Stories Sustain Us #31 – The Art of Storytelling in Community Building

Summary
In this engaging conversation, Steven and Leilah Powell explore the profound impact of storytelling on community building and individual identity. They discuss the neurological aspects of narrative, the importance of belonging, and the unique human capacity for joint intentionality. Leilah shares her personal journey from a science background to her current role at the Local Initiative Support Corporation, emphasizing the need for genuine community engagement and collaboration. The discussion highlights the challenges and opportunities in fostering inclusive communities and the role of organizations like LISC in driving systemic change. Leilah and Steven discuss the importance of understanding systems and the interconnectedness of social issues. They emphasize the role of narrative in shaping perceptions and the need for community engagement. Leilah shares her vision for a better future, focusing on personal responsibility and the significance of recognizing the web of connections that support us. The discussion highlights the challenges of individualism in addressing societal problems and the power of storytelling in fostering understanding and empathy.

About the Guest
Leilah Powell is the Executive Director of LISC San Antonio. A native San Antonian, Leilah has worked in many areas of the community development sector in San Antonio—for financial institutions such as Bank of America; non-profit organizations such as the San Antonio Housing Trust and the Brackenridge Park Conservancy; as a consultant for clients including the San Antonio River Authority, Bexar County and Trinity University; and for municipal and county government, including serving as Chief of Policy for two mayors.

Show notes
LISC San Antonio: lisc.org/san-antonio/

Takeaways
•Storytelling is essential for human connection and community.
•Belonging is a primal need that influences behavior.
•Data alone is not enough; narratives shape understanding.
•Community engagement must be genuine, not just a checkbox.
•Listening to community concerns is crucial for effective policy.
•Emotional responses often drive decision-making more than logic.
•Collaboration can lead to more effective community solutions.
•LISC works to empower marginalized communities through resources.
•Systems change is necessary for addressing urban issues. Systems work is about storytelling, not just data.
•Individual choices are often influenced by systemic issues.
•Understanding the interconnectedness of problems is crucial.
•Narratives shape our perceptions of social issues.
•Community engagement is essential for meaningful change.
•Quality of life should be evaluated beyond mere metrics.
•Language and metaphors can influence our understanding of issues.
•Recognizing our dependence on community can foster gratitude.
•Art and media play a significant role in shaping narratives.
•Peace involves productive coexistence of diverse communities.

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Transcript

Steven 
Welcome back to Stories Sustain Us, the podcast where we celebrate extraordinary individuals who are making the world a better place. You know, storytelling is the thread that weaves human connection, shaping how we see the world and how we build communities. It's not just about facts and figures. Narratives give meaning to our experience and influence the way we engage with people in the places around us. In today's episode, we'll explore the power of storytelling.

the importance of belonging and why community engagement must be more than just checking a box. My guest today, Leilah Powell, has spent her career working to empower communities, ensuring that voices, especially those that have been historically marginalized, are heard and valued. She understands that true systems change isn't just about data, but about the stories that shape our understanding of the world.

Leilah is a proud native of San Antonio and has dedicated her career to community development. She's worked across the nonprofit, public, and private sectors, including roles with Bank of America, the San Antonio Housing Trust, the Brackenridge Park Conservancy, and the City of San Antonio, where she served as chief of policy for two separate mayors. Her expertise has helped shape policies and projects that improve urban life, and her leadership has extended to serving on multiple boards,

including the American Institute of Architects San Antonio and the Texas Chapter of American Planning Association. With a master's degree in community and regional planning from the University of Texas School of Architecture and a bachelor's degree from Stanford, Leilah brings a wealth of knowledge, experience, and passion to her work. But beyond her impressive resume, I have the privilege of calling Leilah a dear friend. We first met in 2001 when we worked together in the mayor's office.

And from that time on, I've had firsthand experience witnessing her brilliance. More importantly though, I know her to be one of the kindest and most compassionate people I've ever met. I'm grateful for our longstanding friendship and I'm honored that she's joining me today on Stories Sustain Us. So get ready for a thought provoking conversation about community, connection, and the power of storytelling. Let's dive in here on Stories Sustain Us where we are inspiring action through the power of storytelling.

Steven 
Hey, Leilah, how are you? Welcome to Stories Sustain Us. Good to see you.

Leilah Powell 
I'm so excited to be here. It's great to see you after all these years.

Steven 
Yeah.

Yeah,

thank you so much for taking time and joining me and speaking with me. you know, just kind of introduced you and told everybody we're longtime friends and have a long history together. So it's great to see you. It's always wonderful to chat with you. So, but thank you for taking time to, to join me on the show and share your story and the work that you're doing. So I appreciate all that you do and appreciate your time.

Leilah Powell 
Thank you for inviting me. And this is a topic that I think a lot about both for the work that we do here professionally with with LISC, Local Initiative Support Corporation, with our San Antonio office, but also personally from a lot of different angles, the way the communities come together around narrative, but also even to get really into the geeky heart of it right away. Like what are the...

What are the neurological substrates that allow us even to tell a story and to put a narrative together? That gets to this question of consciousness. How are we able to be creatures that do this? Because as far as we know, we're really the only creatures that do have this capacity. I think some others do. But we don't have proof right now because we can't talk to them really.

Steven 
Right.

pretty unique. Yeah.

Yeah.

