Episode Notes
In this episode, we welcome Jamie Allison, executive director of the Walter & Elise Haas Fund. In her work with the fund, Jamie focuses on organizational leadership, strategy, and governance, prioritizing staff well-being and grantmaking that promotes liberation and transformation.
Listen as as Jamie discusses trust-based philanthropy and its transformative impact on communities, particularly for leaders of color. She also describes her journey from Tennessee to the Bay Area, reflects on the cultural significance of the region, and emphasizes the importance of supporting nonprofit leaders by maintaining joy, recognizing progress, and navigating burnout challenges.
Episode Transcript
Darren Isom:
Welcome to Dreaming in Color, where we sit down with social change leaders of color to learn how their unique life experiences have prepared them to lead and drive the impact we all seek. I'm your host, Darren Isom, and this season I'm lucky to have a few of my Bridgespan colleagues dropping in to join me as guest hosts. Together we'll be celebrating the genius of leaders who live into the work every day. This is Dreaming in Color. Today I get to chat with Jamie Allison, a distinguished leader in philanthropy and organizational strategy. Jamie leads the Walter & Elise Haas Fund, working closely with trustees to ensure that the fund's efforts are a reflection of its values and that those efforts also resonate with the community and drive transformation in the philanthropic field.
With over 20 years of experience in philanthropy and a background in the public sector and local government, Jamie brings a comprehensive understanding of how systems can be leveraged to affect real change. Her primary focus is on fostering a thriving environment for the fund's staff and advancing practices and grantmaking that promote liberation and community transformation. Born and raised in Chattanooga, Tennessee, Jamie has called San Francisco home for over two decades. She draws daily inspiration from community leaders striving to create a more just society by expanding inclusivity and care for all. Join me in welcoming my friend, the dynamic and inspiring Jamie Allison. Hello, Jamie. How are you?
Jamie Allison:
I'm well, thank you.
Darren Isom:
Real excited to chat with you today. Been looking forward to this conversation. And I like to start with a bit of an invocation. So I will pass the mic to you to kick us off.
Jamie Allison:
I would like to share the words of an interfaith civil rights leader named Valerie Kaur. And this is her “Sikh Prayer for America” from November 9, 2016. "In our tears and agony, we hold our children close and confront the truth, the future is dark. But my faith dares me to ask, what if this darkness is not the darkness of the tomb but the darkness of the womb? What if our America is not dead, but a country still waiting to be born? What if the story of America is one long labor? What if all the mothers who came before us, who survived genocide and occupation, slavery and Jim Crow, racism and xenophobia and Islamophobia, political oppression, and sexual assault, are standing behind us now whispering in our ear, you are brave? What if it is our great contraction before we birth a new future? Remember the wisdom of the midwife: breathe, she says, then push.
Now it is time to breathe, but soon it will be time to push. Soon it will be time to fight for those we love, Muslim father, sick son, trans daughter, Indigenous brother, immigrant sister, white worker, the poor and forgotten, and the ones who cast their vote out of resentment and fear. Let us make an oath to fight for the soul of America, the land that never has been yet, and yet must be, Langston Hughes, and with revolutionary love and relentless optimism. And so I pray this prayer in the name of the divine within us and around us, we find everlasting optimism. Within your will may there be grace for all of humanity."
Darren Isom:
I could stop the podcast right now because I think we're done here. That was beautiful. Thank you. And it's very timely. So thank you for starting with that one. I think of you as being the quintessential Californian, my most San Franciscan friend, but I don't forget that, like me, you have Southern roots, originally from Tennessee, but have lived in San Francisco most of your life at this point, adult life, that is. Your love for the city of San Francisco runs deep. And as someone who relocated to California, I would love for you to, one, just give me a little bit of your origin story and tell me about your upbringing in Tennessee, for sure, but also just for you to share a little bit about what pulls you to the West Coast. What is it about the West Coast and San Francisco that you love and that have made you call it home?
Jamie Allison:
I love that you referred to me as a Californian and a San Franciscan. I absolutely feel that way. I love San Francisco with my whole heart. And even though we have some challenges here, I think it is an amazing city and one that is about reinvention and creativity. And those of us who come here, in fact, we come here for the opportunity to make a new life and reinvent ourselves in the way we see ourselves. And so I'm happy to get to live in San Francisco through some years where I get to be part of that collective imagination and rebirth of this city. I moved here in 2001, and I'll tell you my origin story. So as you mentioned, I grew up in Tennessee. I'm from Chattanooga, and I was working in Chattanooga in philanthropy. I was a baby philanthropic professional and had the opportunity to go to a conference in Boca Raton, Florida, where Angela Blackwell, the founder of PolicyLink, was the keynote speaker, and she blew my mind.
