Everywhere I go, all my life, all across this country, people smile and welcome me. They never seem to realize I’m a criminal. I break the speed limit to smithereens nearly every time I drive. I trespassed through the park last month when it was closed for quarantine. I’m deeply ashamed to say, I shoplifted […]
PSA: As we’re starting to see news of staggering racial disparities in COVID-19 death rates, watch out for perspectives that place blame on individuals instead of systems. THIS IS NOT ABOUT… It’s not about Black people making poor individual choices re: diet, exercise, self-care. It’s not about ostensibly neutral characterizations like “suffering higher rates of” […]
Beloved nonprofit friends. Beloved small-business friends. I beg you to believe me when I say the new federal CARES Act Paycheck Protection Program is not coming to save you. Speaking to you from my heart and from the best of my direct personal knowledge and experience so far: we must act in the belief that […]
Sharing my personal quick takeaways from Thursday’s (3/12/20) Southern California Grantmakers and Philanthropy CA webinar on How Philanthropy Can Support & Enhance the Government Response to Covid-19: Two overall priorities per Kathleen Kelly Janus, CA Governor Newsom’s Senior Advisor on Social Innovation: 1) Support the public health response (testing, tracking, treatment and transparent communications; 2) […]
“People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” – Maya Angelou That quote is why for today’s team retreat I baked blueberry muffins, brought in my Instant Pot and cooked a mole-style chicken buffet right there in the conference room, and […]
The first day of Black History Month seems like an excellent occasion to share how Marcus Walton, the new President & CEO of Grantmakers for Effective Organizations, inspired a roomful of Los Angeles philanthropy sector folks this week. Myself included. “We need to be transformative in our transactions — but to what end? Thriving communities.” […]
New Racecar Report in honor of my birthday today! I’m a couple of chapters into The Color of Success: Asian Americans and the Origins of the Model Minority, by Ellen D. Wu. Ever wondered why the infamously racist Chinese Exclusion Act was finally repealed in 1943, aka less than 30 years before I was born, […]
My friends, I look at what so many of you are doing to change the world, and I judge myself against you. Usually harshly. I’m not doing enough, I’m not having enough impact, I’m not working hard enough. Maybe you do the same. I don’t want to contribute to that. Lately I can’t keep up […]
“Tell me the story of your life,” Grampa would say with a smile as he settled Tiny Me snugly next to him on the sofa. The question was a beloved tradition, going back to my earliest memories; and a shared joke, since we both knew that my handful of years didn’t make much of a […]
Whenever I heard the phrase “grandfathered in,” this photo was always what I imagined: the upstairs unit of the middle Cape Cod beach cottage that was my family’s rented little slice of heaven for two weeks every summer. I thought it just meant situations where the rules had changed but things that had been approved […]