view and my perspective that were unique to being Native American.”
Somewhere between his Native heritage and his disarming Southern charm, Edgar has developed a muscle for speaking truth to power with love (his fantastic words, not ours), and no where is that more apparent than in his work in institutional philanthropy, an industry ripe for change.
In his best-selling book, Decolonizing Wealth: Indigenous Wisdom to Heal Divides and Restore Balance, Edgar takes us on tour of the philanthropic industry that carries the baggage of colonial structures designed to stifle the voices of equity through a veneer of altruism. Philanthropy is an exercised of "dividing Us from Them and the haves from the have-nots," says Edgar.
This week on the show, Edgar shares with us 14-year exploration of Big Philanthropy, and his healing and compassionate solutions to an industry mired in systemic imbalance. He shares the experience of grappling with issues but not having language to have the conversations we need to have, and his work to help others develop vernacular to help and to heal.
Most important, he offers us insight to his efforts not just to discuss these issues, but to change an industry through Liberated Capital: A Decolonizing Wealth Fund.
Rooted in relationships of mutuality and equity, Liberated Capital gives through a reparations model that trusts and supports the leadership of those most impacted by historical and systemic racism. The fund welcomes support from individuals at all levels of giving who are committed to collectively healing the wounds of colonialism and white supremacy by using money as medicine to shape an equitable future.
Anyone can join and take part in the mission of Decolonizing Wealth through Liberated Capital, and we here at Mission Partners are proud to be a part of this movement through our own donation this month. Our great thanks to Edgar for his time and support of this show. We’re proud to be in orbit of the work of this organization.
Links & Notes
- Decolonizing Wealth
- Decolonizing Wealth: Indigenous Wisdom to Heal Divides and Restore Balance — by Edgar Villanueva
- Liberated Capital
- Follow Edgar on LinkedIn
Since starting the Mission Forward conversation series in 2014, we’ve had the opportunity to interview some amazing folks: Pulitzer Prize-winning writers, MacArthur Genius grantees, media entrepreneurs, and philanthropists. One of our favorite conversations to date has been with Ed Yong and Liz Neeley. It took place in 2018, shortly after Ed wrote a story in the Atlantic titled: “I Spent Two Years Trying to Fix the Gender Imbalance in My Stories Here’s What I’ve Learned, and Why I Did It.”
As an acclaimed author and science writer, Ed was a big deal then, but he’s had quite a run these last few years. This past September, his story on the COVID-19 pandemic, “How Did it Come to This?” took the cover spot of The Atlantic magazine, and since that time, he’s published several other articles on COVID 19 including his most recent: “America Is About to Choose How Bad the Pandemic Will Get.”
Given how much we value Ed Yong — and how straightforward he can make even the most complex science story — we decided to resurface this great conversation from a few years back, about building equity and breaking bias in storytelling.
In that 2018 story about gender imbalance in his reporting, Ed found that only 24 percent of his last 23 articles quoted sources that were women. And of those stories, 35 percent featured no female voices at all. As Ed shared in his article:
“I knew that I care about equality, so I deluded myself into thinking that I wasn’t part of the problem. I assumed that my passive concern would be enough. Passive concern never is.”
Yong’s heartbreakingly honest revelation, and several others like it, spurred our desire to dig in on ways that writers, marketers, and communications directors can build equity and break bias in their storytelling, and his story has stuck with us for many years.
But it wasn’t just Ed who we spoke with in 2018. We were joined by his partner, the brilliant Liz Neeley, founder and principal of Liminal Creations, where she focuses her time and talent on science communication. Liz served as Executive Director of The Story Collider through August of this year, shepherding real and deeply personal stories of science and living through on-stage events and their eponymous (and extraordinarily popular) podcast. Together, they had a lot to say on the topic of equity in storytelling.
Liz Neeley and Ed Yong are extraordinary people and exceptional journalists and communicators. We love this conversation and we’re sure that you will, too.
