In this extended episode, Deb Chachra, materials scientist and professor of engineering, explores the profound connections between care and infrastructure in our society; infrastructure systems are ways we take care of each other at scale. This conversation challenges us to rethink how we value and sustain the systems that underpin our lives.

Deb Chachra is the author of HOW INFRASTRUCTURE WORKS (Riverhead/Torva, 2023), and she writes, thinks, speaks, builds and collaborates widely on themes of technology and society. As one of the earliest faculty at Olin College, Dr. Chachra has been deeply engaged in all aspects of undergraduate engineering education, including the design of learning experiences and programs, as well as educational research. Her research interests include design and design education, the built environment, materials science, and the intersection of all the above with the arts and humanities.

Joe Waters is the co-founder and CEO of Capita. Since starting Capita in 2018, Joe has developed an array of initiatives to explore the major transformations of our time—social, demographic, cultural, technological, environmental, and economic—and anticipate their potential impacts on families and their communities worldwide.

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In this episode, Joe Waters talks to Jon Baron, President of the Coalition for Evidence-Based Policy, to discuss the evolution and impact of evidence-based policymaking in the U.S. Jon shares his journey and insights on how government funding can prioritize programs proven to work, tackling social issues through a rigorous, data-driven approach. The conversation explores some of the challenges and the potential of this approach to address core issues fueling public frustration, paving the way for a more effective and accountable policy landscape.

Jon Baron is a government reformer who has played a pivotal role in advancing evidence-based policymaking throughout government for over 20 years. He recently relaunched the Coalition for Evidence-Based Policy – the nonpartisan organization he founded and led from 2001-2015 – and serves as the Coalition’s President, CEO, and Chairman.

From 2015-2021, Jon served as Vice President of Evidence-Based Policy at the Laura and John Arnold Foundation (now Arnold Ventures), where he designed and led a major research funding portfolio that has successfully grown the body of proven-effective social programs. He left Arnold Ventures in 2021 and was a candidate for Maryland governor in the 2022 election.

Joe Waters is the co-founder and CEO of Capita. Since starting Capita in 2018, Joe has developed an array of initiatives to explore the major transformations of our time—social, demographic, cultural, technological, environmental, and economic—and anticipate their potential impacts on families and their communities worldwide.

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In this episode, Capita’s Ankita Chachra talks to Jane Gilbert, Chief Heat Officer for Florida’s Miami-Dade County. In 2021, Jane became the first Chief Heat Officer in the world, a position that is now found in cities across the globe. Jane talks about how heat particularly impacts children and families, the types of strategies that can help keep residents safe, and how she is helping to create a vision for a more livable and climate-resilient city

Jane Gilbert is Arsht-Rock’s Chief Heat Officer in Miami-Dade County, US. Gilbert works across departments and partners to address the increasing risks to human health, lives and livelihoods associated with extreme heat. She has over 30 years experience in public private partnerships, climate mitigation and adaptation, and urban resilience.

Before joining the County, she served as the City of Miami’s first Chief Resilience Officer (CRO) for four years. In this role, Gilbert led the climate and urban resilience strategy development and implementation for the City of Miami. She developed and implemented a city-level response to the impacts of sea level rise and climate change.

Prior to public service, Gilbert led three nonprofits and managed Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) work for large corporations. She holds a Bachelor’s in Environmental Science from Barnard College and Master’s from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.

Ankita Chachra is committed to creating sustainable, just, and vibrant cities for young children and families. She has over ten years of global experience working on her mission through partnerships with city agencies, and the private, non-profit, and philanthropic sectors.
Ankita previously worked at Bernard Van Leer Foundation as the Knowledge for Policy Director. She found her passion for prioritizing the needs of children and caregivers in urban environments while leading the Streets for Kids Program at NACTO’s Global Designing Cities Initiative (GDCI), where her team published the guide on Designing Streets for Kids. She worked under Bloomberg’s Initiative for Global Road Safety, primarily in Latin America and Asia. Ankita was also part of the core team that developed the Global Street Design Guide , the first-ever worldwide guideline for designing city streets.

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In this episode, Capita Co-founder & CEO Joe Waters interviews Dr. Erin M. Cline, Tagliabue Distinguished Professor in Interfaith Studies & Dialogue at Georgetown University and Senior Research Fellow, Berkley Center for Religion, Peace & World Affairs. They discuss Cline’s book “Families of Virtue” which compares Confucian and Western views on childhood development and moral education. Cline describes how the Confucian tradition places a special emphasis on filial piety - the deep respect, reverence, and gratitude that children have for their parents. Cline explains how the Confucian view of rituals are central to moral cultivation. Finally, Cline and Waters discuss how the Confucian emphasis on the importance of early childhood development and the role of family and ritual aligns with modern developmental psychology, and how these insights could inform policy and public discourse around families.