Right,

right. Absolutely. There's definitely theories out there that, you know, other creatures definitely communicate, but we may be the only unique ones that have this ability to tell stories, whether true stories or fictional stories. We have this thing that maybe other creatures don't have, which makes us a little unique.

Leilah Powell 
Right. Right.

Yeah, well, really. So what you're doing is you're doing a podcast about what makes us human.

Steven 
I think so. And how do we take that humanness and recognize that we're connected to everything else, which is what sustainability is. How are we going to live on this planet with each other and with everything else? And my premise here is storytelling is key to that, is how do we connect with each other is through stories and how are we going to live on this planet is by helping each other survive in that storytelling.

Leilah Powell 
Yeah.

I think there's so much, there's so much evidence. So looking at folks who are working in areas like psychology and evolutionary biology, there's so much evidence that what you just said is in fact true, that raw data or facts or compelling rational arguments, know, the Cartesian, cogeto ergo sum, right? So I'm thinking and therefore I know that I'm human and I'm that

that we missed the piece where people have overarching narratives about belonging, about who they are, about themselves and the community they belong to. And then unless you tap into those, that your best case is not gonna be compelling. That in fact, great data can retrench people into bad positions. And yeah, and it's that sense of belonging and community that's hardwired into us.

Steven 
Yep. Yep.

Right. Exactly. Think flat earthers.

Right.

Leilah Powell 
Bacteria, which have no nervous systems, obviously, and no ability to put something into a narrative, or bacteria respond chemically differently to unrelated bacteria than they do to related bacteria. So who are we to think that we can get away from billions of years of evolution of creatures?

And to a sidestep, something that I think is hardwired into us, is the need to be part of a community and to treat members of your community differently than folks who you perceive as not being in your community.

Steven 
Yeah, connection.

Yeah, that sense of belonging is an absolute primal need in us. Absolutely. And how do we then create these narratives where we can create the largest group of belonging so that we can collaborate together and move forward together as opposed to being in constant competition and or, you know, war, like take it to the extreme. Like, cause we, how do we create a sense of belonging where we're together?

Leilah Powell 
Yeah. Yeah.

Steven 
with the largest number of us.

Leilah Powell 
So I know we're supposed to talk about like me and stuff like that, I, something, the word you just used, which is really interesting and we don't break it down sometimes, but the idea of collaboration and co-laboring. So there's a really wonderful thinker who was with the Max Planck Institute for years, but he's at Duke now. His name is Michael Tomasello and he writes about intentionality and.

Steven 
Yes. Yes.

Leilah Powell 
his field of study is comparative development between primates and humans. And he looks at the ability of humans to develop what he calls joint intentionality, which we really don't see elsewhere in the animal world. I think, and this is probably a topic near and dear to the hearts of people in your part of the world more so than our part of the world. But I think that orcas have joint intentionality. I think that they teach each other, which

other animals don't do. I think that they develop culture. So I'm not saying this is a uniquely human thing, but I do think that it is key to our humanness. And experimentally, you can look at, do primates, do other animals establish group norms? Very young children are able to establish group norms. They're able to understand that there is a project or

a process going on and that if and that they are part of it when they join the group and that when they leave the group they have to say I'm leaving or else you're violating the group norms of working together and collaborating. So you know to me that's that critical branching off point why are why are humans done the great and terrible things that we do because we have joint intentionality. We are not simply acting

Steven 
Yeah, yeah.

Leilah Powell 
on our own information or the awareness that there are other actors out there, which is critical. But we're in the I know that you know that I know situation.

Steven 
Right, right.

Absolutely. Well, I could, as you said, geek out on this stuff for hours with you because this is part of my passion and why I'm doing the show and I love where we're going already, but let me steer it into you a little bit so that we can kind of learn your story and I'm sure as we get into the...

Leilah Powell 
Ha

Steven 
professional aspect of what you're currently doing. We can maybe talk about some of these other ideas again and bring them in. what's your story, Leilah? Where did you grow up and how did you get to this position in your life and passions that you have? So tell me a little bit about you.

Leilah Powell 
I'm talking to you from San Antonio, Texas today. And that's where I grew up. I went off to school in a couple different places, but I grew up here and I had one sister and we're very close. We're a year apart. So we were always sort of a tag team and our parents were older when we were born. didn't have close.

They didn't have close friends who had kids our age and we didn't have relatives who were our age. So my sister and I did a lot of things with our parents and our parents were very engaged in this almost the same discussion we've been having. How do you define a community? How do you recognize and build a community that responds to the needs of the people who are in it from different, slightly different perspectives? So they were both

trained as architects and planners. And my mother was an instructor in the Urban Studies program at Trinity University for years. And so at Trinity, she did a lot of work with their graduate students in their Urban Studies program, which was, interestingly enough, there's kind of a reflection of this dichotomy here. When you think about folks who are going into local government, you often think of public administration programs.

where you're learning cost benefit analysis. Well, so an urban studies program is a little more, it's almost like the equivalent of a sort of liberal arts degree in municipal issues. And I think that was the intent of the program was to, it was also the first program headed by a black PhD in the country around municipal issues and Dr. Earl Lewis. And part of the goal of the program,

was to say if folks are gonna be making decisions about growing cities, they need to have an understanding, they need to have lived expertise from a variety of cultural backgrounds, economic backgrounds, racial and ethnic backgrounds. And I don't think at that time you really saw that, back in the 60s, still don't. So they had a very diverse group of students

Steven 
No, yeah, still don't in some places.

