Mission Forward with Carrie Fox

In 2020, the video game world learned something special about Marvel’s newest Spider-Man character, Miles Morales. Turns out he’s pretty good at American Sign Language (ASL). Superfans already knew the character to be bilingual from the animated film “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.” But trilingual?

This is week 39 of the Finding The Words column, a series published every Wednesday that delivers a dose of communication insights direct to your inbox. If you like what you read, we hope you’ll subscribe to ensure you receive this each week.

• (00:00) - Welcome to Mission Forward

There's a superhero origin story in all of us. We're convinced of it. But it's not the story you might think — learning how to fly, or figuring out how to lift cars over our heads. No, the real superhero story is the story we each carry in our hearts that reminds us of the first time we learned compassion, the first time we learned how to feel for another human being, and the first time we learned to love unconditionally.

This week, we present Schroeder Stribling, President, and CEO of Mental Health America. She's with us to talk about mental health, the narrative we've written around it as a society, and why it's time to get serious and teach one another to approach trauma with compassion. Along the way, you're going to hear Schroeder's superhero origin story. We hope it triggers something for you that reminds you of your own.

Because we contend that it's only by reminding one another — and ourselves — of our ability to love that we'll be able to reduce barriers and increase access to mental health care that is increasingly critical to so many of us. Achieving practical, boots-on-the-ground success in meeting the mental health needs of our peers, colleagues, and strangers alike will require us to believe in our ability to bring change to their lives and our own in so doing.

Schroeder is an incredibly powerful individual and if you have never crossed her path, we're thrilled to be the show to do it for you today. Our deepest thanks to Schroeder Stribling for her time and friendship.

• (00:00) - Welcome to Mission Forward

This November 17-19, 2022, thousands of people will gather for Facing Race: A National Conference, produced by Race Forward, to explore new and powerful ways to advance racial justice. It is, in a word, extraordinary in the way this conference offers advocates of all stripes to connect, to learn, and to love the work we all do, in our own ways, furthering the conversations of racial justice together.

In the lead-up to the conference, we thought we'd host our own forum with two very special people in our lives — and in the conference itself. What you're about to hear is a conversation with Glenn Harris, President of Race Forward and host of the Facing Race Conference, and Ashton Lattimore, editor-in-chief of Prism, a valued partner in this year's conference.

This is a timely conversation, not just for its proximity to the conference itself, but for its resonance to the public discourse. We're in the run-up to another election in a contentious political environment. How do we find hope and possibility in the face of what we have lost through division and partisanship? How do we remember the value of speaking truth to power with love in the face of eroding rights in this country? How do we confront the disenfranchisement of public education and the inequality of our efforts in climate legislation with strength, compassion, and faith that people of good will, will do good things?

We don't offer answers in this episode. But we hope that our efforts to showcase these voices and perspectives, voices of two people we believe offer good faith and goodwill in a marketplace of communication challenged by both, can give you a glimpse of how you might mount your own efforts for advocacy, and find a little hope in a brighter future, too.

Our deepest thanks to Glenn Harris and Ashton Lattimore for joining us this week. Please check out the Facing Race conference and join us in Phoenix in November!

• (00:00) - Welcome to Mission Forward

Our words and our actions matter. This week, if you’re serious about what you say, make sure your actions reflect it. Otherwise, you may be the one apologizing.

This is week 38 of the Finding The Words column, a series published every Wednesday that delivers a dose of communication insights direct to your inbox. If you like what you read, we hope you’ll subscribe to ensure you receive this each week.

• (00:00) - Welcome to Finding the Words

As of this writing, 5,852 companies, representing 471,095 workers across 85 countries, carry the “Certified B Corporation” badge. Our firm, Mission Partners, is one of them. But broadcasting this label is more than just surface branding. 

This week on the show, our Chief Operating Officer, Bridget Pooley, sits down with Carrie Fox to discuss purpose. Why does purpose matter? How does a business build a culture that embraces the question, “What If?” And for all the challenges that achieving B Corp Certification may pose, is it worth it?

Before Mission Partners, Bridget worked at the Center for Social Impact Communication at Georgetown University. The Center works to advance the field of social impact by educating and inspiring marketers and communicators, fundraisers, and journalists. She served on the corporate partnerships team at Share Our Strength, which many listeners might know by their No Kid Hungry Campaign. 

Ours is an organization that has embraced the objectives of the B Corp Certification wholly; we wear this accomplishment with pride, including how we intentionally use our business as a tool to advance communications. Bridget’s incredible experience and leadership as a B Corp champion have taught us much about how we present ourselves to our clients, peers, and the world. This week, we dig in on that intentionality and share how we at Mission Partners lead through our core values. 

Thank you, Bridget Pooley, for joining us for this week’s conversation. 

