Power Station

When Carlos Mark Vera started out at American University, he imagined a life in politics. It happened but in a very different way then he expected. He won an internship on Capitol Hill, experience that employers in the political ecosystem deem essential. But when he walked the halls of Congress, he did not see himself, a young person color, among his fellow interns. Most wore nicer clothes than even the paid staffers and because they were not juggling school and an internship with paid jobs, were able to socialize after work. He realized that unpaid internships benefit white and well-off students and virtually exclude low-income people of color from tables where the most critical policy decisions are made. What happened next, from an advocacy perspective where change is slow at best, is extraordinary. It started with knocking on the doors of 535 members of Congress to survey who paid their interns to the passage of a congressional line item. And now, Pay Our Interns, the nonprofit he founded, is tackling unpa

There are many moments that resonate in a conversation with Vimala Phongsavahn, Board President of the Laotian American National Alliance. They include the story of her parents, Laotian refugees who fled a repressive government and the aftermath of America’s covert bombing during the Vietnam War. Vimala describes their resettlement in Rhode Island in 1981 where they started jobs, her mother in a factory with no benefits and her father as a machinist, two days after their arrival. The story extends to the broader Laotian American community, a population of 265,000, 27% of whom are economically and educationally disadvantaged. They have been rendered almost invisible by a pervasive model minority myth, which presents Asian Americans from 50 subgroups as a prosperous monolith. This narrative can only be undone, Vimala explains, through data disaggregation, civic engagement and policy advocacy. It also requires partners in the Asian American eco-system to include Laotian Americans at decision-making tables. Stori

A sea change is underway in the nonprofit sector and it is long past due. For decades, white-led organizations have been privileged by levels of funding and political access denied to nonprofits led by people of color. This is not news. But in environmental organizations, those brand name groups have become synonymous with preservation, conservation and climate change. Far less visible are the Latinos laboring within these organizations and those leading groups at the local level to take on persistent and urgent challenges, from a lack of access to clean water to industrial pollutants flooding their communities. This reality led Mark Magaña to found GreenLatinos, a national nonprofit that convenes Latino leaders working to preserve land and conserve natural resources. As an expert in federal policy making whose experience includes senior positions in congressional leadership and the Clinton White House, Mark has created a platform for Latinos, whose own families have been ancestral stewards of the land, to re

How many of us can look back on a single foundational experience that shaped how we see ourselves? Lupi Quinteros-Grady can. She was 14 years old and an immigrant when she attended a program at Latin American Youth Center. She connected to a diverse group of young people and over time honed the confidence and skills needed to advocate on issues, including HIV, that directly affected the community. Years later, Lupi graduated from college, the first in her family to do so, and was offered a position at LAYC, managing the same program she once attended. She accepted and after 23 years of developing its holistic approach to academics, conservation, workforce development, housing and mental health, Lupi became LAYC’s CEO. She is now shifting programs and resources to meet the almost unimaginable needs generated by Covid19. LAYC has created new system to support families with food, emergency rental assistance and mental health counseling. And it intervenes when young people become disconnected from school, a resul

What I love most about DC PAVE-Parents Amplifying Voices in Education-is that it reinvents an outdated model for building parent leadership. In the conventional model parents meet with teachers to assess their children’s progress and attend school-wide events largely to affirm decisions that have already been made. PAVE wants parents to be in the room where the real decision making is made and prepares them to do exactly that. It focuses on Black and Brown lower-income parents who often feel overlooked by school and city officials and in the era of Covid19, are stressed by a loss of jobs, income and housing. PAVE teaches parents how educational systems work and invites them to shape and propose their own policy platform. Most importantly, parents learn how to partner with city officials to make change possible. PAVE was founded by Maya Martin Cadogan, whose earliest lessons in advocacy came from her mother, an activist devoted to educational equity. There is so much information, nuance and richness in a conve

Ted Piccolo refers to himself as an accidental advocate. It all started when he helped a fellow member of the Colville Indian Reservation craft a business plan for a promising new venture. The plan was sound, but her application for a bank loan was rejected. The bank required her to have $2,500 in equity to make the loan. Like many others on the reservation in rural northwest Washington state, she did not have the assets needed (credit, savings or a home) to meet that threshold. It was a crushing setback and it motivated Ted to find a solution for those whom banks do not serve. He found his answer in the Community Development Financial Institution Fund, a resource within the US Department of Treasury, that deploys funds to underinvested communities. Ted took the many steps needed to become a certified CDFI and now operates the Northwest Native Development Fund, which has made $8 million in loans to tribes throughout Washington, Idaho and Montana. As Ted explains, Native people have a long tradition of sustain

The world needs to catch up to Indira Henard, executive director of the DC Rape Crisis Center. She champions survivors of sexual violence, which she views as inextricably linked to other forms of oppression, including racial and gender inequity. And she applies this intersectional lens to all areas of the Center’s work, from clinical therapy to advocacy for public policies that support survivors. Indira believes that we need to take a bold next step, an inter-generational conversation about sexual violence: how it is defined, whom we believe when it is reported and what accountability looks like. Women that the Center works with have been re-traumatized by the pandemic and the brutal insurrection at the US Capitol. Indira and her team are standing up for them all. As bleak as this work might seem it brings Indira joy. Having swapped out a career on Capitol Hill and the White House to become a voice for and with survivors in the real Washington DC, she is exactly where she needs to be.  

