Resmaa Menakem: We Will Never Go Back to “Normal”

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Resmaa Menakem, New York Times bestselling author of “My Grandmother’s Hands: Racialized Trauma and the Pathway to Mending Our Hearts and Bodies,” is a visionary Justice Leadership coach, organizational strategist and master trainer. Resmaa is a leading voice in today’s conversation on racialized trauma.

As a therapist, trauma specialist, and the founder of Justice Leadership Solutions, a leadership consultancy firm, Resmaa Menakem dedicates his expertise to coaching leaders through civil unrest, organizational change, and community building.

Resmaa is a highly sought after keynote and public speaker, radio, television, and social media personality, author, international trainer and effective communicator among diverse ethnic populations. Resmaa has hosted his own radio talk show as well as appeared on programs ranging from The Oprah Winfrey and Dr. Phil shows as an expert on conflict mediation, self-care and healing to Minnesota Public Radio as an expert on racialized trauma during civil unrest.

Interview Highlights:

  • How Resmaa got into the work he is doing today

  • Resmaa’s time in Afghanistan as a trauma counselor to US military contractors

  • Why white people forming book clubs is not “the work”

  • Why white people need to use Google instead of asking Black and brown folks what they can do to support racial justice

  • What gives Resmaa the most energy right now

  • How listeners can support his work

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Noran Sanford, Ravin Patel, & Norman Garcia-Lopez: "Flip Your Prison" with Growing Change

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Founder of Growing Change, Noran Sanford grew up in an abusive, working-class Scot-Irish family in rural North Carolina. Ever since a young age he had a strong sense of justice, and took a stand against racism in his home even though it meant getting knocked down.

Scholarships for community involvement in high school helped Noran attend university at UNC-Chapel Hill. There he co-founded one of the few college Habitat for Humanity chapters in the country and, when then-President Reagan’s policies resulted in large populations of people shifting from mental health institutions to homeless shelters, he rallied UNC’s athletes to volunteer in shelters, helping deescalate violent situations and prevent police intervention. As a young professional, himself diagnosed with PTSD, he won awards his work in the passage of mental health parity laws in Virginia and for his work advocating for students with disabilities.

In 2000, Noran got married and moved back to Laurinburg to provide home care for his mother who was an Alzheimer’s victim. He “was stunned to find that our challenged area had grown more difficult.” Noran had been heavily involved in community work but, after 20 years “in the trenches”, he became disillusioned with the impact he was having as a counselor. Then, five years ago, at the funeral for “another young man who was lost to gang violence” he made the commitment to “never stand at another graveside for a young person I worked with asking myself if I could have done ‘more.’ This is the 'more.'”

Interview Highlights:

  • How Growing Change is a youth-empowered model taking closed prisons locally – among the hundreds nationally – and transforming them into a replicable model with sustainable farms that generate revenue and livelihoods while regenerating the land and local communities.

  • Hear directly from youth leaders Ravin Patel and Norman Garcia-Lopez about their skills and experience with Growing Change

  • Stay tuned for the Growing Change youth-led DIY “Flip Your Prison” series on their YouTube channel and the “Prison Flip Toolkit” soon to be available on their website (where you can support their work by donating via their PayPal link)

Resources:

Youth Are Flipping an Abandoned North Carolina Prison into a Sustainable Farm

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LIFT Economy is an impact consulting firm whose mission is to create, model, and share a locally self-reliant economy that works for the benefit of all life.

Erin Axelrod is a Partner at LIFT Economy, helping to accelerate the spread of climate-beneficial businesses, specializing in businesses that address critical soil and water regeneration. She is an avid ecologist, grassroots organizer and regularly forages for wild food in her home in rural Sonoma County. You can follow Erin on Twitter @erinaxelrod or email her erin@lifteconomy.com.