She was so dynamic and compelling, and she talked about things I'd never really heard anyone talking about before. She was the first person I ever heard talk about racial equity in the way that she did. And I just remember thinking, wow, if I'm going to do anything with my life and my career, I want to live as close to that person as possible. And Angela Blackwell lived in the Bay Area, and every person that I liked at the conference was from the Bay Area. And I took that as a sign that I, too, needed to be in the Bay Area. And that was May of 2001. In June of 2001, I started to look for work in San Francisco. I don't know that you'll remember this, but in 2001 there was internet but of the dialogue sort. And there were no smartphones, there was no Google Meets, there was no Skype video, there was no WhatsApp, there was no Zoom.
Darren Isom:
Were you out on monster.com? What were you doing?
Jamie Allison:
Oh, this is, I don't even know. So I was using idealist.org and Opportunity Docs dial up looking for job opportunities in the San Francisco Bay Area, and I would go to an Office Depot or Office Max, Staples, and I would buy resume paper and matching envelopes. And then I would print my resume, put them in envelopes, and go to the post office and put stamps on them, and put them in the mail and hope that someone would write me back or call me. And when I think about that now, now in the world of remote work, and you can live anywhere and we're interested in talent from all corners of our planet. In those days, the optimism and the naivete I must've been carrying around, that someone in San Francisco would see my resume with Chattanooga, Tennessee, written at the top and not just throw it away.
Now I'm pleased to report, obviously my resumes didn't get thrown away, and today I remain eternally grateful for my first opportunity to work in San Francisco at the Stuart Foundation. I'll never forget Colin Lacon, who had a senior role at the foundation called me and said he wanted to do a phone interview and then flew me to San Francisco for an in-person interview. And this was not for a senior role, this was for a program associate role. And I teased him about having plucked me out of the foothills of Tennessee because I'm so grateful that he didn't throw my resume in the trash. And that's a part of how I ended up in San Francisco, and I'm so grateful for the opportunity, and I love it here every single day.
Darren Isom:
Yes, you were so lucky, and we're so lucky to have you as well. There is something very magical about the Bay Area from a thinking perspective. I think that the Bay Area lives in the American imagination and a very special place in American imagination. And I think our ability to think about what is possible and this idea of reinvention as being just part of the actual way of living is really powerful and meaningful.
Jamie Allison:
Yeah, I think that's right. There's a demographer in Southern California whose work I follow, Manuel Pastor, you've probably heard of him, and he talks about how California is the nation on fast-forward and I live that. I think that's true.
Darren Isom:
Yeah. Well, I joke all the time, and you've heard me tell you this, that when I worked in Memphis for several years, and I loved my time in Memphis working, leading a philanthropic initiative there. There was an older Black woman who ran an organization and asked me at some point, was it difficult for me to be traveling back and forth between Memphis, and at the time I was living in Berkeley. And I was like, no, I worked in consulting, so I was used to traveling. And she's like, no, no, no, not the physical travel, it's the time travel, you're traveling in from the future every week. And I'd never thought about California that way, but it was really understood that way for sure.
I have some questions for you about work. And so, one of the things that I love about the way you think about the work and do the work is that you've spoken quite a bit about trust in the philanthropic sector and how we can best work with leaders to let them be great while doing the work they do. Can you tell me more about your philosophy here around trust and really what happens when we lead with trust and allow leaders of color to shine?
Jamie Allison:
Twenty-twenty is a really big part of the story at the Walter & Elise Haas Fund. I'm the executive director at the Walter & Elise Haas Fund. I've been there for six years, and so I was just a couple of years into my leadership role when 2020 created a lot of opportunities for us to learn about ourselves and to decide in some ways who we want to be going forward, both in terms of having the public health crisis, the global public health crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic, combined with the summer civil rights racial justice protest. And I don't want to rose-color the suffering and the hardship of that time period, but I really believed that it was going to be a turning point for us as a nation. And I have two godsons, Kyle and Usher, they're 11 and 13 now, and I'd prepared my speech for them, that they were going to have to do book reports and study the COVID time period in school, and they were going to have to interview people for their first-person accounts for what it was like for them and what they remember.
