23. Lina Jean Fritz — Rising with Resilience & Evolving Leadership from Warrior to Diplomat

This episode's guest is Lina Jean Fritz, a Chicago-based, C-suite nonprofit leader in strategy and innovation whose work sits at the intersection of equity and moral courage in access to the work force and higher education.

Lina is a first-generation college graduate, the daughter of restaurant workers, and someone whose early life was shaped by movement—growing up across Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi before graduating from a public high school in Mississippi and heading north to attend the University of Chicago.

From there, Lina’s career took her through teaching, instructional leadership, and senior nonprofit leadership—most recently as an Executive Director at OneGoal, a national organization grounded in a powerful belief: every young person deserves an equitable opportunity to get to and through college.

Lina has consistently pushed leaders to rethink what readiness really means. In a widely shared piece for Chalkbeat, she asked a question that still challenges the field:

What if highly selective colleges focused on being student-ready instead of placing the burden on students to be college-ready?

She goes further—pressing higher-education institutions to confront uncomfortable truths about moral courage, risk, and sacrifice:

What risks should we ask institutions to take—risks that may require reputational and financial sacrifice—in service of equity?

In this episode, we talk about the real meaning of opportunity and how we can build systems that honor the truth that talent is equally distributed—even when opportunity is not. We also explore leadership lessons Lina has learned along the way, including accepting feedback as an act of love, and recognizing that what got you where you are may not get you where you want to go.

Lina reflects on her evolution as a leader—from being the person who figures it out when it seems impossible to becoming someone who leads through discernment, influence, and trust. Drawing on wisdom often attributed to Lao Tzu, she shares a lesson that reshaped her leadership:

“To lead the people, walk behind them.”

Because when you do, you can finally see.

This is a conversation about feedback, humility, and moral courage ...and about using your talents, fully and honestly, in service of exceptional social good.

And with that… let’s dive in.

••••••••••