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From the launch of the very first CaringBridge site in 1997, they’ve been working toward a single vision: a world where no one goes through a health journey alone. In order to turn this vision into reality, they’ve made it their mission to build bridges of care and communication, providing love and support on a health journey.

CaringBridge has made it simple and safe to offer or ask for support when needed most. More than 300,000 people use their private and ad-free platform every single day, sharing health updates and rallying around loved ones. People around the world turn to CaringBridge for health journey communications; every 10 minutes, there’s a new CaringBridge site made to share updates and get support. And every hour, 1,800 messages of encouragement are shared on the sites of loved ones.

Liwanag Ojala is the CEO of CaringBridge, the first and most widely used global nonprofit social network dedicated to helping family and friends communicate with and support loved ones during a health journey. She ensures that all CaringBridge operations contribute toward its vision—a world where no one goes through a health journey alone.

Liwanag’s background has given her a strong foundation of business skills and knowledge that she uses to continue pushing CaringBridge forward into its next era. Before joining CaringBridge as chief operating officer at the end of 2014, she was vice president of ecommerce at Meijer, and had also served in several executive roles. Liwanag began her career as an attorney with Briggs & Morgan and, as legal counsel for SpartanNash, assisted that public company by advising executives.

Liwanag has been continuously recognized for her business prowess and achievements. In just the past few years, she was named among the “Top 500 Executives” by Minnesota Monthly, as well as included in the new CARE 100, a list of Americans doing the most to reimagine and re-humanize our care system. In 2019, Liwanag was named as one of Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal’s “Most Admired CEOs” and selected by Twin Cities Business Magazine as one of their “Top 100 People to Know in 2020.” She remains a member of the Minnesota State Bar, a trustee emeritus of the Blandin Foundation and serves on the Board of Trustees for MPR News.

Liwanag studied at Northwestern University before receiving her law degree from the University of Minnesota Law School. The opportunity to lead an impactful organization at the intersection of healthcare, nonprofit and technology—all while utilizing her many years in e-commerce—has made CaringBridge a rewarding and fulfilling chapter in her professional career.

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Glenn Bergman recently retired as CEO of Philabundance, the region’s largest hunger-relief organization—acquiring, rescuing and distributing food to help feed those in need, and advocating for policies that increase food access. Philabundance’s mission is to drive hunger from our communities today and end hunger forever—a mission that COVID-19 has intensified by an order of magnitude. Prior to Philabundance, Glenn was the general manager of Weavers Way Co-Operative Market. Over his 11-year tenure at Weavers Way, he expanded co-op membership and staff, increased annual sales, and expanded its programs to include the operation of four stores, two urban farms and education for children and adults. Glenn has a Bachelor of Science in biology from Fairleigh Dickinson University and a Master of Public Health from Temple University. After spending his early career in public health and healthcare-related positions, Glenn joined the Shooting Stars Corporation restaurant group and then held positions at the Wood Company and Compass Group. Glenn is an avid bicyclist and resides in Mount Airy with his wife, Dianne. (This encore broadcast originally aired in May of 2019.)

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Planet Word is the world’s first voice-activated museum, with interactive galleries and exhibits that bring words and language to life in all sorts of fun ways… inspiring and renewing a love of language and reading in people of all ages. Through unique, immersive learning experiences, they provide a dynamic space to explore words, grounded in a solid understanding of language arts and science.

Whether signed, spoken, written or sung, language connects us and directly shapes some of our most significant moments, reflecting who we are, how we interact with one another and how we interpret our world.

Ann Friedman is the founder & CEO of Planet Word, and has been integral to the restoration of the Franklin School, the museum’s home. Her interest in literacy began with a lifelong love of reading and early work as a copy editor and translator, with a subsequent career as a beginning reading and writing teacher at Montgomery County Public Schools. From 2010 to 2016, she served as board chair of the SEED Foundation, the parent of the nation’s only public, inner-city, college-prep boarding schools, where she currently serves as vice chair. Ann is also a founding board member of the Downtown DC Foundation, co-vice chair of the Aspen Music Festival and School, and has served on the board of the National Symphony Orchestra for more than a decade in various roles. She and her husband Thomas Friedman, the New York Times foreign-affairs columnist, live in Bethesda, MD, and have two adult daughters.

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In 2020, an estimated 5.8 million Americans had Alzheimer’s, and more than half a million died because of the disease and its devastating complications. Sixteen million caregivers are responsible for paying as much as half of the $226 billion annual costs of their care. As more people live beyond their 70s and 80s, the number of patients will rise to an estimated 13.8 million by 2025.

Part case studies, part meditation on the past, present and future of the disease, The Problem of Alzheimer’s traces its beginnings to its recognition as a crisis. An unambiguous account of decades of missed opportunities and our healthcare systems’ failures to take action, it also tells the story of the biomedical breakthroughs that may allow Alzheimer’s to finally be prevented and treated by medicine, and indicates how we can live with dementia: the ways patients can reclaim their autonomy and redefine their sense of self, how families can support their loved ones, and the innovative reforms we can make as a society that would give caregivers and patients a better quality of life.

