Who Do You Love?

We're often told resilience means being strong enough to get back up on your own. Camila "Cami" Tapias, a disaster resilience leader, UN ARISE Global Board member, university trustee, and former Colombian national team basketball player, makes the case that the opposite is true. Drawing on her journey from the courts of Bogotá to emergency management, Cami shares why the moments she's been most resilient were the moments she leaned on others, and why the most resilient thing any of us can do is recognize we were never meant to do everything alone. Whitney and Cami explore what sports teaches us about knowing your teammates' strengths, why the time to build relationships is in "blue sky" moments before a crisis hits, and how something as simple as knowing who to call can change a community's outcome.

From there, the conversation widens. Cami explains why every dollar invested in resilience can save many more in recovery, and why communities stuck in survival mode rarely get the chance to think bigger. She also explains how planning with communities, not for them, changes who gets protected. The two also take on campus safety, accountability, and the courage to speak up at our own kitchen tables. Cami closes with a reflection on love and freedom you won't want to miss: the people who love us give us both the roots and the room to become who we are. Whitney leaves us with this question: When's the last time you took stock of who's on your team, and who's still missing from it?

Connect with Camila Tapias

• LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/camilatapias
• Instagram: @camilatapias_2
• Watch her talk: Bouncing from Basketball to Emergency Management

Connect with organizations or leaders we mentioned

• ARISE (UNDRR's Private Sector Alliance for Disaster Resilient Societies) - the UN alliance where Cami serves on the Global Board
• Festival of the Diaspora - where Whitney and Cami connected
• TribalHub / TribalNet Conference - the Dallas convening on technology for tribal governments and enterprises Cami attended
• SPIN Global - Cami's previous firm, home of the Community Disaster Resilience Fund she discussed

Further reading on ideas we raised

• UNDRR Global Assessment Report 2025: Resilience Pays - source of the $2.3 trillion true-cost-of-disasters figure
• NIBS Natural Hazard Mitigation Saves - the U.S. study behind the widely cited 6-saved-per-1 figure Cami referenced
• FEMA Community Lifelines - the framework Cami described for stabilizing energy, water, food, health, and safety after a disaster
• The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction - the global framework ARISE supports

When guests had to reschedule, Whitney turned the mic on herself and answered the show's own questions. She starts with the parents who gave her no curfew, only trust, and a home in Nebraska she knew she could always drive back to. That secure love made it possible to leave home at 18, live out of two suitcases, and start a business. From there she looks at who doesn't get that kind of safety net: the solopreneurs paying close to rent for basic health coverage, with no unemployment, family leave, or sick days to fall back on, and the women, especially women of color, for whom the risk of leaping is highest.

Whitney also shares her own choice to leave a marriage and what she's learned walking beside friends who gave up careers to build a family, only to find that housing costs, pay gaps, and support formulas make leaving feel impossible. She pushes back on the "you made your bed" idea of personal responsibility and makes the case for a world where courage is a less courageous choice. That means being a soft place to land, being the safety net that makes the leap possible, and, with midterms six weeks out, pushing for policies that stop tying our safety to our employer. She closes with her littles and the chosen family that has set her free.

Links to engage with this week’s episode:

Connect with Whitney Buchmann

• Illustra Impact (illustraimpact.com) — Whitney's social innovation consultancy
• Solopreneurs Circle (www.illustraimpact.com/solopreneurs) — the peer community of about 75+ solo founders and consultants in the impact space that Whitney founded

Connect with organizations or leaders we mentioned

• National Domestic Violence Hotline (thehotline.org) — 24/7 confidential support at 1-800-799-7233 or text START to 88788, and the partner behind the study Whitney cites on survivors staying longer for financial reasons
• Vote.org — check your registration and find your polling place ahead of the midterms Whitney urges listeners to show up for