And I had my speech prepared for them about how we use that opportunity to recognize our interdependence, to recognize our shared humanity, and to make real our social compact and to widen our circle of care to include everybody possible. And that having that shared experience of sickness and death and uncertainty changed us as a nation. And that's how we got universal healthcare, and that's how we got all of the worker protections that we need. And so I was really prepared for that. And while I was prepared for that at a national level, because I sat in the seat of a leadership role within an institution, I could take that same hope, that same optimism, that same belief in our interdependence, that same belief in the protective factors that we all deserve. And when we're born into the world, it's our birthright to have them, that I could take that same sentiment into my work at the Walter & Elise Haas Fund and I did, and I am proud to say that I work on a team of board members and staff who were ready to embrace those ideas as well.
And when we started to ask ourselves, how can we be most effective? What really is our role? What can we do from our position? A shorthand for that really became about recognizing that the people within nonprofit organizations are our most important partners. Without them we don't have any work to do. They are our vehicle for change, for impact, for transformation, and that it was our job to treat them like we wanted them to win. And so our shorthand now at the Walter & Elise Haas Fund, any time we're making a decision, any time we're designing something, we remind ourselves that we want to behave as if, we want to fund as if we want this partner to win. And so what do we have to do to demonstrate that we want you to win for your mission, that we want you to win for the vision that you have for our community?
It means we have to trust you. It means that we have to provide flexible multi-year support. It means that we have to engage in a partnership that recognizes power dynamics, and we have to do everything we possibly can to be a real partner in sharing power and not dictating how the work happens. And so it's been an incredible journey at the Walter & Elise Haas Fund to do this work. It's a 72-year-old family foundation that had operated in fairly conventional ways. And when we took stock of who we are and who we want to be, we made some decisions. And a big part of that decision was to focus on trust and to focus on relationship and funding our partners to win and behaving as if we want them to win.
Darren Isom:
I love that. You guys do amazing work to ensure that the grants you disperse ultimately advance liberation and community transformation. And so you're trusting the leaders to support the work and actually implement the work to bring you to an ending and a winning point. But so much of this is also based in a true understanding of what liberation looks like and what winning looks like. So you're allowing people to get there using their assets to get to the answer of what liberation looks like. But I would love just to stop and ask you, what does liberation mean to you? What does liberation look like?
Jamie Allison:
I really love this question. It's something I think about all the time, and it's a really difficult question. I want to lean on something I've been thinking about that Mia Birdsong, who is just an incredible public scholar and just a visionary whose work I respect her and I respect her work a lot. She runs an organization called Next River, and part of the work and research she's doing right now is really trying to unpack, when we say we want to get free, when we say that we want liberation, what is it that we're really talking about? And some of her research has revealed that the word “freedom” and the word “friendship” have the same roots. And in the West and in America specifically, we've adopted this idea of freedom that is about individualism and going out on your own and not needing anybody and not needing any other people, but also not needing the community and not needing your government for support.
And that historically, and at the root of the word “freedom,” that it's actually about being connected to other people, being connected to your community, being connected to your friends and family, and that the idea of losing your freedom was about being separated from your loved ones. When I think about freedom and liberation through that lens, through Mia Birdsong's work, then we're back to some of the ideas we were just talking about, that freedom is actually about our connection to each other. Freedom is actually about interdependence. Freedom is about looking at each other and saying, I know that I am doing well because the person next to me is doing pretty okay too, as opposed to saying, I know that I'm doing well because look at all these other people who are not doing well, and I'm doing better than they are. So that means that I'm doing well.
And so when I walk down the streets of San Francisco and I see suffering on my street, my thought isn't, wow, I'm so glad I'm not that person. My thought is, uh-oh, I'm not doing well in this community until I can walk down the street and greet my other neighbors on the street, and they're doing well too. And that's what my personal work is about. And I feel so lucky that that's also what my professional work is about.
Darren Isom:
Yes, luckily we're talking with Mia Birdsong in this season of Dreaming in Color.
Jamie Allison:
That's fantastic.
Darren Isom:
But I think that you're also speaking to, in many ways, this idea of success coming at the community level I think is a very California value but also a very Black value as well. This idea that I'm only as good as my community. And so I would love for you just to talk a little bit about this role of community from a sense of success perspective and how so much of that is cultural and do how you transfer the cultural to the larger narrative as well?
