Power Station

  Niciah Mujahid wants you know that your city’s budget is 100% your business. As the dynamic executive director of Fair Budget Coalition, she leads a cohort of community-based nonprofits in advocating for a budget that invests in human needs and advances racial justice. Every aspect of this complex process, from analyzing budget proposals to engaging residents in testifying at budget hearings to building relationships with and posing solutions to the mayor and city council members is rooted in a racial equity lens. As Niciah explains, the budget, a quantifiable plan for how to acquire and spend a city’s resources, is also a moral document reflecting the priorities of elected decision-makers. This work is particularly consequential in Washington DC, whose residents have been denied statehood and lack full voting representation in Congress. And DC’s elected leadership, who develop and negotiate the budget, cannot enact it without a sign-off from Congress. But a conversation with Niciah is the opposite of bleak

Tram Nguyen, co-executive director of New Virginia Majority, is reframing how to think about progressive change making in politically polarizing times. She pushes back against the deeply embedded belief that those working for social justice and racial equity are in a lonely uphill battle against a fierce anti-democratic majority in her state and throughout the nation. Tram believes that the multi-racial coalition of young people, immigrants and working families New Virginia Majority brings together to restore the voting rights of returning citizens, make housing affordable and advance immigrant rights are the true majority, overshadowed by a loud and aggrieved minority. New Virginia Majority, powered by chapters and hubs across a hugely diverse state, generates policy and electoral wins that should be headline news. Hundreds of Black and Brown community leaders turn out in the state capitol each year, pressing legislative leaders, some of whom they helped elect, to enact legislation that uplifts their communi

As Felipe Pinzon says, not enough Americans know how nonprofits change communities. His own organization, Hispanic Unity of Florida, provides a master class in how transformative change in marginalized communities is made. It started in 1982, when residents recognized that immigrants arriving in South Florida needed help to manage the many complex transitions they faced. Hispanic Unity became a safe space where families learned how to navigate new systems, from public schools to healthcare to learning English, finding employment, and becoming citizens. Hispanic Unity sites the number of jobs attained, businesses started, and homes purchased by new immigrants among its successes. It also considers its public policy advocacy and committment to standing by the community in a deeply anti-immigrant environment a metric of impact. It's 2 Generation approach, working simultaneously with children and their parents to keep all family members on track for reaching their goals is key to building self-sufficiency and gen

There is intention and beauty in the naming of The Person Center. Its founder, Amelia Missielidies, wanted the women she served, survivors of domestic and sexual violence who were African immigrants and refugees to recognize the value of their personhood. As an Ethiopian and a social worker, Amelia understood what American service providers could not, that the experience these women shared: war, conflict, and migration, requires a trauma-informed approach to healing. After Amelia’s passing, her mentee, Lul Mohamud, stepped up to carry on and even deepen her impact. Lul describes The Person Center as guided by “the beauty of collectivism”, lessons from the community that she both comes from and serves. Instead of expecting marginalized women, some with uncertain immigration status to come to them to report abuse, Lul, a Somalian-American public health expert, and her team invest time in African immigrant and refugee communities, building trust, conducting informal needs assessments, and training community memb

  Are you, your nonprofit, and the community you serve being seen and heard? What if you could communicate the story of your nonprofit, the inequitable conditions you tackle, the public policies you advocate and your solutions for uplifting people and communities? In this episode of Power Station, I am joined by Oscar Zeballos, CEO of Podville Media, a fellow podcasting evangelizer whose partnership with co-founder Charlie Birney provides a dynamic stage for diverse voices, from ESPN to the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights to the White House Historical Association. Just before recording I participated on a panel session moderated by Oscar as part of Solutions for Housing Communications, a National Housing Conference event. Oscar conveyed the myriad ways that content generated by our audience of communications professionals can influence decision makers across an evolving media landscape. We carried our passion for purposeful communications into Podville Media’s Studio C where I pressed nonprofi

Where are our nation’s most effective and committed changemakers? You may expect them to be representing us on Capitol Hill or launching start-ups in Silicon Valley but the real champions of opportunity and equity, from poverty alleviation, upending the racial wealth gap and creating a pathway to generational wealth are nonprofit leaders. On this episode of Power Station, two exceptional leaders, Mercedes Lemp of My Sister’s Place and Joseph Leitmann-Santa Cruz, of Capital Area Asset Builders tell us about their organizational partnership, envisioned by Mercedes, to lift domestic violence survivors out of poverty and into a life of possibility. It starts with a monthly cash transfer, guaranteed income that provides women with the means needed to leave their abuser and build a life for themselves and their children. To deepen the effect of this initiative Mercedes reached out to Joseph whose track record in making financial education and resources accessible through CAAB, including guidance on the Earned Incom

  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