SpeakVolumes by bluePrint

Kicking off our second season, SpeakVolumes host Hanna G. brings the indomitable, powerful, and blisteringly chill Sabrina Labossiere and her story of growing up All New York. Jump on this episode and hear about the bricks that you lay in your life become the road you walk. Origin stories are the most foundational tales. Come hear Sabrina's story and what made her who she is.

In Part Two of our conversation with the founder of the SLAPcollective Sabrina Labossiere, host Hanna G. asks about bottom lines - fo her guest, for life, for the heart. Sabrina starts to see how the sweat she was pouring into the work she did before the SLAPcollective was just that: sweat. There was no joy, no euphoria. When it came time for Sabrina to leave her earlier work, there was no love lost between her and her old work.  The new work? All kinds of love. 

Sabrina and host Hanna G. take apart the joys and pains that drive the creative process, and we find what pushed Sabrina to the writing, while the writing pulled Sabrina into the world of her nonprofit, her creativity, and her work. Part Three: Tears takes us through the mix of powerful influences that drive the journey to be of a community, a collective, a creative survival.  

In the final installment  of Season 1 of SpeakVolumes, Hanna G hosts the incomparable and effervescent Soffiyah Elijah, the Founder and President of Alliance of Families for Justice.  We can think of no better guest to cap off our 2020 debut.  Born amid the original civil rights protests of MLK and Malcom X, Soffiyah shares how her personal experiences as a black woman in America helped her find her purpose as a teacher, a criminal justice attorney and an advocate for prisoner rights. As the BLM movement has taken on renewed urgency, never has her story been more timely.

In the second episode of the Soffiyah Elijah story, Hanna G guides the conversation with “the Queen” from the Ivied halls of Cornell University to the responsibilities of being a young revolutionary to the role of popular culture--music and entertainment in forming our identities. Along the way, Soffiyah reminds us that understanding history, finding our pride and our voices is key to finding our purpose.

In this last and final episode with Ms. Soffiyah Elijah, we focus on the American prison system and the unique approach to helping the incarcerated that the Alliance of Families for Justice is taking during these most bizarre times of COVID-19 and the BLM movement as the backdrop.  With every story, Soffiyah inspires with her infectious energy and her ferocious spirit, reminding us, that “we ain’t got no time to be tired!!!”

In this episode of SpeakVolumes, Hanna G reconnects with an old childhood friend, Dr and Pastor John Tyus. Through some shared memories, they talk about the sting of callous teacher’s quips and how alienation from our own identities leads to buried tears. A child of the Church and the ministry, Dr. John’s journey took many twists and turns, from an obsession with Michael Jackson impersonations to, trouble in suburbs of Columbus, Ohio, to the loss of his ultimate hero, before he discovered his purpose leading the ID Movement and providing support for fatherless young black boys.

Yeah, we all remember childhood and if we are lucky we have some happy memories.  But, when you think about it, growing up for most of us is a cruel, hard journey that requires at least some perseverance. For today’s guest, Dr. and Pastor John Tyus, resilience was borne of a search for his identity, a process that took this D-student  to seminary and to writing a PhD thesis. In this episode he poses the provocative question, what does it really mean to be a young black man? And what role does anger play in that identity?

In this final episode of SpeakVolumes with Dr. and Pastor John Tyus, we hear about addiction...yes, addiction to purpose…. and how that purpose has been tested beyond all belief in this unimaginable year of 2020.  How has the ID Movement changed in the age of COVID-19 and Black Lives Matter? For Pastor Tyus, there is a change afoot that is delivering a new hopefulness.  Listen to this vision for hopefulness in the renewed energy to fight injustice that today’s challenges have unleashed!

In another addition of SpeakVolumes: Corona Chronicles, Hanna G sits down with Marty Medina the founder of Why Not Care, a service non-profit that looks to take care of the unmet needs of people in his childhood neighborhood of the Lower East Side in New York City. Marty knows poverty and reflects that he was an outsider, looking in at his life, where his art, not his words was his way to cope. In this animated convo, Marty gets right into it..talking about his multi-cultural heritage, and how the mix of gangs and politics, stints as a “brown boy”in Buffalo and Staten Island, life in the Smith House projects, traveling by skateboard, and exposure to multiple AIDS related tragedies inspired him to find his purpose.