Links & Notes
- Building Equity and Breaking Bias in Storytelling — by Carrie Fox
- What Bias is Hiding in Your Writing? — by Carrie Fox
Nabiha Syed is the President of The Markup. Just what is The Markup, you ask? If this is your introduction to The Markup, we stand as both disheartened that you’re not already a regular reader, yet delighted that we may serve as your guide by way of this week’s show.
The Markup, an investigative journalism startup that explores how powerful actors use technology to reshape society, which, if you’ve never explored the pages of the publication, might sound like a bite far too big for any publication to take. And yet, what we hope you discover in our conversation this week, this approach is not only a standard readily achievable, but with the right tools and an eager team, it can serve as a standard bearer for other institutions of the fourth estate to follow.
It turns out that beyond the top notch journalistic chops, central to The Markup’s DNA is a dedication to developing and releasing the same data analytics investigative tools used by their reporters. This transparency in the process allows the publication to report news that is, as Syed calls it, “bulletproof.” And you can get in on the action.
Take Blacklight, for example. This Markup service asks you to input any website address you frequent and will report back the user-tracking technologies at work on that site that are accessing information about you through your computer and your behavior while using it.
Why would they need such a tool at the news site? Because data — and how it moves through our economy — is part of the central story of the anthropocene. The Markup has invested as heavily in technology tools and journalists as it has in traditional journalism and the results show in every story.
That’s why we’re so lucky to have Nabiha Syed on the show this week. We talk about what it means to exist in the journalism space, and about building a news organization bespoke for us, our modern age, and dedicated to the modern information perils that stand before us.
Links & Notes
- The Markup
- ‘The High Privacy Cost of a “Free” Website’ by Aaron Sankin and Surya Mattu — The Markup
- Blacklight — The Markup
- Follow Nabiha on Twitter
- Connect with Nabiha on LinkedIn
About Nabiha Syed
Previously, she was Vice President and Associate General Counsel at BuzzFeed. As the company’s first newsroom lawyer, she oversaw litigation, including the “Steele Dossier” litigation, as well as select intellectual property, security, international, and cross-company strategic initiatives. Nabiha has been described as “one of the best emerging free speech lawyers” by Forbes magazine.
Before BuzzFeed, Nabiha was an associate at Levine Sullivan Koch & Schulz, a leading media law firm, and the First Amendment Fellow at The New York Times. She has worked on legal access issues at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; represented asylum-seekers in south Texas; counseled on whether to publish hacked materials; and spoken about misinformation at the inaugural Obama Foundation Summit. For her work, Nabiha was named a “40 Under 40 Rising Star” by the New York Law Journal in 2016, a finalist for the Outstanding Young Lawyer of the Year Award from the International Bar Association in 2017, and received an inaugural Reporter’s Committee for the Freedom of the Press award in 2018. She holds a law degree from Yale Law School and from Balliol College, Oxford University, which she attended as a Marshall Scholar.
Anand Giridharadas is a writer who walks headlong into the storm of corporate institutional power. His latest book, “Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World,” is a rebuke of the “unelected upper crust” and their efforts to lobby and influence in the face of our public institutions.
It is not a particularly rosy portrayal of the function of our institutions.
In so writing, however, Giridharadas has become something of a cheerleader for the systems and services institutional wealth has eroded. His call for corporate citizens to stop thinking in terms of doing good, and instead focus on doing less harm is one that the next generation appears to be internalizing. For that, he has hope.
Even as this conversation was recorded three years ago, it could have been held today. To hear just how consistent — and doggedly persistent — Giridharadas is, we invite you to read this piece from Business Insider documenting a recent talk for which he served as a keynote. The audience, the National Association of Corporate Directors. His talk, according to the writer in his newsletter The Ink, “went very well or very badly depending on whether you’re a corporate board member.” In short:
A lot of your children and grandchildren do not respect your work. Some of them say this to you, some of them don't. But we know this from public attitudes. You know this from survey data. There is a sense among younger people coming of age in the most diverse, open-minded generation in American history that what their parents and grandparents did in corporate boardrooms near broke America.
And if for no other reason than to have a less awkward Thanksgiving this year with your relatives, try to get on the right side of history.
