In 2006, journalist Bob Woodruff had made the long trip to Taji, an hour north of Baghdad, to report on the Iraq war. Having recently been named co-anchor of ABC’s “World News Tonight,” Woodruff’s life changed in an instant, when a roadside bomb struck his armored vehicle. The newsman was nearly killed, and after a long recovery, he eventually returned to journalism. He also started a foundation to help service members and their families. Overseen by NationSwell Council member Anne Marie Dougherty, the Bob Woodruff Foundation has raised more than $30 million to rehabilitate the injured, provide access to education and employment opportunities, and work to improve overall quality of life for veterans. NationSwell spoke with Dougherty about what veterans are facing as they return home from two Middle East wars.
How did Bob Woodruff’s brain injury shape the mission of his foundation?
After he was hurt in Iraq, he said, “We’re not special. People are suffering the same injuries, if not worse ones.” He was able to see firsthand the struggles of service members who come home injured. But Bob and his family were acutely aware that they had ABC News and [parent company] Disney to really make sure they were taken care of, in a way that’s maybe different from the resources a young enlisted soldier has.
In a weird way, the Woodruffs became this bridge across the military-civilian divide. They walk the walk. When Bob woke up from his coma and recovered, they could have quietly gone back to their lives. But they felt like they could use the extra attention surrounding their tragedy to raise money and awareness — and they don’t want any credit for it. That gives me energy, because it’s such an authentic commitment. It’s their way of expressing gratitude for his recovery.
As I understand it, the foundation’s mission is to help veterans recover from the war, both physically and spiritually. What does that look like to you, in the day-to-day?
We try to understand what’s going on in the active-duty military and veteran communities. We scan the landscape to identify what the policies are at the federal, state and local levels; what budgets are getting cut; what’s on the horizon with the next administration; and how all these pieces affect service members. Our role is to complement the resources the government provides. Once we know what’s needed, we go out and find organizations that have the relevant programs.
Why does this work matter to you personally?
Shortly after Bob was injured, my husband was getting ready to deploy to Iraq as a marine. He didn’t end up going at that time, but we were staring down the barrel. After following the Woodruffs’ story, I had this thought in the back of my mind, “What if this happens to us?” I followed the thread through a marine wives’ network and was connected to the Woodruffs when they were literally running a kitchen-table operation. I was particularly interested in building the brand and its reputation. Instinctively, it seemed like there was an opportunity there.
There are roughly 40,000 veterans’ nonprofits out there. What do you look for when deciding which are worthy of funding?
A lot of what we think about is how to get outside the small ring of vets who are very proactive about joining programs. There’s a whole universe of veterans who are not taking advantage of the programs that exist. In a way, it’s like connecting supply with demand. After that, we take our due diligence seriously. When you’re running an organization with living namesakes, there’s a responsibility to create and uphold a certain standard. Getting a grant is a seal of approval. As the leader of the foundation, I have to set that standard every day, which is to be rigorous and consistent, transparent and accountable.
What’s one issue impacting service members that doesn’t get enough attention?
We were at war for the longest time in our nation’s history, but only 1 percent of the eligible population volunteered to serve. Because the wars weren’t being fought on American soil, there’s a huge disconnect, and frankly, people are kind of over it. That, combined with the current political climate, means the country isn’t able to focus attention — and therefore, resources — on what returning vets need. The health of our all-volunteer force depends on how we respond to veterans transitioning back into civilian society. If you can get out front of some of these very predictable issues, the trajectory can totally change. We’ve made huge progress — we are a very generous nation after all — but the risk is that we have compassion fatigue and short attention spans.
Is there a book you’d recommend to people who want to better understand the challenges vets face upon homecoming?
Sebastian Junger’s “Tribe” is an incredible explanation of something we intuitively already know to be true. When veterans come home — whether they’re injured or not — they struggle with a sense of purpose and meaning. In the military, it’s very clear what your role in the hierarchy is; you have your tribe. But eventually you wander back into regular life. You might miss being deployed. We need to understand that’s a human response and a very real sentiment.
How do you repair that feeling of disconnection?
Veterans helping other veterans. They’re drawn to service, and we’re creating opportunities for them to continue to serve. We know that by helping others like them, vets get healthier. They just want that human connection. Banks and other companies will say, “We’re gonna hire veterans; that’s how we’re going to solve veteran unemployment,” which is a very important piece of the puzzle. But there are a lot of people who join the military so that they don’t end up sitting in a cubicle at a big company. So we’ve taken on the challenge of finding opportunities, especially for service members who have been injured, that lets them work outside, doing something with their hands. There’s an organization called the Farmer Veteran Coalition, and it’s so simple: If you help a veteran afford a tractor, they can get a plot going. One of the grants from this group went to supplying a young farmer with mating turkeys. He calls it “dirt therapy,” just to be able to plant things and be alone in the peace and healing of the outdoors. On top of that, they’re growing organic food and participating in a farmers’ market to share this food with other people, and they’re attracting more veterans to come and work there. It’s having a multiplying effect.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Note: Since the publication of this article, Bob Woodruff Foundation has become a NationSwell advertiser.
