Past Forward

Natalie J. Graham, a native of Gainesville, Florida, earned her M.F.A. in Creative Writing at the University of Florida and Ph.D. in American Studies at Michigan State University as a University Distinguished Fellow. Since moving to Orange County in 2013, Natalie has coordinated art-centered community events, workshops, and readings for hundreds of participants. She is Production Director of KayJo Creatives (@KayJoCreatives), an artistic event planning company; Director of the Institute of Black Intellectual Innovation (@IBIICSUF) at Cal State Fullerton; and an award-winning author and performer who has toured nationally with her collection of poems, Begin with a Failed Body. In August 2021, she was appointed Poet Laureate of Orange County.

Adjust Accordingly: Placing Equity into Practice is a series of discussions about personal experiences of inequity and how industries, organizations, and people are working to move equity forward.

Each conversation will highlight the challenges, opportunities, and strategies for confronting these issues in our communities while collectively progressing toward a more equitable future.

Produced with Orange County Grantmakers with support from Orange County Community Foundation.

Guest: Natalie J. Graham
Hosts: Jon-Barrett Ingels
Produced by: Past Forward

Lindsey Spindle serves as President of the Samueli Family Philanthropies and Chief Operating Officer of H&S Ventures which oversees all the Samueli Family’s for-profit and not-for-profit activities. The philanthropic entities operating under the oversight of H&S Ventures include the Samueli Foundation, the Anaheim Ducks Foundation, the San Diego Gulls Foundation, the Irvine Ice Foundation, and The Rinks Foundation.

Spindle was President of The Jeff Skoll Group, where she connected and advised Mr. Skoll’s entrepreneurial portfolio of philanthropic and commercial organizations that include the impact entertainment company Participant, Capricorn Investment Group, and the Skoll Foundation. She was the first-ever Chief Communications and Brand Officer of Share Our Strength, a national nonprofit focused on ending childhood hunger in America through its groundbreaking No Kid Hungry campaign.

Before focusing on domestic hunger eradication, Spindle spent nearly 20 years in health care communications, policy, and government relations working for some of the nation’s most respected commercial and non-profit organizations. These include Georgetown University, Brookings, Avalere Health, and Porter Novelli. Lindsey currently serves on the Boards of Directors for the Skoll Foundation, World Central Kitchen, and advises the Shoah Foundation.

Erin Samueli serves as the Director of Social Justice Philanthropy for the Samueli Foundation. She leads the Foundation’s overall Social Justice portfolio with focus on its priorities to support grassroots organizing and organizations led by and for BIPOC and/or communities impacted directly at the intersections of gender/sexual justice, racial, economic and social justice, criminalization, reproductive rights and models for community justice. She also oversees the Foundation’s collaboration with partners and programs that promote diversity, equity, inclusion and access by building empathy, cultural competency and reducing stereotypes. 

Erin was born and raised in Southern California. She earned a Bachelor of Science in Science Education from Boston University in 2017, then a Master of Arts in Education from Stanford University in 2019. She was a middle school science teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area for a number of years and in her teaching, she focused on equity, anti-racist practices, and hands-on learning experiences. Aside from teaching, Erin began her philanthropy journey by joining the Maverick Collective, where she worked closely with a team in Ethiopia with the goal of integrating adolescent reproductive health care into the school system.  

Erin is passionate about reproductive justice, LGBTQ+ equality, racial justice, education, the environment, among more. She uses these social justice lenses as ways to view her work with the ultimate goal of leveling the playing field in America, and globally, so philanthropy is no longer a necessity. 

Adjust Accordingly: Placing Equity into Practice is a series of discussions about personal experiences of inequity and how industries, organizations, and people are working to move equity forward.

Each conversation will highlight the challenges, opportunities, and strategies for confronting these issues in our communities while collectively progressing toward a more equitable future.

Produced with Orange County Grantmakerswith support from Orange County Community Foundation.

Guests: Lindsey Spindle and Erin Samueli
Hosts: Jon-Barrett Ingels
Produced by: Past Forward

Carlos Perea is an immigrant rights advocate and Director of the Harbor Institute for Immigrant and Economic Justice, a collaboration of movement academics and organizers. His work has focused on building the political power of undocumented immigrant communities in Orange County through community organizing, coalition building, advocacy campaigns and policy change. Some of the efforts he has worked on to address immigration enforcement along community and system stakeholders include Santa Ana’s Sanctuary Ordinance and Universal Representation Program. 