Avi Lewis: A Message from the Future II: The Years of Repair

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Avi Lewis is an award-winning documentary filmmaker, journalist, and lecturer in Journalism and Media Studies at Rutgers University. His 25-year journalism career has spanned local news reporting to hosting and producing a variety of current affairs shows for television networks worldwide, to directing theatrically released documentaries, The Take and This Changes Everything, that premiered in festivals like TIFF and the Venice Biennale. In 2017, he co-founded and is now Strategic Director of The Leap – an organization launched to upend our collective response to the crises of climate, inequality and racism. He produced, and co-wrote with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the Emmy nominated short film, A Message from the Future and is producer and co-writer with Opal Tometi of the new short film, A Message from the Future II: The Years of Repair.

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Interview Highlights:

  • Avi shares the backstory on his film The Take, which highlights the surge of worker-owned cooperatives in Argentina and how he wound up co-founding The Working World with Brendan Martin (catch the interview with Brendan Martin on the Next Economy Now podcast here)

  • How Avi’s experience with The Leap Manifesto transformed him into an activist and inspired him to found The Leap

  • Avi humbly admits that he was slow to see that the climate crisis is not the overarching crisis but that it’s merely an expression of the multiple deeper social justice issues that give rise to it

  • Driving a vision of hope through a compelling collective vision that integrates justice movements globally through Avi’s and Opal Tometi’s new short film, A Message from the Future II: The Years of Repair

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LIFT Economy is an impact consulting firm whose mission is to create, model, and share a locally self-reliant economy that works for the benefit of all life.

Erin Axelrod is a Partner at LIFT Economy, helping to accelerate the spread of climate-beneficial businesses, specializing in businesses that address critical soil and water regeneration. She is an avid ecologist, grassroots organizer and regularly forages for wild food in her home in rural Sonoma County. You can follow Erin on Twitter @erinaxelrod or email her erin@lifteconomy.com.

Ian Haney Lopez: Fusing Race and Class, Winning Elections, and Saving America

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Ian Haney López is a law professor and commentator on coded racism in American politics. His most recent book is Merge Left: Fusing Race and Class, Winning Elections, and Saving America (New Press, Fall 2019).

Merge Left builds on his previous book, Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class (2014). That book anticipated the political tactics of Donald Trump by tracking the fifty-year history of politicians helping the new oligarchs through a strategy of racial divide-and-conquer.

Merge Left explains how the political exploitation of coded racism has evolved under Trump—and outlines an evidence-based approach on how to beat it. The evidence comes from the two-year race-class narrative research project involving focus groups and national polling. The main takeaway from the extensive research is that naming racism as a weapon of the rich and calling for coming together across racial lines proved to be the most effective way to defang the Right’s racial fear narratives and to build broad cross-racial support for racial justice as well as for economic populism.

Ian holds an endowed chair as the Earl Warren Professor of Public Law at the University of California, Berkeley, where he teaches in the areas of race and constitutional law.

Interview Highlights:

  • How Ian first got interested in the work he is doing today

  • The work of the Race-Class Project and how it identified a winning message

  • Why naming racism as a weapon of the rich and calling for cross-racial solidarity builds unity across the base and enlists the broad middle in supporting progressive dreams

  • What folks can do now to engage with this exciting new information

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LIFT Economy is an impact consulting firm whose mission is to create, model, and share a locally self-reliant economy that works for the benefit of all life.

Ryan Honeyman is a Partner at LIFT Economy and author of The B Corp Handbook: How to Use Business as a Force for Good (Berrett-Koehler Publishers). You can follow Ryan on Twitter @honeymanconsult or email him ryan@lifteconomy.com.

Doria Robinson & Princess Robinson: BIPOC Community Wealth Building at Cooperation Richmond

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Growing up with a mother who was an illegal resident from Samoa, a single parent of 4 children with no educational background, Princess Robinson was raised in a low income community in Richmond CA with little resources and an unstable home.

Now herself a mother, wife, Richmond resident, and community advocate, Princess Robinson has worked with Urban Tilth, as an environmental steward, restoring creek ecosystems and providing fresh locally grown produce in food deserts throughout Richmond.

