When the Job, the Kids, and the Identity All Hit at Once

What happens when a promotion, a pregnancy, and a full identity reckoning all land in the same year?

That's where Misty Avila was when this conversation was recorded. VP and Chief Strategy Officer at the James B. McClatchy Foundation. Interim executive director at the Central Valley Journalism Collaborative, brought on to stabilize it through a transition. And expecting her third daughter - right in the middle of realizing, by her own admission, that she didn't feel successful. Not despite the titles - while holding them.

That daughter has since arrived. I can't wait for round two so we can hear what has evolved!

What You'll Learn
⭐ Why Misty built her own "curriculum" instead of following a traditional path
⭐ What it means to lead a foundation designed to disappear
⭐ The moment she realized she didn't feel successful, even holding two major leadership roles at once
⭐ How motherhood is reshaping her sense of identity, in real time
⭐ Why funding local news by who it reaches matters more than what beat it covers

Key Insights

The Moment "Successful" Stopped Fitting
VP title. Interim ED role. Third child on the way. Misty's own read on herself: not successful. She sits in that, without rushing to fix it.

People Are Her Library
Not a formal program. Not a degree. Misty's education came from travel, real skills, and real people - a philosophy that still shapes how she leads.

A Foundation Built to Disappear
The James B. McClatchy Foundation is on a Sunrise plan, intentionally spending down by 2030. Misty on what it takes to trust the work continues without owning it.

Resources and Links

Find host Kristin Belden on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristinbelden/ 
or at https://www.BeldenStrategies.com
Book a Clarity Consult: https://www.BeldenStrategies.com/clarityconsult
Sign up for Kristin's newsletter Big Deal Energy: https://www.BeldenStrategies.com/newsletter
Connect with Misty on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mistavila/

If this conversation resonated, share it with someone who needed to hear it - and consider leaving a review. It helps more women find these conversations.

#careerchange #careerreinvention #womeninmidlife #motherhoodandcareer #philanthropy #localjournalism #centralvalley #womenleadership #legacy #over40 #kindofabigdeal #kristinbelden

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hi everyone, welcome back to kind of a big deal. I'm your host, Kristen Belden. If you're new here, hit subscribe so you don't miss what's next. Today's guest, Misty, has a line that I swear needs to be on a t-shirt. People are her library and her school. And she spent her career proving it. From restaurants to nonprofits to running strategy at a foundation that's doing something most funders won't: intentionally spending itself out of existence, moving every dollar back into the community it supports instead of protecting the money for later. We also get into what happens when you're holding a huge job, becoming a mother again, and questioning who you are in the middle of all of it, without any clean answers just yet. A quick note before we start. That child is here now, so consider this round one. I'm already excited about round two. Meet Misty. Hi, Misty.

SPEAKER_01 1:02

Hi, Kristen.

SPEAKER_00 1:04

How are you? I'm doing so good. How are you doing? I'm doing good. I am loving. So Misty and I are based in a similar location in Sacramento, and we're finally moving into fall a little bit here, and I'm I'm feeling the fall vibes. It's like this time of Sacramento, for anybody that does not is not familiar with Northern California in the fall, it's like it's the best place to be. Outside of being on the East Coast in the fall, but I feel like Sacramento, NorCal, it's another great this is a beautiful time of year, so I'm feeling good. I'm feeling like we got through the Halloween craziness. I don't know how that was for your family, but it was intense over here. I actually just wrote a little piece about this because my son, who's six, chose this like really freaky weird costume that no one knew what it was, but it's like from some terribly awful video game, I guess, that he doesn't even know about, but he chose it anyways, and it was awful, and I hated it, but he loved it, so it was all good. How about you guys?

SPEAKER_01 2:06

Yeah, we're I was just talking about how you know I'm my girls, they're four and eight, they pick out their own costumes now, which has made Halloween. Um there's been a sadness to that because I didn't even know I didn't even know one of the costumes either, and then um my eight-year-old wanted to do her own face makeup, so you know, it was really cute, but it looked like an eight-year-old painted her face. What was she? She was a uh vampire.

