On Course: The Podcast from Echoing Green

Carlos Mark Vera is a labor entrepreneur, activist, and co-founder of Pay Our Interns, the only organization in the United States fighting to ensure all students—especially Black, Latinx, and Native American students—have equitable access to professional career paths through the implementation of paid internships countrywide. Carlos was raised in California, by way of Colombia, and moved to Washington, D.C., to attend American University. While there, he navigated feelings of isolation and frustration due to the lack of access afforded to him and others because of their background. Once he landed his first Congressional internship, he decided it was time to do something about it. That decision put him on the path to where he is today.

Antionette Carroll is a social entrepreneur, equity designer, facilitator, and international speaker. She launched Creative Reaction Labs, a nonprofit educating and deploying young people to challenge racial and health inequalities impacting their communities through Equity-Centered Community Design. Tune in to learn how this creative problem-solving process grounded in humility, history, and healing practices challenges existing power dynamics and reimagines community. Learn how Antionette’s journey led her to approaching design as a disruptor and how she’s flipping the supremacy of design by building a movement of justice designers across the U.S.

Antionette Carroll is a social entrepreneur, equity designer, facilitator, and international speaker. She launched Creative Reaction Labs, a nonprofit educating and deploying young people to challenge racial and health inequalities impacting their communities through Equity-Centered Community Design. Tune in to learn how this creative problem-solving process grounded in humility, history, and healing practices challenges existing power dynamics and reimagines community. Learn how Antionette’s journey led her to approaching design as a disruptor and how she’s flipping the supremacy of design by building a movement of justice designers across the U.S.

 Yscaira Jimenez was on a path to success. She graduated from Columbia and landed a competitive private tutoring job with great pay. As a daughter of immigrants and an immigrant herself, she was living the dream and making her family proud. But when she reflected on how she got to where she was from the access and opportunities she secured, she decided to go down a different path. Tune in to hear how Yscaira leveraged her privilege to shatter systems and build new ones, identified hiring culture and the education-to-workforce pipeline as systems to change for the better, why we must change the entrepreneurship and startup narrative, and taking responsibility to serve your community and the world at large. 

Learn more about Echoing Green and the leaders we support at echoinggreen.org.

Learn more about Yscaira and LaborX's work bringing untapped talent to the forefront at laborx.co.

Cory Greene is a community organizer, healing justice teacher, doctoral student, and social entrepreneur. With an intergenerational cycle of incarceration in his family, Cory has been impacted by the criminal justice (punishment) system and has faced the systemic causes of certain neighborhoods targeted by drugs, violence, and incarceration. Tune in to hear Cory’s experiences leveraging the power of organizing, engaging, and creating to heal communities; the process of owning and taking accountability of your own journey and experiences; how family stories and circumstances overlap and intertwine; and how feeding your spirit is another form of payment.

Learn more about Echoing Green and the leaders we support at echoinggreen.org.

Learn more about Cory and H.O.L.L.A!'s work creating safe and healthy pathways and spaces for youth of color at holla-inc.com.

Toni Blackman is an award-winning hip hop artist, cypher specialist, poet, writer, and social entrepreneur. From a young age, Toni’s love for language and words, combined with her curiosity about injustices in the world, resulted in writing her first book of poetry at age 8 on social justice. From there, Toni’s work evolved to theater, activism, and cypher circles. Tune in to hear how Toni’s journey led to her choosing one area to master, destigmatizing rap music, creating a safe space for women to develop confidence to tell their own stories, the downfalls of overachieving and being rewarded for it, facing burnout, and learning to prioritize self-care and intentionality.  

Learn more about Echoing Green and the leaders we support at echoinggreen.org. 

Learn more about Toni and her on-going work at the intersection of social justice and performing arts at toniblackmanpresents.com 

Bessie Schwarz is a dedicated community organizer who has coupled her passion for climate justice with global data and analytics to bring voice and hope to communities most vulnerable to climate change. Tune in to learn about Bessie and Cloud to Street’s depth of impact through scaling global analytics and their work on the ground to create more power, fight unjust systems, and surface who is getting hit the hardest by climate change. Get motivated by Cloud to Street’s drive to expose who existing systems are not protecting, the emotional toll of systems-change work, and how to humanize data and keep the work person-centered.   

Learn more about Echoing Green and the leaders we support at echoinggreen.org.

Learn more about Bessie and Cloud to Street's use of data to build resilience in communities and fight climate change at cloudtostreet.info.

Eddie Gonzalez-Novoa is a serial social entrepreneur and leader who has crossed industries, sectors, and U.S. state lines in pursuit of positive social change. The son of Puerto Rican immigrants, Eddie’s multiple career shifts have included stints in the arts, education, and health care. Tune in to follow Eddie's quest through priesthood, dance and performing arts; creating community around rituals; and recognizing how people enter into a community or space. From Harvard Divinity School to Jump Start New York to Public Allies, find out how Eddie threaded the needle between divinity, education, and leadership development, and how that all led to working with his nephew on a startup video game nonprofit for cancer survivors. 

Learn more about Echoing Green and the leaders we support at echoinggreen.org. 

Learn more about Eddie, and continue following his journey at  about.me/eddiegn. 

Katie Orenstein started The Op-Ed Project after recognizing the pipeline problem in pitching op-eds: 97 percent of op-eds by scholars in the Wall Street Journal were written by men, according to a May 2008 Rutgers University study. To diversify cultural and media narratives, The Op-Ed Project is empowering and amplifying the voices the world most needs to hear. Tune in to learn how Katie is working to shift the gatekeepers of ideas and narratives, how stories reflect truth (including divergent versions of the truth), targeting the influencers of the influencers, and understanding power and voice—with empathy and respect—in a world where power and voice are unevenly distributed.

Learn more about Echoing Green and the leaders we support at echoinggreen.org.

Learn more about The Op-Ed Project's work increasing the range of voices and quality of ideas we hear in the world at theopedproject.org. 

Priti Krishtel has been challenging pharmaceutical companies with I-MAK since 2006. By serving as “patent detectives,” I-MAK has been able to remove barriers to treatment for some of the world’s deadliest diseases such as hepatitis C and HIV. Tune in to hear Priti’s personal mission to open accessibility and stop corruption in “big pharma;” the risk of running a mission-driven organization; facing failure, burn out, and loneliness; continuing to create the world you want to live in; and raising up the next generation of movement builders.  

Learn more about Echoing Green and the leaders we support at echoinggreen.org. 

Learn more about Priti and I-MAK's work disrupting the pharmaceutical industry and advocating for patients: i-mak.org.