What makes culture change possible? Not the kind that divides people, which we are experiencing now but change that which empowers individuals, builds community and in some cases saves lives. Active Minds, a nonprofit founded by Alison Malmon after losing her brother Brian, a college student, to suicide 21 years ago demonstrates how normalizing conversations about mental health and prioritizing the well-being of youth and young adults is transforming America. Active Minds has activated student-led mental health advocacy chapters across 500 college campuses and high schools and is now expanding into middle schools. In this episode of Power Station I speak with Brandi Pretlow, Active Minds Vice President for Community Initiatives whose clinical expertise, deep empathy and strategic savvy is engaging diverse communities, from educational systems to influencers and athletes, in elevating mental health care as a shared value. Brandi speaks to the resources we all need, from housing to health, to maintain our mental health and to the imperative of meeting needs in the most marginalized communities. We talk about navigating federal budget cuts, expanding Active Mind’s advocacy voice and the promise of seeing culture change in action.

We have a long history in America of institutions and public systems that do not serve all members of the public equally. As Erin Kilmer-Neel shares on this episode of Power Station, the financial services industry, banks in particular, have routinely failed to approve loan applications for small businesses and mortgages from borrowers of color on par with their white counterparts. Perceptions of unworthiness is rooted in a well-documented history of racism in public and corporate policymaking. As executive director of the Beneficial State Foundation, the nonprofit that owns and partners with Beneficial State Bank, an equity-driven enterprise, Erin is powering a movement to unlearn the biases that undergird perceptions of risk and reimagine policies and practices that meet the capital needs of borrowers of color. Take Underwriting for Justice, an initiative that is upending racially discriminatory lending norms. It is engaging banks in signing on to methodologies that lead to systemic yeses. Erin is a bright light in the ongoing campaign to bridge the social equity and banking worlds. She credits the vision of Beneficial Bank co-founders Tom Steyer and Kat Taylor in creating an institution that builds power within, instead of extracting from, the communities it serves.

What stories have we heard, and beliefs have we internalized, to explain the crisis level numbers of Americans who are on the brink of losing their housing or are already experiencing homelessness? Do we blame the individuals? Is the problem intractable? Years of study illuminates the facts: we have a profound dual problem of affordability and supply. Our federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour is responsible for a wage to rent disparity that causes extremely low income Americans to pay more than half of their income on rent. And a shortage of 7.1 million affordable housing units makes it inevitable that 77,000 Americans have no home at all. That data and more is captured in seminal reports produced by the National Low Income Housing Coalition, which has been at the forefront of tenant-led policy advocacy for decades. On this episode of Power Station, Renee Willis, the Coalition’s exceptional new President and CEO shares the life experience that guides her leadership in this most challenging of times. As she says, when we talk about policy we are really talking about people. The Coalition knows the true story of housing in America and champions people who aspire for better.

If you think that young people are not informed about, paying attention to or taking action to counter the harm, in rhetoric and policy, practiced by the current administration, you will be encouraged by this episode of Power Station. My three outstanding guests, Jean Garcia, Hannia Hernandez-Mendoza and Bryan Juarez Ruiz, are college students whose academic successes and commitment to shaping a more just future led to their selection as summer interns with the National Migrant & Seasonal Head Start Association. NMSHSA is the advocate and support system for 24 migrant head start centers that provide high-quality educational services to 26,000 children of farmworkers in 34 states.  Jean, Hannia and Bryan have all experienced the extreme challenges of agricultural work first-hand. And they all credit their early childhood days in migrant head start centers as foundational to their educational development and capacity to, as their immigrant parents expect, build a life for themselves beyond the fields in which they have toiled. They are on the way, not only to personal achievement but to charting bold systems change for farmworkers, immigrants and other underserved and targeted communities. Hear them tell their stories here.

It is meaningful and instructive that the Legal Defense Fund, which has championed racial justice at the voting booth, in education, housing and in the criminal justice system since its founding by Thurgood Marshall in 1940, is on the frontlines today, winning legal victories in a perilous moment for American democracy. LDF is defending the hard-won civil rights of Black Americans against racially imposed barriers, laid out in Project 2025 and implemented by President Trump and the 119th Congress. As LDF Associate Director-Counsel Todd Cox explains on this episode of Power Station, Congress has abdicated its responsibility as a check on the executive and the U.S. Department of Justice has rejected its mandate to enforce civil rights laws, leaving the LDF and its sister organizations to carry out the fight in the courts. LDF brings the expertise and infrastructure needed to litigate, advocate in state legislatures and on Capitol Hill, organize in impacted communities and educate the public and policymakers about what is at stake. Todd, a consummate civil rights litigator, looks to his grandparents, who fled autocracy and racial violence in the south, as his inspiration and guide. Hear him and share this powerful story.