Jamie Allison:
I think about that a lot, too. So as the executive director at the Walter & Elise Haas Fund, six years into my tenure, I'm the first woman of color, first Black woman to lead the foundation in its 70-plus year history. And I think a lot about what does it mean for me as a Black woman to come and lead this Foundation that historically hasn't had Black leadership, hasn't had a lot of Black people on the staff in the past, what does that mean, and what are things that are core to me? What are things that are core to my culture, givens and no-brainers that I bring into the institution that for other people they're like, what is Jamie doing? Why is Jamie doing that? What is Jamie talking about? And some of that, some of my culture, some of how I was raised, some of what is core to me, as someone who grew up in the South in a Black family, raised in the AME Church, some of that is coming out in my work even when I don't recognize it.
And sometimes it takes someone saying, what are you doing? Why are we doing it this way? Then I really start to recognize it. And you can see it in some of the ways that the Walter & Elise Haas Fund has codified its approach. So we just adopted what we call three aspirational shifts. They've become part of what we call our operational pillars, and those three shifts, the first one is moving from silos to integration and this idea that we have to take a holistic view of our work that is not going to work for us to pick and choose some specific program area issues and think our work is done. The second one is moving from contributions to commitment. And I really think that one is rooted in my southern Black family…
Darren Isom:
One hundred percent.
Jamie Allison:
... AME church-ness, moving from contributions to commitment. And it is the idea that sometimes we think we can get by making the contribution because it's benevolent. It looks like a good thing, but you can walk away, you're not in it. It is surface. And there's plenty of room for good acts. I'm not saying we shouldn't make contributions to things from time to time, but I am really aware in my life, the difference between when I make a contribution and when I'm making a commitment. And so if someone says, oh, I support this organization, come to the event, and I say, oh, I'll make a donation, that's a contribution, and that contribution is great, it supports that organization, but I didn't show up to the event.
I didn't show up shoulder-to-shoulder with the person who invited me. I didn't show up to learn about that organization. I didn't show up and ask how I can get involved. That is a commitment, and that's a proclamation we're making at the Walter & Elise Haas Fund now, that we're moving away from contributions and we're moving with our full selves with all of our tools and all of our assets into commitment.
Darren Isom:
And there's a broader story there. I think that when you're able to move to the more commitment point, you actually see your value as a philanthropic entity as more than just money. And how do you basically think about using all of your assets and your skills to drive the impact that you seek, and recognizing that power comes in many forms. And so trust-based philanthropy isn't just handing the money and walking away. It's using all of your power to support the work and getting to a win.
Jamie Allison:
Absolutely. It's not walking away. It's about being in relationship and being in difficult conversations together and having the humility to learn and be together. I've learned so much with our partners and from our partners through changing the way we approach our grant making at the Walter & Elise Haas Fund. And because we're in real relationships now, they tell us things that we wouldn't have known otherwise that make us better. And because of where we sit positionally as a foundation, I can talk to my philanthropic peers about the things that I am learning. And so then that learning gets transferred to many different philanthropic leaders and many different foundations and doesn't just stop at the Walter & Elise Haas Fund.
Darren Isom:
And with that in mind, as you've spoken about in the past and some of our earlier conversations, burnout is a huge problem with a lot of leaders in the sector and something that they all face, especially in the social sector. What can philanthropy do to support nonprofit leaders, enable them to stay in the fight, particularly leaders of color who are being faced with such traumatic work situations, life situations, on a daily basis and don't have the supports normally needed to navigate those?
Jamie Allison:
Darren, I'm glad you asked me that because I'm actually thinking about writing a little bit of something about that based on things I've been learning and what's really needed to support the well-being of leaders. So part of the commitment that the Walter & Elise Haas Fund is making is a commitment to, again, the leaders who are doing the work on whom we rely. We're relying on nonprofit leaders, many of them people of color, many of them Black women, to literally save the world. Our leaders are making sure that we are safe and housed and fed and providing enrichment and education and healthcare services, and we treat them as if they are disposable. And so it's not a surprise that burnout is high. It's not a surprise that burnout is high, particularly for women leaders of color, because there is a racial and gender component, I think, to burnout.
