The New Politics Podcast

After seven years and 44 episodes, New Politics podcast host Dr. Max Klau is heading off to his next adventure. In this farewell episode, Max is joined by New Politics Founder Emily Cherniack for a conversation about the early days of the organization, the impact it's had on American politics, and their hopes for the future of this work.

Tiahna Pantovich is an army vet, clinical social worker, lifelong activist, and founder of VetsxHBCU, an organization that supports veterans at our nation's more than 100 historically black colleges and universities.    The daughter of immigrants from the former nation of Yugoslavia, she enlisted in the Army after graduating high school.  In this episode, she talks about her journey to becoming an outspoken advocate for sexual assault survivors in the military and how she continues to serve as both a clinical social worker and an activist with aspirations to serve through politics in the years ahead.  

In this episode, Andre Carroll talks about his unlikely path to politics in his home city of Philadelphia.  Since his father was incarcerated and his mother struggled with drug addiction, Andre was raised by his Grandmother.  He went on to graduate from college and got deeply involved in Philadelphia politics, serving as campaign staff for a Mayoral candidate and for multiple City Council candidates.  In 2022, he decided to enter the arena himself and ran for a seat in the Pennsylvania state legislature to represent the district where he grew up.  He lost that race, but earned 43% of the vote and raised more than $95,000 dollars.  And now in 2023, he is at it again!  Andre just launched his second campaign for the State Legislature and is hoping to harness the momentum he built on his first campaign to win the seat.  

Learn more and support his campaign here:

https://www.andredcarroll.com/

Cristina Flores is a lifelong servant leader who currently serves as our Director of Partnerships & Growth here at the New Politics Academy. In this episode, Cristina talks about her experiences serving as an AmeriCorps member and then on the staff of Literacy First in Austin Texas.  She also describes our work with Partners, how our partnerships are mutually beneficial, and how organizations interested in partnering with us can connect.  It's a great window into this important aspect of our work to bring more servant leaders into politics.

Meet Gideon Culman, one of the facilitators of our Answering the Call program. As a facilitator, Gideon has helped many servant leaders reflect deeply on their own sense of mission and calling.  He is a certified Master Coach and is the founder and president of K Street Coaching, an executive coaching firm based in Washington, DC. 

In this episode, he talks about his path to becoming a coach and his experiences with holding space for servant leaders in our ATC program.  He also talks about how conversations with his most recent ATC group inspired him to jump into the arena himself to run for a local school committee!

Christopher Gilbert is an Air Force vet, a Registered Nurse, and a recent graduate of our Answering the Call program.  He's a member of the LGBTQ+ community who feels called to serve through politics because of all the ways that his community is currently under attack in his home state of North Carolina and across the country.  In this episode, Chris talks openly about the challenges he faced while serving in the military in the era of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and how he seeks to use the hard-earned wisdom and lessons of his own journey to support others.

Here's the resource Chris mentions to the find LGBTQ+ services through the VA:

https://www.patientcare.va.gov/LGBT/VAFacilities.asp

Ed Han is a first-generation immigrant; his family moved to the U.S. from Korea when Ed was two years old. He went on to become a school teacher, a federal prosecutor, a member of the Air Force Reserves, and a university professor. Now, he's decided to enter the arena to represent District 44 in the California State Legislature, where he hopes to represent the town where he grew up.

In this episode, Ed talks about his lifelong commitment to service, path to politics, and how his experience with New Politics programming has influenced his journey. Since we recording this during AAPI Heritage month in 2023, he talks about what it is like running for office as an Asian American, and what he hopes the country is reflecting on this month.

This interview happened on the eighth day of Ed's campaign for the state legislature in California, so he is fresh to the campaign trail in this conversation. He is an amazing servant leader and we are thrilled to lift up his voice on today's episode!

On this episode we meet Derrell Frazier, the lifelong Baltimore resident who grew up as the child of incarcerated parents and went on to run a highly successful campaign for city-wide office. Derrell talks about his early years being raised by a grandmother also raising nine other kids, the mentor who changed his life in middle school, and the many ways that he has found to serve the people of Baltimore over the years.

In 2022, he threw his hat in the ring for a seat on the State Central Committee and found himself in a race with more than 20 other candidates; the top eight vote-getters would win seats on the committee. As a first-time candidate, Derrell came in 10th, just missing the cut to join the board.  It was a remarkable outcome for a first-time candidate, and Derrell is clear that he is just getting started.

Emily Cherniack is the visionary Founder and Executive Director of New Politics and the New Politics Leadership Academy. A lifelong servant leader, she did a year of service with City Year in Boston and has been serving ever since. When her mentor, City Year co-founder Alan Khazei ran for Senate in Massachusetts in 2009, she joined his campaign and had her first experience of politics. After seeing how challenging it was for a candidate from the world of service to succeed in politics, she was inspired to start an organization to bring more servant leaders into politics and help them succeed.

In this episode, talks about why she first joined City Year, why she founded New Politics, and what she has learned from her journey. Also, because this is Women's History Month, she talks about her experiences as a woman in the combative world of politics, and how she handles being a Founder, Executive Director as well as a mother to two young children.

Emily is a remarkable servant leader, and her story is the story of our organization. We're excited to (finally!) lift up her voice on our podcast!

Meet Angelo Pascuiti is a former Marine Corps sniper and Reconnaissance Team Leader who is currently involved in an effort to rethink the way the Marine Corps trains its new Marines.  He’s also an alum of our Answering the Call program who has become an outspoken champion of our work.  In this conversation, Angelo talks about how his own life has been shaped by his experiences in the Marine Corps, and why he believes our politics could be transformed if more servant leaders were in elected office.