Read the whole thing here. But first, please join us for this conversation on the challenge — and yet the inevitability — of serving our collective civic duty if we’re to navigate our way through this generational challenge toward equity.
Links & Notes
- Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World by Anand Giridharadas
- Subscribe to Anand’s newsletter
- Follow AnandWrites on Twitter
- Connect with Anand on LinkedIn
- Learn more about Anand Giridharadas
Last week, we introduced you to Natalie Burke, founder of CommonHealth ACTION, by way of a three-year-old interview on health equity. Since then, her advocacy has taken many turns and become more incisive, more aware, more focused on the disruptive journey toward equity, diversity, and inclusion.
Natalie is back with us today for a conversation that addresses one central question: how does racism harm us all? It’s a deceivingly simple question that is achingly difficult to answer. Natalie’s efforts to create what she calls “constructive discomfort” goes a long way toward helping us all adapt to the pain that can come through learning and change. When we can face our discomfort in trust we all win through transformation.
Links & Notes
- Common Health Action
- Follow Natalie S. Burke on Medium
This week on Mission Forward, we bring you a conversation from 2017 with two guests who boldly challenge assumptions we hold in our everyday lives. They stand unafraid to say the things many of us think, using their words and ideas as waves cresting in and over us, then receding, laying bare our understanding of ourselves and how we relate to the world around us a little more clearly.
We start with a reading from The Alternative: Most of What You Believe About Poverty Is Wrong by the author, Mauricio Miller. Miller has leveraged his experience in poverty — and as founder of the Family Independence Initiative — into a book that addresses the issues of poverty with audacity and courage and we love that we captured some of the words from the author’s mouth.
Natalie S. Burke is the founder of CommonHealth ACTION and if you aren’t following her writing on Medium, then you’re not following her writing yet. Since this conversation in 2017, her work has only become more incisive, more aware, more focused on the disruptive journey toward equity, diversity, and inclusion.
Join us for this conversation that presses on our existing charitable organizations, privilege, and oppression, and what we can do together to change our values.
Recorded live at our 2017 April Mission Forward Convening.
Links & Notes
- The Alternative: Most of What You Believe About Poverty is Wrong by Mauricio L. Miller
- Common Health Action
- Follow Natalie S. Burke on Medium
We’re exploring the work of the Center for Common Ground this week with founding board member, Andrea Miller. When it comes to racial justice and equity, she’s an incredible fighter, a noted leader in Virginia working to turn the tide on compressed voter access, and a firebrand when it comes to elected leaders working against the will of the people of her state.
With the Reclaim our Vote campaign, the Center for Common Ground demonstrates their incredible focus:
Eligible voters of color are being purged from voter rolls at a much higher rate than white voters. People in minority communities were already struggling to reach the voting booth in voter-suppression states, due to the implementation of strict new voter ID laws, a reduction in polling places and/or early voting days, and many other tactics.
Andrea tells us how Reclaim Our Vote is working to expand their volunteer base across for key states specifically, and more nationally. She outlines the tools and techniques her organization is counting on to spread the world of voter disenfranchisement, calling on all of us to gear up, get out, and vote.
Links & Notes
- The Center for Common Ground
- Reclaim Our Vote
- Learn More about Communicating for Change, a course from Mission Partners
About Andrea Miller
Andrea Miller is Founding Board Member, Executive Director, People Demanding Action, Founding President, National Women’s Political Caucus of Virginia, Founding Tri-Chair Virginia Poor People’s Campaign and a member of the Democracy and Governance working group of the Virginia Green New Deal. Andrea is an IT and Political Director, a digital and elections strategist. She designs and administers digital phonebanks and texting programs. From 2013 to 2015 she led the Progressive Round Table on Capitol Hill bringing together members of Congress, activists, and non-profit leaders. Her expertise is in voting rights, climate, and the Equal Rights Amendment. She has successfully advocated for legislation on both the Federal and State level. In 2008 she was the Democratic nominee for the Virginia 4th Congressional district.