When UnidosUS convenes its annual conference this August, it will provide a safe space for the leaders of its 300 affiliates (community based nonprofits) to process and strategize over President Trump’s targeting of immigrants, assault on Medicaid and threats to their nonprofits’ tax exempt status. As Janet Murguía, President and CEO of UnidosUS shares on this episode of Power Station, it is an opportunity for thousands of leaders, stakeholders, allies and partners to draw strength from each other. As this nation’s largest Latino civil rights organization, UnidosUS is a powerhouse nonprofit whose expertise in organizing, research, policy advocacy, educational programming and civic engagement has advanced the rights and well-being of Latinos and other underinvested communities for 57 years. It remains a non-partisan frontline force for intergenerational wealth building, increasing opportunities for homeownership and educational opportunity through programs delivered by affiliates across America.  We talk about the impacts of actions taken by this White House and the 119th Congress, from ICE raids to the breakdown of due process and, in response, the growing pro-democracy movement. I cannot think of anyone more equipped to lead in this unprecedented moment and to make America more equitable than Janet Murguia. Hear HER!

In 1963, a time of heightened suppression of Black Americans to their civil rights, President Kennedy invited 244 lawyers to the White House, calling on them to use their expertise and influence to move the civil rights struggle from the streets into the courts. That call to action launched The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a nonprofit that for 63 years has tackled discrimination against people of color and championed the right to full participation in civic life. In this episode of Power Station, I am honored to feature Rob Weiner, Director of the Committee’s Voting Rights Project. which challenges efforts at the state and national levels to disenfranchise voters of color. It is notable and moving that until recently Rob was Senior Counsel at the Voting Rights Division at the US Department of Justice. He explains that under the Trump administration, the DOJ has abandoned its mission to protect the right to vote and is instead trafficking in disproven claims of voting scams and election fraud. Rob and his colleagues at the Lawyers Committee are boldly pushing back against executive orders, redistricting schemes and narratives that seek to weaken hard-won civil rights. And they are winning. Hear him!

It started, as promised, on Day 1 of this super-charged Trump Administration. His targeting of political foes, immigrants, the LGBTQ community, people of color and the nonprofit organizations that defend their rights morphed into punitive and legally dubious executive orders. Fortunately, the civil rights community was prepared for the onslaught. They had studied Project 2025, pre-election, the administration’s playbook for autocratic rule. John C. Yang, President and Executive Director of Advancing Justice - AAJC, my guest on this episode of Power Station, is one of those insightful and courageous leaders. He and his team at Advancing Justice - AAJC are standing up, in court and on Capital Hill, to the administration’s efforts to defund Asian American organizations, decimate the federal workforce (8% of which is Asian American) and deport community members, including naturalized citizens. Advancing Justice - AAJC is working in concert with civil right and public interest organizations representing all communities who are being maligned and attacked. And these efforts are winning. We talk about diversity, a word that Trump now prohibits, and John reminds us that diversity is our strength and part of our national identity. This is a conversation about truth, hope and action. Listen and share!

As a nation we are learning a powerful lesson in real time. In the just completed first 100 days of the Trump administration, the president has led a reckless campaign of retribution that relies on the flouting of laws, courts and the constitution itself. From freezing federal funding to nonprofits that keep families fed to seizing immigrants and dispatching them without due process to foreign prisons he is adhering to Project 2025, the administration’s autocratic playbook for diminishing civil rights, a precursor to dismantling democracy. In this week’s episode of Power Station I speak with Skye Perryman, the intrepid and unbowed President and CEO of Democracy Forward, the national nonprofit on the frontlines of defending those whom the administration targets from his attacks. Democracy Forward is winning in the courts and in communities by giving a voice to those who are under attack. Its communications team is telling the stories of nonprofit leaders, lawyers and immigration advocates who are standing up for their rights and continuing to serve their communities. And Skye invites us to be a part of the movement. Listen and learn how we can move forward together.

To see disenfranchisement in action, look no further than Washington DC, whose 700,000 residents pay the highest taxes per household in our nation and yet have no voting members in the U.S. Congress. This inequity has persisted through both democratic and republican administrations and is intensifying in the 119th Congress and the Trump presidency. For almost 3 decades, DC Vote, a local nonprofit with national reach has led the movement for DC Statehood. It achieved the passage of Home Rule, but our elected leaders still do not control their budgets, and their legislation can be overturned by members of Congress who do not respect the right of a majority Black and Brown citizenry to govern itself. In this episode of Power Station I speak to DC Vote’s Organizing Director Kelsye Adams whose political savvy and organizing know-how is generating powerful pro-statehood coalitions across the nation. Kelyse, an organizing superstar, co-founded Free DC, which invites everyone, not just the organizationally affiliated, to advocate for democracy. Along the way she found time to launch Long Live GoGo, which celebrates the official music of DC and catalyzes civic action at the  intersection of art, politics and culture. Listen and share!