How Change Happens: Stories & Insights from Social Justice Changemakers

On Disruption as a Form of Bridging — with Amanda Navarro & Michele Silver

• Create Knowledge • Season 1 • Episode 5

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I intended to release this episode back in January but switching podcast editors (welcome, Jessi DiBartolomeo!) and a few life detours threw a wrench in that that timeline. However, re-connecting with this conversation this month has been a joy and I am very grateful to have crossed paths with these two beautiful humans...

Join me as I think out loud with Amanda Navarro (she/her) and Michele Silver (she/her) of Convergence Partnership. We open with an interconnected discussion about listening, exploring what scares us, and different approaches to bridging in social change. From there we touch on topics including:

  • What it takes for people to share their stories and hear other people's stories;
  • De-centering whiteness as an active, ongoing practice;
  • Family and community relationships as key influencers of social change practice — and honoring everyday activists and movement leaders; and
  • A both/and approach to disruption and bridging rooted in love and respect.

You'll hear two stories of what Amanda and Michele learned from their early experiences of social change work that ended up perpetuating harm. And we'll unpack what Convergence Partnership is learning about what it takes to bridge philanthropy and frontline activism.

If you appreciate this podcast, please consider sharing it with a friend, colleague, or network, and/or leaving a review. I'm also always happy when people reach out to share feedback with me directly.

If this episode resonates with you...

  • Subscribe to the podcast using your favorite podcast app,
  • Support How Change Happens with ratings, sharing feedback with me, and/or by sharing it with a friend, colleague or network, 
  • Learn more about Convergence Partnership at www.convergencepartnership.org and hear directly from their inspiring grantees via their podcast episodes (funded by Convergence Partnership instead of requiring final grant reports!), and/or
  • Learn more about my (Kai's) change work at www.createknowledge.org, on Substack, and/or on LinkedIn.

References

Intro

SPEAKER_00

Welcome to How Change Happens, a podcast about social change, the messiness of praxis, and what emerges when our theories meet our day-to-day lives. I'm your host, Kai Fairley Hedrick, learning and change strategist, facilitator and coach, and founder of Create Knowledge, a consulting practice that helps change agents lead with their strengths. Today I am thrilled to be chatting with Amanda Navarro and Michelle Silver, respectively the Executive Director and Director of Programs at Convergence Partnership. Convergence Partnership is a funder collaborative and pooled fund that supports organizations building civic, narrative, or economic power. And all its efforts are oriented toward a North Star of ensuring communities, particularly those most impacted by structural racism, can exercise the power to shape decisions and direct resources and solutions that impact their health and lives. The fund invests in frontline people of color-led and staffed organizations and coalitions to build the long-term organizing infrastructure needed for local, state, and national change. And it is committed to influencing the philanthropic sector to dismantle systemic racism and better align behind community vision, leadership, and priorities, including functioning as a community of practice committed to reimagining the relationship between philanthropy and communities most harmed by racist policies and practice. Welcome, Amanda. Welcome, Michelle. How are you both today? Thank you.

SPEAKER_01

Good. Happy to be here with you and having this conversation. Yeah, thank you, Kai.

SPEAKER_03

Happy to be here today.

SPEAKER_00

Excellent. I'm just always curious as humans, like what we're bringing into this space. So I don't know if there's anything you would contribute. I will uh be upfront and honest that I have been caring for a kid with a flu all week. So I'm bringing a little bit of that frazzledness into the conversation. But very, very excited to be chatting with you all.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. Likewise. I'll I will um sharing your parenting tiredness load over here. We've been also through the ringer with illnesses. But today is a school day, so that's good.

SPEAKER_00

Uh freedom.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. Conversation without interruption.

SPEAKER_00

Lovely. Um anything else of your day that you just want to like name or bring in or yeah, similar.

SPEAKER_01

This I have the sniffles. Um, so I guess it's just part of what happens during the winter. So passing around germs.

How Amanda Believes Change Happens: Listening

SPEAKER_00

Oh, thank you for still coming. We are all in similar boats, it sounds like. So as you know, I ask uh each guest to bring some kind of object that symbolizes how they believe change happens. Uh, and we always kick off the episodes by chatting about what they chose and why, what was behind that choice. Uh and there's a bit of experiment today because you all are my first uh podcast episode where there's two guests. Um, and I think you both brought your own objects. So I will invite you both to share. What did you bring today?

SPEAKER_01

So I'm I'm holding my my earbuds. And while they're not particularly exciting in and of themselves, for me, they symbolize what I've learned time and again on the importance and the power of listening. When we choose to listen, and I mean truly listen, we create space for other persons' lived experience and to tell their story and that they feel seen, heard, and valued. And I think in a time and a culture where right now we're rewarding speaking out or asserting opinions or judgments, listening can seem passive or not important. But I actually think that listening is even more impactful because it lets someone else know that their story matters and their perspective matters. And I really feel like right now it may be difficult to be listening to others, especially if they differ in world views or perspectives. Um, but I think it's the most critical thing to do right now.

SPEAKER_02

Thank you for that.

How Michele Believes Change Happens: Facing What Scares Us

SPEAKER_03

So I have a stepped koala, um which is my son's, and it's one of those, I don't know if you've seen these online. I think they're in like the TikTok shop or something. Someone gave it to him as a gift last year, but it's you click on the foot, its belly starts going up and down like it's breathing, and there's like a warm light that turns on. It's sweet, and to him it's a little freaky, right? Like the thing that sweet with all of a sudden is like moving. And obviously it was given to him by somebody who, you know, loved him and wanted him to have something sweet and comforting. So he's had it for a little over a year. And just in the last few days, actually, he's been asking me on the morning, it's in his crib. And he like cuddles it in the morning, says good morning to it, and he's been asking me to turn it on. Push the little butt and turn it on. And then very quickly, turn it off, turn it off. Okay, and then on, and then it stays on for a little longer. Off. And we do that a few times and then I'm ready to get up. But I've been thinking about it so much because it's so interesting to watch this process with him, and you know, it's something he's scared of, but he wants to get more familiar with it, right? He wants to understand it a little bit more, and he's getting less and less scared with the more time that he gives himself to like see it turned on and watch so that it's not gonna do anything that's hurting him or startling him. And it's really made me think about what a huge part of that is of change, right? Like if we could all really take on our relationships to other human beings, our relationships to communities and cultures that are different than ours, opinions, political stances, as Amanda said, particularly in this moment. I think more often than not, we find our like shared humanity with people. We find that things aren't as scary as we maybe first thought they were, or aren't quite as foreign or different as maybe we thought they were at first. So it's just been really cool to watch this like young mind figuring that out without like any intellectual heaviness or context, right? Like he's just exploring this thing that scares him a little bit. Yeah. So I'm just I'm trying to carry that with me.

