Resource Type: Leader spotlights

Impact Next: An interview with The Campbell’s Foundation’s Kate Barrett

Posted on by Brianna Provenzano

At a moment of inequality and division, who is advancing the vanguard of economic and social progress to bolster under-served communities? Whose work is fostering the inclusive growth that ensures every individual thrives? Who will set the ambitious standards that mobilize whole industries, challenging their peers to reach new altitudes of social impact? 

In 2026, Impact Next — an editorial flagship series from NationSwell — will spotlight the standard-bearing corporate social responsibility and impact leaders, entrepreneurs, experts, and philanthropists whose catalytic work has the potential to shape the landscape of progress amid urgent need for social and economic action.

For this installment, NationSwell interviewed Kate Barrett, President of The Campbell’s Foundation. Here’s what she had to say:

Chloe Lew, Senior Vice President of Strategic Partnerships and Innovation, NationSwell: What brought you to the field that you’re in right now? Was there an early moment, a relationship, or an experience that galvanized your commitment to driving bold action?

Kate Barrett, President, The Campbell’s Foundation: It has definitely been a circuitous route. I talk about the career jungle gym rather than the career ladder because there have been a lot of twists and turns, but social impact has been a consistent through line.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to do work with purpose. I grew up surrounded by teachers, psychologists, and immigrants — people who came to this country and made lives for themselves. I was the beneficiary of tremendous stability, and I learned early how important it is to recognize your own privilege and use it to lift others up.

I majored in public health, and initially thought I would become a doctor. Then I took neuroscience and realized, first, that it was really hard, and second, that I was much more interested in systems than in the granular mechanics of the brain. I wanted to understand why people make the decisions they make, especially when we know what’s healthy, but don’t necessarily act in the best interest of our health (I also don’t love blood, so I’m not entirely sure what I was thinking).

After a summer spent injecting rats in a basement lab, I knew research wasn’t the right fit either. My dad suggested consulting as a way to see different parts of the healthcare system, so I joined McKinsey right out of undergrad, having never heard of McKinsey before. That probably worked to my benefit because it lowered the intimidation factor. My first project was with the Gates Foundation, and I also discovered that I loved organizational work — everything from leadership development and talent structures to culture and employee engagement.

Since then, I’ve worked at a tech startup, gone to business school, done workforce strategy and product development, and spent several years at the Center for High Impact Philanthropy. In a way, I tried each element of what interested me separately. Corporate social impact is where they all come together: business and corporate purpose, organizational strategy and employee engagement, and social impact. I love the employee side of the work, I love building external partnerships, and I love being able to tie it all back to the business.

Lew, NationSwell: How has your perspective on leadership changed or evolved over the years?

Barrett, The Campbell’s Company: Before I came to Campbell’s, the longest I had stayed anywhere was about two and a half years, so the fact that I’ll have been here nine years in June is kind of wild to me.

I first interned in marketing at Campbell’s during business school. That’s when I realized, “I don’t think marketing is for me, but I love this company — and I want to be on that team over there.” I stayed in touch with my predecessor until a role opened on her team five years later. I was lucky to learn from her; she was a former lawyer and nonprofit leader, so we brought very different but complementary perspectives to the work.

When she left, I was nervous about filling her shoes because she had established such a strong reputation externally. But I eventually realized that I didn’t have to fill her shoes. I could build on the great work she had done while finding my own way of leading — not better or worse, just different. Over time, I also had to move beyond my own imposter syndrome and recognize: I know my stuff. I’m now seen within the organization as the expert on social impact and community-focused employee engagement, which is a really interesting place to be.

Before focusing on my external profile, though, I wanted to establish my internal brand: Who am I as a leader here? How do I build the right team, develop champions, and strengthen my credibility and influence across the organization?

At first, I worried I might hire people who were too similar to me. Instead, I found people whose backgrounds and strengths complement both mine and one another’s. A year or two in, my boss told me, “You hired an incredible team. Your team is so high-performing.” That was one of the best compliments I could have received because building and leading a strong team is deeply important to me.

Lew, NationSwell: How have you cultivated your internal brand, and what are you known for within the organization? 

Barrett, The Campbell’s Company: I think about internal brand at both the individual and team levels. I wanted our team to be seen almost as a center of excellence — not as a “nice to have” function off doing its own thing, but as a visible and valuable partner across the organization.

We’re culture builders and culture champions, but we’re also business partners. If a sales team is looking for a meaningful way to engage a customer, for example, we can be a thought partner on nonprofit partnerships and help create something valuable. Building that reputation — as a team people can turn to for expertise and resources — has been important to both my personal brand and the identity of the team.

Lew, NationSwell: What is the “North Star” of your leadership style? What is it about the way that you lead in the space that makes you an effective leader?

Barrett, The Campbell’s Company: It’s about authenticity and integrity. I’ve always been unapologetically myself — I don’t really know how to lead any other way. “Fake it till you make it” has never worked for me; I’d rather lean into my strengths than pretend to be something I’m not. For me, that means being approachable and accessible. I can be a leader while also being a peer, mentor, and partner. I’ve also worked intentionally to become more visible internally, joining teams’ all-hands meetings to explain what we do and how we can be a resource.

When it comes to building a high-performing team, I think hiring is as much art as science. I’m open to nontraditional backgrounds, and I look for people whose experiences and strengths complement mine rather than replicate them. Two of the three people I ultimately hired had initially been screened out by our recruiting team, but I found their backgrounds interesting and asked to bring them back in.

I also pay close attention to candidates’ curiosity and the questions they ask. Once you’ve hired great people and established trust, the key is giving them challenge, autonomy, and room to lead. My job is to bring their work together and tell the larger story — not to stay in the weeds. As someone who has always been hyper-organized, I wondered whether I could let go. But when you hire great people, the answer is absolutely yes.

Lew, NationSwell: What challenges have you had to overcome in your role, and what strategies have you used to overcome them? 

Barrett, The Campbell’s Company: Campbell’s has been based in Camden, New Jersey for 158 years, which is a relatively small city, and I take seriously our responsibility to maintain the community’s trust and be a good neighbor. Camden has often had a bad reputation, and I’ve made it my personal mission to show people what a fantastic place it is.

Another one of the more challenging parts of the work is making our programs equitable and accessible across our employee footprint. Most of our employees work in manufacturing and distribution, and engaging them is very different from engaging office-based employees. At one point, we moved our employee matching and giving programs from paper forms to an entirely online system and saw participation from our plants drop off. Some facilities had been major contributors to their local United Ways, and the change made it harder for them to participate. It showed us that a seemingly efficient organizational decision could exclude much of our manufacturing workforce.

Since then, we’ve worked closely with our supply-chain partners, particularly the HR business partners supporting our plants, to listen and meet employees where they are. It can’t be a one-size-fits-all approach.

That listening has also helped us build stronger partnerships with HR. When collaborations have failed, it’s often because we were asking another team to take on additional work without advancing its priorities. We’ve had the most success when we find the win-win. When we launched a high school internship program, for example, we aligned it with both the early-careers team’s strategy and a new leadership-development program. Graduates of that program could practice managing by supervising a high school intern, while we created opportunities for students.

Lew, NationSwell: What defines the present societal and economic moment? Which trends are filling you with optimism, and which ones give you pause?

Barrett, The Campbell’s Company: What gives me optimism is the collaboration I’m seeing, both in Camden and among funders more broadly. There’s greater acknowledgement that the problems facing us are too big and complex for any one organization — let alone one sector — to solve; we’re moving away from the idea that one signature program will provide the answer and toward more intentional collaboration among funders and nonprofits. 

What gives me pause is the level of division and extremism in the country. We seem to have moved away from compromise and moderate solutions, while the loudest voices are often at the extremes. We have to remember that many people are still willing to listen to multiple perspectives, collaborate, and find solutions that work for different communities.

Even food access and food security — issues you might assume everyone could support — have become politicized through debates over SNAP and whether assistance is a “handout.” It’s startling that we’ve found a way to make food political, too.

Lew, NationSwell: You are a well-connected and thoughtful leader among your peers. Are there any leaders or organizations doing especially strong work whose praises you’d like to sing?

Barrett, The Campbell’s Company: Ali Mathias, who recently moved to a new organization, is someone I immediately connected with both personally and professionally — I believe she introduced me to NationSwell. We would get together every few months to compare notes, and I’ve learned a great deal from her.

I’ve also always admired Chobani. They’ve integrated purpose into who they are as a company, and I love how they treat their products as part of their social-impact strategy.

Walmart is another interesting example. They operate at an entirely different scale, so I look to them to understand how a company with that level of resources can move the needle. Their workforce-development work helped inspire ours: How can a company strengthen its talent pipeline while also creating jobs in communities? They also use their size and influence to bring suppliers into programs addressing issues like hunger and the environment. They’re an organization I continue to watch.

Lew, NationSwell: Are there any resources you’d recommend — books, podcasts, Ted talks — that have influenced your thinking that might influence others as well?

Barrett, The Campbell’s Company: My reading lately has fallen into two categories: pure fun and, frankly, self-help books about parenting my 10-year-old daughter. I’ve been reading Jonathan Haidt, whose earlier work on positive psychology also resonated with me. I really subscribe to that strength-based approach: How do you identify and build on your strengths?

Another major influence was a women’s leadership project I worked on during my last nine months at McKinsey. It began as internal training for women at the firm and eventually became a book, How Remarkable Women Lead, and an external training program. A senior partner interviewed around 100 successful female leaders to understand what had enabled them to succeed and whether women lead differently from men. I contributed to the book and spent my final few months at McKinsey teaching the resulting courses around the world, which was incredibly meaningful.

Two themes have stayed with me. One was “energizing”: consciously recognizing what gives you energy and what depletes it, then managing that throughout your day, week, and year. The other was “framing,” including the idea of learned optimism — that anyone can become more optimistic, although you may have to train your brain to think that way. 

Poppy MacDonald Joins NationSwell as President

Posted on by NationSwell Team

NationSwell is delighted to announce that Poppy MacDonald has joined the organization as President.

As President, MacDonald will lead NationSwell’s next chapter of growth and impact, working across the organization to deepen its membership community, expand its award-winning Studio, and build the partnerships and capabilities needed to serve an evolving ecosystem of leaders.

“As we look toward NationSwell’s next chapter, we knew we wanted an experienced operator who could help us scale what makes NationSwell special,” said Greg Behrman, NationSwell’s founder and CEO. “Poppy brings an exceptional track record of building and growing membership-driven organizations, developing high-performing teams, and translating ambitious ideas into results. I’m thrilled to welcome her as President.” 

MacDonald brings more than 20 years of experience building and scaling mission-driven membership, information, and data organizations. Most recently, she served as President of USAFacts, the nonpartisan civic initiative founded by Steve Ballmer to make government data more accessible and understandable. During her tenure, MacDonald helped grow USAFacts from an early-stage startup into a leading public data platform reaching more than one million monthly users, while overseeing product, engineering, marketing, research and operations. 

“I was incredibly purposeful about finding my next chapter, and NationSwell brought together everything I was looking for: a mission I deeply believe in, an extraordinary community of leaders, a culture and team I immediately respected, and an ambitious opportunity for growth and impact,” MacDonald said. 

Previously, MacDonald served as President and Chief Operating Officer of POLITICO, where she launched a premium B2B subscription offering, and as President and Publisher of National Journal, where she helped transform a traditional media company into a membership business serving leaders and organizations navigating Washington. Earlier in her career, she held senior leadership roles at Gallup and began her work in membership at The Advisory Board Company, where bringing executives together around shared challenges helped shape her approach to building high-value member communities.

Throughout her career, MacDonald has focused on expanding the reach of mission-driven organizations, strengthening the value they deliver to members and customers, and building sustainable growth and impact. Her experience spans membership, media, data, research and civic information, with a focus on helping leaders and organizations navigate complex challenges and turn ideas into action.

MacDonald also serves on the Board of Public Media Company and advises mission-driven and technology companies on strategy, positioning, partnerships and growth. 