Rich in science, history and characters, The Problem of Alzheimer’s takes us inside laboratories, patients’ homes, caregivers’ support groups, progressive-care communities and Dr. Karlawish’s own practice at the Penn Memory Center.

A physician and writer, he researches and writes about issues at the intersections of bioethics, aging and the neurosciences. He is also the author of the novel, Open Wound: The Tragic Obsession of Dr. William Beaumont and has written essays for The New York Times, The Washington Post, Forbes, The Hill and The Philadelphia Inquirer. He is a professor of Medicine, Medical Ethics and Health Policy, and Neurology at the University of Pennsylvania and co-director of the Penn Memory Center, where he cares for patients. He lives in Philadelphia.

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Physicians for Social Responsibility, known as PSR, is a physician-led and membership organization of health professionals in the United States working to protect the public from the global threats posed by nuclear weapons proliferation, climate change and environmental destruction. It produces and disseminates publications, provides specialized training, offers written and oral testimony to Congress, conducts media interviews, and delivers professional and public education.

PSR’s members and activists, state, local and student chapters, and national staff form a nationwide network that targets threats to global survival—specifically nuclear warfare, nuclear proliferation, global warming and toxic degradation of the environment.

 Jeff Carter is PSR’s executive director, a cofounder and U.S. affiliate of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) and shared in the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize. PSR is also a member of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017.

An attorney by training, much of Jeff’s career has been split between nonprofit governance/management functions and public-policy roles, primarily with membership organizations and associations. Until he joined PSR in 2017, his work was in education policy, mostly in adult education. From 2014–2016, he served as president of the National Coalition for Literacy, and in 2018 as president of the Committee for Education Funding (CEF), the largest nonpartisan coalition of national education advocacy groups in the U.S. that works to ensure strong federal funding for education. Members include associations, institutions, agencies and other organizations that represent students, teachers, schools, school boards, state education officers, education researchers, institutions of higher education and others.

In recent months, Jeff has been working with leaders in the peace and security field and environmental movement to mentor emerging leaders and address racial justice and gender equity. He is the cochair of Organizations in Solidarity’s working group on local hiring, and a 2020 fellow in NSquare’s Innovators Network, a community of cross-sector leaders working together to bring diversity, new ideas and perspectives to the nuclear arms control field.

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Presidents Day Weekend Programming and Resources – February 12–15, 2021:

National Consitution Center Presidents Day press release – February 2021

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Jeffrey Rosen is the president & CEO of the National Constitution Center, a nonpartisan nonprofit organization whose mission is to educate the public about the U.S. Constitution. Located steps from Independence Hall in historic Philadelphia, the Center engages millions of citizens as an interactive museum, national town hall and provider of nonpartisan resources for civic education. Among his initiatives, Jeffrey has developed the Center’s acclaimed Interactive Constitution, which brings together the top conservative and liberal legal scholars in America to discuss areas of agreement and disagreement about every clause of the Constitution. This online resource has received more than 15 million hits since launching in 2015.

Jeffrey is also a professor at the George Washington University Law School and a contributing editor of The Atlantic. He is a highly regarded journalist whose essays and commentaries have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, on National Public Radio, in the New Republic where he was the legal affairs editor, and The New Yorker where he was a staff writer. The Chicago Tribune named him one of the 10 best magazine journalists in America and a reviewer for the Los Angeles Times called him “the nation’s most widely read and influential legal commentator.”

Jeffrey is the author of six books including, most recently, a biography of William Howard Taft, published as part of the American Presidents series. His other books include Louis D. Brandeis: American Prophet; The Supreme Court: The Personalities and Rivalries that Defined America; The Most Democratic Branch: How the Courts Serve America; The Naked Crowd: Reclaiming Security and Freedom in an Anxious Age; and The Unwanted Gaze: The Destruction of Privacy in America. He is also co-editor of Constitution 3.0: Freedom and Technological Change.

Jeffrey is a graduate of Harvard College; Oxford University, where he was a Marshall Scholar; and Yale Law School. Encore broadcast: first aired in February 2019.

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Seeking to put God’s love into action, Habitat for Humanity brings people together to build communities and hope.

Habitat partners with people in your community, and all over the world, to help them build or improve a place they can call home. Habitat homeowners build their own homes alongside volunteers, and pay an affordable mortgage. With your support, Habitat homeowners achieve the strength, stability and independence they need to build a better life for themselves and their families. With their 2020 Strategic Plan, Habitat for Humanity will serve more people than ever before through decent and affordable housing.

Habitat now works in all 50 states in the U.S. and in more than 70 countries, and has helped more than 35 million people achieve strength, stability and independence through safe, decent and affordable shelter.

Jonathan Reckford began his journey as chief executive officer of Habitat for Humanity International in 2005. Drawing upon his decades of experience ranging from Wall Street to a local church, Jonathan has led the global nonprofit’s tremendous growth. Through his management, Habitat has grown from serving 125,000 individuals a year to helping more than 7 million people last year tangibly achieve so much through shelter.

