As the saying goes, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, but when it comes to the challenges facing the American safety net, the path forward can feel overwhelming. The problems are vast and complex, and it’s often hard to know where to begin—so sometimes, we don’t.

In this episode, host Rebecca McInroy speaks with four individuals who have dedicated their lives to improving the lives of others: Erine Gray (Founder and CEO, Findhelp), Julian Paraschiv (Co-founder and CEO, AIDA Healthcare), Amber Lombardi (Founder and CEO, Mainely Teeth), and Adrien Lewis (Founder and CEO, CarePortal). Their stories show us that meaningful change starts by identifying one problem, one gap, one issue—and committing to it with clarity and purpose.

We gain valuable insights into what it takes not only to take that first step but to sustain real, lasting impact. We explore the importance of building relationships with others tackling similar challenges,  the power of embracing new technology to expand your impact, and why strong leadership and business skills are essential. Most importantly, we’re reminded to keep people and problems at the center, instead of focusing on the bottom line.

How is technology reshaping the way we access social services and healthcare? In this episode of American Compassion, recorded at The LBJ School of Public Affairs, we dive into the challenges and opportunities of digitizing the American safety net. Our panel of experts—leaders in healthcare, social care tech, research, and AI—break down how digital tools are impacting the way people get the support they need. From AI-powered outreach to new ways of sharing data securely, we explore what’s working, what’s not, and what’s next.

Host Rebecca McInroy joins Emily Barey from Epic, Jaffer Traish from Findhelp, Sherri Greenberg from The LBJ School of Public Affairs, and Amy McCarthy from Hippocratic AI. Together, they tackle big questions: Can AI actually make social care more personal? How do we protect privacy while improving access? And what will it take to build a safety net that truly works for everyone? Tune in for an insightful, real-world conversation on the future of social care in the digital age.

Now that the US election has been decided, what will the new administration mean for the American safety net, and how does the American political story influence how we understand what is possible regarding policy, allocation of resources, funding, innovation, development, and care.

In our second panel discussion hosted in collaboration with the LBJ School of Public Affairs, we explored how the outcome of the 2024 US election may shape the future of the social safety net. 

Filmed in front of an audience at the LBJ School's Bass Lecture Hall, the conversation was moderated by American Compassion host Rebecca McInroy. Our featured speakers were Barbara Chapman, Glen Chambers, Bob Wood, and Paul Stekler.

We concluded season 2 of American Compassion by looking at the legacy of The Great Society and asked, " If we accept the fact that there's enough money in the US to solve poverty—just accept that—then we can start asking, how?" So, in season 3, that is where we begin. 

In our first panel discussion, hosted in collaboration with the LBJ School of Public Affairs, we examine the modern safety net from a broad perspective—how did we get here, what’s broken, and what are the biggest challenges for Americans who need help?

Filmed in front of an audience at the LBJ School’s Bass Lecture Hall, American Compassion host Rebecca McInroy was joined in conversation by Dr. Pritesh Gandhi, Maninder “Mini” Kahlon, Ph.D., Isha Desselle, and Erine Gray.

Episode 2, “What Happens Now?” will be recorded on Nov. 13 after the upcoming presidential election. Grab your free ticket today! 🗓️ Join us Nov. 13 ▶️ https://hubs.li/Q02Qy5Z50

In 1988, Isha Desselle sold everything she owned and turned a dilapidated apartment complex in Houston into a refuge for the elderly who needed a home. Today, she has served over 40,000 men and women over 50 who needed food, shelter, healthcare, and resources.

Dr. Pritesh Gandhi is a physician who has dedicated his work to connecting the most vulnerable and marginalized Americans to medical services and primary healthcare resources, as the Associate Chief Medical Officer and Director of Adult Medicine at People’s Community Clinic, as Chief Medical Officer at the Department of Homeland Security, and currently with Wal-mart as the Chief Community Health Officer.