Category: Council Profiles
How Moms Are Changing the Internet
In 2005, as floodwaters broke through New Orleans’s levees, Emily McKhann wondered if there was a more direct way to assist Hurricane Katrina survivors than just sending care packages down South, where they’d likely sit, undistributed, until relief workers could sort them. So she took to her nascent blog, where she connected with other women, mostly mothers, who posted what they were looking to donate: extra baby clothes and diapers, blankets, airline miles, computers, even beauty-parlor chairs they could send to affected salons. It was the first time McKhann, a longtime public relations professional, harnessed the power of the internet for good, and an idea was born. The Motherhood, Inc., founded by McKhann and her friend Cooper Munroe, was launched in 2006 as a digital marketing agency that taps the influential mom-blogger community to discuss and share content that makes a measurable impact. NationSwell recently spoke with McKhann about the way moms use the internet.
Why do moms specifically need this forum?
Before the web, motherhood could be very isolating. Whether women are working from home or the office, as soon as children are in their lives, they’re so busy. They have so many obligations. Mothers, in many ways, can feel like they’re shouldering the burdens of the world: They’re taking care of their job, their family, their community. On the web, women connected around issues or problems they faced. For example, discovering there’s some health crisis with your child. You wouldn’t necessarily bring it up on the park bench. Your friends around town wouldn’t necessarily understand what you’re going through and offer you even the shoulder, much less the resources you actually need. Finding other women who are going through something similar and hearing someone say, ‘Oh, honey, I’ve so been there,’ or ‘Hey, have you tried this resource?’ or ‘Here’s how things unfolded for me’ — that kind of one-to-one connection that the web allowed was transformative for mothers.
Politically, how does the internet help mothers be heard?
In terms of their role in the community, women — and men, too — are really looking for ways to make things a little better every day. Let’s say you have a 2-year-old and a newborn at home. You’re probably not going to drive to your state’s capital to get your voice heard. But you could put your kids to bed and spend 45 minutes online, find other women who care about the same thing, and suddenly you’re being heard and something’s happening. That collective action is really powerful and affirming. We are going to look back on this time when the web came to the fore as the time when women’s voices came to the fore. It’s changing public policy and the way women see themselves; women online are a powerful crew.
You’ve written before that you think it’s no accident healthcare made it onto Obama’s agenda, because so many women were blogging about the hardship of not having insurance. What’s the blogosphere buzzing about this election that might be on the next president’s agenda?
Gun control. We’ve all seen the violence, and many of the voices you hear are women’s, and mothers’ in particular, because they’re worried about their children going to school or a movie theater. They’re worried about the safety of their institutions. The numbers are so frightening: 33,000 people every year are killed by guns. It’s an epidemic.
Who are some of your favorite bloggers?
I love Asha Dornfest at Parent Hacks; the writing of Liz Gumbinner at Mom 101; Chrysula Winegar’s posts at Global Moms Challenge; and Gabrielle Blair at Design Mom.
Looking to the future, what innovations are you most excited about right now?
Live video, all the way. For those unfamiliar with it, the point is not just that somebody is on video, it’s that they’re interacting with their community in real-time in the comments. The level of engagement and connection in video is different from the written form. It’s not going to be like highly produced network news, but people at home or in the street, wherever they are, who have something to say. We’re going to see people become live video stars, hosting shows at set times during the week. It’s going to become an entirely new medium that we really, at this point, have no sense of yet. And it’s going to cause a great, big shift in how other social platforms are used.
Where do you find your inner motivation?
When we started The Motherhood, we created a way for large consumer-product companies to interact directly with their No. 1 customer. This was one-to-one, a program where 50 bloggers meet a large consumer. Several things happened. For one, we elevated the voice of women: This is what they really think, not what someone thinks they think. That has changed a lot about how causes and brands approach women. There’s tremendous value in that, for all of us. Anything we’re doing where we’re becoming more authentic, more truthful, is good for all of us.
What’s your proudest accomplishment?
I’m really proud I’ve gotten to know and work with so many amazing women. We’ve created incredible programs together. That’s what I’m most proud of: just getting to be a part of this world-changing community of women online.
On Blending Art and Activism
Every day until November 8, bands are releasing songs about what’s at stake in this election. As part of an effort called “30 Days, 30 Songs: Musicians for a Trump-Free America,” new original music, live recordings and remixes are dropping daily. (A sampling of the work released so far includes the songs “Million Dollar Loan” by Death Cab for Cutie; “Demagogue” by Franz Ferdinand; and “Same Old Lie” by Jim James of My Morning Jacket.) Jordan Kurland, owner of the San Francisco–based Zeitgeist Artist Management, says he organized the project along with author Dave Eggers “to save our country.” Kurland spoke with NationSwell about his latest politically-driven project.
When did you first get interested in music?
I was an obsessed music fan from a very young age. At 6, I had every KISS record, and it just went on from there. It became a driving force in my life through high school and into college. At Pitzer College, outside of Los Angeles, I started reviewing records and interviewing bands for the school magazine and freelancing for some local publications. Through that experience, I started to meet people in the industry. That’s when I stuck around L.A. for internship opportunities at record labels and management companies.
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What effect are you hoping to see from the “30 Days, 30 Songs” project?
Music has always been an important part of politics and protest. In 2012, there was a surprising amount of apathy around Barack Obama’s second term: People felt like they all had bought into this idea of change and hope, but that he hadn’t come through on a lot of promises. When we launched “90 Days, 90 Reasons” [daily pro-Obama writings from cultural heavyweights] to motivate voters to re-elect him, we felt like it was an easy way to get people to pay attention to what’s at stake. It’s very much the same this year. We’re getting artists to come out and say, ‘You know what, there’s a lot at stake here.’ Donald Trump is a huge threat to our democracy and our belief system. And we need to point out his hypocrisy and the danger he poses, or play up what’s great about this country and what we want to preserve.