• (00:00) - Welcome to Mission Forward

The stories we pass down need not limit the stories we are capable of writing for our future selves. Two little words have the power to change HOW we communicate and HOW we connect with and understand one another as a result. Those two words? This week we offer a lesson in what if.

Thanks for listening. This is the 29th article in a year-long series called Finding the Words. If you liked this week's essay, we hope you'll forward it along. And a reminder that your family, friends, and colleagues can subscribe to Finding the Words too — along with every episode of our podcast — simply by clicking this link.

This season, we’re looking closer at you how you can use communications as a tool for systems change and social justice. Our first guest, Mark Miller, along with his colleagues, has just written the book on the power of public health communications, Talking Health: A New Way to Communicate about Public Health. Carrie Fox sat down with Mark at an event hosted by the University of Nebraska Medical Center and, with our great thanks to that amazing organization, we offer the interview to you, listeners of the podcast.

Mark Miller serves as Vice President of Communications at the de Beaumont Foundation. His career started in public and civic service before moving to children’s health and now public health. To all these roles, he brings a rich perspective to the challenges that face many front line communicators, including those who are needing to relay critical communications in real time, even as the science is still informing the message. This conversation includes Carrie and Mark in conversation, plus the insightful questions from an audience of invested communicators honing their craft. Our great thanks to Mark Miller and the team at the University of Nebraska Medical Center for making this conversation possible. 

• (00:00) - Welcome to Mission Forward

How do you define power in your brand’s social media? In this climate of mis- and disinformation, navigating a brand's path across the internet means facing difficult conversations head-on. How do you forge ahead, craft an image and perspective that is authentic to the culture of your team, and place it online in a way that aligns with your values?

Our guest this week is Anthony Shop. Anthony is co-founder and Chief Strategy officer of Social Driver, an agency dedicated to building brand image online for their clients. He's also Chairman of the National Digital Roundtable, a DC-based group whose mission is to educate and inform professionals about the technology, trends, and tactics that are transforming how society interacts with the world around them. In short, Anthony Shop knows of what he speaks on this subject. 

This is a conversation about trends, but not the trends defining what we're wearing or listening to. We're talking about the choices brands are making as they choose how to show up online, to live their values on digital channels, navigating the heated rhetoric that dominated so many spaces this election year. Are brands stepping back, or digging deeper into their social strategies?

Anthony's answer may surprise you. It all starts with people. "If CNN calls, you can't send your logo, you have to send a person! More companies are embracing using their people," he says. "Social media policies used to be about what not to do. Now, companies are helping leaders to build their presence," as individuals.

Agencies are carrying heavy baggage right now. Shaking free of white-dominant norms and toxicity can go a long way toward allowing more individuals the freedom to share new ideas for their clients, but our field has a long way to go. Taking Social Driver as an example gives us a light, a model that Anthony and team have created together of an intentional culture built on values and partnership inside the agency and beyond it. We're so grateful Anthony is here to teach us today.

Links & Notes

• Driver Foundation
• The Book of Hope by Jane Goodall and Douglas Abrams.
• Think Like a Monk by Jay Shetty
• 'Yeti’s Billion-Dollar Strategy: No Celebrities, No Pandering' • Wall Street Journal

• (00:00) - Welcome to Mission Forward

Two little words have the power to change HOW we communicate, and HOW we connect with and understand one another as a result. Those two words? What if?

Thanks for listening. This is the 32nd article in a year-long series called Finding the Words. If you liked this week's essay, we hope you'll forward it along. And a reminder that your family, friends, and colleagues can subscribe to Finding the Words too — along with every episode of our podcast — simply by clicking this link.

• (00:00) - Welcome to Mission Forward

Our guest today is someone who is actively rethinking, rewriting, and redefining the status quo media landscape. Ashton Lattimore is Editor-in-Chief at Prism, an independent, nonprofit newsroom led by journalists of color, and as she says, “Prism was founded because mainstream media wasn’t reflecting enough of the truth—and it wasn’t bringing us closer to our vision of collective liberation and justice.”

Through in-depth and thought-provoking journalism, Prism reflects the lived experiences of people most impacted by injustice. Journalists tell stories from the ground up at Prism: to disrupt harmful narratives, and to inform movements for justice. Prism launched in August of 2020 and has quickly provided an important lens through which to report on issues such as electoral justice, racial justice, economic justice, gender justice, climate justice, and more—all through an essential and intersectional lens of racial justice

Prism is, as you’ll hear her describe it, a newsroom with a point of view, but one with a keen eye on the center of the story: the subject with the most at stake. And in a media ecosystem in which stake is too often defined by wealth and power, re-defining the concept in terms of justice and equity is a refreshing turn.

Lattimore is a former lawyer and accomplished writer and editor. She’s also a Maynard Institute Fellow whose work focuses on this intersection of race, culture, and law. We thrilled to have her on the show this week.

• (00:00) - It's Summer at Mission Forward!