What if your job was to ensure that Latino leaders have a seat at decision making tables in the public and private sectors? This is the work that Marco Davis leads as President & CEO of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute. Its fellowships place talented young Latinos with members of Congress who are themselves Latino change makers. This experience, coupled with real-time training, prepares the next generation to navigate the policy making process and the nuances of Capitol Hill culture. With 63 million Latinos in the nation, almost 20% of the population, claiming these seats at the table is long past due. And given the pandemic’s disproportionate impact on Latinos, from rates of infection to loss of businesses to exposure as frontline workers, their engagement in equitable recovery planning is urgent. If you need more evidence of CHCI’s efficacy, its alumni network of 4000  Latino leaders speaks volumes. This pipeline of influence and expertise represents to future of our country. And don’t miss t

If you worry about our nation’s capacity to recover from Covid19, this episode may change your perception of what is possible. Melissa Jones is executive director of BARHII- Bay Area Regional Health Inequities Initiative- a collaborative that is charting a course for recovery in 9 hard-hit counties. This partnership between public health agencies, municipalities and community organizations was launched in the mid 1990s to tackle inequities that are often the underlying cause of illness. They apply the same framework to Covid19, which has disproportionately impacted African Americans, Pacific Islanders and Latinx people, from a loss of jobs to loss of life. BARHII focuses on the social determinants of health, factors that are not addressed in the doctor’s office: housing conditions, isolation, and lack of a living wage. Melissa lays out changes in public policy needed to ensure an equitable recovery. New policies include the provision of housing by municipalities for those who cannot quarantine in crowded hous

    Here it is, my 150th episode, a milestone in the lifecycle of a podcast. It has been a journey, creating a platform for progressive nonprofit change making, one that will expand in 2021. To mark the moment, I reconnected with Joseph Leitmann-Santa Cruz, CEO and executive director of CAAB-Capital Area Asset Builders-and one of the most tenacious seekers of justice that I know. CAAB connects underinvested Black and Brown communities with strategies for creating assets (home ownership, small businesses and higher education) that are the basis for building generational wealth. This population includes the one in five individuals in the nation’s capital who live below the poverty line. And that statistic is particularly jarring because it is based in pre-pandemic data. CAAB embeds itself in the “unofficial” DC and metropolitan region where work opportunities are limited and low paying. And low-wage workers are often unaware that claiming a refund, through the Earned Income Tax Credit, can yield significant and

This episode tells the story of LEDC- the Latino Economic Development Corporation-a nonprofit at the epicenter of our nation’s multiple crises, from COVID19 to the loss of businesses, jobs and housing to the assault on Latinos by the outgoing President and his congressional allies. Marla Bilonick, LEDC’s executive director, credits her staff and the indispensable partnerships she has built with municipalities from Washington DC to Baltimore County and Puerto Rico in creating policy solutions to seemingly intractable challenges. As a CDFI-Community Development Financial Institution-an alternative and more flexible provider of capitol to non-traditional borrowers, LEDC has kept Latino small businesses afloat where banks could or would not. Keeping families whole, through counseling, capitol, organizing and advocacy requires 24/7 responsiveness. And Marla expects a next wave of foreclosure and evictions. We were talking about the toll of anti-Latino rhetoric and policies on the community when we learned the terr

I was deliberate in choosing John Holdsclaw as my first guest of 2021. It is not only because he is a friend and EVP of Strategic Initiatives for National Cooperative Bank, whose investments yield resources ranging from rural electric co-ops to grocery stores in urban food deserts. Or because he is Board president of the CDFI Coalition, the voice for over 1100 lenders in underinvested communities. I was curious about John’s takeaways from 2020, a devastating year particularly for low income and communities of color, and his thoughts about nonprofit changemaking. We focused on intentionality, the practice of stepping back to assess how nonprofits align their stated values with their behavior. John suggests taking a hard look at how your organization engages members, hires and retains executives of color, and works collaboratively within the sector. And he argues that a new administration creates an opportunity to expand which nonprofits have a seat at policy making tables. With thanks to John, this is our year

Here is a staggering statistic. Right now, 45 million Americans are struggling under the weight of $1.7 trillion in student debt. The college education that was supposed to create economic opportunity has far too often, particularly in communities of color, created deep generational harm. Parents have financed their kids’ educations while still paying off their own college loans. And while student borrowing is a reality across race and class lines, the burden is deepest in Black and Brown communities where the racial wealth gap persists. As Ashley Harrington, Federal Advocacy Director of the Center for Responsible Lending (CRL) explains, the majority of borrowers are crushed by less than $10,000 in debt. CRL, an indispensable champion in the fight against predatory lending, is teaming up with advocates from civil rights, veterans and consumer groups to create a new path forward. On this episode, we explore an important question: What if President Biden authorized the cancellation of student debt on day one of