Five Minutes with… Benevity’s Sona Khosla

Posted on by Brianna Provenzano

Corporate purpose leaders have spent the last several years navigating an increasingly complex mix of political pressure, regulatory scrutiny, business demands, and rising expectations from shareholders, employees and communities. For Sona Khosla — Chief Impact Officer at Benevity — that complexity has not diminished the importance of the work, but it has changed what strong leadership looks like.

NationSwell spoke with Khosla about her unlikely path from marketing to impact, the growing need for purpose leaders to pair moral clarity with business fluency, and why adaptability should be understood as a necessary condition for enduring impact.

Here’s what she had to say:

NationSwell: Take us into your world a bit — what brought you to this field? Was there a single moment that catalyzed your interest in social impact? 

Sona Khosla, Chief Impact Officer, Benevity: I would honestly say that most of my career has been accidental. I accidentally ended up in marketing, and spent about 15 years there before I discovered Benevity. I had heard a lot about Benevity and its founder, Bryan de Lottinville, as a rising tech startup in Calgary, but I had no idea what CSR was — I thought it meant customer service representative – so I was clearly walking into new territory when I interviewed for a role at the company.

But I sat across the table from Bryan and felt an instant kinship; after an hour and a half, he offered me the job on the spot. One of his closing questions was, “What is one of your top values?” and I realized I had never been asked that in an interview before. My answer was fairness. I hadn’t realized how much fairness in your personal life is akin to justice at a bigger scale. Bryan lit up and said, “Me too.” It was a meeting of minds. I remember thinking, this is a person I want to work for and a company I want to work for — even though I still have no idea what they do.

Later, while hosting one of our conferences, I heard La Shanda Hurst from Microsoft say, “We may all be competitors in business, but we’re all collaborators in goodness.” In that moment, I thought to myself that impact was a pretty unique place to be and wanted more of it.

A few years later, I moved from marketing into the Chief Impact Officer role and began leading Benevity Impact Labs, whose mission it is to accelerate impact and inclusion through innovation, data insights and community. I found that the collaborative spirit really suits my nature. Working at the ecosystem level is a privilege because you become more than a product to your clients. You become a platform that can fuel impact with greater efficiency for nonprofits and companies. That suits me so much more than being a commercial engine for software.

Ten years in, I’ve realized that this is soul work. This is not just a job, it is a calling. At some level, you have to answer the call — and I did. Now I feel like I’ve found my people.

NationSwell: You came to this work as an outsider. How did you navigate that transition?

Khosla, Benevity: Luckily, I spent my first five or six years at Benevity in marketing, so I had time to learn the field before stepping into the impact role. Even so, I definitely had imposter syndrome. I was suddenly in rooms with people who had master’s degrees in international policy and deep expertise in systems thinking and cross-sector mobilization. I thought, I’m just a marketer — what do I know?

Then I realized the skills I had as a marketer were exactly the skills required to drive behavior change. On the marketing side, you are driving behavior change. In this work, you are driving behavior change for social good. It is still about audience insight, motivation, reward, storytelling, connecting people to something bigger and showing them how they can find belonging. I realized I could bridge those worlds. Those skills were highly transferable—and now they could be used for a greater good.

The other big transition was moving from brand marketing into a lab where data and research are foundational. That has actually been incredibly helpful. I can immerse myself in the data and understand what is happening across the industry without having held every practitioner role myself. I can see what is happening at the ecosystem level, and I’ve learned how to ask good questions of the people in the roles about why it is happening, how it is happening and what dynamics are underneath it.

And as Chief Impact Officer, I’ve also had to do this work for Benevity itself. The standard people hold Benevity to is high because we are literally selling enterprise impact. People expect us to live our values and contribute positively. I have appreciated that high bar, and I’ve learned a lot through it.

NationSwell: How have your strategies or leadership style evolved over time throughout your career?

Khosla, Benevity: I moved from marketing into this role in 2021, after the pandemic and the racial justice movement, when many people still had not returned to the office. I realized how much this work was not merely about running good programs; it was about equity and justice, and that suited me. I had always been an avid reader of Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi and Malcolm X.

Then the conflict in the Middle East escalated in 2023, and many organizations were forced to recalibrate their focus on equity and justice because they recognized how difficult it was to establish a single “right” position. What had been treated as a source of unification was suddenly perceived as a source of risk and division. I was pulled into conversations about discrimination, hate speech and hate groups, and ultimately into policy and ethics.

I don’t think that shift was uncommon. Many people in roles like mine had been running programs and suddenly had to engage with policy, ethics, legal questions and regulatory risk. That only intensified through 2025.

My thinking has rounded out. It began with social impact, then expanded to risk mitigation. Now it is about embedding purpose across the enterprise with a full-spectrum lens: How does it create business value and social impact? How does it support regulatory permission and brand trust? How do you thread those things together so the work delivers maximum value while also managing unexpected risks?

I never imagined I would be in these moral, ethical, policy and legal discussions, but I have found a strange affinity for it. It is challenging, but it requires whole-minded, wholehearted engagement.

NationSwell: What are some of the trends or the evolutions that you are seeing today in 2026, and what should other leaders be preparing for over the next five years?

Khosla, Benevity: We publish an annual trends report called the State of Corporate Purpose. In this year’s research, three-quarters of companies said political and regulatory compliance influenced their strategy. So I know I’m not alone in this—not exactly a pivot, but a real rounding out of how you develop a strategy with those factors in view.

Communications used to be quite broad, but now people in roles like mine are becoming much more discerning and strategic about how they invest and communicate. Last year, 69% of companies changed the way they described their programs publicly, much of that because of legal and regulatory risk.

But the data also showed that corporate giving rose eight points and volunteering reached record levels. In a year when this work was perceived as one of the greatest corporate risks, people in these roles still largely won very difficult internal conversations and continued the work in ways that stand up to scrutiny. To us, purpose prevailed.

Not every conversation was won. Some teams got smaller; some resources were reduced; sixty-five percent of companies changed the programs or nonprofits they funded, and that has real downstream consequences. What we are seeing now is much more thoughtfulness and strategic discernment around communications, nonprofit partnership, and impact storytelling and measurement. Those are the three areas surfacing most strongly in the data.

NationSwell: As leaders navigate uncertainty and scrutiny, what distinguishes the strongest among them?

Khosla, Benevity: Looks can be deceiving. From the outside, it can appear that a company is retreating, but we get exposure to the very difficult decisions these leaders are making and the actual impact they are having in their communities and companies.

The real question is: How does a company make decisions based on its values, and how is it able to live authentically into this work? Looking back, we can now see that some of the work that came out of 2020 was responsive. It was no less important because of that, but there has been a recalibration around how authentic it is to a company’s values and how aligned to its goals going forward.

I have a tremendous amount of empathy for the people making those decisions. More than 80% of the people in our research said they were proud of the decisions their companies made, and I don’t think that is because the decisions were easy. I think it is because of how hard they were.

There is no perfection in this work. If you were able to hold the line on the foundation of the work, that is success. If it gets expressed through different partnerships, slightly different cause categories or different program investments, that is a shift, but it is not necessarily a withdrawal.

We need to allow organizations to adapt without harsh judgment. If we judge every adjustment too aggressively, this work will be undermined. No matter how strong the business case is, purpose is still being weighed against pay, flexibility and other very tangible employee expectations. When companies are held to an impossible standard of perfection, it makes it difficult for them to continue to do the work and adapt as needed. We need some forgiveness in the system for people to continue to do the right thing.

NationSwell: Which trends are giving you optimism now, and which are giving you pause?

Khosla, Benevity: There is actually a lot giving me optimism. Corporate giving rose. Volunteering reached record levels. If that was our hardest year and we still grew our impact, then hell yeah, we can do this!

The level of strategic discernment and adaptability I have seen from leaders in the past few years is phenomenal — the ability to know when and how to hold the line and when and how to adjust. People in this field have basically received a crash course in the skills future business leaders will need. This group of professionals has gone through the test. I have a lot of optimism that they are ready for what comes next and are going to become some of the best business leaders across the enterprise over the next decade.

Our research showed that the number-one reason companies invest in purpose is corporate reputation and trust. So CMOs, chief communications officers and chief brand officers are leaning in. Legal cares. Finance cares. The CHRO cares. Some people see that as dilution. I see it as the work becoming embedded across the organization.

I’m also optimistic about our willingness to surface tensions. In our State of Corporate Volunteering report, we called out that companies are seeing record participation while nonprofits are struggling on the funding side — and many nonprofits do not see value in the employee volunteering they are currently receiving. Once we saw that gap in the data, we felt a responsibility to publish it. The response from both sides was: Thank you. Now help us figure out how to do it better. That is exactly the conversation the sector needs to have.

What gives me pause is the need for stronger internal advocacy. Many people in this work come from nonprofits, policy or impact. We are phenomenal at selling the value of the work to people who already believe in it. Then the challenge is: Now sell it to people who don’t. That is harder.

We need stronger impact-storytelling skills, more business acumen and greater fluency in the language of the business. And I do not mean only making a financial case. A CHRO may care more about culture and connectedness, or about using purpose to unify a company through an acquisition or merger. We need to speak very specifically to every stakeholder in their language. We are getting better at that, but there is still more to be learned and practiced.

NationSwell: What is your North Star when it comes to making difficult decisions?

Khosla, Benevity: Our former CFO and I spent a lot of time together because he was responsible for legal, compliance and risk, while I was working on the policy and ethics side. One day he said to me, “Sona, in your capacity as Chief Impact Officer, I see you as the conscience of the company.” That articulation of the role has stayed with me.

My North Star is to ask: Can I live with the decisions we are making? And are these decisions enduring? Are we going to regret this in 24 months? If so, I cannot live with it now.

My job is to be the conscience at the executive table. That means speaking on behalf of the nonprofits in our ecosystem, our clients, our people and their people. And then asking again: Can we live with these decisions over time? Is this enduring? At the end of my career, I want to leave with a sense that we did the best we could – not as a rationalization but with pride. That is what fulfillment looks like to me.

The other mindset I’m bringing to the work is that we are always going to be in draft mode. We are not going to write the next purpose playbook for the next five years, create a giant tome and simply apply it. We have to become very comfortable constantly writing, rewriting and rewriting again.

That is not failure. That level of adaptability and resilience is success. If you are rewriting, you are successful. That is the mindset this moment of hyperchange requires.

Impact Next: An interview with Allen Family Philanthropies’ Lara Littlefield

Posted on by Brianna Provenzano

At a moment of inequality and division, who is advancing the vanguard of economic and social progress to bolster under-served communities? Whose work is fostering the inclusive growth that ensures every individual thrives? Who will set the ambitious standards that mobilize whole industries, challenging their peers to reach new altitudes of social impact? 

In 2026, Impact Next — an editorial flagship series from NationSwell — will spotlight the standard-bearing corporate social responsibility and impact leaders, entrepreneurs, experts, and philanthropists whose catalytic work has the potential to shape the landscape of progress amid urgent need for social and economic action.

For this installment, NationSwell interviewed Lara Littlefield, Executive Director of Allen Family Philanthropies. Here’s what she had to say:

Chloe Lew, Senior Vice President of Strategic Partnerships and Innovation, NationSwell: What brought you to the field that you’re in right now? Was there an early moment, a relationship, or an experience that galvanized your commitment to driving bold action?

Lara Littlefield, Executive Director, Allen Family Philanthropies: I grew up in a family where community service was embedded in who we were: My mom was an active volunteer in the local children’s community theater, my dad served on the school board, and I grew up watching them both give back to our community.

As a teenager, politically active friends pulled me into volunteering on campaigns around issues like raising the minimum wage. At the same time, I was a dancer and choreographer, and in the arts, every time you want to showcase your work you’re also fundraising, so I had early exposure to both organizing and fundraising.

I loved the arts, but I was also becoming more politically aware. I studied community organizing and political economy, interned with the AFL-CIO, and explored labor organizing. I knew I wanted to work in the nonprofit sector because service and supporting community were core to my motivations. I also needed a job, so I thought about what would make me valuable to a nonprofit and landed on securing capital, which led me into fundraising.