Jonathan has been deeply influenced by his parents, who were active in the civil-rights movement, and by his grandmother, U.S. Congresswoman Millicent Fenwick, widely known for her commitment to justice. Jonathan seeks to follow in their footsteps by leading Habitat’s efforts to draw nearer to a world where everyone has a decent place to live.

His path to Habitat was neither immediate nor direct—with stops at Goldman, Sachs; the 1988 Olympic Games in Seoul, South Korea; Marriott; The Walt Disney Company; Musicland; Best Buy; and Christ Presbyterian Church in Edina, Minnesota. Every position prepared him to lead Habitat with a passion for the mission, tireless commitment to the work and bold vision for the future.

Jonathan holds an MBA from Stanford and a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he was a Morehead Scholar. In 1986, he was awarded a Henry Luce Fellowship.

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Water. We take it for granted, yet 2.1 billion people around the world don’t have access to safe water and 4.5 billion lack access to adequate sanitation. In fact, there are still places on the planet where women and children spend more than four hours walking for water each day. It’s estimated that by 2025, half of the world’s population will be living in water-stressed areas.

Eleanor Allen is the CEO of Water for People and a world-leading water expert dedicated to helping billions of people access safe and sustainable water and sanitation services. An engineer and former Peace Corps volunteer, Eleanor has led large global and regional operations in consulting, project management, program management, business development.  Eleanor believes societal change can be accelerated through social entrepreneurship and the efforts of organizations like Water For People.  Watch her TEDx talk on “Why Water Is A Women’s Issue,” in which she poignantly explains the intrinsic connection between women and one of Earth’s most precious resources.

This episode originally aired July 11, 2019.

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For 34 years, Arts Commons has been one of Canada’s largest and most vibrant arts centers. Located in the heart of Calgary’s Cultural District in the downtown core, the center occupies a full city block and is home to five theatres and the world-class Jack Singer Concert Hall.

Each year, Arts Commons hosts over 1,800 performances and events, including live theatre, concerts, dance productions, readings, public forums, art exhibits and much more—all open to the public. The resident companies of Arts Commons—including Alberta Theatre Projects, Arts Commons Presents, the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra, Downstage, One Yellow Rabbit and Theatre Calgary—create, perform and present a wide range of award-winning and highly acclaimed theatre and concerts each season.

In January of 2020, the Arts Commons board of directors announced the appointment of Alex Sarian as president and CEO. He joined Arts Commons after seven years of leadership roles at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York City.

As a recognized authority on the civic role of arts institutions, Alex has lectured and given workshops across the United States, Argentina, Canada, Chile, China, Mexico, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore, South Korea and Spain. As a professor, he has designed and taught undergraduate and graduate courses on audience development, business management and arts education for New York University, Pace University and City College of New York. He has served on numerous governing boards, special advisory committees and funding panels. He is currently a trustee of The New Group, an award-winning off-Broadway theatre company; an advisor to SXSW, one of the largest film, interactive media and music festivals in the world; a philanthropic advisor to Museo de Arte Moderno de Buenos Aires (Argentina); and was the second arts professional to be invited to serve on the selection committee for the Varkey Foundation’s Global Teacher Prize, an annual $1m award to an outstanding educator.

Originally from Toronto, Alex lived in Buenos Aires for 15 years, where he had the privilege of performing (piano and choir) in venues such as the Teatro Colon Opera House before moving to New York City in 2002 to pursue a career in arts management. He received undergraduate and graduate degrees from New York University, and was an inaugural graduate of the Impact Program for Arts Leaders at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business.

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This episode is brought to you by Better to Speak of It, a book of key leadership, management and personal values written in collaboration with Carnegie Hall’s Executive and Artistic Director Clive Gillinson.

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Managing Editor Robert Rimm talks with Opera Philadelphia’s General Director and President David Devan. Their mission is to deliver outstanding productions of traditional and new repertoire that engage the public and propel the genre forward. By presenting innovative programming that speaks to the multicultural Philadelphia region, they broaden and diversify the opera audience. They also identify extraordinary artists, both established and emerging, and provide opportunities for them to create their most imaginative and inspired work.

David joined Opera Philadelphia in January 2006 and was appointed general director of the company in 2011. Since his arrival, he has worked closely with the board and administration on strategic planning initiatives and building partnerships within the community and opera world. David guided the company through a transformative period of innovation that led Opera News to describe it as “one of the leading instigators of new work in the country” and The New York Times to call it “a hotbed of operatic innovation.” Under his leadership and artistic vision, Opera Philadelphia has grown to become a company of international stature and a favorite co-producing partner with companies all over the globe, developing fresh productions of classic works as well as premieres written by today’s leading composers. The company established the annual Festival O in 2017, launching each season with an immersive 12-day festival featuring multiple operatic happenings in venues throughout the city.

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