Unsung Stewards

Episode 4 features Joy Williams, Founder of Hope to Thrive. Joy opens up about her family’s legacy in community gardening, shining a light on the food insecurity that became so prevalent and exposed with the onset of COVID-19. Joy discusses how food goes beyond providing sustenance and nourishment—it can serve as a connector, a cultural identity marker, a conduit for healing, and a basis for storytelling.

Maka Monture spotlights equity issues affecting the Indigenous community, touching on the importance of stewarding the land and resources that she grew up upon as well as honoring and sustaining the legacies of her ancestors.

In Episode 2, we spotlight another steward, Sterling Cruz-Herr, a teacher, executive, and entrepreneur committed to creating an equitable culture to advance trans individuals and communities through training and coaching.

In the debut episode of Season 2, Colin Killick, Executive Director of the Disability Policy Consortium, shares his vision for an equitable future while addressing the social, medical, and political frames that shape disability rights as well as the legacies that his work is built upon.

In times of crisis, organizations can resort to top-down responses. But when his community faced COVID-19, Pat McNamara threw that playbook out the window. What if local leaders were the ones naming their needs and aspirations? In the first episode of #UnsungStewards, Pat shares how his team shifted to a hyperlocal approach.

When COVID-19 hit, many schools across the country were unprepared for remote learning. Wanda Stansbury worked to equip families in Trenton, New Jersey with the resources children needed to continue to reach their educational potential while learning from home. From the interfaith student protest movement in the sixties to remote learning inequities during the pandemic, Wanda shares her stewardship journey on many different levels: the street level, the scholarly level, the systems level, and the spiritual level.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, many health systems did not prioritize Black and Brown communities. When faced with this reality in Pittsburgh, Fred Brown founded the Black COVID-19 Equity Coalition to increase COVID-19 testing and address the social determinants of health for his community. From a self-defined “street kid” to school teacher to probation officer, Brown’s range of life experiences shaped how he approaches systemic change.

When Covid-19 hit the village of Maywood, Randy, Chris, and Lena mobilized community relationships to address food insecurity, mental health, and other needs exacerbated by the pandemic. The three share poignant stories of the experiences of individual community members in Maywood, which has a history and legacy of grassroots advocacy. This effort has also led to unconventional collaborations between residents and Loyola Medicine, the large local hospital, that has inspired change agents to take positive action in the community.

When Covid-19 hit the village of Maywood, Randy, Chris, and Lena mobilized community relationships to address food insecurity, mental health, and other needs exacerbated by the pandemic. The three share poignant stories of the experiences of individual community members in Maywood, which has a history and legacy of grassroots advocacy. Part 2 explores the unconventional collaborations between residents and Loyola Medicine, the large local hospital, that has inspired change agents to take positive action in the community.

When the city of Roanoke received federal HUD funds, Shauneequa Owusu, Chief Strategy Officer at ChangeLab Solutions, along with the NY Academy of Medicine, supported the city through a public deliberation process to empower residents to shape the investment decisions. As we look towards rehabbing sectors hit hard by the ongoing pandemic, Shauneequa’s experiences shed light on how we can ensure that the use of the American Rescue Plan Act funds could lead to equitable and community driven investments.