Leilah Powell 
across all those dimensions. They had good scholarship support. They encouraged women in the program, Black and Hispanic students in the program. And that was part of the preparation to kind of take a more humanist approach. I don't know that they ever said that, but I'll say it. It wasn't all of it. So the coursework and curriculum, but it starts with making sure that you're including the right people.

Steven 
Yeah. Yeah.

Leilah Powell 
So that was the work my mom was doing and she often was involved in issues in the community, discussions around water preservation, around neighborhood redevelopment. And my dad was an architect who did a lot of work with urban planning and campus planning and he and my mom actually worked together on some campus master plans. that idea of what is design.

Steven 
Nice.

Leilah Powell 
What does how does design serve people? How does design reflect a community? How does design build community? Are you creating the right spaces for people to come together safely? those are things that we actually like grew up talking about and And I think that's kind of how you know when you and I first met each other We were working in the mayor's office. We were all I don't know. We were 12 or something. It was like a long time ago

Steven 
Yeah.

It certainly

felt like we were in preteen years. Yes.

Leilah Powell 
Yeah,

so I think I knew a lot more back then. Like I am sure that I knew the answers to all these questions back then.

Steven 
It's funny how

that works. I probably knew a lot more back then too, yes.

Leilah Powell 
25 years later

on, I'm still seeing those basic questions play out and also even making the case to folks about why it matters. Why does it matter that we think about these questions and why does it matter that we work on connecting to the existing community?

Steven 
Yeah.

Leilah Powell 
Because I think there are places where the story is just, let's get the newest and the best and we'll attract people from elsewhere and.

Steven 
Sure, sure.

even worse in government settings where it's a check the box. It's just we held one public meeting, so therefore we connected with the public. mean, so it's, there's still some old bad habits that are out and about and used frequently still in the world.

Leilah Powell 
Well,

and it's really interesting, Steven, when you mentioned the sort of check the box or we held a public meeting. One of the discussions that we have frequently with folks here in San Antonio is this idea that there's a continuum of collaboration, engagement, you know, from basically ignoring folks to truly empowering. And one of the, I think, pressure points that we have right now is that we use language very imprecisely. And this question of what do you, what are you encouraging people to think?

Steven 
Right, should be.

Leilah Powell 
And what are they hoping for versus what they get out of the process? So if you talk about, we're going to do community engagement and we're going to collaborate, people expect that their ideas will go into practice. So don't use that language lightly. If you're really only taking their concerns under advisement, or they will inform your action, then don't use words like collaborate if really you're talking about. So we're trying to.

Steven 
Yeah.

Sure.

Right.

Leilah Powell 
normalize looking at that spectrum. maybe you don't even, certainly in like emergency situations, we're closing the street down. We're not taking your input. Yeah. Yeah. But if you're talking about truly empowering a group, then that means you are transferring power to them. You are, you are, and that is, that's scary. And it's not something you just

Steven 
Yeah, feet, can tell us later what you thought of it, but we have an emergency to deal with right now. Right. Right.

Leilah Powell 
wake up one morning and say, well, let's let citizens manage the budget process. They don't have the skills to do that. So it's something you plan for, but you certainly don't want to encourage people to think that we're going to skip to giving you total control over this before you're actually ready to do that. if you are in fact building up false hope, that's actually, you're still digging the hole deeper of citizen disengagement.

Steven 
Yeah, that'll

come back and get you in a bad way. Absolutely. If you build up this idea that someone's input will actually influence what the plan is going to say or what the final product is going to be and they provide their input and you not only don't respond and reply to whatever they said, but then you totally ignore it. That

This further drives the wedge between the policymakers and the implementers and the citizens they're supposed to be serving, the residents of the community they're supposed to be serving. That just continues to drive that wedge.

Leilah Powell 
And I'll say this because I know this

relates to your professional background as well and what you do for your day job. You know, the other issue is that people who work in government or public service, we know and we're really aware of the multiple layers of agencies and entities that we all interact with. So even, you know, a particular service district, like a river authority, a county, a city, a state government, but for just an average

Steven 
You

Leilah Powell 
you know, person who's out there taking care of their kids and getting to work and going to school. They don't interact with all those folks at a daily. They may get a tax bill and see all this and think, what am I paying for? But, but for them, the idea that you go through one planning process and then a year later, somebody else goes through a planning process. And I already told you all this and none of this happened. And, and yet all of our particular agencies have charges on us from our funders or our federal regulators to go through these processes.

Steven 
Right.

Right.

Leilah Powell 
They're not integrated, they're not coordinated. And I think it's exhausting. And it's really incumbent on us to do a better job with that. Yeah.

Steven 
Yeah, for everybody. Mm-hmm. Yeah, 100%, 100%.

So tell me a little bit about, you mentioned your time at the mayor's office, where you and I met 20 plus years ago at this point. How did you get to that point from having conversations with your parents about how do you...

How do you build an inclusive community, both from a policy perspective from your mom and design and architectural perspective from your father? And you having these, I imagine, wonderful conversations growing up in your preteen and high school years. And so how did you then make that leap to eventually coming back to San Antonio and working for then Mayor Garza?

Leilah Powell 
So, something you and I have chatted about in the past about the importance of, while we're talking about words and narrative and stories today, neither one of us discounts the science behind the work that we're doing. And I spent a whole number of years in labs, irradiating paramecia, changing cultures, trying to understand the damage it was being, you know, so.

Steven 
Absolutely.

