Homegrown Solutions for a Patchwork World - The Skills, Talents, and Mindsets of Changemakers

This is the second time I’ve had the great privilege of interviewing the radiant and gifted Jeannine Rivers for this Changemaker Series.  She’s that amazing and positively LUMINOUS in her efforts to make the world work better for everyone she meets.  I hope you’ll check out our first interview from last summer here.  This time, I interviewed Jeannine for my new show, On Your Own Terms, on Win Win...

Today we welcome senior fitness specialist, Mariah Kaye.  I met Mariah because she has kept popping up week after week as a wonderfully loyal viewer and participant in my new weekly show on the WIN WIN WOMEN network I call “On Your Own Terms”.  Because she always stays for the vibrant conversation after the show, over time I started to realize that Mariah is a “Big C – Changemaker” in her own righ...

I’ve long been fascinated by the potential of hypnotherapy to help people make necessary changes in their lives.  When I met Certified Hypnotherapist Jackie Maclean recently in a business class we took together, I was immediately drawn to her evident knowledge and passion for helping people who were suffering deeply.  The results she gets for her clients using hypnosis are simply astounding.  Lear...

I met the amazing Jeannine Rivers Colburn last summer when I was reaching out to the world to invite participation in a course I developed called “Tender and Brave:  Authentic Anti-racism for the Well-Intentioned White Woman”.  As an African American woman, something about that title didn’t hit Jeannine quite right.  Who was this Patti Talbot?  What was she up to and what qualified her to teach su...

I met CJ Peterson, our special guest in this episode of the Blue Roads Changemaker Series, through a “matchmaking” service for podcasters.  When she was kind enough to interview me for her podcast “The Journey is Real” about my work to cultivate homegrown changemakers (airing in late June), we got to talking afterward about her own work as a Changemaker.  C. J. generously agreed to be a guest for...

Every effort to create a better world takes substantial energy as well as resources.  Lisa Riggs has come up with a creative solution to fundraising that is helping CHANGEMAKERS reach their goals in a fun and engaging manner by selling something everyone needs at one time or another – SOCKS!  Her socks are designed in collaboration with the organizations she serves to project the message and align...

Today we welcome Dr. Ashley Taylor Repisky,  Director of Education and Lecturer at Rice 360 Institute for Global Health.  I first met Ashley in the summer of 2016 when we traveled together to Malawi for a month of working and learning with and from educators and healthcare workers there. Ashley was working on finding solutions to equipment shortages to address health challenges in hospital setting...

When Danielle Coughlin talks about being “twice exceptional”, she’s talking about kids who are both gifted and experiencing some kind of learning challenge.  She readily admits that this category describes her own experience of the world as well.  I met Danielle as a student at Radford University who traveled with a group I was supervising to Malawi to work in a village school there.  Her gifts fo...

This is Part 2 of a two part series featuring educator Angela Clevinger from Pulaski Virginia.  You’ll remember we left off after she talked about her homegrown roots as the daughter of a Klansman who changed her loyalties in her fifth grade year where she was inspired and motivated by her African American teacher, Mr. John Hocker.  She grew up to be a teacher working for equity and active in her...

This is Part 1 of a two-part series featuring Changemaker Educator, Angie Clevinger.  I was fortunate to meet Angie at Radford University when I was teaching in the Educational Leadership Program there.  She was working on her licensure to be a school principal at the time and I could tell right away that she was something special. But when I read her writing, I knew that she was way beyond “speci...

In this episode of our Changemaker Series, I had the great privilege of talking with my changemaker friend, Sandra Lima Argo.  I call her a “chameleon” because she has an amazing ability to adapt well to any circumstance and to help others do so.   Much has changed in the world since we sat down for this interview back in the spring, but as you will see, as always, Sandra has embraced the challeng...

Carol Crawford Smith is the first changemaker representing the arts in this series that celebrates the work and lives of changemakers through the lens of our framework “Homegrown Solutions for a Patchwork World”.  You’ll remember that I interviewed her amazing son, Garland Smith, founder of the Omushana Company, a few weeks back.   When you read Carol’s story, you’ll fully understand where Garland...

