Firestarters with Shannon Watts

Gregory Jackson is a survivor of gun violence who was shot in 2013, an experience that pushed him into activism. After a decade of advocacy, he helped pass the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, the first major federal gun safety law in 30 years. He then served as Deputy Director of the first ever White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention. Ruth Zakarin is the CEO of the Massachusetts Coalition to Prevent Gun Violence and chair of Vote Yes on 9 for a Safe Massachusetts. She spent more than 25 years working with survivors of domestic and sexual violence before moving into policy and systems change.

I sat down with Greg and Ruth to talk about referendum 9 on the Massachusetts ballot. It is a referendum on the gun safety law Governor Healey signed in July 2024. The local arm of the NRA collected signatures to repeal it, so a yes vote keeps the law in place. We talked about what the law does, from regulating ghost guns for the first time to banning machine gun conversion devices and expanding extreme risk protection orders. Homicides in Massachusetts have dropped for three years in a row. Greg and Ruth shared how they are pushing back on the opposition’s messaging by keeping the focus on safety and community. We also talked about why the NRA is targeting Massachusetts first, and why a loss there could send these fights to other states. We closed with how you can get involved; vote yes on 9 and tell your friends and family to do the same. If you don’t live in Massachusetts, you still know someone who does, so pass it along. Learn more about the campaign at yesforasafema.com. Join the Massachusetts Coalition to Prevent Gun Violence at mapreventgunviolence.org, where you can volunteer for legislative advocacy, community based work, and education.

Connect with Ruth: Website | SubstackConnect with Greg: Instagram | Substack

If you’re looking to unleash your potential, find your personal, professional, or political fire, and to connect with a community who is doing the same, click here to learn more.

Kelsey Baker is a domestic equity coach, lawyer, writer, and the founder of Mockingbird Learning. With fifteen years of experience in resolving conflict, and as a working mom of two, she helps women and couples understand how our laws, patriarchal systems, and societal forces shape our lives and contribute to inequity at home. She guides clients through the process of making the invisible labor visible, moving beyond blame and recurring arguments, and building practical systems for sharing responsibility fairly. She believes that for women to have equity in society, we need to have equity at home.

In this discussion, I asked Kelsey why she frames the mental load for women as a systemic problem instead of a personal one. She shared that the unpaid labor and caregiving that women provide is what holds up our entire economy. And we talked about what the data actually shows: women spend nearly twice as many hours on domestic labor as men do. The inequality has become so normalized in our society, that it’s hard to recalibrate our baselines. We got into why the usual fixes don’t work, how to actually have the mental load conversation with your partner, and how to conduct a household audit. We closed with the most practical first step for women who feel completely squeezed by the household imbalance.

Connect with Kelsey: Website | Substack | Instagram

If you’re looking to unleash your potential, find your personal, professional, or political fire, and to connect with a community who is doing the same, click here to learn more.

Daniella Ballou-Aares is the founder and CEO of the Leadership Now Project, a membership organization of more than 400 business leaders, including CEOs, board members, and executives, who see protecting constitutional institutions as both a civic duty and a business imperative. She began her career at Bain & Company, then co-founded the global advisory firm Dalberg and grew it into more than 25 offices across Africa, Asia, Europe, and the Americas. She later worked on international development at the U.S. State Department. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader, and holds an MBA and an MPA from Harvard.

I asked Daniella why she believed the business community needed to get involved in fixing our political system. She told me she is convinced we can solve our problems. We just haven’t organized ourselves to do it. We talked about election protection and the risks she tracks before, during, and after Election Day. She shared what business leaders can do right now, from making sure employees know when and where to vote to touring election facilities and asking candidates to commit to certifying results. We got into why CEOs carry real influence, since many people trust their CEO more than lawmakers or the press. We also talked about the Business Plan for America, what rebuilding the political center really means, and why she is excited about candidates who come from business, the military, and public service. Daniella closed by sharing what is giving her hope right now.

Connect with Daniella: Website | Substack

If you’re looking to unleash your potential, find your personal, professional, or political fire, and to connect with a community who is doing the same, click here to learn more.

Jose Javier Rodriguez is an attorney, a former Florida state senator, and a former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Labor. Throughout his career he has stood up to powerful interests on behalf of everyday Floridians, from utility ratepayers to insurance policyholders, even when it cost him politically. He is now running for Florida Attorney General on a platform built around three issues: crime, costs, and corruption.

