Per Capita

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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Capita Chief Strategy Officer Caroline Cassidy speaks with LaDon Love, Executive Director of Spaces in Action, to talk about communities, the power of storytelling and listening, and how we build trust.

Caroline Cassidy

Caroline directs overall strategy for Capita, which includes public engagement, communications, and organizational development.

For two decades, Caroline has been a leader in the think tank, global development and not-for-profit sectors where she has orchestrated initiatives aimed at shaping a more just and humane world. She is a strong advocate for embedding a deeper approach to communications throughout an organization or project- from language, relationships, and framing to deep listening, behaviour change, and values. 

Caroline previously set up and led the strategic communications team for the UK-based think tank ODI, with a focus on policy engagement. As a consultant, she has provided strategic council to a diverse range of clients including the Bernard Van Leer Foundation, the OECD Early Childhood Education & Care team, Oxford Policy Management, Rodeemos el Diálogo, the World Health Organization, On Think Tanks and Open Society Foundations. She has also created and implemented a major and individual donor strategy for the media organization tve and worked in TV production at the BBC.

LaDon Love

LaDon Love is the Executive Director of SPACEs In Action. SIA is a multi-ethnic membership based community organization that focuses in the District of Columbia in wards 7 and 8, as well as, Maryland in Montgomery County. In 2019, SIA was a lead organization in the campaign that secured $15.8 million in the DC budget for childcare and health services for DC families raising children from birth to three.

Love has over two decades of experience in community, leadership and organizational development.  She uses grassroots organizing to engage in local, state and national campaigns to affect public policy.  She works with local leaders to identify issues and develop solutions to improve the lives of low and moderate income families and their community.  

She is also a published photographer who uses her photography skills to tell the story of those directly impacted, bringing her subject’s personality to the photography experience.  

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Capita Chief Strategy Officer interviews Play Africa's Managing Director Rongedzayi Fambasayi about the role of cities in protecting child rights, creativity in tackling the climate crisis, governance for child-centered climate action across Africa, and more.

Caroline Cassidy

Caroline directs overall strategy for Capita, which includes public engagement, communications, and organizational development.

For two decades, Caroline has been a leader in the think tank, global development and not-for-profit sectors where she has orchestrated initiatives aimed at shaping a more just and humane world. She is a strong advocate for embedding a deeper approach to communications throughout an organization or project- from language, relationships, and framing to deep listening, behaviour change, and values. 

Caroline previously set up and led the strategic communications team for the UK-based think tank ODI, with a focus on policy engagement. As a consultant, she has provided strategic council to a diverse range of clients including the Bernard Van Leer Foundation, the OECD Early Childhood Education & Care team, Oxford Policy Management, Rodeemos el Diálogo, the World Health Organization, On Think Tanks and Open Society Foundations. She has also created and implemented a major and individual donor strategy for the media organization tve and worked in TV production at the BBC.

Rongedzayi Fambasayi

Rongedzayi is a child's rights scholar and former managing director of Play Africa.

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Capita Senior Fellow, and Instructor in Neurology at Harvard Medical School Ian Marcus Corbin, interviews writer Pete Davis to discuss how this culture of restlessness and indecision is causing tension in the lives of young people today.

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. 

Pete Davis

Pete Davis is a writer and civic advocate from Falls Church, Virginia.

He works on civic projects aimed at deepening American democracy and solidarity. Pete is the co-founder of the Democracy Policy Network, a state policy organization focused on raising up ideas that deepen democracy, and is currently co-producing a documentary on the life and work of civic guru Robert Putnam. In 2015, he cofounded Getaway, a company that provides simple, unplugged escapes to tiny cabins outside of major cities. His Harvard Law School graduation speech, “A Counterculture of Commitment,” has been viewed more than 30 million times — and was recently expanded into a book: Dedicated: The Case for Commitment in An Age of Infinite Browsing.

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