Season 2 of TWB will highlight places within LA & SB Counties that serve as community staples, places of refuge and that symbolize permanence for the Black community where generations of families continue to thrive. Within each neighborhood, there’s always a staple in the community that brings people together- whether a church, restaurant, community center, or park. These places are typically passed down from one generation to the next and play a pivotal role in preserving Blackness as gentrification, underfunding, and climate change threaten their existence. We’ll celebrate the culture and history of these staples by hearing from community members and visiting the places that have become local institutions.

Season 2 of TWB will highlight places within LA & SB Counties that serve as community staples, places of refuge and that symbolize permanence for the Black community where generations of families continue to thrive. Within each neighborhood, there’s always a staple in the community that brings people together- whether a church, restaurant, community center, or park. These places are typically passed down from one generation to the next and play a pivotal role in preserving Blackness as gentrification, underfunding, and climate change threaten their existence. We’ll celebrate the culture and history of these staples by hearing from community members and visiting the places that have become local institutions.

Thriving While Black hosts Kaci Patterson and Felicia Jones kickoff season 2 with the Godmother of Black Philanthropy in Los Angeles, Fran Jemmott Rollins.

In this episode, the SGS executive leadership team shares their perspectives on Black women in leadership, especially in light of several high-profile Black women suffering in silence in their workplaces. They debunk myths about Black women working together and discuss how to dismantle supremacy cultures and internalized racism, all while creating the conditions for Black women to thrive as leaders. Each brings their own unique perspective to the firm and provides a lens into how SGS builds an intentional pro-Black woman work culture.

In this episode of Thriving While Black, we’re joined by the trailblazing Dr. Paulette Brown-Hinds—Founder and Publisher of Voice Media Ventures, home to Black Voice News and the Black Voice Foundation. As the visionary behind Mapping Black California, a Trustee of both the James Irvine Foundation and the Inland Empire Community Foundation, and Curator of the Footsteps to Freedom LLC tour, Dr. Hinds brings unparalleled insight to the table.

Together with hosts Kaci and Felicia, Dr. Brown-Hinds shares her journey as a journalist, publisher, and historian, exploring the critical role of community representation in media as a cornerstone of Black liberation. Tune in for an inspiring conversation on the power of telling our stories, our way.

Everyone has their own lane in the movement. Whether you’re the person on the ground canvassing, or the grant writer submitting proposals, or the funder advocating on behalf of certain organizations, we all have our lane. The folks sitting on boards for nonprofit organizations or philanthropic institutions are crucial figures– they need to be plugged into the community and ready to advance the cause of justice as an institutional north star. At the same time, it’s important for the community to know how to navigate the halls and positions of institutional power. In this episode, we discuss how positional power is an important lever for creating the conditions for Black folks to thrive.

In loving memory of Reggie Webb. Beloved husband, father and entrepreneur. (1948-2024)

Connecting community, philanthropy, and policy together isn’t an easy feat, but it’s necessary. Being able to bridge the three together successfully requires a secret sauce that our hosts and our guest, Karren Lane, most certainly have. How do you navigate differing agendas and a multitude of stakeholders when the community is watching?

Eradicating systemic and institutionalized racism isn’t the work of one organization or two, it’s about creating an ecosystem of power building organizations throughout the state (and country!) that work together to generate a movement. The California Black Freedom Fund and the Black Equity Collective are two examples of what empowering organizations with resources and community allows for maximum impact.

Community organizing has always been the most effective tool of the oppressed. Throughout our history and across our diaspora, Black folks have broken links in the chain of oppression and created new possibilities for Black liberation to take shape by developing grassroots leaders as strategists, activists, organizers and movement builders. In this episode, we highlight Pillars of the Community, an organization that embodies what it means to actualize the hopes and dreams of Black Californians experiencing the harshest forms of de facto and de jure oppression through the power of community organizing.

Thinking outside the box and bringing innovative solutions to philanthropy and investing are two ways that reimagining how capital gets deployed into Black communities will help us all thrive. Join us as we chat with Ashley D. Bell, Georgia-based entrepreneur, attorney and political advisor,, We'll explore strategies from rethinking how we approach grant-making to repositioning Black banks to be major players in real estate development and other capital community investments.