How do you fold public service, whether it’s raising money or awareness, into the music business?
That’s always been part of my DNA, and I’m grateful I have clients who also are interested in that, whether it’s donating money from tours and merch sales or getting involved in political issues. Artists have a way bigger soapbox to stand on than I ever will. I’m fortunate that I can help them come up with a plan and execute it. Maybe it’s sometimes to the detriment of my management company, because maybe I’d be cultivating a new artist instead. But it keeps me passionate about what I’m doing. There are periods of time where you’re doing the same thing for 20 years, so to get involved in things that keep it fresh is important.
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What albums have you listened to most in your life?
The Who’s “Quadrophenia” and “Who’s Next”; John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme”; Bill Evans’s “Sunday at the Village Vanguard”; and “The Bends” by Radiohead. Those are my mainstays, the handful of records that mean a ton to me. I’ve certainly worn out my copies of them.
What’s your proudest accomplishment?
I’m proud that I’ve been able to do this as long as I have. When I was young, I struggled for almost 10 years. There was a long stretch where I wasn’t anywhere near the level of success I wanted to be at. During that period, I always felt that if I had a gold record to my name, I’d have a level of success that’s really meaningful to me and I could decide whether or not I wanted to continue in this career. I’m proud I accomplished that and then some. I’m proud that I stuck with it and was able to take a path that not as many people travel.
Democracy by Design
New York City’s housing court might not be the most obvious subject for a comic strip. But for tenants doing battle with landlords, the colorful, often whimsical illustrations contained in “Housing Court Help,” an animated booklet that educates renters on their rights, can mean the difference between staying in their homes and getting evicted. It’s just one of many creative projects developed by the Brooklyn-based Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP), a nonprofit that uses art and design to increase civic engagement. Under the leadership of executive director Christine Gaspar, the small team works on roughly three dozen projects a year; most recently, a documentary about trash infrastructure, a bilingual guide for immigrants buying health insurance and a comic book about succession rights on apartment leases. NationSwell spoke with Gaspar at CUP’s offices in Brooklyn’s Gowanus neighborhood.
How have your views on leadership evolved over the course of your career?
I once had a colleague who went through an assertiveness training for women, where the tagline was “Die Before You Cry” — which is really intense! I thought about that during an emotional moment a while back, when I was talking to the staff. It was the day the ruling came down that there wouldn’t be an indictment in the Michael Brown case, and I just started crying. We ended up having a really powerful conversation. Afterward, two staff members emailed me saying how proud they are to be part of an organization where it’s okay to show you’re vulnerable, particularly around issues that are important to you. I realized then that there are other ways to show leadership. Namely, the ability to not just focus on the day’s workload, but also having the freedom to say, “You know, something really bad happened today, and we need to talk about it.”
What innovations happening in cities are you most excited about right now?
One cool thing that New York has been doing, and that CUP has been involved with, is participatory budgeting, where public funds are allotted according to how community members want to use them. Rather than representatives choosing for us, we’re voting ourselves, picking what the projects are and developing the proposals. New York City Council members have been doing this for the last two years, and it’s growing: more and more districts are doing it every year. It can be labor-intensive, but it really engages a lot of people, especially those who aren’t traditionally involved with political processes. There are more low-income individuals, people of color, undocumented people who normally have barriers to civic engagement, and younger people who aren’t old enough to vote. It’s broadening the scope of who gets to be civically engaged.
Where do you find your inner motivation?
The combination of getting to do things that are creative and visually expressive but that are also impactful and meaningful to people is so exciting. I feel really lucky to work with such an amazing group of people on the CUP staff. We also collaborate with a group of partners and many community organizers, all of whom represent different perspectives. Then there is our work with talented artists, designers and visual thinkers. It’s an interesting combination of people, fields and topics. There’s never a day where you feel like, “I got this. I already know everything that’s going on today.” It keeps things exciting.
What do you wish someone had told you when you started this job?
I wish someone had told me to go home more. When I first started working here, CUP was really small — a three-person staff at that time — and it was the first time I was running an organization. I felt this incredible sense of responsibility, which I still do, but also fear of doing something wrong. I worked a lot of hours, because I was so nervous about making sure that I wasn’t missing something. The truth is that you’re always going to miss something. At the same time, one of the things I contributed to CUP is making it an organization where we don’t all work crazy hours. We work really hard, people are incredibly committed to the organization, but they also have families and hobbies and outside lives. It took me a while to make it sustainable as a place for me to work.
What’s your proudest accomplishment?
When I started at CUP, there were only three of us on staff, and now there are nine. Every day, they go out and work on projects, and together, we continue to build this organization. That feels really good, that I played a big role in bringing us to where we are today.
What’s your favorite book?
If I’m being honest, I’d probably pick a children’s book, because I really like the illustrations in them. I feel like they speak to my work in that they use visual storytelling to achieve clarity and accessibility. Some of my favorites, which I think of often and now share with my child, are the Richard Scarry books, like “Busy, Busy World.”
What don’t most people know about you?
I’m from Waterbury, Conn., which used to be the brass capital of the world. When I was growing up there, the town was the brownfield, Superfund capital of the Northeast, with heavy-metal manufacturing and abandoned factories. I grew up in a fairly low-income, working-class family, and my parents are immigrants. I can relate on a personal level to a lot of the projects I work on today, because they’re consistent with my own experiences. These are qualities that aren’t visible to people, but I believe that my background has informed the way I work and the things I think about.
