Champions of the Lost Causes

Isabel Gonzalez-Whitaker worked with others to transform an underused Atlanta park into the Sara J. Gonzalez Memorial Park, a park renamed to honor her mother's trailblazing work and reflect the inclusive values her mother stood for and instilled in her. Working through grief after her mother's death became a labor of love that drew others to the effort in unexpected ways. The park now serves as a...

Trevor Clarke is executive director of Working Bikes, a Chicago-based nonprofit bicycle co-op that gives donated bicycles new life by redistributing them locally and globally - 10,000 bikes in Chicago and more than 100,000 across the globe since 1999. The organization's global focus has provided access to resources and opportunities that otherwise could have been out of reach - reducing waste and...

Charlotte Tolley, founder and executive director of Nourish Knoxville started the Market Square Farmers Market in downtown Knoxville in 2004 when downtown wasn’t much to look at. The farmers market not only jump-started the revitalization of the city’s downtown, but it also led to the 2013 establishment of Nourish Knoxville, a nonprofit dedicated to cultivating healthy communities by supporting re...

Victoria Jones is the founder and executive director of Tone, a nonprofit dedicated to empowering Black artists and communities and elevating Memphis as a global cultural beacon. Tone recently announced plans to team up with Unapologetic, a record label and artists collective, to convert the long-vacant United Equipment Building into Orange Mound Tower, a mixed-use development with a commitment to...

When the pandemic struck, Ellen Kuwana started the nonprofit We Got This Seattle to deliver meals to frontline medical workers. What began on instinct, serving people she saw who needed help, became more organized and systematic as she forged partnerships, accepted donations of food and money, worked with volunteers, and served more and more people. What makes people champion causes like she did?...

Protect Our Aquifer's opposition to the Byhalia Connection Pipeline has been front page news recently, but for the group's president, Ward Archer, advocacy for the Memphis Sand Aquifer goes back almost 20 years, to when he was working to stop a logging company from clear-cutting near the headwaters of the Wolf River and first learned of the aquifer. Respect for the aquifer's ancient origins and a...

As co-host of the globally syndicated roots radio show, Beale Street Caravan, and with years of music industry experience under her belt, Pat Mitchell Worley brings a unique set of skills to her role as executive director of the Stax Music Academy. She also brings her perspective as a mother, a special love for expanding the horizons of children, and a confidence to ask “What if?” and “Why Not?” q...

Trey Elder, a longtime member of the Chicago music scene, founded Quiet Pterodactyl in 2019 to bring music and art into the community and provide equitable access for youth, but the pandemic forced him to change gears and serve Chicago in different ways, almost from the outset. SituationChicago, a compilation vinyl and digital album, has raised money and awareness about Chicago live music venues s...

Elizabeth Cawein founded Music Export Memphis in 2016 to elevate the careers of Memphis musicians, to make Memphis a city of choice for musicians and other creatives, and to elevate Memphis’ brand as a contemporary music city. More recently, Music Export Memphis had to switch gears during the pandemic to fulfill its mission in different ways. Championing the cause of Memphis music didn’t start in...

A longtime friend and collaborator of mine, J.D. has a fairly new podcast, Back to the Light, which has already expanded into a podcast network, record label and more, but what set off this flurry of creative activity? On this show, my guests and I talk about why people champion causes and what sustains them, but there’s an uber cause in the background that we can overlook, and that’s championing...

As co-founder and spokesman for the Coliseum Coalition, Marvin has worked with others for five years to reopen the beloved midsize venue. In 2016, he also co-founded Friends of the Fairgrounds, which conducted a yearlong stakeholder input process to determine what people wanted to see the wider Fairgrounds land parcel become. In the last two years, Marvin and his fellow Coliseum Coalition board me...

Historic preservation architect and Coliseum Coalition vice president Chooch Pickard led an interdisciplinary team of experts to produce a physical assessment of the shuttered Mid-South Coliseum in 2016. That assessment found the building to be in excellent shape, and those findings were later corroborated by the City of Memphis’ own due diligence. Chooch brings to bear decades of experience resto...

Coliseum Coalition president Roy Barnes has been a vital part of the grassroots effort to reopen the classic midsize venue from its earliest days. Roy was a key figure in organizing the first Roundhouse Revival in 2015, as well as subsequent revivals and other revitalizing events. He developed the group’s business plan and has contributed other research that has steadily moved public opinion towar...

Mark Fleischer did something that seemed counterintuitive in our digital age, he started a print newspaper in 2018 called Storyboard Memphis. Since then, he’s published neighborhood-level news that was missing from the local media landscape before that, and he’s given digital-only outlets a way to get news out in print. Arts coverage and coverage of historic preservation have also found a home. Ma...

Through his non-profit film company, Memphis FilmWorks, Lakethan Mason creates socially relevant content that captures artistic expression, human connection and our shared humanity. In his new docuseries, Our Neighbors, Our Stories, he explores the art, life, history and culture of Memphis through the shared stories of Memphians. Lakethan lifts up unheard, often overlooked, voices and welcomes the...

Kyle Wagenschutz was a critical figure in growing and sustaining Revolutions Community Bicycle Shop in Memphis, alongside founder Anthony Siracusa. Together, the two shared a love for bikes and punk rock, and they found that each subculture played a role in helping them build community around bikes. Kyle advocated for bike lanes in Memphis, first from his perch at Revolutions, but then as the City...

Roshun Austin is working to keep Memphis housing affordable, even as Memphis’ growth accelerates. She and her team at the Works are working to ensure that Memphis’ momentum reaches all of Memphis, especially the neighborhoods that have been left out in the past, by focusing on housing, economic development and social services.

Britney Thornton founded Juice Orange Mound to develop and advance self-reliance In Orange Mound by building capacity and engagement among its citizens and businesses. What began as regular community meetings and door-to-door fundraising to fund projects has grown over time. Now, there is a growing confidence that neighbors are reclaiming the self-sufficiency and prestige of Historic Orange Mound....

From his perch as a public defender, Josh Spickler saw the limitations of the public defender's office… the enormous case load limiting how much time could be spent on each client and how bail practices and expungement costs were a disproportionate burden for the poor. His curiosity about how to address these issues led him to found Just City, which for five years has advocated for change and has...

Making bikes affordable to more people by founding Revolutions Community Bicycle Shop led Anthony Siracusa to bike advocacy work on the local, state and national level. In time, he saw the bike as only one lever to affect change among many. Anthony's doctoral studies at Vanderbilt deepened that knowledge by showing him the many Champions and their causes within the Civil Rights Movement. That led...

Asking "Wouldn't it be cool if...?"-type questions and getting the community to dream big was the start of re-imagining Memphis' blighted Sears distribution center. Seven years later, in August of 2017, the building was relaunched as Crosstown Concourse, a vertical urban village dedicated to healthcare, education and the arts. But it took more than dreaming from Todd and others to get to opening d...

In pursuing the XQ Superschool grant and answering its charge to "reinvent high school," Ginger Spickler and a group of volunteers developed a vision that became Crosstown High, a place-based learning high school embedded in Crosstown Concourse in Memphis.