Mission Forward with Carrie Fox

On this week’s show, we are thrilled to introduce you to Najma Roberts, Senior Director of Communications and Equity at Democracy Fund , a private foundation that champions the people and organizations who defend democracy, while challenging our political system to be more open and just. Najma joined the organization in 2018 and ever since, she’s been guiding this powerhouse philanthropy to be eve...

Design “is an art form that allows us to tell stories,” says Tim Hykes . “These stories allow us to connect with each other and allow us to see the other side.” It is with that spirit that Tim performs his craft as a UX designer at WorldWide Technology and visual scientist. Tim joins us this week to help us unravel how design can be a tool for justice and equity. Want to know how serious Tim is ab...

Our guest today is someone who is actively rethinking, rewriting, and redefining the status quo media landscape. Ashton Lattimore is Editor-in-Chief at Prism, an independent, nonprofit newsroom led by journalists of color, and as she says, “Prism was founded because mainstream media wasn’t reflecting enough of the truth—and it wasn’t bringing us closer to our vision of collective liberation and ju...

That’s the voice of Nimra Haroon, senior strategist at Mission Partners and a partner in the production of the Mission Forward podcast. Nimra brings a set of foundational insights that help us to set up the key themes we’ll be talking about this season. She’ll be back with us at the end of the season to reflect on what we learned.  Here’s what we’re looking forward to exploring this season:  Theme...

**Just a few more weeks! ** Season four of Mission Forward is right around the corner and we can't wait to share the slate of guests we have on deck. This season, every conversation is designed to help you learn the tools to be a communicator for change. But, since we're a few weeks out from releasing this new season, we wanted to share a bonus episode with you today featuring an awesome communica...

When we set out to produce season three of Mission Forward, we wanted to document this season of what we called perspective-shifting conversations. We wanted to touch on faith. We wanted to touch on media. We wanted to touch on the economy and the role of philanthropy in building back from a period of such damage from the impact of COVID-19. Right now, we're seeing members of our own communities a...

We've talked at some length this season about the role of the media — all kinds of media — in fostering hate and division, and the massive opportunity that exists in our communication spaces to lift one another, to repair, to rebuild. Our guest this week is someone whose steeped in a major movement to rewrite media's story in our society.  Alicia Bell is director of Media 2070. What started as a r...

According to this week's guest, "the word community has been co-opted to something that is a lie." While we might have a shared convention of community, when we use the word, our differences begin to rise to the surface. Our language is littered with words like this — family, culture, and yes, community — words that require us to stop, reflect, and ask: "when you use these words, to whom are you r...

Our digital universe was intended to close divides between time and space, to allow us to communicate more clearly and more often. But there is a situation in this digital universe that actually limits our ability to connect. External forces make us question what is true and false. We are at the mercy of algorithms created to shape our opinions and actions online.  Our guest this week has done ext...

"COVID-19 is not just a medical issue. It is also a social justice, economic, and political issue. That makes it hard to figure out how best to share information about it, especially since messages come from a range of communicators—including elected officials, journalists, scientists, physicians, and community leaders—and are delivered to diverse audiences." Such is the foundational position in a...

"We believe that philanthropy shouldn't be about barriers and bottlenecks." So says the About page of JustFund, the grant platform transforming giving. But removing bottlenecks is just one way that Just Fund is changing the game. Getting resources to organizations truly doing front line work involves challenging entrenched ideologies and engaging leadership often marginalized in philanthropy: peop...

"Journalist interested in what works and why." So reads the Twitter bio of this week's guest, Tina Rosenberg. She is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, in fact. She is a co-writer of the New York Times Fixes column which, according to the masthead, "examines solutions to social problems and why they work," and she is a co-founder and VP for Innovation at Solutions Journalism Network.  It is thro...

