Power Station

  Public narrative is about the story of me and the story of us. This is how Sandy Dang, an expert and educator in the field describes its essence. On this episode of Power Station, we explore the power of public narrative to communicate our values and lived experience and to tell the collective stories of our communities. Sandy came to this field, which trains individuals in how to distill their life experience into a 2 minute story, innately. Born in Vietnam, she survived the war, life in refugee camps and her family’s resettlement in Salt Lake City, Utah. She realizes now that navigating through these challenges made her stronger. It fueled her drive to build community with refugee children and their families by founding Asian American Lead, a groundbreaking nonprofit in Washington DC. AA Lead created opportunities to share her story and to embolden young children and their parents to develop their own voices. Sandy believes in stripping away adjectives and affectation to share personal truth through publi

If we have learned anything from the last several years, it is that while we have shared collective pain, a global health crisis, economic freefall, mass shootings, and political discourse so fractured we cannot agree that democracy is a core value, the impacts of these events have landed starkly unevenly. The data shows what progressive nonprofits know: low income, people of color, immigrants, and LGBTQ communities continue to be disproportionately harmed by systems, rooted in racism that make these outcomes inevitable. On this episode of Power Station, the brilliant lawyer, strategist, and organizer Afua Attah Mensah shares stories of community based organizations across the nation that are building the relationships and policy solutions needed to make transformative change possible. We may not hear about these achievements on the nightly news, but we should. The good news is that Community Change, a national nonprofit with deep community roots and a long history of bold activism invests its assets, staff w

  At its core, the N Street Village story is one of humanity, resistance, and advancing racial and housing justice. It began in 1972, when Pastor John Steinbruck opened the doors of Lutheran Place Memorial Church, at the center of Washington DC’s embattled 14th street corridor, to women and children in need of shelter and care. It was 6 years after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr, a devastating act that reverberated across the nation and ignited riots just blocks from the White House. That moment led to the founding of N Street Village, which has evolved over the last fifty years into a national model for serving women experiencing homelessness. The process starts, as explained with clarity and compassion by N Street Village CEO Kenyatta Brunson, by welcoming them without judgment, providing the time and resources needed to recover from domestic violence, disability debt, divorce, death, key drivers of women’s homelessness, and advocating for the expansion of safe and affordable permanent housing.

When you live with racial injustice as a child and have parents who encourage your intellectual curiosity and impulse to advocate and serve you know what it means to live your values. In this episode of Power Station, Ty Hobson Powell describes a childhood in Washington DC marked by the loss of close friends to gun violence, limited access to resources, from grocery stores and parks, and resilient and underestimated friends and neighbors. His pathway to activism included graduating from high school at 13, earning a bachelor’s degree at 15, and a master’s degree at 17, and since then, applying his skills in public service, political field organizing and an HBCU. In 2020, Ty founded Concerned Citizens Demanding Change, a nonprofit that grew organically from protests, in DC and nationally, against rising violence towards people of color at the hands of police. He invited a team of young Black leaders with expertise ranging from the environment to women’s reproductive rights, to reimagine with him how change is m

The roots of racism in America run so deep they even determine who benefits from life extending clinical trials. This truth guides Dana Dornsife in advocating for equitable access to medical treatment, which should be but is not, a standard of care in our medical system. When Dana’s brother-in-law Mike was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, she immersed herself in enrolling him in a clinical trial. That experience, which allowed him to live another 19 months, inspired Dana to launch the Lazerex Cancer Institute. She knew that with all the challenges Mike faced, it was exponentially harder for people of color without financial support.  Lazerex is upending the status quo for nonprofits in the cancer care arena. It connects people with all forms of cancer to clinical trials, covers the costs of travel for those without means, and engages stakeholders, from patients to hospital administrators in democratizing outdated government policies and profit-driven insurance systems. Lazerex Cancer Institute is building a