SPEAKER_00 2:36

Oh I love it. But it was cute. So we met through our overlapping worlds in journalism, and I've just always been super impressed with Misty's integrity, both in her work and how she thinks about the work she does and the role of journalism in society. And our collaboration deepened in her role as one of the founding team members at the Central Valley Journalism Collaborative, where I did some consulting last year. And one of the things that struck me most during our time working together was just her like true unwavering commitment to ethical fundraising and grant making, and she just consistently centers the communities being served without exception. And that shows up in the way she leads, it shows up, it's so true, it's so true, and it shows up. You know, we'd have these strategy conversations, and it her voice was always just so clear and articulate in the way she thought about this work and the meaning behind it. So I was always just so impressed with that. And in addition to leading that work, she is also the VP and Chief Strategy Officer at the James B. McClatchy Foundation, which is a sunsetting, but they're calling it their Sunrise Plan foundation dedicated to community-powered local journalism, multilingual education infrastructure, and inclusive leadership in California's Central Valley, which for folks that are maybe less familiar, the Central Valley of California has always been kind of an overlooked region. In fact, I was actually looking, and you all have a stat that the region receives less than 6% of statewide philanthropic dollars, which is wild because it's a massive, massive piece of our state's geography. So the work that's happening there is incredibly important, and the work that their foundation is doing in support of that work is incredibly important. So Missy's just a total badass in this space, and others, I'm sure, but I can't wait to dive in and have you tell us a little bit more about you and your work.

SPEAKER_01 4:41

Thank you for reminding me of like who I am.

SPEAKER_00 4:45

I don't even know anymore. This is one of my favorite parts, and I'm sorry if there's a lag because our videos are a little funky right now. But this is literally one of my favorite things about this is truly women do not stop to reflect ever. Maybe this is just the human condition, maybe it's not just women, but I do think women in particular, and the ones that have done a lot of incredible work, like don't actually talk about their story in this way because it's just always like we're building, we're doing, we're producing, we're creating. And if you care about the impact you're having, then it typically is you're just moving into what's next. And so it is kind of nice to sit in a moment of reflection every once in a while. So I would love to start by going kind of back to the beginning of your career. It's so fun because for me, you know, as I've gotten to know you, it's in the current context, right? But I actually don't know anything about your career history, kind of where you started, where your interests lied. So I'd love for you to just maybe give us what were your earlier roles and have you always been driven to mission-driven work?

SPEAKER_01 5:57

Oh man, okay, that's a great question. So I've kind of fell into the nonprofit space in college and then never left. So um, you know, everything from like volunteer, program assistant, program coordinator, program manager, administrative officer to the ED to board member, and then at some point I was like, okay, I've been through this full nonprofit industrial complex. Like, I need to know what it's like to be a funder, and I just need to find the right space and the right role. Because, you know, you through the whole chain of kind of being in the nonprofit space, you can get a real chip on your shoulder about funders and just about how the system is funded and overall. And so for me, it's like I just I just had to know what it meant, what it looked like to be in this space, and if I could still do it from a values-driven approach, or if it if it is as ridiculous as you know, I thought it was as I'm doing fundraising. Um it's really interesting because I started out, my family worked in restaurants, both my parents were lifelong career restaurant folks, and you know, I always had this desire to work. Like even in college, high school, I was working, would choose going and serving. I was a server at local restaurants over like school or class. And and it wasn't like, oh, you know, I'm just like failing on school. I think what I just learned early was people are my school and my library, my experience. Like I think the engagement with other humans is been kind of where I've learned. Um even if I have a desire to read, I tend to gravitate towards experiences where it's like people are my library. Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00 7:32

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:33

And then, you know, it's funny too because things just kind of work out because it's like you're just passionate about something, and so it's like the pieces just keep falling into place without necessarily having to plan. At one point, I um I was part of this nonprofit incubator that was helping organizations bring their organizations online. So building out their first WordPress websites, their first social media, and I was the youngest person at the organization, so I got like tagged to be the person representing the organization. They're like, She must know what she's doing so she can start like a Twitter for us. And it was kind of like this sneaky pathway to leadership because the person that owns all the technology at the organization, in a lot of ways, gets put into these leadership positions where they're helping to tell the story of the organization, representing the organization, being the one that needs to be there because they can access everything. Um, so that pathway actually I ended up getting recruited to work in an organization that does technology capacity building in San Francisco for nonprofits in the Central Valley.

SPEAKER_02 8:36

Oh, really?

SPEAKER_01 8:37

So okay. I was working in the mission in San Francisco, and I was driving out to Fresno and Bakersfield and Merced, Modesto, and actually supporting organizations to do online organizing.

SPEAKER_00 8:49

Oh my gosh, okay.