Yeah

Leilah Powell 
So I took a sort of science detour, but at some point I realized I really don't want to be alone in a lab. And that is, that's a path. Now you have colleagues, but you're really working, there's a lot of internal work that goes on in science. And simultaneously, I was doing a lot of theater, actually. So this idea of connecting with a large group of people, telling stories, basically.

collectively, collaboratively, which is what distinguishes live theater from recordings. And at some point I figured out that what I was really interested in was that idea about community. How do we work in community? How do we accomplish things in community? And so I took a little other diversion in college and did my undergraduate degree basically in Roman history. So.

Steven 
little different than scientific lab work.

Leilah Powell 
Well,

you know, people would ask me, how'd you get to the mayor's office from doing classics? And I said, well, yeah, I spent years studying the thriving global almost civilization. And that built great cities that we saw a lack of engagement with citizens in their cities and the cities began to deteriorate and their empire fell apart. I guess there's no.

No connection to modern America. Yeah, so So and I didn't mean to imply that though, you know, the I don't have a conspiracy theory idea that the Romans were active in Mesoamerica But for the known the world that they had contact with they were they were they were pretty much in

Steven 
No correlation there at all, yeah.

Yeah, they had a

pretty big hand in a chunk of the world at their height.

Leilah Powell 
Yeah, so.

So kind of after doing all that I ended I ended up saying I do want to go back to to to graduate school and I am interested in this idea of of cities and how cities are built and and whether it's possible to intervene in issues through policy. Kind of like these contrasting theories of history. You know, is it possible is the is the great man theory? Are there women and men who?

can really make a change or are things gonna happen the way they're happening because of, know, kind of cultural predeterminism. And I would say we saw a mixed bag in that when we were at the city, but enough to keep my appetite whetted for thinking, I like this, I like policy development. So I had been at a, I'd been at with a lender. So the money piece of the equation is critical, you can't ignore it. But I do find that the money piece can fall in place if you've got the

Steven 
Yeah.

Yeah, 100%.

Leilah Powell 
the community relationships and the building of the infrastructure first. But I was with the bank and then I was with a nonprofit that did work in the housing sphere. And then I had the opportunity to join the mayor's team and then have been, was back in the mayor's office a few years ago with another mayor. And in between there, ran a nonprofit, had a couple of kids.

Steven 
Second go-round, yeah. Yeah.

full life.

Leilah Powell 
Did some teaching, did some consulting work. And essentially the consulting work I was doing actually was around this, question that you're asking, which is folks would come to me and say, hey, we're not connecting somehow. The organizations that we think we're supposed to be working with don't see us as a partner. Internally, we're not working well together. What's wrong? Like we thought we set this up. Why isn't this?

Steven 
Yeah? Yeah.

Leilah Powell 
Why aren't we producing the results or having the relationships? And so there was a lot of discussion with you know sitting down with folks and saying tell me what you understand about what's going on here and And that's that was really more so than looking at you know, someone's fundraising or their organizational structure it was really listening to people talk about what their concerns were and And how they were feeling about a situation

Steven 
listening.

Yep. That's a piece that's often missed as we think we know the answers and tell people what they should or should be doing. We forget to listen to what their, what their interpretation of that information is. And I really appreciate what you said. How are they feeling about it? we, we think we're these rational creatures that make rational decisions and we're not, we're emotional creatures that most of our decisions are based on how we're feeling at that moment in time. correct. Right. Right.

Leilah Powell 
Yes!

And we may not even be aware. So I don't know if you're familiar with Jonathan

Haidt. I don't know if you've read Jonathan Haidt's work. you haven't, H-A-I-D-T, if you haven't read it, go read it now. You'll be going, yeah, that's right. That's the explanation for what I was talking about earlier. And I know there are folks who quibble with, and I'm lucky. I'm in a position where I know enough about science that I can read some of these general science books, but I don't know so much that I get stuck on

Steven 
I don't think so. Yeah. Will do.

Leilah Powell 
details of that that might be wrong or yeah, I just I can take in the big concept and I love this and not be thinking well that statistically might not be as bad, you know, so Yeah, yeah, I think it's it's a it's There is some really great science writing out there and I know a lot of people get turned off by the idea of reading something that they had to study in school

Steven 
Yeah. Debating it.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's the boat I'm into.

Yes.

Leilah Powell 
But that aha moment when you say, that's why people do that, or that's how that works. That's just so fabulous. And again, that's discussion about how do you tell a story in a way that someone can understand as opposed to laying out the chemical basis for why bacteria do that thing.

Steven 
Right, right. Absolutely. So you've had this meandering career that has touched on in a lot of different places, largely in San Antonio. So tell me a little bit about your local initiative support corporation, the San Antonio branch of that national. There it is. Yes. Get the plug in. So tell me a little bit about what the organization

is that you're working for now because I believe it's a national organization and you lead up the the San Antonio branch of that. So tell me a little bit about what it is that you do nationally as well as what it is that you're kind of heading up in in the San Antonio area.

Leilah Powell 
Lists nationally, we were founded in 1970s. have 38 offices across the country. We do a whole variety of things relating to providing resources and financing and technical assistance into communities to help them realize their aspirations for themselves. And that ranges from work with our affiliates that do low income housing tax credits and new market tax credits to

policy work in DC to working with the NFL. I mean, there's a very broad range of projects and products that LISC offers. And that's partly because 38 major cities are all different from each other. yeah, our issues in San Antonio are different than our Puget Sound office issues, different than our DC issues. And so locally, we work on building

Steven 
Yeah, sure, imagine that.

