Resource Type: Leader spotlights

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.

Five Minutes with… The Greater Tacoma Community Foundation’s Kathi Littmann

Posted on by Brianna Provenzano

What does it look like for a community foundation to meet the moment not just as a funder, but as a convener, translator, and catalyst for long-term change? As a longtime steward of community resilience across Pierce County, Washington, the Greater Tacoma Community Foundation is embracing that challenge by connecting unlikely partners across the region and creating the conditions for communities to influence and shape the systems that affect them.

For this installment of Five Minutes With…, NationSwell spoke with Kathi Littmann, president and CEO of The Greater Tacoma Community Foundation, about the evolving role of community philanthropy, the importance of building resilience alongside capacity, and what other foundations can learn from Pierce County’s collaborative model.

Here’s what she had to say:

NationSwell: How would you describe the role The Greater Tacoma Community Foundation plays in the region, and what makes your approach to community philanthropy distinct?

Kathi Littman, President and CEO, The Greater Tacoma Community Foundation: We serve Pierce County, which is in the Puget Sound region between Seattle and the state capital. It’s a gritty, deeply collaborative community that has always known how to do a lot with limited resources, and that really shapes who we are as a foundation.

GTCF has been here since 1981, and we’ve grown from about $10,000 to more than $200 million in assets, so today we’re a mid-sized community foundation. At our core, our prime directive is honoring donor intent: what do our fund advisors love about Pierce County, and what kind of legacy do they want to leave here?

At the same time, when we’re working with discretionary resources, we’re very focused on systems change. We’re always asking how we can help meet urgent needs today, but we’re thinking in parallel about how we can address those problems long-term so that we’re not responding to them forever. For us, that means removing barriers to generational wealth and well-being across Pierce County.

Our strategic framework is built around four interconnected pillars: housing, youth, civic voice and power, and access to capital and wealth. Those issues all intersect, but right now we’re especially focused on civic voice and power in that we’ve been shifting our thinking from helping nonprofits build capacity to helping communities build resilience. Capacity is about doing what you already do, better; resilience is about being able to adapt, lead, and meet a changing moment.

And while we do a lot of grantmaking, our real superpower is not just the money, but the relationships. It’s convening across sectors, connecting people, catalyzing ideas, and helping communities use their lived experience to influence the systems shaping their lives. That’s really GTCF’s sweet spot, and it’s what makes us uniquely suited to this moment.

NationSwell: What would you say GTCF’s secret sauce is as a convener? What lessons have you learned that are transferable for others hoping to build community trust? 

Littmann, GTCF: Pretty consistently, whether we’re working with a government agency, a national funder, or one of our own donor-advised fundholders, people come to us because they know we’ll connect them to others who care about the same issues and help them make smarter decisions about how they invest in the community. They see us as thought partners, and just as importantly, as connectors to other thought partners.

That’s why I often say some of the highest-value things we offer go well beyond the grants themselves. A good example of this is the intermediary work we’ve done with the Washington State Department of Commerce, where we’ve helped move state dollars into communities faster by serving as the contract holder and intermediary so that nonprofits receive those funds as grants rather than taking on the administrative burden and risk of a government contract.

That work led to another important role: Last fall, the state Speaker of the House and the Pierce County Executive asked us to convene nonprofits around the impact of federal budget cuts on county services. We brought in service sector and network leaders, grounded the conversation in data, and created an ongoing space to understand the ripple effects across housing, food access, Medicaid, employment, and more.

That’s really our model: community-centered philanthropy. The people closest to the issue understand the barriers, and our role is to convene them, amplify their voices, bring in research and examples, and help translate lived experience into action.

NationSwell: How are you thinking about what it means to be a community foundation in this moment? What are the unique challenges that you’re facing, and how does your work go beyond traditional grantmaking? 

Littmann, GTCF: Being a community foundation is both inspiring and a little daunting, because in theory we’re built to be here in perpetuity. That means we have to lead with hope — not just for what Pierce County needs right now, but for what we want this community to look like seven generations from now. That’s a beautiful mission, but it’s also a heavy one, especially in a moment when so many systems feel misaligned with that long view. What we’ve learned is that even when there’s trauma and scarcity, there is real power in bringing people together around possibility and helping communities imagine solutions that reduce the need for crisis response over time.

A few lessons consistently guide how we do that work. First, we’re always asking: are we in the right role? If someone else should own it, we’re not trying to hold it. One reason communities trust us is that they know we can incubate and convene, but also that we’re not trying to keep control. Second, we’re constantly asking who’s not at the table; we don’t need to convene everyone, but we do need the right voices in the room. Third, one of our unique roles is helping the community see the bigger picture — surfacing patterns, gaps, and ripple effects that individual organizations may not be able to see on their own. And finally, we believe deeply in passing the mic. Our role is not to speak for communities, but to create the conditions for people to speak for themselves through our platform and relationships.

We’re also very intentional about building relationships beyond Pierce County, because some of our best learning comes from statewide and national partnerships. Pierce County is a strong testing ground: it’s diverse, collaborative, and in many ways a microcosm of the country. That makes it a powerful place not just to serve community needs, but to learn what kinds of philanthropic approaches actually work.