If you are a nonprofit leader who thinks about fundraising with the same intensity that you bring to tackling your mission, this is your episode. Chances are you have been denied the level of funding needed to scale your most impactful strategies or turned down for general operating support, which enables you to deploy resources as needed. In this episode of Power Station, we explore what happens when our most open-minded philanthropic leaders design a new model for identifying and investing in solutions to our world’s most pressing challenges. Dr. Cecilia Conrad brings brilliance, intentionality, and a belief in the power of collaboration to her leadership of Lever for Change, an affiliate of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. She is cultivating a cohort of donors, from the LEGO Foundation to the Kellogg Foundation and MacKenzie Scott, who agree that the most powerful solutions to complex challenges, from climate change to infant and maternal health care and the refugee crisis are generated b

  The acrimony in Congress and across the country reflects competing visions for America’s future. This is less a policy debate than a heated referendum on who is entitled to hold power in America. State legislatures are on a fast track to curtailing the rights of communities of color, immigrants, women, and LGBTQ people. Asian American Pacific Islanders, representing 50 ethnic groups, and speaking 100 languages, have been historically marginalized and are current targets of anti-Asian violence. Now accounting for 6.8 percent of the total U.S. population, the community is hardly a monolith. Disaggregated data compiled from the 2020 Census reveal that Indian Americans, Cambodian, Hmong, Filipino, Chinese and Koreans (among others) have distinctly different levels of economic well-being, educational attainment, political representation, and influence. Christine Chen, the indomitable executive director of APIA Vote, a vital component of America’s civil rights infrastructure is laser focused on delivering what lo

As a child born at the end of the 1960s, inspired by The Jetsons, Keith Jones dreamed of becoming an aeronautical engineer and taking vacations on the moon. He was part of the first generation to come up after the most powerful mass movement in American history led to passage of Civil Rights Acts prohibiting discrimination in voting, housing, education, and employment based on race, disability, religion, sex, and family status. Keith grew up as a Black child with cerebral palsy in St. Louis, Missouri, where children with disabilities were segregated into a single school and telethons were the cultural norm. Being Black and disabled in America has informed his powerful voice, creativity and impact. His critique of nonprofits that fail to center people with disabilities as decision makers and foundations that requires supplication is a clarion call to the social justice movement. At his organization, SoulTouchin’ Experiences he demonstrates how to advocate for systemic change with inclusion and a recognition of

What happens when a well-resourced Community Development Financial Institution with a track record of $3B dollars in investments takes steps to become a measurably more racially equitable and power building nonprofit in the Black and Brown communities it serves? In Power Station’s first episode of 2023 I explore that question with Lucy Arellano Baglieri, one of the community development sector’s most impactful leaders. Lucy’s lived experience as a childhood immigrant from Mexico who navigated unjust systems for her parents inspired her to work for Mission Economic Development Agency (MEDA), which builds Latino wealth through community ownership and civic action. Now, as Chief Strategy Officer and Executive Vice President of the Low Income Investment Fund (LIIF) Lucy is a key player in expanding on and executing a strategic plan that will inevitably shake up organizational and sectoral norms. This work requires changing internal practices in lending, such as reimagining who is credit worthy and in external rol

How do you look back on 2022? It’s been a year in which political, digital, and sometimes physical assaults on the civil and human rights of Americans by their fellow citizens have become commonplace. From book banning and public demonization of LGBTQ youth to partisan campaigns to undo voting rights in Black and Brown communities to criminalizing homelessness and protecting assault weapons over people, extremism has taken hold as a feature of American life. In this episode of Power Station, CDFI maven, community builder and friend John Holdsclaw joins me in exploring how savvy and strategic nonprofits organize, influence policy making and solve seemingly intractable problems in embattled communities. We dig into the principles that position nonprofits to generate bold transformational social change in the face of anti-democratic forces. Requiring accountability from the media and political leaders, creating community ownership, and flexing organizational advocacy muscles to build community power are hallmark