After years of community service, neighborhood meetings, community boards, and serving in many initiatives working toward a Just Transition economy throughout her community (such as beautification projects, alternative housing solutions, and implementing sustainable practices through climate justice systems), as a returning college student, Princess graduated 2019 with 3 AA degrees in business, sociology, and liberal arts.

Currently, she serves as a Project Manager for Cooperation Richmond where she supports her community members develop and launch worker-owned cooperative businesses in their community.

Doria Robinson is a 3rd generation resident of Richmond, California and the Executive Director of Urban Tilth. She is also a cofounder of Cooperation Richmond, a Richmond-based, resident-led worker-owned cooperative developer and small loan fund that builds community controlled wealth through worker-owned and community-owned cooperative businesses and enterprises by and for low-income communities and communities of color in Richmond whose wealth has been extracted.

Doria is also a dedicated Food Sovereignty, Climate Justice and Just Transition Activist, as well as the co-convener of US Food Sovereignty Alliance Western Region and an active member of the Climate Justice Alliance and Richmond Our Power Coalition. Doria currently lives in the neighborhood where she grew up in Richmond with her wonderful 18-year-old twins.

Interview Highlights:

  • The genesis of Cooperation Richmond, from Urban Tilth to leveraging values-aligned enterprise through cooperative development that supports and really meets people where they’re at

  • Some background on the Seed Commons, spawned by The Working World, and it’s relationship with Cooperation Richmond

  • An overview of the racialized and economic history of Richmond California – from the impact of wartime industries to Chevron and the significance of these community efforts in that context

  • A call for listeners to create local loan funds or investment clubs that advance Cooperation Richmond’s model in your local community

Resources:

Urban Tilth

The Working World

Rich City Rides

Star Wyngz

Princess Robinson’s work w/ Wildcat Creek

Richmond Progressive Alliance

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LIFT Economy is an impact consulting firm whose mission is to create, model, and share a locally self-reliant economy that works for the benefit of all life.

Erin Axelrod is a Partner at LIFT Economy, helping to accelerate the spread of climate-beneficial businesses, specializing in businesses that address critical soil and water regeneration. She is an avid ecologist, grassroots organizer and regularly forages for wild food in her home in rural Sonoma County. You can follow Erin on Twitter @erinaxelrod or email her erin@lifteconomy.com.

Claudia Arroyo: Advancing Latina Economic Empowerment for the Benefit of All

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Next Economy Now highlights the leaders who are taking a regenerative, bio-regional, equitable, transparent, and whole-systems approach to using business as a force for good. 

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Claudia joined Prospera in August 2014 as a consultant, providing outreach, recruitment, and training services, and in January 2015 she joined the staff as the Training and Capacity Building Director. She has been a key member of the Program Team, designing all of Prospera’s new programs.

Claudia brings her passion for social justice and equality to her role. She has been an active leader in immigrant rights, gender and violence prevention, gay and queer rights, and health promotion for underserved communities for more than 15 years.

Using Popular Education, video editing, and culture, she has served the community by creating plays to denounce and prevent social and health problems. In 2010 she founded the Latino Coalition against domestic and gender violence, La Red Latina that brought together more than 35 organizations that serve, protect and empower Latina women in the Bay Area.

Claudia is also an entrepreneur and is the founder of a new cooperative business in the Laurel District of Oakland. As an immigrant woman, Claudia has experienced the challenges that are implied in coming to a new country. With a BA in Communications from el Tecnológico de Monterrey in Mexico, one of the most prestigious universities in Latin America, she worked for almost 10 years in the food industry as a waitress.

She recognizes that the immigrant community has a lot of challenges to face but at the same time, she also highlights its strength, power, wisdom, spirit and honesty! Hence, becoming a community worker has not been a choice but a need to demand equality and dignity in oppressed communities.

Interview Highlights:

  • How Claudia first got interested in the work she is doing today

  • How Prospera was started, and how it helps Latina entrepreneurs

  • Why cooperatives are central to economic empowerment

  • Challenges and opportunities for the Latinx community during COVID-19

  • How listeners can support Prospera and the  Latina Entrepreneur Resiliency Fund

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LIFT Economy is an impact consulting firm whose mission is to create, model, and share a locally self-reliant economy that works for the benefit of all life.