Further reading on ideas we raised

• "A lifeline for survivors of domestic violence is at risk amid federal funding cuts" (bostonglobe.com) — source for Whitney's point that lack of affordable housing is one of the top reasons victims stay with abusers
• "'He wanted to destroy me financially': The economic abuse of domestic violence survivors" (wbur.org) — On Point episode discussing the study with the National Domestic Violence Hotline where 73% of callers said they stayed longer because of financial concerns
• Retirement Security: Women Still Face Challenges (gao.gov) — the GAO report behind the stat that women's household income fell 41% after divorce, compared with 23% for men
• "Divorce Rates Tend to Rise When Women Earn More, Studies Suggest" (aol.com) — covers sociologist Pamela Smock's research showing Black and Hispanic women face the steepest income drops after divorce

Mac Brazina — mental health and performance coach, writer, and founder of Human Builder — comes to this conversation as a self-described "hyperindependent, don't need no one" human learning otherwise. Newly postpartum, she talks candidly about being handed a card that read We are your village, and what it took to let herself actually receive the support it promised instead of just providing it to everyone else.

From there, the conversation moves into the mechanics of what Mac calls the "ailment of hyperindependence": the high performers, entrepreneurs, and pro athletes she coaches who believe they have to break themselves to make something succeed, and the biological cost — disrupted hormones, gut health, sleep, emotional regulation — that comes from ignoring what the body is signaling. Whitney and Mac unpack parts work, the difference between depositing into yourself and running on empty, and why the people who most need to hear "your cup has to be full first" are usually the ones who look like they have it all together. It's a conversation about power, sustainability, and the radical, uncomfortable act of letting a village hold you.

LINKS TO ENGAGE WITH THE EPISODE

• On Instagram: @the_human_builder 
• Human Builder (humanbuilder.com) — Mac's coaching practice 

• Valarie Kaur (valariekaur.com) — author of See No Stranger: A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love the book and framework Mac cites as a driving influence 
• Disagree Better (disagreebetter.us)  — the cross-partisan initiative Whitney references when talking about groups working to find common ground across disagreement

• Crucial Conversations / Crucial Accountability (cruciallearning.com) — the communication framework Whitney references being certified in, related to Mac's point about psychological safety and self-regulation in high-stakes dialogue 
• "Toxic Success Is Burning Out High Performers In 2026" (forbes.com) — source for the ZeroBounce survey stat Whitney cites (44% giving up free time, 37% compromising values)

This week, Whitney sits down with Nadia Ali — consultant, storyteller, facilitator, and founder of Idea Labs — to explore what it actually takes for power and freedom to be real, not just theoretical. Nadia offers a reframe that anchors the whole conversation: rather than asking how we use our power and freedom, she asks what infrastructure has to exist first so people can fully live into them at all — the childcare, the parental leave, the community support that let someone show up whole instead of white-knuckling it alone.

The conversation moves from the personal to the systemic and back again — from the choices Nadia makes as a mother about how much truth a child can hold, to her account of parental leave and community care in Canada, to a candid exchange about academic institutions banding together (or not) when federal funding threats hit higher ed. Along the way, Nadia draws a sharp distinction between "networks of association" and real community — the difference between knowing someone's name and actually showing up when they're sick — and talks through what it costs, and what it's worth, to stand with someone else when your own power is on the line. Whitney closes with the question she keeps coming back to: what would it look like if we stopped assuming everyone can already tap into their power and freedom, and started asking what needs to be built so they can?

Links to engage with this week’s episode

Connect with Nadia Ali

• Instagram: @idealabsinaction
• LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/nadia-y-ali 

Connect with organizations or leaders mentioned

• Idea Labs (idealabsinaction.com) — Nadia's consulting practice, focused on organizational culture, leadership development, and belonging 
• PolicyLink (policylink.org/about/summits) — the organization behind the PolicyLink Summit Whitney references attending in August, themed "We Are the Founders" around America's 250th anniversary 

Further reading on ideas raised

• The Mutual Academic Defense Compact story — background on the Big Ten faculty push for universities to defend one another against federal funding threats, and how it evolved into a joint ad campaign instead of a formal compact — the example Whitney raises with Nadia about academic institutions.

