Champions of the Lost Causes

Host Marvin Stockwell talks to Sara Vaas at CONO's offices in Colorado Springs, CO. CONO is a nonprofit that works to connect neighbors to each other and the civic process. Marvin and Sara talk about the challenges of elevating citizens' voices as the city grows, and how CONO is working with the City to organize ongoing citizen input. The two also talk about Sara's work as an artist, a...

Host Marvin Stockwell talks to LA-based writer and director Sean Crouch at his home. Known for shows such as Wolf Pack, The Exorcist, Lore, The 100, Numb3rs and Unforgettable, Sean talks to Marvin about his role in the current writer's strike, and how it differs from his experience of the writer's strike of 2007. The two explore why changes in how episodic shows are produced have hurt the...

Host Marvin Stockwell talks to Sarah Kephart and Andy Hoffman at Envision's Wichita headquarters. Sarah serves as Envision's arts manager, and Andy serves as call center supervisor. What started in Wichita in 1933 as an effort to find jobs for blind people has grown into a multi-state nonprofit with every service imaginable to support people who are blind and visually impaired. The three t...

Host Marvin Stockwell talk to Andy Scurto at the Tulsa's Promenade Mall. Andy followed his daughter's love of playing hockey into being a fan, coach and ultimately owner of the Tulsa Oilers. Marvin and Andy talk about Andy's passion for youth sports, how the team gives back to the youth in Tulsa, and how a vacant former Macy's is being converted into a facility with two new ice rin...

Host Marvin Stockwell talks to Janae Bradford at Tulsa City Hall. Janae leads the City of Tulsa's Office of Financial Empowerment and Community Wealth. Marvin and Janae talk about how her career in finance and nonprofit work prepared her well to champion the cause of financial stability from within municipal government, and how she's applying best practices that are working in other cities...

Host Marvin Stockwell talks to Sharon Chapman, executive director of the Next Step, at the Ft. Smith, AR shelter for people experiencing homelessness. What began as a church outreach serving a daily meal in the 1980s has grown into a multifaceted nonprofit that provides not only emergency shelter, but also transitional housing and other services aimed at helping people become permanently housed. M...

Host Marvin Stockwell talks to Steve Foutch at Hy-Vee Arena in Kansas City. Steve bought the historic Kemper Arena for $1 and set out to do what many people said was impossible – save and repurpose the building. After he and his team solved many structural and engineering challenges, the building was relaunched in 2018 as the multi-use Hy-Vee Arena. Steve also weighs in on the fate of Memphis'...

Host Marvin Stockwell talks to John Rash at the Champions of the Lost Causes home studio in Memphis. John is the creator of the Southern Punk Archive, a growing physical and digital repository of videos, photos, fliers, music, films, and oral histories that document the South's many thriving DIY punk scenes. Before now, the contributions that southern punk scenes have made to the national conv...

People champion all sorts of causes, but the uber-cause that we can sometimes miss is that of our own precious lives. This is where Jen Frank uses her gifts as a career and life coach to help the people she coaches. Our lives and how we make contributions in the world is a multi-faceted equation in which we balance the things we yearn for with other competing priorities. Jen helps people get unstu...

IOBY is a crowdfunding site that helps people make positive changes in their communities. We discuss how Erin and her founding partners discovered their niche in helping smaller neighborhood-level actors make change. We also chat with Dawn about her development from being a project leader in Cleveland to her role as IOBY's Place-Based Strategies Manager, with national responsibilities. 

Svitlana Muzychenko, founder of UA Brokers Without Borders, works with Ukrainian grassroots organizations to address emerging humanitarian needs that stem from the ongoing war with Russia. We’ll discuss Svitlana’s early life in Ukraine, how she moved to Brazil and started her own technology firm, and how she has used her professional skills and network to help her fellow Ukrainians survive.

Mia Henley is the executive director of Creative Aging, a nonprofit that makes music and arts programming more accessible to older adults in Memphis. Everyone needs community to live a healthy, fulfilled life, but family and work connections often fall away as we age. The arts have the transformative power to build skills, confidence and community, and in doing so, the arts can improve physic...