Beyond Big Unions: How One Labor-Rights Advocate Envisions the Future for Workers
Carmen Rojas’s parents immigrated to the U.S. as teenagers. Her father drove trucks, and her mother filed papers at a bank. Neither had finished middle school. A generation later, their daughter had graduated with a Ph.D. in urban planning from the University of California, Berkeley, and traveled to Venezuela on a Fulbright scholarship. Today, Rojas heads The Workers Lab, a Bay Area accelerator that backs early-stage, labor-focused ventures. When Rojas thinks about her family’s upward mobility, she’s both pleased and disturbed: “It kills me to imagine that I might be part of the last generation in this country to benefit from an economy and a government that saw opportunity as core to its existence,” she says.
“We have a reached a moment where we can no longer deliver on the promise of what work is,” says Rojas over lunch at a Thai restaurant in midtown Manhattan. To live in New York City, for example, even a $15 minimum wage wouldn’t cover the expenses of raising two kids: At minimum, each parent needs to earn $18.97 hourly to adequately support their family. Yet only a tenth of American workers are unionized, about half of what it was in 1983. “The 20th-century labor movement as we imagined it — the labor union, collective bargaining — is no longer in a position to protect and create opportunity for the vast majority of workers.”
Those shortcomings have led people to second-guess traditional institutions, as the rise of Donald Trump suggests. Capitalizing on the hot-button issue of income inequality highlighted by Occupy Wall Street and Fight for 15, The Workers Lab is trying to reimagine what the future could be. “That’s why we exist,” Rojas tells NationSwell, “to jump-start the next-generation workers’ movement.” She shared five current initiatives that illustrate what that future might look like.
1. CLEAN Carwash Campaign, California
Cooperatives place businesses back in the hands of workers, where they share in profits and decision-making. They can be a tool for advancement, nurturing professional skills among blue-collar laborers. The CLEAN Carwash Campaign, which fought legal battles on behalf of Los Angeles’s largely undocumented force of carwasheros, tested whether they could open a worker-owned car wash in South L.A. The model has prompted Rojas to start looking for opportunities elsewhere, including a farm in the Coachella Valley. If that co-op, owned by 7,500 workers, actually gets off the ground, it will be the largest in the country. No small feat for an industry that’s known for some of the worst working conditions in this country, says Rojas. “This farm conversion — and the fact that we’re even talking about cooperatives outside of Vermont or Maine — is awesome.”
2. The Coalition of Immokalee Workers, Florida
With the rise of the conscious consumer — the person who reads labels and researches brands online — certification has become one of the easiest ways to push businesses into compliance. In South Florida, which produces most of the nation’s tomato supply during winter, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers created a powerful set of standards for tomato-pickers to ensure they get paid on time, have a voice in the workplace, aren’t subjugated to sexual harassment, and can safely submit complaints without retaliation. They then brought these guidelines straight to buyers like McDonald’s and Yum Brands (Taco Bell and Pizza Hut’s owner), rather than the farms’ managers. Fast-food companies and supermarkets agreed to buy tomatoes only from companies that met certifications, forcing the industry as a whole to catch up. “The coalition was so good at creating the standard,” says Rojas.
3. Worker Defense Project, Texas
With just two OSHA inspectors for the entire state, Texas’s construction sites might as well be unregulated, says Rojas. “Employers aren’t required to pay workers’ compensation, and Texas has the highest rate of mortality in construction in the whole country.” For five years, the Worker Defense Project, an immigrant workers’ rights organization, had been advocating for policy change. They won concessions from some high-profile projects, but the sector as a whole wouldn’t budge. So rather than shaming those who wouldn’t get on board, the group launched its Build It Better campaign, which offered incentives instead. “Their idea was to create a certification for developers’ construction projects,” explains Rojas. For adding on-site monitors and training, the Workers Defense Project in turn would work to fast-track permits and reduce the insurance rate. As Rojas points out, “If people aren’t dying on your projects because they’re being trained, then you don’t need as much insurance.”
4. Coworker, District of Columbia
Rojas is still trying to figure out if digital tools are simply an offshoot of old-school worker organizing or something different entirely. But she is clear about which online project is her current favorite: Coworker, which is a petitioning platform that allows disparate workers to make collective grievances about hyper-specific issues known to employers, without the huge undertaking of forming a union. “For instance, they have 25,000 Starbucks baristas who have all signed different types of petitions and that Starbucks has responded to,” Rojas says of Coworker’s impact. “Often, there is no way for you as a barista in one of hundreds of stores in Manhattan to unify your voice with other baristas around scheduling, wages or appearance. Coworker created that way.”
5. Universal Basic Income, California
While the movement toward a universal basic income has yet to be realized (aside from a small pilot project in Oakland), Rojas is intrigued by the idea. Advocating this policy, which guarantees every family a minimum wage regardless of whether they work, might have gotten you laughed out of a room as a “crazy communist” in the past, but it’s now gaining traction. “The appeal of a basic income — a kind of Social Security for everyone — is easy to understand,” The New Yorker’s James Surowiecki wrote this summer. “It’s easy to administer; it avoids the paternalism of social-welfare programs that tell people what they can and cannot buy with the money they’re given; and, if it’s truly universal, it could help destigmatize government assistance.” Adds Rojas, “I’m interested in what it means for somebody who has spent his entire life in the labor movement to imagine non-labor institution solutions for the issues facing workers.”