Women of color tend to lead organizations that are in that small-to-midsize, at $5 million and less had they have a difficult time raising money. Funders can be really exacting and extractive in the way that they treat leaders of color. And then leaders of color have to make really difficult decisions to keep their organizations solvent. And so when you think about what goes into balancing a budget, every leader knows, I've got to balance this budget. I have to accumulate reserves to keep this organization healthy so it can do its work. So if a leader is in a situation where funding that they thought was going to come through doesn't, the leader still says, I have to balance this budget. So what does that leader do? That leader ends up freezing salaries, ends up laying staff people off, ends up stripping things from the budget that enable wellness.
Things like sabbaticals, professional development, benefits, staff retreats, stripping out all of those things you need to burnout. And then your staff, primarily composed of people of color, because the nonprofit sector is the most diverse sector in our economy. And then your staff looks at you and says, wait a second. I thought you were on our team. I thought you were one of us, and now you're mistreating us? Now you're the seat of oppression. If that is not perfect storm for burnout for a nonprofit leader, particularly a Black woman and other women of color, it's a setup for burnout. And philanthropy plays a role in creating those conditions, and we can play a role in creating better conditions. So what can we do? One, we got to look at our overall funding approach. What are we doing that creates the condition for a leader to have to make those cuts, to have to make such difficult decisions in order to balance the budget and still deliver on the service mandate. So the work is getting done, but with fewer people, who are really stressed out and stretched thin and having a hard time.
So we’ve got to reevaluate our funding approaches and think about, again, this is when I reiterate from the trust-based philanthropy school of thought, we have to be serious about multi-year flexible funding. So with the Endeavor Fund Initiative that the fund started, launched last year, we made those grants for seven years, and we made those grants at sizable amounts or $500,000 a year for each of those seven years for a total of $3.5 million for each of the organizations in the Endeavor Fund cohort. Why did we do that? Because we wanted to ensure that those organizations could fulfill their commitment to their staff and pay living wages and offer benefits and opportunities for advancements and other things that create worker well-being for every person in the organization.
We also know that organizations need room to breathe and experiment. They need their opportunities for R&D as well. They need their opportunities to strengthen the programs that they have that attracted us to the organization in the first place. And we know that organizations can't do that on modest-sized annual grants. And we chose seven years because as we talked to nonprofit leaders, they said, that is about the time it takes for a change cycle to happen. It takes about seven years for a change to really take root and be enduring. And so we said, okay, then we will commit. We move from contribution to commitment, and we will commit for that seven-year change cycle, and we will make explicit that we care about worker well-being and wages in the organizations. And our grantees have told us that in some ways we've given them permission to talk to their boards that way to say, this funder says it cares about the well-being of the people inside this institution, and that includes our salaries, but we have to raise our salaries.
I had a really great conversation with one of our Endeavor Fund grantees. Two of the organizations where unionized and one of them was going into union negotiations around the time of receiving the news that it was going to be an Endeavor Fund grantee. And she told us how much confidence she could have going into those negotiations, and she was able to meet the requests that the staff had and staff wanted to set a ceiling floor for all positions, and they wanted paid time off if a staff person was engaged in some kind of educational activity that was going to help to improve their skills, both for the job they have, but for whatever it is they might do in the future. And this leader was able to approve those requests to set the ceiling for and to enable pay time off for educational purposes. But the reason she was able to do that is because she knew that she could count on seven years of funding that wouldn't cover all of the costs but would cover a portion of what it would take to make real that commitment.
And it was then that I recognized there's a bit of a movement afoot for nonprofits to unionize and unions think that they are organizing against the leader of the organization, and that's absolutely not true. The leaders of nonprofit organizations, they want to pay living wage salaries, they want to offer benefits, they want to offer paid time off, but they're on the annual cycle of raising a budget year to year. They just simply can't make those promises. And for the first time, one of my “aha” moments was, oh, in this unionized shop, staff thinks that they are organizing against management and petitioning management and the executive leader, but they're really organizing against philanthropy and petitioning us in philanthropy, but we're not in the room, and we can't be held accountable and we're not there.
Darren Isom:
Very true. And I'm going to jump just a little bit, because I want to definitely spend some time talking through one of my favorite conversations with you, and it's one that I enjoy when we catch up, which is not often enough, but working in the social sector, we're faced with real issues daily, and it can be really easy to get wrapped up in the intensity of the moment and the work and the complex problems that we're trying to solve, but we also have to balance both this dealing with the intensity of the issues in the moment with staying present in the moment, living in the now, and also thinking about the fullness of time and how we're both extremely important and unimportant at the same time.