SPEAKER_01 8:51

And then I I kind of grew from there to be global. So then I was going to Cambodia, Indonesia, London, Berlin, uh, Mexico City, and doing sort of the same participatory technology movement building. Oh my gosh. Incredible. And so that was like my my whole 20s just kind of spent on an airplane. Uh yeah. And I think, you know, really bringing all that experience back to now being in a position where I'm grounded and serving the valley again. And that's where my family, you know, is at, and that's where I was kind of raised up and down the 99 in restaurants. That's kind of been the full circle joy of where things are at now. That is amazing.

SPEAKER_00 9:27

I had no idea. This is why this is the best. Like, what an incredible story. And um I'm so curious how that that travel and that work and being in these spaces maybe either informed or kind of like gave you an expanded lens on the work that you were doing locally. Like, how did that work maybe you know, kind of influence as you're now back in this full circle moment and serving communities that you care so deeply about?

SPEAKER_01 9:59

I mean, it's definitely made me realize the brilliance that is in the Central Valley of California. That's the region that I mostly focus on in my current work. And it continuing to be affirmed, no matter where you are globally, the hyper-local, kind of grassroots, community-based organizations and people are the folks with the most interesting ideas and the most interesting inputs, um, the most interesting people to kind of like build with. And then I think I love what you were saying earlier. A lot of the stuff that maybe I've had an opportunity to do, it isn't until I look back like 10 years later, that I'm like, oh wow, I really did go to Egypt and work with like 12 Egyptian activists around the social economic report card for their country. There's like these moments. That's wild. That's wild. You have like, yeah, like at the time you don't want to say anything because you don't want to be like this American Californian showing up internationally trying to do some technology facilitation. It has all the wrong keywords for any sort of humility. Uh so you just have to kind of like let the work and the experiences kind of trust that people sense that aura, right? And like that experience and and those opportunities and allowing for that open-mindedness to continue to be part of the work even when you're doing stuff, you know, where you might consider it be back home.

SPEAKER_00 11:15

Yeah, yeah. Outside of that specific example, are there any pieces of work or any places that you where you were that really stand out as something that you um maybe doesn't influence the work now, but just was such a like uh an eye-opener for you in some of the work that you were doing then?

SPEAKER_01 11:38

Oh man. I a lot of my early lessons working with the Latin America feminist co-ops or working with like feminist-led organizations globally and just seeing how articulate and advanced they were around the type of future they envisioned for, I think was some really early learning that I'm still trying to figure out like how do we how can we show up like that in some of the spaces that we're in now?

SPEAKER_00 12:05

That level of awareness of the world, I think my husband did a lot of work abroad for many years, and sometimes even I forget that he had this whole wild experience because but then it starts to come out in these conversations because inevitably it does allow you to, I think, kind of open the aperture around to your point what are other people doing, right? We can get so like closed lensed or so focused on the moment or the region that we're in that we forget to be informed or influenced or inspired by so many of these other incredible global experience or movements that are happening. So what an incredible part of your story. I love that, and I love more than anything that you just said people are your library and people are your school. I mean, I've never heard it expressed more beautifully than that. I literally want to, if that's not on a t-shirt somewhere, it needs to be. I mean, that's truly incredible because I think I'm like, oh, that's it. You're yes, because sometimes I'm like, why do I only want to be with the people all the time? Like at anything, any moment in my life that I look back on, I'm like, well, I just wanted to be with people. I love that you just said that. Do you feel like you have always been that way as a kid? Could you have, if you look back on that time as a child, was that how you interacted with the world, or is that something that came later?

SPEAKER_01 13:37

It's so interesting because I have had an internal identity crisis around this issue, okay? Because this is the thing, is I'm the baby sister of my I'm the youngest. And my sisters and my dad, mom, very, very charismatic people, very extroverted. So I kind of got put in a situation when I was younger where I was the one that went to college. I was the one that everybody was gonna protect. I was the one that like was gonna make it. I kind of got put on a pedestal at a young age. Um both of um, you know, my mom was a very young teen mom, my sister also teen mom. So it was like on my 21st birthday, we got excited that like I wasn't pregnant yet, you know. Like that was or like we made it when she like graduated college. So I think I was kind of like the nerd, you know. I was so I I had this like persona to keep up that was like so academic or something, but it never um it wasn't until really I moved away from home when I was 17. It wasn't really until that point that I was able to kind of break from that identity a little bit. Um and and I don't have the pressures of the older sister immigrant daughter, I don't have that pressure. My sister probably has more of the pressure of being the older sister, you know. So I got to be a little more rebellious as the younger sister, too. So I think between being seen as smart in my family and then also just being rebellious and doing whatever I wanted, um I kind of realized what worked for me at some point, even if I didn't talk about it.