Eventually, I joined the Collins Group, a fundraising consulting firm, where we helped nonprofits build capacity through volunteer-led, staff-supported capital, program and endowment campaigns. I worked on dozens of campaigns across the Pacific Northwest, and it was one of the most inspiring periods of my career — watching people who wanted to do something meaningful jump in and make it happen with a little support.

From there, I went deeper into fundraising at the University of Washington, working at the intersection of research, innovation and impact. That partner-development work eventually led me to what is now Allen Family Philanthropies – founded by Microsoft co-founder Paul G. Allen and his sister Jody Allyen – an organization I had worked with throughout my career as a fundraiser, a consultant and now as its leader.

Lew, NationSwell: How do you think about leading a foundation that has real influence in Seattle, the community that you’re from and continue to live in? What is that like?

Littlefield, Allen Family Philanthropies: It was serendipitous in the best way. You never quite know where your career will lead, but I think if you stay connected to your values, they’ll guide you where you want to be. I didn’t seek this role out; it was a wonderful opportunity that evolved over time and felt deeply aligned with what matters to me.

The Allen family has roots here in Seattle. They grew up here, their parents were a librarian and a school teacher, and they remain committed to this place and the topics I believe can be transformational for the region.

When I attended Evergreen State College, my first interdisciplinary cohort was called “Sense of Place.” We brought together biology, English, writing, and art to understand our connection to place and what those ties mean. Looking back, it all feels connected, even though I couldn’t have known that at the time.

This region has undergone a lot of transformation, but its roots and identity are still here. It’s a place of natural beauty, art, and creativity, and a place that continues to push the envelope in technology and business. A lot of places might say that, but for me, it feels authentic because I’ve seen it and grown up with it. It feels very tangible.

Lew, NationSwell: How do you look at the role of community in your work? Is there something else that you see as being really key to a part of your leadership and management with the Foundation?

Littlefield, Allen Family Philanthropies: It’s a really interesting blend. The foundation has evolved over time, alongside the broader practice of philanthropy, and as a field we’re constantly learning what works, what doesn’t, and which new approaches are worth trying.

There was an era when the foundation’s approach was very much, “move quickly, identify what doesn’t exist but should, and build it.” Innovation is still part of our DNA, and there’s absolutely a place for that. But we’ve also learned that you can develop the most powerful tool in the world, and if it isn’t grounded in an understanding of who it serves, what problem it solves and what adoption will require, it won’t have the impact you intended.

We have three program areas — Arts & Culture, Youth, and Environment — each with its own strategies and goals. But the golden thread connecting all of them is community. We believe that creating a thriving, healthy community requires everyone to play a part.

That means engaging the people closest to the problems, because they often have the strongest solutions. It means responding to what we hear, co-developing approaches, and creating a sense of ownership. Particularly in the environmental sector, we’ve learned that this is what makes a solution sustainable and helps it gain traction. Over the past six years, we’ve really worked to evolve our practices around that belief.

At the same time, we could listen forever, but we also have a point of view. We’re able to look across an entire landscape and identify patterns, associations, and connections that may be harder to see when you’re immersed in the details.

That’s where research and research-to-practice come in. Someone may have a great idea, but it may already have been tested — or there may be evidence showing that a different approach will produce a stronger result. Our role is to bring those perspectives together: to combine the high-altitude view and the experience on the ground.

Lew, NationSwell: How would you describe your leadership style? What is it about the way that you lead in the space that makes you an effective leader?

Littlefield, Allen Family Philanthropies: I first try to create a culture of psychological safety — one where everyone knows we’re in this together to make the work stronger — and that requires leaving ego at the door. None of us is the smartest person in the room, and once you accept that, you become much more open to possibility and to developing better ideas.

People should feel comfortable challenging one another, asking questions, saying something doesn’t resonate or explaining why they disagree. That means building trust, fostering collegiality, and not reacting defensively when something feels uncomfortable. To me, discomfort is part of growth. I don’t want us to become intellectually comfortable, because everything is dynamic. As soon as you think you have the answer, something changes.

There also has to be rigor. I want us drawing connections across fields and disciplines, because that’s often where innovation comes from. And I want us to feel comfortable taking risks, both personally and in what we bring to the board. If everything we propose is immediately accepted, I don’t think we’re pushing hard enough.

And it should be fun, because what an honor and a privilege it is to do this work. We’re engaging with difficult problems every day, and that can wear us down, but we also get to translate those problems into potential solutions and investments, and I try to keep the team focused on that.

Lew, NationSwell: How do you see Allen Family Philanthropies within the broader philanthropy field? How do you see philanthropy situated within the world?

Littlefield, Allen Family Philanthropies: I don’t see philanthropy in a singular way. My perspective changes depending on the altitude from which we’re looking at the question.

At one level, we can ask why philanthropy is necessary at all; that raises legitimate questions about the economic model and the accumulation of wealth that makes large-scale philanthropy possible. Those critiques matter.

But there’s also philanthropy on the ground, which isn’t exclusive to major funders. We practice it in our communities every day, often in ways that research doesn’t capture: helping a neighbor, bringing food to someone who is sick, contributing to a crowdfunding campaign or volunteering at your child’s school.

At its core, philanthropy is about acting on your values and beliefs to help people and the world around you. Whatever critiques we bring to the field, people should have opportunities to act on what matters to them, and that requires understanding what their values actually are.

That’s why fundraising, to me, isn’t really about money. Money is the final transaction, but the work is listening to understand someone’s values, the kind of world they want to live in and where they hope to make a difference. It’s about building enough trust that they believe you understand them and can connect them to a meaningful way to act.

Grantmaking is similar. We’re interpreting proposals and conversations through the values of our founders and the foundation. We’re asking whether the work aligns with our vision for impact and whether we can build a relationship grounded in trust, learning and a shared journey.

For us, that relationship shouldn’t be transactional. We want to learn alongside our grantees, and when something doesn’t work, understand why and figure out together whether to adapt or pivot. That becomes difficult with large portfolios, but to me, it’s the heart of philanthropy — just practiced at different scales.

Lew, NationSwell: What’s currently defining the current social and economic environment that we’re in? What are the trends that you’re seeing, and what’s giving you hope right now?

Littlefield, Allen Family Philanthropies: One thing COVID showed us is that crisis can create opportunity, even in the midst of something terrible. We saw people come together in new ways, and we saw capital move quickly. So we know it’s possible, and we shouldn’t have to wait for a crisis to make that happen.

When I entered this role, I also started seeing more foundations create partner-development functions — people focused on connecting with other funders, aligning strategies, sharing resources and building a stronger understanding of the landscape. None of us is going to solve these problems alone, so the question is how we create greater leverage together.

Pooled funds and collaboratives aren’t new, but I’m seeing much more conversation and partnership among funders, which is encouraging. I’m also seeing trust-based philanthropy grow in scale. That raises important questions about what kind of funder you want to be. Are you simply distributing capital, or are you trying to learn and build relationships as you go?

At the same time, I’m concerned about preserving the philanthropic sector and its ability to make those choices, particularly in moments when attention and funding are pulling inward.

That concern feels especially immediate because of the Ebola outbreak we’re watching now. When Paul was alive, he committed $100 million to the 2014 outbreak, and we funded work across the spectrum — from vaccine development to last-mile community services.

Now, we’re seeing another outbreak accelerate, and we’re trying to understand who is responding and where the gaps are. There’s less U.S. presence, and many funders have shifted toward local giving for very good reasons. But outbreaks don’t respect borders. There’s a risk in pulling inward and assuming that because something isn’t affecting us here right now, it won’t affect us at all.

That’s one of my biggest concerns in this moment: how we maintain a local commitment while still recognizing our global interdependence.

Lew, NationSwell: What issue do you think philanthropy should be paying more attention to right now?

Littlefield, Allen Family Philanthropies: I’m not sure loneliness is lacking attention — people are talking about it — but I do think we need to do more about it. The disconnection people feel from one another is a real concern.

That’s where work like the Chamber of Connection comes in, along with our investments in arts & culture. How do we create third spaces where people can gather, engage face-to-face, and build relationships? How do we leverage cultural experiences to help people see themsevles and each other in new ways? We know people are hungry for connection, so how do we make it as easy and inviting to step outside and walk into your neighborhood as it is to pick up your phone?

We need more opportunities that bring people in and make them feel welcome. The challenge can seem enormous, especially alongside conversations about AI and what accelerating technology might mean for humanity, but a community-based approach makes it feel more tangible.

Rather than trying to solve for what the entire world will look like in 20 years, we can ask what connection looks like just outside our doors: in our neighborhoods, storefronts, walkable spaces, churches, or other gathering places.

I’m grateful that so many people are leaning into this work. That’s where I feel both the concern and the excitement — they’re two sides of the same coin.

Lew, NationSwell: Is there a particular program, signature initiative, or some facet of the work that you would like to spotlight for us that is driving outcomes for the work?

Littlefield: Each project has a different flavor, and often what resonates personally has to do with the people leading it. That’s also why I believe we need to be out in the field. If my team is spending too much time in the office, I get nervous. We should be talking to people and spending time in the communities we serve. I’m constantly trying to balance that myself.

One project I was closely involved in developing was the Community Accelerator Grant with ArtsFund. During COVID, we wanted to move capital quickly and help arts organizations keep their doors open, and we also wanted the community to help determine where that funding went.

We’re now in the fourth year of the partnership, which has distributed about $10 million each year through a low-barrier process, and every eligible applicant has received funding. We’ve supported more than a thousand arts and culture organizations across all 39 counties in Washington state.

One of the most interesting things we’ve learned is how many small organizations operate below the thresholds captured by traditional reporting systems, yet play critical roles in their communities. This year, we limited eligibility to organizations with budgets under $1 million so that more funding could reach that grassroots level. It’s exciting to discover organizations I had never heard of and to learn more about the ecosystem through their work.

And then there’s the Slingshot Challenge with the National Geographic Society, which supports young people developing environmental solutions and presenting their ideas in a video format. They’ve received applications from around 80 countries, far beyond what we imagined when the program began. Watching those videos is incredibly inspiring and humbling. I’m always thinking, “What was I doing at that age? Can I have a do-over?” These young people are already changemakers

Lew, NationSwell: Are there any resources you’d recommend — books, podcasts, Ted talks — that have influenced your thinking or shaped your perspective?

Littlefield, Allen Family Philanthropies: In these roles, we’re already reading constantly — journals, articles, papers and research — so when I have time to read for myself, I want to get out of my own brain a little.

I really like science fiction because it creates associations I might never have made otherwise. It pushes you to imagine different possibilities and think about the future in a new way. I also listen to podcasts, and one I especially enjoy is Hidden Brain. I like the combination of human stories and the science behind them; that probably speaks to my nerdier side.

I’m also drawn to futurism because in philanthropy, we have to keep thinking about the world we want to create. A colleague and I once explored how we might gather a group of science fiction authors and ask them what we ought to be funding.

More and more, the world can feel like a science fiction story. But I do think there’s something valuable in looking to those writers and thinkers to help us imagine what might come next.

Five Minutes with… Kyndryl Foundation and Fair Chance Futures

Posted on by Brianna Provenzano

Across the country, millions of people face barriers to economic mobility because of their involvement with the justice system — barriers that can extend well beyond an individual and shape the economic futures of entire families and communities. Fair Chance Futures, formerly Justice Through Code, is working to close those gaps by pairing free technical and professional training with the social capital, career coaching, and employer access that help learners translate skills into opportunity.

That model has found a strong partner in the Kyndryl Foundation, whose grantmaking focuses on expanding access to economic opportunity through cybersecurity, AI, and workforce readiness. For Kyndryl, the partnership reflects a broader commitment to trust-based philanthropy: providing sustained, multi-year support while also sharing the company’s people capital, technical expertise, and global knowledge networks in ways that help grantees grow their impact over time.

