If there’s one thing that 2020 has taught us, it's that dual transformation is key to sustaining organizations in 2021 and beyond. This week, Ken Zakalik, Director of Innovation at ALSAC/St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, joins us to share how his team looks into the future in the spirit of constant innovation in three core areas—culture, strategy, and opportunities.

This week, before we can dismantle inequality in financial systems, we must understand our roles in these systems. Karen Wawrzaszek is here to help us unpack the complexity of these systems.

This week’s show goes straight to the heart of the dynamics in entrenched business processes that serve to stifle innovation through diversity and limit opportunities for marginalized communities. The opportunity, says our guest, lies in demography.

Carolyn Lowery sat down with Carrie Fox earlier this year to discuss race in the workplace as part of our virtual community conversation series. The goal was to model a conversation on race and racism to show that while these conversations may be challenging, they don’t have to be intimidating.

Edgar Villanueva didn’t plan on starting a movement. If it wasn’t for his boss telling him that he was getting “too big for his britches,” he’d likely still be knee-deep in big philanthropy. Instead of leaving, however, he was spurred on to write his book Decolonizing Wealth. On this week’s show, we talk about the problems he saw in philanthropy, how his take on the industry set a fire under people longing for change, and how to continue having authentic conversations with love.

Ed Yong spent two years trying to fix the gender imbalance in the stories he was writing for The Atlantic, and wrote about his findings. His heartbreakingly honest revelation spurred our desire to dig in deeper on ways that all communicators can build equity and break bias in their storytelling. Part of digging deeper was bringing Ed Yong and his partner Liz Neeley of The Story Collider to speak at our Mission Forward Spring Reception. This podcast episode features that conversation on building equity through storytelling, and what we can all learn from their experience. Conversation moderated by Carrie Fox.

Nabiha Syed is the President of The Markup. Just what is The Markup, you ask? If this is your introduction to The Markup, we stand as both disheartened that you’re not already a regular reader, yet delighted that we may serve as your guide by way of this week’s show. We talk about what it means to exist in the journalism space, and about building a news organization bespoke for us, our modern age, and dedicated to the modern information perils that stand before us.

Anand Giridharadas is a writer who walks headlong into the storm of corporate institutional power. His latest book, “Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World,” is a rebuke of the “unelected upper crust” and their efforts to lobby and influence in the face of our public institutions. He joins Carrie Fox on the Mission Forward stage this week.

Natalie Burke is back with us today for a conversation that addresses one central question: how does racism harm us all? It’s a deceivingly simple question that is achingly difficult to answer. Natalie’s efforts to create what she calls “constructive discomfort” goes a long way toward helping us all adapt to the pain that can come through learning and change. When we can face our discomfort in trust we all win through transformation.

This week on Mission Forward, we bring you a conversation from 2017 with two guests who boldly challenge assumptions we hold in our everyday lives. They stand unafraid to say the things many of us think, using their words and ideas as waves cresting in and over us, then receding, laying bare our understanding of ourselves and how we relate to the world around us a little more clearly.

We’re exploring the work of the Center for Common Ground this week with founding board member, Andrea Miller. When it comes to racial justice and equity, she’s an incredible fighter, a noted leader in Virginia working to turn the tide on compressed voter access, and a firebrand when it comes to elected leaders working against the will of the people of her state.