I asked Jose what drew him to this kind of work, and he traced it back to his faith and a simple throughline in his career: he does his best work standing up to bullies. We talked about the 2020 state Senate race he lost by just 32 votes, after Republican operatives ran a fake independent candidate funded by Florida Power and Light to split the vote against him. Jose laid out exactly what an Attorney General does and why the office matters so much, from going after Medicaid fraud and deceptive insurance practices to leading on gun violence prevention through community intervention programs and witness protection. We also talked about his opponent, the corruption scandals currently surrounding him, and why Jose believes voters need to raise their expectations for what this office should actually do.

Connect with Jose: Website | Instagram | Substack

If you’re looking to unleash your potential, find your personal, professional, or political fire, and to connect with a community who is doing the same, click here to learn more.

Ellen Vora is a board certified psychiatrist trained at Yale and Columbia and the author of The Anatomy of Anxiety. Her work has always challenged the idea that mental and physical health are separate, and her new book, Season of the Witch: A Psychiatrist’s Case for Magic, pushes that inquiry further, into what women lose when we privilege rationality over intuition.

I asked Ellen what led her to write this book, and she took me back to the sudden loss of her mother while she was six months pregnant, and the acupuncture session that changed everything for her. We talked about what it actually means to reclaim the word witch. To Ellen, it’s about reclaiming the intuitive, mystical, and embodied ways of knowing that our culture tries to shame and suppress. We also got into the science behind it, how differently the brain’s two hemispheres process the world, and why she believes women are uniquely positioned to bring forward the kind of holistic, collaborative knowing our culture needs right now. And we talked about menopause not as a loss, but as a liberation, a chance to stop performing for everyone else and finally step into what we already know to be true.

Connect with Ellen: Website | Instagram | Substack | Buy the Book

If you’re looking to unleash your potential, find your personal, professional, or political fire, and to connect with a community who is doing the same, click here to learn more.

Asm. Josh Lowenthal represents Long Beach, California and serves as Speaker Pro Tempore in the California Assembly. Before politics, he worked as a schoolteacher and a successful tech entrepreneur, and he is the father of three young girls, an experience that pushed him to take on predatory social media practices. He is the author of AB 1709 and AB 2, two bills that together ban addictive features like infinite scrolling and autoplay for kids under 16, create a new oversight agency to monitor platforms, and raise the financial penalties when companies are found negligent in harming children.

I sat down with Josh to talk about what it actually took to get this legislation passed unanimously, through a legislature that big tech spends hundreds of millions of dollars lobbying every cycle. We talked about the parallel to gun safety work, a multi trillion dollar industry operating with almost no oversight while kids pay the price, and why he sees this less as a big tobacco moment and more like alcohol regulation, something that can be done responsibly but is causing real harm at the levels kids are currently using it. He also shared why he built this bill to be a model other states can copy and paste, what he is hearing, or not hearing, from the platforms themselves, and why he believes this needs to become a defining issue in the next presidential election.

Connect with Asm. Josh: Website | Instagram | Substack

If you’re looking to unleash your potential, find your personal, professional, or political fire, and to connect with a community who is doing the same, click here to learn more.

Elle Pugh, RN, BSN is a registered nurse, certified Enneagram facilitator and coach, and the founder of Beyond Your Type, an Enneagram based leadership development practice where she coaches senior level and C suite leaders at companies like Ulta Beauty, JPMorgan Chase, and PepsiCo. She began her career in a pediatric cardiac ICU before leaving the bedside, frustrated with the brokenness of the healthcare system, to build out a healthcare startup’s team from the ground up. That experience shaped her working philosophy that healthy organizations are made up of healthy individuals. She also writes The Dangerous Woman, a Substack on the Enneagram, women’s health, and leadership, and is building Naxos Health, a women’s integrative health platform launching in early 2027.

Elle walked through the full map of the Enneagram, from the body types to the heart types to the head types, and why she believes the real work isn’t picking a number off a quiz but understanding the story behind it, the ways each of us learned, as kids, how to feel safe, esteem, and in control. We got candid about my own type, an eight, and how the instinct to be strong and avoid vulnerability can be exactly what makes someone effective in a fight while also being the thing that strains relationships closest to home. We also talked about the Enneagram’s spiritual dimension, the passion and virtue underneath each type, and why Elle sees this as a tool for a lifetime rather than a one time test to take and file away.