Dr. Byron Green-Calisch, co-founder and co-executive director of Justice Over Everything, is an executive coach, equity strategist, and civic educator. The thread running through all of his work is a single design principle: build for the people furthest from power, and the system gets strong enough to hold everyone. Byron and his organization built Justice Over Everything as a safety net specifically for Black trans women, not as an afterthought or a footnote, but as the starting point — because a net designed to catch the most vulnerable person in the room is a net that catches everybody on the way up.

The conversation moves from the intimate to the structural, the way it always does on this show. Byron opens with the story of falling in love with his husband — a white Jewish man — and how their relationship became a years-long practice of curiosity instead of obligation, learning each other's histories through books and museums rather than interrogation. From there, the conversation widens: what it actually looks like to run an organization built on intersectionality, why the redrawing of Florida's congressional maps under a weakened Voting Rights Act should worry all of us, and why "pick one elected official to hold accountable" might be the most practical thing any of us can do with our civic energy. Byron closes with a reminder that love isn't just what we feel for the people already in our circle — it's what pushes us to build for the people we haven't met yet, whose lives will still be shaped by the decisions we make today. So this week, ask yourself: who is the person your systems haven't been designed for yet — and what would it take to build with them in mind first?

Links to engage with this week’s episode

Connect with Dr. Byron Green-Calisch

• Instagram: @dr_bgc 
• LinkedIn: 
• Coaching / work with Byron: justiceovereverything.com/work-with-us 

Connect with organizations or leaders mentioned

• Justice Over Everything — the social justice center Byron co-founded with State Rep. Michele Rayner (justiceovereverything.com)
  • Instagram: @justice_over_everything

Further reading on ideas raised

• Don't Touch My Hair by Emma Dabiri — the book Byron references reading with his husband early in their relationship; a cultural history of Black hair from pre-colonial Africa through today's natural hair movement.
• Louisiana v. Callais and the Voting Rights Act rollback — background on the Supreme Court ruling Whitney references, which struck down part of the VRA and opened the door to redistricting fights in several Southern states, including Florida.
• The 10 states where redistricting has happened since the SCOTUS decision.
• Florida's 2026 congressional redistricting.

Yuritzy Gomez Serrano is a somatic practitioner, a third-generation eldest daughter, and an immigrant from Michoacán, Mexico, who works at the intersection of nervous system healing and systemic change. At the center of this conversation is a phrase she returns to again and again with her clients, especially eldest daughters and caregivers who hold everything together: let it fall apart. Not as resignation, but as an act of trust — trust that when we stop overextending to keep every plate spinning, we finally see our actual capacity, and we make room for others, and for the systems that should be doing the holding, to step in.

Yuritzy and Whitney trace how this plays out in real bodies and real budgets — from a client who sold her house rather than keep abandoning her own needs to build a business that wasn't sustainable, to nonprofits absorbing the gaps left by funding cuts and government systems that should be doing the work in the first place. Yuritzy's own path unfolds into a bigger question about what freedom actually requires: not escape, but the courage to feel what we've been powering through, name our real limits, and let some things break so something more honest can be built in their place. As you listen, ask yourself: what are you holding together right now that, if you let go, might reveal the true interdependencies?

Links to engage with this week’s episode

Connect with Yuritzy:

• Yuritzy Gomez Serrano on Instagram — where she posts on somatic healing, eldest daughters, and nervous system work
• Join The Eldest Daughter email list —  where she shares her free monthly support circles and private podcast for eldest daughters
• Yuritzy Gomez Serrano on LinkedIn
• Work with Yuritzy one-on-one or in your org: https://canva.link/4f7frgnut8sqwg6

Engage with ideas we raised:

• Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) — background on the therapy approach, for listeners unfamiliar with the term
• Brainspotting — the brain-body therapy method developed by David Grand, the other modality referenced in Yuritzy's training
• University of Cambridge study on the 4-day work week  — source for stats about a trial where 71% of employees reported reduced burnout, with revenue staying broadly stable

Clinton Drees has spent his career building the very thing this episode is about: proof that another way of living is possible. A social worker who is dedicating his life to mentorship, leadership development, and LGBTQ+ youth advocacy, Clinton helped launch mentorship programs that bring safe, vetted adults into schools to meet LGBTQ+ youth where they are — because, as he puts it, every kid deserves someone who's already walked the road ahead of them.

