Podcasts about distinguished service

On Todays podcast, I speak with an Australian Army 1 RAR / 2 Cav veteran. This is a story of the tenacity of Linton "HARRY" Harris, joining the army not once but twice, in his quest for purpose. Harry's 1st term of service included deployment to Somalia, Africa, as a 19-year-old. Re-enlisting after a 7-year break, Harry's 2nd term of service included 2 tours to Iraq, resulting in the awarding of the Commendation for Distinguished Service. After service, seeking the quest for a purpose that is often an issue for Veterans, Harry rose to the position of VP of the Tasmanian RSL, only to be betrayed by that organisation, while fighting for the plight of a homeless veteran, leading to a mental breakdown, and suicidal ideation, due to the RSLs treachery. An incredible story that goes to show you don't have to be in special forces to serve at the pointiest end. Presenter: Adam Blum Guest: Linton “Harry” Harris Editor: Kyle Watkins

In this Pharmacy Leadership episode, Allison Porter is joined by the Section of Inpatient Care Practitioners 2024 Distinguished Service Awardee, Linda Spooner, to discuss what membership within the section and ASHP means to her and how it helped her develop as a pharmacy practice leader during her career.   The information presented during the podcast reflects solely the opinions of the presenter. The information and materials are not, and are not intended as, a comprehensive source of drug information on this topic. The contents of the podcast have not been reviewed by ASHP, and should neither be interpreted as the official policies of ASHP, nor an endorsement of any product(s), nor should they be considered as a substitute for the professional judgment of the pharmacist or physician.

You've seen Dr. Motta on Restoring Darkness (https://restoringdarkness.com/episode/120-blue-light-leds-are-an-immune-suppressor-proven-to-cause-cancer-dr-mario-motta) now he's on Get a Grip on Lighting to tell you about the hazards of blue-rich LED's. No matter how some might push back, the evidence is irrefutable: blue light LED's suppress melatonin which can lead to cancer. When Dr. Motta's and the American Medical Association's report was released in 2016, the Lighting Deep State was “not polite” in their rebuttal. But it seems they have come around in recent years. Dr. Motta had been in practice at North Shore Medical Center in Salem, Massachusetts, since 1983, recently retiring in 2022. He is a graduate of Boston College, with a BS in physics and biology, and of Tufts Medical School. He is board certified in Internal medicine and Cardiology, and is a fellow of the American College of Cardiology, and of the American Society of Nuclear Cardiology. He is an associate professor of medicine at Tufts University School of Medicine. Dr. Motta has long been active in organized medicine, both in the American Medical Association (AMA) and in the Massachusetts Medical Society (MMS), holding a number of posts through the years. He is a past President of the MMS. He was elected and served 8 years on the AMA council of Science and Public Health, and then was elected to the Board of Trustees of the AMA in 2018, recently completing his term. In May of 2023 at its annual meeting, the MMS awarded Dr Motta its highest honor, the “Award for Distinguished Service.” Dr Motta also has a lifelong interest in astronomy, and has hand built a number of telescopes and observatories through the years to do astronomical research, including his entirely homemade 32 inch F6 relay telescope located in Gloucester, MA. He has been awarded several national awards in astronomy, including the Las Cumbras award from the Astronomical Society of the Pacific in 2003, and also the Walter Scott Houston award from the northeast section of the Astronomical League, and in 2017 the Henry Olcott Award from the American Association of Variable star Observers (AAVSO). He has served as a president of the ATM's of Boston, and has served as a council member of the AAVSO, and is a past president as well. He has also served on the Board of the IDA. He has worked on light pollution issues, and published several white papers on LP as a member of the AMA council of science and public health. He served on a UN committee (COPUOS) representing the AMA on light pollution for a worldwide effort to control LP and satellite proliferation. Finally, several years ago the International Astronomical Union awarded Dr Motta an asteroid in part for his work on light pollution as well as amateur research, asteroid 133537MarioMotta. Connect with Dr. Motta: www.mariomottamd.com Connect with The Soft Lights Foundation: www.softlights.org

In this Pharmacy Leadership Episode, Cher Enderby sits down with the Section of Pharmacy Educators Awardee Lea Eiland to discuss what membership within the section and ASHP means to her and how it has helped her develop as a pharmacy practice leader. The information presented during the podcast reflects solely the opinions of the presenter. The information and materials are not, and are not intended as, a comprehensive source of drug information on this topic. The contents of the podcast have not been reviewed by ASHP, and should neither be interpreted as the official policies of ASHP, nor an endorsement of any product(s), nor should they be considered as a substitute for the professional judgment of the pharmacist or physician.

In the latest episode of Contracting Conversations, we talk to Sally Schopmeyer, president of Maintenance Inc. Sally recently received BSCAI's Walter L. Cook Award for Distinguished Service, recognizing her years of dedication to the association and the industry at large. She's spoken at several BSCAI events, been an active member and served as BSCAI President in 2011. When it comes to helping others navigate strategic realignment and being fearless in the face of change, Sally is a go-to. Tune in to learn how she built her career alongside peers at BSCAI, the disruption she's navigated professionally, her thoughts on challenges ahead with the current labor market and ways to invite the next generation of leadership into the fold. Listen and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or anywhere you listen to podcasts. Learn more about BSCAI's CLEAN Award winners. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Connect With BSCAI Online bscai.org bscai.org/exec facebook.com/bscaipage twitter.com/BSCAI linkedin.com/company/building-service-contractors-association-international/ bscai.org/About/Awards-Scholarships

Dr. Philip J. Landrigan is a pediatrician and a public health doctor. He is Professor of Biology, Director of the Program for Global Public Health and the Common Good, and Director of the Global Observatory on Planetary Health at the Schiller Institute for Integrated Science and Society at Boston College. He is also Professor Emeritus of Pediatrics and Preventive Medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. In his work, Phil's goal is to better understand how toxic exposures in the environment harm human health. As a pediatrician, he focuses primarily on the impacts on children's health. On the public health side, he aims to harness science to prevent toxic exposures to keep kids healthy and prevent disease. His research has spanned many areas, including the health impacts of lead poisoning, air pollution, pesticides, plastic pollution, and chemical pollution. When he's not working, Phil loves to spend his time outdoors, particularly hiking and kayaking. He is also an avid reader and enjoys spending the evenings sitting down with a good book. Phil completed his undergraduate studies in biology at Boston College and earned his MD from Harvard Medical School. After an internship at Cleveland Metropolitan General Hospital, he completed his residency at Boston Children's Hospital. Phil also earned a MS degree with distinction in Occupational Medicine from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine and the University of London. Phil worked at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, and Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai before joining the faculty at Boston College. He also spent a sabbatical working at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Phil has earned numerous awards and honors throughout his career, including the Gold Medal for Distinguished Service to Humanity from the National Institute of Social Sciences, Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Council for Science and the Environment, the Lifetime Achievement Award from Healthy Child Healthy World, the Child Health Champion Award from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Meritorious Service Medal of the U.S. Public Health Service, multiple Commendation Medals from the Navy and Marine Corps, the Secretary of Defense Medal for Outstanding Public Service, the National Defense Service Medal, and many others. He is also an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine and the American Epidemiological Society. In addition, he is an elected Fellow of the American College of Preventive Medicine, New York Academy of Medicine, New York Academy of Sciences, American College of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, American College of Epidemiology, Royal Society of Medicine, and the American Academy of Pediatrics.

In this Pharmacy Leadership Episode, Kelli Johnson sits down with the Pharmacy Technician Forum (now The Pharmacy Technician Society) Awardee Charlotte Hook to discuss what forum membership, TPTS, and ASHP means to her and how it has helped her develop as a pharmacy practice leader.  The information presented during the podcast reflects solely the opinions of the presenter. The information and materials are not, and are not intended as, a comprehensive source of drug information on this topic. The contents of the podcast have not been reviewed by ASHP, and should neither be interpreted as the official policies of ASHP, nor an endorsement of any product(s), nor should they be considered as a substitute for the professional judgment of the pharmacist or physician.

In the second of our powerful two-part conversation, Emily Kircher-Morris and Dr. William Dodson discuss the complexities of ADHD, emotional dysregulation and its subset, and Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria (RSD). He explains how RSD can manifest in ADHDers, the impact of childhood experiences, and the importance of understanding and treating these conditions. There is a need for updated diagnostic criteria and effective treatment strategies, including medication and supportive environments. They dig into the complexities of ADHD, including management strategies, and the importance of understanding the overlap between social anxiety and mood disorders. TAKEAWAYS Emotional dysregulation is often overlooked in ADHD diagnoses. RSD is a specific condition affecting many with ADHD. The emotional pain from RSD can be both emotional and physical, and can lead to significant life impairments. Childhood experiences can exacerbate RSD but are not the sole cause. Medication can be effective in managing emotional dysregulation. Understanding RSD is essential for clinicians working with ADHD patients. Preventative strategies are key in managing RSD episodes. Sleep, nutrition, structure, and routine play vital roles in emotional regulation. Social anxiety and rejection sensitivity can coexist but are distinct. The research project Emily mentions in her closing thoughts. The sign-up window is open for a limited time, for the Neurodiversity University Educator Hub! Join a community of like-minded teachers, administrators, and advocates who are passionate about supporting neurodivergent kids. It's a welcoming space to share ideas that will help make your classrooms and school districts better places for all students. The Educator Hub is available via an app for your smartphone, or online through a browser. Click and join us. Dr. Bill Dodson is a board-certified adult psychiatrist who has specialized in adults with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder for the last 27 years. In recognition of his clinical contributions to the field of ADHD he was named a Life Fellow of the APA in 2012. He was the 2006 recipient of the national Maxwell J. Schleifer Award for Distinguished Service to Persons with Disabilities. His contributions to the field of ADHD include: The only currently available methodology for the fine-tuning of ADHD medications. The concept of Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria and its treatment with medications. The first non-behavioral theory of what ADHD is and how it can be treated successfully with an emphasis on what goes right rather than what goes wrong. Dr. Dodson has a book for clinicians, patients, and parents on the practice of ADHD medicine coming out at the end of 2025. BACKGROUND READING Bill Dodson's website Dr Dodson's contributions to ADDitude magazine

In part one of a two-part conversation, Emily Kircher-Morris and Dr. William Dodson discuss the complexities of ADHD, emotional dysregulation and its subset, and Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria (RSD). He explains how RSD can manifest in ADHDers, the impact of childhood experiences, and the importance of understanding and treating these conditions. There is a need for updated diagnostic criteria and effective treatment strategies, including medication and supportive environments. They dig into the complexities of ADHD, including management strategies, and the importance of understanding the overlap between social anxiety and mood disorders. TAKEAWAYS Emotional dysregulation is often overlooked in ADHD diagnoses. RSD is a specific condition affecting many with ADHD. The emotional pain from RSD can be both emotional and physical, and can lead to significant life impairments. Childhood experiences can exacerbate RSD but are not the sole cause. Medication can be effective in managing emotional dysregulation. Understanding RSD is essential for clinicians working with ADHD patients. Preventative strategies are key in managing RSD episodes. Sleep, nutrition, structure, and routine play vital roles in emotional regulation. Social anxiety and rejection sensitivity can coexist but are distinct. The window is open for Educator Hub sign-up for a limited time, beginning January 31. Join a community of like-minded teachers, administrators, and advocates who are passionate about supporting neurodivergent kids. Click and join us. Dr. Bill Dodson is a board-certified adult psychiatrist who has specialized in adults with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder for the last 27 years. In recognition of his clinical contributions to the field of ADHD he was named a Life Fellow of the APA in 2012. He was the 2006 recipient of the national Maxwell J. Schleifer Award for Distinguished Service to Persons with Disabilities. His contributions to the field of ADHD include: The only currently available methodology for the fine-tuning of ADHD medications. The concept of Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria and its treatment with medications. The first non-behavioral theory of what ADHD is and how it can be treated successfully with an emphasis on what goes right rather than what goes wrong. Dr. Dodson has a book for clinicians, patients, and parents on the practice of ADHD medicine coming out at the end of 2025. BACKGROUND READING Bill Dodson's website Dr Dodson's contributions to ADDitude magazine

This is one of the more mind-blowing episodes we've recorded. So much we hadn't heard about before. Light pollution at night suppresses melatonin and can lead to cancer and the lighting industry deep state tried to intimidate and silence Dr Motta in 2016. That's just the tip of the information iceberg that Dr. Motta reveals. Blue light is great during the day, but stay away from 469 - 489 nanometers at night. Dr. Motta had been in practice at North Shore Medical Center in Salem, Massachusetts, since 1983, recently retiring in 2022. He is a graduate of Boston College, with a BS in physics and biology, and of Tufts Medical School. He is board certified in Internal medicine and Cardiology, and is a fellow of the American College of Cardiology, and of the American Society of Nuclear Cardiology. He is an associate professor of medicine at Tufts University School of Medicine. Dr. Motta has long been active in organized medicine, both in the American Medical Association (AMA) and in the Massachusetts Medical Society (MMS), holding a number of posts through the years. He is a past President of the MMS. He was elected and served 8 years on the AMA council of Science and Public Health, and then was elected to the Board of Trustees of the AMA in 2018, recently completing his term. In May of 2023 at its annual meeting, the MMS awarded Dr Motta its highest honor, the “Award for Distinguished Service.” Dr Motta also has a lifelong interest in astronomy, and has hand built a number of telescopes and observatories through the years to do astronomical research, including his entirely homemade 32 inch F6 relay telescope located in Gloucester, MA. He has been awarded several national awards in astronomy, including the Las Cumbras award from the Astronomical Society of the Pacific in 2003, and also the Walter Scott Houston award from the northeast section of the Astronomical League, and in 2017 the Henry Olcott Award from the American Association of Variable star Observers (AAVSO). He has served as a president of the ATM's of Boston, and has served as a council member of the AAVSO, and is a past president as well. He has also served on the Board of the IDA. He has worked on light pollution issues, and published several white papers on LP as a member of the AMA council of science and public health. He served on a UN committee (COPUOS) representing the AMA on light pollution for a worldwide effort to control LP and satellite proliferation. Finally, several years ago the International Astronomical Union awarded Dr Motta an asteroid in part for his work on light pollution as well as amateur research, asteroid 133537MarioMotta. 

Retired legendary undercover agent Joaquin “Jack” Garcia shares his thoughts about being honored on November 21, 2024, by the FBI Agents Association (FBIAA) as their G-Man Honors – Salute to FBI Heroes, Distinguish Service Honoree. During a replay of his previous interview on the podcast, he reviews some of his early undercover roles and his last assignment infiltrating the New York mob as "Jack Falcone," where, after gaining the trust of mobster Greg DePalma, Jack was able to penetrate the Gambino crime family for nearly three years. Jack played his undercover role so convincingly that he was proposed for membership in La Cosa Nostra. Jack Garcia served in the FBI for 26 years.  Check out episode show notes, photos, and related articles: https://jerriwilliams.com/338-jack-garcia-undercover-legend-fbiaa-distinguished-service-honoree/       Support the FBIAA's two charitable funds by texting FBIAA to 50155 or visit the FBIAA Ways to donate page: https://fbiaa.org/ways-to-donate   Buy me a coffee - https://www.buymeacoffee.com/JerriWilliams   Join my Reader Team to get the FBI Reading Resource - Books about the FBI, written by FBI agents, the 20 clichés about the FBI Reality Checklist, and keep up to date on the FBI in books, TV, and movies via my monthly email. Join here. http://eepurl.com/dzCCmL    Check out my FBI books, non-fiction and crime fiction, available as audiobooks, ebooks and paperbacks wherever books are sold. https://jerriwilliams.com/books/

Tony Gardner, Senior Vice President for the Commonwealth Center for High-Performance Organizations joined the podcast to discuss his ICMA Distinguished Service Award. He shared his work aboard in Poland, innovations in local government, and provided advice to the next generation. This episode was recorded at the 2024 ICMA Conference in Pittsburgh, PA. Host: Lauren Palmer

Join renowned restorative dentist Dr. Edward Feinberg as he delves into the age-old question: which is better, saving your own tooth or extracting it and placing an implant? With over 40 years of experience and a legacy of expertise, Dr. Feinberg shares his insights on the latest advancements, techniques and considerations in restorative dentistry.From evaluating tooth suitability to understanding patient expectations, Dr. Feinberg explores the complexities of this critical decision. Tune in for thought-provoking discussions, real-life case studies and expert advice on:The pros and cons of tooth saving vs. implant placementThe impact of dental technology on restorative dentistryPatient-centered approaches to dental careThe future of restorative dentistry and digital dentistryWhether you're a dental professional seeking to enhance your skills or a patient navigating the world of restorative dentistry, this podcast is your go-to resource for informed decision-making.Dr. Feinberg works with dentists who want to improve their crown and bridgework skills so that they can deliver better treatment outcomes for their patients. Dr. Edward Feinberg is a graduate of Tufts University and practiced Dentistry in Scarsdale, New York for more than 40 years. Now practicing in Arizona (www.edwardfeinbergdmd.com), he is the successor to a unique tradition of restorative dentistry. He was trained by a master and pioneer in full coverage restorative dentistry, Dr. Elliot Feinberg. The techniques used by Drs. Edward and Elliot Feinberg have been documented with more than 100,000 pictures taken during the past 70 years. Dr. Feinberg is currently Director of ONWARD, an online teaching organization for full coverage restorative dentistry (www.theONWARDprogram.com). To date he has created more than 30 online courses for the site. The site also has an extensive library of downloadable materials, a weekly blog and a forum. Dr. Feinberg is a nationally recognized lecturer and a noted author of scientific and educational articles for dental publications, a textbook, The Double-Tilt Precision Attachment Case for Natural Teeth and Implants, and a book of essays on Dentistry: Open Wide: Essays on Challenges in Dentistry to Achieve Excellence. Dr. Feinberg is a reviewer for the Journal of Oral Implantology and an Editorial Board Member of the AAIP's Implant Prosthodontic Monographs. In addition to educational activities, Dr. Feinberg has served on 4 Councils of the American Dental Association and currently sits on the Arizona Dental Association's Council on Annual Sessions and serves as Secretary-Treasurer of the Central Arizona Dental Society. He is a past president of the Ninth District Dental Association, a component of the New York State Dental Association with 1600 members. Dr. Feinberg has made notable contributions to other organizations such as the New York State Dental Association, the Greater NY Dental Meeting, the American Academy of Implant Prosthodontics, the NY State Pierre Fauchard Academy, the Scarsdale Rotary Club, the Scarsdale Family Counseling Service and the Scarsdale BNI. Dr. Feinberg is a recipient of the Ninth District Dental Association D. Austen Sniffen Award, the Paul Harris Fellowship Award and the NY State Pierre Fauchard Academy's Award for Distinguished Service.http://www.theonwardprogram.com/Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/i-am-refocused-radio--2671113/support.