Leilah Powell 
wealth, health and power for communities that have been excluded and systematically disadvantaged. And we do that by working in community, by building capacity and by advocating. And a major focus of what we do is systems change, because that's a hard area for a lot of folks to grasp why it's important. When we look at an urban issue or any kind of issue in community, a lot of times we want to say, well, that person should be doing this.

to fix it. And I know you have a background and awareness with Ashley, with your wife and issues around homelessness and in issues around substance use disorder and in counseling issues. And so a lot of people feel like that's a personal thing. That's an individual thing. But we see that all people think about financial resources as being personal issues.

housing, transportation, but they're really not, right? They're the product of a system. If you see a woman wheeling herself in a wheelchair down the street, she did not decide, this would be a great place for me to be safe and secure. There's no sidewalk for her. So you may think she made a personal choice to put herself at risk and to hold up traffic, but it's decades of making of an environment. And we can't fix that problem by telling her,

Steven 
Right. Yes.

Leilah Powell 
use the sidewalk because the sidewalk doesn't go where she needs to be. So that's a systems discussion. And it's about a lot of different players making changes to the way they think about planning and resource investment, not about an individual doing their job better. And the way you explain systems is through stories. It's not by giving you the budget of six different agencies and showing you their five-year plan.

Steven 
Right.

Yes.

You

Yes.

Leilah Powell 
Because

we don't take in information that way. We take in information by thinking about, was it that woman's fault? Well, no, that's wrong. That's unfair to blame her for that. So systems work is about storytelling. And that's what makes it so, I think, rewarding when you connect with someone in a way that explains something that wasn't clear before. And that's what also makes it so challenging.

because you have to find a frame that resonates with the person that you're or group of people that you're speaking with. So we do a lot of systems work here because we think that, you know, it's that old story about you're standing on the bank of a river and people are being washed down, you're pulling them out and you're helping them, but they keep coming down. Well, do you just keep doing the pulling out or do you go up and say, who's throwing people in the river?

Steven 
Yeah,

go upstream, right?

Leilah Powell 
do go upstream. And I'm a little anxious about the upstream because I think we tend to feel like I can chase this back to some ultimate origin. And I don't think that's the way systems work. But it's

Steven 
Yeah, that terminology. Yeah, yeah. That upstream

for folks who are, not be in the same professions that Leilah and I are in, there's upstream and downstream problems, part of the system analysis and that upstream kind of terminology is something that's common in these types of discussions, but also maybe, again, talking about language and making sure people understand that.

might not be commonplace around everybody's dinner table or a coffee shop that when they're talking about the problem that they're having well I should go figure out upstream you know where where this started from that so just wanted to make sure folks listening or watching understood that you and I were talking about upstream but they might not have connected with that so

Leilah Powell 
And literally, quite literally, you work with upstream problems in your career path.

Steven 
I literally work

with flowing rivers that have upstream problems, A little different from the systems where we might actually be able to pinpoint here is the problem where we need to implement a flood mitigation project or something. So go on and describe, yeah, please. Yeah.

Leilah Powell 
But Steven, you, I want to ask you a question. So

don't you think that your career with basically systems work, with looking at environmental systems and looking at interaction, don't you think that has informed your interest in these questions and in how you describe that? Yeah.

Steven 
Mm-hmm. Absolutely.

100%.

Yeah, absolutely. yeah, it's, the work that I've been doing for the last, you know, since I met you in 2001, so 24, prior to that, so 25 years, work that I've been doing professionally in mostly the public sector has all led to this appreciation of the intersection of all of these different systems and how everything is connected and.

you know, the ignorance that we can have as individuals and as collective individuals, as groups, to understanding how the interplay of all of these things, that one thing that happens here can have all of these other consequences, intended or not, unintended consequences, so that it's immensely complicated and we may never grasp all of the interconnections, but if we're not

Consciously acknowledging these interconnections and how are we trying to improve them? we're never going to solve these problems whether it's a housing issue or you know an environmental issue all of these things are interconnected and and You know

I was imagining as you were starting to talk about systems change and the lady in the wheelchair going down the street and, you know, the sidewalk issue that you brought up, those were policy choices made decades ago when that part of the town was developed. My mind went to like redlining, you know, back in the 20th century that that was a policy decision that.

people are still feeling impacts of today, which maybe that lady warbling down the street might have been, you know, impacted by a 1930s era, 40s era decision about where home loans could go or not, you know, because why build sidewalks for a community that we don't care about, you know, was kind of the thought process of some of our policymakers back in the previous decades that we're living with today.

Leilah Powell 
Let me take a little diversion

into visual narrative, visual storytelling, right? And because another potential scenario there is that she lives in a kind of second ring suburb that was developed in the sixties where it was so car centric that

Steven 
Yeah, please. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Leilah Powell 
having a sidewalk indicated that people were walking as opposed to driving to and from. And the idea that you had a beautiful lawn with no interruption and no sidewalk conveyed something about the socioeconomic status and who lived in the community. And so we built lots of neighborhoods deliberately without sidewalks. And the visual narrative that that told back when it was built is different than what it tells now.

Steven 
Sure.

Yeah, yeah, that's brilliant.