Dr. Erin M. Cline

Professor Cline specializes in Chinese philosophy, Chinese religions, and comparative philosophy and theology.  The author of five books, she is especially interested in how the virtues, values, and rituals that classical Chinese philosophers emphasized can help us to live better lives today.  Her latest book, The Analects: A Guide (Oxford University Press, 2021), offers an argument that the Confucian Analectsis a sacred text, exploring its often-neglected religious and spiritual dimensions. Her last book, Little Sprouts and the Dao of Parenting: Ancient Chinese Philosophy and the Art of Raising Mindful, Resilient, and Compassionate Kids (W.W. Norton, 2020), shows how the wisdom of Chinese philosophy can enrich the lives of families today in a variety of surprising ways.  Inspired by her own experiences as the mother of three children, the book explores wide-ranging topics, from the role of daily rituals and mindfulness practices to ways of nurturing a love of nature and a love of learning, to how we respond to disabilities and challenges. Professor Cline recently completed a new translation of the Confucian Analects (under contract with W.W. Norton).

In addition to her work in the field of Chinese philosophy, Prof. Cline also works on Ignatian spirituality in relation to different religious and cultural traditions; her book, A World on Fire: Sharing the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises with Other Religions(The Catholic University of America Press, 2018), puts the Ignatian tradition into conversation with Asian traditions (including Confucianism, Buddhism, and Hinduism), showing how and why the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises—though they are rooted in the Christian tradition—might be adapted for people from traditions other than Christianity who are interested in Ignatian spirituality.

Joe Waters

Joe Waters is the co-founder and CEO of Capita. Since starting Capita in 2018, Joe has developed an array of initiatives to explore the major transformations of our time—social, demographic, cultural, technological, environmental, and economic—and anticipate their potential impacts on families and their communities worldwide.

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In this episode Capita Senior Fellow Elliot Haspel interviews Brendan Ballou, author of Plunder: Private Equity’s Plan to Pillage America. They discuss the basics of private equity and its differences from venture capital firms and hedge fund investments. They outline the risks of private equity on the human services and child care sectors. Finally, they touch on policy solutions and how individuals can work with advocacy groups to address these risks.

Brendan Ballou

Brendan Ballou is the author of Plunder: Private Equity’s Plan to Pillage America.  He served as Special Counsel for Private Equity in the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division.  Previously, he worked in private practice, and before that, in the National Security Division of the Justice Department.  His work has appeared in the New York Times, the Atlantic, and the Nation.

Elliot Haspel

Elliot--Senior Fellow at Capita--is a child & family policy expert and commentator. He specializes in early childhood & education issues and the intersection between early childhood development and climate change. He most recently served as the Senior Program Officer for Early Childhood Education at the Robins Foundation.

Among other accomplishments, Elliot conceived of and helped raise over $7 million for the Child Care NEXT philanthropic initiative, and helped spearhead the launch of the 100-member strong Virginia Funders Network.

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In this Capita in Conversation episode, Senior Fellow Elliot Haspel talks to Abby Jitendra from the UK’s Joseph Rowntree Foundation about financialization threats, particularly from private equity firms, facing both the UK and US child care systems. They discuss Jitendra’s proposal for a new social licensing model that treats child care more as a public good and aims to improve quality and supply by linking high standards with public money, ensuring government investments benefit families equitably and effectively.

Elliot Haspel

Elliot--Senior Fellow at Capita--is a child & family policy expert and commentator. He specializes in early childhood & education issues and the intersection between early childhood development and climate change. He most recently served as the Senior Program Officer for Early Childhood Education at the Robins Foundation.

Among other accomplishments, Elliot conceived of and helped raise over $7 million for the Child Care NEXT philanthropic initiative, and helped spearhead the launch of the 100-member strong Virginia Funders Network.

Abby Jitendra

Abby is a Principal Policy Adviser at JRF and is working on developing a new programme of work on care, family and relationships. Her areas of expertise include energy policy and regulation, destitution, household debt and social security. Abby previously worked at Citizens Advice, leading a team of policy researchers and campaigners to stand up for consumers as energy companies failed and costs increased. Before that, she had oversight of policy and research at anti-poverty charity the Trussell Trust. She is a trustee of Quaker Social Action.