For this installment of Five Minutes With…, NationSwell spoke with Monoswita Saha, Social Impact Director at the Kyndryl Foundation, and Aedan Macdonald, Executive Director of Fair Chance Futures, about how their collaboration is helping create pathways to economic opportunity for justice-impacted communities and why durable partnerships and programs both require trust at the fore. 

NationSwell: As it continues to expand its grant portfolio globally, what are some of the lessons Kyndryl Foundation has learned about the value of sustained support? 

Monoswita Saha, Social Impact Director, Kyndryl Foundation: Multi-year grants allow our partners to do more meaningful work: to get to know their communities better, deepen their partnerships, and build toward longer-term impact. As a newer foundation entering our third year, we’re just beginning to see the fruits of that sustained support, both in what we’re learning and in the impact our partners are having in the communities they serve.

Trust-based philanthropy is foundational to our work, and that means giving organizations the room to do what they do best while also measuring the work so we can understand what’s succeeding, where there’s a path forward, and how we can continue building together.

As we expand Kyndryl Foundation into new countries, including France and Mexico, we’re also continuing to deepen our relationships with grantees over multiple years — including Fair Chance Futures and Aedan’s team.

NationSwell: What initially convinced you that Fair Chance Futures was the kind of partner Kyndryl should be backing, and what does this partnership reveal about how you’re currently thinking about long-term impact?

Saha, Kyndryl Foundation: Really, it was everything. The work that Fair Chance Futures — formerly Justice Through Code — is doing with justice-impacted communities is an area where I’ve always seen real value and impact. Even in my previous work at Sesame Street, we worked with formerly incarcerated families and focused on creating those kinds of connections.

When we were introduced to Fair Chance Futures, their model felt unique not only in the justice space, but in the way they were engaging, skilling, and training their community. It really seemed like the perfect match.

As we’ve continued to build the relationship, we’ve also seen the strength of Aedan’s leadership: the strategic way he approaches partnerships, the work itself, and the value it can bring. For us, it comes back to trust — trusting the work, and finding new and creative ways to support it. After our first year together, we’re still digging in and identifying new ways to make an impact.

NationSwell: Aedan, Kyndryl is backing a broader portfolio focused on cybersecurity, AI, and workforce readiness. Where do you see Fair Chance Futures fitting into that larger picture?

Aedan Macdonald, Fair Chance Futures: For us, Fair Chance Futures fits squarely into that picture because there are 80 million Americans with a criminal record. That’s one in three adults, touching every community, school, and neighborhood across the country.

It’s also a population that too often receives the least attention, even though there is enormous upside if we invest not only in justice-impacted individuals, but in their communities and families. If philanthropy is trying to make the world better through economic opportunity, it’s very difficult to do that while ignoring a problem of this scale.

That’s especially true as AI begins to widen skills gaps. AI is an incredible tool: People who learn to use it can become far more efficient and competitive in the workforce, but the question is who has access to those skills in the first place.

That’s part of why we changed our name to Fair Chance Futures. Our work is now more broadly place-based, focused on communities impacted by the justice system. Whether you’re looking at West Virginia, Brownsville or Bed-Stuy in New York City, Texas, or other communities across the country, there are places that have been disproportionately impacted, and those are places we need to invest in.

Saha, Kyndryl Foundation: So much of what Aedan is saying resonates with how we operate at Kyndryl. Our culture is grounded in the Kyndryl Way: how we show up for our people, our communities, and our customers. So using our people’s expertise and resources to support organizations like Fair Chance Futures is really an extension of who we are.

That’s also why this work feels not only impactful, but meaningful and authentic to us as a company. We believe our expertise in AI, cybersecurity, and skilling is vital to the future success of these communities, so the partnership really goes hand-in-hand with our broader mission. When I hear Aedan speak about the work in that way, it deeply resonates with me.

NationSwell: Considering the recent rebrand, what was the genesis of the work that Fair Chance Futures is doing, and how would you describe the impact that you’re hoping to drive? 

Macdonald, FCF: Our aspiration is to ensure that every community impacted by the justice system has access to economic opportunity. That includes people who have been directly involved in the justice system, as well as neighborhoods where incarceration has had a broader economic impact — for example, where families and communities have been affected by the absence of someone who could otherwise contribute economically. We’re deeply invested in providing what we see as some of the country’s most highly resourced, free educational programming for people impacted by the legal system, with both technical and professional career tracks.

What makes our model unique is that our mechanism for change is not just skills-building, it’s also social capital. Through research and through our own work, we’ve seen that if you provide people with skills alone, it’s still very difficult to make the jump into a job. Depending on the estimate, somewhere between 70 and 90 percent of jobs come through some kind of in-network referral.

If you’re only cold-applying to jobs, that dramatically narrows the field of opportunity. So we’re focused on closing that gap by embedding our programs in leading universities across the country and connecting our fellows to MBA students, university alumni, and business leaders. As a result, Fellows graduate with a network of roughly 100 professionals they can tap into during their career transition.

We’ve seen that do two things: First, it decreases the time from training to employment. Second — and this has become especially important amid tech-sector layoffs — it helps Fellows get back into jobs more quickly if they are affected, because they have a deep, established network to draw from.

Saha, Kyndryl Foundation: Because we’re a tech company, we’re obviously focused on building deeper impact around technical skills, but we also can’t forget the human-centered skills that make this work meaningful. 

Part of the importance of this partnership is that we’re helping enable critical skills while keeping the human piece at the center. We need those human connections, whether through mentoring or by using our people to connect with Fair Chance Futures and our other grantees. Kyndryl has employees in more than 60 countries, so our people capital is vital to the success of this work.

Because we have Kyndryls in so many different places, we have a real opportunity to use that people capital to connect the dots.

Macdonald, FCF: That idea of investing in people really resonates with me. When you look at Kyndryl’s perspective, practice, and culture, and then see that extended into philanthropy through multi-year support, it makes a lot of sense: you can’t change someone’s life by making a quick investment and hoping their entire future changes overnight, and that is also true for organizations.

As a nonprofit leader, I know how easy it is to get caught in a cycle of always moving quickly and planning year-to-year. Just as we invest in people, we also need to invest in organizations, because that’s what leads to long-term growth.

Even within our own program, our technical track is 20 months long, with three levels that people can test into, but what drives successful outcomes is the sustained support: the network Fellows build, the programmatic support they receive, and the lifetime career coaching available to them. There’s a real link between how we invest in people and how we invest in organizations, and I applaud the Foundation for recognizing that;  I think it’s something more foundations should strive toward. 

Saha, Kyndryl Foundation: We also think about this work in terms of ripple effects: When you train or upskill one individual, what does that make possible for their family? For their community? It’s almost a train-the-trainer model.

We don’t yet have all the research to measure the full effect, but we know conceptually that this work creates a ripple. It can be life-changing when it happens over time — not as a one-and-done investment, but as sustained support.

NationSwell: What has Kyndryl’s support unlocked in practice that’s changed what Fair Chance Futures can deliver on or imagine? 

Macdonald, FCF: Sustained support has allowed us to adapt much more quickly to a changing labor market. If you think about workforce training, the cycle for developing curriculum, making sure it is industry-informed, and ensuring people are learning skills that actually translate into jobs has shrunk rapidly over the last few years because of AI.

Sustained support has also allowed us to focus on updating our internal systems and processes so we can constantly iterate and provide curriculum that meets learners’ needs in an increasingly competitive job market. For example, in 2020 or 2021, we could develop a software engineering training program and make moderate changes over a two-year period based on learner feedback. Now, even though our most advanced program is nine months long and we know the modules we’ll teach, an individual lesson may not be finalized until four to six weeks before it’s delivered. The market is changing so quickly that material developed six months ago may no longer be as relevant.

Another important piece is engagement with Kyndryls. Our Fellows often say they didn’t fully believe what was possible until they worked with an MBA student or attended an event with Kyndryl. Getting in front of someone in a business context, receiving feedback, and realizing, ‘Okay, I can do this,’ is a huge unlock for Fellows. That kind of confidence-building is an essential part of the engagement.

I also think Kyndryl’s thought leadership has been very valuable. The Readiness Report they released over the past year is something we’ve returned to as we think about how skills are changing and how our programs should map to those changes. That kind of knowledge-sharing is especially important in corporate philanthropy. There are centers of knowledge inside companies and universities that help shape where we’re headed as a country and as a world, but very few people get access to them.

If that information isn’t shared, it stays limited to the people making decisions within those institutions, and frankly, that holds others back. The way Kyndryl has invested in sharing that knowledge, and in engaging grantee partners around it, has been incredibly helpful. 

Saha, Kyndryl Foundation: When we’re developing thought leadership or conducting research around readiness for our customers and our Kyndryls, of course we want to share that first and foremost with our grantees.

We also think about that globally. Aedan is here in the U.S. with Fair Chance Futures, and we also support grantees like Girl Security, as well as partners in places like the Czech Republic, Japan, and India. So the question becomes: How do we share knowledge across that network? The beauty of a company like Kyndryl is that we’re at the epicenter of so much information, and we can help connect dots, share resources, and create knowledge transfer. Why wouldn’t we?

The work Aedan is doing is very unique, so why wouldn’t we connect Fair Chance Futures to partners doing related work globally? That kind of exchange makes all of us stronger.

NationSwell: When you think about a strong grantee partnership, what distinguishes “writing a check” from being the kind of partner that actually helps drive impact?

Saha, Kyndryl Foundation: It’s so much more than writing a check. For me, both personally and professionally, it comes back to building relationships and practicing trust-based philanthropy. That’s what real partnership looks like: open dialogue, transparency, and trust that our grantees know how to do the work.

At the same time, we’re measuring the work and looking at impact, but there is a constant dialogue. Aedan and our other grantees may come to us as a funder, but really, this is a partnership. We are both invested in the work because we know the impact is greater when we do it together.

We’re not the experts in every area; our grantees and partners are. Everything we do comes back to filling their buckets and transferring knowledge in the best way we can.

And we’re still learning and growing. This is year three, but what does year four look like? Year five, six, seven? There is so much opportunity ahead, and we’re grateful for partners like Aedan and Fair Chance Futures. We can’t do this work without them.

NationSwell: Aedan, from your seat, what have you learned about what grantees need most from corporate funders beyond just capital? 

Aedan: Engagement with team members across companies is incredibly important. As I mentioned earlier, there are institutions — like the leading universities where our programs are embedded — that are centers of knowledge. There are reports, research, and external resources that come from those places. But there is also the knowledge each individual carries, and the power of access to that knowledge.

That’s a huge part of what matters in corporate philanthropy. It’s not only whether dollars are available; it’s whether there is engagement across the company or organization to help drive transformation forward. That kind of sustained investment and engagement is what creates change. 

I often say this to people who have kids: Think about what you want to give your children to help them succeed. Do they have someone they can call when they have questions? Do they have financial support to overcome obstacles? Do they have access and education?

It’s very similar for us. Corporate philanthropy is uniquely positioned to provide that kind of connective tissue — especially when we’re focused on economic opportunity, where access and relationships are such a huge part of the equation.

Most of us can look back on our lives and identify moments that changed things for us: someone we met, a class we took, an opportunity that opened a door. The question is whether we can create and scale those experiences for people who may not have had that traditional pathway, or who need a little extra support getting there. That’s what corporate partners can uniquely bring.

The brand association matters, too. For better or worse, society often attaches value based on where someone works, where they went to school, or who they know. There is power in opening more doors so that someone can say, “I know someone at this company, and they gave me this advice.”

NationSwell: What are the lessons you’d impart on other companies or nonprofits aspiring to build the kinds of partnerships that are truly durable, strategic, and mutually reinforcing? 

Saha, Kyndryl Foundation: Trust-based philanthropy is a huge part of what makes our work successful and impactful. So is authenticity — making sure the work is true to your brand and your company — and building real relationships.

The kind of relationship we have with executive directors like Aedan is hard to replicate and hard to put in writing. It requires openness to change, openness to evolution, and a willingness to be thought partners.

Again, it all comes back to being a true partner — not just a funder. It’s about staying committed together, and staying committed long enough for the work to grow into what it can become.