SPEAKER_00

So I hear, I'm gonna ask you to hold your objects up in a second, I'll describe them. But I um yeah, I hear that like exploring and experimentation and what you're describing. I also, it's interesting that my head went to like it. I heard him kind of testing his agency. Like I get to say when it goes on and when it goes off. And I mean, as part of being in our agency, right? Like feeling the power to actually do things and make change also is key.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, I love that.

On Bridging, Defensiveness & Agency

SPEAKER_00

So can you hold the objects up and I'll just I'll quickly describe them. And then for anyone who's listening and wants to see them themselves, they can go to the podcast website um and see photos. But so we've got, I'll start with the earbuds. They're in, you've got like the white case. And I love that they're kind of like there's a it's a really common item. It's not like it's possible. Like listening is something we all can do. You know, most of us have a pair of earbuds. There's something about that that like sparked for me that I really appreciated. And then the koala, it's sort of a fuzzy gray with a brown nose and a white belly that, as you said, goes up and down. I kind of want to ask you to turn it on now because I'm curious. Oh, and it glows too. Yeah, that might freak me out a little bit too. Um, and yeah, big ears and he's sleepy, which is sweet. The other thing I heard across what you both shared was you both spoke to difference. And I think it makes sense given what convergent partnership focuses on too. I heard you both speak to bridging. I see you both smiling and nodding. I have like two questions in my head. One is, did you know what you each had brought today? Just out of curiosity. Oh no, interesting. So I'd love to hear what you even think of each other's objects. And then if you have a little bit more you want to say around that idea of bridging, open up a little bit of space for that.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I love the koala bear. And I think in the relationship that Michelle and I have for all these years, uh, Michelle always brings something new that for me always enlightens me, makes me think differently about myself or the world or the work. So I always appreciate what she brings that expands me and helps me to grow.

SPEAKER_02

No fair, you got to go first.

SPEAKER_03

Um thank you. First of all, I will say I am not at all surprised um when Amanda and I speak, read from the same page, speak from the same page. It happens all the time and it's a wonderful thing. And I love the earbud example, and it's it's interesting, Amanda, that you chose to say what that was about me, because that's what I was thinking about you. The way that you reflect on things and like synthesize and analyze brings a depth of wisdom and experience and expertise and like deep thought that you've been cultivating over many, many years. And so my experience of working with you is that I just get to like that's the air that I get to breathe with you. And, you know, you've been teaching me for almost a decade now, which is really unbelievable. And I think to the bridging piece, you know, Amanda and I are both people who have taken on very intentional work personally to be the kind of human beings that can be in communication with anybody in a way that makes a difference, the end goal being that things are better, right? If it's a conversation, a relationship, a city, a country, uh, whatever, right? Like at any scale, but knowing that that, you know, it starts with us, right? And who we're going up as in the States. And so I think that theme of listening, engaging, bridging, whatever, you know, words we want to use to describe that space, I think is is not by accident.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah, I I would add bridging can mean so many different things. The thing that comes up for me around bridging is the intentionality of understanding where people are, what is either motivating them or holding them back, and then really identifying that gap to then figure out what is the opportunity to bridge. And sometimes in our work, the bridge might be a conversation among community members around racial tensions, and that's happening in the work that we're doing, around uh healing from a traumatic event. Bridging could also be bringing together groups that had never worked before. So bridging people, ideas, concepts, perspectives is part of what is um really seeding or or grounding our work around narrative change and community narrative power, because in order for everyone to feel like they have agency to share their own story, that they also are intentionally or not also creating and building bridges with other people because they're starting to see what's happening over there and not just what's happening here with me.

SPEAKER_00

I love that. Yeah, there's two places that's making my brain go. What am I trying to think? There's one thing you said around like meeting people where they're at, which actually reminded me of like you offering the koala and then like, nope. There was something like that. It's as simple as, you know, we do it with the child, but it's also like when we can show up that way in life and like kind of test and like, okay, it's not the time to do more than this, right? But this is where we can get to. So there's something around you're making me think of yeah, the opportunities of timing and the other thing that came to mind, and I feel like it's going to be a little bit of test in my early training, but uh, as you were talking, Amanda, I am uh training with my local mediation center and transformative mediation. And one of the things you made me think of was the framework that underlines the practice or underlies the practice, sorry, is about kind of shifting folks from this place we often start at in conflict, which is this place of feeling kind of defensive and disempowered. And it comes from this kind of often a sense of like weakness or vulnerability, right? And we ironically, we often focus on other people, but it's coming from like we're very caught up in our own experience in our story. And the sort of practice is intended to help folks make a shift over into being in their agency, which we've talked about already, right? And being able to operate from like a position of strength or feeling like they have the power to do things, which at the same time opens us up, as you were saying, to being responsive to other people, right? Being able to listen or to hear, and that there's there's real power in being able to make that shift. I don't know if that I hear you nodding or hear you, I see you nodding. I don't know if that resonates with you and your work at all. Or if there's anything that pings for you.

SPEAKER_03

Um yeah, I mean, that really resonates. I think you just described, I think, a conversation that Amanda and I have all the time when we're looking at what's working and what's not working. And almost always there's something over here with us, us as a team, each of us as individuals, whatever, that we can look at, right? That we have the power and the agency to shift, or an action that we can take, or a conversation that we can reach out and create that can move things. And you know, I think we're just we collectively as a society, I think we're so naturally I don't know if we're inclined or we're just trained and sort of socialized to be this way, to just like be looking over there, right? Like we're always pointing the finger over there.