This is such an interesting contradiction. And I've just loved this conversation, because it's always just very inspiring for me, but it probably shouldn't be to be reminded how unimportant I am, but I think it is important to think about the fullness of time. And so I would just love for you to just share how we've engaged in that conversation and what that means to you as well, this fullness of time piece, and how that can actually act as a motivator when you think about this work.
Jamie Allison:
Thinking about the fullness of time gives me a tremendous amount of hope, and I do find it inspiring and motivating when I think about the fullness of time. So I'm not sure when this episode will be released, but we are talking on the day of the anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education. That wasn't that long ago. Brown v. Board of Education wasn't that long ago. Loving v. Virginia wasn't that long ago. It wasn't that long ago that as a woman, as a Black woman, I couldn't have a bank account, I couldn't have a credit card, I couldn't buy a piece of property unless a man said that I could. One of the things in The 1619 Project and the writing that Jones did around that time reminded me that I am in the first generation of Black people that hasn't been subjected to legal discrimination.
Darren Isom:
Yep, you're right.
Jamie Allison:
And here I did, in my home in San Francisco, on a podcast with you talking about leading a 72-year-old family foundation, in the fullness of time that is possible. All kinds of medications have been invented that keep us alive longer. In the fullness of time, generally speaking, life gets better. And part of why I started with the invocation is not to say that things aren't hard right now. Things are hard right now. Things are hard right now. But I believe, just as Valerie Kaur says in her prayer for us, that that darkness doesn't have to be the end. In fact, that darkness is the origin of something beautiful, of birth and many, many, many new beginnings that can be and will be better for all of us. And so I bring that perspective and that long range of thinking to my personal life and to my professional work.
Darren Isom:
Yes. And I'm reminded as well, my sister who lives in Charlotte was complaining to my mother. I have a nephew, Nico, who's wonderful, that it's not easy raising a Black boy in today's world. And my mother reminded her that our family's been in this country now for some nine generations. Most of them have been in New Orleans. And she told her that of those nine generations, she assured her that it was probably easiest to raise a Black boy now than any of the generations before. And I think that we can lose perspective in that moment. We can lose the fullness of time, it’s very comforting for me. It reminds me of how much progress we've mad, and also in many ways it's a reminder of how much work there is to be done, but also gives us some means of celebrating the work that has been done to date as well.
So thanks for sharing it with me because sometimes I'll stop and think about the fullness of time and go back into the call and go back into the work and go back into the room. So it's really reassuring. And with that, I also want to note it's so important to remain joyful, especially during hard times. And as Black people, that's something we are really good at joyfulness. I would love for you to just share, how do you mindfully practice joy in your life, in your work? What are your self-care go-tos?
Jamie Allison:
Well, one, both of my parents are deceased, and I carry them with me every single day. I wear something of my mother's every single day. I think about them a lot and they are a source of joy for me because I have a lot of questions that I wish that I could ask them. And I do ask them, and I'm in conversation with them all the time. Their love for me was immense. They were completely dedicated to me and poured everything they had into me to prepare me for a life that they couldn't necessarily articulate, that they had never seen or experienced, but they did everything they could so that I could live this life. I'm pretty sure my mother didn't have a passport. And yet, as a youngster, as a teenager, I had a passport, and I traveled and they exposed me to so much and encouraged me to live the biggest life possible and raised me to believe that I could do and be anything. And I believed them.
Darren Isom:
Jamie, I joke all the time, how my grandparents and my parents would tell me all the time, you can do anything you put your mind to. And the way I really believe that, right?
Jamie Allison:
I believe them. And they created such a nurturing environment for me that I go out into the world every day, even though there are all kinds of signs and signals that say, maybe you don't belong here and we don't want you here. But when Jamie goes out into the world every day, I know that I belong. I know who I am, I know what I'm worth, I know how smart I am. I mentioned both my parents were deceased. And when my mom died about 10 years ago, I was at the house going through things, and she'd kept every school paper, every drawing from kindergarten. So I got to see all of my things. And then there was some worksheet that I did based on handwriting. It looked like maybe first or second grade, and I don't know what this assignment was about, but the assignment said, name three things are true. And the first thing on that list that little Jamie Allison, as maybe a first-grader wrote was, I know I'm smart.
