I am where I need to be today, apparently. Just received the gift of these words from Tara Houska of the Ojibwe Tribe, reflecting back to me why I’ve recently been immersing myself in the historical and contemporary reality of racism in the US: “Because you cannot transition to justice without first knowing the truth […]
Dammit, I did it again. I completely missed the point. Heart was open, eyes were closed. Want to see if you do better than I did? So there I am, visiting LURN with some of my Southern California Leadership Network Leadership LA cohort on Friday. Merced, who is one of their clients, comes in to talk about the successful […]
As a member of the advisory committee for the LA County Center for Financial Empowerment, I had the honor of speaking today on the “Meet the Funders” panel at the CFE’s first-ever Financial Capability Summit. Here’s the session description – if this looks interesting to you, read on for the specific questions our moderator asked […]
In my Leadership LA fellowship, we were asked to define our Values and Leadership Principles. I know I frequently fall short of these standards, but this is the best I could come up with to represent who I aspire to be as a leader and colleague: Kindness – treat everyone with warmth and openness rooted […]
PSA: I am 12% into the audiobook of Ijeoma Oluo’s “So You Want To Talk About Race” and she’s already given me 3 insights that made me gasp. 1) “Do you think black people are poor for the same reasons white people are poor?” (spoiler alert: no) 2) So, my own lifelong focus on economic […]
Today as I fly across our country, I’m looking down and sending love to all the Marchers in all the streets of all the cities. And I’m sending gratitude, because without gun control laws, I would have lost a beloved family member. A few years back, someone I love got suicidally depressed. He started to […]
I’ll say his name: Stephon Clark. Because I could have an actual gun in my hand in my backyard and the police wouldn’t shoot me dead in three seconds. Pretty sure I’d live to eat a Happy Meal like Dylann Roof after he killed 9 black worshipers at Mother Emanuel. And I’ll be honest: part […]
I’ve told this story for a dozen years. It was deeply meaningful to me. But I just recently realized I was telling it all wrong. Because I got the meaning deeply wrong. If you’ve heard me share this story before a few months ago, I’d like to set the record straight now: In 2005, I […]
Hey kids! I’ve got a story for y’all, in honor of today being Presidents Day, AND the 76th anniversary of FDR’s Executive Order 9066 which incarcerated tens of thousands of American citizens of Japanese descent, AND we’re still in Black History Month. Guess what? All of those things are mashed up in a pair of […]
Let’s thank the President for reminding us why we must march today. I will march because nothing this Administration has done threatens me directly. Nobody sees me as a thug or terrorist. My family won’t get deported. Nobody cares about my marriage or where I pee. I can afford the higher taxes. My neighborhood isn’t […]