In this episode of Practical Access, hosts Lisa Dieker and Rebecca Hines welcome Dr. Karen Karp, a professor emerita in mathematics education at the University of Louisville and recently a professor at Johns Hopkins University. Her scholarship lies at the intersection of mathematics education and special education. She is the author or co-author of numerous book chapters, articles, and books, including the U.S. Department of Education Institute of Science's What Works Clearinghouse Practice Guide on Assisting Students Struggling with Mathematics: Intervention in the Elementary Grades, and other titles such as Strengths-based Teaching and Learning in Mathematics: 5 Teaching Turnarounds for Grades K-6, The Math Pact: Achieving Instructional Coherence within and Across Grades, and Elementary and Middle School Mathematics: Teaching Developmentally which has been translated into seven languages. She also was on the authoring team of the NCTM- CEC Joint Position Statement. Dr. Karp is a former member of the board of directors of the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) and a former president of the Association of Mathematics Teacher Educators. In 2020, she was selected for the NCTM Lifetime Achievement Award for Distinguished Service to Mathematics Education. She also is a member of the U.S. National Commission on Mathematics Instruction. This summer she represented the United States as the Chair of the Topic Study Group on Teaching Mathematics to Students with Special Needs at the International Congress on Mathematical Education in Australia. She holds teaching/administrative certifications in elementary education, secondary mathematics, K-12 special education, and K-12 educational administration.Karp's scholarship stands out for its direct and visible impact on practicing mathematics teachers. Her work goes beyond theory, with her ideas being actively implemented in classrooms, shaping how mathematics is taught. In this podcast, Dr. Karp offers invaluable advice for general education teachers working with students with disabilities in math. She emphasizes the importance of early collaboration between general-ed and special-ed teachers, advocating for a proactive, rather than reactive, approach to math interventions.Throughout the conversation, Karp discusses strategies like using multiple representations in math instruction, focusing on the strengths of students rather than their perceived weaknesses, and ensuring that Individualized Education Programs (IEPs) are written with concepts and skills. She shares practical methods to engage and empower students to succeed in math, using examples such as the "Whole School Agreement" and success stories from students she's worked with.We love to hear from our listeners! If you have any questions, feel free to reach out. We look forward to receiving your questions on our Twitter (@Accesspractical) or Instagram (@Practical_Access).Karp's bio and publications: https://www.mathbykarp.com/publications 

The Apostle Paul wrote that believers are in a spiritual battle all the time against forces that are wickedly strong. He also maintains that we have the power of God with us in these battles, and this New Testament promise is an echo from the days of Joshua, the fearless Israelite commander in ages past. This mindset is a model for all of us. Dick Winters was a 27-year-old first lieutenant when he jumped into Normandy, France in 1944 with other paratroopers during the invasion of Europe. Once the allies began moving inland, Winters' unit was given the objective of taking a key French town from the Germans.As Winters and his men approached, machine gunfire pinned them down along a road leading into the town; they had nowhere to go. All of a sudden, Winters stood straight up and began shouting orders at his men. Stunned at first, they looked up and decided that if he could do it—so could they. The entire force leaped to their feet and charged the German position. That was the last day Nazi forces controlled the current in France. The next day, Winters was awarded the Distinguished Service cross. This is precisely how we can overcome great odds, great challenges. When circumstances threatened to overwhelm us, we can fight back with confidence in Christ. He's the one leading us along dangerous roads. Psalm 27:3 offers encouragement for life's battles, “Though an army besiege me, my heart will not fear; though war break out against me, even then I will be confident.” When the army of God is with you who can stand against you. Let's pray. Father, only you can lead us in the battles of life. You are all we need. We believe that no enemy can stand against you and your army. Your strength holds us up above the danger and sets us on safe ground. Thank you, Lord, for your eternal faithfulness. In Jesus' name, amen.Change your shirt, and you can change the world! Save 15% Off your entire purchase of faith-based apparel + gifts at Kerusso.com with code KDD15.

Having a diverse background is sometimes better than specializing in one thing. Today's guest, Lori Van Dusen, is the author of Running with Grace. Notice how she didn't say running with the fastest speed or endurance. It's about style, being a good sport, and thinking about things in the long term. Lori Van Dusen, welcome to the Better Call Daddy show. I am so excited that David Hirsch connected us. In this heartfelt episode, Lori shares her journey from Wall Street trainee to successful financial advisor, emphasizing the importance of holistic client care. She delves into her personal life, discussing the sudden loss of her husband, the challenges of being a present mother while managing a demanding career, and the therapeutic process of writing her book. This episode is a powerful exploration of resilience, adaptability, and the importance of building meaningful relationships. Tune in to hear Lori's inspiring story and the wisdom she's gained along the way.   Lori Van Dusen, CIMA®, is the Founder and CEO of LVW Advisors, a registered investment advisory firm that serves both wealthy families and individuals, as well as nonprofit institutions throughout the United States.  An advocate of client-focused strategies for more than 25 years, she has become the voice of reason in providing unbiased and integrated solutions in a fragmented financial services industry. Lori is passionate about numerous philanthropic causes, serving on several boards focused on urban education, health and wellness, and the fine arts. Lori began her investment advisory career in 1987 with Shearson Lehman Brothers, which was later acquired by Citigroup Smith Barney. By 2004, she had achieved the title of Managing Director with Citigroup Smith Barney. She founded LVW Advisors, a registered investment advisory firm, in 2011, leading a team of investment professionals. A recipient of numerous accolades, in 2019 Lori was named to Barron's Financial Advisor Hall of Fame, which recognizes advisors who have appeared in more than 10 of Barron's annual Top Financial Advisor rankings. Additionally, Lori was ranked #1 in New York - NY State on Forbes' 2023 and 2022 Best-In-State Wealth Advisors lists and has been ranked for five consecutive years on both Forbes' America's Top Wealth Advisors list and Forbes' America's Top Women Advisors lists.  In recognition of her involvement in the Rochester community, Lori was recognized in the Rochester Business Journal's 2023, 2022, and 2021 Power 100 list and received the 2020 Women of Excellence distinction with the Circle of Excellence honor. The Circle of Excellence recognizes a small group of women each year with longstanding, notable success in the community who are leading the way for other women. Additionally, Lori was inducted into the 2019 Rochester Business Hall of Fame and joins a prestigious list of Rochester business leaders who have been previously inducted. Lori has also been recognized by the Girl Scouts of Western New York as one of the 2019 Women of Distinction. In 2017, Lori was featured on the J.P. Morgan Asset Management and Dow Jones panel discussion, “Let's Talk: The Changing Face of Advice,” where she and Dr. David Kelly, Chief Global Strategist of J.P. Morgan Asset Management, discussed the investment and wealth management needs of today's client and the client of the future. This inaugural production was widely promoted in both Barron's and The Wall Street Journal. In addition, in light of her astute business acumen and numerous philanthropic endeavors, Lori is a highly sought out speaker and is frequently featured in premier investment publications, such as Barron's and Forbes. In 2018, Lori was awarded the Alice Holloway Young Award for Distinguished Service by a Retired Trustee, presented by the New York Community College Trustees. This prestigious award recognized Lori for her fervent advocacy, leadership and on-going support of student success at Monroe Community College, where she retired as Chair of the Board of Trustees in 2008. Key Takeaways - The importance of holistic client care and listening to truly understand their needs. - The challenges and rewards of balancing career and family life. - The therapeutic power of writing and sharing personal stories. - The value of building a supportive team and mentoring the next generation. Connect with Lori Van Dusen - Book: Running with Grace Connect with Reena - Website: bettercalldaddy.com - LinkedIn: Reena Friedman Watts - Twitter: @reenareena - Instagram: @reenafriedmanwatts - Instagram Podcast: @bettercalldaddypodcast We love hearing your feedback. Leave us a review, share your thoughts, and spread the word about this enriching episode. Share it with someone who appreciates resilience and the importance of self-worth. - (00:00) Reena Friedman Watts welcomes back Wayne Friedman for the better call daddy show - (01:58) Lori Van Dusen: David and I go way back - (08:54) When you have a traumatic event, your soul leaves your body - (14:00) Your music producer son helps you edit your book - (16:46) I just want to say that I love how personal your book is - (21:54) What is your most gratifying experience with philanthropy - (27:35) Cole weighed five pounds when he was born - (28:00) You met your husband on his birthday, and you got married quickly - (31:40) You've sold two homes and are in the process of listing another one - (35:29) After Ron, my husband, died, I dealt with grief through meditation - (42:01) I have kept things from my college days or my early twenties - (43:08) You didn't really know your dad until you were 24 - (47:04) You write about how your family has incredible history in New York - (49:49) When you started at Lehman Brothers, there were 300 people - (54:25) You developed a recurring revenue business model to help grow your firm - (57:12) I'm curious how opera singing fits in to your next book - (01:02:33) I'd love to hear your dad's advice to young parents - (01:04:15) You've heard from my mom. Now let's switch it over to grandpa Show notes created by https://headliner.app

Dr. Saul Axelrod is a professor emeritus of education at Temple University. His major interests include applying behavior analysis principles to behavioral problems exhibited by people with disabilities and increasing the academic development of children living in poverty. Dr. Axelrod has served on the editorial boards of several journals, including the Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, the Journal of Behavioral Education, and Behavior Modification. He has written numerous journal articles and book reviews. He is the author or editor of Behavior Modification for the Classroom Teacher, Behavior Analysis and Treatment, and How to Improve Classroom Behavior. In 2006, Dr. Axelrod was the first recipient of the Behavior Analyst Certification Board's Michael Hemingway Award for Distinguished Service to Behavior Analysis. In 1991, he was elected a fellow of the American Psychological Association. In 2007, he was elected a fellow of the Association for Behavior Analysis. In 2009, he received Florida State University's Distinguished Alumnus Award, Distinguished Educator category. Here, Dr. Axelrod shares his career journey and how he got into the world of behavior analysis. We discuss bridging the gap between the research side and the clinical side of ABA, how the field has changed since Saul's career began, and expanding the field beyond ASD.What's Inside:All about Saul's career journey and how he landed in behavior analysis.How can we bridge the gap between the research side and clinical side of ABA?Thoughts on expanding the field of ABA beyond ASD.Mentioned In This Episode:HowToABA.com/joinHow to ABA on YouTubeFind us on FacebookFollow us on Instagram

In this Pharmacy Leadership Episode, Tyler Darcy sits down with the Pharmacy Technician Forum Awardee Julia Becker to discuss what membership within the forum and ASHP means to her and how it has helped her develop as a pharmacy practice leader.  The information presented during the podcast reflects solely the opinions of the presenter. The information and materials are not, and are not intended as, a comprehensive source of drug information on this topic. The contents of the podcast have not been reviewed by ASHP, and should neither be interpreted as the official policies of ASHP, nor an endorsement of any product(s), nor should they be considered as a substitute for the professional judgment of the pharmacist or physician.

In this Pharmacy Leadership Episode, Benjamin Anderson, immediate past-chair of the ASHP Section of Pharmacy Informatics and Technology, has a discussion with SOPIT member and Distinguished Service Awardee for 2023, Maritza Lew, to discuss her service within the section and the role ASHP has played in her development as a pharmacy practice leader. The information presented during the podcast reflects solely the opinions of the presenter. The information and materials are not, and are not intended as, a comprehensive source of drug information on this topic. The contents of the podcast have not been reviewed by ASHP, and should neither be interpreted as the official policies of ASHP, nor an endorsement of any product(s), nor should they be considered as a substitute for the professional judgment of the pharmacist or physician.

André, The Impulsive Thinker, sits down with Dr. William Dodson, a top psychiatrist specializing in adult ADHD, to dive deep into Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria (RSD). Emotional dysregulation in ADHD is often overwhelming, especially in the U.S. where it's overlooked. Dr. Dodson breaks down what RSD is—a quick, intense emotional response to perceived rejection or failure. It feels unbearable but doesn't last as long as typical mood disorders.   Check out the ADHD Transform Journey Program that is now available. We want to hear from you! Please send show ideas, questions, or feedback to podcast@tacticalbts.com and join our mailing list! Watch the podcasts on YouTube and connect with me on LinkedIn. Check out our website. Take a look at ADDitude.   Guest: Dr. Dodson is a board-certified adult psychiatrist who was one of the first practitioners to specialize in adults with ADHD 25 years ago. He is the recipient of the national Maxwell J. Schleifer Award for Distinguished Service to Persons with Disabilities in 2006. He was named a Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association in 2012 in recognition of his contributions to the field of adult ADHD.   He is part of a group doing initial research programs to validate the concept of RSD and its treatments.  They are recruiting people who are willing to give 20 minutes of their time to participate in the study to determine whether RSD is a distinct syndrome and whether it is invariably associated with ADHD. If you are 18 years of age or older and have been formally diagnosed by a professional and are interested in participating in the study, contact Dr. Dodson directly for the initial screening at billdodson19@gmail.com.

Roxana Robinson is the author of eleven books—seven novels, three collections of short stories, and the biography of Georgia O'Keeffe. Four of these were chosen as New York Times Notable Books, two as New York Times Editors' Choices. Her fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper's, Best American Short Stories, The Southampton Review, Ep!phany and elsewhere. Her work has been widely anthologized and broadcast on NPR. Her books have been published in England, France, Germany, Holland and Spain. Roxana Robinson has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Guggenheim Foundation and the MacDowell Colony, and she was named a Literary Lion by the New York Public Library. Robinson has served on the Boards of PEN and the Authors Guild, and was the president of the Authors Guild. She has received the Barnes and Noble “Writers for Writers Award,” given by Poets and Writers, and the Award for Distinguished Service to the Literary Community from the Authors Guild. She teaches in the MFA Program at Hunter College. Her latest novel is Leaving. Roxana Robinson joins Barbara DeMarco-Barrett to discuss beginnings and endings, backstory, animal companions as characters, love scenes, theme, opera, and much more. For more information on Writers on Writing and extra writing perks, visit our Patreon page. To listen to past interviews, visit our website. Support the show by buying books at our bookstore on bookshop.org. We've stocked it with titles from our guests, as well as some of our personal favorites. You'll support independent bookstores and our show by purchasing through the store. Finally, on Spotify listen to an album's worth of typewriter music like what you hear on the show. Look for the artist, Just My Type. Email the show at writersonwritingpodcast@gmail.com. We love to hear from our listeners. (Recorded on May 8, 2024)  Host: Barbara DeMarco-BarrettHost: Marrie StoneMusic and sound editing: Travis Barrett (Stream his music on Spotify, Apple Music, Etc.)

Today, I'm joined by Dr. William Dodson.   Now semi-retired, Dr. Dodson is a Board-Certified adult psychiatrist and was one of the first clinicians to specialize in adults with ADHD over 25 years ago. He has been on the faculties of Georgetown University and the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center.  He was the recipient of the national Maxwell Schleifer Award for Distinguished Service to Persons with Disabilities in 2006, and was named a Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association in recognition of his clinical contributions to the field of ADHD in 2012.  He has written more than 120 articles and book chapters designed to help a lay audience better understand ADHD and its treatment. In this episode Dr Dodson shares his “Interest-Based Nervous System” approach to ADHD.  We discuss: The changes he's seen in ADHD treatment over the course of his career How the ADHD nervous system differs from the neurotypical one, and how that causes confusion and challenges when it comes to motivation. Key Questions to ask about ADHD  The 5 general areas that support ADHD engagement The dangers of creating urgency & catastrophe in order to activate    Register for the ADHD Essentials Parenting Groups Here   Guest Links: Learn more about Dr Dodson here: https://www.dodsonadhdtreatment.com/   Learn More about Brendan and his work at:   Learn about & Register for the The ADHD Essentials Online Parent Coaching Groups  Join The ADHD Essentials Facebook Community Check out the ADHD Essentials Website Contact Brendan at brendan@ADHDessentials.com Learn more about the Men's ADHD Support Group

In this Pharmacy Leadership Episode, Christi Jen, sits down with the Section of Clinical Specialists and Scientists Awardee Rena Gosser to discuss what membership within the Section and ASHP means to him and how it has helped him develop as a pharmacy practice leader.   The information presented during the podcast reflects solely the opinions of the presenter. The information and materials are not, and are not intended as, a comprehensive source of drug information on this topic. The contents of the podcast have not been reviewed by ASHP, and should neither be interpreted as the official policies of ASHP, nor an endorsement of any product(s), nor should they be considered as a substitute for the professional judgment of the pharmacist or physician.

In this Pharmacy Leadership episode, Sarah Stephens sits down with the Section of Inpatient Care Practitioners 2023 Distinguished Service Awardee, Lois Parker, to discuss what membership within the section and ASHP means to her and how it helped her develop as a pharmacy practice leader during her career.   The information presented during the podcast reflects solely the opinions of the presenter. The information and materials are not, and are not intended as, a comprehensive source of drug information on this topic. The contents of the podcast have not been reviewed by ASHP, and should neither be interpreted as the official policies of ASHP, nor an endorsement of any product(s), nor should they be considered as a substitute for the professional judgment of the pharmacist or physician.

Lynn R. Miller is a painter, farmer, horseman, and writer. Odd jobs ranging from commercial fisherman, logger, sawyer, farmer, workhorse teamster, lecturer, and cattle rancher, supported him through college. Over the past 40 years, Lynn has become a world-renowned authority in the fields of alternative farming and animal powered agriculture. In 1976 with the encouragement of his father's suggestion to “grow a crop of literature”, to assist the fledging small farmer, he founded the Small Farmer's Journal, an international agrarian quarterly which functions to this day as cornerstone empowering a worldwide readership. For SFJ's entire 48 year history Lynn has manually stewarded this living alternative preservationist publication, now in it's 188th edition. We learn of Lynn's early enchantment with painting, and self-described “genetic memory”, leading him to follow a manual transmission life integrating his passions rooted in “shared work”, and restorative land cultivation. Mr. Miller is author to over twenty books (poetry, fiction, and nonfiction), including the best-selling, Workhorse Handbook, now in its second edition, and his current release Roots in a Lovely Filth,  He has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Ranch and Reata, and Western Horseman. Lynn has lectured across North America and keynote speaker for farm conferences, and universities. He was awarded the Steward of Sustainable Agriculture, at the 1999 Eco Farm Conference, The Garfield Award for The Preservation of Rural Technologies, Award for Distinguished Service from the Missouri House of Representatives, and the Utne Reader Award for Environmental Reporting. His artworks are in private and public collections across the country. It's my pleasure, privilege, and honor to welcome my friend Lynn R. Miller to this episode of Intrinsic Drive™. Intrinsic Drive™ is produced by Ellen Strickler and Phil Wharton and Andrew Hollingworth  is sound editor and engineer.Photo Credit: Kristi Gilman-Miller Created for human beings by human beings.  NO GENERATIVE AI USE ALLOWED.