SPEAKER_00 14:59

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. What how do you think that manifested when you think about what worked for you? Couldn't you put words to that?

SPEAKER_01 15:07

I think it plays into kind of what you were saying about, you know, like when did you realize that people were part of the work, you know? I I remember I would create like curriculums for myself because I could never find a I started grad school multiple times and dropped out like first quarters. And could never find something that was exactly what I wanted. So I would always create these like curriculums for like what is my own education that I'm gonna put myself through. And whether that would be traveling or making certain things or learning a new skill or hobby or meeting certain types of people. Um and you know, I just realized that that was actually a way that you could make a life kind of doing that and being adventurous rather than just following this playbook of like what it means to be successful.

SPEAKER_00 15:53

Oh my gosh. You are literally speaking all of my words in my language. I was like, Yes, yes, because I mean what an incredible gift, I think, to have been maybe I don't know if you were articulating it in that way at that stage of your life, but to even be acknowledging and aware that we don't have to follow a very specific path in order to find whatever our version of success is. I mean, that has been so much of my unlearning over the last few years and my own evolution is really poking at that. Like, what does that mean to me? And why was I always blindly chasing whatever was next? What was driving my ambition? And these are all very uncomfortable questions if you have not asked yourself them yet. And so I think that's been kind of part of my like what I want to be talking about with women in particular, because I think many times this is not universal, but you see this come up a lot where it's like, oh, I was chasing this version of success that I've I got it. And then in fact, one of my friends that I just interviewed, she said she realized one day it was like an itchy sweater that she had to get off. Like it she was like, This is right. I was like, yes. She's like, This is I had all the things, like I got all the things that I was supposed to want to have. And then I realized I didn't want, you know, 90% of them or whatever. And so she like totally blew up her life and then had spent the last decade, literally, rebuilding. I think about this with my own daughter, like, how can she build in that sense of self from a young age to where she is aware of that enough? It's not to say that when you choose something, it has to be perfect or the thing that you're doing forever, but knowing yourself enough to know that you're at least choosing with integrity and choosing with intention, I think that is not something that I did for a very long time. And that's okay. It's okay. But I think it's cool when you hear from people who maybe had a different experience in that you saw maybe a little bit younger how these things fit for you. Hey, quick pause before we get back into it. If you're listening to conversations like this one and something keeps nudging you, like I know I'm at some kind of turning point. I just can't quite see it clearly yet. That's actually exactly what I do. I work with women leaders who are in the middle of something a career shift, a business that's ready to evolve, a moment where what got you here just isn't cutting it anymore. Sometimes what you need most isn't a whole program or a big engagement. You just need a few hours with someone who can help you see what you're too close to see yourself. That's the clarity session. It's a focused one-on-one conversation where we dig into where you are, where you want to go, and what's actually in the way. You walk away with real direction, not a list of homework, but genuine clarity on your next move. If that sounds like what you need right now, I'd love to talk. You can find all the details at Beldenstrategies.com slash clarity.

SPEAKER_01 19:12

Yeah, I mean, I think sometimes I just um I don't think I had the examples around me of other ways were possible. It wasn't there was nobody around me that knew what a FASFO was. It's like all the all the stories that you hear about the first-time college students. That was so my experience too. It's like just a lot of making it up as I went. And so, you know, I'm thankful for that now. At the time, sometimes I'm like, what was I doing? But it was I'm thankful for that now. But it's so even even the journalism space, because you know, I really came my intersection with journalism over the years was always like youth media. I just really care deeply about youth media. I feel like it's hitting some pulse, uh some nexus, some intersection of social impact in a way that I has always really just been I deeply care about. Uh so I kind of came through the journalism space through there. And then another thing that happened is I uh started to really love journalists. Like the actual sector, I was like such interesting people, always asking such interesting questions, had really cool life stories, could go deep really quickly, you know. They don't really stay shallow, even though I think they can be highly skeptical too. Um, and I realized I started just really deeply caring for journalists and I actually never read their stories. Because I thought we don't really read, so they'd be like, This story has so much impact. And I'd be like, I don't care. I just want you to have a job because you're a good person, and I really value you. Like, and so it's been interesting for me too, because they'll be like, What does success look like? Oh, an award-winning publication, and I'll be like, I'll have to be like, Oh, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Like the stories are true. Because I'm just like really um, I think much more fascinated by just kind of like the people behind the stories. Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_00 20:57