We will look back on 2020, the year of COVID-19, as the moment when our nation’s longstanding systemic inequities became impossible to ignore. Just look at our digital divide. Right now, over 17 million children lack the requisite connectivity plans or devices needed to participate in a remote learning mandate. It is not only a problem of broadband access. It is also a challenge of adoption, the ability of families to afford laptops and service plans. Which means that parents are also excluded from engaging in 21st century commerce, from banking, to health services, to shopping, that have increasingly, and sometimes exclusively, migrated online. The impacts are felt most acutely by those already grappling with housing and food insecurity. While federal resources are limited, municipalities have become the change makers, creating solutions and taking action to implement them. And these mayors, tribal leaders state regulatory bodies and residents have an indefatigable partner in Next Century Cities, a national

This nation is finally cracking open the conversations we need to have to make change possible. Systemic racial inequities have been exposed by COVID-19, particularly its disproportionate impacts on communities of color, which are stark and quantifiable. The loss of jobs, and by extension homes, for those with the most tenuous employment, demands that elected leaders act and affected communities are engaged. And we are confronting a less publicly discussed but longstanding challenge. On this episode of Power Station, Karma Cottman explains that domestic violence is on the rise, exacerbated by stay-at-home orders that have sequestered survivors with their abusers. As executive director of the DC Coalition Against Domestic Violence and its national sister organization, UJIMA, Inc, Karma is the voice that policy makers, courts, law enforcement, schools and the media to listen to right now. Karma brings so much to this conversation, from great successes in systems change to an inexhaustible energy and love of her

We know how nonprofits make change. They provide services, teach people how to organize and use those capacities and get legislation passed. Can cultural institutions also make change? In the case of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, the answer is yes. While the experience of changemaking may be more personal at a museum, the same strategies are needed to be successful. It starts with a mission to amplify the voices of communities that are too often unheard. And it is powered by a governance structure that includes and is accountable to its constituency. In both cases, they meet members/visitors where they are and hope they carry what they learn forward. As NMAI's Paul Chaat Smith explains, the museum  is about deepening awareness, not promoting cultural tourism. A Comanche author, essayist and curator, Paul walks us through Americans, the powerful exhibit he co-curated with Cécile Ganteaume, to explore how Indian imagery is embedded in virtually every area of American life. Listen to

Mile High Connects is a nonprofit collaborative that is leading a movement for transit equity in the Denver Metro region. Sounds pretty straightforward and non-controversial, right? Of course, it isn’t. As data shows, public transit is crucial for connecting working people to jobs and schools, the building blocks for economic opportunity. The challenge in building or expanding a system is in setting priorities. Is it an amenity for high-income residents going to downtown offices or a component of economic recovery, particularly for low-income, Black and Brown residents whose jobs and homes are less accessible? With Deya Zavalas at the helm, Mile High Connects is building the table at which community residents, organizing groups, public agencies and community foundations are coming together to advocate for a more inclusive system. And they are tackling more than transit. Their proposals include policy solutions for the region’s inter-related and highly stressed housing and health systems. Nonprofits are where

One half of all Texans under the age of 18 are Latinos. The future of the state, and increasingly this nation, lies with an immensely diverse population that has been underestimated by mainstream political parties. That paradigm is changing, however, in large part due to Jolt Texas, a nonprofit launched by rising political star Cristina Tzintzun Ramirez after the 2016 election. Jolt is dedicated to inspiring a new generation of Latinos to become civic leaders and political candidates. It holds forums about health, housing and other pivotal issues, trains young people in community organizing, and brings civic engagement messaging to cultural gatherings, including a young women's Quinceañera. Pedro Lira, Jolt’s Civic Engagement Director, has been hooked on politics since high school and is already a veteran of national electoral campaigns. He is passionate about the potential of young Latino voters in Texas to represent their community and generate a more equitable future. And he is patient. While this election

Our high-stakes national election is (almost) over and it is time to breathe and celebrate. For community-based nonprofits, which took root long before this election cycle and are base builders no matter who is in office, this is a moment for reflection. It requires taking stock of how differently our divided nation perceives the state of our union. It also validates their commitment to creating a shared vision for the future. This is the work of Doran Schrantz, executive director of ISAIAH, a multi-racial, state-wide, nonpartisan coalition of congregations and people of faith in Minnesota. Its vision is carried out by its stakeholders, from the Barbershops and Black Congregations Cooperative to Latinx and Muslim faith-based coalitions. And the vision is furthered by Faith in Minnesota, a 501(c)4, which expands ISAIAH’s (501(c)3) vision into the state electoral arena. Collectively, they have created the Greater Than Fear Campaign, to push forward, through messaging and narrative building, a movement centered