Ryan Honeyman is a Partner at LIFT Economy and author of The B Corp Handbook: How to Use Business as a Force for Good (Berrett-Koehler Publishers). You can follow Ryan on Twitter @honeymanconsult or email him ryan@lifteconomy.com.

Natalie Reitman-White: Restructuring Organically Grown Co. to a Perpetual Purpose Trust

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Next Economy Now highlights the leaders who are taking a regenerative, bio-regional, equitable, transparent, and whole-systems approach to using business as a force for good. 

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Natalie Reitman-White served as Vice President of Organizational Vitality and Trade Advocacy at Organically Grown Company, one of the largest independent distributors of organic produce in the country, where in 2018 she led an groundbreaking move to restructure the company ownership under a Perpetual Purpose Trust.

This initiative was featured in 2019 Fast Company’s World Changing Ideas, and Natalie was recognized as “a leading executive and change-maker in efforts to make food supply greener, healthier and equitable.”

She founded and served as the Executive Director of the Sustainable Food Trade Association (2008-12), she was on the faculty of the Institute for Sustainable Environment, serves on numerous advisory boards throughout the organic food sector.

Recently Natalie has shifted her focus to transformative finance and ownership models that ensure mission maximization, shared prosperity for multiple-stakeholders and lasting independence through growth or business transition.

In the last year she supported the launch of the Purpose Foundation to grow the movement toward a new paradigm of “steward-ownership” in the U.S. through field building, infrastructure development, and investment.

In 2020 she co-launched Alternative Ownership Advisors, is a Trustee of the Sustainable Food & Agriculture Purpose Trust, and is in Cohort 5 of the New Zealand Edmund Hillary Fellowship for Global Change Makers.

Interview Highlights:

  • Natalie’s background as an activist that informed her work to shift corporate behavior that is irresponsible to it’s stakeholders

  • Translating principles of regeneration in a farming context to a business context

  • Examining the purpose of a corporation and making a distinction between driving shareholder value and actual value

  • A background on Organically Grown Company’s mission, operations, and iterations of the company’s structure to be ever closer to the values that inform the mission

  • Organically Grown Company’s innovating on the Employee Owned Trust model by making it multi-stakeholder and anchoring it in the purpose of transforming food and agriculture – a “Perpetual Purpose Trust”

Resources:

Alternative Ownership Advisors: A Steward Ownership Consultancy

Fast Company: This company pioneered a new business structure to preserve its mission

Next City: Why Employee Ownership Wasn’t Good Enough for This Organic Food Company

The National Center for Employee Ownership

Christopher Michael: Could the Employee Ownership Trust Better Sustain Perpetual Employee Ownership?

Christopher Michael P.C. – Employee Ownership Law

The Climate Collaborative

Sustainable Food Trade Association

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LIFT Economy is an impact consulting firm whose mission is to create, model, and share a locally self-reliant economy that works for the benefit of all life.

Shawn Berry is a Partner at LIFT Economy, where he works as an organizational strategist inspired to harness the power of business to create resilient local economies as patterns to be documented, open sourced, scaled globally and adapted regionally.

Makani Themba: “Curing” What Truly Ails Us: Movement Strategy in the Time of Coronavirus

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Next Economy Now highlights the leaders who are taking a regenerative, bio-regional, equitable, transparent, and whole-systems approach to using business as a force for good. 

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Makani Themba is Chief Strategist at Higher Ground Change Strategies based in Jackson, Mississippi. A social justice innovator and pioneer in the field of change communications and narrative strategy, she has spent more than 20 years supporting organizations, coalitions and philanthropic institutions in developing high impact change initiatives.  Higher Ground Change Strategies provides her the opportunity to bring her strong sense of history, social justice and organizing knowledge, and deft movement facilitation skills  in support of change makers seeking to take their work to the next level.  Higher Ground helps partners integrate authentic engagement, systems analysis, change communications and more for powerful, vision-based change.