Listen now and nominate a colleague who is making a similar impact in our field!Matthew K. Cashion, Jr., CIC, CRM (Matt), born and raised in Little Rock, was enrolled in the seventh grade at Pulaski Academy upon its inception by his parents. Before graduating in 1977, he attended Boys State and served as state president of the Future Business Leaders of America (FBLA). His next phase of life found him following in the footsteps of his next older brother, Ted, graduating from Westminster College in Fulton, MO in 1981 with degrees in Economics & Business Administration and Accounting, and a fiancee, Susan Pippin. While at Westminster, he served as a member of the college's prestigious Skulls of Seven Society and is a Sigma Chi. After graduation, he joined the family agency alongside both brothers, Benson and Ted, and his father, Knight, and marrying his college sweetheart in the spring of 1982.Education and industry involvement was instilled in the agency fiber by Knight and continues as part of its DNA today. Soon after joining the agency, his father sent him to the Reliance Insurance Company's Agent Surety School in 1983. In 1986, Matt received his Certified Insurance Counselor Designation and completed the requirements for his Certified Risk Manager designation in 2004. Additionally, Knight gave him the opportunity to attend surety industry association meetings, where he found his business passion. With mentors from all over the countryproviding wind in his sails, Matt volunteered his way through the ranks of the National Association of Surety Bond Producers (NASBP), serving as a Regional Vice-President, Board Member, various committee memberships and chairmanships, and in 2003-2004 he served as the youngest national president.His lane through NASBP was via education. Attending its Level 2 surety school in 1986, he discovered a second passion; teaching. Returning to the association's school two years later, Matt was recently honored as the longest tenured instructor for NASBP clocking in 35 years of volunteer service to thousands of students from every state in the union as well as seven foreign countries. Further participation has included curriculum development and review of all levels of the association's educational offerings on contract surety, text editing of The Basic Bond Book, curriculum review for The Institutes' AFSB designation as well as recording select course introduction videos.Having just completed another term as chair of NASBP's Professional Development Committee, Matt is currently serving as co-chair of the Annual Meeting Program committee for a record sixth time.NASBP honored Matt with the President's Award in 2004, the John J. “Jack” Curtin Presidents Award for Distinguished Service in Surety Education in 2009, the Bruce T. Wallace Award for Career Contributions in 2013 (its highest award), and the John J. “Jack” Curtin Award again in 2023, becoming the only two time recipient.Matt also followed the leadership example set by his business partner, Jim Allbritton, serving as president of The Independent Insurance Agents of Arkansas (Big I - Arkansas) in 2015-2016. In 2021, Big I honored Matt with its highest award, the Allan Kennedy Memorial Award.An unintended consequence of volunteer service to various construction trade associations over the years has resulted in awards from the Associated Builders and Contractors of Arkansas (ABC) (2020 - Phillip Joiner Award for leadership) and Associated General Contractors of Arkansas (AGC) (2011 - Distinguished Service Award; 2021 - President's Award). After having served as a founding member of National AGC's Surety Industry Advisory Council and acting as its Outreach and Education Task Force Chair in 2001, AGC inducted Matt into its Consulting Contractors Council of America in 2009.Further involvement has included presentations and speaking opportunities all over the country to various groups ranging from the AICPA, the National Home Builders Association, local surety associations, trade associations (AGC, ABC, ASA, NAWIC), universities, engineers, and as a convention keynote speaker in Puerto Rico.Outside of the industry, Matt has offered his time to a variety of civic organizations including Pulaski Academy, Alzheimer's Arkansas Programs and Services, the Metropolitan YMCA, and the Heflin Youth Foundation. Additionally, he has received gubernatorial appointments to the Information Network of Arkansas and the Contractors Licensing Board, where he has served as Chair.Combining his passion for teaching and his greatest blessing, Matt and his wife have co-led various small groups at their church for over 30 years, most recently post college single adults. Pushing the comfort zone limits, he even became an ordained minister during the pandemic in order to perform a requested wedding service for a couple that had met in the class.His most recent passion and greatest joys are found in spending time with his six amazing grandchildren. His daughter Rachel and her husband Dr. David Rainwater, have three wonderful girls. His son, Matthew K. Cashion, III (Tripp) and his wife Kara, have two amazing girls and his only grandson (Matthew K. Cashion, IV aka Knight).

Lynn R. Miller is a painter, farmer, horseman, and writer. Odd jobs ranging from commercial fisherman, logger, sawyer, farmer, workhorse teamster, lecturer, and cattle rancher, supported him through college. Over the past 40 years, Lynn has become a world-renowned authority in the fields of alternative farming and animal powered agriculture. In 1976, with the encouragement of his father to “grow a crop of literature” to assist the fledgling small farmer, he founded the Small Farmer's Journal, an international agrarian quarterly which functions to this day as a cornerstone empowering a worldwide readership. For Small Farmer's Journal's  entire 48 year history Lynn has manually stewarded this living alternative preservationist publication, now in it's 188th edition. We learn of Lynn's early enchantment with painting, followed by a self-described “genetic memory”, leading him to follow a manual transmission life integrating his passions rooted in “shared work”, and restorative land cultivation. Mr. Miller is author to over twenty books (poetry, fiction, and nonfiction), including the best-selling, Workhorse Handbook, now in its second edition, and his current release Roots in a Lovely Filth, He has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Ranch and Reata, and Western Horseman. Lynn has lectured across North America and keynote speaker for farm conferences, and universities. He was awarded the Steward of Sustainable Agriculture, at the 1999 Eco Farm Conference, The Garfield Award for The Preservation of Rural Technologies, Award for Distinguished Service from the Missouri House of Representatives, and the Utne Reader Award for Environmental Reporting. His artworks are in private and public collections across the country. It's my pleasure, privilege, and honor to welcome my friend Lynn R. Miller to this episode of Intrinsic Drive®. Intrinsic Drive® is produced by Ellen Strickler and Phil Wharton and Andrew Hollingworth  is sound editor and engineer.Photo Credit: Kristi Gilman-Miller Created for human beings by human beings.  NO GENERATIVE AI USE ALLOWED.

In this Pharmacy Leadership Episode, Justin Moore, Chair of the New Practitioners Forum (NPF) Executive Committee, sits down with the 2023 NPF Distinguished Service Awardee, Joe Marchiano, to discuss what membership within the Forum and ASHP means to him and how it has helped him develop as a pharmacy practice leader.  The information presented during the podcast reflects solely the opinions of the presenter. The information and materials are not, and are not intended as, a comprehensive source of drug information on this topic. The contents of the podcast have not been reviewed by ASHP, and should neither be interpreted as the official policies of ASHP, nor an endorsement of any product(s), nor should they be considered as a substitute for the professional judgment of the pharmacist or physician.

Recognized as a leader in the field of diversity, Tiffany is a talent strategist with 22+ years of championing diverse professionals in the advertising industry. In 2005, she founded ADCOLOR, which has launched the ADCOLOR Industry Conference, ADCOLOR Awards and ADCOLOR University. As President of ADCOLOR, she is deeply involved in the direction the industry is taking around diversity. As Executive VP, Chief Diversity & Inclusion Officer for Sony Music Group, Tiffany R. Warren will expand equity and inclusion activities and policies across all Sony Music Group's (SMG) global recorded music, publishing and corporate divisions, reporting directly to SMG Chairman Rob Stringer. Previously, as the Senior VP, Chief Diversity Officer for Omnicom Group, Warren oversaw a team of 25+ Chief Diversity Officers and Directors focused on Omnicom-wide change efforts through the award-winning Omnicom People Engagement Network (OPEN) for the support, advancement and retention of top performing talent inclusive of women, people of color and LGBT professionals. Recognized as a leader in the field of diversity, Warren is a talent strategist with 24+ years of championing diverse professionals in the creative industries. In 2005, she founded ADCOLOR, which has launched the ADCOLOR Conference, Awards, FUTURES program and ADCOLOR in Music. As President of ADCOLOR, she has been widely recognized for the progress and direction the creative industries have taken around diversity, equity & inclusion. Warren also serves as the 2021-2022 Chair of the National Board of Directors for the American Advertising Federation (AAF) spearheading the expansion of the organization's diversity, equity and inclusion efforts while emphasizing the audio, music and entertainment aspects of AAF's programing. She was honored as an Advertising Age Woman to Watch, AAF District 2 “Role Model” Diversity Achievement Award, AAF Hall of Achievement Inductee and The Jack Avrett Volunteer Award Recipient, AAF Pioneer in Diversity Award (Omnicom Group), 4A's MAIP Gladiator Award, the National Association Black Journalists' Patricia L. Tobin Media Professional Award Recipient, The European Diversity Awards' Global Diversity Champion Award, AOL MAKER, the New York Urban League's Frederick Douglass Medallion and the AAF Barton G. Cummings Gold Medal for Distinguished Service, the 4A's 100 People Who Make Advertising Great List, Ebony 100 and John A. Reisenbach Distinguished Citizenship Award, Black Enterprise Top Executive in Diversity 2019, DoSomething.org 2020 Empower Player, 2021 Henry Crown Fellow and 2021 Billboard Change Agent.

O.P. Singh, an IPS officer from the 1983 batch, served as Director General of Police (DGP) of India's largest police force, Uttar Pradesh Police, from 2018 to 2020. He served as the Director General of the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) from 2014 to 2016. During his tenure, the NDRF conducted several search and rescue operations in response to natural disasters in India and Nepal, notably during the Nepal earthquake in April 2015. Singh has also held positions in the Special Protection Group, responsible for the Prime Minister's security, and the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), dealing with internal security. He was the Additional Director General (Airport Sector) in the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), overseeing security at 59 airports and vital installations. His efforts in managing the Ardh Kumbh Mela in Allahabad and resolving disputes between Shia and Sunni communities in Lucknow were recognized by the Uttar Pradesh Government. His awards include the Indian Police Medal for Gallantry, Indian Police Medal for Meritorious Service, Police Special Duty Medal, Disaster Response Medal, President's Police Medal for Distinguished Service, and the Distinguished Leadership Award for Disaster Resilience by the All India Council of Human Rights, Liberties & Social Justice in 2015. His latest book 'Crime, Grime and Gumption: Case files of an IPS officer' is now out. Order your copy here: https://www.amazon.in/Crime-Grime-Gumption-Files-Officer/dp/0143464167

In this Pharmacy Leadership Episode, Melanie Smith sits down with the Section of Ambulatory Care Practitioners 2023 Awardee, Megan Dorrell, to discuss what membership within the Section and ASHP means to her and how it has helped her develop as a pharmacy practice leader.   The information presented during the podcast reflects solely the opinions of the presenter. The information and materials are not, and are not intended as, a comprehensive source of drug information on this topic. The contents of the podcast have not been reviewed by ASHP, and should neither be interpreted as the official policies of ASHP, nor an endorsement of any product(s), nor should they be considered as a substitute for the professional judgment of the pharmacist or physician.

This week, Lisa and Misty bring you the book SMART with Dr. Sood: The Four-Module Stress Management And Resiliency Training Program.  Amit Sood, M.D. is one of the world's leading experts on resilience and wellbeing, and executive director of the Global Center for Resiliency and Wellbeing. He was also professor of medicine, and Chair for student life and wellness at Mayo Clinic. He has received numerous awards including the 2010 Distinguished Service, 2010 Innovator of the Year, 2013 Outstanding Physician Scientist and 2016 Faculty of the Year awards, all from Mayo Clinic. Dr. Sood has authored or co-authored over 70 peer-reviewed papers and is the author of several books.In this SMART with Dr. Sood book review podcast, we cover his proposal for a new version of Mindfulness, as well as two core practices that he suggests in the Gratitude and Mindful Presence modules.If you want to know more about the author, you can visit his website.If you want to buy the book, you can do so here.Sign up for our newsletter at gohelpyourself.coGet in touch with us: gohelpyourselfpodcast@gmail.comFollow us on instagram at gohelpyourselfpodcastIf you like what you're hearing, leave us a review.xoAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

In this Pharmacy Leadership Episode, Denise Scarpelli, the Chair for the Section of Specialty Pharmacy Practitioners, sits down with SSPP's Distinguished Service Awardee Matt Rim to discuss what membership within the Forum and ASHP means to him and how it has helped him develop as a pharmacy practice leader.   The information presented during the podcast reflects solely the opinions of the presenter. The information and materials are not, and are not intended as, a comprehensive source of drug information on this topic. The contents of the podcast have not been reviewed by ASHP, and should neither be interpreted as the official policies of ASHP, nor an endorsement of any product(s), nor should they be considered as a substitute for the professional judgment of the pharmacist or physician.

February is Teen Dating Violence Awareness Month, Safe Place talks about awareness efforts; Van Pelt earns Distinguished Service recognition from Extension peers; update on efforts to increase broadband access in Arkansas; All-Star selections named; MHS basketball teams notch wins over Waldron; we visit with Jasmine Wilson and Aida Kuettle about MHS Financial Aid Night.

Are you struggling to overcome challenges in your direct sales business? Join us as we explore the difficulties faced by business owners, the importance of operating lawfully, and the significance of leadership skills in both direct sales and franchising. But what happens when the main character is left in a difficult situation, with no resolution in sight? Tune in to find out more.About April Porter:April Porter is a former award-winning, multi-unit franchisee, attorney, and creator of the Infinite Franchisee® mentorship program, which teaches franchisees business intelligence, strategic thinking, leadership skills, and an entrepreneur mindset to apply to the franchise model in order to reach a life of SWAG™ - Sanity, Wealth, and Gratitude™. 2023 was the inaugural year of the SWAG™ Conference founded in April. Its focus is to bring franchisees and small business owners back on track to achieving their goals of Sanity, Wealth, and Gratitude™. The Conference also serves as a resource for emerging franchisors, to host their brand conference at the event.April has been recognized as a Top Ten Woman of Distinction in Franchising and a Top 100 Influencer in the Global Franchising Industry, hosts the #1 Franchisee Podcast on Apple - The Infinite Franchisee Show, has received the Chairman's Award for Distinguished Service to the Franchising Industry from the AAFD, and has been honored in Marquis Who's Who of America in 2023.In this episode, Jennie and April Porter discuss:Comparing Direct Sales and FranchisingIn the podcast episode, April Porter expertly breaks down the essential differences between direct sales and franchising. Porter emphasizes that though both avenues are valid forms of business ownership, they each have their unique features, risks, and rewards. Overcoming Challenges in Direct SalesThe conversation delves into the significant obstacles often encountered in direct sales. High turnover rates, the threat of liability, and inconsistency in training are among the challenges highlighted by April. Embracing the Importance of MentorshipA standout point from this episode is the emphasis on finding the right mentor or coach in both direct sales and franchising. April and Jennie advocate for the value of learning from someone who has successfully navigated the path you are currently on. In this episode, you will be able to:Compare direct sales and franchising to make informed business decisions.Overcome challenges in direct sales and achieve business success.Discover the importance of mentorship in business for accelerated growth.Manage liability in direct sales and protect your business.Build a committed team in direct sales for exponential growth and success."Direct sales isn't this pyramid scheme that a lot of people have as a negative side. It's a mini-franchise. You have rules that you need to follow from the company. ” –April PorterCONNECT WITH APRIL:Facebook Business Page: https://www.facebook.com/askaprilporterFacebook Group Name: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ifzcommunityLinkedIn URL: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ask-april-porter/Instagram Handle: https://www.instagram.com/askaprilporter/Instagram Business Handle: https://www.instagram.com/askaprilporter/CONNECT WITH JENNIE:Website: https://badassdirectsalesmastery.com/Email:  jennie@badassdirectsalesmastery.comFacebook personal page: https://facebook.com/jbellingerPLFacebook podcast page: http://facebook.com/BadassDirectSalesMasteryFacebook group for Badass Crew: https://facebook.com/groups/BadassDirectSalesMomsInstagram: https://instagram.com/BadassDirectSalesMasteryPersonal Instagram: https://instagram.com/jenniebellingerLinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/BadassDirectSalesMasteryShow Notes by Podcastologist: Hanz Jimuel AlvarezAudio production by Turnkey Podcast Productions. You're the expert. Your podcast will prove it.

Ready to roll the dice on ep. 185 of the Promo UPFront #podcast live from BamBams booth at the PPAI Expo in Las Vegas? Of course, you are! This week hosts Kirby Hasseman and Bill Petrie talk about the biggest tradeshow in the promotional products industry – education, great booths, surprises, and a few other topics, Bill receiving the PPAI Icon Award for Distinguished Service, welcome back the return of “rapid fire,” and so much more! A big thanks to our sponsor in BamBams for hosting us at their booth. When you're looking for custom, made to order merchandise, look no further than BamBams. Also, be sure to check out their BRAND NEW web-to-print platform at bambamsselfpromo.com!

In this episode, Xavier Bonilla has a dialogue with Lisa Feldman-Barrett about emotions. They discuss what emotions are and how they are different from affect and feelings. They also discuss the social construction model of emotions with discussion on interoception, exteroception, allostasis and homeostasis. They talk about predictive processing, Bayesian brain, emotions as heuristics, nature of reality, discrete emotions, emotions in relationships, and many more topics.Lisa Feldman Barrett is Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Director of the Interdisciplinary Affective Science Laboratory (IASLab) at Northeastern University. She also holds research appointments at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH)/Harvard Medical School in the Psychiatric Neuroimaging Program in the Department of Psychiatry, and at the Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging in the Department of Radiology. She is among the top 0.1% of the most-cited scientists in the world with more than 275 peer-reviewed scientific papers across several fields. Her research focuses on how the human brain, in continual conversation with the human body and the world, regulates the body and creates mental events, such as episodes of emotion.Dr. Barrett has also received numerous awards for service to the field of psychology, including the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award in Psychology (2021) and the Award for Distinguished Service to Psychological Science (2013), both from the American Psychological Association. She also received the Mentor Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Association for Psychological Science (2018) and a Guggenheim Fellowship (2019). She has served on the editorial boards of psychology's most important journals, including Psychological Science (since 2007), Psychological Review (2007-2012) and Current Directions in Psychological Science (2020-2023). She also served as president of the Association for Psychological Science (APS) in 2019–2020. She is the author of How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain and 7 1/2 Lessons About The Brain. She has also edited five scientific volumes, including the 3rd and 4th editions of the Handbook of Emotion. Website: https://lisafeldmanbarrett.com/Lab: https://www.affective-science.org/Twitter: @lfeldmanbarrett Get full access to Converging Dialogues at convergingdialogues.substack.com/subscribe

In this Pharmacy Leadership Episode, David Chen sits down with the Section of Pharmacy Practice Leaders Distinguished Service Awardee Kristi Gullickson to discuss what membership within the Section and ASHP means to her and how it has helped her develop as a pharmacy practice leader. The information presented during the podcast reflects solely the opinions of the presenter. The information and materials are not, and are not intended as, a comprehensive source of drug information on this topic. The contents of the podcast have not been reviewed by ASHP, and should neither be interpreted as the official policies of ASHP, nor an endorsement of any product(s), nor should they be considered as a substitute for the professional judgment of the pharmacist or physician.