McKrell Baier is the director of the BridgeUp, GiddyUp nonprofit program. Through her unique and compassionate approach to horseback riding and Equestrian sports, McKrell and her team work with children ages 11 to 18 to help them become more confident, responsible, empathetic and goal-oriented. With wealth and privilege often associated with Equestrian sports, McKrell is also working to make the s...

Tina Sullivan, executive director of the Overton Park Conservancy, played a pivotal role in resolving the decade-long fight over the Memphis Zoo parking cars on the park's Greensward. Today's hard-fought wins are built on the activism of Overton Park's past, including the landmark Supreme Court court case in 1971 that kept Interstate 40 from bisecting the park. Tina's passion for the park's rich h...

Media consolidation in the 1990s forced John Michael off the 96X airwaves in Memphis and on to a successful career in radio that included a stint at the vaunted KROQ in Los Angeles. John found that his varied experiences taught him a lot about what worked in radio. Those experiences also showed him how radio was broken and disconnected from the audiences it once served, and he began to think about...

After cutting his teeth as a musician and producer in New York City, James Dukes (IMAKEMADBEATS) returned home to Memphis in 2011 to find a music scene that at first seemed stuck in the past. As he began to work with local artists, he discovered an eclectic and uniquely creative group of artists that would become the backbone of Unapologetic, a label and artist collective James founded and has sin...

Nick Oyler is the Bikeway & Pedestrian Program Manager for the City of Memphis. When the push for bike lanes in Memphis resulted in early victories for the bike/ped movement and then gave way to the city’s initial buildout, Nick was away at college, grad school, then working in Germany. Following all that news from afar, Nick thought that he might have missed his moment to get involved. But as...

Roshun Austin and Quincy Jones of the Works Inc., are working to rebuild, restore and renew families and where they live by focusing on housing, economic development and social services. With the recent merger with Neighborhood Preservation Inc., the Works has strengthened an already strong partnership and is now capable of doing more to advocate for the needs of residents, and ambitious plans are...

Eric Barnes is the CEO and publisher of the Daily Memphian, an online daily news outlet launched in 2018. The global decline of the daily print newspaper meant the decline of the Commercial Appeal, Memphis' legacy paper. The Daily Memphian was a response to that decline, and as the paradigm shift in journalism continues, the Daily Memphian continues to adapt to find a funding model to support its...

In 2000, Christopher Reyes founded Live From Memphis, a website that showcased the city's burgeoning music, film, and art scenes. The site gave artists new tools and ways to connect that bigger social media platforms had not yet built. It galvanized collaboration and helped grow community among artists. Always ahead of the technological curve, immersive multimedia art was next for Chris. In creati...

Panelists Isaac Daniel (Stax Music Academy), Elizabeth Cawein (Music Export Memphis), J.D. Reager (Back to the Light) discuss the past, present, and future of the Memphis music landscape. Each panelist has championed the cause of Memphis music in different ways. Recorded live on Saturday, December 4th, 2021 at the Memphis Listening Lab inside Crosstown Concourse.

Many consider Mike McCarthy the godfather of independent film in Memphis, but in addition to his films, he has created comic books, graphic novels, sculptures, played in bands, and was the co-founder of the Coliseum Coalition, the grassroots group that worked to save Memphis' historic Mid-South Coliseum from the wrecking ball, and is now working to reactivate it. The common thread in all of Mike's...

Aaron Shafer led the grassroots effort to open Memphis' first public skate park in 2011. We discuss how his passion for the idea drew others to the cause and how they collaborated with the city of Memphis and the community to open the park. We also talk about his idea for a wave park and other civic projects on the horizon.

Jared Boyd is the program manager for WYXR, Memphis' newest community radio station, which grew from a germ of an idea and collaboration with others to now broadcasting diverse viewpoints and an eclectic mix of music from Crosstown Concourse in Memphis. Jared's experience as a journalist and DJ also helped him work with others to make the station what it has become in its first year.

Angela Barksdale's focus on improving Memphis' historic Orange Mound community has seen her produce events, lead campaigns, and advocate for the reopening of the dormant Mid-South Coliseum. She and others think the Coliseum could fit in with the City of Memphis' redevelopment of the city's fairgrounds, now known as Liberty Park, as a community asset that would enhance other efforts underway in Ora...