NationSwell: Can you share an example of a partnership, initiative, or investment that reflects how you’re trying to meet this moment differently?

Littmann, GTCF: I’ll start with our Department of Commerce work around the Community Reinvestment Project, which was a $200 million state initiative designed to address harms caused by the war on drugs and which we stepped into as an intermediary for Pierce County. We signed the contract, negotiated the terms, provided upfront funding, and convened a local advisory team made up of leaders from the sectors most impacted. We also trained them in community-centered philanthropy, because many had been conditioned to navigate contracts and compete for funding rather than help shape how resources move. Then they helped decide how the money went out.

We were able to move funds quickly and get grant dollars into the hands of local organizations, but what became most interesting was what happened beyond Pierce County. The Department of Commerce wanted to serve the whole state, and we stayed in our lane while helping foundations in the other priority counties replicate the model. We shared our contract, encouraged them to step into the same intermediary role, and built a coalition across the state. We were asking: what does this look like in a rural county? In a place with a huge geographic footprint? In a community with fewer people but different needs? We eventually brought in a third-party evaluator, captured what we learned, and shared it back with the Department of Commerce. That’s the kind of role we can play as connectors, conveners, and catalysts: helping partners scale while learning in real time.

Another example is our work with the Pierce County Resiliency Hub, which feels especially relevant right now. As federal funding started to shrink, we heard from two longtime community leaders — the Washington State Speaker of the House and the Pierce County Executive — both of whom came up through grassroots and agency leadership. They reached out and essentially said: Pierce County has done this before; when resources get tight, the community has to come together and get ahead of it, and GTCF is in a unique position to help make that happen.

That really speaks to our role beyond grantmaking. We can convene, yes, but we also serve as a knowledge facilitator. One of the hardest questions right now is simply: how much federal money has actually been flowing into Pierce County, and where is it going? That’s incredibly difficult to answer. Funding reaches municipalities, the county, the state, and individual organizations in different ways. So one of the first things we did was secure a researcher to help us build what we’re calling reliable data. With so much federal data becoming harder to access or disappearing altogether, we wanted a shared source of truth the community could trust.

NationSwell: As you look ahead, what feels most important for community foundations to get right in the next few years if they want to build long-term resilience and opportunity?

Littmann, GTCF: First, we have to be truly client-centered in how we make philanthropy accessible. The products themselves can be confusing: donor-advised funds, designated funds, changing tax laws, qualified minimum distributions. For someone simply trying to figure out how to do good with what they have, it can be overwhelming, and our role is to make that process feel human, clear, and usable.

Second, we have to get our financial model right. Like many organizations, our organic revenue doesn’t fully cover the catalyst and convening work we know has the highest impact. So it’s our responsibility to sustain GTCF in a way that reflects a theory of abundance, not scarcity. That means being able to clearly articulate the return on investment: if you support GTCF, you’re helping ensure we can meet the moment not just now, but 10, 20, or 50 years from now. That kind of long-term stewardship matters, and so does making sure we can retain the staff who make that work possible.

Third, we need to create the time and bandwidth to influence the field. We do our best work when we’re running alongside like-minded foundations, businesses, agencies, and partners. But that kind of collaboration takes time. It requires real relationship-building and a willingness to understand not just what someone is doing, but how they’re doing it and, most importantly, why.

And that leads to the last piece: narrative. If we’re truly thinking seven generations ahead, we can’t just document what we did or how we did it; the most important thing to preserve is why. If future leaders understand the values and reasoning underneath a decision, they can adapt the tactics to meet their own moment without losing the thread.

Five Minutes with… Walton Family Foundation’s Tina Fletcher

Posted on by Brianna Provenzano

The Arkansas-Mississippi Delta is a case study in what community-rooted investment can make possible. Too often framed through deficit and disinvestment, the Delta is also a place of deep resilience, cultural richness, and local leadership; a region where people have been building and adapting solutions for generations, often without the level of sustained support they deserve. 

Tina Fletcher, who helps lead the Walton Family Foundation’s work in the Delta, is focused on helping shift that narrative by pairing long-term commitment with a community-centered approach to partnership. Across education, economic mobility, and leadership development, Fletcher’s work centers on strengthening what’s already working in the region and connecting the people and institutions best positioned to carry that momentum forward.

For this installment of Five Minutes With…, NationSwell spoke with Tina about what makes the Delta such a distinctive and inspiring place to work and why the greatest opportunity may be less about reinventing the Delta than investing in the talent and leadership that’s already there.

Here’s what she had to say:

NationSwell: For those less familiar, how would you describe the Delta — and what makes this region both unique and inspiring to you?

Tina Fletcher, Senior Program Officer, Walton Family Foundation: When it comes to the Delta, what stands out to me is just how much determination and resilience already exists. The Delta is a region rich in culture, community, and getting things done, with deep relationships and a strong sense of place that you can feel immediately. What makes it especially inspiring is that, despite being under-funded, the Delta has never lacked the capability to thrive. The Delta is full of people who have been leading and building for generations, people who aren’t waiting for solutions; they’re generating them in real time and in and meaningful ways. What’s needed now is investment that recognizes and accelerates that momentum because when you shift from “What’s wrong?” to “What’s working?”, the Delta looks entirely different.