Every civil rights law enacted in America is preceded by a past we have not fully reckoned with. The Civil Rights Act of 1968, following the assassination of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr, was an antidote to the racism embedded in state and national policy making, from segregationist zoning laws to bank and insurance redlining. Known as the Fair Housing Act, it prohibits discrimination in housing based on race, religion, and national origin, later expanded to include gender as a protected class. After its passage, community members in Virginia strategized to make it enforceable. They landed on testing to demonstrate how white and Black families with the same means experienced disperate treatment and results when applying for apartment or bank loans. These forward-thinking volunteers launched Housing Opportunities Made Equal of Virginia in 1971, now led by civil rights lawyer Thomas Okuda Fitzpatrick. He champions those who have been discriminated against, including on grounds of newly protected categories in Vir

If you have lived through the harrowing experience of eviction and the long slide or quick jolt into homelessness or advocated for those who have, this conversation with Marisol Bello is a tribute to you. It is critical listening for journalists who report on homelessness without fully grasping the nuances of the insurmountable gaps between low wages and spiraling rents. It is for politicians with homeless constituents who can either criminalize them through sweeps or invest in affordable housing production. And it is for anyone that has not interrogated the systems that make homelessness with disproportionate impacts in Black and Brown communities inevitable. Marisol leads Housing Narrative Lab, a nonprofit that is building a new narrative about homelessness by giving voice to our collective need for and love of home. She and her team start with the understanding that homelessness is what happens when there is no housing justice. They are formulating a narrative powerful enough to pierce through biases and g

What will you do when your community is under assault? In our increasingly fractured society, in which elected officials demonize marginalized people and threaten violence when elections don’t go their way, this is a question based in reason, not hyperbole. Hate crimes in the form of mass shootings have become a regular feature of American life. For Nadine Bridges, executive director of One Colorado, the state’s largest advocacy organization for the civil rights and advancement of LGBTQ people, the answer is to strengthen connections and keep moving forward. She is still processing the killing of beloved community members at Club Q, long considered a safe and inclusive space in Colorado Springs. Her small and courageous staff of 13 are organizers, policy advocates, social workers and power-building champions of LGBTQ Coloradans and their families. Over time, they have achieved so much, from marriage equality to empowering LGBTQ students and their allies to expanding health and human services. They do not want

It takes a powerful amalgam of dynamics to produce a groundbreaking book. This is what Brandi Collins Dexter, lawyer, researcher, activist, and stand-out nonprofit advocate has achieved with the publication of Black Skinhead: Reflections on Blackness and Our Political Future. She takes on, with curiosity, deep personal investment, and an openness to views she may not share, the reasons for and consequences of the disillusionment of Black voters with the Democratic Party. This sensibility mirrors the rise of a multiracial skinhead movement in England, post-World War II that eventually devolved into racially divisive factions. Her interviews with 50 voters from 18-108, reveal an increasing unease with how the party represents Black interests and whether government can generate solutions to the impacts of the racial wealth gap, student debt and the toll of unlivable wages. Brandi explores how social media, rather than encouraging shared cultural and political aspirations, splinters community and fosters alienati

How is your mental health? Schroeder Stribling, President and CEO of Mental Health America, believes we should all live in the open about our stories and support one another when we are challenged. She is inspired by Clifford Beers who founded Mental Health America in 1909 to dismantle the system of institutionalization of those, like him, who suffered from mental illness. MHA embraced Clifford’s vision for a reform movement, fundamentally changing America’s approach to mental health. MHA is a crucial resource in this moment. A global pandemic, deep civil divisions and social isolation have been disorienting and deadly with communities of color, immigrants and LGBTQ youth bearing its disproportionate impacts. In this time, MHA’s Prevention and Screening platform has been used by 15,000 people per day, providing real time data about those most at risk: those between the ages of 11-17, primarily LGBTQ and youth of color. MHA advocates in state legislatures and on Capitol Hill and partners with community-based a