I love that. Yes, I'm with you a hundred percent. I too fell into the media and journalism space. I didn't have a background in it, right? And so it was a whole new world that opened up to me when I when we started The Bay Citizen. And I was so enamored with all of them because I'm like, you are all literally talk about choosing a path that is not like very it can be clearly defined from what we think of as what it means to be a journalist, but ultimately there's so many different ways to be a journalist. There's so many different ways to think about story writing, and there's so many different outlets, and there's it's so it's not actually that straightforward. And so you are choosing a path that is not black and white. And Trey Bundy, who one of my favorite humans of all time, the way he approached his work made me love him as a human, right? And that's because that's also then how he shows up in life. It's not just the way he's doing the work and the way he's telling the stories, that's inherently just who he is, right? And as an art major, I was just. Just like, oh, these are a bunch of weirdos and I love them. These are my people. Um, how do you see? I mean, gosh, there's so much. Not to like, maybe we won't totally nerd out on the journalism space yet because I feel like there's so much to unpack there. But I love what you were just saying about youth media because I think there, this has been my I am so hellbent on this that I really do believe that the future of journalism hinges on our ability to engage young audiences because ultimately you can't tell somebody to care about journalism and the importance of it to our democracy. You can't convince somebody of that when that ship has already sailed, or when somebody has decided that every major media publication is, you know, a farce or is filled with misinformation, whatever the case is. And so I think our only shot is to get them while they're young and get people engaged in these conversations from a really young age. So I'm curious, maybe we'll start with just where you're at now and the work that you're leading now. I think for people who may not have had as much experience with like foundations, foundational work, what does it mean to be sunsetting an organization? How does that help kind of shape the focus of the giving and the impact? We talk a lot about building legacies in this show, but as a foundation itself, when you're thinking about the sunrise plan, how does that inform the way you guys are thinking about where you are placing your funds?

SPEAKER_01 23:37

Yeah, it's such a great question, Kristen. So ultimately, when you think about philanthropy, the changes we hope to see is generational work. And so when you're looking at a foundation and you have these two-year, three-year, five-year plans, like I get it's important to have a plan, but so much of the work kind of creates this elite philanthropy solutionism in order to move very limited resources to communities. And, you know, even if you try not to, there's just inadvertently to kind of like secure your own agenda and way of the world. And you being the institution, the system, your board, you know, whoever you want to say the you is. And so I think what's been kind of uh one of the reasons why I kind of agreed to be in this space through my own kind of hesitation was that being at a sunsetting foundation, I know that the priority is to move resources to community. And we always say in nonprofit space, make ourselves obsolete, right? That's the goal. I think in philanthropy, in a lot of spaces, even if we're not saying it, the real goal is to like protect the corpus, which is the money that's um usually in investments or wealth, so that you can kind of live in perpetuity and you push out five percent a year. So the idea with the Sunsetting Foundation that we're basically saying, hey, the issues are urgent enough now. We believe that this funding, these resources will be better served in community, and that the community actually has the answers. I mean, we're gonna live that and practice that by strategically spending the money, but also using our platform and our leverage to uplift the Central Valley as a place to invest in. Um and so that's been the part, that's kind of been the dance is how to um spend down these resources in a way that can go directly into Central Valley Leaders. Because again, in the Central Valley of California, often dollars go to intermediaries that aren't even in the area to kind of serve the Central Valley. So very few dollars make it actually reach the valley leaders. And then secondly, you know, is there any way because of our how sorry, that's my dog sneezing?

SPEAKER_00 25:48

Because we're I thought you were just moving your chair or something. We both have some dog noises happening, it's all good.

SPEAKER_01 25:54

And then because we're adjacent to wealth and adjacent to all these networks, and we have a really rich team. What does it look like to partner with community to actually uplift the Central Valley as a place to celebrate, change the narrative around resource? And just knowing that by 2030, we would have essentially closed our doors. And then trusting that, you know, I think there can be a real scarcity mindset of what's gonna happen when you're gone. And I'm really working on this narrative and learning from other folks, but it's like we're joining a river, a movement that already exists, and trying to build capacity in it, and it will continue after us, and we have to trust that rather than building up an empire that's gonna crumble when we're gone. Um so I think there's lessons learned along the way, but we're around for such a short amount of time, kind of in the longer vision of the work. I do kind of trust that it will evolve too. The organization or institution might be going away, but all these staff and all these networks that we've been a part of, you know, especially in the Central Valley, you see the same leaders and just might be called different things over time. Totally, yeah, totally. So that's where we're at as a foundation. And um, yeah. Does that answer your question? 100%.