SPEAKER_00

Trying to like it's power over, trying to control what's over there, right?

SPEAKER_03

Like, yeah, exactly. And I, you know, I think we've both really discovered the the freedom, right, that comes with the willingness to be responsible because that's sort of the pathway to to agency. And inside all of that, I think there's this undoing of all that yucky stuff that you were describing, right? The defensiveness, the reactivity. And I'm not saying, you know, I'm not putting myself on a pedestal by any means. I have reactions with the best of them and get defensive with the best of them, but have access to tools, right? That, you know, I I think I should speak from what I was saying. We've both seen the power of, you know, slowing down and choosing to use those tools, you know, in personal lives and in the work.

Amanda's Change Lineage: Her Father's Legacy (Every Person Counts, Let No One Be Silenced)

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. This is maybe a nice segue. I'd like to ask folks about their, I call it their change lineage, how you became the people who operate that way. Um, and so I would love to hear actually, there's probably many things, but if there were a couple or a handful that uh sort of stick out to you as really formative in sort of shaping how you think about and approach change work or social change work, I'd love to hear who or what those things are. And they can be a wide variety. So, like, as an example, I'll offer like mine would include like um my mom was an activist, an artist, an educator who like absolutely you can see her fingerprints all over the way I work and influence. And it would include sort of a headier like the systems work I do and systems practice and that kind of orientation to the world and social change. I have a bookshelf which I feel like is half my brain, and all the time find myself looking over and um going back to Kazu Hago's book, Healing Resistance, uh, which was just really, really influential for me in thinking around like change at a personal and interpersonal level, particularly around like accountability and and harm and healing. So, yeah, a few examples of like can be really anything, but what what sort of shaped your your thinking and your practice?

SPEAKER_01

For me, my father comes up for me. Um he was a community advocate and worked in local government. Um, but it was actually just I'll share one story. After he retired from local government, he went to serve as a regional director for the Census Bureau. He was going around the a part, a region of um Texas. And I remember him coming home and talking to my mom and hearing him say how his the higher-ups were telling him to not go to particular communities, particularly unincorporated communities. So those are communities on the outskirts of the city that are not incorporated into the municipal grid. So these are communities that have no running water, no paved streets, maybe a stoplight. The closest hospital is 30 miles away. So when he still chose to go and count and help everyone be counted in the census, help them fill out the application, all of that. I just really heard in him the importance of letting every person know that they matter, that every person counts. It took him courage, but also a conviction to say I'm not gonna let anyone be dismissed or anyone be silenced. And so I've really carried his legacy and his values uh with me.

SPEAKER_00

I guess I can see that in the object you brought too. There's something about that, like that listening and seeing people and acknowledging people.

SPEAKER_03

So I have there's sort of two big ones that come to mind immediately, although there are many. Um Vegas is my grandmother. Both of my grandmothers were incredible, and my paternal grandmother, she and my grandfather were Holocaust survivors. They came they came from Europe in 1950, I think. Sorry, Dad, if I got that wrong. And they went straight to Oakland, California. And um she was an incredible person. She her entire life was about being a fit. And she was one of the most optimistic and grateful human beings I've ever met in my entire life. Uh my grandfather was very different. Like they had, you know, went through very similar traumas and came out with very different perspectives on in the world. And it was always so inspiring to see you know have a different different connotation today, but she was like a super proud American, right? Like her ability to achieve citizenship and you know, overcome everything she had was was such a big deal for her and and the freedom that she had. But what I got from that, and I was also raised in a very progressive and I think beautiful Jewish community, very focused on social justice. And so what I've gotten from that is that when we say never again, the Jewish community says never again about it's never again to anybody. It was interesting because I I had to there was sometimes a disconnect with my grandmother, right? That she couldn't always see how her life inspired the work that I do, which isn't in the Jewish community, right? And and before she died, she was really able to understand that, and it was a beautiful arc of conversations that we got to have. But that has just been a core of my identity, you know, for as long as I had the ability to have some conscious thought about it. Um, but there was this piece that I couldn't fully make sense of for myself, and it started to come together for me in college when I took a class, it was a one of my majors was sociology, and I took a class on the study of whiteness. And it was fascinating. Brilliant professor. The most confronted I have ever been at that, you know, up until that point in my life. But what it gave me access to was language and understanding of yes, I came from this family that overcame a lot, but I was born into a family that had overcome, right? That had succeeded. And here I am now a woman who presents white, blonde hair, blue eyes, but really understanding like what that meant in terms of my lived experience, not being somebody who has been oppressed. And I just didn't have access to that in terms of what that then meant my responsibility is for how I relate to the world that I live in and the privilege that I have that hasn't been earned. And and so those two things put together, I think started to give me a grounding for what could this look like if I'm committing, you know, my life's work to never again to anybody. And what's the responsible role for me to come in and play as a white ally, a Jewish ally, you know, whichever identity slice you wanna you wanna pick.

SPEAKER_00

I wanna offer like what does that look like in the context that I am in and living in?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. Absolutely. And I think, you know I don't think these conversations are ever done or should be done. I think, you know, people who hold privilege and are choosing want to be responsible for that. It requires constant conversation, dialogue, and to Amanda's point listening, right? Like my job more often than not is just to listen because it's not what I've lived.

SPEAKER_00

You're nodding, Amanda. I'm curious was that if that pings anything for you, or you're just agreeing.

On Processing Bias & De-Centering Whiteness

SPEAKER_01

I I'm well partly agreeing. Um because the the the other thing I would add to that is yeah, there's a a journey that you know each of us or Michelle and I have have taken personally that includes our professional careers. But I think that what brings us together in this work is us working on our own awareness and consciousness of the assumptions, stereotypes, biases that we all carry with us, but being really intentional about raising them, acknowledging them, and then up in whatever form or fashion we do, putting them aside so that we really can be present to the work and to our communities. And for me, it's similar in the sense that, you know, I'm a third-generation Mexican-American. I'm what many would consider white passing. So I don't dismiss the privilege that I had growing up and in a middle class family and having the education that I had. But that kind of uh sense of who you are, what you're carrying with you, your history, but also the idea of like, okay, what does it mean to as a woman of color de-centering whiteness in everything that we do, um, not falling into those traps. It's just an it's an active practice. And that active practice is essential, is the work as well.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah, I appreciate that. Because everything is in place to push us toward it.