Macdonald, FCF: I think any good partnership has to be treated like a relationship you’re building with someone else. And the foundation of any good relationship is showing up and communicating.

That doesn’t mean you’re in touch with every partner all the time, but consistency and dialogue are the most important pieces. In our case, over the time we’ve received support from Kyndryl, many things have changed and plans have been updated. We have to be responsive to the present moment.

A good partnership is marked by that level of communication: understanding how we’re thinking about solving problems, and trusting that we’re making decisions based on sound logic and what’s best for the people we serve. That kind of trust only comes from showing up and communicating consistently.

Impact Next: An interview with The Carter Center’s Paige Alexander

Posted on by Brianna Provenzano

At a moment of inequality and division, who is advancing the vanguard of economic and social progress to bolster under-served communities? Whose work is fostering the inclusive growth that ensures every individual thrives? Who will set the ambitious standards that mobilize whole industries, challenging their peers to reach new altitudes of social impact? 

In 2026, Impact Next — an editorial flagship series from NationSwell — will spotlight the standard-bearing corporate social responsibility and impact leaders, entrepreneurs, experts, and philanthropists whose catalytic work has the potential to shape the landscape of progress amid urgent need for social and economic action.

For this installment, NationSwell interviewed Paige Alexander, CEO of The Carter Center, about what it means to lead an institution shaped so deeply by its founders; how The Carter Center is carrying its global health and peacebuilding legacy into a new era; and how to source and refine more durable forms of hope. Here’s what she had to say:

Raymond Hutchison: You’ve mentioned before that you transitioned to The Carter Center from an organization that was founder-led to one that is guided by its founder’s principles. What was it like working with or for Jimmy Carter and Rosalynn Carter, and how has that experience impacted you as a leader?

Alexander, The Carter Center: I had the benefit of coming back in 2020, right in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic. Even though President and Mrs. Carter had spent one week every month up here in Atlanta for 35 years, the pandemic meant that I had to go down to Plains, Georgia every month to meet with them, and that was a great opportunity. 

They were in their own home, a very simple, ranch-style house, and you were two and a half hours away from Atlanta, so really not only outside the Beltway of Washington, but truly in Middle America in many ways.

To listen to their stories, and to have the opportunity to understand how what they saw at the end of the road in Mali and Sudan was similar to what they saw at the end of the road in rural Georgia, in terms of helping people, was really meaningful.

For me, it was also an opportunity to kick the tires on a couple of issues that came up in my first few years. The 2020 election was teeing up, and I felt like we had to work domestically if we were going to be credible overseas in all the elections we were supporting there. President Carter went along with the idea that we could start doing domestic work, and that was a pretty big shift. But he also knew that we had to go where we needed most and where we had something unique to offer.

When Russia invaded Ukraine, I called him and said, ‘We’ve got to do something,’ and he said, ‘There are people in the neighborhood who will take care of Ukraine. We need to be where the neglected people are — dealing with neglected tropical diseases at the end of the road. That’s where people aren’t paying attention,’ he said, ‘and that’s where we should be.’

So I got a very good sense from him of what his North Star was, and that allowed me to recognize where this organization had to go in order to continue to be founder-inspired, even though it wasn’t founder-led.

Hutchison, NationSwell: What is the “North Star” of your leadership style? What is it about the way that you lead in the space that makes you an effective leader?

Alexander, The Carter Center: It’s hard for international NGOs to build legitimacy, and when one does, it’s usually because of things like inclusion, transparency, accountability — all the buzzwords that let people know you’re not going anywhere. 

So for me to come in and think I was going to have a brand-new North Star didn’t feel right, particularly when we had all of these preexisting commitments we needed to honor: eradicating Guinea worm, eliminating other neglected tropical diseases, staying true to human rights… my North Star became very much aligned with theirs.

And I knew that because in all of the work I had done— whether it was in the federal government or with other nonprofits — what people understand, respect, and trust are the people who go to the end of the road with them to complete something, not someone who’s coming in to do a project. So in the end, it was pretty easy to adapt my North Star to theirs.

Hutchison, NationSwell: My impression is that you’re on the road quite a bit. When it comes to social impact, what does proximity mean to you, and how does that influence you as a leader?

Alexander, The Carter Center: Proximity is important — I feel that it defines us. We’re more than 3000  people, and 99% of our staff in the field are local. We don’t have a lot of American or third-country nationals as our chiefs of party, so they don’t always get a lot of overlap with management, per se. So my ability to go out and meet the staff in the field and understand what their pain points are is incredibly important — that’s how I learn.

President Carter and Rosalynn Carter always believed in hiring locally and making sure programs were grounded in local needs, not simply what headquarters was presenting, and to me that’s really important. It’s not one-size-fits-all: What I see in the DRC is not necessarily relevant to Ethiopia, just like how what I see in Arizona is not necessarily relevant to what I’m seeing in Pennsylvania.

But I think being here in Atlanta is equally important; it’s helpful to be around to make sure I’m listening the whole time and reacting appropriately.

I think that’s the most difficult thing about management: you can’t be on a train, or in a boat, if no one is rowing with you.

Hutchison, NationSwell: The Carter Center has recently expanded its domestic work around conflict resolution, democracy, and the integrity of elections. Having seen social and political instability internationally, what feels similar to this moment in America, and what feels different?

Alexander, The Carter Center: When The Carter Center started out, we were initially peace-focused; it was largely about human rights and conflict resolution.

President Carter felt like he could bring people together around a table — all of our buildings here are literally round, because he didn’t want anyone’s back to be in a corner. So, our entire raison d’être was specifically focused on human rights, conflict resolution, and convening people quietly to have those conversations. And then as he traveled, he saw health problems emerging at the end of the road. That became equally important, because both he and Mrs. Carter saw health as a basic human right. 

When you think about how we have changed, and what we have seen, that’s one of the reasons we’re doing more domestic work now. In our conflict resolution work, we were named in the Colombia Peace Accords; we were named in Mali as an observer; we’ve done so much work in Israel-Palestine; we’ve worked in Sudan and South Sudan. In all of those places, we were seen as a neutral voice and a place that could reconvene people.

To be able to go into states here is more difficult, because as The Carter Center, we are the center of a former Democratic president. That makes the work much more challenging, but there are similarities in how we approach it. We don’t have to worry about fighting warlords, but we do recognize that you have to take a left-leaning lead and a right-leaning lead, have them build a community, and find a place where they can agree on something — and that is an incredibly powerful message to people who are listening. 

In North Carolina, for example, they see a former Republican Supreme Court justice sitting on stage with a former Democratic mayor from Charlotte, and the two of them are disagreeing respectfully. That moment shows people that we don’t have to agree on everything, but there are some issues where we can talk, find the low-hanging fruit, and build from there.

We do that with warlords, and we do it with political parties here. I think that helps with polarization because we’re not there just to talk at people — we’re there to listen and hear what might be the easiest problem to solve, and what might be the lowest-hanging fruit we can grab onto and build from.

We’re also using lessons from places like South Africa and Northern Ireland to ask: What have we learned? How can we disagree better now, so that when the coin flips and the other side is on top, we know how to do that in a way that’s not vengeful?

Hutchison, NationSwell: Striving for a healthier and more peaceful world is a demanding job for an organizational leader. What are some of the strategies you’re employing in your own life to make it healthier and more peaceful?

Alexander, The Carter Center: Mrs. Carter focused so much on mental health — and destigmatizing it in particular — even as many as 50 years ago, and I think COVID went a long way toward doing that. There isn’t one person you’ll have a conversation with who doesn’t have a family member or a close friend who had a mental health crisis during COVID or post-COVID. And even now, we’re in such a polarizing time. So how do you have these conversations, and how do you take care of yourself?

Our mission statement is to wage peace, fight disease, and build hope. And hope is not a policy, but it is something that we all have to hold onto. Every part of the world has gone through something similar at some time or another, so we’re not alone.

If you can find like-minded people, have one good conversation a day, and find one appreciation for something positive that happened; it really helps ground you.

And if you can turn off the noise, that’s also incredibly important. I am not on social media anywhere near as much as I probably should be, because even those alerts and breaking news notifications can be overwhelming.

Hutchison, NationSwell: What are some of the programs, signature initiatives, or facets of the work that you’re doing right now that feel particularly exciting or top of mind for you right now? 

Alexander, The Carter Center: With global health and peace being our focus, and with The Carter Center having started as a peace-focused organization and then grown into global health, President Carter had a wonderful quote that he always used, from his high school teacher: “We must adjust to changing times and hold true to unchanging principles.”

For me, when we’re looking at our signature initiatives, we have to honor our existing commitments. We started down the path of eradicating Guinea worm, and we were doing it in a very specific way. We were getting closer, and then the disease jumped to animals. So how do we adjust to that? How do we address a disease that has moved from humans to animals, and therefore can move back again?

That is probably our signature initiative on the health side, because no other disease has been eradicated except for smallpox. Smallpox was eradicated with a vaccine; Guinea worm is being eradicated through behavior change — by teaching people how to collect water differently than they have for generations and generations.

And the fact that that behavior change has led to only 10 human cases in the world last year, down from 3.5 million cases a year in 21 countries, is remarkable; that’s one of our biggest health initiatives.

Also on the health side is that mental health piece. Everyone cares about mental health now, and that was not true six years ago; it was still very stigmatized, and people wouldn’t talk about it. Now, we’re finding ways to address it through school-based behavioral health and through caregiving.

Mrs. Carter said there are four types of people in the world: those who have caregivers, those who are caregivers, those who will need caregivers, and those who will be caregivers. That’s all of us. So recognizing the need for mental health and caregiving is another important piece of the health side.

And then, when you look at the peace side of the house, there’s no shortage of conflicts. Our job is to continue to place ourselves in the middle as a neutral party that’s willing to talk to both sides and see if we can find space where we can agree on something.

We’ve been really successful in that, not only because of President Carter’s voice — because he could just pick up the phone, knock heads together, and say, “This has to be done” — but because of that legacy. Generationally, in these countries, The Carter Center can walk in with a kind of clean slate, and that gives us a special place at the table.

We also continue to raise the flag on human rights, human rights abuses, and rule of law issues that affect human rights. So it’s a little bit of everything, but those are probably the top four focus areas.

For me, it’s like a graduate school education to be surrounded by colleagues who have devoted their lives to this work, and then to go that last mile and talk to people who have recovered from Guinea worm — people who are now working with us as health volunteers, or working directly for the ministries.

Hutchison, NationSwell: What are some of the things that are giving you hope at the moment?

Alexander, The Carter Center: For me especially, President and Mrs. Carter planned incredibly effectively for the future, and they also gave us an extraordinary off-ramp. During COVID, they stopped coming up every month to spend time here, and that allowed all of us to grow into ourselves and determine what this organization was going to look like when they were no longer active.

They had been talking about that transition for 25 years. And even though we only truly lost them in the last 18 months, they had established this foundation for us that I can build from. That gives me a lot of hope.

I feel like I’m leading an organization that has great ideas every day. The work is choosing which ones we really want to double down on, while still honoring the commitments we already have and continuing to innovate and learn all the time. That’s hopeful.

I see our work as preserving democracy and making headway — not only overseas, but in our own backyard — and we can’t do that unless we’re willing to be honest about where our own foibles are, and apply that honesty to every lesson we have learned.

That honesty and transparency also give me hope. It means we’re not walking around life with blinders on. We’re asking: What does the big picture look like, and how can we effect change?

Raymond Hutchison: Let’s say you’re having guests over; what are you putting on the record player. What books are you going to lay out for them to see? 

Alexander, The Carter Center: I just went through one of our bookshelves recently, and Ta-Nehisi Coates was the first thing I saw — and it was in Dutch. When did I ever think I was actually going to read that in Dutch?

It really depends on what kind of person was coming over. I could have jazz or piano music on if I were looking to lower the vibe, and I’d be very happy to have Springsteen on if I were trying to get people hyped up.