In this second episode of our conversation with Marty Medina, the inspiration behind the NYC based non-profit, Why Not Care, Hanna and Marty reflect on tough love, tee shirt art, the power of faith and positivity, and how the tragedies that can lead us to ask God, “Why Me?” can also lead us to be called: “Why Not Me?” Marty shares his journey from working in the mailroom of the community center to discovering his gifts in graphic design to finding a vision for giving back to his people. What started as one care package turned into a running multi-purpose community events to inspire learning, plug into resources and win free haircuts!

In this final episode of Corona Chronicles with Marty Medina and Why Not Care, Hanna G plumbs the challenges of running community events in an era of COVID-19. Creating care packages for students, homeless, hungry families and essential workers, Marty shares how he has built a coalition of the willing spanning from Puerto Rico to the Bronx, bringing corporates, rappers and DJs, caretakers, educators and churches together. From serve first! To finding the resources that are available to you, Marty shares indispensable counsel... “be like water”….formless but all powerful and vital.

In this first episode of our Corona Chronicles, the effervescent Alvin Irby, founder and Chief Reading Inspirer of Barbershop Books joins us to talk about his journey from winning crocheting championships as a young black man in Little Rock, Arkansas, to watching PBS, to running one of the most innovative non-profits in the country attacking childhood literacy. An educator, social entrepreneur and comedian; with humor and grace Alvin poses and answers the questions: “what would happen if I tried my hardest?”

In this episode of SpeakVolumes:  the Corona Chronicles, our conversation with the irrepressible Alvin Irby, the founder and social entrepreneur behind Barbershop Books, turns to the particular challenges of inspiring a love of reading among black boys. A colorful and gifted storyteller, Alvin shares with us the concept of “childhood reading trauma” and the unique importance of barbers as role models in today’s urban setting. See why Alvin believes that by creating safe spaces for children to read, he is planting the seeds for true cultural and community change.

In this final installment of SpeakVolumes: Corona Chronicles, the effervescent Alvin Irby, founder and Chief Reading Inspirer of Barbershop Books, sits with Hanna G and gets serious about the unique challenges that the Coronavirus lockdown has posed to kids. From the failures of remote learning, the lack of access to resources, especially books and the overall environment of doom and fear, the pair tackle how we might live in the “New Normal” acknowledging for many of us, “its ok to not be okay”.t?”

In this launch episode of SpeakVolumes-thebluePrint.org co-founders Hanna G and Lisa S. talk about a fate-filled and personally wrenching journey that brought two unlikely souls together to harness personal pain as a way of finding our life’s purpose. The tortuous path from call centers to Wall Street to lawsuits to founding a non-profit whose mission is establishing first time endowments for grassroots community charities is, at turns, a story filled with sadness and regret, the loss and discovery of identities, the deeply painful but necessary discussions of racism and unconscious bias, as well as a tale of love, respect and laughter. But it starts with Hanna G discovering that in America, her blackness is a whole different thing.

In this second installment of SpeakVolumes, Hanna G. and Lisa S. continue the story of how thebluePrint.org came to be. Touching on the experiences of first generation Americans, the hypocrisy of corporate meritocracy, and the power of racism to break multi-generational dreams, we explore how  painful the truth can be.When someone you respect confronts you with with your own behavior and literally forces you to wake up.  Talk about getting ‘woke.

In this final installment of the Hanna G. and Lisa S. origin story of thebluePrint.org, we talk about hitting bottom; anger and sadness, being clueless and experiencing shame - oh, and quitting six-figure jobs and initiating a lawsuit. Ultimately, unpacking the trauma of 2018 allowed us to think about how to attack a broken world with what we knew -which was finance and how to invest. The founding of thebluePrint.org was the answer to flipping the non-profit model on its head---with the goal of attacking racism and the power dynamics in traditional philanthropy.  By seeding first time endowments for community organizations that serve our youth, we hope to contribute to healing the next generation.