The second thing on the list was, I know I'm pretty, it was the second thing on the list, me a little Black girl in Chattanooga, Tennessee. And then the third thing was about a dead president. But I was like, I know this person is dead. I was like, okay. But to be a child and for an adult to say, name three things you know are true. And for me to be able to say, I'm brilliant, job well done parents, job well done. One of my joys in life is getting to work with young people through my work at the foundation. And we have young people on our team, Bay Fellows, and they tell us what to do and we learn so much from them.
And I was traveling with some young people at a conference. Two of our Bay Fellows and some young people from the Skillman Foundation were presenting together at the Grantmakers for Education Conference last year. And at one point, one of the young men said, one of the young men who's from Detroit said, you can't invite me to a table that's already mine. And though I had never heard it expressed that way before, that's what my parents gave me. And that is a sense of joy for me. You can't take anything away from me that's already mine.
Darren Isom:
Or what's the quote? You can take nothing from me, but notes. How about that?
Jamie Allison:
Absolutely. The other thing that brings me tremendous joy is the arts, music in particular. I cannot get through a single day without music. I listen to music every day. I sing all day, every day. Live performance is the best. I serve on the board of SF Jazz. We just had our big gala, and I had the time of my life. I still feel energized from it, getting to see live music performed and watch the creativity, the sacredness, the other worldliness of people coming together either alone or as an ensemble to make something new that can move thousands of people, millions of people. Again, back to those ideas about connections and our circle of care and interdependence and freedom being about us being linked together, going to witness live music and being in a room with hundreds of people or being outside with hundreds of people who are having that shared experience and getting to be ecstatic at the same time? There's nothing better than that.
Darren Isom:
That's a reminder of our shared humanity, for sure. And as I close out, you began your career in philanthropy over two decades ago, which given that you started at 10, so I don't know how you manage that. But given such a tenured profession, and I'm sure there are years to go as well from an impact perspective, what keeps you in the work?
Jamie Allison:
One of the things I've been thinking about because I didn't start this work when I was 10, and though I still feel energetic and fresh, and I still have a sense of wonder and curiosity about the work, I'm going to be an elder soon, and that's a responsibility I don't take lightly. And so I've been thinking about, what are the things I need to do?
Darren Isom:
Jamie, can you just stop for a second and just, that needs to just sit with me, because I'm reminded of this all the time, you're like, oh, I'm not only the adult in the room, I'm getting to be the old person in the room. So yeah.
Jamie Allison:
I'm going to be an elder soon, and what a privilege, what a sacred privilege to get to be on this planet long enough that I might have something to provide to the young people who are going to take my place. And that's part of the reason why we have young people on the team. I think of the foundation as the Young People's Foundation. It's been a long time since I was a young person, and the work I do is about now, it's all about the generations to come in the fullness of time. What are the things I do now so that your nephew, my godsons, your nephew's children, my godson's children, so that they are in a world that is better, more just, easier to raise their children? What are the things that I have to do now?
And so thinking about what it means to become an elder is part of what's keeping me grounded. Having young people on the team and getting to learn from their experiences and their perspective and making sure that I am moving in ways that's setting them up for success and to be ready to take on these roles. It's really inspiring, and it's humbling, and it requires a new kind of learning on my part and a new way for me, a different way for me to think about myself and my role and my continued commitment to this grand social experiment of being on this planet together.
Darren Isom:
Yes. And so just as we close out, this season of Dreaming in Color, we're highlighting mentors who have paved the way for us as leaders and truly impacted our lives for the better. Would love to give you the space to call out a mentor or even a mentee, we all define mentorship differently, who you've had who has really been impactful in your life and career.
Jamie Allison:
There is a person that is on my mind. Her name is Akaya Windwood, and she is a mentor to me and a role model for me for what it means to be an elder and to use the wisdom and the connections that you've gained over time to invest in who's coming next. And she does that with every fiber of her being. And in a really difficult moment, she sent… I'm on a very active WhatsApp group with Akaya and other women whom she brings together so that we can support each other in our lives and learn and grow from one another. And she sent us this message during a difficult time.
She says, "Beloveds, we're watching as patriarchy, White supremacy and capitalism die. Please do not get distracted by the stories deliberately designed to dishearten us. Enormous archaic systems are falling apart. And while I'd hoped for a graceful falling, demolition is rarely easy. So trust. Trust yourself. Trust each other and the universe. And love, love yourselves, love each other and the universe. And remember that there is nothing wrong, not with ourselves, with each other, nor the universe. We were created to lead in these times. Each of us chooses to show up now, and each of us carries something no one else can. Trust and celebrate that. I'm so glad to be on this journey with you all and cannot wait to see what we collectively will bring to the world."