As far as books go, Peter Attia is on my bookshelf right now, because I was living off this idea that I was going to get healthier and be better. And then there’s Atul Gawande’s Being Mortal, which feels very relevant because I’m in the sandwich generation. I have parents in their 90s and kids in their 20s, so I think I’m drawn to books that help me think about how you treat both generations, and how you find your place in the middle of that.

Hutchison, NationSwell: What is one call to action you have for other impact leaders in this moment?

Alexander, The Carter Center: Hope can’t just be something we talk about in the abstract. It has to mean staying engaged — especially when the work feels hard, or slow, or discouraging. We have to look at the generations around us, older and younger, and recognize that if we don’t make a difference now, we’re missing the moment.

A lot of that engagement has to happen at the subnational level. That’s something we’ve learned overseas: not everything happens at the national or federal level, and we need to learn that here in the U.S., too.

How are you involved in your community? How are you proximal to solving local problems? So much of this work is going to come from the ground up. We can’t wait for government or policy to take care of everything; we have to build from trusted local institutions — the places people already know, rely on, and feel safe turning to.

Here in Atlanta, for example, we run a domestic violence program that works through fire stations. Someone experiencing domestic violence — especially a child — may not feel comfortable walking into a police station, but they might walk into a fire station. There are 36 fire stations in Atlanta and only six police stations; they’re close, they’re trusted, and people show up.

That’s what we all have to work toward: finding trusted institutions where we’re willing to show up, listening to each other, and making them stronger. That’s what builds social cohesion — not talking past each other, not othering each other, but creating places where people can be seen, heard, and helped.

Impact Next: An interview with ServiceNow’s Lyndsay Harris-Kyei

Posted on by Brianna Provenzano

At a moment of inequality and division, who is advancing the vanguard of economic and social progress to bolster under-served communities? Whose work is fostering the inclusive growth that ensures every individual thrives? Who will set the ambitious standards that mobilize whole industries, challenging their peers to reach new altitudes of social impact? 

In 2026, Impact Next — an editorial flagship series from NationSwell — spotlights the standard-bearing corporate social responsibility and impact leaders, entrepreneurs, experts, and philanthropists whose catalytic work has the potential to shape the landscape of progress amid urgent need for social and economic action.

For this installment, NationSwell interviewed Lyndsay Harris-Kyei, Vice President of Global Impact and Sustainability at ServiceNow. Here’s what she had to say:

Greg Behrman, CEO and founder, NationSwell: What brought you to the field that you’re in right now? Was there an early moment, a relationship, or an experience that galvanized your commitment to driving bold action?

Lyndsay Harris-Kyei, Vice President of Global Impact and Sustainability, ServiceNow: My journey really started long before my career did. I grew up on a dairy farm in Western New York — which a lot of people don’t expect, especially if they meet me now in my very tall heels. But I grew up on 100 acres, I can drive a tractor, fix heavy equipment, and milk cows. My dad still insists that I jump on a piece of equipment, from time to time and now he likes me to show off for my son. My upbringing gave me an early and deep appreciation for what it means to live in harmony with nature and that understanding has shaped everything I do.

I always knew I wanted to move to NYC and I’ve been here since grad school. In college, I was at a liberal arts school, trying to figure out what I wanted to do and jumping around different majors. Then I took a World Affairs class, and something clicked: my interest in the world and in impact could translate into a role. I switched to political science halfway through my junior year, and later went on to get my master’s in international affairs at The New School.

But the defining moment came during my senior-year internship in refugee resettlement. I remember realizing how powerful it is to reach across borders and boundaries, and how universal the desire is to have the resources you need so your family can live a happy, safe, healthy life. There were moments that really caught me off guard — taking people to doctor’s appointments, being the only person in the room who spoke English, trying to make sure everyone felt at ease during complicated situations. These were things I had taken for granted, and that experience helped define what I wanted to do. 

Later, while pursuing my master’s and interning in Senator Gillibrand’s office, someone said to me, “Great, you have a political science degree and a master’s in international affairs — now you know a lot of facts. What skills have you developed?” That question stayed with me, and I started thinking about the trail of capital: where it comes from, where it goes, and what it makes possible. That’s when I began leaning into the corporate side of impact.

Throughout my career, I’ve stayed close to that intersection of business, philanthropy, and community. I started at IAC, working on philanthropic initiatives, including the Little Island project. From there, I went to Medidata, where I had the opportunity to take over CSR and build it from the ground up.

That has been a theme in my leadership journey: asking the questions, seeing what’s possible, and not being afraid of hearing “no.” Then I got a call, somewhat randomly, from a senior leader at ServiceNow who wanted to talk about my philosophy on impact. That conversation eventually turned into a role that was designed around this work, and once again, I had the opportunity to build something from the ground up.

I once got advice from a senior leader who said, “Always take the call.” You just never know. Even if it turns into nothing, you’ve made a connection. I’ve tried to follow that throughout my career: take the call, ask to be in the room, ask the question, and push the boundaries of what’s possible.

Behrman, NationSwell: What is the “North Star” of your leadership style? Is there anything in particular that’s motivating or driving you now? 

Harris-Kyei, ServiceNow: I think over time, you hear the same stories and have the same conversations. We’ve been talking about coalition building and collaboration for years. And I think about the bright-eyed 22-year-old version of myself who really believed we could change the world. Even now, when I’m in rooms with young people, I get so excited because they believe their solution is going to change the world.

What inspires me today is that even in the most challenging of times the work doesn’t stop — you just get smarter about how you approach it. When you’re young, you tend to think at the macro level: How is this one solution going to solve all the world’s problems? The more seasoned you get, the more you understand the nuance. These challenges repeat themselves across geographies, places, spaces, and people, but they’re also deeply unique to each community.

That’s what keeps me inspired: realizing how much you can do locally. You can change one person’s life, and that person could go on to become president, or lead change in ways you would never expect. You start to understand that the one-to-one connection is so much more important than you may have realized.

And then, as you get older — especially when you have kids — these conversations take on a different meaning. It becomes less theoretical; we have a responsibility to create the world we envision, not just accept the one we have. But I think that responsibility starts at the micro level, because the macro will come.

Behrman, NationSwell: As you’ve grown as a leader, what are some of your insights or perspectives that have sharpened that you would offer to peers or emerging leaders?

Harris-Kyei, ServiceNow: I started in the social impact space, and over time I have leaned further into environmental sustainability and corporate sustainability reporting. What’s interesting to me is how often we think about these things in silos, as if they’re fundamentally different from one another.

The more I’ve leaned into environmental sustainability, the more I’ve seen how closely connected these worlds really are. We just talk about them differently — and of course there are differences, I’m not denying that. However, when it comes down to it regardless of what you are purchasing, how it is measured, and why you are doing it…it comes down to the fact that you are trying to make the world a better place.. The more we break down the definitions, parameters, and guardrails we’ve created for ourselves, the more we can start to see these worlds merge.

That’s a huge part of the philosophy we’ve built at ServiceNow: environmental sustainability and social impact don’t sit on opposite sides of the fence. They’re completely intertwined. What happens if your social impact strategy mirrors your carbon market strategy? Suddenly, you’re investing in solutions in the same communities and spaces. That gives you an opportunity to double your impact.

The more time I spend in this space, the more I realize that in many of these rooms, we’re using different terminology, but we’re often working toward the same outcome. Together, we can have a much stronger impact. That’s a lot of the philosophy behind our program at ServiceNow.

Behrman, NationSwell: What principles guide your leadership, and how are you helping your team adapt the way they talk about impact and sustainability in today’s business environment?

Harris-Kyei, ServiceNow: I think there are a few requirements on my team, and honesty and authenticity are always at the top. I try really hard to create an environment where we can openly and respectfully challenge one another. We all have different backgrounds and experiences and that means we have to be open to changing our own ways of thinking.

That feels especially important in a world that is constantly shifting. ESG might be the number one topic one day and the second topic the next. The pendulum is always swinging, so we have to be agile, open, and willing to push ourselves. I tell my team all the time: challenge our thinking. And as a team, it is healthy to have open, sometimes difficult discussions and debates. I think that’s how you get to the most innovative ideas. 

The other thing I’ll say is that now more than ever, as an industry, we have to think differently about how we influence this work and lead with a business mindset. We need to connect the work back to customers and business outcomes. 

For example, we know the market is decarbonizing. So instead of only talking about sustainability as a values-led issue, how do we connect it back to the business? What percentage of our customers are in the green economy? How many of our customers are already moving in this direction?

That’s something my team and I have been talking a lot about. Even with sustainability, take the word “sustainability” out and focus on what we know: good business is efficient business, and efficient business is good for the planet. If we can talk about it that way, I think we’ll get more people engaged, because it’s no longer just values-led; it’s a business imperative.

Behrman, NationSwell: So many of your peer leaders are thinking hard about how best to make the business case for resourcing on impact right now. How do you think about ROI at a moment like this? 

Harris-Kyei, ServiceNow: As we looked at our portfolio, one of the things we started doing was mapping customers and partners against every impact relationship we have. For every partnership, we ask: Who are we partnering with — not just from the nonprofit perspective, but from the customer or partner perspective? Who is already doing this work, and who could we bring in to support it?

That helps the nonprofit, because it reduces the burden of every company coming in separately and saying, “Let’s build something new.” It forces us to come together across industries. But it also helps our own leadership connect the dots. I can sit down with an executive and say, “You’re meeting with this company — you should know we’ve been working with them on a social impact initiative.” It creates a more organic business conversation.

For every partnership, I want to understand how it connects back to a customer, a partner, a brand opportunity, or a local market where we’re growing. There is real ROI in investing in the places and spaces where the business is expanding. The question is always: Where does impact overlap with business opportunity?

When I worked in clinical trials, we were asking ourselves how we could increase equity in trials, strengthen patient advocacy, and help more people feel comfortable participating. At ServiceNow, it means thinking about our role in the AI economy. If hundreds of millions of people don’t have access to connectivity, that’s untapped potential. And for a technology company, those are future customers who can’t even plug in a laptop.

So we have to think about infrastructure, skilling, and reskilling together. It always comes back to who you are as a business and where impact can help the business scale.

Behrman, NationSwell: Is there a particular program, signature initiative, or some facet of the work that you would like to spotlight for us that is driving outcomes for the work?

Harris-Kyei, ServiceNow: I think what’s unique at ServiceNow is that social impact and environmental sustainability don’t sit on opposite sides of the fence. Because my team is responsible for corporate sustainability reporting, environmental sustainability, social impact and investments, and employee volunteering, we’re able to step back and ask: What happens if we think about all of these resources holistically?

On the environmental side, we’re focused on things like renewable electricity and nature-based solutions. On the social impact side, we’re also investing in organizations like GivePower, which builds solar-powered desalination water farms in Kenya. 

In a place like Kenya, some of the strongest investments happening right now are in the carbon market, so the question becomes: Are we looking at those investments holistically? Are we thinking about our handprint across both environmental sustainability and social impact?

India is another good example. Our environmental sustainability team is investing in renewable electricity, while our social impact team is supporting rural village adoption and solar energy access. Suddenly, the story becomes about solar energy and community resilience — we’re just approaching it through different forms of capital. 

To me, it all has to tie back to your business. That’s why I love bringing the environmental side, the business side, and the social impact side together. It forces us to think more creatively about the resources we have available.

NationSwell: Of the socially motivated leaders you consider your peers, who are 2-3 whose work inspired you and whom you hold in high esteem?

Harris-Kyei, ServiceNow: A few leaders come to mind, but Melanie Nakagawa, Chief Sustainability Officer at Microsoft, is always at the top of my list. I think she’s brilliant in the way she has helped shape the space.

I’ve also had the opportunity to work with Suzanne Kennedy (Director, Office of the Chairman & President) at IAC Foundation, who was a huge mentor to me and really helped frame my career. What I admire about Suzanne is how locally grounded her approach to impact has always been — whether through IAC, Little Island, or the way she thinks about bringing in community and the people who actually live nearby.

While so many of us are trying to figure out how many countries we can reach or how many people we can serve, Suzanne has always had a much more grassroots lens, which I really love and admire. 