  When Cleofas Rodriguez says that leading the National Migrant and Seasonal Head Start Association is his dream job, believe him. He knows first-hand the risks that farmworkers face because of their immigration status and exposure to dangers in the fields. As executive director of NMSHSA, Cleo honors farmworkers by ensuring that their children are educated. He does this by supporting Head Start agencies in over 30 states that serve families who may move multiple times a year to harvest crops. Doing so requires logistical coordination, expertise in early childhood education and a deep commitment to these families. In previous episodes, we have talked to children of farmworkers who are now in college and working as NMSHSA Fellows. Cleo is now realizing a vision for these families that originated during the pandemic. When millions of Americans received stimulus checks, farmworkers were excluded. The Biden Administration is now extending cash relief to farmworkers, meat packers and grocery workers. NMHSA is part

White House staffer and public health advocate Natalie Davis was all-in when President Barack Obama signed on to expand and transform our nation’s ailing health care system. And she was instrumental in navigating the choppy waters of its implementation after the Affordable Care Act was signed into law in 2010. As an advisor to the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Andy Slavitt, she was deeply engaged in one the country’s largest expansions of health care in modern history. This was also when Natalie welcomed, albeit three months early, the birth of her first child. She experienced, as so many Americans do, the live-changing urgency of health insurance. That moment paved the way to her co-founding, with Andy Slavitt, of United States of Care, the national nonprofit she now leads. USC asks people what they want from their health care and uses policy levers to generate results. The culture is open-minded and pragmatic, working with all sectors and across partisan divides. As Natalie explain

At a moment of profound national and global upheaval it is important to consider what makes bold, transformational change possible. How can illicit conduct in industries ranging from banking to pharmaceuticals to technology and nuclear energy be exposed and repaired? Calling out corruption, waste and fraud may involve politicians and pundits, but it starts with brave individuals, employees of government agencies, corporations, and nonprofits who are driven by personal integrity. In this episode of Power Station we learn about whistleblowing, the laws that protect those who step forward of their own volition as truth-tellers, the significance of this act to the public and our planet, and the role of attorneys in defending them against retaliation by employers. Siri Nelson, the changemaking executive director of the National Whistleblowers Center explains how NWC advocates for protections in Congress, the courts and regulatory agencies and educates the public about non-disclosure agreements, retaliation, and re

We are living in extraordinary times. The racism, misogyny and anti-immigrant vitriol unleashed by the Trump presidency has generated tremendous social discord in America. Decades of public policies crafted to bridge a cavernous racial wealth gap imploded under this administration. Even the most vigilant news consumers are hard pressed to keep up with right wing attacks on voting rights, bodily autonomy, and democracy itself. But mainstream reporting does not often tell the whole story of what is happening in America. Grassroots organizations are making transformational change in historically marginalized communities. The Workers Center for Racial Justice, a Chicago-based grassroots organization, is building power in Black communities from the ground up. Led by the gifted and inexhaustible DeAngelo Bester, WCRJ is producing a level of engagement and policy change that should be headline news. It’s Ban the Box Campaign is just one example of what community organizing, powered by formerly incarcerated citizens

In 1984, Billy and Debby Shore founded Share our Strength in response to famine in Ethiopia, a mission that soon expanded to ending hunger in America. Their singular focus on hunger deepened our collective consciousness and involved elected officials, the culinary industry, advocates, and low-income communities in securing solutions. They launched No Kid Hungry, a campaign that connects families, many of whom are working people of color with low wage jobs, to public resources, from WIC to SNAP. As Jillien Meier, Director of Partnerships & Campaign Strategy explains, ending hunger is complex and nuanced. It requires understand the byzantine rules and myriad of systems involved in accessing food, pressing Congress to reauthorize and improve the Farm Bill and Children Nutrition Act, and listening to directly impacted families with lived experience. Jillien reminds us that while No Kid Hungry has always held that hunger is a non-partisan issue, during the pandemic it became decidedly political. Flexibility to