Whitney and Clinton trace resilience from the deeply personal — a closeted childhood, a Tuesday-night ritual with two restaurant coworkers who became lifelines, a partner who taught him how to receive love — out to the systemic: record numbers of anti-LGBTQ+ legislation, the defunding of youth crisis resources, and what happens to a community when institutional support disappears. Clinton offers a clear-eyed, hopeful answer: resilience isn't about finding one person to be your everything, it's about collecting small, real data points that prove people show up. As you listen, consider — who in your life offered you proof that there was another way to live, and who might be waiting on you to do the same for them?

Links to engage with this week’s episode

Connect with Clinton:

• Clinton Drees on LinkedIn 

Connect with organizations or leaders we mentioned:

• Big Brothers Big Sisters of America — The national mentoring model Clinton drew on when building his mentorship program.
• The Trevor Project — Non-profit suicide prevention organization that provides 24/7 crisis support services, research, and advocacy for LGBTQ+ young people.
• Human Rights Campaign — The nation’s largest civil rights organization working to achieve LGBTQ+ equality.
• American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) — Non-profit, non-partisan organization founded to defend and preserve individual rights and constitutional liberties guaranteed by the US Constitution.

Engage with ideas we raised:

• 2024 U.S. National Survey on the Mental Health of LGBTQ+ Young People — The source for stats Whitney cites about the "90% of youth affected by anti-LGBTQ+ policy" and "one-third suicide attempt rate"
• Mapping Attacks on LGBTQ Rights in 2026 — The source for the "500+ bills tracked in 2026" figure discussed
• LGBTQ+ Youth Reports — The "annual youth HRC report" Clinton references as a resource he's used in his own program research
• Paris is Burning - A documentary recommended by Clinton in a follow-up to his comment about a read/watch list.
• The Velvet Rage - A book recommended by Clinton in a follow-up to his comment about a read/watch list.

Evelyne Kane is a public health professional and longtime advocate for health equity and authentic community engagement, currently leading national programs centered on people with lived experience. A former teammate of Whitney's at the Camden Coalition, Evelyne has spent her career at the intersection of service delivery and systems change — work she describes not as standing in the spotlight, but as opening doors: connecting the people closest to a problem with the people who hold the power to solve it. That role as a bridge, a liaison, an amplifier, becomes the episode's central image.

The conversation moves from Evelyne's own rabbit hole on what love and freedom actually cost her, into the Camden Coalition's practice of "authentic healing relationships" and what it would take to build that kind of genuine responsibility into our healthcare systems rather than leaving it to individual goodwill. From there, Evelyne and Whitney get concrete: the elimination of federal research and data, and the new Medicaid work requirements under HR1. Evelyne closes with a challenge drawn from her own life: take an honest inventory of who's actually in your circle, and notice who gets excluded the farther you get from the people it's easy to have compassion for.

Links to engage with this week’s episode

Connect with Evelyne:

• Register for the monthly Community Engagement Learning Network conversations that Evelyne facilitates
• Follow Evelyne Kane on LinkedIn

Engage with ideas we raised:

• The Strength of Weak Ties - Evelyne references this article in her early reflection on love that is freeing.
• What is value-based care? - this is a concept that Evelyne references as one of the ways of holding our healthcare institutions accountable to genuine care for patient outcomes and wellbeing
• The Social Change Ecosystem framework was created by Deepa Iyer at Building Movement Project. Whitney and Evelyne discuss how there are various roles to play in the ecosystem and we need all of them.
• NIH guts its first and largest study centered on women - ScienceInsider article that Whitney referenced for the numbers about NIH funding cuts
• Elimination of Federal Diversity Initiatives: Updates and Current Status - KFF article that Whitney referenced for specific programs impacted by the cuts
• A Summary of Federal Medicaid Work Requirements - Find out more about the changes to healthcare accessibility that are a result of HR1 (sometimes referred to as the “Big Beautiful Bill”) and take effect on July 31, 2026