April Porter is a former award-winning, multi-unit franchisee, attorney, and creator of the Infinite FranchiseeSM mentorship program, which teaches franchisees the business intelligence, strategic thinking, leadership skills, and entrepreneur mindset to apply to the franchise model in order to reach a life of SWAG™ - Sanity, Wealth, and Gratitude™. April has been named to the Ten Women of Distinction in Franchising and a Top Influencer in the Global Franchising Industry, hosts the #1 Franchisee Podcast on Apple - The Infinite Franchisee Show - and received the Chairman's Award for Distinguished Service to the Franchising Industry from the AAFD.   Key Takeaways: [2:08] - April shares her law background as a criminal prosecutor before she made a shift into franchising. [4:30] - Her entrepreneurial spirit drove her to open a franchise location of something she loved. She wanted more time freedom and control over her income. [6:50] - April was able to identify the “franchise gap.” [8:36] - A lot of people franchise in an area they already know how to do, but they don't know how to run a business. [10:31] - Just because you like the product or service, doesn't mean you will like the business. [13:45] - Business owners who choose to franchise their business model must also know how to train and educate franchisees. [16:37] - April shares more about her cloning system. [19:08] - Franchisees need to have a business owner mindset. The franchisor can support but isn't going to be able to do everything. [21:41] - A major pitfall for franchisees is knowing the difference between business and personal finances. [24:41] - Sanity, wealth, and gratitude are the elements that franchisees are in search of. [26:30] - A common problem is a franchisee's management of time.  [28:15] - Josh's number one piece of advice for prospective franchisees is for them to talk to current franchisees and franchisors already in the business. [30:12] - What about multiple locations?   Mentioned in This Episode: Infinite Franchisee Website The Infinite Franchisee Show on Apple Ask April Porter Website

Peter Scott joined the Royal Australian Navy as a seventeen-year-old Midshipman, hopeful but uncertain, and over three decades rose to be the professional head of the Navy's elite: the Submarine Arm. During that journey, he served among the dedicated crews of the most highly specialised capability in any Navy in the most complex and demanding environment on earth: the undersea battlespace.He survived and led others through at-sea fires, floods and explosions, and passed the most demanding military command course in the world, Perisher. Peter commanded the longest deployment ever conducted by an Australian submarine and led the Arm through an unprecedented period of expansion. In all, he served in ten submarines and twenty different command and leadership appointments over thirty-four years. A veteran of multiple Special Operations with the Submarine Arm, he also saw war service in Iraq, the Persian Gulf and Afghanistan during 2006 and 2007.He was awarded a Commendation for Distinguished Service in the Australia Day Honours List 2008, having previously been decorated with the Conspicuous Service Cross for achievements in command of HMAS Collins. Peter holds a Master's degree in Coaching Psychology from the University of Sydney and now works as an executive coach to help leaders develop, perform and succeed. He has recently authored a memoir, published by Fremantle Press, on his naval and submarine service - ‘Running Deep. An Australian Submarine Life.'When not writing or coaching, Peter can be found on the trails running ultra-marathons or relaxing at home with his family.Peter's Top Leadership Tip: is to never add to the fears of your people. Rather, give them the courage to face what threatens them. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Dr. Mario R. Garcia, Senior Adviser on News Design and Adjunct Professor at Columbia University, joins Nikita Roy to discuss how artificial intelligence is revolutionizing news design and creating new opportunities for visual storytelling.Mario shares insights from his extensive research and his new book, 'AI: The Next Revolution in Content Creation,' on how AI is being applied in newsrooms globally.Mario offers his perspective on the emerging skill of prompt engineering and discusses ways in which journalism educators can teach the responsible use of AI.Mario is the CEO and Founder of Garcia Media, a global consulting firm, and has been involved in redesigning and rethinking more than 700 publications across 120 countries, including notable ones like The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post. He is also the author of 15 books.He is a recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society for News Design, the Journalism Medal of Honor from the University of Missouri for Distinguished Service in Journalism, and the Charles O'Malley Award for Excellence in Teaching from the Columbia Scholastic Press Association. Additionally, People Magazine named him one of the 100 most influential Hispanics in the United States.

On this Election 2023 re-air, Crystal chats with Jorge Barón about his campaign for King County Council District 4 - why he decided to run, how 17 years at the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project has prepared him for the role, and his thoughts on generating progressive revenue for county services, drug possession and substance use disorder, addressing overcrowding in the King County Jail, improving frontline worker wages and workforce issues, air quality and climate change, and the importance of oversight and genuine community engagement in policy implementation. As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com. Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Jorge Barón at @jorgebaron.   Jorge Barón Jorge L. Barón has spent his legal career advancing and defending the rights of marginalized communities, and has served as executive director of the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project for more than 15 years. Jorge has fought egregious policies like the Muslim Ban and family separation as well as built coalitions that drove significant policy change and generated hundreds of millions of dollars of funding for immigrant communities. Jorge has had the honor of being awarded the King County Council's MLK Medal of Distinguished Service and served on the Joint Legislative Task Force on Deadly Force in Community Policing. Jorge is originally from Bogotá, Colombia, immigrating with his mom and brothers at the age of 13. Jorge is a graduate of Yale Law School and Duke University, a proud former union member, and public school parent.    Resources Campaign Website - Jorge Barón   Transcript   [00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review show and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. Today, I am excited to be welcoming a candidate for King County Council District 4 - Jorge Barón. Welcome to Hacks & Wonks, Jorge. [00:01:03] Jorge Barón: Thank you so much for having me, Crystal. I'm pleased to be here. [00:01:05] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely - we're pleased to have you here. I guess just starting out - what made you decide to run for King County Council? [00:01:12] Jorge Barón: Yeah, it's a great question because I think for me, this is a new adventure that I'm embarking on. I think if you'd asked me 10 years ago if I was going to run for elected office, I would have said no. But I think what's happened over the last - since that time - is that I've seen, of course, working in the immigration field for the last 17 years, I've seen a lot of bad policy, but during the Trump administration, I saw a particular period of really egregious attacks on communities that I'm a part of, that I care about, and that I was working on behalf of. And I also saw how state and local government played an important role in protecting people. And I also saw people, frankly, that I've considered mentors and people who I admire - like Representative Pramila Jayapal and Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda - who also went from being advocates on the outside of government to go inside and to actually work on policy issues at the government level, and saw how effective they've been in creating some policy change in a progressive direction. So that gave me an inspiration, and of course, I've continued working here at Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, but last year I made the decision to step away from this work that I've been doing for now 17 years. And when I started thinking about what would come next, I thought that working at the local government level would be an avenue to further some of the same social justice issues that I've been pursuing for nearly two decades, and that gave me the inspiration. And of course, when Councilmember Kohl-Welles announced that she would be stepping down, saw an opportunity to put myself forth and to share with folks in District 4 - where I live - that I would be a good advocate for the social justice values that I've been pursuing for a long time now. [00:02:46] Crystal Fincher: How do you think your work at Northwest Immigrant Rights Project has prepared you to run and serve? [00:02:52] Jorge Barón: Yeah, no - it's a good question. And I've been very fortunate, of course, to have had the privilege of serving in this role. And for a long time, I thought that something else would pull me away from leaving here, and it - nothing better came along, but I felt like it was a good time for me to allow other people to step into leadership roles here and for me to take a break and do something new. But the experience that I've had here, I think, has prepared me for this role in a couple of different ways. First of all, obviously, I've had the opportunity to be the chief executive here at this organization - that we've been able to grow into now the second-largest nonprofit law firm in the Pacific Northwest, and I think that experience of being a leader in that role has given me an opportunity to learn a lot about how to manage organizations and how to run an effective organization. And I think the other part that's been really important in the work that we've done here that I think will be helpful - very important at the county level - is that I have been able to work in partnership with many stakeholders in building coalitions that have enabled important policy change at the state level. And one of the things that has inspired me to run at the County Council level is seeing that right now the county is facing a very difficult period because of the limitations that the state government has placed on - particularly on the revenue side - and I think we need people who are going to be able to build the kind of coalition to push the State Legislature, to work in partnership with our state legislators to make sure that we get some changes - that I think a lot of people recognize are needed - to the way that the county is funded, to make sure the county can actually operate effectively and carry out its responsibilities. So that kind of coalition building - working with state legislators in making actually progressive and important changes happen at the state level - which is what I've been able to do here, is something that I feel is going to serve me well if I get the privilege of serving on the council. [00:04:41] Crystal Fincher: When you talk about the issue of revenue, which is very important - and as we talk about this and the things we'll talk about as we continue, lots of them will require additional revenue. More money is needed. But as you talk about, the progressive revenue options that exist at the county level are limited. What progressive revenue options will you pursue, if any, and how will you go about doing that? [00:05:04] Jorge Barón: Yeah, no, I think it's important to talk about it because that's absolutely one of the key things that I think we need to discuss and make sure that voters understand. And I've seen it, and it's been frustrating to me actually, from - in my role at Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, we've been advocating before the councils - at least myself, I've been advocating before the council since around 2008, 2009. And even since that time, the conversation had been that the county was in an unsustainable fiscal path, right? That we had this structural deficit, and particularly because of the 1% tax lid that restricts how much property tax revenue the county can collect, that we were in this unsustainable path. And in some ways, I feel like we haven't - as a community, we haven't felt the actual impact of that because inflation has been relatively low during that period, because there have been different periods of COVID relief money, for example, that came in the last couple of years that in some ways mitigated the full impact of that situation. But we're starting to now, and the upcoming budget cycle - we're facing, as a county, $100 million shortfall. And so I think now we're gonna start feeling the direct impact of those changes. And so I think we radically need to restructure how the county is funded and move away - I don't think we're gonna be able to move away completely, obviously - but at least shift some of the burden that currently is impacting particularly low income and even moderate income households here in King County and make sure that we create the opportunity. And again, this is one of the challenges - is that it's not something the county directly can do, but we will need to work with the state legislators to provide those opportunities for some changes so that we become less reliant on things like the sales tax and the property tax. And we have opportunities to have the revenue come from sources that have greater ability to pay. Obviously this is not only an issue for the county. Obviously at the state level, we also need to be working on that because we have the most regressive tax structure in the country. And so at all levels of government, we need to do this. And my hope is to be able to bring new energy to this conversation, to help talking about it all the time that - my campaign have been trying to talk about it - that's the first thing I always talk about because I think a lot of people don't understand the situation that we're in and that we're gonna be facing in terms of county services having to be drastically cut at a time when we see so much need in the community and people are saying - Why aren't we tackling these issues? Why aren't we tackling housing affordability, the homelessness crisis? - all kinds of issues that we can talk about. And those things - we need more investments to be able to make progress in those areas. And so the regressive revenue options need to be something that we absolutely put top of mind in talking to voters and talking to state legislators. [00:07:46] Crystal Fincher: Right, and you talked about how to handle issues in terms of public safety, behavioral health, and how important that funding is. In the wake of the State Legislature increasing criminalization of possession of drugs and public use of drugs - making it a gross misdemeanor. And in the wake of the Seattle City Council weighing this issue themselves and currently still searching for a path forward on how to approach drug use and abuse in the City of Seattle - how do you view this in King County? Where do you stand on the criminalization of public drug use, and what do you think needs to be done to address this crisis? [00:08:23] Jorge Barón: Yeah, Crystal - I'll be very clear that I do not support criminalizing substance use disorders. I believe that we have - what I try to tell people about this issue is that we need to look at this the same way that we talk about - for example, when we talk about climate justice, a lot of people in this community - I guess I would say most people in this community, I know there's some people who are still climate skeptics out there - but most of us believe the science and we talk about the importance of believing the research and following the science. Same thing with public health, right? Most people in this community say we need to believe the science around public health and COVID and vaccines, right? And why don't we do the same thing with regard to public safety and the criminal legal system, right? There is abundant research when it comes to how to address the serious issues - and I wanna say it's important to note that the issue is not about doing nothing about the fact that people are experiencing substance use disorders. And obviously, it's a crisis in the fact that we have so many people in our community who are dying because of that. So the question is not, should we do something? We absolutely should do something. The question is, what should we do? And for me, the response of trying to punish people and putting people in jail because they're experiencing substance use disorders is not the solution. And I think the evidence and the research conclusively proves that that is not the path that is going to result in people actually being safe. And I'm concerned - some ways - that particularly right now, some of the debate is framed as in, we're trying to protect people by putting them in jail. And if you look at the evidence, that's not the case - at least if you look at overall numbers. And I know people will say - Well, there's this one example, this anecdote where this person got better because they went to jail. And I appreciate that there may be cases like that, but we can't do public policy based completely on anecdotes. We need to look at the research. And the research to me is very compelling in that, for example, with people who are experiencing substance use disorders with things like fentanyl, that you will end up increasing the risk that they will die if they go into jail. It's pretty dramatic - the statistics and the data on increasing the risk of overdose in those situations. And so I am concerned, I think we need to be thinking about what is best approach long-term - and particularly because the criminal legal system is also a very expensive system, right? And so when we're talking about investing limited public resources in a time of austerity in terms of the fiscal situation that we were just talking about - to me, it doesn't make sense to continue to invest in a system that has not proven to have, for lack of a better term, return on investment - when we see that there are programs that are currently underfunded, that we're not putting enough resources in, that do have an impact in terms of reducing peoples experiencing substance use disorder, and that will actually put them in a pathway to recovery. So I think we need to really rethink how we're approaching things. I think we've learned lessons for decades of using the criminal legal system to try to address substance use disorders. And I think we have been doing important things here in this community, and I think it's important to recognize that there's been programs like the LEAD program here locally, that have been seen as models for other places, but we've never sufficiently resourced those. And right now, of course, the need has only escalated because of the impacts of the pandemic and so many things that disrupted the lives of so many people. So I think we need to be investing in the things that actually have a return on investment. [00:11:54] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Now, you make a great point about our jails - one, not being a source of treatment, but they're not equipped to do that right now. And in fact, they're not equipped to do a lot of things that people think they do and things that they have done before. We've seen outcry from everyone from the ACLU to the guards and workers at our jails saying - Things are overcrowded, we're understaffed, we don't have adequate services, facilities, we don't have the tools to do the job that you're asking us to do and the way that you're asking us to do it, and the overcrowding is really making issues harder. In order to address that, the King County Council voted to initiate a contract with another jail provider - the SCORE Center in Des Moines - to transfer some inmates over there. Would you have voted to do that? And do you think we should do what Dow Constantine suggested and closing the jail? What is your plan for this? Would you have done what the County Council did? And where should we move forward after that? [00:12:56] Jorge Barón: Yeah, Crystal - that's a good question. So the answer to your question about the SCORE jail is that I would not have voted to enter into that contract and to transfer people, primarily because I think at the time - and I think still to this point, from what I understand - the concerns that a number of people raised, and particularly the public defenders who represent people in the facility, in the jail, that the issue of access to counsel and access to family was not adequately addressed at the time. And to me, this is a particular issue that I care a lot about, just because I've had a lot of experience being an attorney and starting my career at Northwest Immigrant Rights Project as a staff attorney working with people in the Immigration Detention Center in Tacoma. I did work during law school in the criminal legal issues and prisons in the South. And this issue of being able to access attorneys is a really important one that we as a community should be absolutely standing up for - because when people are put into jail pending a charge, we have a strong presumption in this country of being presumed innocent until we're proven guilty. And one of the key ways that people can have that right be enforced is through access to counsel. And so if we're gonna undermine that, I think that's a serious issue. I absolutely, to be clear, do not think that the conditions at the King County Jail are adequate, and we absolutely need to take steps to address the overcrowding. I think people in the community may not always be paying attention to this, but it's remarkable that we have groups that don't normally align on this - like the public defenders on the one side and the correctional workers in the jail - calling for the same steps because of how bad the situation was. And so we should be listening to people who are working most directly with people in there. And obviously we should be deeply concerned about the fact that multiple people have been dying in our care. I've been telling people that we need to think about, as a community - when we take one of our neighbors into custody because we determine that they need to be held in jail, we become responsible. They become our responsibility, and we need to make sure that we have the staffing and the resources to adequately care for them. And if we see that people are dying at the rate that we've seen, we're not living up to that commitment. And so we need to take steps, and I would support, at least as an interim measure, the call from the public defenders and from the correction officers of having booking restrictions that will limit the number of people who are gonna be in the jail until we know that we can actually take care of people. I know it's a complex issue because I think part of the challenge has also been that the state has failed in its obligation to make sure that we provide treatment and assessments for and evaluations for people who have behavioral health issues, and that's also exacerbated the problem in terms of people being able to be released. But we need to address this with more urgency because literally people are dying in our custody, and it shouldn't be - even if you're accused of a crime, this should not be a death penalty situation where we're putting people in fatal consequences because they're accused of a criminal offense. And so I think we need to be taking very significant steps to move that. And again, the SCORE Jail - I understand the intention, but we also need to be respecting the right for people to be able to defend themselves in court. [00:16:19] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. I do wanna talk about housing and homelessness. And it's been an issue that has been on the top of mind of everyone, basically. One thing that it's a big challenge for our community to deal with, and another because so many people are struggling themselves. One issue called out by experts as a barrier to our response is that frontline worker wages don't cover the cost of living, and that services provided by frontline workers, especially those with lived experiences, are necessary to effectively reduce the amount of people who are homeless. Do you believe our local nonprofits have a responsibility to pay living wages for our area? And how can we make that more likely with how we bid and contract for services at the county level? [00:17:04] Jorge Barón: So Crystal, I absolutely agree that nonprofits have a responsibility to make sure that their workers are adequately compensated. It's something that I've been working on here at Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, and I think one of the things that I see frequently at the county level - and I think a lot of people don't realize that a lot of the human services that the county provides is actually done through nonprofit entities that the county contracts out with. And so the county does have a responsibility to make sure that we're structuring the contracts in ways that are going to incentivize our nonprofit partners to do the right thing. I've seen practices where, for example, we have contracts where there's lesser amount of funding year-over-year for a nonprofit partner. And of course, that doesn't help when we have a situation where the cost of living is increasing. I've also seen situations where there's this pressure of - well, you're not delivering enough services per FTE, and so it incentivizes employers to try to do it as cheaply as possible in kind of a race to the bottom that actually hinders the ability of organizations to be able to adequately compensate their employees. And so I definitely think that the county has a responsibility to make sure that it's structuring its practices to incentivize for people to be paid well. And I think part of the problem is that sometimes we think of short-term - how many services we can provide in the very immediate term - but we lose sight of the fact that when we don't compensate people well, we end up losing those workers. And so you get into the cycle where people, the attrition rate is very high, the experience that we get from workers - it's lost. You spend a lot of energy and time with recruiting and hiring and training new employees. And so I think people need to understand that there is actually - it's a better investment to compensate people well. Even in the situations where that might mean - in the very short term, you might not be able to do as many services. But in the long term, you're actually gonna be able to serve people better and more fully if you invest in the workforce so that they will stick around. Because particularly in a place - obviously the cost of living is increasing, it's all connected - housing affordability is limited. So we need to make sure that the people who are providing services to county residents can also themselves be able to be county residents - because I hear that from a lot of people that they're having to, they can't even live in the county that they work in because of the high cost of living. So I absolutely think that needs to be a responsibility that the county plays a role in doing better from its part. [00:19:35] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And as you talk about, there are shortages everywhere, there are staff shortages even in the county. And this impacts how the county is able to deliver services. There's been lots of coverage about staffing crises in a variety of government agencies, school districts, just seemingly at every level. And these people are crucial to programs and services that people count on, that have been around for decades, and that are now in jeopardy. King County has done hiring and retention bonuses for deputies in the Sheriff's department. Should we be doing that for other workers in other departments? How do we address this? [00:20:11] Jorge Barón: I do think that we should look at those options. I do wanna work and wanna be very proactive in engaging labor partners that represent workers and finding what they think would be best for their workforce. 'Cause I wanna be very respectful of the role that they play in channeling the voice of the people who are working for the county. Because I know sometimes that can create some tensions for people who have been working there for a long time and then money is being invested to attract new workers. And so I wanna make sure that it's done in a way that we're engaging people who are already part of the workforce and who have devoted a lot of time to serve the community. So I think that is important. But Crystal, one other thing that I was gonna mention when you talk about workforce issues is important role - and again, how lots of these things are connected - is childcare issues. That's one topic that I've heard a lot from community members that is making these workforce development issues more difficult, and in terms of attracting and incentivizing people to join the workforce is the high cost of childcare. And particularly the way that our current subsidies are structured at the county level, we have the situation where if you make above a certain amount, you then don't qualify for any subsidy at all. And that makes it difficult because then if you're considering - Well, okay if I take this job and maybe it's a good union paying job, but it actually will put me above the income level that qualifies for the subsidy. And then when I start doing the math, it turns out that doesn't make sense for me to take the job because I'll end up paying more on childcare than would make the job worth it. And as a parent who had three children go through the childcare system, who's gone through the public school system, I felt that very directly. And I've been fortunate to be able to have the resources to make that happen, but it was a big stretch. And so for a lot of people in the community, that's gonna be something that I think has made it more difficult for people to be able to join the workforce. And that impacts us all, right? We can talk about, for example, the challenges that the Metro Transit is having and the fact they're having to reduce routes - and it's not because of lack of money, it's because of the fact that they can't find enough drivers and they've had challenges there. So I think we need to be able to connect those dots and realize that investments in those areas are important to make sure that we have an adequate workforce. And it's also a good social equity and racial equity issue to make sure that we're investing so that folks can get the support they need to make sure they can not fully be participants in the community. [00:22:40] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely, and thank you so much for bringing that up because that is a major factor in just the affordability of our community, the ability for people to participate in our workforce and our economy, to be upwardly mobile, and to get out of poverty. So thank you so much for talking about how important it is to help make affordable childcare accessible. I also want to talk about health, and especially with the county doing the heavy lifting when it comes to public health, really, and being the source of delivery for so much of it. I wanted to talk about something that we've been dealing with increasingly, whether it's because of COVID, which is still around and still here, and trying to reduce transmission and mitigate the impacts of it, or wildfire smoke, which we have to contend with, and that is extremely unhealthy to breathe and be in the midst of. Or other illnesses, viruses that are all around - trying to just reduce the prevalence of illness in our community. And it's become more apparent that how we treat air, how important air is to health, and how air filtration and ventilation is important to public safety. Do you have a plan for, would you advocate retrofitting, ensuring that all of our public buildings have the recommended air filtration, air turnover, healthy air systems for our community? And how can we help private businesses and spaces do that? [00:24:08] Jorge Barón: Yeah, I absolutely support that. And I think it's an important - and I think there will be some important opportunities with some of the investments that are coming through the Inflation Reduction Act that - mostly focused on energy efficiency, but there could be opportunities where some of those resources could be used at the same time to make sure that we're improving air quality inside buildings, homes, and businesses as well. And it's interesting 'cause I think one of the things that I think about when I think of this - when you're talking about the community health - one of the things that's most disturbing to me and one that I absolutely wanna continue to focus on if I'm given the opportunity to serve in this role, is the disparities that we see in life expectancy in our communities. I'd encourage people to look up some of the research that's publicly available where you can see the life expectancy disparities in census tracts around the county, around the region. And I think to me, it should be disturbing to all of us that there are census tracts in South King County where the life expectancy is 17 years less than census tracts in other parts of the county - just a short drive away. And of course, when you dig into the reasons for that - and of course, there are many - but issues of pollution and of all the social determinants of health are driving a lot of those disparities. And that is something that we should not find in any way acceptable at this point of time in a county, particularly a county that we renamed in honor of Dr. King. I always think of what he would think about those kinds of disparities and obviously, he would find them unacceptable and I find them unacceptable. And so addressing those issues and looking at the reasons that the impact - that all kinds of issues are impacting people's health, including air quality, both inside and frankly outside would have. And so when we talk about that and of course, with the ongoing impacts of climate change and the climate crisis, we're gonna be needing to tackle that even more - because unfortunately, we're gonna continue as we work in the long-term strategy, obviously, of reducing our greenhouse gas emissions, but we also have to mitigate the impacts that we're seeing day in and day out with now the wildfire season that we see where the smoke is impacting people. And of course, many of us may have the fortune of being able to work inside and protect ourselves to some degree, but a lot of other people can't. And so we need to be addressing on multiple levels - ensuring that all community members and of course, particularly the most directly impacted communities, which of course overwhelmingly are people of color, immigrant refugee communities - that they're being given the tools and the protection to make sure that we don't see the level of disparities that we're currently seeing across the county. [00:26:47] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And following on that - talking about how exposed people are - climate change is a major factor in this. And on almost every measure, we're behind on our 2030 climate goals, while experiencing some of the devastating impacts that you just talked about - from wildfires and floods and cold and heat. What are your highest priority plans to get us on track to meet the 2030 goals? [00:27:10] Jorge Barón: I think there's a number of things. So one of our major drivers in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, of course, is our transportation system. And so a lot of that has to be focused on stopping our reliance and reducing our reliance on cars. And trying to build a transit infrastructure that is gonna be reliable, it's gonna be safe, and that it's going to be such that people can rely on it to get to work and to get to other places in the community. So for me, that's important. I think it's important - obviously, I appreciate and support the efforts to electrify our bus fleet and would do anything I could to expedite that and move forward on that. But the challenge is that if we can have the buses be electric, but if people are not using them and they're still relying on their cars, that's not gonna help us achieve the targets. So that's gonna be really important. I think the other sort of big sources is obviously our infrastructure and our buildings and homes. And as I mentioned earlier, there is gonna be some opportunities for credits and investments through federal resources in the coming years that we need to make sure that we as a county are promoting and incentivizing and fully tapping into so that we can further reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and we can get closer to reaching the goals that we've set for ourselves. So I think that's gonna be an important work that we need to do in the community. And this is, again, where a lot of things are connected to - also how we build and how we structure our communities is gonna be important, because as we talk about transit - I fully support what the legislature did to create greater density 'cause that has a significant impact on climate justice goals. And so that's something that I think we are going to need to also monitor - as these new changes that the legislature made - how those are implemented will have an impact in our long-term strategy to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. So I think this is gonna be an important period of time for us to really step up in our commitment to addressing what is a very urgent issue. [00:29:12] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. One issue impacting, I guess a major issue that impacts residents is how we implement policy - state level, county level, federal level really. There's been some great, helpful policy passed, but when it comes to the implementation of it, there's been a lot that has been desired in some circumstances - including those where some partners may not understand what needs to be stood up at the county level to deliver services. The county is pretty visible in this 'cause a lot of times the county is the entity responsible for the ultimate disbursement of funds or provision of services that come through the state or county level. And there seems to be sometimes a disconnect between what the county has capacity for, what it's capable to do and what legislation or funding or program calls to be done - leaving a shortfall in service delivery, things getting delayed, things not turning out as intended. What can be done to better improve the implementation of policy so that more people can receive the benefits that were intended? [00:30:17] Jorge Barón: I completely agree, Crystal, 'cause I've seen that myself in terms of being able to get policies done both at the local level and at the state level in terms of changes to policy. For example, we did some work many years ago on the connection between immigration enforcement and local law enforcement - and we achieved a victory of getting an ordinance passed at the county level. And then time went by and the actual implementation of that was not happening. And we later found out that some of the things that we had thought that the policy had changed had not changed. And so I've definitely seen that situation play out. And I think what it takes is constant oversight and very intense focus from entities like the council. I think the council has a particular responsibility and a duty to be the one who is providing oversight as the elected officials who are responsible for making sure that the policies that are in place are actually being implemented. 'Cause oftentimes what I see in those situations is that things get passed and then you move on to the next thing, but if the implementation and the oversight is not there, then changes aren't actually playing out on the ground level. So that's an important thing. I think the other thing that I think is important is a genuine engagement with communities that are going to be served. And I think that's another element that I would like to bring to the council is the fact that I have been working for nearly two decades now with marginalized communities throughout the state, particularly here in King County, and have built those relationships with people. And I would wanna be very proactive. I often tell people - Sometimes people say, I'll have an open door. And that to me is not really a good way to approach it because that still means that people have to come to me and my office. I wanna be very proactive in being out there - as I have been in my work here - of being out in community, talking to people, seeing how things are actually playing out on the ground level, and being engaged, and having genuine relationships with people so that you can actually assess how those policies are being implemented because that's what it takes. It's not just about receiving a report in council chambers, but it's about discussing with people how is this actually playing out. And that's how we've found things out here in my work at Northwest Immigrant Rights Project - has been working with community members - hearing how is this actually playing out on the ground level? How is this policy that looks nice on paper, on the King County Code, actually being impacted or being reflected on what people are experiencing in the community? And that's what it's gonna take to make sure that implementation is actually - that things are being done the way that we've intended them to be done when there's been changes in policy. [00:32:54] Crystal Fincher: Definitely. As we move to close today, I just want to give you the opportunity to share with voters who are going to be making a decision between you and a couple other candidates in the primary election. What differentiates you from your opponents most of all, and why should voters choose you? [00:33:14] Jorge Barón: For me, I think I hope voters will look at the track record that I've built over the last two decades working as a civil rights and human rights leader, working directly on behalf of marginalized communities with a deep commitment to equity and justice. I think that to me is really important because it's the work that I don't just talk about, I have done that work. And also the fact that I had the experience of working at the state level - building coalitions with community members, with allies - in a range of issues to make actually proactive and significant progressive change to policies that have impact marginalized communities across the state. And I hope to bring that same level of expertise and skill of building coalitions to impact policy that will make the situation for the county and county residents better. And then finally, again, the fact that I've had this experience and I've been fortunate to have this experience of leading a nonprofit organization, building an effective organization that has delivered, that's widely recognized as delivering strong services. And that puts me in a good place to be able to provide that oversight, to be able to ask the tough questions, to make the tough decisions because I've been in that kind of executive role before. And be able to make sure - because I think this is an important component of county government, and I think something that will help us build the case for more investments is - I think one of the things that people in the community rightly are concerned about is - are our tax dollars being invested well in various programs that the county funds? And because I've been a nonprofit leader, seeing how to properly allocate and distribute and make resources be spent effectively, I'm in a good position to be able to evaluate those things when those issues come up at the County Council. And so all of those experiences that I've had - I've been very privileged to be able to play that role - have prepared me well for this role. And I hope the voters in the District 4 will give me the opportunity to represent them in the council. [00:35:12] Crystal Fincher: Thank you so much for joining us today and for helping us learn more about you, and certainly wish you the best. [00:35:17] Jorge Barón: Thank you so much, Crystal - it was great talking to you. [00:35:19] Crystal Fincher: Thank you. Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks, which is produced by Shannon Cheng. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on every podcast service and app just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review shows and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes. Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.

