Mission Forward with Carrie Fox

Have you ever told yourself that you were going to do something — maybe launch a new initiative at work, make something of that hobby you’ve always loved, or take on a lofty personal goal — but found that something gets in the way of your progress?

Thanks for listening. This is the 28th 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

According to this week's guest, "the word community has been co-opted to something that is a lie." While we might have a shared convention of community, when we use the word, our differences begin to rise to the surface. Our language is littered with words like this — family, culture, and yes, community — words that require us to stop, reflect, and ask: "when you use these words, to whom are you referring?"

We're talking about Mia Birdsong: pathfinder, community curator, and storyteller, who steadily engages the leadership and wisdom of people experiencing injustice to chart new visions of American life. You may have seen her TED Talk ('The Story We Tell About Poverty Isn't True'), or read her book (How We Show Up: Reclaiming Family, Friendship, and Community), or listened to her podcast (More than Enough), but if you haven't, you will surely want to after listening to this week's conversation. She has an extraordinary gift for leveraging the brilliance of everyday people so that our collective gifts reach larger spheres of influence, cultural and political change, and create well-being for everyone. 

We take on the concept of community, and the challenges and lack of clarity in the words we use. We talk about how a culture of self-reliance and a system of oppression have become hurdles for forming community. We talk about the differences between independence and interdependence. We talk about the dangers of whiteness in society, and why now, more than ever, we need a new white culture to prevail. 

As much as this is a dialogue about the disparity between bodies, it is also a celebration of potential. The pandemic has done much to pull back the veil on the inherent lack that exists in communities adjacent to privilege. As Mia says, while there is a pull to revert to whatever we experienced as "normal" before the pandemic, we have an opportunity and an obligation to one another to test our understanding of our language of community, of family, of culture, of friendship, all in an effort to balance the scales long tilted against color and poverty. 

Our thanks to Mia Birdsong for her courage, her activism, and her time to share with us this week. 

Links & Notes

• 'The Story we Tell About Poverty Isn't True' — Mia Birdsong, TEDTalks
• 'More Than Enough: An exploration of Guaranteed Income' — Mia Birdsong, The Nation
• How We Show Up: Reclaiming Family, Friendship, and Community by Mia Birdsong

• (00:00) - Welcome to Mission Forward

Years ago, my dear friend and mentor Don Foley shared a story about Isaac Stern that I’ve never let go. The great violinist (1920-2001) was often asked why the music sounded so different when Isaac played it on his violin versus when the same song sheet was followed by others.

“Anyone can play the notes,” he would tell students; “music is what goes on in between the notes.”

Thanks for listening. This is the 15th 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

Linda Villarosa is a brilliant storyteller. In addition to her work as a journalist, author, editor, and educator, she's a New York Times Magazine contributing writer where she covers race, inequality and health. You may have come across her 2018 cover story for the magazine titled 'Why America's Black mothers and babies are in a life or death crisis,' which was nominated for a national magazine award.

It was that article that first prompted us to reach out with Linda to participate in a Mission Forward. She returns to us today because of a story she recently published called 'Black Lives are Shorter in Chicago: My family's history shows why.' Reading that story, a very personal account of her own family's journey through Chicago transports the reader through time, while reinforcing some of the most essential public health issues of our time.

As you'll hear in this episode, this country has turned an important corner on the fight against COVID, a fight to return some semblance of life as we once knew it, with an approach of equality. But we do not suffer, nor do we heal equally. This is a fight which must be waged equitably, acknowledging the decidedly unequal contributions to our collective suffering shouldered by Black and Brown people in this country.

Linda Villarosa is uniquely experienced to help Carrie Fox and Natalie S. Burke navigate this conversation, confronting just how far our public health system has to go on issues of equity and inclusivity.

• (00:00) - Welcome to Mission Forward

Have you ever been given an assignment so daunting that it made you wonder, “How in the world will I ever do this?” Those responsible for communicating during the most uncertain times of COVID-19 surely know the feeling.

Thanks for listening. This is the 16th 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

Amira El-Gawly believes love is making a comeback at work.

That's a pretty heady statement, and one you might be tempted to dismiss. What's love got to do with work? you might say. We're about engagement and KPIs and customer data you might say. Here's the thing: Amira El-Gawly co-founded her first company at 27 and across the arc of her myriad careers — journalist, marketer, designer, speechwriter, operations executive — she has focused a keen eye on her people, their relationships, and what leads to better results.

As it turns out, work has changed. Our people have different expectations of one another and their leaders today than they did five years ago, and the last twelve months has only accelerated the trend. Her firm, Manifesta, specializes in helping organizations unleash potential through the relationships and experiences of their people. Collaboration across the workforce thus becomes an exercise in "alignment, joy, and humanity." Today, as Amira says, "investing in people is investing in performance."