NationSwell: How would you describe the Walton Family Foundation’s strategy on building trust and momentum in the Delta region over time?

Fletcher, WFF: At the Walton Family Foundation, our Delta Region strategy is simple, but not easy: show up, listen, be a good partner, and stay committed. Building trust in the Delta means investing in relationships just as much as we invest in results. In my role, I focus on strengthening what’s already working across education, economic mobility, and leadership, while finding creative ways to connect the individuals driving progress. I also bring a learning mindset to every table and conversation  I join, using data to inform the work without losing sight of community voice. That combination-commitment, consistency, humility, and rigor—is what turns trust into real momentum.

NationSwell: Can you share a moment or partnership in the Delta that changed how you think about community-centered philanthropy?

Fletcher, WFF: The biggest shift for me has been seeing what happens when communities aren’t just included—they’re in the lead. Across the Delta, I’ve seen young people, educators, and local leaders design solutions that are more relevant, effective, and sustainable than anything we could prescribe from the outside. I saw this firsthand in Jonestown, Mississippi, during a conversation with Mayor Columbus Russell, Jr., the youngest mayor in the state, and again in Helena-West Helena, Arkansas, led by Mayor Joseph Whitfield. Both are young, energetic leaders working in step with residents, partners, and funders to move their communities forward. Those moments reinforced that proximity matters. Community-centered philanthropy isn’t just about engagement, it’s about shared ownership. When communities lead together, the results aren’t just impactful, they’re sustainable. And that’s when the work doesn’t just land, it takes root.

NationSwell: For funders looking to invest in the Delta, what guidance would you offer to ensure their approach is both effective and community-centered? What are some common mistakes you’d recommend they avoid?

Fletcher, WFF: First, start by listening and plan to stay longer than you initially imagined. The Delta doesn’t need more one-off investments; it needs partners willing to build over time. Fund what’s already working, invest in capacity, and trust local leaders to guide the way. A common mistake is chasing quick wins without understanding the broader system or underestimating how long trust takes to build. In the Delta, philanthropy must focus on building trust and staying committed, because that’s what ultimately drives results. Opportunities for impact are real and plentiful, but they require patience, partnership, and a deep belief in the people closest to the work.

NationSwell: As a leader, how has working in the Delta shaped your personal leadership style, or clarified what kind of leadership this work requires?

Fletcher, WFF: This work has taught me that leadership isn’t about having all the answers, it’s about creating the conditions for the right answers to emerge. In the Delta, that means listening deeply, sharing power, and being intentional about whose voices shape your decision-making around the work. It’s also reinforced the importance of staying grounded in both data and humanity, balancing the desire for accountability and rigor with the realistic challenges Delta communities face. As a result, I am much more focused on connecting dots amongst stakeholders, leverage my organizations connections to benefit the communities we serve, funding what has proven to work, and making space for others to learn and lead. The kind of leadership this work requires is steady, collaborative, and deeply rooted in trust.

NationSwell: What gives you the most optimism about the future of the Delta, and where do you see the greatest opportunities for impact in the years ahead?

Fletcher, WFF: What gives me optimism is the talent and leadership already present, especially young leaders who are stepping up to shape what comes next, alongside seasoned leaders supporting them along the way. There’s a growing ecosystem of organizations doing powerful work, and the opportunity now is to connect and scale those efforts. I see real potential in more intentionally linking education to economic mobility, creating clear, local pathways from learning to earning and investing. The Delta doesn’t need to be reinvented; it needs to be invested in. And for funders willing to lean in, this is a moment with real momentum.

Impact Next: An interview with the Caterpillar Foundation’s Asha Varghese

Posted on by Brianna Provenzano

At a moment of unevenness and division, who is advancing the vanguard of economic and social progress to bolster under-served communities? Whose work is fostering the shared 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 2025, 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 Asha Varghese, Head of Corporate Social Responsibility at Caterpillar and President of the Caterpillar Foundation.

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?

Asha Varghese, Head of Corporate Social Responsibility at Caterpillar and President of the Caterpillar Foundation: What brought me into this work wasn’t a single defining moment but really a series of experiences that shaped how I see opportunity, equity, and the role the private sector can play in expanding both.

A big part of that goes back to growing up between two very different worlds. I spent my early childhood in Kerala, India, and my family didn’t move to rural Kentucky until I was 12. On the surface, those places couldn’t have looked more different, but what connected them for me was how deeply access to opportunity shaped people’s lives. I was fortunate to grow up in a family that believed fiercely in education and pushed us toward careers, especially in STEM. But many people in both of those communities didn’t have the same access. Living between those two worlds taught me resilience, but also a lasting awareness of how much opportunity — or the lack of it — can define a person’s path.

The other set of worlds I’ve learned to navigate is more professional: I’m a computer engineer by training, and I now work in corporate philanthropy and social impact. Those fields may seem far apart, but for me they’re deeply connected: Engineering taught me how to break down complex problems, innovate with limited resources, and build thoughtful, durable solutions, and I bring that same mindset to social impact work.

That’s really how I think about this role: bridging the discipline and problem-solving orientation of the private sector with the urgency and complexity of social development. It’s the combination of those personal and professional experiences that led me here.

