The New Politics Podcast

After seven years and 44 episodes, New Politics podcast host Dr. Max Klau is heading off to his next adventure. In this farewell episode, Max is joined by New Politics Founder Emily Cherniack for a conversation about the early days of the organization, the impact it's had on American politics, and their hopes for the future of this work.

Tiahna Pantovich is an army vet, clinical social worker, lifelong activist, and founder of VetsxHBCU, an organization that supports veterans at our nation's more than 100 historically black colleges and universities.    The daughter of immigrants from the former nation of Yugoslavia, she enlisted in the Army after graduating high school.  In this episode, she talks about her journey to becomin...

In this episode, Andre Carroll talks about his unlikely path to politics in his home city of Philadelphia.  Since his father was incarcerated and his mother struggled with drug addiction, Andre was raised by his Grandmother.  He went on to graduate from college and got deeply involved in Philadelphia politics, serving as campaign staff for a Mayoral candidate and for multiple City Council candidat...

Cristina Flores is a lifelong servant leader who currently serves as our Director of Partnerships & Growth here at the New Politics Academy. In this episode, Cristina talks about her experiences serving as an AmeriCorps member and then on the staff of Literacy First in Austin Texas.  She also describes our work with Partners, how our partnerships are mutually beneficial, and how organizations...

Meet Gideon Culman, one of the facilitators of our Answering the Call program. As a facilitator, Gideon has helped many servant leaders reflect deeply on their own sense of mission and calling.  He is a certified Master Coach and is the founder and president of K Street Coaching, an executive coaching firm based in Washington, DC.  In this episode, he talks about his path to becoming a coach and h...

Christopher Gilbert is an Air Force vet, a Registered Nurse, and a recent graduate of our Answering the Call program.  He's a member of the LGBTQ+ community who feels called to serve through politics because of all the ways that his community is currently under attack in his home state of North Carolina and across the country.  In this episode, Chris talks openly about the challenges he faced...

Ed Han is a first-generation immigrant; his family moved to the U.S. from Korea when Ed was two years old. He went on to become a school teacher, a federal prosecutor, a member of the Air Force Reserves, and a university professor. Now, he's decided to enter the arena to represent District 44 in the California State Legislature, where he hopes to represent the town where he grew up. In this ep...

On this episode we meet Derrell Frazier, the lifelong Baltimore resident who grew up as the child of incarcerated parents and went on to run a highly successful campaign for city-wide office. Derrell talks about his early years being raised by a grandmother also raising nine other kids, the mentor who changed his life in middle school, and the many ways that he has found to serve the people of Bal...

Emily Cherniack is the visionary Founder and Executive Director of New Politics and the New Politics Leadership Academy. A lifelong servant leader, she did a year of service with City Year in Boston and has been serving ever since. When her mentor, City Year co-founder Alan Khazei ran for Senate in Massachusetts in 2009, she joined his campaign and had her first experience of politics. After seein...

Meet Angelo Pascuiti is a former Marine Corps sniper and Reconnaissance Team Leader who is currently involved in an effort to rethink the way the Marine Corps trains its new Marines.  He’s also an alum of our Answering the Call program who has become an outspoken champion of our work.  In this conversation, Angelo talks about how his own life has been shaped by his experiences in the Marine Corps,...

Jennifer Marshall is best known as the actress who plays Max's mother on Stranger Things, the smash hit on Netflix.  She's also a Navy vet, a mother of four, a licensed private investigator, and an alum of our Answering the Call program.  She joins us on today’s podcast to talk about her journey from service to Hollywood and how she manages to stay grounded as a servant leader in the wor...

Phillip Jones is a Naval Academy graduate and Marine.  He grew up in Newport News, Virginia, and dreamed of serving his home community by running for Mayor.  In the 2022 election cycle, the opportunity appeared and Phillip jumped into the race.  He ran a great campaign and won the election, becoming the youngest Mayor ever in that city (Phillip is 33 years old). In this episode, Phi...

