Fault Lines

In this short episode, Dr. Richard Roman invites listeners into a reflective space by sharing a poignant poem, "October Journey," by Margaret Walker. 

Margaret Walker, a notable figure in American literature, was part of the Chicago Black Renaissance and left a lasting impact with her works such as For My People and Jubilee. 

Walker’s poem paints a vivid picture of autumn, serving as a metaphor for life's journeys and the changes that accompany them. The opening lines set the tone for a meditation on the transition from light to dark, urging carefulness in our paths.

As the poem unfolds, Walker invokes imagery of vibrant colors and the bittersweet nature of change, reminding us that while some journeys are filled with beauty, others carry the weight of loss.

The juxtaposition of vibrant autumn colors against the somber realities of winter offers a poignant reminder of the cycles of trust in our lives and organizations.

Too many “helping” systems are built to extract knowledge instead of create change. Keara Cormier-Hill breaks down how trauma-informed, equity-centered research can shift power back to the people most affected, and why that changes everything for safety, trust, and real community care.

Keara is the founder and principal researcher at South Design Research Studio, where she works with mission-driven organizations to bridge the gap between what communities say they need and what institutions actually build. Her path runs through nonprofit community engagement, public education, UX research, service design, and civic tech, giving her a rare ability to translate lived experience into systems-level action.

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She also shares what changed when a district realized it was serving a multilingual community with only one language in mind, and how that mismatch led to interpreters and better access. We break down the difference between co-creation and extraction, why some institutions unintentionally turn care into surveillance, and how small human gestures like a neighbor’s note or a shared hello can help but never replace structural change.

Keara also explains the Spanish concepts of compartir and acompanar, which capture something deeper than “share” or “accompany” and point to the heart of her work: being with people, not just studying them.

If you care about trust-building, public systems, community engagement, or research that leads to actual change, this conversation will stay with you.

Essential listening for leaders, researchers, educators, and anyone trying to build services that truly serve.

Trust does not collapse because people disagree. It collapses when people believe the truth was hidden. In this episode, Dr. Richard Roman shares findings from his dissertation on how state legislators decide whether public universities deserve their trust and continued support.

Drawing on 25 interviews with legislators across seven battleground states, Richard explains why outcomes matter, why dishonesty can become a turning point, and how a problem disclosed through the news can look more like concealment than transparency. He calls this turning point the deception threshold.

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Although the research focuses on public land-grant universities, the lessons apply to any organization accountable to outside stakeholders, including funders, regulators, boards, and communities.

For leaders seeking practical ways to strengthen stakeholder trust and institutional legitimacy, this conversation offers ideas they can put to work right away.

Find Richard on Substack and at Trusted Arc Labs for more writing on trust, leadership, and institutional legitimacy. His dissertation research, Trust at the Threshold: Stakeholder Confidence and Institutional Legitimacy in Public Land-Grant Universities, is available upon request.

Higher education is facing a steep decline in public trust Dr. Kathryn A. E. Enke explains why the problem goes beyond public relations, and what colleges and universities can do to rebuild confidence through clearer communication, effective governance, and stronger ties with their communities.

As Vice President in the Office for Leadership and Strategy at AAC&U, Dr. Enke supports leaders across a diverse range of institutions. She and Richard discuss the organization’s work to advance public trust and shares why small, mission-driven colleges can offer important lessons for larger universities.

In this episode, we explore:

Dr. Enke also discusses the trust agenda she co-authored with Jeremy Young, including the need for higher education to demonstrate its value through meaningful, local action, not just tell a better story. The conversation offers leaders and anyone interested in institutional trust a practical perspective on what rebuilding credibility can require.

Trust can break long before anyone admits it. The real danger is not only a headline-making ban or complaint; instead, it’s the quiet retreat that follows when people start teaching, speaking, and making decisions as if the worst-case scenario has already arrived.

Richard also considers a different perspective from sociologist Neil Gross, whose work emphasizes student sorting, peer dynamics, and campus polarization. Together, these perspectives raise a bigger question: when people face ambiguous rules, what evidence tells them whether their institution will stand behind them?