SPEAKER_02

Exactly.

On Everyday Leaders & How Our Relationships Shape Our Social Change Work

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. You know, it's so interesting to me. I ask this question on most episodes, and especially kind of in the spaces we work in, I'm sure it'll resonate for you, right? There's always, we're always circulating articles about how to do social change work, right? And what we have learned and a new framework. And don't give me I love a framework. I love the the way it ordered, puts everything in order. But almost everyone names a family member.

SPEAKER_02

Wow.

SPEAKER_00

There's something really interesting to me about like when we when we open up that question about like where we learned how to do change work and like where the sort of formative things come from. So much of it, I mean, to almost to the points you raised in the beginning as you were sharing your objects, like so much of it is comes out of this relational space of like the people we came from and the people we work with and the people we know and the way we're doing the practice. I mean, as you were saying, like every day working to decenter whiteness, right? Like what that looks like to do it in um collaboration with other people and what we learned from that. So one of the things I was curious about when I started this podcast, like what would come up. And it's been a really strong theme, which has for me raises questions of like, what does that mean for how we talk about social change work? You know, and the kind of very academic way we often approach it. I don't know if that pings anything for you.

SPEAKER_01

I think Michelle and I might be thinking the same thing, but it actually raises for me the and what we've been seeing in our work through Convergence Partnership is there's so many leaders and there's so many influencers, and I'm saying that outside of the social media realm. People in our lives, in our communities that are having such an impact because of who they are, how their courage, what they're leading us to do, and moving us in different ways. And sometimes I think we forget or we just focus on those that have the biggest media presence. And what we have learned time and again is that there are hundreds of unknown, lesser-known leaders of the work and the movements, and they're critical. So right now, the idea of collective leadership can come from anyone and everyone. And actually, just a really quick story: some of the work that we've been supporting in Kansas includes actually a community organization printing, publishing coloring books for kids. It's a brilliant idea because not only do they elevate the leaders that we know, right? Martin Luther King, so many others in communities, Dolores Huerta, so many others. And there's space in that coloring book for children to draw leaders in their communities. So it can be their grandfather, it could be their sister, it could be an uncle. It helps connect in the ways in sort of dismantling the idea that a leader looks a certain way or is in a certain position of power.

SPEAKER_00

I love that. That's very cool. That makes me want to like make my list of influences and just like list every person I've ever collaborated with.

On a Both/And Approach to Disruption & Bridging

SPEAKER_03

I mean, I was gonna say small, but it's not small, you know, it's just it's not necessarily someone who wrote a book, but well, and I think to your point, Kai, about almost everybody talks about a family member and inside, you know, what Amanda just shared. I think more and more we're learning. I mean, yes, I think lots of us love a good framework. And it is the relationship, right? Whether it's inside your family, in your community, the people, your colleagues, the people you're collaborating with, the people you're in coalitions with, people who you, you know, go to the pool with in the summer, whatever, right? Wherever it is that human beings are being in contact with each other, it is those relationships that ultimately inspire change or not. There's just a lot to be said for what's possible if we're like really intentional about that relational piece.

SPEAKER_00

I want to shift to asking, because I know I asked you to also bring a story, but there's something, because the bridging theme is so strong in our conversation, there's something that I sometimes it's the right word. I don't know if it's I'm always kind of grappling with or checking myself on, but I'm curious to know what you all would think of it. So sometimes I do my my inclination is often more towards bridging, although I have definitely had my disruptive periods of making change. But I do sometimes have a question when I fall into bridging of like, am I picking a sort of softer route, right? Like, should I be pushing or challenging or disrupting, you know, versus making this, you know, kind of move? And it reminds me, I am in the middle reading in a very ADHD fashion, jumping around. Um I'm gonna blank on the author's name, but the book Solidarity that came out, the history of solidarity. And one of the things I talk about is sort of the the idea of solidarity is um the tension inside of it as both like as a concept, it was about like kind of solidarity social glue, but also it's about like building solidarity to get a big enough base to be able to like leverage your power, right? So there's a there's a piece of it that is disruptive, and about you have to kind of define an opposition, or you're defining an opposition. But then the tension of like, how do you do that in a way that doesn't other so much that you can't eventually invite some of those folks in to build your base? You're not like so. I I feel this constant, this tension of like between that like bridging and disruption, bridge, you know, like and and maybe I'm making assumptions about disruption as being something that interferes with relationship, and I have to think about that. But I'm curious if that resonates with you all, that just that that I that tension and that I would call it sometimes the maybe the insecurity that I feel when I, you know, want to default to a bridging stance. Does that make sense? You can say no. That was I was talking my way into my question.

SPEAKER_03

I think that totally makes sense. I mean, I certainly, you know, do not have an answer. And I think we are to your point about the question you just raised about like are you forcing these two things to be separate? I think culturally we are in many ways trained to not bring disruption and conflict into spaces that we want to be, you know, good relationship, whatever that. We want things to be pleasant or agreeable or whatever. And that sometimes we think that that's what you know the pathway to success requires. I think there's something really powerful inside unpacking this idea of like these two things can exist together. We can be caring and loving and accountable and responsible and all of these wonderful things to each other and ourselves and our values while also standing for a future that we all deserve, which requires disrupting things that are not what people are way less than what people deserve and really problematic at at best. You know, and I think to me this also goes back to that courage or bravery piece that we talked about, right? Like we have to be brave enough to have to do anything, which I believe it requires us being brave enough to envision something I mean, dramatically different than what we have now. And that's too big for any one group, however you wanna group folks to build alone.