Darren Isom:
And Jamie, with that AME tradition, you've given us both an invocation and a benediction. So I have nothing to add after that. Thank you so much for your time. This season, we're going to be asking folks FOR their theme song. It's a song that they'd like to walk out or walk on stage to, and I’d love to ask you, what is that song for you?
Jamie Allison:
So anyone who's ever worked with me at an event, I'll always ask, oh, do I get a walkout song? And I have two. My first, this is not going to come at any surprise, is Prince, “Baby I'm a Star.”
Darren Isom:
Yes. Sounds about right.
Jamie Allison:
And my second choice is Diana Ross, “I’m Coming Out.”
Darren Isom:
And don't even get me started, with me as a child watching Diana Ross perform in Central Park singing “I'm Coming Out” in my living room. My mother must've had some clues then.
Jamie Allison:
Okay, listen, don't get me started on watching Diana Ross perform in Las Vegas.
Darren Isom:
Stop. Stop.
Jamie Allison:
You can watch it on YouTube. I still watch it today.
Darren Isom:
Nice. Very nice. It's been wonderful chatting with you, Jamie, and I look forward to our follow-up conversation in person real soon.
Jamie Allison:
This was really fun. Thank you so much, Darren.
Darren Isom:
Some months ago I dreamt that my grandma Lucinda, long gone, visited me here in California. I made a big old pot of red beans to celebrate her visit to ensure that I hadn't forgotten home. The beans were delicious, and we sat around the table for hours laughing and talking, because sometimes the ancestors visit you in your dreams to let you know that everything's going to be all right. And in that dream, I recreated at my kitchen table, the kitchen scene that I'd known as a child, with my Grandma Lucinda so patiently and lovingly coaching and consoling all who visited in-person or by phone. Her very presence was calming. And on the crazier days when the world seems to have gone completely mad and there's no sense to be made, I'm reminded of my grandma's voice, warm and clear, comforting a disconsolate friend on the other end of the phone or there at the kitchen table. Don't worry, she'd say, don't worry, dear. We're going to get on the other side of this. This, I promise you.
And while my last seven grandparents passed some 15 years ago, their words, like those of my Grandma Lucinda, live with me now more than ever. They, like Jamie, understood the fullness of time and that where there is love, there is faith, and where there is faith, there is hope. And where there is hope, there is purpose. British mathematician, logician, philosopher, Bertrand Russell once shared words that I've held onto since reading them my freshman year at Howard.
"I allow myself to hope that the world will emerge from its present troubles, that it will one day learn to give the direction of its affairs, not to cruel swindlers and scoundrels, but to men possessed of wisdom and courage. I see before me a shining vision, a world where none are hungry, where few are ill, where work is pleasant and not excessive. Where kindly feeling is common and where minds release from fear, create delight for eye, ear, and heart. Do not say this is impossible. It is not impossible. I do not say it can be done tomorrow, but I do say that it could be done within a thousand years, if only men would bend their minds to the achievement of the kind of happiness that should be distinctive of man." And while my faith isn't as strong as my grandparents, my good taste and home training a little faith goes a long ways. And as my Grandma Lucinda promised, we will get on the other side of this. And as my fellow Californian, Jamie would agree, what a shining vision awaits us there. California for each of us.
This season, we're putting some music with the magic and have collected the theme songs from all of our guests and collaborators to create a Spotify playlist for our listeners to enjoy. Find it on Spotify under “Dreaming in Color: The Playlist.” Thanks for listening to Dreaming in Color. A special shout-out to all the folks who make this magic happen. From StudioPod Media, our wonderful producer, Denise Savas, audio engineer, Theresa Buchanan, and graphic designer, Diana Jimenez. And from Reel Works, our video production team: Jenny Loo and Steven Czaja. A huge shoutout to our ever brilliant Bridgespan production team, Cora Daniels, Christian Celeste Tate, Christina Pistorius, Ryan Wenzel. And this season's guest hosts, Jasmine Reliford, Nithin Iyengar, and Angela Maldonado. And of course, our fabulous creative director, Ami Diané. What a squad, you all. Be sure to rate, subscribe, and review wherever you listen to podcasts. Catch you next time.