As we prepare to kick off Season 4, by popular demand and return of the favor today Brian interviews Bill! Bill Allison is Professor of History and former chair of the Department of History at Georgia Southern University. He started his academic career as an assistant professor at the University of St. Francis (Indiana) and then spent several years at Weber State University. Bill earned a BA and MA in History at East Texas State University and took his PhD at Bowling Green State University, where he started as a diplomatic historian before embracing military history. He has done several stints in professional military education, first as a Visiting Professor in the Department of Strategy and International Security at the USAF Air War Colle,ge followed by a Distinguished Professorship in Military History at the USAF School for Advanced Air and Space Studies. From 2012-2014, he was General Harold K. Johnson Visiting Chair in Military History at the US Army War College. Bill is the author of several books, including My Lai: An American Atrocity in the Vietnam War (Johns Hopkins), Military Justice in Vietnam: The Rule of Law in an American War (University Press of Kansas), and The Gulf War, 1990-1991 (Palgrave). His first book, American Diplomats in Russia: Case Studies in Orphan Diplomacy, 1916-1919 (Praeger) was published in 1997. He is co-author with Janet Valentine and the late Jeffrey Grey of American Military History: A Survey from Colonial Times to the Present (Routledge), which is now in its third edition. Bill's professional service is a sign of his dedication to our profession. He is a former Trustee and Vice-President of the Society for Military History and was awarded the Society's Edwin Simmons Award for Distinguished Service in 2019. He has served on the editorial board of the Journal of Military History and is series editor for Routledge's Critical Moments in American History Series and Modern War Studies at the University Press of Kansas. In 2014, he was awarded the Department of the Army's Meritorious Public Service Medal. In June 2023, Bill served as the Program Director at the Society for Military History Summer Seminar in Military History, held at the National WWII Museum in New Orleans, and he is a current member of the Department of the Army's Historical Advisory Subcommittee. Join us for a fun and interesting chat with one of the co-hosts of Military Historians are People, Too! We'll talk growing up in East Texas, Vietnam, music, guitars, blocked algebra memories, reinventing yourself, and Rudy's BBQ in Texas! Rec.: 08/18/2023

On this week's show we bring you conversation about the Roots of Environmental Injustice in Appalachia with historian Ron Eller that recorded live on June 29, 2023 by the Kentucky Resources Council as part of their Kentucky Environmental Leadership Institute (https://www.kyrc.org/our-work/kentucky-environmental-leadership-institute). Ron Eller is a Distinguished Professor of History Emeritus at the University of Kentucky. Originally from southern West Virginia, Ron Eller has spent over forty years writing and teaching about the Appalachian region. A descendant of eight generations of families from Appalachia, Dr. Eller served for 15 years as the Director of the University of Kentucky Appalachian Center, where he coordinated research and service programs on a wide range of Appalachian policy issues, including education, health care, economic development, civic leadership, and the environment. A former Rockefeller Foundation Scholar, he holds a Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and is widely known as a scholar of Appalachian history and the study of rural economic development and social change. He has published more than sixty articles and reports but is most well known for his award-winning books Miners, Millhands and Mountaineers: The Industrialization of the Appalachian South, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 1983, and Uneven Ground: Appalachia Since 1945, published in 2008. He has served as Chairman of the Governor's Kentucky Appalachian Task Force, the first Chairman of the Kentucky Appalachian Commission and as a member of the Sustainable Communities Task Force of President Clinton's Council on Sustainable Development. Among other awards, he is the recipient of the Jim Wayne Miller Award for Distinguished Service to Appalachia, two East Kentucky Leadership Foundation Special Awards (1999 and 2009), and the University of Kentucky William E. Lyons Award for Outstanding Public Service. He has worked on projects in rural education reform with the Ford Foundation, the American Council on Education, and the American Association of Community Colleges and has served as the John D. Whisman Visiting Scholar for the Appalachian Regional Commission in Washington. Dr. Eller's most recent book, Uneven Ground: Appalachia Since 1945, was the winner of the 2008 Willis D. Weatherford Award for the best publication about Appalachia by the Appalachian Studies Association and the 2009 V.O. Key Award for the best book on Southern Politics by the Southern Political Science Association. The book examines the impact of government programs and economic development on Appalachia since World War II. He is retired and splits his time between his cabin in western North Carolina and his home in Lexington, Kentucky. On Truth to Power each week, we gather people from around the community to discuss the state of the world, the nation, the state, and the city! It's a community conversation like you won't hear anywhere else! Truth to Power airs every Friday at 9pm, Saturday at 11am, and Sunday at 4pm on Louisville's grassroots, community radio station, Forward Radio 106.5fm WFMP and live streams at forwardradio.org

Schools are at the heart of communities across the United States, and teachers are at the heart of each school. Alexandra Robbins shares a year in the life of three teachers, the schools in which they teach, and the children whose lives they shape Robbins is the author of five New York Times bestselling books, is an investigative reporter and a recipient of the prestigious John Bartlow Martin Award for Public Interest Magazine Journalism, given by the Medill School of Journalism. In 2022, she also was honored for “Distinguished Service to Public Education.” She is the author of “The Overachievers,” a New York Times Editors' Choice and People magazine Critics' Choice, New York Times bestseller, “The Nurses: A Year of Secrets, Drama, and Miracles with the Heroes of the Hospital,” and “The Geeks Shall Inherit the Earth.” Robbins' latest book, “The Teachers: A Year Inside America's Most Vulnerable, Important Profession,” described as “A remarkable piece of storytelling … with extraordinary reporting,” was released in March 2023. Robbins has written for several publications, including The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, Vanity Fair, The Washington Post, Forbes and The Atlantic. She has appeared on television, on 60 Minutes, The Today Show, CBS Mornings, Oprah, The View and The Colbert Report and has appeared as an on-air expert on hundreds of other shows on dozens of networks.  She won the Best Single Article of the Year award from Media Industry News, an Exceptional Merit in Media Award from the National Women's Political Caucus, the Donald Robinson Memorial Award for Investigative Journalism; the June Roth Award for Medical Journalism, among others.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Dr. Tim Davis is an inspiring voice in the field of Physical Education. He is a professor at the State University of New York at Cortland. Tim is the director of the Sensory Integration Motor Sensory and Multi-Sensory Environment. Dr. Davis serves as the Executive Director of the Adapted Physical Education National Standards and Certification Program through the National Consortium for Physical Education and Individuals with Disability. Tim is also a senior consultant for Fit and Fun Playscapes. Dr. Davis is an award-winning educator with major accolades including the SUNY Chancellors Excellence in Professional Service Award and the 2021 SUNY Faculty Award for Distinguished Service.