Behrman, NationSwell: What is the “North Star” of your leadership style? What are some of the attributes that make you an effective leader in the space?

Varghese, Caterpillar: I’d say my North Star as a leader is creating stable pathways for people to thrive, no matter where they’re starting from. That’s true for how I lead as an individual, and also for how I show up representing our brand.

I actually got a lot of clarity on that through the Presidential Leadership Scholars program, which brings together leaders to study the leadership styles of past U.S. presidents. One of the most powerful exercises they put us through was identifying your single core value — the one you’d choose if you could only pick one. For me, that value was stability.

That really clicked for me because it ties so directly to my own journey. Stable environments created opportunity in my life, and that’s shaped how I think about leadership ever since. Any solution I’m building, any initiative I’m helping lead, I want to make sure I’m leaving behind something that outlasts me: a system that is durable, intentional, and built to support people over time.

The other value that has become increasingly important to me over the last decade is empathy. And I don’t think of empathy as a soft skill but as strategic clarity. It’s about listening deeply to communities, to teams, to emerging leaders, and making sure their voices shape the systems we’re building. At the core of all of it, I believe in expanding access to opportunity. That’s what guides the work I do.

Behrman, NationSwell: What is helping you or anchoring you to a sense of stability in the current moment?

Varghese, Caterpillar: A good example of that is the work we’ve been doing at Caterpillar around the future of work. Last year, as we celebrated the company’s centennial, we used that milestone not just to reflect on our legacy, but to sharpen our focus on people.

In a moment defined by AI and rapid technological change, the question for us is not whether technology matters; of course it does. The question is: how do we make sure people and technology can coexist and thrive together? That’s where a lot of my work is centered right now.

It connects directly to our broader commitment around workforce development and the future of work. For the next generation entering the workforce, the path forward can feel increasingly unclear. At the same time, there are many workers, especially in manufacturing and adjacent sectors, who understandably worry about being left behind. So the challenge for us is how to help create stable pathways for both groups: pathways that help young people navigate what’s next, and pathways that help current workers adapt with confidence.

That’s the work in front of us right now: taking a massive, complex problem and breaking it down into scalable solutions that help people feel more prepared, more included, and more secure in the future.

Behrman, NationSwell: What is unique or differentiated about the approach that you’re taking? Can you walk us through what excites you most about the work that you’re leading?

Varghese, Caterpillar: It’s hard to pick a single initiative, but the work I’m most energized by right now is our growing enterprise-wide commitment to workforce development. We’ve supported that work in different ways for years, but this deeper focus across the company gives me a lot of optimism because it’s so clearly centered on people.

More broadly, one approach I’m especially proud of is how we think about shared-value philanthropy: designing strategies that create real social impact while also aligning with the unique role a company like Caterpillar can play. Over the last six years, through a pandemic, humanitarian crises, and all kinds of global volatility, we’ve stayed committed to showing up consistently in communities. And what I’m proudest of is that we’ve done it by keeping community at the center — not by assuming we know the answers, but by listening, collaborating, and building solutions that can outlast us.

A good example in the U.S. is the Caterpillar Foundation’s work with Learning Undefeated, which uses game-based experiences to get K–12 students, especially middle schoolers, excited about STEM and modern manufacturing. It’s a creative way to tackle perception and interest early, and it brings in not just students, but teachers and other adults who influence their choices.

Globally, the Foundation is also focused on partnerships that treat jobs as the outcome, not just training. That’s what I appreciate about partners like IYF and Generation: the goal isn’t simply to hand someone a certification. It’s to ask, did this person get a job, and are they still in it six months later? That’s the kind of economic progress that matters. 

Behrman, NationSwell: Are there any particularly cool or illustrative examples of how Caterpillar is showing up in communities?

Varghese, Caterpillar: One longstanding area of work I’d point to is our disaster relief and humanitarian response portfolio through the Foundation. What I find especially meaningful about it is that we don’t think about disaster response as just the immediate relief effort (though that’s obviously critical). We also focus on how communities can be better prepared before disaster strikes, so local organizations are ready to respond quickly rather than starting from scratch in the middle of a crisis.

And just as importantly, we stay engaged after the headlines fade. Once the cameras are gone and the community is still recovering, we look at long-term mitigation and resilience, which is where this work connects directly to our sustainable infrastructure portfolio. That means asking: what kinds of nature-based or infrastructure solutions can actually reduce the impact of future floods, fires, droughts, and other climate-related events?

To me, that portfolio really reflects the consistency of how we try to show up as a company. Whether it was COVID, wildfires in California, or flooding in parts of Africa, the goal is the same: respond in the moment, but also invest in the systems that help communities recover and withstand what comes next. That’s a strong example of what shared-value philanthropy looks like for 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?

Varghese, Caterpillar:  On the resource side, a couple of things come to mind right away. Podcast-wise, I really like the TED Radio Hour episode on “Networks.” It resonates deeply with how I think about leadership and impact — that solutions grow at the speed of trust, and that ecosystems and relationships really matter.

I also really enjoy Fortune’s Leadership Next. It’s a great look at how CEOs and corporate leaders are thinking about leadership today, especially when it comes to integrating social responsibility into business strategy. That intersection feels very relevant to the work I do, so I always find something useful there.