SPEAKER_01

I agree with Michelle in that it I think it's a both and and not an either-or. You can be a disruptor and still come from a place of love and respect and be a a bridge, a bridger, bridge bridge building. Um and in some ways it's sort of like one at times I think you you have to interrupt or disrupt something that you know is not good for anyone, it's not good for the greater good, and you disrupt because in I mean, another way to say it is you can that's a way to press pause. It's a way to help to slow the conversation down or the work down so that you can put it on its on the right track. So I I think one goes with the other. For us, I would say that I'm pretty proud. And in the work and the and the groups that we work with, we both work to build bridges and we are disruptors in the utmost loving and respectful way to get to where we want to be.

On What Amanda Learned From Social Change Work That Perpetuated Harm

SPEAKER_00

It's funny you said that's as you were talking my head, I was like, what does disruption look like as a form of care? I feel like is where you got to. Yeah. Thank you. That's it's something I still I yeah, I appreciate you kind of thinking with me on that one. Because I I grapple with it a lot. Um, I feel like that's also a nice segue, maybe, to sharing the story that you all brought. I know I ask folks to also prep it's a story of like change work that you've been involved in that shifted something about how you think about change or changed something about you as a person. So I might open up some space to for you to share what that made you think of.

SPEAKER_01

It's so funny when Michelle and I were actually reflecting on this question together yesterday, I was laughing because I said to her, well, what actually comes to mind are all the experiences and the different settings I've worked in where of how social change doesn't happen when you do think a certain way. And actually how how some of those experiences show that you could actually do the opposite, right? You could actually create harmful change, not positive change. So being really clear about the type of change that you're creating is important. I'll share one brief story. Early on in my career, I'm I'm my background is in public health, and I worked for academia and research institutions for a number of years. One of the many projects I worked on was a public health intervention for women of color who were experiencing increased rates of HIV from their partners. And so we received funding from the health department to provide an intervention that, of course, included surveys, focus groups, all of that. I noticed certain things like the steps in the process where I wondered, huh, is that really what is going to get us the outcome that we want? Well, the first one was the curriculum that was developed, was developed in a room with academics, none of which represented the community that we were, that was part of our research study, which led then to a curriculum that was culturally inappropriate and insensitive. And what it did was when we saw the findings, is that instead Yeah. Surprise, surprise. Exactly. I mean, this is this is one of many stories like this, right? Seeing the changes that we wanted to make in healthier choices or outcomes, we were actually seeing the perpetuation of internalized racism and division in the community. And then last but not least, then the question around who owns data, right? And the findings of this. I pushed for having the data be owned by the community and have it go back to the community. The response was, we're just going to use it to publish a paper. They don't need to see it, move on to the next intervention, right? So that experience really got me to see how we can actually do so much harm when we're not conscious about the fact that there are inequities, there are divisions. I was someone as a as a research assistant, I thought I was coming into doing these surveys in focus groups like I'm Amanda. You know, everyone will just see me as Amanda. Instead, they were seeing me as a representative of that research institution that had a very long history of harming communities of color. The community members were seeing me that way. Then I knew that the only way to move forward was to put the agenda down, put the survey down, let the ego go, and just listen. And again, we come back to the same thing that we started with is just to listen to their experience of the history of abuse by this research institution and and others. So I I share that as part of my awakening to how social change can cause harm rather than cause good. And that's where I've always been very aware of.

SPEAKER_00

The strategies we choose. Can I ask what the listening shifted? Like I imagine some for you personally a lot. I'm curious also within the project what the result of that was.

Side Step: On What It Takes to Bridge Philanthropy & Frontline Activism

SPEAKER_01

So I'll never forget uh sitting at a community clinic, health clinic, with uh the head of a women's community group. And I sat with her for about two and a half hours for her just telling me every instance where she had experienced an interaction with this institution and the harm that they had caused, the community group and the community. I didn't say very much. I acknowledged the harm. I validated her experience. And then when there was an opening started the conversation about how can we, how can I, as the individual or I representing this institution, help to rebuild that trust with this group. That started many conversations before we even got to the project. And that's what needed to happen. And the institution was open to that direction? I would say the the faculty that were head of the project, yes, and there were still a time crunch. Yeah. You had your pocket within which to work. But it's the same thing that we see in philanthropy, right? When we say we really want to, we care, we're listening, we hear you when you say we need, you need unrestricted dollars for 10 years, and we come back with, oh, I heard you, uh, we'll give you X amount for two years, and we expect you to have all these outcomes by the end of those two years. Sometimes I think it really takes the acceptance of, oh, this may actually not move forward because it can't until world trust is rebuilt. And uh a lot of people aren't comfortable with that.

SPEAKER_00

I wonder if I can take a sidestep here, because something about where you've gone pings with something I was curious to ask you all. And then I want to circle back. So you you brought a story as well, right, Michelle? Yeah. Yeah. So one of the things, and we've talked about bridging already. It was, you know, it's funny I wrote this question down before even knowing what objects you would bring. But I'm really interested in the way, you know, you you are functioning as a bridge between philanthropy and frontline organizations. And you are, you know, navigating all that is involved, including the power dynamics of like that kind of collaboration. And I'm I'm just curious, what are you learning? I think about like what it takes to do that work. I know that's a huge question.

SPEAKER_01

But I think the response is disrupting. And here's here's how. Um so we started with disrupting the way we had always been doing grant making. So we started disrupting our our our normal practices or processes that are commonplace in philanthropy. So we disrupted the way that we asked groups to apply to get funding. We disrupted the way that we asked for reporting, actually didn't ask for any reporting. We provided something to the community instead, rather than extracting from them. Those are the podcasts.

SPEAKER_00

Yes. That you funded. Yeah. Awesome. Where folks were, instead of a final report, they were able to create a podcast about their work.

SPEAKER_01

Um it was disrupting ourselves. So again, Michelle and I, and all the work that we've done in our own individual professional personal development has been disrupting the usual ways of operating, right? Which is some ways sometimes feels like you're going upstream when everything else is going in a different direction. You're like, wow, okay, or sometimes you're hitting your head up against a wall. But you understand that a transformation actually really does begin to be realized when you keep disrupting the inherent ways that we've been trained that actually don't lead us to the types of outcomes that we want. So disruption is to me the best, the best way to go.