Leilah Powell 
Right?

as those neighborhoods, some of them have declined, then people are stuck. And those decades of choices about who we're building for and how we design the environment and what the the story that the built environment conveys to us, that's another way of establishing a narrative. Yeah.

Steven 
Yeah,

yeah, 100%. Let me, something else that triggered as you were talking about your current job and the significance of narrative in identifying current systems and then looking for improvements to those systems. you know, kind of our earlier conversation a little bit about collaboration as well. So we live in a country that is dominated by

a narrative of the individual. It's a mythology, right? It's not real. There are the Wild West and the cowboy that tamed the West on their own. That didn't happen. That's not at all reality.

But we certainly have this ethos as a nation and it's stronger in different pockets of the country. I think nationwide we have this, know, lone wolf, it by yourself, pick yourself up by your bootstraps, type of self-made millionaire, all of these.

Leilah Powell 
Not to be, you know, that's a random non-specific example, I'm sure that last one.

Steven 
Right, of course, but all

of that's nonsense. All of that isn't real, but yet it is such a powerful narrative.

that I think I'm imagining intersects a lot of your work. know, again, the lady on the street and, you know, this idea of, she should fix her own problem. Like, she got herself into that problem. She should fix the problem by herself because that's what I do. I'm, know, and we fail, I think, often as individuals and collectively to recognize that our national narrative of do it by yourself is...

wrong. It's not accurate. It's not how things get done. And it perpetuates these societal problems because we can then just blame the person who's in that situation that, they're just not doing enough to get themselves to, you know, to get them out of that situation.

One, guess, do you agree with my interpretation that I just laid out? And two, then if that's if we're in the right ballpark, how do you combat that narrative that's so powerful in our nation of the individual triumphing over nature and economy and everything?

Leilah Powell 
Yeah, I mean, I think, first of all, it's kind of funny the examples you used. I'm lucky in that I have two teenage daughters who both the same experience I had growing up, I have that with them. And we get to talk a lot about these issues. I was just talking with my high school junior about the mythology of the American West and the idea of what a cowboy did and the reality of what a

that expansion, westward expansion was like. And she was kicking around ideas for how you convey that in, of all things, a puppet show. But this discussion overlaps a lot with the discussion you and I have actually had about art and the role of art and the role of media in creating these stereotypes, which certainly that's.

really where they come from. have another kiddo who's in college studying theater and film and if you look at the story that we tell about ourselves as a country, that's the vehicle. We don't tell enough stories about the...

partly because it's hard to use as there's that old experiment and you show a picture also this is right up your river area you show a photograph to a group of Americans and it's there's a salmon and some plants and you know and the Americans say you say what is this and Americans say that's a fish and you show it to Japanese people and they say that's a river so

Steven 
Yeah.

Leilah Powell 
how do we, and that may even be apocryphal, but it's a good story. So how do we tell stories about the river and not stories about the fish, right? And how do we make those as compelling as what we've come to be kind of used to? And I think this is another point where the science really backs this up. You can't sit down with someone and say, Steven, you're wrong.

Steven 
Yeah.

Leilah Powell 
You're wrong, your beliefs are incorrect. You may think this happened, but here's the data that shows that that didn't really happen. Because we actually know what happens when you proceed that way. You upset someone's apple cart so profoundly that they deepen their adherence to their incorrect beliefs.

Steven 
Yeah, will shut down, they'll

wall themselves off in a defensive posture and yeah, absolutely.

Leilah Powell 
Yeah,

so we've actually been talking about this. One of the things we've been talking about is, you know, just to take a real serious turn here for a minute, hundreds of people die on the streets of San Antonio every year. Some of them in their 90s, some of them infants.

So in some ways it's easier for someone to walk past an individual in real life than it is for them to hear a story about a woman who went to high school somewhere, who went to church somewhere, because you're starting to construct that this person was part of a community. And there's a big difference between saying this guy suffered from this

Steven 
Yeah, it's part of...

Leilah Powell 
And my saying, hey, a Churchill grad, this is what happened to him. Because immediately you've put it in a frame of, oh, that's the high school I went to. And that's a person who has something in common with me. And so I think that's how we move forward, right? Is we try to get more into people's spaces. Right now, we are really differentiating ourselves. If you don't use these words, you don't wear this kind of thing, then you are not part of my...

Steven 
Yeah, it starts getting personalized and connected, Yeah.

Yep.

Yep.

Leilah Powell 
And we know billions of years of evolution teach us to wall ourselves off and to protect us and our own. Yeah. And your question about, right, where does that go? How do we become more inclusive? How do we realize that my tribe includes not only all the people, but also the plants, the planet? That's the trick, right? And I don't think it's done.

Steven 
Yeah, to get into our tribes and know who the enemy is. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Leilah Powell
Forgive me for saying this, I don't think it's done with data. I think it's done with stories and with connecting people through the webs, making those invisible webs visible. You may think you're not connected to this person, but actually, her sister is the one who took care of your kids at that daycare. that, without her in your life,

Steven 
Yes. Yeah.

Leilah Powell 
you would have a different life. You would be a different person. You would have different opportunities. And I think that that's that story of America. It's not about one person going out and taming the West. It's about the school teachers, the folks who already lived there, the people who understood how to utilize indigenous resources. Like that's a much more complicated story than one family or one man went out and fenced off some land and put cattle on it, right?

Steven 
Right,

right.

Leilah Powell 
So, yeah, I think that that, how do you make those connections visible? That to me is the path, you know, the path forward.