Linda Villarosa is a brilliant storyteller. In addition to her work as a journalist, author, editor, and educator, she's a New York Times Magazine contributing writer where she covers race, inequality and health. You may have come across her 2018 cover story for the magazine titled 'Why America's Black mothers and babies are in a life or death crisis,' which was nominated for a national magazine a...

“It was an experience that we could never have imagined…” That's been a consistent refrain in and around our country since the early days of this COVID-19 pandemic. "I could never have imagined living through COVID.”  “I could never have imagined the number of lives that would be lost.” “I could never have imagined the toll this pandemic would take on Black lives." And yet, the writing was on the...

A few weeks back, we reached out to a group of CEOs and business leaders with a very big request: join Carrie and Alex Orfinger, publisher of the Washington Business Journal, for an honest, on-the-record, uncomfortable conversation about the anti-racist commitments and statements we have made over the last twelve months, and assess our progress against those commitments. The conversation comes at...

Amira El-Gawly believes love is making a comeback at work. That's a pretty heady statement, and one you might be tempted to dismiss. What's love got to do with work? you might say. We're about engagement and KPIs and customer data you might say. Here's the thing: Amira El-Gawly co-founded her first company at 27 and across the arc of her myriad careers — journalist, marketer, designer, speechwrite...

C.Marie Taylor is a role model and a mentor. We have to get that out of the way right up front because this is one of those conversations that makes us proud; proud of our place in history that allows us to watch people such as her evolve as thought leaders and mentors far beyond us, our community, but to business and leaders around the country. Her new company is Equity Through Action and through...

Marisa Forti is an ultra endurance athlete, entrepreneur, fitness and wellness coach, and certified FST trainer. She’s a two-time Ironman, along with having many marathons and long-distance bike rides in her rear view. She has traveled the country working with everyone from weekend warriors to professional athletes across the NFL, NBA, PGA, Olympic training program, right alongside musicians and t...

What’s the purpose of events? It’s a big question, and heavy is the weight on those whose industry shifted overnight in the era of COVID. Opportunity might be too generous a word for the experience, and pivot too slight. What happened in our efforts to understand gatherings during the pandemic marked a transformation in how we as human organisms express our desires to connect with one another. We...

Essential. No, says Jackie DeCarlo, her people aren’t front line nurses and doctors, but they’re nothing if they are not essential . DeCarlo serves as CEO of the Manna Food Center in Montgomery County, Maryland and 2020 was a year to test their vision like no other: Our community is a place where all people at all times have access to safe, sufficient, nutritious food in order to lead fulfilling l...

Eric Meade is a futurist. That’s what he calls himself, at least. But when you get him talking about it, it becomes clear all too quickly that this work as a futurist is far more rooted in the past and present than the actual future.  “In college I studied history, so I think I probably just have an inherently long-term perspective looking both ways,” he says. “That has advantages and disadvantage...

Dr. Robert Kelly serves as Vice President and Special Assistant to the President at Loyola University Maryland. As we catch up with Rob, he’s doing the deep work of reintroducing students to campus. He does so under the shadow of a pandemic, only just now meeting the tease of a vaccine and a general misimpression that all colleges and universities are potential super-spreading elements of national...

Carol Cone is an incredibly generous person. To hear her talk about what she does from day to day, she says her super power is connecting people, but that minimizes her story by a country mile. Her brand of generosity has brought to fruition iconic projects and teams to create products and campaigns that have — by all objective measures —changed the world since she started building brands in the 1...

The business of Washington D.C. is government , so the saying goes. But sayings aren't sayings for nothing. And if we take ourselves through the WayBack Machine to the halcyon days at the end of the 20th century, the reputation of the city as the hub of national leadership brought with it the perception that the business community was a distant other . Then, in 1996, Alex Orfinger took on the role...

More than 70 years ago, Danny Thomas dreamed the idea of a hospital that would operate in segregated South, where patients of all races would be treated together by physicians of all races. Thanks to that history of radical inclusion and innovation, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital has moved the childhood cancer survival rate from 20% to more than 80% today.  Many organizations have perfected...