Mission Forward with Carrie Fox

In the fast-paced nature of time, where it’s all too easy to get caught up in what’s coming next (vs. what’s happening now), where we want to be (vs. where we are), and how we get there (vs. what we’ve accomplished to date), it’s good to pause and remember that life is fast, and it’s short. Wherever you are, may you find something wonderful worth holding onto in this present moment. This week’s es...

So much of the success of any of our DEI work is rooted in our ability to communicate vision through metaphor. It is, after all, a metaphor that connects to emotion, to our human ability to find empathy and build affinity between us. Vision, often, starts with a metaphor built with the heart in mind. In this rebroadcast episode, we are talking about the role of storytelling in social change. And t...

Earlier this month, I gathered with colleagues to review updates to a brand guide. We were deep in the language preferences section of the guide when the team came upon a point of tension. All agreed to capitalize racial, ethnic, and cultural identities such as Black, Asian, Latino, and Navajo. Still, there was disagreement among those who wished to capitalize White and those who wanted to lowerca...

November 17-19, 2022, thousands of people gathered for Facing Race: A National Conference, produced by Race Forward, to explore new and powerful ways to advance racial justice. It is, in a word, extraordinary in the way this conference offers advocates of all stripes to connect, to learn, and to love the work we all do, in our own ways, furthering the conversations of racial justice together. In t...

Last November, Apple released a short film titled "The Greatest," which follows seven people throughout what is considered an average day, with an all-disabled cast, representing the authentic experiences of each cast member as they engage in various daily tasks, showcasing how Apple's suite of accessibility tools enables them to, as Forbes writes, navigate a world that wasn't designed with their...

In 2020, Mission Partners was exploring the launch of an apprenticeship program to advance leaders in the communications and PR field with a specific and public race equity action plan to invest $2.5 million in Black and women-led organizations over five years. As we started on that journey, we discovered some troubling data: 8% of agency leadership identified as Black, while 89.8% identified as W...

You probably know the name Craig Newmark. You probably know his name as the founder of Craigslist, a web pioneer, a philanthropist, and—depending on your line of work—a staunch advocate on behalf of trustworthy journalism. (Learn more about that in our conversation on the Mission Forward podcast.) But there’s one equally important part of his bio you may not know: Customer Service Representative....

A couple of years ago, a well-known and well-loved nonprofit organization contacted our team with a bit of a problem. The organization had been sustained by a loyal following of recurring donors, but their leadership had noticed a concerning trail off in contributions. They had lost some of their most important donors and they needed to figure out why.  This week’s essay comes from the Finding The...

The role of Army Pathfinders originated with the U.S. military during World War II. These specialized soldiers were parachuted into Europe ahead of the D-Day invasion. Their mission: establish and operate drop zones, pickup zones, and landing sites for airborne troops and air supply operations in support of ground unit commanders. They were the first soldiers deployed into enemy territory and the...

John Trybus is a professor at Georgetown University and Director of the Georgetown Center for Social Impact Communication . He sat down with Carrie Fox for a conversation on the role and power of social impact communications on the cusp of the release of her book, More Than Words: Communications Practices for Courageous Leaders .  John is a generous interviewer and host and opens the conversation...

This week, we offer a preview of Carrie’s new book, an excerpt from chapter one, and an invitation to explore what it means to use communication to drive change in the world.  With over twenty years as a social impact communications consultant and a leader in the B Corporation movement, Carrie Fox takes to heart the role—and the responsibility—that leading communicators hold in shaping how stories...

Nicole Lynn Lewis is the founder and CEO of Generation Hope and an incredible leader in the fight against poverty and the stigma surrounding it. Her specific area of focus? Teen mothers. You see, Nicole is a former teen mother herself, rocked by this sudden life change that upended her life at a young age. But she was able to rebound, to put herself through college with a three-month-old daughter...

Shilpi Chhotray is the co-founder and executive director of People over Plastic . This week, she joins Carrie to share a story of waste colonization, social divides, and the work her team is doing to lift the intersectional stories of environmental racism. People over Plastic is something truly special. On one level, it is a platform, the only multicultural media platform of its kind, publishing s...