Steven 
Yeah. Well, I love this conversation and I could keep, you know, just going and going and going. But I also know that there's a hard stop coming up for you in a little bit. So thank you again for all the time you've given and for participating in this discussion, which is fascinating to me. But let me transition into just to make sure we get kind of the...

things that we talk about here in the show, you an opportunity. What's your call to action? As we've been talking here about the importance of narrative, particularly in social issues and some of the work that you're doing in San Antonio and your organization does around the country.

What do want people to do now that they've heard this discussion and are hopefully energized about connecting and being more engaged in their community and a larger inclusive community? What do you want people to do with this discussion?

Leilah Powell 
I want to preface this by saying this has been fabulous. I just, could, again, just to repeat what you said, I could talk about this stuff all day. So unfortunately no one pays me to do that, similar to your situation, right? So, I mean, one thing I would say is if you casually use language or metaphors or phrases, interrogate your own use of that. And a really interesting example of this is we...

Steven 
Right. Right.

Leilah Powell 
We had a big buy local campaign here. I'm sure people are familiar with buy local campaigns and we were doing, we decided, well, we need to understand more. We need to ask people more specifically when this language is used, what does it mean to you? So for example, in that, in that survey, we also ask people what does a home have to have a yard? And 70 something percent of the people said, yeah, unless it has a yard, it's not a home.

Steven 
Mm-hmm.

Leilah Powell 
Well,

that's not the way a lot of us in this sector use that word home, right? But one of the questions that we asked was, do you try to buy local? And most people, 80 % said, yes, I do. So then we said, can you give an example of a local? And some people said, Walmart or the corner gas station or, and I get what they're saying. That is not online. It is a local place that they go, right?

Steven 
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, it's in their community.

Right.

Leilah Powell 
But we're all having these huge conversations and spending millions of dollars telling people, buy local. And we're not even talking to them in a way that makes sense to them. But think about that from yourself. When you hear someone using a word or you hear something, particularly if it's something that you feel like you're being exhorted to do, interrogate that a little bit. What do they mean? And what do I understand that they mean by that?

And so I think that's one thing that we can all do. The other thing I would encourage people, and I know I already said this to you, but read some on this. If you feel like you can argue someone into submission, read some on why that doesn't work. You know, I mentioned Haydn. I think he's great. If you're, you know, there are some other books there about the big narrative arcs.

Steven 
Read some more. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Love it.

Leilah Powell 
There's a book called mind the science about the way Science around thinking and understanding can be used to manipulate us There's a book and I'll get I can't remember the name of the book right now But about the way that narratives around something being natural Manipulate us into spending money. We don't need to spend and

Steven 
Yep, natural, organic,

and yep. Mm-hmm. Yep. Yep. Right. Right. Right.

Leilah Powell 
Yes, what is organic? What is natural? There's no definition for the word natural in food or any other products. so

pause for a minute and think about when I see this word, what's it triggering in me? Try to become more aware of the frames that you're using and why you're responding in a way. And I think it'll help you understand other people more, but it'll also help you understand why did I disagree with that person? That may not...

actually make a lot of sense. So I think that is what I, that sort of self-awareness. And then just in general, a lot of these discussions, they're really wonderful. Make yourself open to them. As you start reading about this, I know it sounds goofy, but ask someone, hey, have you read this book? Have you thought about these issues? People won't have conversations with someone else if there's not an opening to learn.

Steven 
Yeah, invite

people in.

Leilah Powell 
So that

connection to talk about it, become an evangelist for the idea of systems thinking and do some reading on systems thinking.

Steven 
Yeah, right on. We've got by my clock two to three minutes left before you got to run. So I'm going to ask you the three questions at hope about hope. in your challenge then will be to be succinct so that can get all three questions in in the time before you have got to run to your next meeting. So just your first gut reaction to these questions. So the first question about hope is what's your vision for a better future?

Leilah Powell 
Yeah.

Ha!

Steven 
Could be for you personally, professionally, or for the world. What's your vision for a better future?

Leilah Powell 
A personal vision that I'm really working on is this consumer issue and particularly not consuming things that are overpackaged and just trying to cut out plastic as much as I can. That's really very personal. I'm not doing any policy or any other work in that. But a professional vision around a better future is that we move away from

the kind of check the box mentality that you were talking about. And I'm not implicating any particular, you know, but, but, and a lot of folks are implicit in, in, in, promoting that. And I love KPIs, but sometimes just a real quick story. have a friend who, in seventh grade did a field trip and she was just blown away by the historic missions by the San Antonio missions. And she thought, is, this is where I want to be. Right.

Steven 
Yeah.

Leilah Powell 
So she grew up, she graduated from high school, she married her high school sweetheart, she dropped out of college, she had a bunch of kids. When she was in her 30s, she said, back in seventh grade I took that field trip, I wanna go back and do that. And she became an archeologist and she became the city archeologist of the city of San Antonio and she became.

a nationally recognized expert. Now, if you had a KPI that said, these seventh graders get something out of this trip, you would never be able to measure her story. So let's be aware that yes, we need outcomes, that, I mean, we need outputs, but that outcomes can be hard.

to measure. So I would love to see us get a more nuanced idea of how we recognize what quality of life is and how we evaluate outcomes so that we're not, you know, we're not focused on the wrong measures for what makes a meaningful life.

Steven 
I to measure.