This week on the show, we're talking about the nature of work, how work has changed in the last twelve months, and how those expectations of stronger, richer relationships can bring more love back to the workplace. People who love their work, and love the people they work with, love succeeding together.

Thanks to Amira El-Gawly for her participation on the show this week. She's an aspirational figure and a dear friend of Mission Forward.

Links & Notes

• Learn more about Manifesta

• (00:00) - Welcome to Mission Forward

Our words and our actions matter. The effect they can have on others is enormous. This week, a reminder to come at your conversations — with your employees, your colleagues, your children, your neighbors — with love.

Thanks for listening. This is the 20th 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

Edgar Villanueva is a southerner. He’s a North Carolinian. He was raised in the church. He’s also a member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina, and as such, was the only Native American in his K-12 education experience. 

“When I got to the University of North Carolina, I was so hungry to connect with other native students. I began to understand there that there were things about my world view and my perspective that were unique to being Native American.”

Somewhere between his Native heritage and his disarming Southern charm, Edgar has developed a muscle for speaking truth to power with love (his fantastic words, not ours), and no where is that more apparent than in his work in institutional philanthropy, an industry ripe for change. 

In his best-selling book, Decolonizing Wealth: Indigenous Wisdom to Heal Divides and Restore Balance, Edgar takes us on tour of the philanthropic industry that carries the baggage of colonial structures designed to stifle the voices of equity through a veneer of altruism. Philanthropy is an exercised of "dividing Us from Them and the haves from the have-nots," says Edgar. 

This week on the show, Edgar shares with us 14-year exploration of Big Philanthropy, and his healing and compassionate solutions to an industry mired in systemic imbalance. He shares the experience of grappling with issues but not having language to have the conversations we need to have, and his work to help others develop vernacular to help and to heal. 

Most important, he offers us insight to his efforts not just to discuss these issues, but to change an industry through Liberated Capital: A Decolonizing Wealth Fund. 

Anyone can join and take part in the mission of Decolonizing Wealth through Liberated Capital, and we here at Mission Partners are proud to be a part of this movement through our own donation this month. Our great thanks to Edgar for his time and support of this show. We’re proud to be in orbit of the work of this organization. 

Links & Notes

• Decolonizing Wealth
• Decolonizing Wealth: Indigenous Wisdom to Heal Divides and Restore Balance — by Edgar Villanueva
• Liberated Capital
• Follow Edgar on LinkedIn

• (01:17) - Welcome to Mission Forward

Have you ever experienced a moment that made you feel strong, maybe even capable of great things? Perhaps it was a big goal accomplished, an affirmation from someone you admire, or a time when you helped someone who really needed it?

Thanks for listening. This is the 21st 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) - Finding the Words • Wait For It

Ryan Pintado Vertner is founder of Smoketown, and a brand strategy expert. We had him on the Mission Forward podcast a year ago, but his message is as powerful today as it was then. It is one of our favorite episodes and we’re glad to be able to serve it back up to you today as a part of our summer session.

It was his experience in the consumer packaged goods industry that taught our guest this week how to channel his empathy. He found it by way of the institution’s appreciation for Design Thinking in product development. “One of the things that you do in design thinking very explicitly is that you obsess over the problem that you’re solving in people’s lives. ... They name that empathy.”

For Ryan Pintado-Vertner, that experience connected a new vernacular to something he’d known all along. Empathy — that sensitivity to others’ experience — described both his expertise in product development and his desire to change the world through his activism.

And thus, Smoketown, LLC was born. The name? A callback to Louisville’s oldest African-American neighborhood founded by emancipated slaves after the Civil War. To Pintado-Vertner and team, “it represents extraordinary potential hiding in plain sight.”

This week’s show goes straight to the heart of the dynamics in entrenched business processes that serve to stifle innovation through diversity and limit opportunities for marginalized communities. The opportunity, says Pintado-Vertner, lies in demography.

“They are more likely to lean into progressive expectations for how the economy should work better,” he says of recent generations. “What that means for us, how we think about this moment, is that this is not a moment at all. It is a building up of increasing power and influence of generations who do not share our expectations of the corporations they interact with; what we’re seeing right now is simply going to accelerate.”

Smoketown is an incredible operation with a powerful team shepherding its legacy. Ryan’s insights on that legacy and the historical events that shape our collective outlook today make him the perfect guest to take on such challenging conversations.

Links & Notes

• Learn more about Smoketown Strategy, LLC
• Connect with Ryan Pintado-Vertner on LinkedIn
• Subscribe to the Brand New Blueprint Podcast by Smoketown

• (00:00) - Welcome to Mission Forward