How do you harness the power of money for the greater good? This week, Farai speaks to philanthropist Mona Sinha, founder and CEO of the Insight Circle Fund, about what it means to make an impact as a woman of color in the worlds of finance and of giving. In the series “Our Body Politic Presents…” Aimée Eubanks Davis, host and creator of the podcast After 1954 speaks to author of Black Teachers on Teaching, researcher and professor Michele Foster about the rich past of Black education in the United States, specifically the effects of school desegregation on Black students following Brown V. Board. Then in our weekly segment, ‘Sippin’ the Political Tea’, Farai speaks about pathways to shared prosperity and innovative approaches to community and finance with Nwamaka Agbo, CEO of the Kataly Foundation and Managing Director of the Restorative Economies Fund; and Jessica Norwood, Founder of RUNWAY.
Farai Chideya:
Hi folks, we are so glad that you're listening to Our Body Politic. If you have time, please consider leaving us a review on Apple Podcast. It helps other listeners find us and we read them for your feedback. We'd also love you to join in financially supporting the show if you are able, you can find out more at Ourbodypolitic.com/donate. We are here for you, with you, and because of you. Thank you.
Farai Chideya:
This is Our Body Politic, I'm Farai Chideya. Economic power provides access to many things, from political power to better health outcomes. Who has access to wealth matters and includes who has jobs in finance and philanthropy? Mona Sinha is a global force in finance, philanthropy, feminism and more. We reached out to ask Mona about her work helping women of color claim their economic power in many different ways. She's the founder and CEO of the Insight Circle Fund & Project, the board chair of Women Moving Millions, and also board chair of the ERA Coalition Fund for Women's Equality. But more than that, she's an integrated thinker about finance, race, gender equity, and social progress. Mona, welcome to Our Body Politic.
Mona Sinha:
Thank you, Farai, it's such a pleasure to be here speaking with you today.
Farai Chideya:
So, I want to start with a broad question. What's money? You've had this incredible career in finance and philanthropy, and I'm just trying to get a sense of how you think of money, what it is and isn't, and how we should understand how it moves in and impacts the world?
Mona Sinha:
I think money is a social and geopolitical force. It enables people to hold power, which is a word many of us don't like, but let's face it, people who have money, have great influence and have great power.
Farai Chideya:
And how did you understand money when you were growing up as a child in Calcutta? We all have an origin story. Like my origin story around money was being part of a family of Black working class intellectuals who often were over educated and underpaid. And we had to find our own self worth in a system where the financial compensation we got was not always equal to the effort we put into getting it. What is your origin story and how does that affect the choices you've made?
Mona Sinha:
Well, I grew up in Calcutta, which is by and large, a very poor city in India, which is by and large, a very poor country with pockets of great wealth. We grew up in a middle class environment, if you will. My parents were scrappy and provided for us very well, but also I saw what my mother did in terms of share whatever little we had, every day she would put aside a fist full of rice and I'd often wonder why she was doing that. And I'd notice that at the end of the month, when it had filled a bag essentially, she would give it away to someone who had less than us.
Mona Sinha:
So I think that informed me from a very early age. And as you know, Farai, I worked with Mother Teresa when I was quite young, at age 12, and that's where I saw what one could achieve without really having a lot of money. There was so much warmth and love and affection in that room with these young children who were orphaned, and it all depended on the generosity of other people, because they really had no way of revenue per se. That I know now in hindsight had a huge impact on me.
Farai Chideya:
You have had an incredible career and you've got more titles and distinctions than we can get to in one interview, you are the founder and CEO of the Insight Circle Fund. What is that? And what do you do?
Mona Sinha:
The Insight Circle Fund is really about bringing people together in a feminist circle to learn from each other, and to then, myself as a funder, fund those projects that I think most need to be funded. It is completely focused on the advancement of gender equality.
Farai Chideya:
If you could say, okay, 10 years from now, when I look back on the Insight Circle Fund, this is what I'd love to accomplish.
Mona Sinha:
I really see it, Farai, as risk capital. I want to fund in areas that have been overlooked, that impact who've been marginalized, that can create a shift in systems. I'd like two things to happen. Broadly speaking, I'd like to create more of a gender equal world, and narrowly speaking, I'd like the Equal Rights Amendment to be codified into the US constitution.
Farai Chideya:
And so, speaking of which, you are the board chair of the ERA Coalition Fund for Women's Equality. And we spoke with Carol Jenkins from the ERA Coalition Fund, why are you doing that work?