On this Primary Week re-air, Crystal chats with Jorge Barón about his campaign for King County Council District 4 - why he decided to run, how 17 years at the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project has prepared him for the role, and his thoughts on generating progressive revenue for county services, drug possession and substance use disorder, addressing overcrowding in the King County Jail, improving frontline worker wages and workforce issues, air quality and climate change, and the importance of oversight and genuine community engagement in policy implementation. As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com. Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Jorge Barón at @jorgebaron.   Jorge Barón Jorge L. Barón has spent his legal career advancing and defending the rights of marginalized communities, and has served as executive director of the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project for more than 15 years. Jorge has fought egregious policies like the Muslim Ban and family separation as well as built coalitions that drove significant policy change and generated hundreds of millions of dollars of funding for immigrant communities. Jorge has had the honor of being awarded the King County Council's MLK Medal of Distinguished Service and served on the Joint Legislative Task Force on Deadly Force in Community Policing. Jorge is originally from Bogotá, Colombia, immigrating with his mom and brothers at the age of 13. Jorge is a graduate of Yale Law School and Duke University, a proud former union member, and public school parent.    Resources Campaign Website - Jorge Barón   Transcript [00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review show and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. Today, I am excited to be welcoming a candidate for King County Council District 4 - Jorge Barón. Welcome to Hacks & Wonks, Jorge. [00:01:03] Jorge Barón: Thank you so much for having me, Crystal. I'm pleased to be here. [00:01:05] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely - we're pleased to have you here. I guess just starting out - what made you decide to run for King County Council? [00:01:12] Jorge Barón: Yeah, it's a great question because I think for me, this is a new adventure that I'm embarking on. I think if you'd asked me 10 years ago if I was going to run for elected office, I would have said no. But I think what's happened over the last - since that time - is that I've seen, of course, working in the immigration field for the last 17 years, I've seen a lot of bad policy, but during the Trump administration, I saw a particular period of really egregious attacks on communities that I'm a part of, that I care about, and that I was working on behalf of. And I also saw how state and local government played an important role in protecting people. And I also saw people, frankly, that I've considered mentors and people who I admire - like Representative Pramila Jayapal and Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda - who also went from being advocates on the outside of government to go inside and to actually work on policy issues at the government level, and saw how effective they've been in creating some policy change in a progressive direction. So that gave me an inspiration, and of course, I've continued working here at Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, but last year I made the decision to step away from this work that I've been doing for now 17 years. And when I started thinking about what would come next, I thought that working at the local government level would be an avenue to further some of the same social justice issues that I've been pursuing for nearly two decades, and that gave me the inspiration. And of course, when Councilmember Kohl-Welles announced that she would be stepping down, saw an opportunity to put myself forth and to share with folks in District 4 - where I live - that I would be a good advocate for the social justice values that I've been pursuing for a long time now. [00:02:46] Crystal Fincher: How do you think your work at Northwest Immigrant Rights Project has prepared you to run and serve? [00:02:52] Jorge Barón: Yeah, no - it's a good question. And I've been very fortunate, of course, to have had the privilege of serving in this role. And for a long time, I thought that something else would pull me away from leaving here, and it - nothing better came along, but I felt like it was a good time for me to allow other people to step into leadership roles here and for me to take a break and do something new. But the experience that I've had here, I think, has prepared me for this role in a couple of different ways. First of all, obviously, I've had the opportunity to be the chief executive here at this organization - that we've been able to grow into now the second-largest nonprofit law firm in the Pacific Northwest, and I think that experience of being a leader in that role has given me an opportunity to learn a lot about how to manage organizations and how to run an effective organization. And I think the other part that's been really important in the work that we've done here that I think will be helpful - very important at the county level - is that I have been able to work in partnership with many stakeholders in building coalitions that have enabled important policy change at the state level. And one of the things that has inspired me to run at the County Council level is seeing that right now the county is facing a very difficult period because of the limitations that the state government has placed on - particularly on the revenue side - and I think we need people who are going to be able to build the kind of coalition to push the State Legislature, to work in partnership with our state legislators to make sure that we get some changes - that I think a lot of people recognize are needed - to the way that the county is funded, to make sure the county can actually operate effectively and carry out its responsibilities. So that kind of coalition building - working with state legislators in making actually progressive and important changes happen at the state level - which is what I've been able to do here, is something that I feel is going to serve me well if I get the privilege of serving on the council. [00:04:41] Crystal Fincher: When you talk about the issue of revenue, which is very important - and as we talk about this and the things we'll talk about as we continue, lots of them will require additional revenue. More money is needed. But as you talk about, the progressive revenue options that exist at the county level are limited. What progressive revenue options will you pursue, if any, and how will you go about doing that? [00:05:04] Jorge Barón: Yeah, no, I think it's important to talk about it because that's absolutely one of the key things that I think we need to discuss and make sure that voters understand. And I've seen it, and it's been frustrating to me actually, from - in my role at Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, we've been advocating before the councils - at least myself, I've been advocating before the council since around 2008, 2009. And even since that time, the conversation had been that the county was in an unsustainable fiscal path, right? That we had this structural deficit, and particularly because of the 1% tax lid that restricts how much property tax revenue the county can collect, that we were in this unsustainable path. And in some ways, I feel like we haven't - as a community, we haven't felt the actual impact of that because inflation has been relatively low during that period, because there have been different periods of COVID relief money, for example, that came in the last couple of years that in some ways mitigated the full impact of that situation. But we're starting to now, and the upcoming budget cycle - we're facing, as a county, $100 million shortfall. And so I think now we're gonna start feeling the direct impact of those changes. And so I think we radically need to restructure how the county is funded and move away - I don't think we're gonna be able to move away completely, obviously - but at least shift some of the burden that currently is impacting particularly low income and even moderate income households here in King County and make sure that we create the opportunity. And again, this is one of the challenges - is that it's not something the county directly can do, but we will need to work with the state legislators to provide those opportunities for some changes so that we become less reliant on things like the sales tax and the property tax. And we have opportunities to have the revenue come from sources that have greater ability to pay. Obviously this is not only an issue for the county. Obviously at the state level, we also need to be working on that because we have the most regressive tax structure in the country. And so at all levels of government, we need to do this. And my hope is to be able to bring new energy to this conversation, to help talking about it all the time that - my campaign have been trying to talk about it - that's the first thing I always talk about because I think a lot of people don't understand the situation that we're in and that we're gonna be facing in terms of county services having to be drastically cut at a time when we see so much need in the community and people are saying - Why aren't we tackling these issues? Why aren't we tackling housing affordability, the homelessness crisis? - all kinds of issues that we can talk about. And those things - we need more investments to be able to make progress in those areas. And so the regressive revenue options need to be something that we absolutely put top of mind in talking to voters and talking to state legislators. [00:07:46] Crystal Fincher: Right, and you talked about how to handle issues in terms of public safety, behavioral health, and how important that funding is. In the wake of the State Legislature increasing criminalization of possession of drugs and public use of drugs - making it a gross misdemeanor. And in the wake of the Seattle City Council weighing this issue themselves and currently still searching for a path forward on how to approach drug use and abuse in the City of Seattle - how do you view this in King County? Where do you stand on the criminalization of public drug use, and what do you think needs to be done to address this crisis? [00:08:23] Jorge Barón: Yeah, Crystal - I'll be very clear that I do not support criminalizing substance use disorders. I believe that we have - what I try to tell people about this issue is that we need to look at this the same way that we talk about - for example, when we talk about climate justice, a lot of people in this community - I guess I would say most people in this community, I know there's some people who are still climate skeptics out there - but most of us believe the science and we talk about the importance of believing the research and following the science. Same thing with public health, right? Most people in this community say we need to believe the science around public health and COVID and vaccines, right? And why don't we do the same thing with regard to public safety and the criminal legal system, right? There is abundant research when it comes to how to address the serious issues - and I wanna say it's important to note that the issue is not about doing nothing about the fact that people are experiencing substance use disorders. And obviously, it's a crisis in the fact that we have so many people in our community who are dying because of that. So the question is not, should we do something? We absolutely should do something. The question is, what should we do? And for me, the response of trying to punish people and putting people in jail because they're experiencing substance use disorders is not the solution. And I think the evidence and the research conclusively proves that that is not the path that is going to result in people actually being safe. And I'm concerned - some ways - that particularly right now, some of the debate is framed as in, we're trying to protect people by putting them in jail. And if you look at the evidence, that's not the case - at least if you look at overall numbers. And I know people will say - Well, there's this one example, this anecdote where this person got better because they went to jail. And I appreciate that there may be cases like that, but we can't do public policy based completely on anecdotes. We need to look at the research. And the research to me is very compelling in that, for example, with people who are experiencing substance use disorders with things like fentanyl, that you will end up increasing the risk that they will die if they go into jail. It's pretty dramatic - the statistics and the data on increasing the risk of overdose in those situations. And so I am concerned, I think we need to be thinking about what is best approach long-term - and particularly because the criminal legal system is also a very expensive system, right? And so when we're talking about investing limited public resources in a time of austerity in terms of the fiscal situation that we were just talking about - to me, it doesn't make sense to continue to invest in a system that has not proven to have, for lack of a better term, return on investment - when we see that there are programs that are currently underfunded, that we're not putting enough resources in, that do have an impact in terms of reducing peoples experiencing substance use disorder, and that will actually put them in a pathway to recovery. So I think we need to really rethink how we're approaching things. I think we've learned lessons for decades of using the criminal legal system to try to address substance use disorders. And I think we have been doing important things here in this community, and I think it's important to recognize that there's been programs like the LEAD program here locally, that have been seen as models for other places, but we've never sufficiently resourced those. And right now, of course, the need has only escalated because of the impacts of the pandemic and so many things that disrupted the lives of so many people. So I think we need to be investing in the things that actually have a return on investment. [00:11:54] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Now, you make a great point about our jails - one, not being a source of treatment, but they're not equipped to do that right now. And in fact, they're not equipped to do a lot of things that people think they do and things that they have done before. We've seen outcry from everyone from the ACLU to the guards and workers at our jails saying - Things are overcrowded, we're understaffed, we don't have adequate services, facilities, we don't have the tools to do the job that you're asking us to do and the way that you're asking us to do it, and the overcrowding is really making issues harder. In order to address that, the King County Council voted to initiate a contract with another jail provider - the SCORE Center in Des Moines - to transfer some inmates over there. Would you have voted to do that? And do you think we should do what Dow Constantine suggested and closing the jail? What is your plan for this? Would you have done what the County Council did? And where should we move forward after that? [00:12:56] Jorge Barón: Yeah, Crystal - that's a good question. So the answer to your question about the SCORE jail is that I would not have voted to enter into that contract and to transfer people, primarily because I think at the time - and I think still to this point, from what I understand - the concerns that a number of people raised, and particularly the public defenders who represent people in the facility, in the jail, that the issue of access to counsel and access to family was not adequately addressed at the time. And to me, this is a particular issue that I care a lot about, just because I've had a lot of experience being an attorney and starting my career at Northwest Immigrant Rights Project as a staff attorney working with people in the Immigration Detention Center in Tacoma. I did work during law school in the criminal legal issues and prisons in the South. And this issue of being able to access attorneys is a really important one that we as a community should be absolutely standing up for - because when people are put into jail pending a charge, we have a strong presumption in this country of being presumed innocent until we're proven guilty. And one of the key ways that people can have that right be enforced is through access to counsel. And so if we're gonna undermine that, I think that's a serious issue. I absolutely, to be clear, do not think that the conditions at the King County Jail are adequate, and we absolutely need to take steps to address the overcrowding. I think people in the community may not always be paying attention to this, but it's remarkable that we have groups that don't normally align on this - like the public defenders on the one side and the correctional workers in the jail - calling for the same steps because of how bad the situation was. And so we should be listening to people who are working most directly with people in there. And obviously we should be deeply concerned about the fact that multiple people have been dying in our care. I've been telling people that we need to think about, as a community - when we take one of our neighbors into custody because we determine that they need to be held in jail, we become responsible. They become our responsibility, and we need to make sure that we have the staffing and the resources to adequately care for them. And if we see that people are dying at the rate that we've seen, we're not living up to that commitment. And so we need to take steps, and I would support, at least as an interim measure, the call from the public defenders and from the correction officers of having booking restrictions that will limit the number of people who are gonna be in the jail until we know that we can actually take care of people. I know it's a complex issue because I think part of the challenge has also been that the state has failed in its obligation to make sure that we provide treatment and assessments for and evaluations for people who have behavioral health issues, and that's also exacerbated the problem in terms of people being able to be released. But we need to address this with more urgency because literally people are dying in our custody, and it shouldn't be - even if you're accused of a crime, this should not be a death penalty situation where we're putting people in fatal consequences because they're accused of a criminal offense. And so I think we need to be taking very significant steps to move that. And again, the SCORE Jail - I understand the intention, but we also need to be respecting the right for people to be able to defend themselves in court. [00:16:19] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. I do wanna talk about housing and homelessness. And it's been an issue that has been on the top of mind of everyone, basically. One thing that it's a big challenge for our community to deal with, and another because so many people are struggling themselves. One issue called out by experts as a barrier to our response is that frontline worker wages don't cover the cost of living, and that services provided by frontline workers, especially those with lived experiences, are necessary to effectively reduce the amount of people who are homeless. Do you believe our local nonprofits have a responsibility to pay living wages for our area? And how can we make that more likely with how we bid and contract for services at the county level? [00:17:04] Jorge Barón: So Crystal, I absolutely agree that nonprofits have a responsibility to make sure that their workers are adequately compensated. It's something that I've been working on here at Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, and I think one of the things that I see frequently at the county level - and I think a lot of people don't realize that a lot of the human services that the county provides is actually done through nonprofit entities that the county contracts out with. And so the county does have a responsibility to make sure that we're structuring the contracts in ways that are going to incentivize our nonprofit partners to do the right thing. I've seen practices where, for example, we have contracts where there's lesser amount of funding year-over-year for a nonprofit partner. And of course, that doesn't help when we have a situation where the cost of living is increasing. I've also seen situations where there's this pressure of - well, you're not delivering enough services per FTE, and so it incentivizes employers to try to do it as cheaply as possible in kind of a race to the bottom that actually hinders the ability of organizations to be able to adequately compensate their employees. And so I definitely think that the county has a responsibility to make sure that it's structuring its practices to incentivize for people to be paid well. And I think part of the problem is that sometimes we think of short-term - how many services we can provide in the very immediate term - but we lose sight of the fact that when we don't compensate people well, we end up losing those workers. And so you get into the cycle where people, the attrition rate is very high, the experience that we get from workers - it's lost. You spend a lot of energy and time with recruiting and hiring and training new employees. And so I think people need to understand that there is actually - it's a better investment to compensate people well. Even in the situations where that might mean - in the very short term, you might not be able to do as many services. But in the long term, you're actually gonna be able to serve people better and more fully if you invest in the workforce so that they will stick around. Because particularly in a place - obviously the cost of living is increasing, it's all connected - housing affordability is limited. So we need to make sure that the people who are providing services to county residents can also themselves be able to be county residents - because I hear that from a lot of people that they're having to, they can't even live in the county that they work in because of the high cost of living. So I absolutely think that needs to be a responsibility that the county plays a role in doing better from its part. [00:19:35] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And as you talk about, there are shortages everywhere, there are staff shortages even in the county. And this impacts how the county is able to deliver services. There's been lots of coverage about staffing crises in a variety of government agencies, school districts, just seemingly at every level. And these people are crucial to programs and services that people count on, that have been around for decades, and that are now in jeopardy. King County has done hiring and retention bonuses for deputies in the Sheriff's department. Should we be doing that for other workers in other departments? How do we address this? [00:20:11] Jorge Barón: I do think that we should look at those options. I do wanna work and wanna be very proactive in engaging labor partners that represent workers and finding what they think would be best for their workforce. 'Cause I wanna be very respectful of the role that they play in channeling the voice of the people who are working for the county. Because I know sometimes that can create some tensions for people who have been working there for a long time and then money is being invested to attract new workers. And so I wanna make sure that it's done in a way that we're engaging people who are already part of the workforce and who have devoted a lot of time to serve the community. So I think that is important. But Crystal, one other thing that I was gonna mention when you talk about workforce issues is important role - and again, how lots of these things are connected - is childcare issues. That's one topic that I've heard a lot from community members that is making these workforce development issues more difficult, and in terms of attracting and incentivizing people to join the workforce is the high cost of childcare. And particularly the way that our current subsidies are structured at the county level, we have the situation where if you make above a certain amount, you then don't qualify for any subsidy at all. And that makes it difficult because then if you're considering - Well, okay if I take this job and maybe it's a good union paying job, but it actually will put me above the income level that qualifies for the subsidy. And then when I start doing the math, it turns out that doesn't make sense for me to take the job because I'll end up paying more on childcare than would make the job worth it. And as a parent who had three children go through the childcare system, who's gone through the public school system, I felt that very directly. And I've been fortunate to be able to have the resources to make that happen, but it was a big stretch. And so for a lot of people in the community, that's gonna be something that I think has made it more difficult for people to be able to join the workforce. And that impacts us all, right? We can talk about, for example, the challenges that the Metro Transit is having and the fact they're having to reduce routes - and it's not because of lack of money, it's because of the fact that they can't find enough drivers and they've had challenges there. So I think we need to be able to connect those dots and realize that investments in those areas are important to make sure that we have an adequate workforce. And it's also a good social equity and racial equity issue to make sure that we're investing so that folks can get the support they need to make sure they can not fully be participants in the community. [00:22:40] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely, and thank you so much for bringing that up because that is a major factor in just the affordability of our community, the ability for people to participate in our workforce and our economy, to be upwardly mobile, and to get out of poverty. So thank you so much for talking about how important it is to help make affordable childcare accessible. I also want to talk about health, and especially with the county doing the heavy lifting when it comes to public health, really, and being the source of delivery for so much of it. I wanted to talk about something that we've been dealing with increasingly, whether it's because of COVID, which is still around and still here, and trying to reduce transmission and mitigate the impacts of it, or wildfire smoke, which we have to contend with, and that is extremely unhealthy to breathe and be in the midst of. Or other illnesses, viruses that are all around - trying to just reduce the prevalence of illness in our community. And it's become more apparent that how we treat air, how important air is to health, and how air filtration and ventilation is important to public safety. Do you have a plan for, would you advocate retrofitting, ensuring that all of our public buildings have the recommended air filtration, air turnover, healthy air systems for our community? And how can we help private businesses and spaces do that? [00:24:08] Jorge Barón: Yeah, I absolutely support that. And I think it's an important - and I think there will be some important opportunities with some of the investments that are coming through the Inflation Reduction Act that - mostly focused on energy efficiency, but there could be opportunities where some of those resources could be used at the same time to make sure that we're improving air quality inside buildings, homes, and businesses as well. And it's interesting 'cause I think one of the things that I think about when I think of this - when you're talking about the community health - one of the things that's most disturbing to me and one that I absolutely wanna continue to focus on if I'm given the opportunity to serve in this role, is the disparities that we see in life expectancy in our communities. I'd encourage people to look up some of the research that's publicly available where you can see the life expectancy disparities in census tracts around the county, around the region. And I think to me, it should be disturbing to all of us that there are census tracts in South King County where the life expectancy is 17 years less than census tracts in other parts of the county - just a short drive away. And of course, when you dig into the reasons for that - and of course, there are many - but issues of pollution and of all the social determinants of health are driving a lot of those disparities. And that is something that we should not find in any way acceptable at this point of time in a county, particularly a county that we renamed in honor of Dr. King. I always think of what he would think about those kinds of disparities and obviously, he would find them unacceptable and I find them unacceptable. And so addressing those issues and looking at the reasons that the impact - that all kinds of issues are impacting people's health, including air quality, both inside and frankly outside would have. And so when we talk about that and of course, with the ongoing impacts of climate change and the climate crisis, we're gonna be needing to tackle that even more - because unfortunately, we're gonna continue as we work in the long-term strategy, obviously, of reducing our greenhouse gas emissions, but we also have to mitigate the impacts that we're seeing day in and day out with now the wildfire season that we see where the smoke is impacting people. And of course, many of us may have the fortune of being able to work inside and protect ourselves to some degree, but a lot of other people can't. And so we need to be addressing on multiple levels - ensuring that all community members and of course, particularly the most directly impacted communities, which of course overwhelmingly are people of color, immigrant refugee communities - that they're being given the tools and the protection to make sure that we don't see the level of disparities that we're currently seeing across the county. [00:26:47] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And following on that - talking about how exposed people are - climate change is a major factor in this. And on almost every measure, we're behind on our 2030 climate goals, while experiencing some of the devastating impacts that you just talked about - from wildfires and floods and cold and heat. What are your highest priority plans to get us on track to meet the 2030 goals? [00:27:10] Jorge Barón: I think there's a number of things. So one of our major drivers in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, of course, is our transportation system. And so a lot of that has to be focused on stopping our reliance and reducing our reliance on cars. And trying to build a transit infrastructure that is gonna be reliable, it's gonna be safe, and that it's going to be such that people can rely on it to get to work and to get to other places in the community. So for me, that's important. I think it's important - obviously, I appreciate and support the efforts to electrify our bus fleet and would do anything I could to expedite that and move forward on that. But the challenge is that if we can have the buses be electric, but if people are not using them and they're still relying on their cars, that's not gonna help us achieve the targets. So that's gonna be really important. I think the other sort of big sources is obviously our infrastructure and our buildings and homes. And as I mentioned earlier, there is gonna be some opportunities for credits and investments through federal resources in the coming years that we need to make sure that we as a county are promoting and incentivizing and fully tapping into so that we can further reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and we can get closer to reaching the goals that we've set for ourselves. So I think that's gonna be an important work that we need to do in the community. And this is, again, where a lot of things are connected to - also how we build and how we structure our communities is gonna be important, because as we talk about transit - I fully support what the legislature did to create greater density 'cause that has a significant impact on climate justice goals. And so that's something that I think we are going to need to also monitor - as these new changes that the legislature made - how those are implemented will have an impact in our long-term strategy to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. So I think this is gonna be an important period of time for us to really step up in our commitment to addressing what is a very urgent issue. [00:29:12] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. One issue impacting, I guess a major issue that impacts residents is how we implement policy - state level, county level, federal level really. There's been some great, helpful policy passed, but when it comes to the implementation of it, there's been a lot that has been desired in some circumstances - including those where some partners may not understand what needs to be stood up at the county level to deliver services. The county is pretty visible in this 'cause a lot of times the county is the entity responsible for the ultimate disbursement of funds or provision of services that come through the state or county level. And there seems to be sometimes a disconnect between what the county has capacity for, what it's capable to do and what legislation or funding or program calls to be done - leaving a shortfall in service delivery, things getting delayed, things not turning out as intended. What can be done to better improve the implementation of policy so that more people can receive the benefits that were intended? [00:30:17] Jorge Barón: I completely agree, Crystal, 'cause I've seen that myself in terms of being able to get policies done both at the local level and at the state level in terms of changes to policy. For example, we did some work many years ago on the connection between immigration enforcement and local law enforcement - and we achieved a victory of getting an ordinance passed at the county level. And then time went by and the actual implementation of that was not happening. And we later found out that some of the things that we had thought that the policy had changed had not changed. And so I've definitely seen that situation play out. And I think what it takes is constant oversight and very intense focus from entities like the council. I think the council has a particular responsibility and a duty to be the one who is providing oversight as the elected officials who are responsible for making sure that the policies that are in place are actually being implemented. 'Cause oftentimes what I see in those situations is that things get passed and then you move on to the next thing, but if the implementation and the oversight is not there, then changes aren't actually playing out on the ground level. So that's an important thing. I think the other thing that I think is important is a genuine engagement with communities that are going to be served. And I think that's another element that I would like to bring to the council is the fact that I have been working for nearly two decades now with marginalized communities throughout the state, particularly here in King County, and have built those relationships with people. And I would wanna be very proactive. I often tell people - Sometimes people say, I'll have an open door. And that to me is not really a good way to approach it because that still means that people have to come to me and my office. I wanna be very proactive in being out there - as I have been in my work here - of being out in community, talking to people, seeing how things are actually playing out on the ground level, and being engaged, and having genuine relationships with people so that you can actually assess how those policies are being implemented because that's what it takes. It's not just about receiving a report in council chambers, but it's about discussing with people how is this actually playing out. And that's how we've found things out here in my work at Northwest Immigrant Rights Project - has been working with community members - hearing how is this actually playing out on the ground level? How is this policy that looks nice on paper, on the King County Code, actually being impacted or being reflected on what people are experiencing in the community? And that's what it's gonna take to make sure that implementation is actually - that things are being done the way that we've intended them to be done when there's been changes in policy. [00:32:54] Crystal Fincher: Definitely. As we move to close today, I just want to give you the opportunity to share with voters who are going to be making a decision between you and a couple other candidates in the primary election. What differentiates you from your opponents most of all, and why should voters choose you? [00:33:14] Jorge Barón: For me, I think I hope voters will look at the track record that I've built over the last two decades working as a civil rights and human rights leader, working directly on behalf of marginalized communities with a deep commitment to equity and justice. I think that to me is really important because it's the work that I don't just talk about, I have done that work. And also the fact that I had the experience of working at the state level - building coalitions with community members, with allies - in a range of issues to make actually proactive and significant progressive change to policies that have impact marginalized communities across the state. And I hope to bring that same level of expertise and skill of building coalitions to impact policy that will make the situation for the county and county residents better. And then finally, again, the fact that I've had this experience and I've been fortunate to have this experience of leading a nonprofit organization, building an effective organization that has delivered, that's widely recognized as delivering strong services. And that puts me in a good place to be able to provide that oversight, to be able to ask the tough questions, to make the tough decisions because I've been in that kind of executive role before. And be able to make sure - because I think this is an important component of county government, and I think something that will help us build the case for more investments is - I think one of the things that people in the community rightly are concerned about is - are our tax dollars being invested well in various programs that the county funds? And because I've been a nonprofit leader, seeing how to properly allocate and distribute and make resources be spent effectively, I'm in a good position to be able to evaluate those things when those issues come up at the County Council. And so all of those experiences that I've had - I've been very privileged to be able to play that role - have prepared me well for this role. And I hope the voters in the District 4 will give me the opportunity to represent them in the council. [00:35:12] Crystal Fincher: Thank you so much for joining us today and for helping us learn more about you, and certainly wish you the best. [00:35:17] Jorge Barón: Thank you so much, Crystal - it was great talking to you. [00:35:19] Crystal Fincher: Thank you. Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks, which is produced by Shannon Cheng. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on every podcast service and app just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review shows and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes. Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.