Mini Kahlon began her career in medicine as a neuroscientist. With intense creativity, intuition, and curiosity, she moved her family to Austin and was the Dell Medical School’s founding vice dean of the health ecosystem. Her focus today, with her company Beheld, is identifying opportunities to rapidly improve health through programs embedded in people’s lives, getting the data to prove how empathetic connection can address chronic conditions such as diabetes, depression, and loneliness, and building systems to incorporate these innovations into our healthcare, our workforce, and our safety net.

Connection is also a big part of Erine Gray’s relationship to the safety net. Life experience and working in public policy taught him the importance of access to information and resources in times of need and that when it came to this access, there was a huge gap for most Americans. After 9/11, with a background in computer science, he decided to pursue an MPA from the LBJ School of Public Affairs. Erine went on to build Find Help, the nation’s largest social care network, to connect people to programs that improve outcomes for some of the most vulnerable.

During Lydon Johnson’s 4 years in office, his administration shepherded through: The Civil Rights Act, The Voting Rights Act, The Economic Opportunity Act, Upward Bound, The Job Corps, Head Start, Community Action Agencies, The Elementary and Secondary Education Act, Medicare and Medicaid, The National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities, The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, PBS, and NPR, The Urban Mass Transportation Act, Cigarette Labelling and Advertising Act, The Motor Vehicle Safety Act, The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The Fair Packaging and Labeling Act, The Child Safety Act of 1966, The Water Quality Act, The Housing and Urban Development Act, The Fair Labor Standards Act, and many many other programs designed to eliminate poverty in America. 

By eliminating poverty, he didn’t only mean financial poverty, yet this isn’t to say that LBJ ignored the economics at all. You might recall from our first episode Johnson saying, "This administration here and now declares unconditional war on poverty in America.” But we still see poverty in America today, so does that mean the war on poverty failed? 

In this episode, we’ll look at the legacies of the Great Society, the War on Poverty, and LBJ’s Presidency.  And we’ll ask, what did the policies that came out of his administration mean for the American Safety Net and why aren‘t more people aware of LBJ’s social policy legacy? 

Special thanks to our guests for this episode, Erine Gray, Guian McKee, Martha Baily, Julian Zelizer, Mark Updegrove, H.W. Brands, and Robert Caro.

Thank you as well to The Miller Center at the University of Virginia, The American Presidency Project at The University of California Santa Barbara, The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum, and The LBJ Presidential Library and Museum in Austin Texas for their consultation and use of archived materials. 

Michael Zapruder arranged and composed the music for this show, and played guitar, with Jeff Olsen on drums, Mike St. Clair on bass, and Sam Lipman on keyboards.

Executive Producer, Rebecca McInroy. 

Advising Editor, Jim Tuttle

Intern, Frances Cutter

Here we are in the third episode of our 4 episode season looking at how Lyndon Johnson, by passing the civil rights bill on July 2nd, 1964, and The Economic Opportunity Act on Aug. 20th, 1964, is continuing the work of Franklin Roosevelt, and doing it as a sort of interim president before he is elected in his own right in November of 1964.

An election he’s nervous about, an election that could find him out of politics altogether with an enormous amount of work undone and with no clear path to power within reach. One of the biggest goals left undone by FDR and through the terms of Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy, is that of passing a comprehensive healthcare bill for the poor and elderly. 

In this episode, we explore Medicare’s tenuous, and little-known road to realization and the masterminds behind its conception. 

Special thanks to our guests for this episode, Erine Gray, Guian McKee, Melody Barnes, Julian Zelizer, Mark Updegrove, and Robert Caro.

Thank you as well to The Miller Center at the University of Virginia, The American Presidency Project at The University of California Santa Barbara, The Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum, and The LBJ Presidential Library and Museum in Austin Texas for their consultation and use of archived materials. 

Michael Zapruder arranged and composed the music for this show, and played guitar, with Jeff Olsen on drums, Mike St. Clair on bass, and Sam Lipman on keyboards.

Executive Producer, Rebecca McInroy. 

Advising Editor, Jim Tuttle

Intern, Frances Cutter

It’s the summer of 1964 and Lyndon Johnson has just signed the most sweeping civil rights legislation since Reconstruction. It was a continuation of the proposal of John F. Kennedy and LBJ found a way to make it happen, but when it came to the safety net Johnson’s vision encompassed far greater legislation.

From healthcare to education, unemployment to the media, the arts, and beyond; and much of that work, as we touched on in the last episode, he began under FDR. 

By this time LBJ had been a part of the US government for over 25 years with one goal, to become president of the United States. So 1964 after he’s become president following the assassination of John Kennedy,  he now had to run for office on his own, and everything he’d worked for was on the line.

President Johnson needed to make his mark and form a foundation that was truly his. Although, as we’ll explore in later episodes, he is remembered for another war, it was the War on Poverty that he was willing to wager his presidency on.

One of the most unique pieces of the war on poverty was Community Action. Community Action Programs or CAPS turned out to be one of the most controversial parts of the war on poverty and simultaneously one of the most revolutionary. The programs were controlled at the local level and the power was in the hands of the people who needed the resources. 

In this episode, we will pull apart the fine details of the Economic Opportunity Act, and hear some conversations that illustrate the tension and the steaks of creating some of the most revolutionary safety net programs of the 20th century. We’ll talk about why the war on poverty and programs like Community Action, Job Corps, and Head Start were so important to LBJ as a person and as president, we’ll talk about the compromises it took to create and pass this legislation, and we’ll explore the impact of programs like the Job Corps had on people like heavyweight boxing champion George Foreman. 

Special thanks to our guests for this episode, Erine Gray, Guian McKee, Andrew R. Smith, Melody Barnes, and Robert Caro. And thank you as well to The Miller Center at the University of Virginia, The American Presidency Project at The University of California Santa Barbara, and The LBJ Presidential Library and Museum in Austin Texas for their consultation and use of archived materials. 

Michael Zapruder arranged and composed the music for this show, and played guitar, with Jeff Olsen on drums, Mike St. Clair on bass, and Sam Lipman on keyboards.

Executive Producer, Rebecca McInroy. 

Advising Editor, Jim Tuttle

Intern, Frances Cutter

When we left off last season FDR’s New Deal and the end of WWII meant America was out of the Great Depression. But in 1960 people were waking from dreams of Earth Angels and Chantilly Lace to times that were changing. The Civil Rights movement, The Women's Movement, and Anti-war protests were drawing attention and building momentum. 

Longer nightly news broadcasts meant Americans were seeing more and gaining consciousness of what life was like not only overseas, but right in their own backyards. 

 People were seeing what it meant to be black in America and to be poor in America. Popular culture, especially music, reflected this, in folk music and protest songs like Odetta’s Oh Freedom, in Bob Dylan’s “Oxford Town” Nina Simone’s “Mississippi Goddam,” and in jazz like John Coltrane’s “Alabama.” These recordings brought the injustices of American life into the public consciousness in a new way.

So on November 22, 1963, when the 35th president of the United States John Fitzgerald Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, and Vice President Lyndon Baines Johnson assumed the role of president of the United States and wasted no time getting to work on continuing the legacy of not only Kennedy but of FDR. And creating a series of programs that he hoped would define his legacy as well.

 In May of 1964, 6 months before he would be elected president of the US in a landslide victory. President Johnson laid out his vision for The Great Society in a speech at the University of Michigan.

 And this was no pie-in-the-sky hyperbole. Johnson was the architect of the continuation of the safety net through the great society and that meant. Passing the civil rights bill was crucial for Johnson, not only because he was continuing Kennedy’s legacy, but because it was a foundational piece of his Great Society and the American Safety Net.

 But who was LBJ? What motivated his keen focus on domestic policy, poverty, civil rights, healthcare, and education, especially at a time when the Cold War was heating up and the war in Vietnam was on everyone’s hearts, minds, and TVs?

In this episode we explore Lyndon Baines Johnson the man and the president with Pulitzer Prizing-winning biographer Robert Caro, we hear conversations between LBJ with Martin Luther King Jr. and we get a better understanding of the context and the consequences of this monumental moment in American history.

Special thanks to our other guests for this episode H.W. Brands, Julian Zelizer, and Erine Gray, and to The Miller Center at the University of Virginia, The American Presidency Project at The University of California Santa Barbara, and The LBJ Presidential Library and Museum in Austin Texas for their consultation and use of archived materials.

Michael Zapruder arranged and composed the music for this show, and played guitar, with Jeff Olsen on drums, Mike St. Clair on bass, and Sam Lipman on keyboards.

Executive Producer, Rebecca McInroy. 

Advising Editor, Jim Tuttle

Intern, Frances Cutter

In season 1 of American Compassion we went back to the turn of the last century to explore poverty and wealth, philanthropy and charity, work, health and politics, and policy at a time when the idea of a safety net was just a dream, and we dove deep into what and who it took to make those dreams a reality. From Workplace safety to fair labor standards and child labor laws, to the New Deal, and with all that we merely scratched the surface of the complex history of the American safety net.

In season 2 we continue in our exploration of the safety net from The New Deal to The Great Society.

When President Lydon Baines Johnson laid out his vision for the Great Society at The University of Michigan on May 22, 1964, he said, “Your imagination, your initiative, and your indignation will determine whether we build a society where progress is the servant of our needs or a society where old values and new visions are buried under unbridled growth. For in your time, we have the opportunity to move not only toward the rich society and the powerful society but upward to the Great Society.”

But what does it mean to be a Great Society? For Johnson, it meant elevating the quality of life for all Americans by not only continuing the work of Franklin Roosevelt on the American Safety Net but also expanding the idea of the safety net itself. Even before Johnson was elected to office in 1964 he passed the Civil Rights bill after assuming the office of president following the assassination of John F. Kennedy, and during his first year in office, he shepherded through the Economic Opportunity Act and Medicare and Medicaid.

In Season 2 of American Compassion, we explore not only what programs and legislation Johnson created to build the safety net we have today, but we delve into why LBJ was so committed to civil rights, education, economic opportunity, and so much more through archived recordings, speeches, and through Johnson’s biography with Pulitzer Prize-winning author known for his biographies of Lyndon B. Johnson, Robert Caro. 

Other guests include biographers, economists, policy advisors, and historians, H.W. Brands, Julian Zelizer, Guian Mckee, Mark Updegrove, Martha Baily, Andrew R. Smith, Melody Barnes, and Erine Gray.

Compromise is at the heart of almost every aspect of life. From what our family wants for dinner, to what subjects are taught in our schools, to what is included in, and left out of, congressional legislation. Yet, sometimes it seems like a “winner takes all” mentality is taking over. Many social media feeds, television shows, and podcasts glorify the winners and prompt accomplishment over compromise, and overwhelmingly our legislative process reflects this as well. In this atmosphere, it’s hard to make progress toward a more comprehensive and effective safety net.

So far in our series on the American Safety Net, we’ve examined wealth and poverty at the turn of the last century. We talked about what it meant to be poor without a safety net, and where those in need found housing, food, work, and a sense of safety and well-being. We talked about the role of government, philanthropy, and charity and we met Frances Perkins, and Franklin Roosevelt, two people who were integral in the shaping of the first American safety net--The New Deal.

In our final episode of season 1, we explore what compromises were made in order to get the New Deal through. We talk about how a grand vision for universal healthcare was scrapped, how cradle-to-grave social security was whittled down, and how bending on certain elements of the safety net created generational loss that is felt to this day. 

Yet, we also discuss how monumental the New Deal was to America. It stabilized an American economic system that was in freefall during the Great Depression; it put people back to work; it instilled faith in the American government, and it restored hope in a people who had been crushed by poor working conditions, poverty, starvation, and insecurity. And still, Frances Perkins glumly appraised the accomplishments as but a few, “practical, flat-footed first steps.”

Join hosts Rebecca McInroy and Michael Zapruder and guests, Erine Gray, H.W. Brands, Robin D.G. Kelley, Tom Philpott, Mike Konzcle, Willow Lung-Amam, Marshall Auerbach, Penny Coleman, and David Kennedy, as we explore this complicated and rich history and what it can teach us today.