Mona Sinha:
Well, when I grew up in India, I grew up as a youngest of three girls, and being a girl in India in those days, and even now to some extent is not as valued because it's such a society that prefers male. So when I came to America and especially when I landed at Smith College, which as you know is the bastion of women's leadership. I just felt tug of, "My goodness, I can actually be myself, I can be equal."
Mona Sinha:
So imagine my shock when I realized that women even in the US are not equal in the constitution. And I was like, "Wait, what? So I swapped out India for America and we're sort of in the same boat again?" For me, it's very important if we are left out of our constitution, we are left out of the fundamental legal structures that rule our lives, and the US is the only democracy in the whole world that has a written constitution and leaves women out of it.
Farai Chideya:
Now, with all of these different interventions in which you're operating in power, how do you manage your time, and what does it mean for you to use your time well, both for social change and your personal and family time?
Mona Sinha:
I don't do it well, I will admit, I don't do it well at all. I'm a passionate person, but I'm also very driven in terms of getting stuff done. The beauty of what I do and self-constructed career, if will, is that I juggle with many different things. My children are now in their twenties, and they now today thank me for making them independent human beings, because I didn't have the time to be this tiger mom or the super ... someone looking over their shoulders constantly, and they learned how to be independent and get things done. For example, my children have been booking and going to their own doctor's appointments from when they were 16 years old. I think that's a good thing, because it allows them to take responsibility for their health, for their teeth, booking dentist appointments and all that.
Farai Chideya:
Speaking of health, we talk a lot on our show about mental and emotional wellness. And one of the other hats you wear is being a founding member of the Columbia Global Mental Health programs, International Advisory Board. And this is a time of just crushing pressure on our mental health in part, because of the pandemic and the changing nature of work, geopolitics, all sorts of things. What do you want us see happen with that work?
Mona Sinha:
It's very critical, and I'm so proud that it's finally being recognized. When I started this work at Columbia, looking at the ICD, which is the bible of disease and diagnosis. There were so many terms in there under mental health that were just simply offensive. I mean, for example, in India, there was a category called madness. What an earth does madness mean? Is a clinical diagnosis. There was another category which called transgender people mentally ill. I mean, this is just downright offensive.
Mona Sinha:
So that's what we sought to change. Just like it's fundamental for women to be in the constitution, I think it's fundamental for the definitions of mental health to be accurate and to identify certain diseases that can be treated, not some kind of a random social problem which people have. I think today, just all the hats that we wear and all the challenges that have been exposed by the pandemic, people in unexpected places are looking at mental health and finally recognizing that our body is whole from head to toe. So it's way overdue and much needed.
Farai Chideya:
You were recently featured in an article about a new report from the Donors of Color Network, exploring how philanthropists who are people of color navigate the use of their funds and their impact. But it also got to being underestimated when you walk into a room and you spoke about a situation where you walked into a room and people thought that you were a staffer versus a donor.
Farai Chideya:
In a much less big picture moment, I paid a fair amount of money to support a museum that I care very much about, and the guests sitting next to me made assumptions about me based on assuming that I had been somehow comped for a ticket or whatever. And it was a pretty negative experience, not because they assume I'd been comped, but because they treated me not that well, based on who they thought I was. So, how would you advise other people of color who have resources who are interested in making impact to navigate these spaces?
Mona Sinha:
Farai, it was hard for me initially to stand up to that kind of treatment, because I think as many of us know, growing up, we were always told, "Be quiet, don't be so visible." But I realized quickly, and especially when I moved to this country by myself, that I was responsible for me, and there was nobody else. There was no safety net, that I had to stand up for myself. So that whole story, which you recount actually ended like this, somebody there asked me, with a very sweet smile, "Oh my dear, are you from the development office?"
Mona Sinha:
And I looked around the room and I stood up and I said, "No, actually I'm the vice chair of the board of trustees." And it made people stop and gulp, and I think what's hard for us sometimes as women of color is to stand in that position of authority and claim it. It's not like we are an anomaly, it's not like women of color or people of color have not made money or are not philanthropic, we are in many more ways than the world sees. And I think it's important for us to stand up and claim that and show other people like us that it's important to do this work.
Farai Chideya:
What do you hope your legacy will be, maybe 50 or a 100 years from now when people say, "Oh, that Mona Sinha, she sure did a lot of stuff?" What is it that you would like to have done?
Mona Sinha:
I would like the conversation to never center around differences. I would feel very fulfilled honestly, if people started talking about people as human beings who contribute to humanity in the best way that they can, but it's really recognizing that women and girls are the soul and the core of change in our world. And when you talk about restorative justice, it has to start there. Because people who are proximate to problems are often the best people to figure out the solutions. They just need the support to be able to do that. Access to information, access to obviously funds, and they need access to be able to amplify the solutions that they discover.