Richard closes with practical steps for leaders: clarify what remains protected, create a visible process for handling complaints, strengthen peer support, put protections in writing, and measure what people have stopped raising.

Because when trust is thin, silence can look like compliance, while concealing what an organization has lost.

The hardest part of a doctorate is not the coursework. It is the moment the cohort disappears, the dissertation begins, and the quiet isolation hits all at once.

Madeline Rowe, PhD and Richard unpack what really happens after structured support fades, why so many PhD students experience a shift from belonging to burnout, and how peer relationships can matter more than formal advising when it comes to surviving the long middle of doctoral work.

Madeline shares how a politically charged undergraduate course first pulled her toward academic freedom, higher education policy, and the systems that shape what gets researched, taught, and said on campus.

Richard adds his own path through admissions and advising, where student-by-student problem-solving eventually pushed him toward policy work and a PhD of his own.

Together, they explore:

Madeline also discusses balancing a doctorate with a master’s in public policy, navigating different academic identities, and learning to trust the evidence that her research was meaningful. Richard reflects on teaching while writing a dissertation, the pressure to meet competing responsibilities, and the institutional policies that shape students’ lives.

If you are a graduate student, doctoral advisor, higher education professional, or anyone interested in PhD completion and student belonging, this candid conversation offers a thoughtful look at what helps scholars persist ... and what can quietly push them away.

Trust is not something you ask for; it is something you prove, one visible act at a time.

Dr. Richard Roman breaks down why the fastest way to rebuild trust in a person, team, organization, or institution is often the least flashy one: showing up, following through, and closing the loop.

Using Hallie Thompson's real-world experience from a Missouri town, a campaign, and her own consulting work, Richard maps trust across four levels (individual, team, organizational, and civic) and connects it to the research behind what actually changes minds and behavior.

If you've ever wondered why mission statements, listening tours, and polished messaging so often fall flat, this episode shows you what works instead. You'll discover:

Richard also puts hard numbers on the current trust crisis, including Pew's finding that only 17% of Americans say they trust the federal government most of the time or always. That matters far beyond politics because when the top layer of trust is depleted, every layer below it starts from a weaker baseline.

This episode is essential listening for leaders, managers, founders, organizers, CHROs, and anyone trying to repair trust that has already been damaged, or avoid breaking it in the first place.

If you need a practical framework for turning abstract trust language into real behavior, this one will give you exactly that.

What if the fastest way to rebuild trust in politics, science, and your community was not to persuade harder, but to listen better?

You’ll discover:

This episode is essential listening for anyone interested in science policy, civic engagement, political trust, community building, local government, systems change, and public service.

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Trust is the invisible economy that holds organizations, communities, and even families together, but what happens when it breaks? In this episode, Dr. Richard Roman examines why people stop trusting institutions not because the facts changed, but because the relationship broke down first.

Roman also reveals why personal stories are powerful but not the same as proof, and why a good outcome does not automatically mean an intervention caused it.

From public health to healthcare, HR, government, and leadership, this episode gives you a clear framework for spotting trust breakdowns, understanding what fills the vacuum, and building systems people can actually verify.

If you lead people, care for patients, make policy, or simply want to understand why trust erodes so quickly, this conversation will change the way you think about evidence, credibility, and institutional failure.

She was told her son would never talk, never live independently, never function without lifelong care. She refused to accept it.

In this episode, Tracy Slepcevic, bestselling author of Warrior Mom, founder of the Autism Health Summit, and one of the newest members of the federal Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee, speaks with Richard Roman to trace the fault line between the families who lost trust in the healthcare system and the institutions that stopped listening.

From the 1986 Vaccine Injury Act to the design of her own counter-institutional conference, Tracy reveals what happens when a parent's self-trust becomes the only foundation left, and what it takes to build something new from the wreckage.

A conversation about accountability, institutional design, and the question every system should be asking: was this built to serve, or built to protect?