In this episode of Who Do You Love?, Whitney sits down with Maria Camila Velasquez — political refugee from Colombia, former undocumented resident, and now president and CEO of a social services agency serving thousands of children and families — to unpack what equity actually requires of us. Drawing on a training exercise that stuck with her for years, Maria Camila reframes equity not as picking winners but as taking collective responsibility for a track that was never built level to begin with: the weights people carry, the charges that get filed differently for the same crime, the families judged by a system that was never designed around their strengths.

The conversation moves from personal to systemic and back again — from Maria Camila's own family, which she calls "brothers and sisters in arms," to her work building trust with Afro-Colombian community leaders, to the coordinated, multi-layered attacks she's watching unfold against immigrant communities in Lake County, Illinois. What emerges is a harder truth than equity alone can hold: for the communities she serves, the fight right now isn't about reaching the same finish line. It's about being allowed to keep breathing at all.

This episode asks listeners to sit with a question Whitney can't shake: who in your life might be fighting just to exist — and would you know it if they were?

Links to engage with this week’s episode:

Connect with Maria Camila Velasquez:

• Instagram @camilastintico
• LinkedIn

Connect with organizations or leaders we mentioned:

• Arden Shore Child & Family Services (where Maria Camila serves as President & CEO)
• Radiante Strategy Group (founded by Maria Camila)
• Casa Innovation (a non-profit that supports underestimated social entrepreneurs, founded by Maria)
• Othering & Belonging Institute at UC Berkeley, home of john a. powell's equity framework Whitney references in her opening

Donate

• On July 10th, a fire tore through barrio Pablo Sexto in Quibdó — destroying more than 30 homes, displacing nearly 120 people, and taking two lives: a grandmother and her six-year-old grandson. Support survivors and displaced people from the fires in Quibdó at gofund.me/5f067e05b (organized by Casa Innovation and Liseth Martinez)

Further reading on ideas we raised

• “First They Came” – by Pastor Martin Niemöller (original poem that Whitney adapted)
• Whitney’s adaptation of “First They Came” referenced by Maria

Darrie Matthew Burrage is an innovation consultant who treats every relationship like a friendship — diving in deep, building trust fast, and refusing the small talk. He brings that same approach to this conversation.

Darrie Matthew unpacks the difference between what he calls exploitive interdependence — where people need each other, but the power between them is wildly unequal — and something more equitable, more dignified. He traces that idea from garden plots to workplaces to the wealthy, arguing that freedom isn't just about what you have, but what you're willing to be free from: scarcity thinking, blame, the exhausting hustle of going it alone. Along the way, he and Whitney talk about Fannie Lou Hamer, Martin Luther King Jr.'s indictment of America, and what it costs — and what it opens up — to keep showing up for people, especially across lines of race and gender, even when it's uncomfortable.

By the end, Darrie Matthew's advice is disarmingly simple: get curious about the people already in your life. Most of us don't actually know what our friends do, what they're building, or what they need — and that ignorance, he says, is quietly limiting our freedom. So this week: who in your circle could you go one level deeper with? What might become possible if you did?

Links to engage with this week’s episode:

Connect with Darrie Matthew

• LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/darrie-matthew-burrage

Further reading on ideas we raised

• “Nobody's free until everybody's free." - Fannie Lou Hamer, during her speech at the founding meeting of the National Women's Political Caucus in Washington, D.C. on July 10, 1971. 
• "I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land.” - Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., during his "I've Been to the Mountaintop" speech. He delivered this speech in support of the striking sanitation workers at Mason Temple in Memphis, TN on April 3, 1968 — the day before he was assassinated.