Introduction
Faces of Change with Marshall Ganz is a podcast that explores the stories of people developing leadership and enabling communities to create change all over the world.
Leadership is accepting responsibility for enabling others to achieve shared purpose in the face of uncertainty – Marshall Ganz
Throughout the world people who have accepted responsibility for leadership, their communities, and their allies are stepping up with courage and showing us that change is possible. In Faces of Change, Marshall sits down with those leaders each month to explore how they were called to leadership, how they organize their communities, and how they’re building the power their people need to achieve real change.
Episodes
Nisreen Haj Ahmad
We’re excited to introduce Nisreen Haj Ahmad of Jordan as our first leader to be featured as part of our new storytelling series Faces of Change. Our founder Marshall Ganz sat down with Nisreen to explore her journey to leadership — from a young girl forced to leave Palestine with her family, to returning years later to advise the Palestinian team on peace negotiations with Israel and then discovering the power of organizing and committing herself to building new civic leadership across the Middle East. Read more about NIsreen
Art Reyes III
Marshall meets Art Reyes III, the Executive Director of We the People-Michigan, a statewide multi-racial community organization that is building people-power for social and economic justice in Michigan. Their mission is to transform the politics of Michigan from the ground up, moving away from simply mobilizing around elections, but by embedding the organizing infrastructure needed for people to shape politics from their community up.
In Marshall’s conversation with Art, we learn how he was called to organizing at an early age, and is leading an innovative — and challenging — effort in one of the most segregated states in America. We also hear how mastery of the organizing craft grows form sustained learning across diverse domains, issues and communities, and what it takes for people to mobilize the power they need to shape their communities, their politics and their state.
Mariali Cárdenas
In this podcast Marshall meets Mariali Cárdenas, co-Founder of Vía Educación, the trailblazing civil society and education organization that is combining community organizing and innovative education approaches to build the citizenship skills of children and young people. Mariali and Vía Educación’s work on citizenship education is being implemented as part of Mexico’s national curriculum. Mariali shares with Marshall why children give her hope for building the democracy project, how they’re doing it on the ground in Mexico and what called her to leadership.
Building the Sunrise Movement with Dyanna Jaye
Ever wondered how the Green New Deal was catapulted onto the national agenda in the United States? It’s impossible to answer this without talking about the Sunrise Movement: the movement of young people who are uniting to stop the climate crisis.
In our latest Faces of Change podcast, Marshall Ganz sits down with Dyanna Jaye, Sunrise’s Co-Founder and Organizing Director, to chart the rise of a movement that has rocked the political establishment, and to learn about Dyanna’s own journey to climate justice leadership.
Dyanna shares Sunrise’s movement building ‘DNA’, taking us from the moment they were thrust onto the national stage after the high profile sit-in protest outside Nancy Pelosi’s Office with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, through to how they’re scaling a national movement driven by thousands of young people in local communities at this time of social distancing and deep uncertainty. Dyanna and Marshall also explore the power of sustained learning for building powerful movements and how we can seize this very moment to create the change our communities want.
Explore Further
- Leadership, Organizing, and Action Podcast – Listen to the six part series featuring Professor Marshall Ganz. Each episode provides practical strategies to learn this craft: building relationships, storytelling, strategy, action, and structure.