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Fighting Terrorism and Warding Off Cybersecurity Attacks Are All in a Day’s Work for This Lawyer
Former federal attorney Brendan McGuire has won convictions against some of the world’s worst criminals and terrorists. He successfully prosecuted cases in New York City courtrooms against Faisal Shahzad, a Pakistani immigrant who tried to detonate a car bomb in Times Square, and Abduwali Muse, a Somali pirate who hijacked Captain Richard Phillip’s American-flagged cargo ship (that drama was captured in the 2013 Oscar-nominated thriller “Captain Phillips”). This spring, he moved to the private sector, joining the law firm WilmerHale where he helps white-collar clients identify illegal money laundering, fend off cybersecurity attacks and comprehend the complexities of international trade law. In a conversation with NationSwell, McGuire reflected on the value of his public service and what the country can do to attract younger workers to government jobs.
What’s the best advice you have ever been given on leadership?
The best advice I’ve been given is really rooted in communication and understanding how to make those with whom you’re working feel invested in whatever it is they’re doing. Obviously that can take a number of forms. But in many respects, some of the most effective leaders have been those who attempt to build up the people they work with in such a way that, in theory, the leader could be rendered irrelevant.
A really formative experience for me was playing basketball in college. I had two coaches who understood that you don’t need the five best players on a team to win a championship. What you need are the five most complementary players, players who are going to do different things and have different strengths and weakness. But ultimately, they must be prepared to surrender themselves to the mission of the team. [This was instrumental] for me in setting goals once I entered the professional world.
What’s on your nightstand?
Right now I am reading a biography of George Washington, which approaches him in a frankly different way: not as the first president of the country or as the first great general, but as the first entrepreneur in the United States. It is an interesting, different take on a relatively well-known figure. And then I’ve got a bunch of other half-read books about terrorism and intelligence, which is what on what I focus on for work.
What innovations in your field are you most excited about right now?
Law enforcement, in many ways, is a very traditional field that is often playing catch-up with the next innovative criminal method or criminal objective. One of the true challenges now, which the current administration has made a real effort toward, is trying to harness technological innovation to support the country’s intelligence and its counterterrorism and other law enforcement efforts. Continuing to foster a productive relationship among Silicon Valley, younger generations and the intelligence community will be key to national security. Doing so will also dispose with the myth that the government, in aiming to protect us, is always trying to spy on us and dispel any misconception, particularly among younger Americans, that they can’t feel good about serving the country. There is an ability to balance privacy and security. To me, the most important innovation we should be focused on is really a human one, and that is continually trying to make government service, particularly in the cyber field, as appealing as possible — that’s the direction the world is heading in and for which there will be an incredible need in this country and around the world.
You’ve prosecuted some tough, high-profile cases, and I imagine they caused a lot of sleepless nights. Where do you find your inner motivation?
There’s a lot of cynicism about certain aspects of government today, and that can allow for misconceptions about working in government. Many people who have served in government in different capacities will often tell you that it is the most rewarding job they’ve ever had – that it combines the privilege of serving with a job where your self-interest aligns with the public’s. When you’re able to do that, there’s real potential for significant satisfaction, because you’re doing something that is both personally fulfilling and serves a higher cause. It can be very challenging work; there are nights without necessarily a great deal of sleep. But for those who find fulfilling government jobs, that’s a very small price to pay.
What do you wish someone had told you when you started this job?
Focus most of your time on doing your job, and don’t obsess over the next job. Often, those coming out of school and graduate programs feel pressure to script their professional narrative from day one, which means they’re spending time figuring out their next chapter as opposed to doing the best job they can in their current chapter. You can’t be blind to the future but, in many respects, the next thing will take care of itself if you prove yourself to those you work with. If you treat people with respect and do what you’ve been hired to do, a lot of things will present themselves naturally.
What’s your perfect day?
I wish I could tell you that I’ve discovered the formula, but for me, the perfect day is not having to check my phone and getting to look instead at my two kids for as many hours of the day as I can. Probably, at this point, with a 5-year-old and a 1-year-old, it’s as simple and boring as that.
What’s your proudest accomplishment?
Professionally speaking, it was being sworn in as an assistant U.S. attorney in New York. It was a position that my father had when he was younger. It was the job that I had sought for many, many years, and one that I always had hoped would be my dream job. And it ended up being that. Looking back on it now, that day where they actually let me in the building and I held up my right hand to be sworn in is probably the day I’m most proud of.
What don’t most people know about you?
I’ve mounted my own private protest: I have refused to attend a New York Knicks game for about 10 years because of the team’s current ownership.
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This interview has been edited and condensed.
Homepage photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images.
Can New Tools End the AIDS Epidemic by 2020?
In 1995, Perry Halkitis watched as New York City’s AIDS crisis unfolded around him and quit his job to focus full-time on the plague killing thousands of gay men. Professionally, it probably wasn’t an advantageous move, but he never doubted that it was the right thing to do. Halkitis, who, at age 18, came out to his Greek immigrant parents in 1981, is now a professor of public health, applied psychology and medicine at New York University. Two years ago, he completed a book about HIV+ gay men who survived that era, and he’s now working on a book about the experience of coming out across generations. Speaking to NationSwell in his Greenwich Village office, Halkitis recalled the experience of witnessing two devastating decades of the AIDS epidemic and his hope of finding a cure.
What innovations in your field are you most excited about right now?