So I think you answered the second question, which is why that's important. I think you just explained, is there anything else you want to add into the why your vision of that is important?

Leilah Powell 
Yeah.

You know, it's a deeply personal thing with me and I've attended a Quaker meeting here in San Antonio. You can't really be a Quaker alone. You have to be in community. And I really feel pretty strongly that we need to understand how deeply entrenched in community we are. If you are sitting alone at your house watching TV, you are thoroughly enmeshed in community. There are...

Steven 
Yeah.

in a meeting, right? Yeah.

Leilah Powell 
hundreds of thousands of people that contributed to your being able to do what you want to do that evening and Most of what you think you know, this is the great experiment where we asked people to draw a bicycle Almost no one can actually draw a bicycle that functions But you even if you sit you're like where how is this connected like I don't know right? Most people can't couldn't fix their plumbing if it went wrong Nobody knows how these work right but we're dependent on them

Steven 
Yeah.

Leilah Powell 
So everything you do, you're a Meshton community, recognize that, celebrate that. If we understood that more, I think we would make decisions that reflect how deeply dependent we are on people. Most of what you know is not in your brain. Most of what you know and most of who you are is shared now globally. And if we could really be deeply thankful for all of that and for the...

Steven 
Yes.

Yes. Yes.

Leilah Powell 
the billions of years of evolutionary history and hundreds of thousands of years of human evolutionary history that got us to the point where we're able to share knowledge at this level, I think that would make all of our lives better. That sense of gratitude for the web that supports us.

Steven 
Yeah, perfect. And the minute we have left before you got to go, now imagine we're in that future where we understand we're connected and we're deeply embedded into community and we're functioning and making better choices based on that understanding. How do you feel?

Leilah Powell 
to think that as I have gotten older, and this has been a, I'm in my 50s now, it's been this unexpected bonus, peace becomes so much more of a priority. And something that would have looked dull and uninteresting when I was 20 becomes rich and satisfying. so I think that when you talk about peace,

Steven 
Yeah.

Leilah Powell 
And when I talk about it and that famous quote, it's not the absence of violence or war, right? Peace is the coexistence, productive coexistence of all kinds of communities, people communities, environmental communities. And so I think that, you know, ultimately what I would hope and in my own life, I hope I'm moving towards it is a more peaceful existence.

Steven 
Well, Leilah, thank you so much. I know we had to kind of truncate this a little bit so you can get on to your next appointment, but thank you so much for taking time to join me today and sharing all that you've shared. I thank the world of you and consider you one of my dearest friends. So thank you for being a part of this show with me and sharing your wisdom and inspiration with everybody.

Leilah Powell 
I'm so honored to be asked. and it's fine to say, well, we could have had a few more minutes, but there is no amount of time that we could have dedicated to this conversation where we would walk away saying, we covered everything. So yeah, we covered it all.

Steven 
We covered it all, yeah, absolutely.

Leilah Powell 
So

I had a great time and you start up a lot of interesting thoughts that I want to pursue. maybe we'll check back in in a few years and talk about the next phase of both of our work. All right. Thanks. Thank you. All right. Bye bye.

Steven 
I hope so.

see where we've grown. Perfect. Well, Leilah, take care. All right. Bye-bye.

Steven 
What an incredible conversation with Leilah Powell. Today, she reminded us that storytelling isn't just a tool for connection. It's a fundamental driver of change. We talked about the necessity of belonging, the power of narratives to shape our understanding, and how genuine community engagement, not just checking a box, leads to real solutions.

Most importantly, Leilah emphasized that systems change isn't just about collecting data and crunching numbers. It's about recognizing the interconnectedness of issues and using stories to shift perceptions, drive policy, and empower communities. Think of systems change like a river. Data gives us the depth and width of its water. It tells us where the currents are strong and where obstacles lie.

But without the stories of the people who rely on that river, those who fish its waters, who build their homes along its banks, who face floods and droughts, we don't truly understand its impact. Numbers may show us where a problem exists, but stories show us why it matters and how we can fix it. If we want to transform the systems that shape our communities, we have to change the narratives that uphold them. Leilah's work is a testament to this truth.

and I can't thank her enough for sharing her insights with us today. Her dedication to empowering communities, amplifying voices, and fostering real engagement is an inspiration. And I hope you all have taken as much from this conversation as I have. Now, from those of you tuning in, whether you're listening or watching, Leilah's story reminds us that change starts with us. Here are some simple but meaningful actions you can take in your own community.

Listen to your neighbors' stories and uplift their voices. Get involved with local organizations working for systemic change. Advocate for policies that prioritize people over statistics. And most importantly, recognize that belonging, connection, and engagement are not just ideals, they are necessities for building stronger, more inclusive communities. If this episode inspired you, please share it with your family and friends.

like and follow stories sustain us, leave me a comment, and help continue these important conversations. Your support truly makes a difference. So thank you. And don't forget to join me for the next episode coming out on March 4th. I'll be talking with another incredible guest about the complexities of mental health systems and the collaborative efforts needed to create real change. We'll explore the role of community support and policymakers

in addressing the mental health needs of children and youth. This is a really fascinating conversation and you're not gonna wanna miss it. So check out the next episode of Stories Sustain Us on March 4th at storiessustainus.com, wherever you listen to podcasts and on YouTube. So thank you for being with me here today. Please keep sharing and keep believing in the power of Stories to sustain us all. Until next time, I'm Steven Schauer.

Take care of yourself and each other. Take care.