Behrman, NationSwell: Are there any resources you’d recommend — books, podcasts, Ted talks — that have influenced your thinking that might influence others as well?

Harris-Kyei, ServiceNow: Every morning, I listen to BBC News, NPR, The New York Times highlights, and Al Jazeera. I don’t know if that’s inspirational or just helpful, but it gives me a more global perspective on what’s happening in the world.

That feels incredibly important to me, because I think we can get very tied to what’s happening in our own country or our own immediate world. Listening more globally grounds me. It reminds me that the problems and headlines we’re seeing here are not the only things happening.

When I have time and need more of a moment of inspiration, I’ll also listen to Ayana Elizabeth Johnson’s podcast, “WHAT IF WE GET IT RIGHT?”. I really appreciate how direct and honest she is about what’s happening in the world.

Impact Next: An interview with Russell Innovation Center for Entrepreneurs (RICE)’s Jay Bailey

Posted on by Brianna Provenzano

At a moment of inequality and division, who is advancing the vanguard of economic and social progress to bolster under-served communities? Whose work is fostering the inclusive growth that ensures every individual thrives? Who will set the ambitious standards that mobilize whole industries, challenging their peers to reach new altitudes of social impact? 

In 2026, Impact Next — an editorial flagship series from NationSwell — will spotlight the standard-bearing corporate social responsibility and impact leaders, entrepreneurs, experts, and philanthropists whose catalytic work has the potential to shape the landscape of progress amid urgent need for social and economic action.

For this installment, NationSwell interviewed James “Jay” Bailey, President and CEO of the Russell Innovation Center for Entrepreneurs (RICE). Here’s what he had to say:

Greg Behrman, founder and CEO, NationSwell: What brought you to the field that you’re in right now? Was there an early moment, a relationship, or an experience that galvanized your commitment to driving bold action?

James Bailey, President and CEO, RICE: Part of my story is I’ve always been entrepreneurial: I started my first business at 12, bought my first house at 19, and made my first million by 23, but I didn’t have the right role models, and by 28, I’d lost everything. I went from a 10,000-square-foot house to living in a nine-by-nine storage unit. And that’s where I had to confront the truth: by the world’s standards, I had been successful, but I had zero significance. I hadn’t done anything to put a dent in this world.

A big part of that story goes back to losing my mother, Millie L. Bailey, when I was 19. She never made more than $40,000 a year, but she was one of the greatest philanthropists I’ve ever known. She worked with young people in the juvenile justice system, brought kids home for Christmas, made sure they felt seen, valued, and loved. When she died, all of that left my life, and money became my hiding place. Big houses, nice cars — all of it covered up a kid who was grieving.

I remember thumbing through a photo album and seeing pictures of all these kids throughout my life that my mother would make a part of our lives, ensuring that they had exposure to something different. Slowly I found my way back to my core, and to her example, and that’s when I stopped chasing success and started dedicating my life to significance.

Behrman, NationSwell: Is there a particular program, signature initiative, or some facet of the work that you would like to spotlight for us that is driving outcomes for the work?

Bailey, RICE: I love Atlanta. I was born and raised here, and I believe Atlanta has the chance to be the most consequential city of the next 100 years: the collision of corporations, culture, and community — if we get our act together — could create something few cities can match. But I love my city enough to be honest: we’re the worst city in the country for income inequality and economic immobility. And if you’re not willing to talk about race, I think you’re being intellectually disingenuous about solving it.

There are no poor white neighborhoods in Atlanta. There are no failing Latino schools in APS. Ninety-nine percent of the demographic drivers behind those statistics look like me. So when I chose to focus on Black entrepreneurs, it wasn’t just a social cause — I was thinking like an economist. If we’re 52% of the population but our companies account for just 8% of economic growth, there’s a disconnect keeping Atlanta from becoming everything it could be.

That’s why we chose entrepreneurship. Not because it solves everything, but because it can move the needle. I’ve long believed we lose GDP every year because brilliant ideas on the south side of the tracks never reach the marketplace — because people don’t believe they belong. And that’s why we rejected the traditional, episodic model of programming alone. Programming matters, but our goal was transformation.

You can’t ignore the loneliness, the depression, the isolation, the generational poverty and trauma. Before someone can grow a business, they have to see value in their own reflection. They have to feel belonging. Then you build the scaffolding — the infrastructure, the support, the pathways to actually start and scale. Both are necessary for the people we serve.

That’s built into the DNA of the Russell Center. It’s one of the few places in the country where the place that serves the people is built, run, and supported by the people it serves. Our architect, our contractor, the products on my shelf, even the snacks — they all come from our entrepreneurs. That circular economy creates allegiance, covenant, and community. And at the heart of it all, more than access to capital, is culture: a community of collaboration, support, and belief. That mindset shift is everything.

NationSwell: What makes this model different — what you have learned from the outcomes you’re generating?

Bailey, RICE: My core inspiration was the HBCU model — historically Black colleges and universities — which have been one of the greatest economic mobility engines in our community for the past 100 years. I wanted to build the entrepreneurial equivalent of that experience; I didn’t want a model where you come for four weeks or 18 weeks, graduate, and that’s it. What’s unique about what we do is that it’s a continuum of engagement across the life cycle of a business; you don’t graduate out.

That ties back to the circular economy we’ve built: companies that are thriving pour into the ones coming behind them. It creates the same kind of culture you see on a college campus — seniors tutoring freshmen, freshmen aspiring to be seniors. Every day, even outside the curriculum, people are being inspired, exposed to new pathways, and changed by proximity, and so much of that transformation has nothing to do with what’s on the transcript.

That model pushed us to think about serving the whole entrepreneur beyond just what we can teach. How deeply can we understand what makes a person himself, what he is trying to do, and what actually works for him? That’s why I value business experts at the same level as therapists and psychologists in our curriculum: That whole-person approach — our ability to grow, retain, and build real community as we grow — is something I haven’t really seen anywhere else.

Behrman, NationSwell: Can you walk us through a couple different facets of the work you’re leading that are particularly exciting to you right now?

Bailey, RICE: One of my biggest learnings in this work is that, yes, access to capital will always matter for entrepreneurs; you plan for that. But what I’ve found is that community is a deep need, in many cases even more urgent than capital. 

Where I come from, I didn’t grow up seeing a lot of Black billionaires or people running multinational companies. And when 98% of Black-owned businesses have just one employee, there’s a reason for that. So much of it comes down to how we see ourselves as entrepreneurs. I bought into the narrative that success meant hustling, grinding, doing everything yourself. What I want at the forefront of our work is breaking through that mindset — giving people the exposure, access, and belief to say, ‘Why couldn’t my idea become the next great company?’ That kind of exposure creates belief.

The second thing we’ve identified is a huge donut hole in the ecosystem: the growth-stage entrepreneur who isn’t a venture-backed tech unicorn, but a bedrock, missing-middle business. If you’re a startup with an idea, there’s support. If you’re a high-growth tech founder chasing a massive exit, there’s support. But if you’ve got 15, 20, 30, even 150 employees and you’ve plateaued, there’s almost nobody built to help you break through. That’s why we’re building out the Scale Studio to surround those companies with the accountants, attorneys, consultants, and capital they need to grow. The businesses stabilizing our economy are the ones getting the least support.

And the third is campus expansion. Early on, when we mapped the barriers to starting and growing a business, things like housing, childcare, and healthcare were at the top of the list. So one of our big ideas is: how do we go from a 70,000-square-foot campus to something bigger — adding housing, medical care, affordable office space, and other supports around the entrepreneur? How do we fully build out that whole-entrepreneur model and make sure Atlanta stays affordable enough to dream? Because if the city becomes so expensive that people with ideas have to leave, then dreams can’t live here. We want to be a speed bump against that.

So those are the three big areas for us: mindset as part of the theory of change, support for the missing middle that no one is really serving, and expanding beyond our current footprint to truly meet the needs of the people we support.

Behrman, NationSwell: Of the socially motivated leaders you consider your peers, are there any whom you hold in particularly high esteem, and how has their approach shaped your own leadership?

Bailey, RICE: There’s one in Atlanta who absolutely needs to be on people’s radar: Dr. Lakeysha “Key” Hallmon, the founder of The Village Market. I remember meeting Key when she was just a teacher with a big idea, and now she’s built real spaces for entrepreneurs, business owners, and creatives. 

In Detroit, Alexa and Johnnie Turnage, the husband-and-wife team behind Black Tech Saturdays, are two of the most inspirational people I know; they make technology sexy and fun. I’ve been to Detroit to speak with them, they’ve brought their team down to Atlanta, and the passion they have for moving the community forward is infectious. 

And then, when I think about my core motivation, I have to name someone who’s no longer with us: Maynard Jackson, Atlanta’s first Black mayor. I draw endless inspiration from him. His courage helped change the direction of Atlanta and, in many ways, the South. He paid a real price for it, but he made that sacrifice to create opportunity. He’s responsible for creating more Black millionaires than any other mayor in American history, and he did it with grace, style, humility, and empathy. His legacy is still shaping all of us.

Behrman, NationSwell: Are there any resources you’d recommend — books, podcasts, Ted talks — that have influenced your thinking that might influence others as well?

Bailey, RICE: I quote Rudyard Kipling’s poem “If” constantly, and then there’s “Invictus” by William Ernest Henley — Out of the night that covers me / black as the pit from pole to pole … I am the master of my fate / I am the captain of my soul. Those are two I come back to. And honestly, another quote that I return to all the time is simpler: “don’t quit.”

In terms of other things that influence my thinking, I’m a city boy with country leanings. My wife and I are landowners here in Georgia, and nothing clears my mind like getting out of the city, getting into the country, and hopping on my four-wheeler. For some people it’s a massage, a round of golf, whatever people do to unwind — for me, nothing compares to being on that ATV and just riding.

There’s something about it that brings me real joy, release, and freedom. The engine is so loud you can’t hear your phone, can’t feel it vibrate, can’t hear it ring. And that means, for a little while, you’re free — free to just be, without any connectivity to the device or the world. It’s how I get away from everything, and it’s one of the things I cherish most.

Five Minutes with… the Northern New Mexico Pathways to Opportunity Strategy Table

Posted on by Brianna Provenzano

As funders look to move from isolated grants to systems-level impact, the need for durable, place-based models that communities can shape — not just receive — has never been clearer. In northern New Mexico, the LANL Foundation and the Annie E. Casey Foundation are collaborating with twenty other funders to pioneer the next frontier of place-based funding with the Northern New Mexico Pathways to Opportunity Strategy Table: a 15-member collaborative that brings philanthropy, public agencies, community leaders, and young people themselves together to align resources for those too often left out of education and workforce pathways.

What began as a listening process and a fund-mapping exercise has since evolved into a distinctly ambitious model that blends pooled philanthropic, corporate, and public dollars; youth-led participatory grantmaking; and capacity-building designed to help nonprofit  and tribal organizations grow stronger over time. The result is a more community-rooted way of thinking about how grant funding moves, who helps shape it, and what long-term success looks like.

For this installment of Five Minutes With…, NationSwell spoke with Alvin Warren, Vice President of Policy and Impact at the LANL Foundation, and Tomi Hiers, Vice President of Center for Civic Sites and Community Change at the Annie E. Casey Foundation, about what it took to move this work from convening to action, why the Strategy Table built youth voice into the model from the start, and what other funders around the country can learn from this effort. 

NationSwell: What is the Strategy Table, and what challenge was it built to address?

Alvin Warren, LANL Foundation: From our side, it’s important to understand that we’re a 100% place-based foundation based in Española, New Mexico, and we serve a predominantly rural and tribal region across north-central New Mexico. We were created to address a very specific geography: a seven-county, eighteen-tribe region of northern New Mexico.

One thing I knew from my time at Kellogg was that when national funders looked at New Mexico, they often focused only on Albuquerque, and there are understandable reasons for that, especially when funders are trying to meet numerical targets. But what struck me were the many opportunities to invest in good work in rural New Mexico — including work aligned with Casey’s Thrive by 25 framework — and yet that work often wasn’t visible or accessible to larger funders. Sometimes it was happening at a smaller scale; sometimes there were structural barriers that made it difficult for national funders to support smaller, rural organizations or tribes.