Elle is also launching a new podcast with her colleague Scott Allender called Present Company, set to debut in January. The name carries a double meaning, both about being fully present in your own life instead of running on autopilot, and about the company we keep when we choose to do this kind of deep work together. Keep an eye out for it to launch as a Substack publication, and subscribe to Elle's Substack now so you don't miss it when it does.

Connect with Elle: Website | Instagram | Substack

If you’re looking to unleash your potential, find your personal, professional, or political fire, and to connect with a community who is doing the same, click here to learn more.

Dr. Lauren Hartman is a double board certified pediatrician and adolescent medicine specialist with nearly 20 years of experience caring for young people. She runs a private practice in Berkeley, California, Aspen Grove Adolescent and Young Adult Medicine, where she specializes in eating disorders, and serves on the Eating Disorder Committee for the Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine. Her new book, Freeing Children and Young Adults from Shame, Scales and Stigma, published this year by Routledge, is written as a practical guide, with scripts and strategies for doctors, schools, and parents navigating this together.

Dr. Hartman and I talked openly about the shame so many parents carry, the false belief that eating disorders are somehow voluntary or self inflicted, and why that thinking needs to change. Dr. Hartman shared how she got into this work, why early intervention makes such a difference, and how parents, far from causing eating disorders, are actually one of the most powerful parts of a young person’s recovery. We also talked through what a worried parent should actually do first, the mistakes even well intentioned parents make, and why Dr. Hartman wrote her book to give families and clinicians the language they often don’t know how to find on their own.

Connect with Lauren: Website | Instagram | Substack | Buy the Book

If you’re looking to unleash your potential, find your personal, professional, or political fire, and to connect with a community who is doing the same, click here to learn more.

Jennifer Weiss-Wolf is a lawyer, author, and longtime advocate for gender equality. She is executive director of the Birnbaum Women’s Leadership Center at NYU Law and leads partnerships and strategy at Ms. Magazine. Jennifer spent over a decade turning menstruation, something women were told to keep private, into a matter of public policy, and her new book, When in Menopause: A User’s Manual and Citizen’s Guide, does the same for menopause, making the case that it is not just a personal health issue but a workplace, economic, legal, and public policy one.

Jennifer traced how she stumbled into period policy back in 2015, after seeing two kids in her community collecting tampons and pads for a local food pantry, and how her own menopause transition during the pandemic pulled her into this next fight. We talked through the history of hormone therapy policy, from the misogynistic messaging of the 1960s to the 2002 study that scared a generation of doctors and patients away from treatment for decades, and why women are still living with the fallout of that decision today. Jennifer also broke down a whirlwind week of federal hearings on menopause care, including her own testimony before the Senate, and shared why she wrote the book as a practical, choose your own adventure style guide to help women advocate for themselves in the doctor’s office, the workplace, and their own communities.

Connect with Jennifer: Instagram | Substack | Buy the Book

If you’re looking to unleash your potential, find your personal, professional, or political fire, and to connect with a community who is doing the same, click here to learn more.

Sarah Stankorb is the author of Disobedient Women, a USA Today national bestseller, and her reporting has appeared in The Washington Post, The New York Times, Vogue, Elle, Marie Claire, Slate, and VICE, among others. Her new book, Damned If She Does, looks at the millions of women who have quit American churches over the last several decades, tracing the threads that connect purity culture, politics, and the reasons faith stopped fitting for so many of them.

Sarah talked about the years-long reporting process that led to the book, and how covering women who blew the whistle on abuse inside their own churches, many of them still faithful, shaped the questions she wanted to answer. We got into the cognitive dissonance so many women describe between being treated as equals in their professional lives and being told to submit at church, and the hypocrisy of religious leaders who forgive abuse within their own walls while shaming the women who experienced it. Sarah also shared what she found most surprising and most fun to report, the wide range of things women are turning to instead of organized religion, from women’s only gyms to a renewed interest in astrology and ancestral spiritual practices, and what she thinks it will actually take for churches to survive if they keep ignoring the fact that women no longer feel welcome there.

Connect with Sarah: Website | Instagram | Substack | Buy the Book

If you’re looking to unleash your potential, find your personal, professional, or political fire, and to connect with a community who is doing the same, click here to learn more.