Farai Chideya:
Mona, thank you so much for joining us.
Mona Sinha:
Thank you Farai, it just warms my heart to have this conversation with you.
Farai Chideya:
We've been speaking with Mona Sinha who works in finance, philanthropy, feminism, and more. She's the founder and CEO of the Insight Circle Fund & Project. Coming up next, the Our Body Politic Present series brings you a look back at the aftermath of the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision and its unintended consequences from the podcast, After 1954. Plus, Sippin' the Political Tea dives into restorative economics and pathways to shared prosperity. That's on Our Body Politic.
Farai Chideya:
Welcome back to Our Body Politic, with Our Body Politic Presents, we bring you stories and conversations from independent voices in audio. This week, we're featuring a selection from the five episode podcast, After 1954. It's hosted by educator and nonprofit leader, Aimée Eubanks Davis. Specifically, highlights from their episode, it's a sin to waste Black talent and brains. Now this episode looks at the rich past of Black education through the research of professor Michele Foster. After 1954 producer Piscilla Alabi, explains why they featured Foster.
Piscilla Alabi:
Michele Foster was our direct connection to the teachers who taught in segregated schools. We set out wanting first person accounts of what segregated schools were like and how culturally affirming they were to Black kids. Michele Foster, she'd done a lot of work in the eighties and nineties that followed Black teachers who lost their jobs after Brown.
Farai Chideya:
And with no further ado, After 1954.
Aimée Eubanks Davis:
I'm Aimée Eubanks Davis, and this is After 1954. I want to tell you a story about my education as a Black student. I grew up on the south side of the city of Chicago, where in elementary school, my three siblings and I got a strong education. We lived in all Black neighborhoods and we were taught by many Black teachers. But our parents knew that if we stayed in Chicago public schools, our high school prospects would diminish, and they could not afford private schools, four kids, private school, too damn expensive.
Aimée Eubanks Davis:
So they moved us to a suburb. They thought this would give us a better chance at a high quality education for free. Like they just thought, "We're moving to a suburb. It's going to be great. They're strong schools." What my parents didn't know is that simply because we were Black, we were going to be placed in remedial classes. No matter how academically talented we were. We scored high actually on the interim exams, it didn't matter, just because we were Black and coming out of Chicago public schools. My mom and some other Black parents decided to sue for the racial tracking of Black kids. And they won.
Aimée Eubanks Davis:
When I reflect on this time, I realized there was no one in that building who believed in Black students from the inner city, that we had anything to offer academically. We didn't have any Black teachers, the experience was a nightmare, but it also inspired my own career. Years later, I became a sixth grade teacher in New Orleans. And now I run a nonprofit that supports college students to graduate with strong jobs.
Aimée Eubanks Davis:
Given my family's experience 30 years after Brown, it seems we broke this promise we made to Black students, that they would have equal access to educational opportunities. And Black students to this day are still being left behind. And that in part is because there are not enough Black teachers. And this is the part of the story we rarely talk about.
Aimée Eubanks Davis:
Before Brown versus Board of Education, becoming a teacher was a pathway towards greater economic mobility for Black people, nearly half of Black college graduates living in the south listed teaching as their occupation, with these jobs came status and pride. Honestly, they broke us into the middle class economically. But while teaching provided career opportunities for Blacks, the reality of the Jim Crow south was still prevalent.
Aimée Eubanks Davis:
So when toxic integration began, Black teachers had their concerns, not only for their jobs, but also for the wellbeing of their students who would now be in classrooms where there will be no Black teachers. And unfortunately, their concerns became a reality. 38,000 Black teachers were fired throughout integration. This means the number of black educators in our public schools dramatically decreased during this time, and that number has never gone back up.
Michele Foster:
The idea of Black teachers having been good or offering something to students is recent. That wasn't something people talked about in the fifties.
Aimée Eubanks Davis:
That's Michele Foster. She's worked all over the country in different levels of education. Today, she's a professor at the University of Louisville, and she knows about these educators who are fired during integration, because she met with many of them. Her book, Black Teachers on Teaching is an exceptional look into the lives and knowledge of those who taught in the 1950s before and after desegregation. She captured their stories so we couldn't forget them. Here's Michele.
Michele Foster:
I grew up thinking that Black people were pretty special. I mean, I just did. I thought ... So when I first started teaching in the Boston public schools and people talked about cultural deficit or the kids didn't have any language, I thought that people were insane. That had not been my experience. I was like, "What are they talking about?" And I knew that Black kids could do well in school with the right support, with the right education.