SPEAKER_00 27:07

No, I literally was gonna say, can y'all see and hear why I fell in love with this woman? I mean, the way you talk about it is just so you have such an intention, and I think that vision and the lens that you bring to the work is very unique. This is, to your point, this is not the way every funder perceives the impact that they're having, and so I think having you speak into that, it just shows that there are other ways to do things, and there are other ways to be thinking about what impact even means. So thank you for sharing that. When we think about the journalism piece specifically, what have you seen over the last few years, especially with the launching of the Central Valley Journalism Collaborative, as you're focused in this space? What have you seen change or evolve by entering into these conversations, right? And by bringing a bit of a spotlight to the fact that for those that again maybe are a little less nerdy about the journalism space, there's news deserts all across the country. The Valley has many where you have communities that have not been served from a local news perspective for a very long time. And so this concept of being able to bring that back as one of the you know biggest investments in these communities is a big deal. So I'm just I'm curious kind of what you've seen over the last few years as it's evolved.

SPEAKER_01 28:28

Yeah, I would say we're trying to intentionally invest in the civic ecosystem, and so thinking about like the grassroots leaders who take on everything in the valley, they end up like any social or economic issue happening, they're taking it on. Then we really focus on centering multilingual learners and students. And then the third kind of pillar of that is media and journalism at the intersection of democracy as well. So I think from the very beginning, it hasn't been like, oh, we're a journalism funder. It's like, no, we're we're um, you know, a Central Valley funder, we care about civic engagement. Journalism is a critical part of this story, and I think that that is true now. So I think that's what's really changed is when I first started this work six years ago, many folks, and there is like First Amendment folks that have always got it, but again, when I first started this work, First Amendment, when I would ask people what that means, they would like talk to me about guns. Yeah, like we're just like that was you know, so it's just like so yeah, like that was happening. I don't think that journalism and media was seen just as much as journalists often see themselves outside of community as neutral facilitators of it. Um, they didn't see democracy and journalism so intertwined. Where I think now there's been national recognition, there's been external impacts, kind of the local market failure of news, the impact of not having quality news in some communities, and then folks like us too on the ground trying to intentionally weave the narrative over time. That, like, no, you can't have a democracy portfolio without journalism. You can't have a democracy without journalism. That's a major sign of your free press goes away, is like a major sign of the fall of democracy. And even if you don't care about democracy, because again, it's not even about that word, it's just about the health of our communities, too.

SPEAKER_00 30:14

Totally, yes, yes. I like that you say it like that because I do think sometimes these words can feel um there's a weight to them that is important, and yet it also kind of feels like it takes it away from the reality of just our everyday like democracy, amendment, all of those things, yes. And it really is just literally how are we showing up in our communities and with each other, and how are we being informed about the places that we're in? These are just real tangible everyday things, but I don't know that we were I think maybe we were talking about it back then, but not in that way that feels like it's actually human, you know, like this is your actual everyday life, right? Um what do you think, where do you think the biggest opportunities are, not just in the valley, but just in general, as we think about what it means to um, and I'm sorry, I know that we are not just talking about journalism, but I'm just staying on that track for one more moment. Where do you think there is big opportunity as we think about what the future of local journalism looks like?

SPEAKER_01 31:21

It's so funny because I'm always I have like some opinions about this, but then you know, a real litmus test on this sometimes for me is going to these big national conferences and hearing what other people are saying, and if I agree with everything they're saying, then I'm like, oh man, I'm in my own echo chamber. Like I've crossed over, you know, because I should be annoyed by whatever makes it to the national stage at some point, I should be annoyed by the answer. And like, so I found myself little agreeing with like big thinkers, and I'm like, oh, I'm disconnect, I'm somehow disconnected from the root. But I um, you know, I would say, and I think this is really resonant right now for what a lot of people would say is hyperlocal and local is is where it's at, and in terms of just what type of infrastructures you want to build, what type of news you want to focus on. We in the Central Valley, we've seen the organizations or the community leaders that have really tried to fill information or news gaps in their areas, they do it for their areas and for the people they know. And and that's been where I think I've probably seen the most uh impact, traditional impact, um around this work. I also think there's so funding for journalism has traditionally been focused on like beats. Like, oh, we're a health funder, so we're gonna fund healthcare reporting. Right, right. Or education funders, so we're gonna fund education reporting. I think that there's this dissonance or there's this understanding that like maybe some of these legacy outlets, some of them have evolved, but some of them, it's like they're still not necessarily representing community voice. There might have been histories or legacy of community harm, actually, or like erasure. Even if they are, you know, an important public record, I think the disruption of news offers opportunity for some of these voices to come forward. So, you know, where I get more excited when I hear folks talk about this work is when they're actually audience specific versus topical. Like when you're funding for a specific, not even region specific, but when you're actually know, like I really want to reach bilingual parents, or I really want to reach the Punjabi community in my area, or we're really serving just the 4,000 households in Ivanhoe. We have our community, we want to serve those 4,000 people. And I think if the whole sector could move to kind of funding for that, that to me is more interesting because we get a lot of in any journalism, especially in the valley, any journalism funding, any money that goes in the valley, I'm happy about. So I don't want to deter people from funding in the valley, but if you just keep funding um, you know, the same kind of health news, maybe you don't get to a place where you're actually reaching anybody new.

SPEAKER_00 33:56

Um my gosh, yes, because we can become very prescriptive about what we think people want to read about too, right? It's like, well, we care about this, so obviously the cares about it. That's not necessarily true, right? How do you think you can like how do you get to that to get to the heart of what people actually so say you're trying to reach, you know, bilingual parents in a certain community, how do you engage with that audience, right? Like how do you do that in a way where it is that reciprocal kind of relationship where you are reporting out obviously on the things that you think they care about, but they're also informing what that reporting looks like?

SPEAKER_01 34:35

Yeah, it's it's so hard because one, you just have to sometimes work with who shows up and not be perfect about it, you know? Like who are the people that keep showing up caring about this issue? And maybe they're not the perfect in your mind's eye, especially as a funder, like who you want to be doing this or the right representation. But sometimes at the end of the day, there's such a grit and scrappiness too about the valley. And you you can trust that. I think you can trust that more often than than not. But I that's why I love what I love about some of the work that's happening right now is you get to that through the leaders, the local nonprofit leaders. So I think there's um I think nonprofit leaders tend to have their finger on the pulse on the issues of society faster than other people because they are the ones first addressing it. And so most of our interesting things that get me excited, just as also a news consumer, have come through somehow one of the um kind of entrepreneurial or nonprofit leaders in the space knows someone or is trying to address this themselves. And so, in some ways, it's like new leadership has to be in place, yeah. Which then means new infrastructure, and then that's the part that takes resources and capacity, and so you know, it can be it can be a long journey as well.

SPEAKER_00 35:51

Yeah, yes. Oh my gosh, we could talk about this forever, but I need to never I need to bring it back to you. Um, because that's the story I'm also interested in, which is you know, we we touched on this briefly before we started recording, which is you have a life change happening that's causing you to kind of look at your own leadership a little bit differently and how where you're placing your priorities and your time. And so I'm curious, like when you look at the arc of your own career journey, has your idea of success evolved over time from those early days? And even as you acknowledge that you could kind of see that coming together differently throughout your career, but to today has that definition for you evolved?

SPEAKER_01 36:35

Yeah, I think one of the places that, and I don't talk about it much because I feel like I haven't figured it out for myself, but one of the places that I'm still really trying to fully articulate is the intersection of motherhood and working. And it's like annoying to me that I don't have an opinion about it yet, but I've always felt this deep sense that um somehow my life purpose is connected to motherhood. And that you know, I'll just say I grew up kind of worried about bringing children into the world, not really wanting to necessarily have a family. I never wanted a wedding. I I never wanted these things, I never imagined them or dreamed about them. And so in my 30s, when this kind of started coming together for me and having a family, um, when having kind of this stability and the safety of okay, bringing these beautiful girls into the world, what does that mean for me? When I've always been like, oh, I can take care of myself, but now what does it mean to also take care of all these other things? Yes. And so right now, I I do feel like there's I was at a job interview once. I was interviewing somebody, and we really, really wanted her. She was an amazing educator. We really wanted to hire her. And we started the interview to tell us about yourself. And she just said, I'm a mom. And then she spent about like 10 minutes just talking about being a mom and talking about her kids and just very, very everyday stuff that I go through all the time. At the time, I didn't have kids. And I remember having such a like internal conflict of like, this is so badass that she's doing this, and also like, can you do this? Is this allowed?

SPEAKER_00 38:05

And then like uh usually no, unfortunately.

SPEAKER_01 38:09

After we got off the interview, everyone still wanted to hire her because she she obviously had developed her way of moving in the space and then just absolutely killed the whole interview overall. And we were like, Yeah, we want you to come take care of us too. Like, come be our mom, you know, by the end of the call. Come lead our organization. Um, yeah, I've been trying to find this narrative for myself, and I think this particular last year, I took on a lot of additional responsibilities. I got moved from chief impact officer into the vice president chief strategy officer role at the foundation, crossed my five-year mark with the foundation, and then also took on an interim executive director role at the Central Valley Journalism Collaborative, just for a transition period to try to stabilize it back to um, you know, it's been about four years, so kind of like reset the vision for the organization. And right in the middle of all this, I figured out I was pregnant with my third girl, expecting my third girl. And this is like right after talking to you, Kristen, about I knew I was overcommitted.

SPEAKER_02 39:07

Like I already knew I was overcommitted.

SPEAKER_00 39:10

Yeah, anybody that's like I'm a VP of an org and I'm an interim ed of another org, like that's wild. That's next level.

SPEAKER_01 39:18

No, but I think I, you know, I have to like it can't be a victim thing. I've been thinking about a lot about this. I think, you know, I've always um part of success for me has been like taking care of the folks around me and being responsive to my team. Like there's been a people development side of it. It's like how are the folks how are the people doing around me? Um is kind of uh also how I'm if I'm feeling successful or not.

SPEAKER_00 39:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:49

And so I think with all these added responsibilities and caretaking responsibilities on top of just the sheer just increase in number of people, like in my immediate orbit, I'm not able to individualize and do everything I want to do for everyone. Yeah. And so my my self-analysis of success, like I I've not been successful. Ah, interesting. Yeah. What does that look like to evolve now? Because it's actually some of it is like a greater responsibility. I have more perceived power. I have more um more to lose. Yeah. Um, and so what is my role? I think I'm still in that space of like, what is my actual role now in this work? And how do I I think my own definition of like what success looks like moving forward is not something I've fully wrapped my mind around yet.

SPEAKER_00 40:50

Oh my I love that answer. Not because I love that you're in that moment. But I love that you just you just allowed people to say that for themselves, that we don't have to have it always defined. We don't always have to know what it means. We can be evolving in the middle of it and still be seeking our truth within that. And that is not that's not an easy place to be, but it's an important place to be because over the course of our lives these things do evolve, and we've always we've had these moments, right? In the past, probably. We may not have been able to recognize them at the moment. Because to your point, I think the stakes get higher the more we grow in our lives and our careers, and so we're maybe more cognizant of what that means later on. Um, I typically end every conversation by asking Um, what does building a legacy mean to you? Because in my mind, it's it's similar to the conversation we were just having, which is these are the things that we're building in real time, these are not the things that we are just leaving when we die. It is what is the impact that we want to have? Why do we care about that impact? And I think I I I kind of want to hold on that one though for you, because I think you are talking about it. You're already saying it by talking about your care for other people, your care for the work, your own place in that. So I I will I will say answer it if something comes to mind. And also I want to leave room for it to breathe so that when I bring you back, because there will be a part two. Um, I I mean, I would love to be able to have this conversation in six months or a year after you've had your third child, right? So much changes in these moments, and so um long-winded way of saying the floor is open, but we can also hold that one for the next time.

SPEAKER_01 42:48

No, I love the idea of checking back in after I've had my third kid and seeing what has evolved or changed and or maybe some enlightenment through this process. Um yeah, I would just say we think a lot about legacy and my work, especially because we're going away. It's actually made me um how I'm I'm struggling with how to how to think about legacy in a way that's not about doesn't make it about me. Is that the right is that the right way to do it right now, or is that us once again just decentering ourselves as women leaders? I don't know. I I'm still in the I'm still in the messy parts of that one, so I appreciate the the I love it.

SPEAKER_00 43:36

I love it, I love it. I love the way you look at life. I love the way that you are just so incredibly intentional. I love everything you shared. I just really appreciate you, and I appreciate the relationship that we've gotten to form, and I deeply appreciate you taking some time because holding two massive roles amidst also becoming mom by three is a lot. So thank you so, so much for spending some time. Thank you, Kristen.

SPEAKER_01 44:07

I so love talking to you, so thank you so much for having me. All right, we'll see you soon. Oh, yeah, I'll talk to you soon.

SPEAKER_00 44:13

Bye. Bye. Thank you so much for listening and spending some of your time with me here. I hope our conversation sparked some new ideas for you. If you enjoyed the episode, please make sure to hit subscribe so you don't miss what's next. And if you're ready for even more tools and stories, head on over to beldenstrategies.com slash newsletter. I share fresh insights, stories, and tools for women leaders every week. Until next time, keep building, keep evolving, and remember that you are kind of a big deal.