On this Tuesday topical show, Crystal chats with Jorge Barón about his campaign for King County Council District 4 - why he decided to run, how 17 years at the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project has prepared him for the role, and his thoughts on generating progressive revenue for county services, drug possession and substance use disorder, addressing overcrowding in the King County Jail, improving frontline worker wages and workforce issues, air quality and climate change, and the importance of oversight and genuine community engagement in policy implementation. As always, a full text transcript of the show is available below and at officialhacksandwonks.com. Follow us on Twitter at @HacksWonks. Find the host, Crystal Fincher, on Twitter at @finchfrii and find Jorge Barón at @jorgebaron.   Jorge Barón Jorge L. Barón has spent his legal career advancing and defending the rights of marginalized communities, and has served as executive director of the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project for more than 15 years. Jorge has fought egregious policies like the Muslim Ban and family separation as well as built coalitions that drove significant policy change and generated hundreds of millions of dollars of funding for immigrant communities. Jorge has had the honor of being awarded the King County Council's MLK Medal of Distinguished Service and served on the Joint Legislative Task Force on Deadly Force in Community Policing. Jorge is originally from Bogotá, Colombia, immigrating with his mom and brothers at the age of 13. Jorge is a graduate of Yale Law School and Duke University, a proud former union member, and public school parent.    Resources Campaign Website - Jorge Barón   Transcript [00:00:00] Crystal Fincher: Welcome to Hacks & Wonks. I'm Crystal Fincher, and I'm a political consultant and your host. On this show, we talk with policy wonks and political hacks to gather insight into local politics and policy in Washington state through the lens of those doing the work with behind-the-scenes perspectives on what's happening, why it's happening, and what you can do about it. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review show and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review wherever you listen to Hacks & Wonks. Full transcripts and resources referenced in the show are always available at officialhacksandwonks.com and in our episode notes. Today, I am excited to be welcoming a candidate for King County Council District 4 - Jorge Barón. Welcome to Hacks & Wonks, Jorge. [00:01:03] Jorge Barón: Thank you so much for having me, Crystal. I'm pleased to be here. [00:01:05] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely - we're pleased to have you here. I guess just starting out - what made you decide to run for King County Council? [00:01:12] Jorge Barón: Yeah, it's a great question because I think for me, this is a new adventure that I'm embarking on. I think if you'd asked me 10 years ago if I was going to run for elected office, I would have said no. But I think what's happened over the last - since that time - is that I've seen, of course, working in the immigration field for the last 17 years, I've seen a lot of bad policy, but during the Trump administration, I saw a particular period of really egregious attacks on communities that I'm a part of, that I care about, and that I was working on behalf of. And I also saw how state and local government played an important role in protecting people. And I also saw people, frankly, that I've considered mentors and people who I admire - like Representative Pramila Jayapal and Councilmember Teresa Mosqueda - who also went from being advocates on the outside of government to go inside and to actually work on policy issues at the government level, and saw how effective they've been in creating some policy change in a progressive direction. So that gave me an inspiration, and of course, I've continued working here at Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, but last year I made the decision to step away from this work that I've been doing for now 17 years. And when I started thinking about what would come next, I thought that working at the local government level would be an avenue to further some of the same social justice issues that I've been pursuing for nearly two decades, and that gave me the inspiration. And of course, when Councilmember Kohl-Welles announced that she would be stepping down, saw an opportunity to put myself forth and to share with folks in District 4 - where I live - that I would be a good advocate for the social justice values that I've been pursuing for a long time now. [00:02:46] Crystal Fincher: How do you think your work at Northwest Immigrant Rights Project has prepared you to run and serve? [00:02:52] Jorge Barón: Yeah, no - it's a good question. And I've been very fortunate, of course, to have had the privilege of serving in this role. And for a long time, I thought that something else would pull me away from leaving here, and it - nothing better came along, but I felt like it was a good time for me to allow other people to step into leadership roles here and for me to take a break and do something new. But the experience that I've had here, I think, has prepared me for this role in a couple of different ways. First of all, obviously, I've had the opportunity to be the chief executive here at this organization - that we've been able to grow into now the second-largest nonprofit law firm in the Pacific Northwest, and I think that experience of being a leader in that role has given me an opportunity to learn a lot about how to manage organizations and how to run an effective organization. And I think the other part that's been really important in the work that we've done here that I think will be helpful - very important at the county level - is that I have been able to work in partnership with many stakeholders in building coalitions that have enabled important policy change at the state level. And one of the things that has inspired me to run at the County Council level is seeing that right now the county is facing a very difficult period because of the limitations that the state government has placed on - particularly on the revenue side - and I think we need people who are going to be able to build the kind of coalition to push the State Legislature, to work in partnership with our state legislators to make sure that we get some changes - that I think a lot of people recognize are needed - to the way that the county is funded, to make sure the county can actually operate effectively and carry out its responsibilities. So that kind of coalition building - working with state legislators in making actually progressive and important changes happen at the state level - which is what I've been able to do here, is something that I feel is going to serve me well if I get the privilege of serving on the council. [00:04:41] Crystal Fincher: When you talk about the issue of revenue, which is very important - and as we talk about this and the things we'll talk about as we continue, lots of them will require additional revenue. More money is needed. But as you talk about, the progressive revenue options that exist at the county level are limited. What progressive revenue options will you pursue, if any, and how will you go about doing that? [00:05:04] Jorge Barón: Yeah, no, I think it's important to talk about it because that's absolutely one of the key things that I think we need to discuss and make sure that voters understand. And I've seen it, and it's been frustrating to me actually, from - in my role at Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, we've been advocating before the councils - at least myself, I've been advocating before the council since around 2008, 2009. And even since that time, the conversation had been that the county was in an unsustainable fiscal path, right? That we had this structural deficit, and particularly because of the 1% tax lid that restricts how much property tax revenue the county can collect, that we were in this unsustainable path. And in some ways, I feel like we haven't - as a community, we haven't felt the actual impact of that because inflation has been relatively low during that period, because there have been different periods of COVID relief money, for example, that came in the last couple of years that in some ways mitigated the full impact of that situation. But we're starting to now, and the upcoming budget cycle - we're facing, as a county, $100 million shortfall. And so I think now we're gonna start feeling the direct impact of those changes. And so I think we radically need to restructure how the county is funded and move away - I don't think we're gonna be able to move away completely, obviously - but at least shift some of the burden that currently is impacting particularly low income and even moderate income households here in King County and make sure that we create the opportunity. And again, this is one of the challenges - is that it's not something the county directly can do, but we will need to work with the state legislators to provide those opportunities for some changes so that we become less reliant on things like the sales tax and the property tax. And we have opportunities to have the revenue come from sources that have greater ability to pay. Obviously this is not only an issue for the county. Obviously at the state level, we also need to be working on that because we have the most regressive tax structure in the country. And so at all levels of government, we need to do this. And my hope is to be able to bring new energy to this conversation, to help talking about it all the time that - my campaign have been trying to talk about it - that's the first thing I always talk about because I think a lot of people don't understand the situation that we're in and that we're gonna be facing in terms of county services having to be drastically cut at a time when we see so much need in the community and people are saying - Why aren't we tackling these issues? Why aren't we tackling housing affordability, the homelessness crisis? - all kinds of issues that we can talk about. And those things - we need more investments to be able to make progress in those areas. And so the regressive revenue options need to be something that we absolutely put top of mind in talking to voters and talking to state legislators. [00:07:46] Crystal Fincher: Right, and you talked about how to handle issues in terms of public safety, behavioral health, and how important that funding is. In the wake of the State Legislature increasing criminalization of possession of drugs and public use of drugs - making it a gross misdemeanor. And in the wake of the Seattle City Council weighing this issue themselves and currently still searching for a path forward on how to approach drug use and abuse in the City of Seattle - how do you view this in King County? Where do you stand on the criminalization of public drug use, and what do you think needs to be done to address this crisis? [00:08:23] Jorge Barón: Yeah, Crystal - I'll be very clear that I do not support criminalizing substance use disorders. I believe that we have - what I try to tell people about this issue is that we need to look at this the same way that we talk about - for example, when we talk about climate justice, a lot of people in this community - I guess I would say most people in this community, I know there's some people who are still climate skeptics out there - but most of us believe the science and we talk about the importance of believing the research and following the science. Same thing with public health, right? Most people in this community say we need to believe the science around public health and COVID and vaccines, right? And why don't we do the same thing with regard to public safety and the criminal legal system, right? There is abundant research when it comes to how to address the serious issues - and I wanna say it's important to note that the issue is not about doing nothing about the fact that people are experiencing substance use disorders. And obviously, it's a crisis in the fact that we have so many people in our community who are dying because of that. So the question is not, should we do something? We absolutely should do something. The question is, what should we do? And for me, the response of trying to punish people and putting people in jail because they're experiencing substance use disorders is not the solution. And I think the evidence and the research conclusively proves that that is not the path that is going to result in people actually being safe. And I'm concerned - some ways - that particularly right now, some of the debate is framed as in, we're trying to protect people by putting them in jail. And if you look at the evidence, that's not the case - at least if you look at overall numbers. And I know people will say - Well, there's this one example, this anecdote where this person got better because they went to jail. And I appreciate that there may be cases like that, but we can't do public policy based completely on anecdotes. We need to look at the research. And the research to me is very compelling in that, for example, with people who are experiencing substance use disorders with things like fentanyl, that you will end up increasing the risk that they will die if they go into jail. It's pretty dramatic - the statistics and the data on increasing the risk of overdose in those situations. And so I am concerned, I think we need to be thinking about what is best approach long-term - and particularly because the criminal legal system is also a very expensive system, right? And so when we're talking about investing limited public resources in a time of austerity in terms of the fiscal situation that we were just talking about - to me, it doesn't make sense to continue to invest in a system that has not proven to have, for lack of a better term, return on investment - when we see that there are programs that are currently underfunded, that we're not putting enough resources in, that do have an impact in terms of reducing peoples experiencing substance use disorder, and that will actually put them in a pathway to recovery. So I think we need to really rethink how we're approaching things. I think we've learned lessons for decades of using the criminal legal system to try to address substance use disorders. And I think we have been doing important things here in this community, and I think it's important to recognize that there's been programs like the LEAD program here locally, that have been seen as models for other places, but we've never sufficiently resourced those. And right now, of course, the need has only escalated because of the impacts of the pandemic and so many things that disrupted the lives of so many people. So I think we need to be investing in the things that actually have a return on investment. [00:11:54] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. Now, you make a great point about our jails - one, not being a source of treatment, but they're not equipped to do that right now. And in fact, they're not equipped to do a lot of things that people think they do and things that they have done before. We've seen outcry from everyone from the ACLU to the guards and workers at our jails saying - Things are overcrowded, we're understaffed, we don't have adequate services, facilities, we don't have the tools to do the job that you're asking us to do and the way that you're asking us to do it, and the overcrowding is really making issues harder. In order to address that, the King County Council voted to initiate a contract with another jail provider - the SCORE Center in Des Moines - to transfer some inmates over there. Would you have voted to do that? And do you think we should do what Dow Constantine suggested and closing the jail? What is your plan for this? Would you have done what the County Council did? And where should we move forward after that? [00:12:56] Jorge Barón: Yeah, Crystal - that's a good question. So the answer to your question about the SCORE jail is that I would not have voted to enter into that contract and to transfer people, primarily because I think at the time - and I think still to this point, from what I understand - the concerns that a number of people raised, and particularly the public defenders who represent people in the facility, in the jail, that the issue of access to counsel and access to family was not adequately addressed at the time. And to me, this is a particular issue that I care a lot about, just because I've had a lot of experience being an attorney and starting my career at Northwest Immigrant Rights Project as a staff attorney working with people in the Immigration Detention Center in Tacoma. I did work during law school in the criminal legal issues and prisons in the South. And this issue of being able to access attorneys is a really important one that we as a community should be absolutely standing up for - because when people are put into jail pending a charge, we have a strong presumption in this country of being presumed innocent until we're proven guilty. And one of the key ways that people can have that right be enforced is through access to counsel. And so if we're gonna undermine that, I think that's a serious issue. I absolutely, to be clear, do not think that the conditions at the King County Jail are adequate, and we absolutely need to take steps to address the overcrowding. I think people in the community may not always be paying attention to this, but it's remarkable that we have groups that don't normally align on this - like the public defenders on the one side and the correctional workers in the jail - calling for the same steps because of how bad the situation was. And so we should be listening to people who are working most directly with people in there. And obviously we should be deeply concerned about the fact that multiple people have been dying in our care. I've been telling people that we need to think about, as a community - when we take one of our neighbors into custody because we determine that they need to be held in jail, we become responsible. They become our responsibility, and we need to make sure that we have the staffing and the resources to adequately care for them. And if we see that people are dying at the rate that we've seen, we're not living up to that commitment. And so we need to take steps, and I would support, at least as an interim measure, the call from the public defenders and from the correction officers of having booking restrictions that will limit the number of people who are gonna be in the jail until we know that we can actually take care of people. I know it's a complex issue because I think part of the challenge has also been that the state has failed in its obligation to make sure that we provide treatment and assessments for and evaluations for people who have behavioral health issues, and that's also exacerbated the problem in terms of people being able to be released. But we need to address this with more urgency because literally people are dying in our custody, and it shouldn't be - even if you're accused of a crime, this should not be a death penalty situation where we're putting people in fatal consequences because they're accused of a criminal offense. And so I think we need to be taking very significant steps to move that. And again, the SCORE Jail - I understand the intention, but we also need to be respecting the right for people to be able to defend themselves in court. [00:16:19] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. I do wanna talk about housing and homelessness. And it's been an issue that has been on the top of mind of everyone, basically. One thing that it's a big challenge for our community to deal with, and another because so many people are struggling themselves. One issue called out by experts as a barrier to our response is that frontline worker wages don't cover the cost of living, and that services provided by frontline workers, especially those with lived experiences, are necessary to effectively reduce the amount of people who are homeless. Do you believe our local nonprofits have a responsibility to pay living wages for our area? And how can we make that more likely with how we bid and contract for services at the county level? [00:17:04] Jorge Barón: So Crystal, I absolutely agree that nonprofits have a responsibility to make sure that their workers are adequately compensated. It's something that I've been working on here at Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, and I think one of the things that I see frequently at the county level - and I think a lot of people don't realize that a lot of the human services that the county provides is actually done through nonprofit entities that the county contracts out with. And so the county does have a responsibility to make sure that we're structuring the contracts in ways that are going to incentivize our nonprofit partners to do the right thing. I've seen practices where, for example, we have contracts where there's lesser amount of funding year-over-year for a nonprofit partner. And of course, that doesn't help when we have a situation where the cost of living is increasing. I've also seen situations where there's this pressure of - well, you're not delivering enough services per FTE, and so it incentivizes employers to try to do it as cheaply as possible in kind of a race to the bottom that actually hinders the ability of organizations to be able to adequately compensate their employees. And so I definitely think that the county has a responsibility to make sure that it's structuring its practices to incentivize for people to be paid well. And I think part of the problem is that sometimes we think of short-term - how many services we can provide in the very immediate term - but we lose sight of the fact that when we don't compensate people well, we end up losing those workers. And so you get into the cycle where people, the attrition rate is very high, the experience that we get from workers - it's lost. You spend a lot of energy and time with recruiting and hiring and training new employees. And so I think people need to understand that there is actually - it's a better investment to compensate people well. Even in the situations where that might mean - in the very short term, you might not be able to do as many services. But in the long term, you're actually gonna be able to serve people better and more fully if you invest in the workforce so that they will stick around. Because particularly in a place - obviously the cost of living is increasing, it's all connected - housing affordability is limited. So we need to make sure that the people who are providing services to county residents can also themselves be able to be county residents - because I hear that from a lot of people that they're having to, they can't even live in the county that they work in because of the high cost of living. So I absolutely think that needs to be a responsibility that the county plays a role in doing better from its part. [00:19:35] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And as you talk about, there are shortages everywhere, there are staff shortages even in the county. And this impacts how the county is able to deliver services. There's been lots of coverage about staffing crises in a variety of government agencies, school districts, just seemingly at every level. And these people are crucial to programs and services that people count on, that have been around for decades, and that are now in jeopardy. King County has done hiring and retention bonuses for deputies in the Sheriff's department. Should we be doing that for other workers in other departments? How do we address this? [00:20:11] Jorge Barón: I do think that we should look at those options. I do wanna work and wanna be very proactive in engaging labor partners that represent workers and finding what they think would be best for their workforce. 'Cause I wanna be very respectful of the role that they play in channeling the voice of the people who are working for the county. Because I know sometimes that can create some tensions for people who have been working there for a long time and then money is being invested to attract new workers. And so I wanna make sure that it's done in a way that we're engaging people who are already part of the workforce and who have devoted a lot of time to serve the community. So I think that is important. But Crystal, one other thing that I was gonna mention when you talk about workforce issues is important role - and again, how lots of these things are connected - is childcare issues. That's one topic that I've heard a lot from community members that is making these workforce development issues more difficult, and in terms of attracting and incentivizing people to join the workforce is the high cost of childcare. And particularly the way that our current subsidies are structured at the county level, we have the situation where if you make above a certain amount, you then don't qualify for any subsidy at all. And that makes it difficult because then if you're considering - Well, okay if I take this job and maybe it's a good union paying job, but it actually will put me above the income level that qualifies for the subsidy. And then when I start doing the math, it turns out that doesn't make sense for me to take the job because I'll end up paying more on childcare than would make the job worth it. And as a parent who had three children go through the childcare system, who's gone through the public school system, I felt that very directly. And I've been fortunate to be able to have the resources to make that happen, but it was a big stretch. And so for a lot of people in the community, that's gonna be something that I think has made it more difficult for people to be able to join the workforce. And that impacts us all, right? We can talk about, for example, the challenges that the Metro Transit is having and the fact they're having to reduce routes - and it's not because of lack of money, it's because of the fact that they can't find enough drivers and they've had challenges there. So I think we need to be able to connect those dots and realize that investments in those areas are important to make sure that we have an adequate workforce. And it's also a good social equity and racial equity issue to make sure that we're investing so that folks can get the support they need to make sure they can not fully be participants in the community. [00:22:40] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely, and thank you so much for bringing that up because that is a major factor in just the affordability of our community, the ability for people to participate in our workforce and our economy, to be upwardly mobile, and to get out of poverty. So thank you so much for talking about how important it is to help make affordable childcare accessible. I also want to talk about health, and especially with the county doing the heavy lifting when it comes to public health, really, and being the source of delivery for so much of it. I wanted to talk about something that we've been dealing with increasingly, whether it's because of COVID, which is still around and still here, and trying to reduce transmission and mitigate the impacts of it, or wildfire smoke, which we have to contend with, and that is extremely unhealthy to breathe and be in the midst of. Or other illnesses, viruses that are all around - trying to just reduce the prevalence of illness in our community. And it's become more apparent that how we treat air, how important air is to health, and how air filtration and ventilation is important to public safety. Do you have a plan for, would you advocate retrofitting, ensuring that all of our public buildings have the recommended air filtration, air turnover, healthy air systems for our community? And how can we help private businesses and spaces do that? [00:24:08] Jorge Barón: Yeah, I absolutely support that. And I think it's an important - and I think there will be some important opportunities with some of the investments that are coming through the Inflation Reduction Act that - mostly focused on energy efficiency, but there could be opportunities where some of those resources could be used at the same time to make sure that we're improving air quality inside buildings, homes, and businesses as well. And it's interesting 'cause I think one of the things that I think about when I think of this - when you're talking about the community health - one of the things that's most disturbing to me and one that I absolutely wanna continue to focus on if I'm given the opportunity to serve in this role, is the disparities that we see in life expectancy in our communities. I'd encourage people to look up some of the research that's publicly available where you can see the life expectancy disparities in census tracts around the county, around the region. And I think to me, it should be disturbing to all of us that there are census tracts in South King County where the life expectancy is 17 years less than census tracts in other parts of the county - just a short drive away. And of course, when you dig into the reasons for that - and of course, there are many - but issues of pollution and of all the social determinants of health are driving a lot of those disparities. And that is something that we should not find in any way acceptable at this point of time in a county, particularly a county that we renamed in honor of Dr. King. I always think of what he would think about those kinds of disparities and obviously, he would find them unacceptable and I find them unacceptable. And so addressing those issues and looking at the reasons that the impact - that all kinds of issues are impacting people's health, including air quality, both inside and frankly outside would have. And so when we talk about that and of course, with the ongoing impacts of climate change and the climate crisis, we're gonna be needing to tackle that even more - because unfortunately, we're gonna continue as we work in the long-term strategy, obviously, of reducing our greenhouse gas emissions, but we also have to mitigate the impacts that we're seeing day in and day out with now the wildfire season that we see where the smoke is impacting people. And of course, many of us may have the fortune of being able to work inside and protect ourselves to some degree, but a lot of other people can't. And so we need to be addressing on multiple levels - ensuring that all community members and of course, particularly the most directly impacted communities, which of course overwhelmingly are people of color, immigrant refugee communities - that they're being given the tools and the protection to make sure that we don't see the level of disparities that we're currently seeing across the county. [00:26:47] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. And following on that - talking about how exposed people are - climate change is a major factor in this. And on almost every measure, we're behind on our 2030 climate goals, while experiencing some of the devastating impacts that you just talked about - from wildfires and floods and cold and heat. What are your highest priority plans to get us on track to meet the 2030 goals? [00:27:10] Jorge Barón: I think there's a number of things. So one of our major drivers in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, of course, is our transportation system. And so a lot of that has to be focused on stopping our reliance and reducing our reliance on cars. And trying to build a transit infrastructure that is gonna be reliable, it's gonna be safe, and that it's going to be such that people can rely on it to get to work and to get to other places in the community. So for me, that's important. I think it's important - obviously, I appreciate and support the efforts to electrify our bus fleet and would do anything I could to expedite that and move forward on that. But the challenge is that if we can have the buses be electric, but if people are not using them and they're still relying on their cars, that's not gonna help us achieve the targets. So that's gonna be really important. I think the other sort of big sources is obviously our infrastructure and our buildings and homes. And as I mentioned earlier, there is gonna be some opportunities for credits and investments through federal resources in the coming years that we need to make sure that we as a county are promoting and incentivizing and fully tapping into so that we can further reduce our greenhouse gas emissions and we can get closer to reaching the goals that we've set for ourselves. So I think that's gonna be an important work that we need to do in the community. And this is, again, where a lot of things are connected to - also how we build and how we structure our communities is gonna be important, because as we talk about transit - I fully support what the legislature did to create greater density 'cause that has a significant impact on climate justice goals. And so that's something that I think we are going to need to also monitor - as these new changes that the legislature made - how those are implemented will have an impact in our long-term strategy to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions. So I think this is gonna be an important period of time for us to really step up in our commitment to addressing what is a very urgent issue. [00:29:12] Crystal Fincher: Absolutely. One issue impacting, I guess a major issue that impacts residents is how we implement policy - state level, county level, federal level really. There's been some great, helpful policy passed, but when it comes to the implementation of it, there's been a lot that has been desired in some circumstances - including those where some partners may not understand what needs to be stood up at the county level to deliver services. The county is pretty visible in this 'cause a lot of times the county is the entity responsible for the ultimate disbursement of funds or provision of services that come through the state or county level. And there seems to be sometimes a disconnect between what the county has capacity for, what it's capable to do and what legislation or funding or program calls to be done - leaving a shortfall in service delivery, things getting delayed, things not turning out as intended. What can be done to better improve the implementation of policy so that more people can receive the benefits that were intended? [00:30:17] Jorge Barón: I completely agree, Crystal, 'cause I've seen that myself in terms of being able to get policies done both at the local level and at the state level in terms of changes to policy. For example, we did some work many years ago on the connection between immigration enforcement and local law enforcement - and we achieved a victory of getting an ordinance passed at the county level. And then time went by and the actual implementation of that was not happening. And we later found out that some of the things that we had thought that the policy had changed had not changed. And so I've definitely seen that situation play out. And I think what it takes is constant oversight and very intense focus from entities like the council. I think the council has a particular responsibility and a duty to be the one who is providing oversight as the elected officials who are responsible for making sure that the policies that are in place are actually being implemented. 'Cause oftentimes what I see in those situations is that things get passed and then you move on to the next thing, but if the implementation and the oversight is not there, then changes aren't actually playing out on the ground level. So that's an important thing. I think the other thing that I think is important is a genuine engagement with communities that are going to be served. And I think that's another element that I would like to bring to the council is the fact that I have been working for nearly two decades now with marginalized communities throughout the state, particularly here in King County, and have built those relationships with people. And I would wanna be very proactive. I often tell people - Sometimes people say, I'll have an open door. And that to me is not really a good way to approach it because that still means that people have to come to me and my office. I wanna be very proactive in being out there - as I have been in my work here - of being out in community, talking to people, seeing how things are actually playing out on the ground level, and being engaged, and having genuine relationships with people so that you can actually assess how those policies are being implemented because that's what it takes. It's not just about receiving a report in council chambers, but it's about discussing with people how is this actually playing out. And that's how we've found things out here in my work at Northwest Immigrant Rights Project - has been working with community members - hearing how is this actually playing out on the ground level? How is this policy that looks nice on paper, on the King County Code, actually being impacted or being reflected on what people are experiencing in the community? And that's what it's gonna take to make sure that implementation is actually - that things are being done the way that we've intended them to be done when there's been changes in policy. [00:32:54] Crystal Fincher: Definitely. As we move to close today, I just want to give you the opportunity to share with voters who are going to be making a decision between you and a couple other candidates in the primary election. What differentiates you from your opponents most of all, and why should voters choose you? [00:33:14] Jorge Barón: For me, I think I hope voters will look at the track record that I've built over the last two decades working as a civil rights and human rights leader, working directly on behalf of marginalized communities with a deep commitment to equity and justice. I think that to me is really important because it's the work that I don't just talk about, I have done that work. And also the fact that I had the experience of working at the state level - building coalitions with community members, with allies - in a range of issues to make actually proactive and significant progressive change to policies that have impact marginalized communities across the state. And I hope to bring that same level of expertise and skill of building coalitions to impact policy that will make the situation for the county and county residents better. And then finally, again, the fact that I've had this experience and I've been fortunate to have this experience of leading a nonprofit organization, building an effective organization that has delivered, that's widely recognized as delivering strong services. And that puts me in a good place to be able to provide that oversight, to be able to ask the tough questions, to make the tough decisions because I've been in that kind of executive role before. And be able to make sure - because I think this is an important component of county government, and I think something that will help us build the case for more investments is - I think one of the things that people in the community rightly are concerned about is - are our tax dollars being invested well in various programs that the county funds? And because I've been a nonprofit leader, seeing how to properly allocate and distribute and make resources be spent effectively, I'm in a good position to be able to evaluate those things when those issues come up at the County Council. And so all of those experiences that I've had - I've been very privileged to be able to play that role - have prepared me well for this role. And I hope the voters in the District 4 will give me the opportunity to represent them in the council. [00:35:12] Crystal Fincher: Thank you so much for joining us today and for helping us learn more about you, and certainly wish you the best. [00:35:17] Jorge Barón: Thank you so much, Crystal - it was great talking to you. [00:35:19] Crystal Fincher: Thank you. Thank you for listening to Hacks & Wonks, which is produced by Shannon Cheng. You can follow Hacks & Wonks on Twitter @HacksWonks. You can catch Hacks & Wonks on every podcast service and app just type "Hacks and Wonks" into the search bar. Be sure to subscribe to get the full versions of our Friday week-in-review shows and our Tuesday topical show delivered to your podcast feed. If you like us, leave a review wherever you listen. You can also get a full transcript of this episode and links to the resources referenced in the show at officialhacksandwonks.com and in the podcast episode notes. Thanks for tuning in - talk to you next time.