"If you can't see it, you can't feel it. And if you can't feel it, you won't be inspired to take action.” So says our guest this week, Lisa Cron. Lisa is a story coach, a teacher, a speaker, a former literary agent, and the author of many books, including "Wired for Story," "Story Genius," and most recently "Story or Die: how to use brain science to engage, persuade, and change minds in business a...

Jennifer Brandel is a serial entrepreneur and innovator who works between industries to address how to design better systems for listening, responding, and evolving with their stakeholders. She is a co-founder of Hearken , which she’ll talk about extensively today, but she’s also behind Zebra's Unite , Civic Exchange Chicago , Democracy SOS and WBEZ Chicago's Curious City .  Now that we have her b...

So much of the success of any of our DEI work is rooted in our ability to communicate vision through metaphor. It is, after all, a metaphor that connects to emotion, to our human ability to find empathy and build affinity between us. Vision, often, starts with a metaphor built with the heart in mind.  On this season of the show, we are talking about the role of storytelling in social change. And t...

In flying, the takeoff and the landing are critical to success. Everything in between is coasting. It matters in the sky, and it matters in our speech. In this week’s Finding the Words, Carrie Fox explores how landing the plane helps her, and the Mission Partners team, when it counts. This is week 4, in the second year, of the Finding The Words column, a series published every Wednesday that deliv...

Tyler Meier is the director of the University of Arizona Poetry Center and the co-editor of Dear Vaccine: A Global Vaccine Poem, a project that invited anyone to share experiences of the pandemic and vaccination through poetry.  What business poetry, you might ask? Because poetry, as Tyler says it, is marching away at the atomic level of our communication. “Our lives are shaped by the language aro...

On Monday, March 6, Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) tweeted that it was “proud to be on Forbes’ annual ranking of America’s Best Banks.” Three days later, that very same bank was at the center of the largest U.S. bank failure since the global financial crisis. This week, Carrie Fox dissects the communications troubles at the center. This post is part of the Finding The Words column, a series published e...

George Jones is the CEO of Washington, DC-based Bread for the City , which supports people living with low incomes to develop their power to determine the future of their own communities. They provide food, clothing, medical care, and legal and social services to reduce the burden of poverty. And in working to solve some of the cities most pressing challenges, George Jones is one of the very best....

Whether we’re planning a road trip or a change of course in our organization’s strategy, the clearer the roadmap, the better the outcome. This is week 3, in the second year, of the Finding The Words column, a series published every Wednesday that delivers a dose of communication insights direct to your inbox. If you like what you read, we hope you’ll subscribe to ensure you receive this each week....

Our guest today is focused on objectives. We get it. We're all focused on objectives. Why should this episode be any different? Here's the trick: much of our advocacy and change efforts are centered in who we are. That's at the core of so much of our diversity and equity work, after all. Today, we ask what happens when we focus our advocacy, our engagement, and our public speaking on what we want...

Have you ever had one of those moments, maybe after a big presentation or an important conversation with a loved one when you’ve wondered, “did that go OK?” In this week's Finding the Words, Carrie explores our universal quest to be heard.  (00:00) - Welcome to Mission Forward (00:39) - Did that Go OK?

We are just five years from the bicentennial anniversary of the Black press. Freedom’s Journal was founded March 16, 1827 in Lower Manhattan, New York by John Brown Russwurm, the first African American graduate of Bowdoin College, and the third Black person to graduate from the halls of an American college or university. Our guest this week refers to the Journal as a mouthpiece of the Black moveme...

Houston Kraft is a professional speaker, author, curriculum designer, and kindness advocate whose book, Deep Kindness: A Revolutionary Guide for the Way We Think, Talk, and Act in Kindness , has inspired millions to examine the difference between nice and kind and why specifically deep kindness is not only a revolutionary act, but a necessary one. Kraft is also the co-founder of Character Strong ,...