Carlos is also a public policy and strategy development consultant, he has supported local initiatives including the OC Opportunity Initiative and OC Grantmakers. He currently serves on Santa Ana’s Measure X Citizen Oversight Committee, which reviews the annual revenue and expenditures of funds from the tax authorized by voters of the city.

Adjust Accordingly: Placing Equity into Practice is a series of discussions about personal experiences of inequity and how industries, organizations, and people are working to move equity forward.

Each conversation will highlight the challenges, opportunities, and strategies for confronting these issues in our communities while collectively progressing toward a more equitable future.

Produced with Orange County Grantmakers with support from Orange County Community Foundation.

Guest: Carlos Perea
Hosts: Jon-Barrett Ingels
Produced by: Past Forward

Tracy La is the co-founder and Executive Director of VietRISE. Raised by Vietnamese refugees in a large working class family, Tracy brings in 9 years of experience as a campaign strategist, organizer, and policy advocate who has built campaigns alongside community members for freedom from ICE detention and for immigrant and housing justice policies that strengthen protections and self-advocacy tools for renters and people facing deportation. At VietRISE, Tracy directs the organization’s campaigns, programs, cultural strategy, and operations. 

Prior to VietRISE, Tracy was a youth organizer and led campaigns for immigrant justice and to build electoral power for youth of color. As a student at UCI, Tracy was the elected Associated Students president where she co-developed the largest student-run voter registration program in Orange County in 2016. In 2018, she co-founded VietRISE. Tracy holds two B.A.s in Social Policy & Public Service and Political Science from UCI. She serves on the Advisory Board of the Harbor Institute for Immigrant and Economic Justice, a policy and movement building think tank in Orange County.

Adjust Accordingly: Placing Equity into Practice is a series of discussions about personal experiences of inequity and how industries, organizations, and people are working to move equity forward.

Each conversation will highlight the challenges, opportunities, and strategies for confronting these issues in our communities while collectively progressing toward a more equitable future.

Produced with Orange County Grantmakers with support from Orange County Community Foundation.

Guest: Tracy La
Hosts: Jon-Barrett Ingels
Produced by: Past Forward

Wajahat Ali is a Daily Beast columnist, co-host of the "Democracy-ish" podcast, public speaker, recovering attorney, and tired dad of three cute kids.

His book Go Back To Where You Came From: And, Other Helpful Recommendations on Becoming American was published in January 2022 by Norton. He believes in sharing stories that are by us, for everyone: universal narratives told through a culturally specific lens to entertain, educate and bridge the global divides.

His essays, interviews, and reporting have appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The Guardian, and New York Review of Books. Ali has spoken at many organizations, from Google to Walmart-Jet to Princeton University to the United Nations to the Chandni Indian-Pakistani Restaurant in Newark, California, and his living room in front of his three kids.

Adjust Accordingly: Placing Equity into Practice is a series of discussions about personal experiences of inequity and how industries, organizations, and people are working to move equity forward.

Each conversation will highlight the challenges, opportunities, and strategies for confronting these issues in our communities while collectively progressing toward a more equitable future.

Produced with Orange County Grantmakers with support from Orange County Community Foundation.

Guest: Wajahat Ali
Hosts: Jon-Barrett Ingels
Produced by: Past Forward

Susan Albert Loewenberg is founder and Producing Director of L.A. Theatre Works, a non-profit media arts and theatre organization. Ms. Loewenberg has produced award-winning radio dramas, plays, and films in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, and London.

Under her supervision, LATW has created the largest library of plays on audio in the world, garnering numerous awards from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Writers Guild, The American Library Association, Publishers’ Weekly, and others. Ms. Loewenberg also serves as host and is the Executive Producer of LATW’s nationally distributed syndicated radio series, “L.A. Theatre Works,” broadcast on NPR stations nationwide.

A graduate of Sarah Lawrence College, she has served on innumerable boards and panels, including the National Endowment for the Arts, California Arts Council, The Fund for Independence in Journalism in Washington D.C., and was co-chair of the League of Producers and Theatres of Greater Los Angeles.

Chapters is a multi-part series concerning the history and the lessons of civil rights violations or civil liberties injustices carried out against communities or populations—including civil rights violations or civil liberties injustices that are perpetrated on the basis of an individual’s race, national origin, immigration status, religion, gender, or sexual orientation.

This project was made possible with support from Chapman University and The California Civil Liberties Public Education Program, a state-funded grant project of the California State Library.