Book-wise, one that has really stayed with me is Atomic Habits by James Clear. It’s helped me stay disciplined and intentional about how I want to show up, both personally and professionally. I also subscribe to his weekly newsletter, which I find grounding and consistently useful.

Behrman, 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?

Varghese, Caterpillar: The person who most inspires me is my father, Dr. Roy Varghese. He came to the U.S. in the 1970s and ultimately chose to spend more than 30 years of his career in rural Kentucky, helping revive a struggling hospital in a small town where he was, for a long time, the only physician. He could have chosen to practice anywhere, but he chose to stay there; that says so much to me about resilience, purpose, and intentionality. The way he showed up in medicine, and the way he stayed rooted in service, has had a profound impact on how I think about leadership.

Beyond that, I’m inspired by so many leaders across the social development space — especially those who lead with steadiness, creativity, and a commitment to building systems that outlast them. It’s a tough and often chaotic world, and I have a lot of admiration for the way so many nonprofit and corporate leaders continue to show up with consistency and conviction for the greater good.

Impact Next: An interview with the International Youth Foundation’s Christina Sass

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 Christina Sass, President & CEO of the International Youth Foundation.

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?

Christina Sass, President & CEO, International Youth Foundation: The short version is that I’m obsessed with youth employment. I genuinely believe it’s one of the most sustainable ways to get and keep people out of poverty. That’s why I focus on jobs for young people — I don’t want them to need things they can’t afford for themselves. When we help young people build skills they can take anywhere, we create change that lasts across generations.

That’s why this is my issue area, and why I tell people all the time: if you have a dollar or an hour to give, give a young person a chance who wouldn’t otherwise get one. Yes, you can do that through a charity like IYF, but honestly, if you have a job to offer in your own organization, that may be the most powerful thing you can do.

The reason this is so deeply personal is that it tracks closely with my father’s story: He immigrated to the U.S. from Germany at 22 with a suitcase and a couple hundred dollars to join his older brother. He was born in 1942, so you can imagine that his childhood was characterized by World War II, a devastated society, a family separated for years. His father was a prisoner of war for the first six years of his life; their family was internally displaced. His brother, my uncle, found a path forward through the brick masons, then volunteered for the U.S. Army as a way to stay in the country. My dad got a chance to build his career by coming over to live with his older brother. They were both hungry for opportunities.

His first job in the U.S. was picking up trash in a park while he barely spoke English. His second was moving boxes in an IBM warehouse — back when IBM was probably building typewriters, long before computers. But my dad was a true lifelong learner. He noticed that the most expensive machine parts were going missing, and he spent all night practicing enough English to ask his boss a question: why not keep the most valuable parts in one place and require people to check them out? His boss said, “Why don’t you build it?” And he did.

My dad retired after 32 years at IBM. Along the way, he kept leaving to get more education, kept pushing for opportunities, and was also lucky enough to have people take a chance on him — on someone who barely spoke English. That changed everything for our family. My dad is the reason my brother and I had the life we had; somebody gave him a chance. He passed away when I was a sophomore in college, and it was devastating for all of us, but his story still looms large for me.

So yes, this work is deeply personal, and it also happens to align with something I genuinely love. I stay so focused on youth employment because I’ve seen what it can unlock: in my own family, in my brother’s life, and in so many other young people’s lives.

I’ve taken multiple swings at the same question: How do we get young people into jobs at scale? Because I think we’ve failed badly at this. Educators say young people are ready for work; employers say they need two to three years of experience. And for the most at-risk young people, that gap is rarely merit-based. We can do so much better at opening doors early — and giving young people the chance to realize their full potential.

Behrman, NationSwell: Tell us a little bit about your current role and how you came to it.

Sass, IYF: International Youth Foundation is currently in its 35th year of operation, and I am the fourth CEO. All of the CEOs are around and super supportive of the work, which is a really cool legacy to have. IYF was founded by Rick Little, who was really ahead of his time in recognizing that young people face a distinct set of challenges in the transition from school to work, especially when there isn’t a clear path into employment.

I came to IYF in 2024, after spending 10 years building Andela, a platform connecting global companies with developer talent, especially in Africa. Bill Reese, IYF’s longtime second CEO, had been a mentor of mine for years, so when he reached out and said, “This is your issue area, would you consider it?”, it was a pretty extraordinary invitation.

What drew me in was the chance to work at a different order of scale. At Andela, we were intentionally building outside the system. At IYF, we’re working inside it — which comes with more constraints, but also a much bigger opportunity to create lasting change.

At its core, IYF focuses on youth economic opportunity, especially through training and job placement. We think broadly about who we serve: young people, of course, but also employers, school system leaders, and the funders who make this work possible. Our programs are strong, our outcomes are strong, and the work now is about growing awareness, expanding our reach, and continuing to evolve to meet young people where they are in a very complicated moment.

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?

Sass, IYF: One great example is a program we run with FedEx in Mexico and Colombia called Jóvenes con Entrega, which roughly translates to “youth who deliver,” both literally and in life.

The idea is simple: we look at where there are real hiring gaps, then work backward with employers to build training directly into the school day. In this case, FedEx had a huge need for entry-level logistics workers, especially as nearshoring accelerated across the region. So we worked directly with their HR and logistics teams to map the skills they needed, build a curriculum around those requirements, connect Fedex mentors to program participants, and integrate into technical high schools. We initially trained teachers ourselves, then transitioned that ownership to the school systems.

Since 2018, that program has served more than 50,000 young people, with job placement rates more than double what they would be otherwise. Nearly half of participants are young women, which is especially meaningful because many were initially being steered toward “safe” roles like secretarial work. We had to make the case that logistics was not only viable, but safe, respected, and far better paying, and once families saw the first graduates succeed, the momentum really took off.

Another example I love is our work with the banking sector in Mexico. For years, you needed a four-year economics degree to become an entry-level bank teller, which made no sense for the role and excluded a huge amount of talent. We worked with banks to rethink the job around skills instead of credentials, and helped create a pathway for technical high school graduates to move directly into those roles. We’re now on our third cohort, and it’s been transformative for the young people involved (and a much better talent match for the banks, too).

Behrman, NationSwell: What is unique or differentiated about the approach that you’re taking? Can you walk us through a couple different facets of the work you’re leading that are particularly exciting to you right now?

Sass, IYF: We work with about 50,000 young people a year in what I’d call a high-touch way, meaning they’re getting the full curriculum in a classroom setting, often through technical high schools or school systems. The number is actually higher if you include lighter-touch engagement, like online learning, but 50,000 is the number we use when we’re talking about deeper transformation.

In 2025, 90% of young people who started an IYF program completed it, and 75% went on to a better economic outcome, whether that was job placement, enrolling in higher education, advancing in their current path, or starting something entrepreneurial. Overall, about 87% are connected to work in some meaningful way: employed, in education that leads to employment, or in training that improves their economic prospects. We also have very high net promoter scores with young people, and our partners tend to stay with us for the long term — on average about seven years, with some partnerships lasting 14 years or more. That matters, because systems change is almost always a multi-year effort.

I think the reason young people rate our programs so highly is simple: we design them with young people, not just for them. That “nothing about us without us” mindset is core to how we work. Our life skills curriculum, Passport to Success, is a great example: it’s active, relevant, and grounded in the real pressures young people are navigating, from anger management to gender norms to workplace expectations. Then we build the technical training on top of that. So the real secret sauce is strong systems-level partnerships combined with program design that is genuinely responsive to young people and accountable to them.

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?

Sass, IYF: I think my superpower as a leader is that I’m wired to empower other people. My instinct is not to hold power tightly, it’s to give it away. I’m pretty vulnerable as a leader, and I talk openly about what I’ve learned about myself and how I work. I want to build a true team of rivals: extraordinary people with different strengths, fully unlocked to do their best work.

At the center of my leadership is not power or control, but the opposite: If we’re going to scale, we have to align people around the mission, bring in incredible talent, and then trust them.

That mindset was also shaped by an extraordinary executive coach I’ve worked with since my second year at Andela, Jeff Hunter of Talentism. His core methodology is based on the idea that leaders, particularly founders and entrepreneurs, have to see themselves clearly and design around what they actually are best in class at, and that framework has had a huge impact on me. To use myself as an example, I am a great individual contributor, but I am not a good day-to-day clarity manager. That tells me that I need to hire those people, and they need to manage those facets of the work. So I relentlessly try to see myself clearly and design well around myself, and then I hire people with high mission-alignment in mind. I believe that the best teams out there have a lot of psychological safety, so I try to start with vulnerability, lead with vulnerability, and really mean it when I say that I’m handing the reins over.

Impact Next: An interview with One Mind’s Kathy Pike

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 Kathy Pike, President and CEO of One Mind. Here’s what she had to say:

Ray Hutchison, Vice President of Community Engagement, NationSwell: What brought you to the field that you’re in now? Was there an early moment or a formative experience that helped shape how you arrived at this role, or your leadership?

Dr. Kathy Pike, President and CEO of One Mind: Before I became CEO of One Mind, I spent 35 years as an academic, as a professor at Columbia University in the Department of Psychiatry and the School of Public Health. Academia is a kind of priesthood, and moving from a full-time faculty role into leading a nonprofit is not a transition most academics make. So something had to shift for me, and it really came down to a couple of moments.

About ten years ago, I was invited by a large multinational company in New York to give a talk on mental health and well-being. I went in for an in-person prep meeting, and they told me there was one condition: I couldn’t say “mental health” or “mental illness.” Those terms were considered too alienating, too stigmatizing. They wanted the talk framed entirely around stress, coping, and resilience.

That stayed with me. The discomfort around even naming mental health felt incredibly restrictive, and I remember giving those kinds of talks and feeling like progress was painfully slow.

Then, a few years ago, after COVID, I was invited back to that same company to give a similar talk. When I walked in, there was a large sign on the door that read something like: “Feeling anxious? Depressed? Want to talk? I’m a mental health ambassador.”

That was a crystallizing moment for me. It was clear we had entered a genuinely new era, one where people were paying real attention to mental health and well-being. And with that shift came a huge opportunity to bridge what we know from rigorous science with what is actually happening in workplaces and communities.

I have always been deeply committed to translational science, to the question of how we take what we know and get it into the hands of people who can use it. That moment made it clear to me that the bridge between science and practice needed to be stronger, and that I wanted to lean fully into building it. When the opportunity came to join One Mind, it felt like exactly the right place to focus that work, to help ensure that what reaches people is grounded in strong science and actually makes a difference in their lives.

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

Pike, OneMind: Early in my leadership career, I was very focused on building a team that could deliver the work with excellence. I approached leadership in a very task-oriented way. When I thought about hiring or bringing people onto a team, it was largely about finding the right people to get the job done.

And that’s still essential. The work does need to get done, and it needs to be done well. But over time, my thinking about leadership has evolved, and I now see leadership as much more about leading with people. It’s about understanding who individuals are so that they can do the work they’re best suited for. The work they approach with energy and passion, and that allows them to operate at their highest level.

So the question becomes: How do you create the right match between the work that needs to be done and the person who’s doing it? Because when someone is working in an area where they feel alive, engaged, and capable of excellence, they’re simply going to do better work. It’s a subtle shift; the goal of delivering the work doesn’t change, but it changes how I think about leadership, especially when something isn’t working. It changes the questions I ask and the adjustments I consider.

More recently, when we think about building teams, I’ve come to see it less like assembling pieces of a pre-made puzzle and more like building with Legos. You may have an idea of what you’re trying to build, but people bring different strengths and perspectives, and the organization becomes stronger when you build around those differences. When people feel fulfilled and are working in areas they care about and feel strong in, the quality of the work improves as well.

Hutchison, NationSwell: What are some of the programs, signature initiatives, or some facets of the work that you’re doing at One Mind that feel particularly cut-through?

Pike, OneMind: I knew I wanted to lead an organization focused on translating science into practice, and One Mind felt like the right fit for a couple of reasons. For one thing, there’s a deep commitment to grounding the organization in science, which aligns closely with how I believe the mental health field needs to move forward. But there’s also a more personal reason: My paternal uncle was diagnosed with schizophrenia when he was around 20 years old, before I was born. As a child, I used to visit him with my father on Sundays at Rockland State Psychiatric Hospital, where he lived as a ward of the state for most of his adult life. But more than living there, he languished there. It wasn’t because people didn’t care. There were many deeply committed professionals working at the hospital, but the treatments and the understanding of serious mental illness at the time were very limited. I remember riding home after those visits thinking, we have to be able to do better than this. I’m sure that experience shaped my path toward becoming a clinical psychologist, and ultimately joining One Mind.

One Mind was founded by Shari and Garen Staglin after their son, Brandon, was diagnosed with schizophrenia. In contrast to my uncle’s experience, Brandon is thriving today. He serves as our Chief Advocacy and Engagement Officer, and the opportunity to work alongside him was an important part of my decision to join the organization. In a certain poetic way, it feels like being able to say, we’re doing better now, Uncle Henry. 

Of course, a diagnosis like schizophrenia is not unlike other serious health conditions where you can do everything right and still face difficult outcomes, but we can do far more now than we once could to help people thrive. One Mind’s commitment to integrating people with lived experience in all our programming under Brandon’s leadership, is enormously valuable and meaningful and ensures that the priorities and perspectives of those we aim to serve shape what we do.

What excites me every day is the way our work pushes the field forward across three core pillars: The One Mind Rising Star Academy supports researchers pursuing bold, breakthrough ideas in neuroscience to better understand the brain and develop new interventions; the One Mind Accelerator brings investment, technology, and innovation into mental health to build scalable, sustainable solutions; and One Mind at Work takes those insights into workplaces, helping organizations rethink how work itself supports mental health and well-being.

Across all three, the goal is the same: to demonstrate that better is possible, and to help make that future real.

Hutchison, NationSwell: What are the trends that you’re currently seeing that are giving you hope?

Pike, One Mind: Mental health is definitely having a moment. For a long time, nobody wanted to talk about it. Now everyone does. The advances in science and technology, the innovation, and the level of investment coming into this space fill me with genuine hope and make me deeply optimistic about what lies ahead.

But I’ll be honest about what keeps me up at night. All of this attention may not translate into real impact. There’s a real risk that good intentions don’t actually achieve their aims, and if that happens, the naysayers will say: we invested in mental health, we funded research, we built workplace programs, and nothing changed. They’ll throw up their hands and walk away. That concerns me deeply, because I believe we have a genuine opportunity right now, and I don’t want to see us squander it.

Here’s the challenge: too much of the work in mental health is underdosed. Think about strep throat. A doctor prescribes a very specific antibiotic at a very specific dose for a very specific number of days, because that is what produces results. In mental health, we have evidence-based strategies that similarly require a certain level of frequency and intensity to work. But too often we are asked to make do with less. It’s like telling a doctor to cut the prescription in half and then wondering why the patient isn’t getting better.

At One Mind, we think about this constantly. Good intentions are not enough. We are committed to translating science into programs that are designed and scaled for real impact.