SPEAKER_00

Do you want to add anything to that, Michelle?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah, I mean, I think I think that's spot on. And I think the other piece that we've really had to tone for ourselves as skills is one of translation. And I think this goes back to everything we've already talked about in terms of who you are as a human being communicating with other human beings, your ability to listen and sort of really get what someone is saying without your own stuff coloring that in whatever way. And that means I think that Amanda, you tell me if this isn't true, but I think it's safe to say, I think it's easier for us to really get our grantee partners, right? Like to really get over in the world that they're living in and hear their challenges, concerns, frustrations, needs, etc. Wins, all of it. And I think we've gotten very good at translating that back to philanthropy in a way that is authentic, but powerful in the way that philanthropy needs it to be. where I think we still have work to do, although it's not something we don't do, is having that same level of understanding, I don't know, maybe empathy with our colleagues and partners in philanthropy, like really understanding where each person as an individual, maybe not so much at the institutional level, but as an individual is coming from, what they care about, what they're committed to, and also the pressures, right, that they're dealing with. They have jobs and bosses and boards and all of these things that they also have to manage. And so I think, you know, we have this beautiful vision for for what we think it could and should look like to just move resources to people in communities doing great work with, you know, ease and trust and power and all of that. And there's a reason that it's, you know, taking time for philanthropy to sort of undo itself and start transforming some of these practices. And it's happening at very different scales in different places. And so I think having some compassion for the fact that change takes time, you know, the fact that change is a process and not just a decision, not just a like, we want to do things differently, you say yes, okay now go. You know, all of that I think we can accelerate it. I think we probably should and need to accelerate it as a you know the field of philanthropy. But change takes time. And so yeah, I think just that piece of like what does it really look like to to truly listen to all of the partners around the table and still be holding your values and the ultimate outcome that you know not sort of not compromising right on the out at all. But still being able to like bring everybody along in the conversation.

SPEAKER_00

I hear something like in what you're talking about too around like relating to philanthropy as people you talked about individuals and also when we I think was it you Amanda who had said a question like what we mean by change too of like what what's within different people's power to move forward, right? What pieces of change and how do we coordinate that and push but also not hold people accountable for things that are outside of their control. That's what I'm I see both nodding.

SPEAKER_03

And support others to you know if it's out of your control and you want to go be the disruptor what does that look like for us? To 100% have somebody's back, right? Like convergence has got to go, right? And that you know goes back to what Amanda was talking about in terms of just this trust building peace. I mean it's it's just all over the work. You know, we need to have established trust between ourselves and the funders that are part of convergence. They the funders who sit around that table need to trust each other to collaborate and strategize and share honestly about what's going on in their own institutions when they have challenges there, you know, I mean it's just in every way trust is the foundation for us to move anything.

SPEAKER_00

You're making me think of my it's like my go-to it's just like lives in a certain part of my brain very close to the front of from um Kazuhaga's book, the quote around accountability that like when we talk about holding people accountable, the emphasis should be on the holding, not the accountable. How do we hold people so they can hold themselves accountable in a way that supports them to do that.

SPEAKER_01

And part of that disrupting and bridging is our uncomfortable conversations.

SPEAKER_00

I was going to say hold people and ourselves through all the uncomfortable emotions of impatience and frustration and anger.

SPEAKER_01

Yes, all of that. And we have experienced that you know I think at the end of the day everyone sitting around the table just wants to s see the very best where all children and families are flourishing and thriving where we actually get to see a healthy democracy and communities coming together and and I know that we're all holding the same thing. And yes then when we're sitting in different positions of power or different positions, right, that's when the difficulties or the challenges come in. So being able to listen being able to translate interpret see where that gap is to then bridge is the messy part of how change happens. And sometimes in this position you as staff of Convergence partnership there's tends to be sometimes this feeling of well you know you can't really push on the funders right can't very say say too much or push back. And so as we're holding that power dynamic and imbalance we're also trying to hold all these other things but and the power dynamic piece is I come back to the disruption is that when you can interrupt something that is going the same direction on the same track that it's always gone on, you're you know what's going to happen at the end. But to interrupt and stop it then get on a different track it's kind of scary and and not because you know this is the right thing that has to happen in order for a different change to happen. And so we've had instances where you know we thought we were all on the same page about what certain approaches mean to the work and we weren't. And so in the midst of a grant making process we had to interrupt and get a a particular foundation to move onto a different track and change their approach and let them know why. And it was a big deal. I mean this was something they had not done before this was and also in part big deal because this was changing support of legacy grantees and that's that can be a whole other conversation but it required them in their own way to take a risk to do something different that they've never done before. However I will say that the outcomes of that and the impact to where they are now that is real transformation of what we're seeing. It's just incredible what that one difficult conversation that had to take place to just pivot and reframe things, the difference in what we're seeing happening on the ground in these communities in my head you're I say like I feel like there needs to be a part two because I'm also watching the time and I really want space for Michelle's story.

SPEAKER_00

So I'm gonna restrain myself from like going, I want to ask you so many more questions about that. Yes, I have so many questions around like just how you approached, you know, without needing to share the details of the conversation but like how you approach that difficult conversation and but yeah Michelle I would love to uh sort of turn it back to you and create space for you to share the story that you brought about something, an experience that shifted your thinking about change.

SPEAKER_03

Sure, yeah and I don't I don't need to go into a ton of detail because it's actually not surprisingly very similar to Amanda's and I keep looking at I just want to share I keep looking at this post-it that I've had on my desk for years that from something that a a friend of mine shared in a conversation with me many years ago and it's to me encapsulates this whole conversation we're having which is compassion is an act is an action. It's not a feeling it's not a sentiment right like true compassion is actually an action that you take to be over there with someone else. And I think everything that Amanda was just talking about and sharing particularly this example that she's talking about was the epitome of compassion as an action compassion for the ultimate priority which was the communities being served and invested in. But also compassion for the people who were part of the process that needed disrupting um and so really you know and as you said right the the holdings part holding everybody through those messy conversations resulted and and I I don't mean to spark more questions and curiosity you have about this when we're trying to move on but you know I mean to Amanda's point we're talking about like tens of millions of dollars is the different result. As a result of these messy conversations going in very important places. This was not a small transformation.