So we realized a mechanism might be needed to both draw attention to the opportunities and needs in Northern New Mexico and also make it logistically possible for funders, especially national funders, to invest in a way that felt informed, respectful, and shared. That’s really the blueprint for what the Strategy Table became.

Tomi Hiers, Annie E. Casey Foundation: At the Annie E. Casey Foundation, we made the decision to dedicate roughly 50% of our grantmaking to improving access to opportunity for young people ages 14 to 24 through our Thrive by 25 commitment, and we wanted to begin implementing that work in three places: our hometowns of Baltimore and Atlanta, and also Albuquerque, New Mexico — a place where the Foundation had already been active for about two decades, particularly around systems impacting justice-involved and child welfare-involved youth.

As we started thinking about a place-based strategy in Albuquerque and about working in deep partnership with nonprofits helping young people connect to education, training, employment, youth leadership, and financial stability, we knew it was important to understand the local philanthropic landscape. As a national funder, there can sometimes be tension around how national philanthropy shows up in a place, so we wanted to be a strategic co-investor; we wanted to know who the local funders were, what their priorities were, how those priorities aligned with ours, and how they wanted national philanthropy to support their work.

That’s how we began building relationships with local funders, and with Alvin, who was then at Kellogg and later transitioned to LANL Foundation. Those early conversations about what was important in the broader community, and what kinds of partnerships could help address barriers facing young people, were really the building blocks that eventually led to the Strategy Table.

NationSwell: What makes this different from a traditional workforce or economic development effort?

Warren, LANL Foundation: Northern New Mexico has one of the highest rates of disconnected, or “opportunity,” youth in the country: nearly one in four. For some populations, including Native youth and young parents, that number can be even higher. And this is happening in a region that also has real deserts of opportunity — places where access to paid internships, career training, or youth development programs are limited or uneven. So the goal isn’t simply workforce development in the conventional sense, it’s about transforming the landscape of opportunity so that young people, regardless of where they live in the region, have access to meaningful pathways.

What makes this model distinct is that it’s a pooled fund with three important differences. First, it’s designed to pool philanthropic, corporate, and public dollars, which is relatively unusual. Second, the grantmaking is done through a youth-led participatory process. And third, the model includes dedicated capacity-building support through a Regional Resource Hub, so grantees aren’t just getting one-off dollars, they’re also getting technical assistance, peer learning, and support to become more competitive for larger public and philanthropic funding over time.

Hiers, Annie E. Casey Foundation: What was attractive to us about the Strategy Table was that it offered leverage, sustainability, and scale. We rarely go it alone as a funder; we think a lot about how to use philanthropic dollars to leverage public funding or to bring other philanthropic partners into the work. We’re always asking: how do we have impact beyond a few hundred young people served directly? How do we influence policy and practice?

So part of what was exciting here was that there were already strong efforts underway, and a number of the funders at the table were supporting that work, including state agencies. The question became: how do we scale the best and most promising practices around education, training, and employment for young people, especially those who are often left behind and locked out of opportunity?

NationSwell: How have the Annie E. Casey and LANL Foundations helped move the work from convening to action?

Warren, LANL Foundation: We formally launched in 2021, and the first major step was a fiscal map. We partnered with the Children’s Funding Project and used the Thrive by 25 framework to do a five-year lookback on philanthropic investments in the region. Initially, we were only going to look at philanthropy, but the Casey Foundation pushed us to include public investments as well, and that was transformational; it would have been a huge missing piece otherwise.

At that point, the table had grown from an initial group of four funders to about ten. When the fiscal map was completed, we made what turned out to be a very important decision: instead of releasing the report publicly right away, we paused and took the findings out to our community first. We held a series of community gatherings, including a tribal-specific gathering, across the region, including in very rural communities. We also ran a survey and held focus groups, including one focused on underrepresented youth and another for policymakers and public funders. That process took about a year, and it was all about listening to how community understood the data and what they believed should happen next.

The other major shift from convening to action came when Casey helped us recognize that if we were serious about this, we needed infrastructure. Casey was the first funder to commit real resources to support the backbone and operations of the collaborative. Without that early investment, we would not have been able to grow the table or move toward implementation.

Hiers, Annie E. Casey Foundation: We think a lot about leverage. There’s power in bringing other funders to the table and in aligning philanthropic dollars with public systems. For us, this was an opportunity to support a table that was already rooted in a particular place and to help build something that could influence systems, not just fund isolated programs.

Once the fund mapping report came back, it became easier to think strategically. It helped us understand both where resources were flowing and where they weren’t. There was one county, for example, where the lack of investment was striking. That allowed the table to ask: What problem are we trying to solve, and what can a pooled set of more nimble philanthropic resources actually do?

From there, it was about planning carefully and building toward a model that could invite local partners into a meaningful, well-designed process for competing for and receiving resources.

NationSwell: What does the most helpful philanthropic support look like in a collaborative like this?

Hiers, Annie E. Casey Foundation: Flexibility is really important. In the early days, there was some willingness from other funders to include Albuquerque because Casey was doing work there. But we took the position that even though we were active in Albuquerque, this table was focused on northern New Mexico, and that was okay. We didn’t want our partners to contort themselves to make something work for us just because of how we had originally framed our priorities.

So for other funders or strategic partners joining a table, I think one of the biggest lessons is: if there are places where you can be flexible in service of the broader effort, you should seriously consider that.

Warren, LANL Foundation: I’d add that impact comes from infrastructure. Funders often want as much money as possible going directly out the door, and of course that matters. But if you under-resource the infrastructure it takes to do something complex like this, you undercut the impact. That means staffing, facilitation, evaluation, communications, support for the youth advisory members, and all the connective tissue that makes a collaborative actually function. Those investments may not always feel as exciting as direct grants, but they’re what make the grants more effective.

The other thing is: lend a hand. This doesn’t work if one organization is doing all the labor. Casey and other funders have actively helped make introductions, bring in new partners, and expand the pool, and that’s part of how we’ve grown the number of contributing funders. 

And finally: show up. It matters when national funders come in person, meet grantees, and participate face to face. That presence builds trust and changes the quality of the relationship.

NationSwell: What’s one anecdote or example of progress you’ve seen that shows the model is working?

Hiers, Annie E. Casey Foundation: One sign is simply that partners are still there, and new partners keep joining. My understanding is that this kind of table is something relatively new for northern New Mexico: funders coming together in this way with each other, with public systems, and with the broader community. The fact that the table has held together and continued to attract interest is itself a meaningful sign that the model is offering something valuable.

Warren, LANL Foundation: We’ve now been able to make 19 grants, almost all at the $100,000 level, with a couple slightly smaller based on what grantees requested. Based on grantee data, we anticipate reaching at least 800 young people by the end of the first year.

What’s especially exciting is the growth in participation in the pooled fund itself. As of the end of last week, we had 21 corporate and philanthropic funders either contributing or engaged in supporting the youth fund in some way, including 17 philanthropic funders and four corporate funders. And our largest state agency partner, the New Mexico Department of Workforce Solutions (essentially our Department of Labor), has committed a $1.5 million match for our second grantmaking round.

NationSwell: What’s been your biggest challenge in standing up this work, and what have funders needed to understand about that complexity?

Warren, LANL Foundation: One of the biggest challenges was the tension between moving thoughtfully and moving quickly. We spent what I think was an appropriate amount of time doing shared analysis and relationship building. That meant bringing funders together repeatedly, defining terms, developing guiding principles, and getting clear on what success actually meant across organizations with very different strategies and metrics.

That took time — a couple of years, really. And during that period, there were certainly people saying, “We’ve been in this space too long; we need to move to action.” That pressure is understandable. But if you don’t spend time building shared understanding, you can end up with a collaborative that looks aligned on paper but isn’t actually aligned in practice.

Hiers, Annie E. Casey Foundation: I think it also helps to have a broader definition of success. To me, the table being formed was a success. Having diverse philanthropic and public partners at the table was a success. Conducting the fund map and having honest conversations about what the data told us, and what it didn’t, was a success. Those things matter. And then, yes, the grants and the impact on young people are the “cherry on top,” but the process that led there matters too.

NationSwell: What felt important about building youth voice and participatory grantmaking into the Strategy Table’s design from the start?

Hiers, Annie E. Casey Foundation: Youth leadership is one of the pillars of Thrive by 25, and our Foundation has also been doing a lot of work around intergenerational engagement. It’s one thing to talk about youth voice or youth development. It’s another to think seriously about how adults and young people actually sit together, share decision-making, and govern together.

That was part of what made this model so intriguing to us. I’ll be honest — I didn’t know exactly how it would play out. I had questions: How would the youth advisory group be structured? Who would support them? How would adults and young people sit alongside each other in a real decision-making process? But when you’re part of a collaborative, you also have to trust the design process and the partners at the table. This was a chance to see what meaningful youth leadership and intergenerational governance could actually look like in practice.

Warren, LANL Foundation: We were very intentional about making sure the young people involved actually reflected the populations the work is designed to serve. The original members of the Regional Youth Advisory Council represented Native youth and Opportunity Youth, among others. In fact, two of the most active members are young parents.

We also didn’t just bring in young people who had never been exposed to philanthropy or leadership spaces. We recruited young people who had already participated in youth development efforts and were ready for this to be the next step in their leadership. And the reason we were able to do this well is because we had already spent so much time developing shared guiding principles that became a touchstone for the table. They made it much easier to say: if we really believe these things, then youth leadership and participatory grantmaking aren’t optional — they’re part of the model.

NationSwell: What can other funders and regional leaders take away from this model?

Hiers, Annie E. Casey Foundation:  Flexibility is one of the biggest takeaways. If you’re joining or building a collaborative, there may be places where you can loosen your grip on your own preferences in order to strengthen the broader effort, but that doesn’t mean losing your priorities, it means being willing to support something bigger than any one organization.

Also: time matters. If you want to build something durable, you have to resist the urge to rush to visible outputs before the foundation is there. Build intentionally, document what matters, and be prepared to adapt as the work evolves. The goal is not speed for its own sake — it’s sustainability.

And finally, I advise folks to define success broadly. The process of building alignment, doing the analysis, surfacing the data, and creating a real table with diverse stakeholders is not just pre-work, it is part of the impact.

Warren, LANL Foundation: If I had to put it in bullet points, I’d say:

  • Be willing to learn together. We wouldn’t have this table, or this success, without the Casey Foundation, our other Strategy Table partners, and other contributors. In particular, if Casey had gotten a year in and said, “Actually, it’s been great, see you later,” I honestly don’t know where we’d be. 
  • Stay the course. Philanthropy is often too quick to pivot just as things begin to work. When you stay the course, you begin to build capacity and move towards long-term impact. 
  • Recognize that impact comes from infrastructure. You don’t win by undercutting the resources it takes to do something this complex. Funders have to invest in the infrastructure, too — staffing, evaluation, communications, facilitation, the support it takes to manage and train the Regional Youth Advisory Council. All of that is what makes the impact possible, alongside the dollars going into the fund itself.
  • Lend a hand: Don’t assume one backbone organization should do all the labor.
  • Show up, especially in person. National funders, in particular, need to remember that their presence matters. It matters when they come to the community, meet grantees, and participate via relationships, not just transactions. That can make all the difference.

The Northern New Mexico Pathways to Opportunity Strategy Table is made possible by a collaborative of 15 members: Anchorum Health Foundation, The Annie E. Casey Foundation, Aspen Institute Forum for Community Solutions, The Cricket Island Foundation, LANL Foundation, Los Alamos National Laboratory Community Partnerships Office / Triad National Security, LLC, Las Vegas (New Mexico) Community Foundation, Marshall L. and Perrine D. McCune Charitable Foundation, New Mexico Foundation, Regional Youth Advisory Council, Santa Fe Community Foundation, Taos Community Foundation, Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, Thornburg Foundation, United Way North Central New Mexico, and W.K. Kellogg Foundation.