I do work in gay men’s health, part of which is HIV. I emphasize that because too often people think about gay men’s health work as being synonymous with HIV. The thing that is most exciting me is that there are biomedical interventions that have been developed over the course of the last decade that provide another way to fight the epidemic. Now what do I mean that? We have something called PrEP now, which is administering an antiviral once a day to people who are HIV- that prevents them from becoming infected. It’s miraculous. We also know very clearly that HIV+ people — now living longer, fuller lives — who adhere to their treatment have viral suppression and are un-infectious. That is remarkable to me that these biomedical advances enable people to deter both acquiring and spreading the infection. We haven’t fully realized the power of these tools, and there are some challenges with them. But in the absence of a cure, it is the best thing we have.
Are these tools powerful enough that we can talk about ending the epidemic?
There are conversations about ending the epidemic. In New York, two years ago, Gov. Andrew Cuomo put forward a mandate to end AIDS by 2020. By that, he meant making infections go from 3,000 to 750 a year by use of these tools. So, do I think these tools are, in and of themselves, enough to bring an end to AIDS? They can get us near the end. We know perfectly well that people don’t finish their antibiotics and that people don’t exercise regularly. Being dependent completely on administering medicine on a regular basis is challenging reality. So I’m going to say that we’re going to do a really good job at deterring new infections.
What motivates you to do this work?
My decision, about 25 years ago, to enter this field was purely directed by the loss I experienced in my life. I was trained as an applied statistician working at a testing company, and at night, I was an activist. I was in New York City; AIDS was all around me. I witnessed friends dying. I decided to merge the two: to take my skills as a researcher and combine them with my passion as an activist. I find my motivation in the memory of the people who I’ve lost. I find my motivation in making sure that a new generation is free of this disease. And I find my motivation in training my students who are going to continue the good work once I’ve finished. I want gay men to be healthy, and I’m going to do everything in my power to see that.
What do you wish someone had told you when you started this job?
Don’t expect it to get easier over time. It’s going to get harder and more complicated. The more I learn and the more writing and research I do, the less I think I actually know. Which is good: it opens up more questions. I would have told myself in 1995 to be prepared for any possibility that might happen in this epidemic. I would tell myself to keep hope. I don’t think I had a lot of hope in 1995 that there was going to be an end to this epidemic. I was going to fight the battle for as long as I needed. And I would have told myself to be better about writing about my day-to-day life, which I haven’t done. It would have been an interesting story.
What’s your proudest accomplishment?
My book “The AIDS Generation,” where I documented the lives of 15 men who were long-term survivors. It could be the period at the end of the sentence of my career, if I did nothing else. (Surprise, I’m doing more.) I’m incredibly proud of that book, because it got a lot of attention in the popular press, and it inspired a conversation. Sean, one of the guys in the book, reminds me all of the time: “You started all of this.” I don’t really know if that’s true, but I like to think that I contributed to the beginning of the dialogue about long-term survivors.
To learn more about the NationSwell Council, click here.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
Homepage photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images.
The Importance of Slowing Down in Schools
After striving for years to create public after-school and summer educational opportunities, Charissa Fernández came to the realization that, no matter how effectively her programs worked, “they could not compensate for the inadequate education during the rest of the school day,” she says. Since becoming the executive director of Teach for America’s (TFA) New York chapter in 2013, Fernández has worked to establish a homegrown, more diverse TFA pipeline, as well as partnerships with local principals and other classroom educators. NationSwell spoke with Fernández, who’s quick with a laugh, at TFA’s headquarters in Lower Manhattan.
What’s the best advice you’ve ever been given on leadership?
Keep a long-term view. Perspective adds value to any situation. That is the notion of wisdom: the combination of experience and time. I was fortunate in my career, when I was younger, to work with older professionals who identified and nurtured talent in me, and they taught me that lesson. When you are inclined to freak out because something is happening, they told me this has happened before, it will happen again, and it will also be okay.
What’s on your nightstand?
I have a lot of things virtually stacked up on my phone, but I am excited to start reading Angela Duckworth’s new book, “Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance.” It’s a little nerdy, but for someone who works in education and has children, I have both a personal and professional investment in getting this right. How do I instill this in my own children, and then help teachers instill it in the children they work with?
What innovations in education are you most excited about right now?
One is the integration of mindfulness into schools and workplaces — for both students and educators. We just welcomed our 2016 corps of teachers, and the opening workshop we did with them was on emotional resilience. We bring in people who are incredibly passionate and want to do everything to help kids. They have to take care of themselves to do right by their students, because teacher stress can have a profound impact on student behavior and student performance.
What do you wish someone had told you when you first started this job?
There are two things. One is just to make time and space for processing. In the urgency of working to improve public education, we always think we have to do one more thing: I have to go to that meeting, have to write that email, have to do that proposal. There are opportunities to make connections that we miss because we’re moving so fast. It’s information overload, unless you carve out time for processing, both individually — who are the people I met this week, what were the key ideas, how do they connect to each other, do I need to go back and ask additional questions — and as a group.
The other lesson, related to that, is how much this work is all about people. I believe, as a leader, the time invested in supporting people’s growth and development is generally always time well spent. Everything comes back full circle. When I think about starting my career, the first year, I taught 9th grade English, and one of my students is now a principal in the Bronx who hires TFA corps members. I never imaged that would be the case. It all comes down to relationships. You can’t over-invest in people.
What inspires you?
We live in a world that’s really set up to support being passive, to maintaining the systems as they are: inertia, the status quo, whatever you want to call it. In that context, when people choose to act, and particularly when they choose to do so without self-interest, I find that incredibly inspiring. The vast majority of our corps members are recent college grads, but we have two incoming members who are fifty-something, African-American men, both of whom have had successful careers in the private sector. I want to get inside their heads: what leads somebody to do that?