SPEAKER_00

Again, I think compassion accountability all of those things are really at the the heart of that I don't know the place my head goes to too is like the ability and willingness to risk right that is the risk of difficult conversations or disruption that they people are not in a place where they can move through them and then what happens to that investment. Yeah but also what happens if we don't have the conversation right the risk both way.

On What Michele Learned From Social Change Work That Perpetuated Harm

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. Yeah and I think you know all of the value that we place invergence partnership Amanda and I, the funders who are part of it on disrupting historical power dynamics I think is really informed by Amanda and I both have backgrounds as researchers. And so that's also where my story is from and it's also a story of getting really clear on what doesn't work.

SPEAKER_00

And I love that you both went there too you do work together all the time.

SPEAKER_03

Yes we really do. But it was just another I mean I was doing I was managing an evaluation research project of a healthy food initiative in several neighborhoods of New York City that was also happening nationally but we were responsible for the the New York part of the evaluation as part of an academic institution. And it was another you know designed behind closed doors I mean obnoxiously long survey the hours for people to complete and maybe they got a five dollar subway card for it. Which we thought was just great. Well we I didn't think it was great but you know and some focus groups where people got some snaps right like not not groundbreaking. So what became immediately clear particularly in facilitating focus groups where you're actually just getting to be in relationship with people and have conversations is, you know, to Amanda's point, right? Like script goes out the door, questions go out the door, agenda goes out the door, you've got to meet people where they are and it ended up being these unbelievably beautiful conversations of people sharing so many stories that come from their relationship to food whether that's their access to food their ability to eat healthy food their knowledge of food their family's history right like food is is everywhere for us as humans. And so naturally that topic is gonna like pull threads on you know from lots of different things but and then all of those beautiful stories went nowhere right like these people like gifted like me, us, anybody who had the privilege to get to read these write-ups or these transcripts so much history and storytelling and it lived nowhere, right? Like it's on a server somewhere in a document. And it certainly didn't influence the work. It for sure didn't influence the way those communities were then invested in in the future how much in what ways whatever. And frankly being in in the role of evaluator even though we were having conversations with the community which yes we should be talking to community ultimately the you know entity being evaluated were these grassroots organizations in each of these neighborhoods who had been given this grant to implement this work. And so any result that showed people aren't buying leafy greens every single day now because of your interventions, right? Lynn, that's a ding against that organization, not the way the funding was designed, not the way the initiative was designed by a bunch of funders at a national foundation thousands of miles away from any of these neighborhoods. So it was just a very it was a very clear message to me that this was not where I was going to be making the change that I was interested in and what that has continued to evolve into in my thinking around this work is just always looking for where power needs to be flipped on its head. I mean one of I'll never forget one of the conversations I had in one of these communities was why don't universities have to apply to the community, right? Why don't foundations have to apply to us to give us money like do we want your money? I don't know. To me it's like oh my gosh duh that's so common sense but in the moment it was such a profound question, you know, like such a massive paradigm shift and it really got me to like be on the hunt for where else because you know our sector it wasn't is full of blind spots where there you know things are right for total lifts.

SPEAKER_00

You're also making me think right of this idea and an evaluation of like we we study down, right? But like why don't we study up and you both actually in your stories you both went to what wasn't working, what the barriers were in the system, right? Which is a like to see those you have to look up you have to study up you have to look at the institution at the way the funding was designed.

SPEAKER_03

Exactly and I think you know it goes back to the conversation we had about responsibility right like I mean it's kind of a crude saying but the fish stinks from the head.

SPEAKER_00

So like studying out where is that from I've heard that in a couple different places the fish bots from the head down or something like that, right?

SPEAKER_03

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

I'm so curious about the origins of that phrase.

SPEAKER_03

Right? I know I have never looked into it but it does it always works for me when I invoke you know what I mean? Like it always gives me the the message that I that I'm needing to convey. And I think it's a real missing right and there is a huge amount of responsibility and accountability missing from the quote unquote top wherever that is you know the top of an institution whatever wherever the whatever the power structure is.

SPEAKER_00

Yeah. You're also making me think of I keep looking up because as I said half my brain's in my bookshelf I keep looking over to like remind myself of the title there's a book I came across a handful of years ago called Facilitating Breakthrough by Adam Cahane and it's around facilitation but like some of what you're speaking to I feel like resonates and it really shifted something for me around facilitation and that he the starting point he comes at from is that like people, as you were kind of saying Amanda, like people want to connect, people want to contribute people well, there might be some question about all people, but I think people generally want to live in an equitable world, right? Where they can like operate from their power, their agency. And so when he thinks about facilitation design in the book he says like rather than coming at facilitation as like trying to get people somewhere like because you come at it as being about like how do I remove the barriers that are getting in the way of people doing the things they naturally want to do. Right. So like facilitation design how do I facilitate in a way that's like removing the barriers to connection in this room for these three hours, right? Or removing the things that are keeping people from contributing. I don't know if that resonates for you both like I hear that too of identifying like looking up, identifying the barriers like what if that's where we focused, right? Removing the barriers versus the looking down and like Yeah.

SPEAKER_03

Which requires a willing to see them, acknowledge them, own them if you're responsible for them.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah I mean I think we could do a an episode just on facilitation itself but um my experience has been that to not see yourself as a neutral facilitator because then I think you get yourself off the hook of being accountable, responsible to the holding everyone in that conversation. But if you as a facilitator of any conversation, dialogue, exchange, I think it is our responsibility to not repeat patterns of extraction and erasure, which is inherent unfortunately in every institution you know, in institutions. And so if we can be conscious that we're not going to perpetuate those patterns of extraction like grant reports or erasure of people's stories because we're telling them for them, you know, we we do everyone a disservice. And the reality is that communities particularly those that are most impacted by structural racism and injustices is that they hold their own narratives and stories about institutions, narratives of broken promises, of exclusion, of mistrust. That's what I heard from the community member when I was doing the research project and I fully got that. So yeah there was not there's nowhere to take her to it was just letting her know that I got where she is right now. And that's where things begin to shift.