The United States Marshals Service is a federal agency responsible for the arrests of federal fugitives. With origins dating back to the nation's beginnings, the U.S. Marshals continue to serve the country by protecting the federal judiciary. Retired U.S. Marshal Bill Sorukas discusses the history of the U.S. Marshals Fugitive Apprehension Program, how the group operates, and some of its high-profile cases. After working as an undercover officer in Indiana, Bill Sorukas became a Deputy U.S. Marshal in the Southern District of California. He would soon become a Chief Inspector within the Investigative Operations Division. Bill also served as a Senior Fellow at the International Association of Chiefs of Police, where he helped establish the Center for the Prevention of Violence Against the Police. Now, he works as a Project Alert Consultant at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Bill was given many honors throughout his career, including the National Association of Police Organizations' "Top Cop" award for his work on the Beltway Snipers case, as well as the Attorney Generals Award for Distinguished Service for Investigative Excellence for his involvement with the investigation of Ed and Elaine Brown. In his book, Chasing Evil: Pursuing Dangerous Criminals with the U.S. Marshals, Sorukas details various high-profile cases on which he worked. Follow Emily on Instagram: @realemilycompagno Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Michael Lane is the Head of iShares U.S. Wealth Advisory at BlackRock and a member of the US Wealth Advisory and US iShares Executive Committees. Michael has worked with financial advisors for nearly three decades and oversees the development of advisor-xcentric solutions helping advisors build better portfolios.  Prior to joining iShares at BlackRock in 2018, Michael served as the Global Head of Strategic Retirement Initiatives at Dimensional Fund Advisors where he was responsible for the strategic development and global distribution of retirement solutions for one of the world's premier asset managers.  Michael has published three books, including “Secrets of the Wealth Makers,” as well as a range of articles on financial planning and advisory practices. He's also a member of the Carson Wealth FinServ Advisory Council and he is kicking off the FinServ Foundation's Next-Gen program—an initiative that will focus on bringing diverse talent to the financial services industry. He's a fellow Binghamton University alum and serves as an Executive Committee member of the Binghamton University Foundation Board and received the Medal of Distinguished Service in 2019. Listen in for some great takeaways about Michael's journey from Binghamton to BlackRock and how he's making an impact on the profession.  You will want to hear this episode if you are interested in... Learn more about Michael Lane [3:54] Michael's favorite memories from Binghamton [6:03]  The transition from farm life to big city living [9:59]  What Michael wishes people knew about BlackRock [11:30]  How to reach people in need of financial literacy [14:55]  Parents need to instill financial literacy in their kids [20:07]  Michael has always sought to “Do the right thing” [24:34]  The intersection between technology and risk [28:35]  What does “Find your freedom” mean for Michael? [34:09]  Michael shares how his love for wine became a venture [38:54]  Why Michael is launching a podcast with his son [41:10] What Michael did today that put him in the mindset for success [44:35]  Resources & People Mentioned The NIL Policy BlackRock Connect with Michael Lane The website On Linkedin Connect With Mitlin Financial podcast*at*mitlinfinancial(dot)com - email us with your suggestions for topics or guests If you would like to learn more schedule a call: https://mitlin.us/FitCall https://mitlinfinancial.com  Follow on Twitter Follow on Instagram Subscribe on Youtube Follow on Linkedin Follow on Facebook Guests on the Mitlin Money Mindset Show are not affiliated with CWM, LLC, and opinions expressed herein may not be representative of CWM, LLC. CWM, LLC is not responsible for the guest's content linked on this site. Subscribe to Mitlin Money Mindset™ on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts