Lori Brewer Collins
Tips for Your 2024 Thanksgiving Table
Tips for Your 2024 Thanksgiving Table

The Latest from CtK Fellows & Alumni 

Ashley Spillane's smart research on civic engagement and what the private sector can do attracted a room full of luminaries and was (predictably) SRO. Read her work here!

The Rainey Center celebrated it's 1st Birthday! Congratulations to Alums Sarah Hunt, Bishop Garrison, Charles Moran, and Josh Hone. Check out the photos from the event, the CtK family was out in full force!

Jose Antonio Vargas Elementary School had its official ground breaking ceremony.

Emmy Ruiz, Julie Chavez Rodriguez, and Jenn Brown saw their candidates take the stage on Wednesday and Thursday for the two-night Democratic Debate.

Katie Bethell writing in Evoke, interviewed in Salon, and retweeted by Supermajority as the push for paid leave by her great org, Paid Leave + US, heats up.

We know you're out there doing great democracy building work. Send us a note and let us know what you're up to so we can highlight your accomplishments!

The Gift of Fallow Time

The gift of time set apart. To slow the pace and turn off the constant disruption. To practice the art of reflecting, listening, and connecting with what is possible. To lead from within.

I spent three days this past week leading a group of twenty-four global managers who are on the rise within their organization. Talented, ambitious, smart - and eager for the tips and techniques that will catapult them into an assured sequence of promotions and success.

In other words, a typical professional group.

On the final day of the workshop, each participant prepares, rehearses, and presents a story. The stories are a mere three minutes and incredibly compelling. The common thread that connected them was the theme of authenticity - of coming to a fuller version of themselves and the importance of “bringing in our heart as well as our mind.”

Their words.

They voiced what it was like for them inside to move from a fear of becoming unmoored if they weren’t constantly tethered to real and imagined timelines, and the thought of being cast adrift by their company. That’s what immediately popped up. And then they tasted the liberation, short-lived though it was, of becoming vulnerable and opening themselves to important conversations. Conversations of substance, with each other, and mostly with themselves.

This may not seem like much of an insight until you’re in the midst of all twenty-four of them. You feel the veil lift and the energy shift as they see themselves and one another as whole people. They voiced surprise and delight in the insights they heard emerging from themselves and from their peers. 

And in the debrief, they agreed that what had allowed the transformation was time set aside from deadlines and the obligations that accompany our work. They recognized how stepping back and slowing the usual 24/7 activity had allowed them, in two-and-a-half-days, to gain important insights. For some, it was genuinely life-shifting.  

“We need to rest, to read, to reconnect. It is the invisible labor that makes creative life possible,” Bonnie Tsui writes. “Fallow time is part of the work cycle, not outside of it.”

An age-old truth, ripe for a current-day renaissance.

Have A Great Weekend!

If you’re like us, you’re watching (and enjoying) the US Women’s National Soccer Team putting on a clinic in the opening round of the Women’s World Cup. Maybe you’re also enjoying the spate of articles that their consistently stellar performance and consistently unequal pay have spurred on equal pay, women in sports, lingering stereotypes about women, and how much representation in leadership matters. Check them out here, here, and here.

New work and an upcoming panel from Ashley Spillane:

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Bishop Garrison & Sarah Hunt speaking this week at the 9th Annual Breakthrough Institute

Nick Troiano recently featured on How Do We Fix It? talking about Country Over Party. As Executive Director of Unite America, Nick is a leading voice of the reform movement. "We are caught in a democracy that is spiraling in a very negative direction and the question before us is how do we break that.” Among his solutions:

  • End gerrymandering. Independent commissions, not partisan legislators, would decide the shape Congressional districts.

  • Ranked-choice voting. Instead of choosing just one candidate, voters would have the option of ranking candidates according to their preference.

  • Reform primary rules, and allow independents to vote in party primaries.

  • Campaign finance reform. Allow small donors to have more influence at the expense shadowy "dark money" special interest groups.

  • Encourage support for The Problem Solvers Caucus and other bipartisan coalitions in Congress and state legislatures.

  • Voting reform. Expand polling hours, and legalize early and at-home voting. For information regarding your data privacy, visit acast.com/privacy

Jeff Buenrostro and Lori Brewer Collins co-facilitating CtK.Leadership Academy’s 1-Day Accelerator. Space is extremely limited. Register now!

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Global Leadership: The Time Is Now

Read the latest whitepaper from CtK Founder, Lori Brewer Collins!

Leading in a global context has become a must-have for executives in today’s global business environment. Leaders increasingly are challenged to address unique problems and cross-cultural issues in a climate that’s more volatile, uncertain, and complex than it’s ever been.

As the world’s economic center of gravity shifts, global companies compete intensely with fast-growing local companies for a limited pool of executive talent. Prime targets are leaders who can span different cultures, economies, politics, and geographies; who can think systemically across multiple networks, deal with rapid change and layers of complexity; and who can speak the language of global business.

Organizations and elected bodies are increasingly hard-pressed to find leaders who can both adapt to these complexities and excel at helping those around them be similarly adaptive and agile. But the good news is that leaders can develop the qualities they need to meet this growing demand.

Global Leadership: The Time Is Now explores a powerful framework for helping leaders navigate global challenges and develop global leadership capacity.

Download the whitepaper now.

Friday Updates & Have A Great Weekend!

Cultivate the Karass is about making unlikely connections, forming lasting relationships, and holding each other accountable to live into the democratic promise of our nation. Sometimes, that seems further away or more abstract than others - especially in moment of political turmoil and uncertainty. But the promise of the karass we are cultivating is this: Loyal Antagonists are those you can trust to deeply challenge as well as deeply support you, throughout your life.

As the Karass continues to grow, we have more great news from our Fellows & Alums! Here are just a few of the exciting announcements:

  • Laura Leigh Oyler was named the Senior Director of International Regulatory Integration at JUUL Labs

  • Ross Dakin has joined the State of New Jersey's Office of Innovation

  • Sasha Moss is now a Senior Director at Insight Public Affairs 

  • Nick Allardice was promoted to Chief Product Officer at Change.org

What we’ve been watching and listening to this week:

As we close out the week, we want to thank the Fellows & Alums who have stepped up recently to make “Pay It Forward” Donations that ensure that the Campfire continues burning. Have a great weekend!

Have A Lovely Weekend!

More amazing news from CtK.Campfire Fellows and Alums:

Maria Town with an exciting announcement: AAPD announces new President & CEO

Today, the Board of Directors of the American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD) announced that Maria Town has been selected as the new President & CEO. Ms. Town, a well-recognized disability rights advocate, will begin her new position on July 15, 2019. AAPD Board Chair, Ted Kennedy, Jr., said he is excited about the future of AAPD with Maria at the helm. He went on to say that he is “incredibly grateful to our current CEO, Helena Berger, for her leadership and dedication to AAPD. She has created an environment that will allow the new CEO, Maria Town, to have maximum impact at AAPD in 2019 and beyond.”

Jen Pahlka on taking Code for America to the next level: Making Government Work: The Next Ten Years (and some news)

We decided that when government truly works for people, the services it provides will be simple, accessible, and easy to use, and will get measurably better outcomes. And they will cost less. We decided that we can and must serve everyone with respect and dignity. And we realized that if we could all come together to make this real, it would be the biggest source of societal good for a generation. To solve all the daunting challenges we face as a nation and a planet, we will need smart, capable government that has the trust of its people.

Think about Code for America’s footprint: In addition to the 75 full-time people we’ll have this year, there are our community fellows and the 25,000 people active in Brigades. And there’s huge growth coming our way as we rise to the occasions of clearing all the eligible criminal records in the country, redefining the safety net, giving everyone in the country the tools they need to transform their own governments, and building a nationally visible movement. A successful growth-stage leader who is passionate about our mission, holds our vision, and can effectively lead the business processes we need at scale is exactly what we need.

Emily Holden with an in-depth look at toxic exposure in everyday life: Is modern life poisoning me? I took the tests to find out

All this testing came during a six-month journey to try to answer what sounds like a very simple question: how toxic am I?

As an environment reporter for the Guardian in Washington DC, I had noticed a growing number of experts expressing concerns about how Americans are exposed to potentially toxic chemicals just by living our everyday lives.

But how concerned should individuals be? How worried should I be?

Have A Great Weekend

Anne Snyder named Editor-in-Chief of Comment Magazine!
”Having served as a contributing editor to Comment, Snyder says she’s excited to lead a magazine at the nexus of North American cultural conversations. ‘I love Comment,’ says Snyder. ‘No other magazine has challenged me so consistently with such big questions, playing an important role in my own thinking as a Christian seeking to interpret our times. It would be an honour to amplify that role for the benefit of a wider pool of writers and readers. The world is hungry for a moral lens that is both ancient and future-oriented, coherent yet open to new ideas.’”

Anurima Bhargava in Soul Mechanism: A Community Conversation at Carnegie Hall
In preparation for the Soul Mechanism concert on May 19, celebrated performer Toshi Reagon leads a discussion with artists, activists, and community leaders on the ways ideas travel from generation to generation and across borders. Part of Migrations: The Making of America.

Bishop Garrison with his first published fiction in Vice.com
“Today's speculation is truly something special. Bishop Garrison, an army veteran, joins the small but distinguished ranks of vets who use both their personal experience and speculative fiction to examine the future of warfare and the trauma it engenders through a lens you quite literally cannot find anywhere else. As Garrison tells me, "I based this writing loosely on my own experiences as a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom as well as a West Point graduate and a national security professional working within and for the government since 2010." The subject is an AI soldier forced to cope with the trauma of war, and the result is unmissable. See for yourself. -the Ed.”

Sarah Hunt writing about innovation espionage in Protego Press
”The best weapon against these attacks, however, is something we already have in this country: Unmatched ingenuity. We can always use more — but we will only get it if our policies adapt to show our innovators that we will protect their ability to innovate and home and profit off the results of their genius on a global scale.”

Three CtK.Campfire Fellows will be hosting an event in NYC on June 11. Huge thanks to Sam Corcos, Shaun Gordon, and Claire Baumann for hosting and a special thanks to Sean O’Hare for providing the venue. If you’re in NYC on 6/11, join us for cocktails and conversation!

Plus a few interesting additions to the world of democracy building and talking across difference.

  • Eric Liu - Become America: Civic Sermons on Love, Responsibility, and Democracy. You can buy his new book here or check out his TED Talk here. And you can hear him reading from it tomorrow (May 18!) at Politics and Prose at Union Market.

    Co-founder and CEO of Citizen University and executive director of the Aspen Institute Citizenship and American Identity Program, Liu addresses groups around the country on how to be an engaged citizen in these polarized times. His new book, a follow-up to his “citizen’s guide to making change happen” You’re More Powerful Than You Think, collects nineteen of these “civic sermons”—bracing essays that explore urgent questions related to democracy, liberty, equal justice, and what it means to be part of an empowered citizenship. By turns inspiring and comforting, these pieces offer hope as well as concrete guidelines for getting involved and rehumanizing politics.

  • "For every hateful message, there was one of gratitude."

  • And a little about the SALT conference: SALT [was designed] to be a safe place to debate political opinions without vitriol. “I want to put the ‘fun’ back in political ‘dysfunction,’ ” Scaramucci said. “To me, these people should figure out a way for four days to get along with each other.”

    “I think what they are trying to tell us is that it’s okay to be together,” said Robert Wolf, the Fox News commentator who moderated the discussion. “It’s okay to respectfully disagree. And it’s okay to agree on things we should agree on.”

    “Whatever noise is going on on Twitter, there really are solid people, whether they are R’s or D’s, who just want a better, stronger, fairer country,” said Lynn Forester de Rothschild, an investment executive and Democratic Party supporter.

We continue our work to build the capacity of leaders who are willing and able to build a stronger democracy. Join us! And have a great weekend.

Transformational Leadership Development

Early feedback from the launch of CtK.Leadership Academy has been incredible. Thanks to those who participated in our inaugural workshop.

I'm loving the leadership workshop. It was just what I needed--ways to think about what being a leader means, what skills/capacities are required, and how to get there. Also, it's just wonderfully positive group to be around!

-Transformational Leadership Participant, May 2019

Have A Great Weekend!

We’re heading into the weekend with lots of reading and watching on our plate - most of it from CtK.Campfire Fellows and Alums who’ve been in the media of late:

As featured in the Times Magazine, “Meet the Other Resistance: The Republican One,” CtK.Campfire Alums & Fellows Joel Searby, Evan McMullin, and Sarah Longwell are profiled for their work as loyal antagonists on a national political scale.

  • "It was at these confabs that Longwell met Kristol...The two started Defending Democracy Together."

  • "McMullin announced his candidacy in August. Searby ran his campaign."

Emmy Ruiz among these extraordinary women: “Kamala Harris chooses women of color to drive her campaign.”

  • “Harris senior adviser Emmy Ruiz hasn't experienced this before in national politics. ‘I remember the first meeting I ever walked into,’ says Ruiz, recalling her start in the Harris campaign after she was hired in February. ‘I was surprised. I was taken aback. It was the most diverse room I've ever walked into in politics, and I've been a proud member of many diverse teams in politics.’"

Zahra Billoo on MSNBC talking about Speaker Pelosi’s response to attacks on Rep. Omar

Bishop Garrison on MSNBC on religion in public discourse. And writing in InkStink about how The Crisis at the Border Is Deepening the Civil-Military Divide.

Sarah Longwell making her debut on The Bulwark’s podcast talking about whether Bernie can beat Trump.

Plus some fun photos from our recent DC Happy Hour.

Exciting news from all around the CtK family.

Jenn Brown’s new role: “Friends, I’m so excited to announce my new job, Deputy Campaign Manager for Cory Booker!!!!”

Jose Antonio Vargas is a Broadway Producer!

We wanted to highlight his recent comments on what it means to take risks in order to engage with people who don’t agree with you.

We’re closing out the week with a quick reminder about an upcoming executive leadership program! Transformational Leadership: Vertical Development & Beyond is coming up in May and there is still a little space in the 2-day program!

Want to get more out of your leadership approach? This workshop is designed to give you personal feedback and an action plan to build your capacity as a high level leader. You can find out more about the program here.

Register today! (Some discounts available.)

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