SPEAKER_00

And that's why it's so important to put that time in for relationship building.

SPEAKER_01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00

Okay we are in our last stretch I do I I really love at the end of every episode to hold space for um folks to kind of shine light on someone else or some other group and so I I'm always curious as a closure question, you know, what's inspiring you right now in terms of social change work? Is there anyone you want to lift up or any other you know organization? I don't know if it could be a grantee what's inspiring you both right now?

SPEAKER_03

I mean for sure grantees and I wish I could name all of them right now but we could put them in the show notes. Perfect yeah they are literally what Amanda and I going every day. And these are organizations across six different states working in very different environments, many of them on very different issues yet they all are clear that they're all under the same pet. Because what they all care about is justice, equity, inclusion, people thriving people being respected, people's stories being heard, people having power and agency. And so it happens in this work we divide things typically under you know issue areas, right? Who's working on transportation, who's working on housing, who's working on food access. And yet this group that's got folks working on all of that and so much more, um this group of you know 13 different organizations all over the country all totally identify with one another particularly with each other's, you know, challenges and struggles. I mean I think Amanda and I get to sit in our home offices and computers and talk and brainstorm and strategize and write. And we are not on the streets every single day. We are not having conversations with people who are struggling right on these on all the ways that we know that people are really struggling right now. And those are you know the leaders of these amazing organizations that we have had the privilege of of funding that's their everyday and not just like nine to five, right? Like it's 24-7. Everyone in the community has their cell phone number and to a point that some people have had to change their cell phone numbers just to bring a little bit of balance back into their lives. So I mean but really what we've got is people who are just they're fighting. They're fighting for you know the communities and the people that they love and beyond. They are I think doing some incredibly innovative and beautiful work you know we talked in the beginning about unlikely alliances. We have you know folks who are building historic coalitions where players at the table have never been at the same table together and you'd never think that they would be you know community leaders and and labor unions along with you know municipal leaders like all at a table duking it out sometimes but getting somewhere together. We have some unbelievably innovative approaches to storytelling that we're seeing you know Amanda shared about the comic book there's folks who are there's a group that's producing documentary films that are you know being told in first person narratives are being told in first person by people who have lived the experience of the topic of the film and then data is woven in and then you know viewers are left with action that they can take real meaningful and not like go change the kind of light bulbs you buy. And you know there is just so much brilliant happening and I think what we know is that communities have all the solutions, right? Like they know what they need. They've already innovated to survive in many ways. And and so these folks are just our teachers really and our guides and you know it's our job to follow their their lead.

Shout Out: Young People & Student Movements!

SPEAKER_01

Yeah I couldn't have said anything better than what Michelle shared about our grantees and they hold us accountable and I'm honored for them to do that and tell us where we need to do better. And they are absolutely every day on the front lines. So when we when we talk about risk it's a very different conversation so a level of courage and maybe I would even dare say that for them it's not not even courage it's just what they have to do because they love their community so deeply right they refuse to see anything different than a just and equitable society. So they're my light and my truth um so I will gladly follow them and anywhere. And I would just build off of what Michelle also to say that for me what's really inspiring me, I wouldn't even say one person, but I am really inspired by the younger generations, particularly the student movements that have happened over the past year or so that are reminding us, us older folks, younger folks, but that we all belong, that we all need to be taken care of and seen and heard, and that they're calling on us, like really holding us accountable to recognize our equal humanity.

SPEAKER_00

I love that. That resonates. I feel like every time I get the privilege of working with youth organizers, I have the same thought which is like can we just hand the world over to you now? It's like Yep.

SPEAKER_01

Please we're seeing them. We're seeing their stories and whether on Instagram or TikTok or they're coming up and they're fearless. And um I'm hopeful, so hopeful.

Outro

SPEAKER_00

I think of risk and risk taking as one of the like real strengths of youth and young people. And like you know we're also biologically wired when we're younger to do that. But that's like one of the really like the major contributions that we need, right? Well thank you both. I so appreciated this conversation. And I don't know if there's anything else you have floating in your head that you want to throw out there or add or that's sort of like still on your mind. We have a few extra minutes or we can also be done because I know I credit to you Amanda for making it all the way through with your cold just wanted to express um appreciation to you Kai for having us just felt like this was a a really generative and loving conversation and just yeah just appreciate the time.

SPEAKER_03

Yeah just echoing Amanda's appreciation. Thank you. This has really been a really generative and warm conversation. It's really it's so important I think to have opportunities to reflect in these ways. And you know I think a big part a a big theme of what we've talked about today is that change does happen through conversation. And so you creating the space for these conversations is so critical. I think it's just it's such a huge part of of how we start to really make some meaningful shifts. So thank you.

SPEAKER_00

I'm glad thank you both as well. I have like so many I wish I could take a picture of my notes. I have like so many pings especially like one question I have is like what does it take to be a disruptive bridge the way you all kind of channel and like fought with me and challenged that thinking around like why I worry that bridging you know is somehow different than disruption that's gonna sit with me for a while in a really good way. So yeah I really appreciate you both. I feel like I need to jot them all down. There's like so many good like sound bites and thank you both. Thank you so much thank you for listening to how change happens you can find a list of the resources we talked about during this conversation in the show notes as well as more information about convergence partnership. And in the next month or so you'll be able to catch me in conversation with another change practitioner about how they believe change happens. If you appreciate this podcast please consider sharing it with a friend, colleague or network and or leaving a review. I'm also always happy when people reach out to share feedback with me directly I want these conversations to be both inspiring and useful to folks doing social change work. So how they're landing with you genuinely matters to me. Finally, how change happens is a create knowledge production. Thanks go out to Jomen and Gael for their remix of their song T Baba, the podcast theme song, and to my editor Jessie DiBartolomeo. If you're a woman or nonbinary person working on a podcast and looking for support definitely check her out. Thanks again for listening and take care