This latest episode in the Blue Roads Changemaker Series features Phyllis Albritton who I have long called “Blacksburg’s best-known citizen”.  Now, I don’t know if it’s true, but it is certainly true to me.  I’ve been in Blacksburg for more than 40 years and I don’t seem to know a single person who doesn’t know Phyllis, too.  She’s a big presence, and an important one, in our community. Until her...

Featuring High School Seniors Kolby Brown and Molly McPherson It’s never too soon to be a Changemaker! In my first two-person interview for the Changemaker Series, I welcomed two rising high school seniors, Kolby Brown and Molly McPherson, to talk about their work for racial justice in our community.  These two young leaders recently organized a protest that took place prior to a meeting of the Mo...

Garland Smith is one impressive entrepreneurial changemaker!  I was fortunate to meet Garland and his family during his childhood schooling at Margaret Beeks Elementary in Blacksburg, Virginia where I was principal in the late 90’s and early 2000’s.   I hadn’t seen him or talked with him in years until I saw a recent ad for his socially-minded enterprise, The Omushana Company.  As soon as I saw th...

I was fortunate to meet Boston history teacher, Kim Young, first as an online classmate in World’ Savvy’s Global Competence Certificate (GCC)  program for educators.   When I first laid eyes on this world traveling teacher, she was propped up in a bed with a computer on her lap tuning in from Palestine.   A year and a half into the GCC program, the group met up in Ecuador for a field experience wo...

I was fortunate to meet Dr. Liovani Nazario during an immersion experience at the River Phoenix Center for Peacebuilding in Gainesville, Florida in October 2019.    As you’ll see and hear, Liovani’s story is a unique and inspired example of “Homegrown Solutions for a Patchwork World”.  Her life resonates with clear themes of fairness and inclusivity.  With a strong role model  in her mom,  she sta...

In Part 1, Dana shared her upbringing and learning experiences that led to the founding of World Savvy as well as how that work unfolded from the early days to include a broad range of work with people across cultures.  In this second part of the conversation, Dana updates us on World Savvy’s growing influence and includes a reflection of her hopes for education as the world recovers from the Covi...

Dana Mortenson is Co-Founder and CEO of World Savvy, a national education nonprofit committed to “building inclusive, adaptive and future-ready education systems” for over 18 years. World Savvy’s overarching goal is to integrate “cultural and global competence into the ethos and foundations of what we define as quality education.” I can draw a direct line from my first association with World Savvy...

You’ll likely be surprised, as I was, to learn the number of homeless youth present in a community like Montgomery County, Virginia. Two thriving universities welcome students and faculty from all over the world into small towns that sit comfortably among the Appalachian Mountains in an almost idyllic environment. In this setting, homeless and unaccompanied youth are almost “invisible” to most of...

In Part I, we considered the first two quadrants of the Changemaker Journey “Homegrown Solutions” in light of current recommendations to stay at home as much as possible. In this second installment of “How to be Homebound Changemaker, we are thinking about the “Patchwork World” described in the 3rd and 4th quadrants of the Blue Roads Changemaker Journey.  Here we are encouraged to think beyond our...

At Blue Roads Education, we’re defining “changemakers” as those creating “Homegrown Solutions for a Patchwork World”.   This gets complicated when we are ordered to stay home and away from our usual efforts at changemaking.  Many of us are trying to figure out how to remain effective changemakers while staying within the four walls of our homes. We are doing our best to practice physical distancin...

Today’s Changemaker conversation features Nicole Mignone who can count attorney, photographer and coach among her many specialties.  Please tune in here via video, podcast and/or print to learn how she nurtures her own changemaker light and the lights in those around her. Nicole says that it can be complicated to explain what she does because she’s a bit of a “Jane of all trades.”  Among other thi...

Urbandictionary.com defines the term “solutionary” this way: Someone who finds revolutionary answers to life problems. A problem solver, an inventive activist. A type of revolutionary who makes change by providing a better way to do things.  In this second portion of my changemaker conversation with Penny Franklin, she shares how she started to push for new solutions to old problems when her child...

This is the final episode of four from my conversation with Changemaker Penny Franklin.  You’ll want to be sure you caught the first three parts where she talks about her work with people across differences to create homegrown solutions to racial injustices in her community.  In this last piece, you will hear Penny talk about the “ripple effects” of this work that are starting to radiate outward t...