On this episode we highlight Ashely Dickerson, one of our Answering the Call facilitators who is an alum of FOUR AmeriCorps programs.  Ashely grew up in Phoenix, Arizona, and participated in her first AmeriCorps program in college. That program was called the Breakthrough Collaborative, and it involved providing academic support to young people in schools.  She went on to do another year...

John Walters is an Air Force Vet turned leadership coach who serves as a facilitator for our Answering the Call program.  In this episode, he talks about his decision to serve and tells us a bit about his work with the Personnel Recover Agency.  As a Training Manager with that agency, he teaches solders how to handle the pressures of isolation and separation, whether that involves findin...

This episode features interviews with Rene Foster and Janet Newsome, both Navy vets deeply involved in the Women's Veteran's Leadership Program run by TMC.  They talk about their own service journeys, explain the work being done by TMC, and discuss why TMC is happy to partner with New Politics in promoting our programs to the veterans in their community. To learn more about TMC, visit https:/...

Zach Maurin in a City Year alum who has gone on to spend most of his professional life fighting to expand national service opportunities here in the United States.  As the co-founder of ServeNext, he got Presidential candidates campaigning in New Hampshire to publicly support the cause of national service.  Later, he served as the Executive Director of Service Nation as well as Service Y...

Sal Ramirez grew up as the fourth of seven children in a big Mexican family in East Los Angeles.  After completing undergrad at UC Santa Barbara, he decided to enroll in the Peace Corps and served as a Secondary School Health Educator in Khazakistan.  He was supposed to stay for two years, but the program was shut down after his first year due to widespread political instability in that...

Rachel Bailit is an actor and acting coach who teaches at the prestigious Lee Strasberg Theater and Film Institute in LA.  She's appeared in movies like "The Grinch Who Stole Christmas" with Jim Carrey, and on TV shows like "The Conan O'Brian Show", "Desperate Housewives", "NYPD Blue" and "General Hospital".  Recently, though, Rachel has begun to coaching and teaching in a different cont...

John Scianimanico began his service journey as a Teach for America corps member in Huntsville, Alabama.  He went on to complete an internship at the White House, served as a Regional Organizing Director on Pete Buttigieg's presidential campaign, and currently works on education policy in the state of Connecticut.  He also recently joined the Navy reserves, adding military service to the...

Kathryn York is a Teach for America alum who entered the arena in 2019 to run for a State Representative seat in Mississippi.  She lost that race but jumped right back onto the campaign trail to run for school board in 2020;  that time she won.  In this episode Kathryn talks about her lifelong commitment to service, her experiences teaching in rural Mississippi and then later in Lon...

Meet Shaquan Boykin, the lifelong Brooklyn resident who recently ran and won an election to become District Leader for her community of Fort Green. Shaquana has an incredible story. After entering the foster care system as a teenager, she went on to receive her associates degree and bachelors degree, and also completed an AmeriCorps year with the program Public Allies.  When Shaquana decided...

Dr. David Myles is a medical doctor, Navy vet, and father currently serving his first term as a City Counselor in Rockville, MD.  In this episode, he talks about his decision to become a pediatrician, his service in the Navy doing humanitarian medical work, and now his experiences as a politician. He is also African American, and describes his experience being stopped by police while knocking...

Juana Matias is a first-generation American who moved with her family to the U.S. from the Dominican Republic when she was five years old.  She went on to become the first Latina ever elected to the serve in the Massachusetts State House, and in 2018 ran for Congress in a crowded field of candidates vying to fill the seat that opened up when long-term Congresswoman Niki Tsongas announced that...

Jess Lieberman spent the last two and half years working as a Senior Campaign Advisor here at New Politics.  In that role, she spent her days advising many of the servant leaders in our network as they ran for office at every level from school board to Congress.   Jess began her professional life as a lawyer, until 2016 when she got involved in a friend's political campaign in her hometo...

In honor of Veteran's Day 2021, we invited four of the veterans in our community to reflect on what this day means to them and what they hope it means to their fellow Americans.  On this episode, we hear from Elis Salamone, a vet who served for 27 years including tours with the Army and later the Air Force;  Mary Tobin, a West Point graduate who served ten years in the Army including 2 t...