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In this episode, Capita Senior Fellow Elliot Haspel interviews Chiara Rosselli, co-founder and executive director of the APROPOS Group, a non-profit, politically neutral think tank operating in the field of democratic innovation specializing in the development and implementation of process design methods for the political sphere.

Elliot Haspel

Elliot--Senior Fellow at Capita--is a child & family policy expert and commentator. He specializes in early childhood & education issues and the intersection between early childhood development and climate change. He most recently served as the Senior Program Officer for Early Childhood Education at the Robins Foundation.

Among other accomplishments, Elliot conceived of and helped raise over $7 million for the Child Care NEXT philanthropic initiative, and helped spearhead the launch of the 100-member strong Virginia Funders Network.

Chiara Rosselli

Chiara is a process designer and political dialogue curator, designing fit-for-purpose processes for better dialogue and collaboration, for the political sector & beyond.

She is Executive Director and Co-Founder of the APROPOS Group, where they specialize in Political Process Design. She has been a political dialogue curator for over 7 years, designing political conversations with a purpose for Europe's first policymakers' dialogue platform and OECD best practice for cross-border innovation & collaboration - the Open European Dialogue.

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Capita Senior Fellow Ian Marcus Corbin speaks with author Jennifer Banks about her book "Natality: Toward a Philosophy of Birth."

Ian Marcus Corbin

Ian is a Senior Fellow at Capita. He is also a philosopher on the Neurology faculty at Brigham and Women's Hospital / Harvard Medical School, where he co-directs the Human Network Initiative. He serves on the ethics committee at Brigham and Women's, and helps to direct the Trust and Belonging Initiative at Harvard's Human Flourishing Program. He has studied politics, religion and philosophy at Gordon College, Oxford University, Yale University and Boston College, with an eye to the ways that deep human values function in the formation and evolution of human communities.

At Harvard Medical School, he studies intersubjectivity, cognition and human flourishing. He is currently writing a book on belonging and world-making for Yale University Press. He has taught at a number of colleges and universities in the Boston area and published widely in venues such as the Washington Post, The New York Times, Newsweek, The Point and Plough. In a former life he founded and ran a contemporary art gallery in Boston's South End. 

Jennifer Banks

Publishing professional with a wide range of experience, from foreign rights and marketing to editorial. Since 2007, as an editor at Yale University Press, Jennifer has built up a diverse, interdisciplinary list in the humanities that has emphasized non-fiction books on religion. She has edited many New York Times best-selling and Pulitzer Prize, National Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Award, MacArthur Genius Grant, and Grawemeyer Award-winning authors.

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Capita visualiza un futuro en el que las niñas y los niños, y sus familias, puedan desarrollar todo su potencial en una sociedad justa, pacífica y próspera en un planeta sostenible.A menudo, quedan excluidos de cómo moldeamos nuestros sistemas políticos, económicos y sociales. Sin embargo, al priorizar a nuestros niños más jóvenes, sus familias y sus comunidades, tenemos el potencial de transformar radicalmente la estructura de nuestras sociedades a largo plazo.

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Capita envisions a future in which children and families can flourish. So often, they are excluded from how we shape our political, economic, and social systems. Yet by prioritizing our youngest children, their families and their communities we have the potential to radically transform the fabric of our societies for the long term. 

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Capita Co-Founder + CEO Joe Waters talks with UpTogether CEO and Aspen Ascend Fellow Jesús Gerena on wealth inequality and the work UpTogether is doing to help low-income people.

Joe Waters

Joe Waters is the co-founder and CEO of Capita. An independent, nonpartisan think tank with a global focus, Capita works to build a future in which children and families can realize their full potential in a just, peaceful, prosperous society on a healthier, cleaner, and safer planet.

Since starting Capita in 2018, Joe has developed forward-leaning initiatives exploring how the great cultural, planetary and social transformations of our day affect our youngest children (0-8 years old) and our communities. From the impacts of climate change to parental loneliness and social disconnection, Capita’s work catalyzes creative new ideas and solutions to some of the most pressing global challenges impacting families.

Jesús Gerena

Jesús Gerena is CEO of UpTogether (previously Family Independence Initiative), a national organization with a bold mission of changing policies, systems, and underlying beliefs so that all people in the United States are seen and invested in for their strengths and are able to build power, reinforce their autonomy, and drive their own economic and social mobility.

Under Jesús’ leadership, UpTogether has developed a model for systemic change through philanthropic and government partnerships to support the broad adoption of UpTogether’s strength based approach of centering community, cash and choice. Over the past three years, UpTogether has grown its work and organizational capacity to expand its reach to all 50 states and Puerto Rico, distributing $190 million dollars in support of its mission.

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