Guests: Susan Albert Loewenberg
Hosts: Jon-Barrett Ingels
Produced by: Past Forward

Before developing a passion for middle grade and young adult fiction, Sonia Antaki had several careers—as a professional singer, a financial analyst, a Tony-nominated Broadway producer and an advocate for Arts and Native traditions. Red Dove, Run Through the Fire, Book Three of The Red Dove Trilogy, grew out of Sonia’s own experience of living between worlds, and the desire to bring them together. Of Swiss, British and Syro-Lebanese ancestry, she was born in Egypt and came to the U.S. as a child.

Red Dove, Run Through the Fire
Atmosphere Press, 2022

A World Without Books was created to help writers connect with readers during the pandemic. This Micro-Podcast provides authors a platform to share stories about writing, discuss current projects, and consider life without books. Listen on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you podcast.

Past Forward is a curiosity company dedicated to educational accessibility. Our public podcast service, paired with millions of discounted books curated into topic-themed collections, provides guidance and tools to support lifelong learning.

Blair Austin was born in Michigan. A former prison librarian, he is a graduate of the Helen Zell Writers’ Program at the University of Michigan where he won Hopwood awards for Fiction and Essay. He lives in Massachusetts. Dioramas is his first novel.

Dioramas
Dzanc Books, 2023

A World Without Books was created to help writers connect with readers during the pandemic. This Micro-Podcast provides authors a platform to share stories about writing, discuss current projects, and consider life without books. Listen on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you podcast.

Past Forward is a curiosity company dedicated to educational accessibility. Our public podcast service, paired with millions of discounted books curated into topic-themed collections, provides guidance and tools to support lifelong learning.

Chika Unigwe is a celebrated and highly acclaimed Nigerian-born Igbo author, whose honors include winning the Nigeria Literature Prize, the Sylt Fellowship for African Writers, and many other distinctions. Chika is Creative Director of the Awele Creative Trust, and she was a judge for the Man Booker International Prize in 2016. In 2016-2017, she was Bonderman Professor of Creative Writing at Brown University, Providence RI, USA, and then went on to lecture in creative writing at Emory University, GA. In 2020-2021, she will be joining Georgia College and State University's MFA in Creative Writing as a core faculty member.

Chika was born and raised in Enugu, Nigeria. She graduated from the University of Nigeria, KU Leuven (Belgium) and has a PhD from Leiden University, Holland. Author of The Middle Daughter, Unigwe’s previous work includes novels On Black Sisters Street and Night Dancer as well as the short story collection Better Never than Late. She was also a contributor to Of This Our Country: Acclaimed Nigerian Writers on the Home, Identity and Culture They Know; Lagos Noir; New Daughters of Africa; and Regiones Imaginaires. 

The Middle Daughter
Dzanc Books, 2023

A World Without Books was created to help writers connect with readers during the pandemic. This Micro-Podcast provides authors a platform to share stories about writing, discuss current projects, and consider life without books. Listen on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you podcast.

Past Forward is a curiosity company dedicated to educational accessibility. Our public podcast service, paired with millions of discounted books curated into topic-themed collections, provides guidance and tools to support lifelong learning.

B. Travis Wright, MPS is a 2022 Colorado Preservation Inc. State Honor Award recipient for his advocacy of Rollins Pass, President of the Board of the Grand County Historical Association, Vice Chair of the Gilpin County Historic Preservation Commission, and has written multiple academic works and published books about Rollins Pass and the Moffat Tunnel.

Travis is also co-founder of Preserve Rollins Pass. Preserve Rollins Pass strives to fulfill a Native American adage: “In every deliberation, consider the impact of decisions on the next seven generations.” As one of Colorado’s Most Endangered Places, prehistoric and historic preservation of Rollins Pass are paramount. Through partnerships with state and federal representatives, Native American tribes, special interest groups across the nation, archaeologists, historians, and university professors, Preserve Rollins Pass applies strategic pressures to protect the integrity of this national historic district.

Travis lives in the mountains of Colorado with his wife, Kate.

Rollins Pass: Past and Present
Arcadia Publishing, 2022

A World Without Books was created to help writers connect with readers during the pandemic. This Micro-Podcast provides authors a platform to share stories about writing, discuss current projects, and consider life without books. Listen on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you podcast.

Past Forward is a curiosity company dedicated to educational accessibility. Our public podcast service, paired with millions of discounted books curated into topic-themed collections, provides guidance and tools to support lifelong learning.