Previously, Makani served as the founder and executive director of The Praxis Project, a nonprofit organization helping communities use media and policy advocacy to advance health justice.  Under her leadership, The Praxis Project raised more than $20 million for advocacy organizations working in communities of color and provided training and technical assistance to hundreds of organizations and public agencies nationwide.  These initiatives include Communities Creating Healthy Environments (C-CHE), an initiative of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to support policy advocacy to advance healthy food outlets and safe places to play in communities of color and Building Capacity Building Power, a partnership with Ford Foundation to support grassroots civic engagement and Policy Advocacy on Tobacco and Health (PATH)

Makani is a highly sought-after public speaker, capacity builder, and trusted facilitator.  Her publications have helped set the standard for policy advocacy work and contributed significantly to the field of public health’s current emphasis on media and policy advocacy to address root causes of health problems.  

Makani has published numerous articles and case studies on race, class, media, policy advocacy and public health. She is co-author of Media Advocacy and Public Health: Power for Prevention, a contributor to the volumes We the Media, State of the Race: Creating Our 21st Century, along with many other edited book projects. Makani was chosen as one of “Ten Black Thinkers” asked to comment on Black conditions as part of the NAACP Crisis magazine’s 60th anniversary commemoration of the landmark article What the Negro Wants.  She is author of Making Policy, Making Change, and she has also co-authored with Hunter Cutting Talking the Walk: Communications Guide for Racial Justice and Fair Game: A Strategy Guide for Racial Justice Communications in the Obama Era (under The Praxis Project).

Interview Highlights:

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LIFT Economy is an impact consulting firm whose mission is to create, model, and share a locally self-reliant economy that works for the benefit of all life.

Kevin Bayuk, Co-founder and Partner at LIFT Economy, works at the intersection of ecology and economy where permaculture design meets next economy organizations intent on meeting human needs while enhancing the conditions conducive to all life. He is the Senior Financial Fellow at Project Drawdown and a founding partner of the Urban Permaculture Institute.  You can follow Kevin on Twitter @kevinbayuk or email him kevin@lifteconomy.com.

Eleanor Hancock: Before We Were White

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Next Economy Now highlights the leaders who are taking a regenerative, bio-regional, equitable, transparent, and whole-systems approach to using business as a force for good. 

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Director and co-founder of White Awake, Eleanor Hancock directs all of White Awake’s activities – from curriculum development and implementation, to organizational vision and strategy, to management of the daily functioning of the organization. She plays an integral role in the development of White Awake’s online courses, which engage hundreds of people in the work of White Awake each year. Her leadership grows out of years of experience as an academic, activist, artist, educator, and mom.

Eleanor holds an MFA from the University of Madison-Wisconsin, where she began a study of whiteness in the context of performance art, identity politics, and critical postmodern theory. She has trained directly with Joanna Macy in facilitation of the Work that Reconnects, served on the Steering and Accountability Team of the DC Chapter of Showing up for Racial Justice, and contributed to the work of the SURJ National Faith Leaders team.

Interview Highlights:

  • Eleanor’s background and how she first got involved in this work

  • How her organization, “White Awake,” first got started

  • A discussion of some of the key learnings from “Before We Were White,” one of White Awake’s core offerings

  • Why it is important for white folks to learn about the pre-Christian, earth-based, Indigenous European traditions of their ancestors

  • Her new course, “Solidarity and Intersectionality”

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LIFT Economy is an impact consulting firm whose mission is to create, model, and share a locally self-reliant economy that works for the benefit of all life.

Ryan Honeyman is a Partner at LIFT Economy and author of The B Corp Handbook: How to Use Business as a Force for Good (Berrett-Koehler Publishers). You can follow Ryan on Twitter @honeymanconsult or email him ryan@lifteconomy.com.

Lyla June: Indigenous Europe, Intersectionality, & the Value of Knowing Your Ancestors

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Next Economy Now highlights the leaders who are taking a regenerative, bio-regional, equitable, transparent, and whole-systems approach to using business as a force for good. 