What’s your perfect day?
I usually wake up in the morning and say I want to accomplish roughly three things. If I get through all three in a day, that is remarkable. But I have to say, it doesn’t happen that often. Everything takes longer than anticipated, and there’s a million interruptions. A good day is one where I get through all my priorities.
What’s your proudest accomplishment?
I never think of this as my accomplishment, but I would tie it to finding great people and bringing them into the organization. I think about having left places, and when I’m making my goodbye speech, I’m proud that I brought these people here. I’m leaving, but they are still here and will continue the impact of what they are doing. It’s about identifying and nurturing talent.
What’s something most people don’t know about you that they should know?
When I think about my professional career — and I don’t think this was intentional — the jobs I have have all been public-private partnerships. I had an old boss who told me the reason I did a good job at those strategic partnerships was because I came from a big, complicated family.
To learn more about the NationSwell Council, click here.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
MORE: Why It’s Important for Children to Learn Mindfulness at a Young Age
Why It’s Important for Children to Learn Mindfulness at a Young Age
Mindfulness, a secular form of meditation based on old Buddhist practices, is gaining popularity in more and more workplaces, but it still isn’t broadly available in most communities. In New Canaan, Conn., residents Nick and Michelle Seaver, Will Heins, and Erika Long banded together to offer group sessions in public institutions like libraries and wellness centers that help locals train their awareness on their physical existence in the present moment.
NationSwell spoke with Long, a former managing director at J.P. Morgan Chase and founder of the Carpere Group, about how she found meaning in mindfulness after quitting her career in finance.
How did you first become interested in mindfulness?
I was on a business trip to Tokyo and couldn’t fall asleep. In the nightstand next to the bed were the teachings of Buddha. I started reading it and thought the lessons were really interesting. Then I began investigating more about Buddhism and learning that meditation was really a core practice for that spiritual tradition. The more I read, the more it resonated with me. I was leading a very, very busy life in investment banking at the time, and soon after, I had two kids. I spent so much time in my head, trying to figure out investments, that mindfulness really helped me to integrate the mind and the body — to check in and make sure I wasn’t missing stuff that was going on outside my head. And I found that meditation allowed a lot of the clutter in my mind to settle, so that when decisions needed to be made, the path forward became more evident.
What advice do you have for someone who’s just starting to dabble in meditation?
We’re not a culture that supports sitting down without distraction. For some reason, you can justify doing a ton of other things, even if it’s just the crossword puzzle on the train on the way in or looking at Facebook. Some people have to overcome that as a hurdle.
Other people find that their mind won’t stop, and they get frustrated. We say that it’s very difficult to enter meditation or mindfulness thinking with the goal to keep thoughts out, to keep the mind quiet. It’s much easier to engage in the practice if you think when thoughts arise — because they will — choosing not to engage in them, not to get carried away with them, letting them arise and carry on their way.
What do you hope to accomplish through the Community Mindfulness Project (CMP)?
Originally four [founders] lived in the same town, and we all felt tremendous benefit from our own personal meditation practices over the years. But we had a hard time finding a community that we could sit with. There’s a real power to sitting in a group in addition to one’s own personal daily practice: you learn from each other, get support and feel a tremendous energy that arises when you sit in stillness with others. We started with one hour on a Monday night, and it grew and grew. We had the class coming in from lots of different places, asking “Could you do it here? Could you work with the kids in this school? With the teachers in this program?”
The more we looked around, we realized that there weren’t other secular, regular meditation or mindfulness sessions that were free and open to the public on an ongoing basis in community hubs. We offer regular weekly sessions in libraries and wellness centers in New Canaan and Stamford, Conn. We’re expanding out, particularly targeting communities with high numbers of stressors: food, housing and job insecurity, as well as people with other special needs like patients going through chemotherapy (as we’re currently doing at New York-Presbyterian Hospital).
Mindfulness is showing up in more places. What uses are you most excited about right now?
Maybe just because I’m a mom of a couple of teenagers, I feel that very little children are very much in the present moment, and as they get older, all of the adults in their lives and the media influences that they see begin to yank them out of the present moment. They’re sitting down every day with this notion that everything they’re doing in that moment is for the future somehow. It makes it really hard for them just to sit in the present. That’s right about the same time they need to be really connected with their bodies, and they need to be building habits and patterns for self-care. I love the extent to which people are thinking how we show kids these practices so that they can bring them into their lives, during those middle and high school years.
What’s on your nightstand?
I’m reading “It’s What I Do: A Photographer’s Life of Love and War,” by Lynsey Addario. She was a photographer for The New York Times, and that feeds my love of trying to push myself outside my comfort zone by reading about other people’s lives. And I’ve just been given, by someone in our community, “Buddha’s Brain,” by Rick Hanson, which really is the boiled-down neuroscience behind mindfulness. Then there’s a beautiful book called “Natural Wakefulness: Discovering the Wisdom We Were Born With,” by Gaylon Ferguson.
What’s your perfect day?
I have to say the perfect day would involve no technology whatsoever. It would involve time with my kids. I’m at that point where I’m very aware they’re going to be heading off on their own soon, so I’m cherishing every moment that I have with them right now. And it would involve being outside. There’s something about the outdoors that really grounds us in the present moment and gives us the sense of connection as part of something better. And there’s some kind of food involved. If we have those elements, it doesn’t really matter what we’re doing.
What’s your proudest accomplishment?