Michele Foster:
My name is Michele Foster and I'm a professor at the University of Louisville in the college of education and human development. I describe myself as a Black American woman who grew up in New England. In 1954, I would've seven years old. I was in the north living in Massachusetts with my grandparents and my mother. The biggest thing I remember was hearing about Thurgood Marshall, and how this Black lawyer had won the case. So he was a hero in my family because he had fought so many civil rights cases.
Thurgood Marshall:
We have a five point program already in effect which will clean up and end segregation on the coaches in the South.
Michele Foster:
I was at home hearing my grandfather talk about what a great decision it was. And I knew that it was going to be better for Black people. I'm sure they said better for Negros at that time. And my grandfather and grandmother were particularly excited because it meant the dismantling I think they thought of segregation, but I don't think that it mattered particularly to me because I was a Catholic school kid. Even though I lived in the North, I did not live in the South, I had cousins and relatives who lived in Georgia. So there was this excitement. I'm not sure that I fully understood what it was, that was going to be a new day in the United States.
Michele Foster:
My grandparents were probably the most influential people on me. My mother of course was influential, but my grandparents were ... People said, "Oh, you didn't have a father." I had a grandfather. He was fabulous. He was wonderful. He was funny. He had had an eighth grade education, but he was self-taught. He read, he knew politics, he knew all about history. He was what you'd call today a race man. He believed in the race and he taught. So I came home from school one day and I said, "John Brown was a crazy man." My grandfather said, "No, John Brown was a hero because he was willing to die for Black people."
Michele Foster:
My grandmother also took a raggedy ann doll that had red hair. She took the red hair out. She replaced it with black hair for [inaudible 00:20:44] and she painted that doll black. And she gave me that doll. So I had black dolls before there were black dolls, and they used to tell me, "You are the smartest little girl." I'd say, "People don't like me." He'd say, "Well, then they don't know what they're missing." I know now that was all designed to fortify me to be able to be successful in a world that they thought was opening up. They thought that, they were trying to get me ready.
Michele Foster:
What people don't understand about these schools is many of these schools, these Black schools, the teachers were better educated in the Black schools than then White schools. Because think about it, the Black teachers didn't have a lot of options. So many of them had master's degrees. Some of the schools were accredited where the White schools weren't. The teachers had limited opportunities. So they became teachers with master's degrees. So I think that we often, when we talk about Brown, we overlooked that part. Of course, we were trying to make the case that the schools were deprived, and often they were materially deprived. They didn't have the teacher's manuals, they didn't have the quality of books, but what they had were people who really cared about the kids.
Farai Chideya:
You are listening to Our Body Politic. We're bringing you as a part of the Our Body Politic Present series selections from the podcast, After 1954, hosted by Aimée Eubanks Davis. Let's get back to it.
Tryphenia Peele-Eady:
My name is Tryphenia Peele-Eady, I identify as a Black woman, and personally, I am an associate professor in language and literacy in the college of education and human sciences at the University of New Mexico. I am a sister, I am a daughter. My mother recently passed. Yeah, I think that about covers it. And a wife, I'll give a shout out to my husband. I'm a wife.
Michele Foster:
I see Tryphenia as that intellectual child who I poured as much as I could, that I had into her development to becoming an academic. So, she is my dearest and most accomplished person who I worked with as a mentor, who is now a professor herself.
Tryphenia Peele-Eady:
First, I'm just so incredibly humbled by my Michele's characterization, and would likewise describe Michele as my intellectual mother, because the relationship absolutely has been, I think, one of parenting, one of mentoring, one of schooling, one of keeping it way real, and a grooming and kind of development that goes beyond what we anticipate for a graduate school education.
Michele Foster:
Tryphenia was at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and she was a work study student, and I was a post-doctoral fellow there for two years. And she worked for a woman who was like an administrative assistant for one of the departments. When I first met Tryphenia, she would be in her little desk at the corner doing the woman who was her supervisor's work. So, that might be checking citations for one of the professors' papers.
Michele Foster:
I can remember she seemed very shy and maybe even afraid of me. I'm kind of a boisterous individual, and when I'm in a room, everybody knows I'm there. Right? I'm like, "That's my entertainment background." But the woman, just was an African American woman who was not an academia, but she was like a mentor to all these young Black undergraduates.
Michele Foster:
And she said, "You need to get to know this woman." She was talking about me. "Because one day she's going to be successful, and you need to get to know her." So that was the introduction I had, a formal or an informal introduction to Tryphenia. I said to her, when I got to know her, "Would you like to get a PhD?" And she said, "Yes." I said, "Well, I'm getting established, but when I get established one day, I'm going to call for you to come and study with me." That's what I told her.