And here is what I keep coming back to: we are living in a moment of extraordinary possibility. The science is stronger than it has ever been. The cultural openness is wider than it has ever been. The investment is growing. If we do this right, if we stay grounded in evidence and committed to reaching the people who need it most, I believe mental health will lead the way to a broader and more expansive understanding of what it means to be healthy. Not just mentally healthy, but fully, wholly healthy. That future is within reach, and that is what drives me every single day.

Hutchison, NationSwell: How are you thinking about AI in this moment? Is there a future where it’s a force for good? And if so, what does that look like? How do we get there?

Pike, One Mind: It’s not a future where AI becomes a force for good; it’s already here. AI is power, and it is potential. In many ways, it’s like water or money: what matters is how you use it.

In mental health and well-being, AI offers tremendous opportunity. Population-level data show that the burden of untreated mental health conditions is enormous, one of the leading causes of disability worldwide. And the vast majority of people with these conditions, whether in high-income countries like the United States or in lower-income countries and communities in the US, are not receiving treatment.

There are many reasons for that. Stigma remains a barrier, access to care is limited, and AI can help address both. It can expand access to information and support in ways that feel more private for people who are hesitant to seek care openly; it can help standardize aspects of care and reduce administrative burdens, like documentation and record-keeping, that take time away from clinicians. In those ways, AI has the potential to dramatically increase access and improve how mental health care is delivered.

But there is also real risk. We’ve already seen cases where people turn to tools like ChatGPT or other AI systems for mental health support, even though those systems aren’t trained to manage clinical risk. There have been tragic outcomes, which underscores how important it is to approach this thoughtfully.

We are addressing the issue of AI and mental health across all our programs. What is ethical use of AI for our One Mind Rising Star Award researchers? How can we responsibly support companies that are creating AI-enabled interventions in our One Mind Accelerator? How do we bring best practices to this new world of work for the companies we work with through One Mind at Work. Workplaces are all grappling with what AI means for their industries and their workforces. Jobs will change. Some roles may disappear, and new ones will emerge. All of us will be working differently in the years ahead.

So from my perspective, AI brings enormous opportunity and enormous risk. Our future will be shaped by the choices we make now. We need to be intentional about building AI in ways that advance our shared aspirations: improving the human condition and strengthening people’s health and well-being. And if we see risks emerging, we have a responsibility to act in ways that reduce harm and optimize good outcomes.

When there is choice, there is risk. But there is also the possibility of getting it right.

Hutchison, NationSwell: What are some peer leaders out there that you admire, particularly leaders in roles at other organizations, or companies, or nonprofits whose work you hold in high esteem? Is there anybody else out there that we should be pointing a finger in the direction of as another great example of a human being or an organization?

Pike, OneMind:  One organization that serves as a North Star for me is the Kennedy Forum, founded by Patrick J. Kennedy. I believe Patrick is the most important and effective national spokesperson on mental health today when it comes to advocacy, parity, and advancing solutions that matter for society as a whole. The organization’s CEO, Rebecca Bagley, is also an incredibly thoughtful, strategic, and compassionate leader who is helping carry that mission forward.

Patrick’s leadership was especially top of mind for me recently. This past Monday, he convened a major gathering at the National Press Club that brought together mental health leaders and policymakers. The event opened with an interview featuring his cousin, Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

Patrick and Secretary Kennedy have very little in common politically, and Patrick acknowledged that directly. As he closed his opening remarks, he said many people were probably wondering how he could stand on that stage and introduce someone whose political views he often disagrees with. But he explained that he was there because the Secretary will help shape the national agenda on mental health and addiction. And those issues matter to everyone. Patrick spoke about how both of them understand, through their own family experiences, what mental illness and addiction can do to individuals and families. He said, essentially, that they may sit in different political camps, but on this issue they share a mission.

For me, that moment captured something powerful. Patrick doesn’t just say that mental health is bipartisan, he treats it as a universal issue and leads accordingly. He’s willing to partner with people he may disagree with in other arenas because the mission matters more. One of my mentors used to say, “Keep your eye on the prize.” That’s exactly what Patrick is doing.

Because of that leadership, he and Rebecca and their team have helped drive real progress, including the Action for Progress on Mental Health and Substance Use — a framework that, if fully implemented, could have tremendous benefits for people across the country. I have enormous respect and admiration for Patrick’s ability to lead with that kind of focus and commitment.

Hutchison, NationSwell: What is the North Star of your leadership?

Pike, OneMind: I think about the North Star of my leadership as a three-legged stool of values: dignity, purpose, and joy.

As I make decisions about where to spend my energy, whether in my leadership, my social life, or my philanthropic work, those three values are the ones that guide me. I want to feel a sense of dignity, purpose, and joy in the way I engage in the world. If something lacks those things, if it doesn’t feel purposeful, if it doesn’t bring joy, or if there’s an indignity in it for myself or for others, then I know it’s not where I belong.

We live in a world with a frenetic energy that can pull people away from what they care about most. It’s easy to become disconnected, to drift from your center without even noticing it’s happened. But when we are intentional about keeping our values close, we actually have tremendous power to shape the world around us. It shows up in the decisions we make every single day, the small ones as much as the large ones.

So for me, dignity, purpose, and joy are not abstract ideals. They are the stars I use to navigate my leadership and to choose the work that is worthy of my time and energy.