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Lyla June is an Indigenous environmental scientist, doctoral student, educator, community organizer and musician of Diné (Navajo), Tsétsêhéstâhese (Cheyenne) and European lineages from Taos, NM.

Her dynamic, multi-genre performance and speech style has invigorated and inspired audiences across the globe towards personal, collective and ecological healing. Her messages focus on the climate crisis, Indigenous rights, supporting youth, inter-cultural healing, historical trauma and traditional land stewardship practices.

She blends her undergraduate studies in human ecology at Stanford University, her graduate work in Native American Pedagogy at the University of New Mexico, and the indigenous worldview she grew up with to inform her perspectives and solutions. Her internationally acclaimed performances and speeches are conveyed through the medium of prayer, hip-hop, poetry, acoustic music and speech. Her personal goal is to grow closer to Creator by learning how to love deeper.

Interview Highlights:

  • Lyla’s background and upbringing

  • How she first got into the work she is doing today

  • How being a person of intersecting racial and cultural identities has shaped her worldview

  • Why it is important for white folks to understand they have roots deeper than whiteness

  • Why she ran for office in New Mexico and the result of her seven day fast on the steps of the state capitol

  • Lyla’s recommendations on resources 

  • How folks can better support her work

*

This episode is brought to you by the Next Economy MBA.

What would a business education look like if it was completely redesigned for the benefit of all life? This is why the team at LIFT Economy created the Next Economy MBA (http://www.lifteconomy.com/mba).

The Next Economy MBA is a nine month online course for entrepreneurs and aspiring entrepreneurs who want to learn key business fundamentals (e.g., vision, culture, strategy, and operations) from an equitable, inclusive, and regenerative perspective. 

Join the growing network of nearly 250+ alumni who have learned essential skills, increased their confidence in Next Economy business fundamentals, and joined a lifelong peer group that is catalyzing a global shift towards an economy that works for all life.

Courses are offered in the Spring and Fall of each year. Learn more and/or register today at http://www.lifteconomy.com.mba.

*

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Jessica Norwood: The Power of Repair

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Next Economy Now highlights the leaders who are taking a regenerative, bio-regional, equitable, transparent, and whole-systems approach to using business as a force for good. 

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Jessica Norwood is founder of the Runway Project. She is also the executive director of the Emerging ChangeMakers Network, an organization dedicated to working with inspiring leaders and innovative ideas that end economic inequality. As a leading social entrepreneur in her region, she supports strengthening social enterprise and social investing as a way to build community resilience. Jessica previously spent years in Washington, D.C., and elsewhere, as a political fundraiser and consultant, raising millions of dollars for various campaigns. Jessica is a past member of the board of directors for the Highlander Research and Education Center, a former Emerging Leaders Fellow at the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University, and the Political Power Fellow with the Hip Hop Archive at the Du Bois Institute at Harvard University.

Interview Highlights:

  • How Jessica first got interested in the type of work she is doing today

  • How The Runway Project is supporting Black entrepreneurs with non-extractive finance

  • Jessica’s Buddhist practice and how it influences her work

  • How she is feeling about the Democratic Primary process so far

  • The individuals and organizations she most admires



This episode is brought to you by the Next Economy MBA.

What would a business education look like if it was completely redesigned for the benefit of all life? This is why the team at LIFT Economy created the Next Economy MBA (http://www.lifteconomy.com/mba).

The Next Economy MBA is a nine month online course for entrepreneurs and aspiring entrepreneurs who want to learn key business fundamentals (e.g., vision, culture, strategy, and operations) from an equitable, inclusive, and regenerative perspective. 

Join the growing network of nearly 250+ alumni who have learned essential skills, increased their confidence in Next Economy business fundamentals, and joined a lifelong peer group that is catalyzing a global shift towards an economy that works for all life.

Courses are offered twice per year. Learn more and/or register today at http://www.lifteconomy.com.mba.



If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It really helps expose these ideas to new listeners:

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/next-economy-now-business-as-a-force-for-good/id1074584017

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