In this episode of SpeakVolumes, we introduce you to the wild and wonderful Kizzy Cassell, the founder and Executive Director of Pink Roses by Kizzy.  Kizzy is an example of a natural born and serial entrepreneur who literally stumbled onto non-profit work as a reaction to her experiences of struggle as a child of the drug culture, a black woman, and a working mom. Hanna G and Kizzy cover everything from growing up in Columbus, Ohio, to encounters with the law and jail-time to her best memories as a stripper.

Hanna G and Kizzy Cassell continue the conversation in this episode of SpeakVolumes, discussing the opportunities to help young girls find their identities in a society dominated by social media, bullying, sexism and misogyny.

In this final convo with the founder of Pink Roses by Kizzy, Kizzy brings her colleague and photographer to sit and weigh in on the challenges faced by young women of color in the times we live in.  

In this episode of SpeakVolumes we meet social activist, Jennifer Ching of North Star Fund as she describes her journey from the wilds of suburban New Jersey as the child of Korean/Chinese immigrants, through a chapter as a community organizer in Boston and long nights as a corporate lawyer to her present role leading a NYC non-profit.  In their opening conversation, our host Hanna G and Jennifer tackle everything from the failure of the American Dream, to racism and white supremacy, to the struggle to find the right substitute for designer jeans.

In this episode of SpeakVolumes Jennifer Ching, Executive Director of North Star Fund, joins host Hanna G to talk about the work and the inspiration behind funding NYC community non-profits.  They jump from Black Panthers to Frederick Douglass; acknowledging the importance of grassroots leaders willing to buck traditional philanthropy and the corrosive power dynamics that traditionally dominate it.

In this final installment with guest Jennifer Ching, Executive Director of North Star Fund, Hanna G plumbs the issue of “what keeps us up at night” touching on financial insecurity, privilege, apocalypse, social media echo chambers, and the world we leave our kids. Today’s generation is undoubtedly hurting. Pain, we learn is unfortunate, but is the motivator that pushes our lives towards urgency and purpose and real change.

In this episode of SpeakVolumes, we introduce you to the charming, charismatic and exceptionally talented Ty Jones, Producing and Artistic Director of the Classical Theater of Harlem. In this opening episode, Ty and Hanna discuss discovering their blackness, poverty, different regional flavors of racism, seeing KKK signs and being kids of divorce.This is a journey of childhood that took him from East NY to trailer parks in Missouri, Germany, St. Louis and Delaware only to come back to his roots, settling in Harlem. While sharing memories of playing in the ’hood, code-switching, and treasuring banana seat bicycles, Ty and Hanna explore how one can find an unlikely passion in theater and turn that into community activism.

In this episode of SpeakVolumes, we continue the conversation with Ty Jones, Producing and Artistic Director of the Classical Theater of Harlem and leading actor in the TV series, “Power”. Here, Hanna G and Ty take on the ironic concept of “black excellence” and the power of language to define the edges of racism. They discuss Martin and Malcolm, Nate Turner and ultimately choosing the long game to drive change. Using Shakespeare and Dickens to demonstrate that we are all more similar than we are different; Ty focuses on the message that what makes art powerfully universal is when it is made authentic and relatable to all communities: Choice is key.

In this episode of SpeakVolumes, we wrap up the conversation with Ty Jones, Producing and Artistic Director of the Classical Theater of Harlem. Hanna G and Ty talk about the financial struggles that non-profits and arts organizations, in particular, face. Their convo weaves through the intricate relationships between the limousine liberals, local politics, gentrification, racism, immigration, historically black colleges and cultural heritage and creating a powerful black middle class in America.

Host Hanna Gebremedhin and her business partner Lisa Shalett have launched Speak Volumes to bring conversations about non-profit innovation to the next generation of social justice warriors, advocates, and artists.