Tryphenia Peele-Eady:
Yes, I remember that first meeting, and I was just in awe. I'm just doing what I'm told, because in my mind, that's how I'm going to succeed. Right? I'm going to develop as a professional, I had my own sense of professionalism and what it meant to be in the office. They were all professors, mostly White, several men. What felt like a world that was distant to me, the only Black people were in support roles. Right? So, there were very few Black people who were in administrative roles or roles of authority.
Tryphenia Peele-Eady:
And then here comes Michele, who is just this powerhouse, and has a PhD, who looks like me and who carries herself in a way that is very familiar and familial, where it was like, "This person could be my family, this person could be my mother, right, who holds a PhD." So, that's how that meeting was. But I remember just being in awe. Yeah, shy, all of these things and not wanting to mess up or not wanting to disappoint and just trying to do my little old job as a work study student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Aimée Eubanks Davis:
Tryphenia, Michele's paths would cross again, five years later, when Michele landed a job at Claremont Graduate School in California. She called Tryphenia to join her as a graduate student. Eventually, Tryphenia would get her masters and her PhD there, studying with Michele. Here's how it went down.
Michele Foster:
So in 1994, I called her because I wanted her to study with me like I had promised she could. I had never met Tryphenia's mom, but she knew about me. And so she encouraged Tryphenia to come and study with me. I think her mother told her, "You better get in the car and drive out there to California." And she actually got in the car and drove on Route 40, I'm sure, from North Carolina to L.A.
Tryphenia Peele-Eady:
And that's what I did. Everything went to Goodwill, packed up my apartment, cleared out everything and headed to California to pursue graduate school. One way that Michele has kept it real with me and in my intellectual upbringing has been to sit down at her kitchen table. A lot of my learning happened at her kitchen table. It happened in spaces that we would not consider traditional learning spaces, and that's what I mean by the kitchen table. I spent a lot of time at her home.
Tryphenia Peele-Eady:
Michele's a great cook and her favorite thing, as I recall, and it could have been an indirect message to me, I don't know Michele, you have to tell me, but it was always salad. She was always making salads and reminding me to eat my greens to stay healthy and nourish, because I spend a lot of time in fast food as a lot of students do. Just being a part of her everyday life. And at the same time, discussing research, approaches, discussing data, discussing feelings around these processes and these experiences that I was having that were new to me, but not new to her.
Tryphenia Peele-Eady:
One thing my mother used to say as a child to me, and as an adolescent in particular was, "I've been down the road you're trying to cover." I never really understood what that was as an adolescent. It was more like, "Oh, okay, here we go." But I think that's exactly what was operating in my relationship with Michele at that kitchen table around salads, around her cat, her spouse, her family, her garden. I saw everything and loved everything, and was a part of everything, because she embraced me that way and brought me into her live all the while, teaching me in ways that didn't necessarily look like teaching, but absolutely it was that, because she's been down the road I was trying to cover.
Tryphenia Peele-Eady:
My dissertation explored the language socialization of African American youth in a Black Missionary Baptist church in Northern California. A moment that stands out in my mind is when I finally finished that dissertation, she says, "So what do you think?" And I was like, "Well, What do you mean what do I think?" "I want to know what you think, I'm waiting for your signature." "Where is this thing going? Are we finished?" And she said, "Well, what do you think about your work?" And I said, "Well, I like it. I think it's good, and here's why." And I began to tell her why, I began to talk about what I thought were shortcomings of the work. What I thought were important points of the work.
Tryphenia Peele-Eady:
And she said, "Great. Now you're done. The fact that you're able to do that, now you're done." And all the while, so this long trek, all the while rested with my ability to come to see that in myself. I'll never forget that moment, because it was powerful, it was meaningful, it was also anti-climatic, I think we were eating more of her salad, and she said, "Well, what do you think? Okay, great. All right. Well, let's set up the defense and let's get going. I'm thinking that's it. You were waiting for me to say it's okay?"
Aimée Eubanks Davis:
This spring marks 68 years since the historic Supreme Court decision to integrate public schools, and yet there's still an unbelievable amount of work to be done. In Black segregated schools, educators believed in their students, they did everything they could to help them succeed inside and outside of the classroom. But as the number of Black educators has dwindled in our public schools, this idea that there is an achievement gap in the Black community, has grown also. I'm here to tell you, it is not an achievement gap, it's an opportunity gap.
Farai Chideya:
That was the podcast, After 1954, hosted by Aimée Eubanks Davis and their episode, it's a sin to waste Black talent and Black brains. You can subscribe to After 1954 wherever you get your podcast and find them on Twitter @LemonadaMedia. Coming up next, our weekly roundtables, Sippin' the Political Tea gets into restorative economics with community finance thought leaders, Nwamaka Agbo and Jessica Norwood. You're listening to Our Body Politic. Each week on the show, we bring you a roundtable called Sippin' the Political Tea. And joining me this week is Nwamaka Agbo, CEO of the Kataly Foundation and managing director of the Restorative Economies Fund. Hi Nwamaka.
Nwamaka Agbo:
Hi, thank you so much for having me today, Farai.
Farai Chideya:
And we are also joined by Jessica Norwood, the founder of Runway. Hi Jessica.
Jessica Norwood:
Hi Farai.
Farai Chideya:
So this week we're going to discuss restorative economics pathways to shared prosperity and innovative approaches to community and finance. I wanted to start this conversation by asking each of you to explain what you do to a really bright interested eight year old. Nwamaka, what do you do?
Nwamaka Agbo:
At the Kataly Foundation, I help to give money to communities that have not had access to capital before, so that they can try to build up the types of neighborhoods and homes that they want to live in with dignity.
Farai Chideya:
And Jessica, what about you?
Jessica Norwood:
I take the money that Nwamaka gives, and I put that money into the hands of brilliant entrepreneurs, people who own businesses, so that they can give the jobs and they can build the buildings and make our communities safe and livable.
Farai Chideya:
I want you to flesh that out, like give us a specific sense of what you personally and your organization, Kataly, does in this space, but also what are we talking about here?
Nwamaka Agbo:
Restorative economics is, it's a framework that I created to guide my own consulting practice, and essentially it's rooted in the recognition that we need to economically restore and repair those communities that have been historically extracted from. And so we seek to do that by supporting what we call community-owned and community-governed projects that are rooted in a power building analysis, essentially projects that build the political, economic and cultural power of Black indigenous and communities of color. And we want those communities that stand to be most directly impacted by these projects to also be the decision makers. Right? So reclaiming governance over our resources and assets as a community.
Farai Chideya:
So, I understand that your organization, Kataly, is helping to fund Jessica's organization. Like how do you, Nwamaka, make decisions about where to place bets in what you're trying to transform in this world?
Nwamaka Agbo:
We think of it as not just placing bets, but a deep belief that the communities that are closest to the pain are also closest to the solutions. And so, with the Kataly Foundation, we've decided to take the restorative economics frameworks to help us think through how we redistribute our assets as a spend out foundation to make sure that they're going into communities that are really working towards the root cause solutions. And Runway Project and my dear friend and comrade, Jessica Norwood is someone that I'm honored to work alongside. Jessica has really helped us to think through how we strategically close the racial wealth gap by reinvesting in Black entrepreneurs. And so our assets help us to think through how we move money into community governing vehicles like Runway.
Farai Chideya:
Yeah, and speaking of which, Jessica, what is Runway? Where do you operate? What are your goals? What brings you life?
Jessica Norwood:
Oh, wonderful question. I'm excited to be talking about this with Nwamaka because really with Nwamaka's resources and folks like Nwamaka in this space, we're able to step up as financial innovators. That's what we call ourselves at Runway. There's been a high degree of distrust and extraction that's happened at the hands of financial and banking systems. And so, Runway is looking to bring in fresh ideas to disrupt those industries, to create new policies and a new rule book, so that capital can really move more freely.
Jessica Norwood:
And what that looks like is we provide friends and family-style like capital. So, really is like rich auntie, rich uncle, really trying to love on you and take good care of you. We also give holistic business advising, peer to peer coaching, and a robust community centered around the entrepreneur and around the investor community that's focused on wellbeing, collaboration, democratic governance, and decision making.
Farai Chideya:
Can you give me really specific example? What kind of person or organization are you working with, and how do you work with them on just like a super basic human to human level?
Jessica Norwood:
We have operations in Oakland and Boston right now. We're working with entrepreneurs, taking them from their idea, and then really putting in some thoughts around how to support their business and match them with the right capital. We've got a lot of different kinds of companies, food based businesses, there are a couple of restaurants, a florist. And then we work with the investment community, and we're looking at how do they place that capital with us in a way that gives those kinds of generous and thoughtful opportunities for people to work with the money.
Jessica Norwood:
And so, we created equity like instrument with banks, like Self-Help Credit Union and Berkshire Bank in Boston, where we are able to make it feel like equity, that kinds of friends and family, early round of money that comes into a business, that $50,000 or so to buy the equipment. So, it's intimate in that way of small kinds of amounts of money, but it is catalyzing the entire ecosystem around an entrepreneur from business support providers, investors, and so forth, to be thinking about what does it mean to be doing restorative investment strategies in our communities.
Farai Chideya:
Nwamaka, I can't help but think of about the ways in which Black women in particular are extremely likely to start businesses. We start businesses at extremely high rates and they fail at extremely high rates. How does your work get into the questions of access to capital that shape that desire for economic self-determination among Black women and women of color in particular, and the ways in which it is not met by the market?
Nwamaka Agbo:
What we recognize is that the racial wealth gap is not just a gap in access to capital, it's a gap in access to knowledge, skills, expertise, and networks. And so. with our work at the Kataly Foundation and the Restorative Economies Fund, we try to be in deep relationship with our grantees and borrowers to understand not only what their capital needs are, but what are their non-financial resources as well. And how do we support them over a period of time? So our first question is not what loan do you need, our first question is what type of relationship do you need to be in with the financial partner?
Nwamaka Agbo:
And then how do we build that relationship over a period of time to get you investment ready for the type of capital that you need to support your business? Black women out of necessity, have had to create economic ways to support their friends, their families, and their communities. And while sometimes they can be seen as failures, if the business don't necessarily launch and go to an IPO, what we know to be true is that those starts and fits are actually part of where the seeds of innovation come to be.
Nwamaka Agbo:
And so, if we can continue to believe and support those communities that haven't had the financial literacy, haven't had access to the networks before to try and try again, we believe that they can be successful. There's a number of ways that Black women are being really creative and thoughtful around how we challenge capitalism and economic systems that haven't historically served our communities.
Farai Chideya:
You are listening to Sippin' the Political Tea on Our Body Politic, I'm Farai Chideya, and this week we're doing a special roundtable on restorative economics with Jessica Norwood, the founder of Runway and Nwamaka Agbo, CEO of the Kataly Foundation and managing director of the Restorative Economies Fund. Jessica, I used to live in the East Bay of California many years ago, and part of your base is in Oakland. And I think about that region of the country as one with so much energy, history, culture, passion, but also it's just expensive and it's hard. What are you hearing from folks that you work with about what they're facing?
Jessica Norwood:
Yeah, one of the things that I've seen, that's been really incredible about the entrepreneurs that we've been able to work with and community partners in the Bay Area is, the way that to mitigate and to manage the rising costs that it takes to live in the Bay Area. And also, isolation that is taken on with the pandemic. A lot of people have joined together in just some beautiful ways. We saw our portfolio of companies start to work together. There were labor shortages, there were product delays in people's supply chain. And these other companies who were borrowers out of our portfolio started working together to satisfy those particular needs.
Jessica Norwood:
So, I see growth of community from the folks who are taking on money and capital from us. They're regularly thinking about how they can employ more people, how they can do more livable wage ideas and politically be in gage with the use of buildings and the stewardship of land and space. So there's so much that starts to happen when we start to think of folks not as just isolated companies, but really as a community working together to really keep that neighborhood safe and good usage and relationship to one another. The more the people are linked to each other, the more they actually are able to weather the most difficult storms in their lives. And I think that's true even in this moment, post pandemic.
Farai Chideya:
And Nwamaka, I spent some time before getting together with both of you listening to some of your talks, you've given some incredible talks that people can find on your website. And in one of them, you mentioned the need to make power visible. Can you tell me a little bit more about what that means in a very simple, practical sense?
Nwamaka Agbo:
Yeah. I think for me coming out of philanthropy, one of the ways we look at power is the recognition that Black indigenous and communities of color have not had access to a suite of choices for how they want to live their lives. Right? Their choices has been limited based on economic structural factors. And so, the ability to have choice around how you want to be in community, and then being able to have access to the resources to implement those decisions are part of where we think power lies and part of where we think we can support impacted communities as a foundation.
Nwamaka Agbo:
So, for us, we recognize that we do have power and privilege as a financial institution that's been capitalized with a large sum of resources. And so, part of what we get to do is to be really clear and honest about our power, and then figure out how we redistribute our resources, how we leverage our power to really lift up and support those grantees and borrowers in the work of Runway. For me, to really think about the ways that we need to restructure economic systems to really support those communities that have been locked out and left behind.
Farai Chideya:
Jessica, I'm going to turn to you next with this question of power. On this show, we do a wide variety of things, super hard news, like about the Ukraine and about the Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson hearings, and also work on healing and work on health. When it comes to power, how do you locate yourself and your work in power, both personally, locally and nationally?
Jessica Norwood:
For myself, I find the most power being in community with my friends and my family. I think there is a built-in network of information and relationships. And when I think about the work that we're doing, talking about capital and the movement of those dollars for your business, as well as your local community, is a powerful thing. And I find Runway is in a really great position to educate more about what have been some of those historical harms, and how we might think about things differently, how we get ourselves out of repeating over and over again these cycles of violence towards one another when it comes to the way we move our financial resources. And I see a lot of power surging from that.
Jessica Norwood:
And I think maybe nationally, what I find really powerful about this work, is the way that we're able to talk and work with partners like Nwamaka, because it's not just a financial partnership, it's also a thought partnership. We are constantly in dialogue about how we support this ever growing movement around restorative economies and how we talk about reparative finance. So I see us move moving power and building that muscle that we all have to engage in repair work happening at all of those different levels.
Farai Chideya:
I want to play the tape forward, we are in a time where there's collapse of the Antarctic ice shelf, violent conflicts on multiple continents, threats to bodily autonomy in the US from a wide variety of directions. And for me, sometimes I feel being a journalist is the way that I process my anxiety over the future. But I also have a strong, personal through line of Afrofuturism, I write science fiction for fun, I am a huge fan of Octavia Butler, which I know that you've talked a bit about, Nwamaka. Playing the tape forward can be stressful, but it can also be beautiful where we imagine a space where we are healthy, supported, secure, able to live our lives. And so, I'm going to start with you, Jessica, when you play the tape forward in a positive sense, what is the world that you're building? What do you want to see?
Jessica Norwood:
Yeah, I see much more of these democratically governed funds all over the country, all over the world. I see community members being in relationship with their financial institutions, not somewhere far off, but in a way where together we're looking at how we solve the most pressing problems in our area around food access and housing, and how we protect the environment, how we protect one another, and using finance as a tool, not as a way to keep us separated, but to really bring us together.
Farai Chideya:
And Nwamaka, when you play the tape forward in a way that has hope and agency, what are you seeing?
Nwamaka Agbo:
What I see happening is less about expecting leaders of nation states to do what we've been organizing and calling on them to do in terms of economic policy, climate change policy, public health. But what I am already seeing on the ground is that, whether it's mutual aid networks, whether it's grassroots projects or people in communities, the projects that we are currently supporting, Runway included, are the early seeds of what it means for community members to learn and understand what it means to govern for themselves.
Nwamaka Agbo:
And so, when we can do that, I think we put ourselves in positions to be in relationship with our beloved community, to weather through the impending crises that we're currently in, and that we know will only continue to grow. So it's very much connected to Jessica's vision, and I think that work has already started in community.
Farai Chideya:
Well, thank you so much, Nwamaka.
Nwamaka Agbo:
Thank you so much for having me. Thank you, Jessica.
Jessica Norwood:
Thank you, Nwamaka.
Farai Chideya:
And thank you, Jessica.
Jessica Norwood:
Thank you for, Farai. Thank you so much for having me.
Farai Chideya:
That was Jessica Norwood, the founder of Runway and Nwamaka Agbo, CEO of the Kataly Foundation, and managing director of the Restorative Economies Fund. I really enjoyed that conversation and I also want to make a quick ask before we wrap up this week. Next week, we're interviewing investigative reporter and award-winning author of Nomadland, Jessica Bruder, about her current cover story for the Atlantic magazine. It's about the abortion underground, people preparing for the potential end of Roe v. Wade and legal abortion.
Farai Chideya:
So, do you have a question for Jessica? Please phone in and leave them on our voicemail at 929-353-7006. Again, that's 929-353-7006, and you'll get a prompt with more information and instructions.
Farai Chideya:
Thanks for listening to Our Body Politic. We're on the air each week -- and everywhere you listen to podcasts. Our Body Politic is produced by Diaspora Farms. I'm the executive producer and host, Farai Chideya. Our Co-executive producer is Jonathan Blakely. Bianca Martin is our senior producer. Bridget McAllister is our booker and producer. Emily J. Daly is our producer. Our associate producer is Natyna Bean.
Farai Chideya:
Production and editing services are by Clean Cuts at Three Seas. Today's episode was produced with the help of Steve Lack and Lauren Schild. And engineered by Archie Moore.
Farai Chideya:
A special thanks to the podcast After 1954, brought to you with the generous support from The Walton Family Foundation.
Farai Chideya:
Aimée Eubanks Davis is the host. This series is produced by Priscilla Alabi and Kristen Lepore. Priscilla Alabi is the producer. Kristen Lepore is the supervising producer. Story editing is by Jackie Danziger. Story consulting by Sonya Ramsey. Sound design and mixing by Andrea Kristinsdóttir (Kristen's Daughter). Music by Hansdale Hsu. Additional music by Andrea Kristinsdóttir. Additional engineering from Ivan Kuraev. Executive producers are Stephanie Wittles Wachs and Jessica Cordova Kramer.