I worked with amazing people in investment banking. I could not believe how lucky I was to be able to do what I did. I felt like every day the world was my university. I learned so much. But I’m really proud of the fact that I got off that treadmill, even though there were financial ramifications. It wasn’t tapping into a deep need to do something that was more meaningful. I’m proud that I was able to sacrifice the identity that comes with having that job.
One of the CMP cofounders, Michelle Seaver, is from Canada, and she said one of the things she noticed most when she moved to the Northeast is that when people ask, “What do you do?” in Vancouver, the answer is “I waterski. I play tennis.” In the Northeast, it’s all about your job. After having a career for so long, when you go out into public and somebody asks, “What do you do?” you’re no longer able to say, “I manage money, I’m in finance.” There’s that open-ended “I am.” That can be really unsettling, and you have to dig deep inside and figure out where you pull your own identity from. Can you have the courage just to let that be? It’s a beautiful process to go through, and you don’t go through it when you’re on the treadmill of your career. I’m proud of that because my kids watched me do it. Hopefully, that will give them the freedom in their life to pursue what they’re passionate about.
To learn more about the NationSwell Council, click here.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
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The Woman That’s Using Big Data to Solve Fertility Problems
Before Piraye Beim began collecting and analyzing big data on women’s fertility, doctors had little concrete direction to give to the 7 million American women who have trouble getting pregnant. But her company Celmatix, which she founded in 2009 after earning a doctorate in molecular biology from New York’s Cornell University, uses a woman’s medical history to identify the treatment most likely to lead to conception. Since launching last year, it’s served 20,000 patients. NationSwell spoke to Beim about the challenges of starting a company as a female academic during a time when male college dropouts dominate Silicon Valley’s narrative.
What’s the best advice you have ever been given on leadership?
I’ve been given advice that there are different ways to be a leader and that recognizing what kind of leader I’m good at being would be helpful. Imagine a general who’s barking out commands and helping people get up on the hill. That’s really good in that situation, but maybe not a good leadership style or strategy for other situations.
What’s on your nightstand?
I’m reading “Hunger Makes Me a Modern Girl,” an autobiography by Carrie Brownstein, an actress on the TV show “Portlandia.” I knew her as one of the three members of the indie band Sleater-Kinney, and their music really got me through grad school. It’s this kind of girl power rock band that broke through a lot of the stereotypes in rock and roll. Their songs address things that are relevant to women and to world events. It’s been fun to read this story. It transports me from these songs that were so influential to me to where they came from.
What innovations in your field are you most excited about right now?
I think girls are in right now. I watched the Democratic National Convention, and it’s just girl power. It’s a great time to be building a women’s health product and a women’s health company. One of the challenges of entrepreneurship is that, by definition, disruptive technologies mean that you see something before other people see it. When I founded Celmatix seven and a half years ago, to me, it was such a no-brainer that women’s health was being underserved, that if we could decode the genetic basis of reproductive conditions and reproductive function in women, we could unlock so much and impact lives so profoundly by enabling women to be proactive in managing their health.
But what’s been interesting about the arc of the company is it feels like not only is the industry catching up to the fact that women’s health really matters and that women are an important demographic from a market standpoint, but that the zeitgeist of the world feels like it’s catching up too. Sometimes you feel in your little piece of the fishbowl that there’s a phenomenon happening in women’s health, but what I realized is that it’s part of the overall women’s empowerment, whether it’s Malala [Yousafzai] being outspoken about educating women and becoming a household name and now Hillary Clinton’s historic nomination. It’s been very interesting to feel that these confluences are stitched into the overall fabric of the world at the moment, that women have so much potential and the world would benefit so much from unleashing that. For us, where we stay grounded in our piece of the puzzle is that women can’t ever fully unleash that potential if they aren’t fully able to manage their health.
What inspires you?
One analogy that I’ve made is I feel like a knight that goes into battle and he’ll put the handkerchief from his sweetheart into his armor, tucked away. Since I’ve founded Celmatix, I have not been to a single dinner party or networking event where someone did not, probably with tears in their eyes, share a story about their miscarriage or how they’re struggling or their failed IVF [in vitro fertilization] cycle. It’s one of those things that’s so pervasive. For most people who are going through fertility struggles or for women who are struggling with the decision to freeze their eggs, they don’t have anyone to talk to about it. There’s not an outlet or forum. I feel like a knight going into battle, and I feel like all of those people I’ve met, I just keep shoving those handkerchiefs into my armor until it’s bursting. In those moments where I don’t feel strong, I’m bolstered by knowing I can’t give up now.
What’s your proudest accomplishment?
The moments that are poignant and really moments of strength for me are when we’ve had employees go through a life event like a death in the family or maternity leave. We’ve been able to build this product in a way that people felt supported along the way. That nuance is very important for me. When a mother comes back from maternity leave and says, “This time with my child was such a gift,” or when we give somebody flexibility to work part-time and that allows them to flourish.
What do you wish someone had told you when you started this job?
I wish they had told me that I had it in me to do it. People have written about how women tend to be a bit more cautious in whether they’re qualified to do something. When you first get started and you’re coming from my position where I had no business background, coming into this as an academic scientific researcher, I assumed that I didn’t have the DNA and that I’d need to make up for my decisions along the way. To some extent, you do that. You hire experts and people with MBAs. But three years in, I realized, wait a minute, I am an entrepreneur. I totally have entrepreneur DNA. It took me a little while to get that self-confidence, but the company did a lot better once I owned it and said, I’ve got this. I can totally do this.
To learn more about the NationSwell Council, click here.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
Homepage photograph courtesy of Celmatix.
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