Why Belonging Matters in Politics and Leadership

The Belonging Podcast by Elev8 Villages | Liana Cassar | Episode 20

In this insightful episode of the Belonging Podcast by Elevate Villages, host Melissa Kay sits down with Liana Cassar, former Peace Corps volunteer in Costa Rica and current advisory board chair of the Oasis Leadership Network.

Together, they explore the powerful connection between leadership, democracy, belonging, and community.

Liana shares her experiences serving as a community development worker with the Peace Corps, her journey through public service, and the important work Oasis Leadership Network is doing to support women and gender-expansive legislators across the United States.

This inspiring conversation explores:

• What belonging truly means in leadership
• The challenges women face in politics
• Power “with” vs power “over” leadership
• Creating inclusive communities and democracy
• Why representation matters in government
• How leaders can create spaces where everyone feels seen
• Supporting women legislators through resilience and community

If you’ve ever wondered how we can build stronger communities, healthier leadership, and a more inclusive democracy, this episode offers hope, wisdom, and practical insight.

Learn more about Liana’s work:
https://www.oasisleadershipnetwork.org/

Learn More About Elev8 Villages:
Website: https://www.elev8villages.org/
Download your FREE Belonging Kit: https://www.elev8villages.org/FREEkit

🔔 Subscribe for more conversations about belonging, leadership, healing, community, and personal growth.

This podcast exists because we believe belonging is not a luxury. It’s a human need. Every story shared here helps us imagine a world where no one has to walk alone. 

If this conversation resonated with you, please follow, rate, or share the show with someone who might need it today. To learn more about the movement we’re building (or to get involved) visit Elev8Villages.org.

Thank you for joining us for this episode of The Belonging Podcast by Elev8 Villages - where belonging becomes a place we build together. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to the Belonging Podcast by Elevate Villages. I'm your host, Melissa Kay. Today we have with us Liana Cassar. She spent some time previously in her life working as a community development worker with the Peace Corps in Costa Rica. And now, currently, she's the advisory board chair of OASIS Leadership Network. There are so many curiosities I have about her work and what she's doing now and how that relates to belonging. Liana, welcome to the Belonging Podcast. Thanks, Melissa. Good to be in conversation with you today. Let's start by letting our listeners get to know a little bit more about you. Can you tell us a little bit about you, maybe a moment or a season in your life where you felt deeply seen or included?

SPEAKER_01 0:54

Thanks for that question. And um, you know, in your introduction, you named uh uh an example, which is um when I had the privilege of being a Peace Corps volunteer in Costa Rica. It was shortly after I graduated from college. And um there were about 25 of us who were um who were Peace Corps volunteers. It was back in the early 90s, and we ended up becoming a very close group. We had a shared experience of leaving home and being interested in doing work that helped the world, right? Um, we also were adventurers and we were curious. Um, and we just had this wonderful shared experience and shared adventure and shared challenges. And that really was a time of belonging for me that was very unique. And that group remains a very close-knit group to this day, now, 30 odd years later, as we've all gone on our different journeys, we've really stayed close. And that that really is just one of the bigger formative memories for me of um belonging to a very unique group.

SPEAKER_00 2:03

Wow, I love that. So by serving together and doing what you did in a place away from home, like this how how deeply that bonded you for decades to come.

SPEAKER_01 2:13

Yeah. And we were all in different, you know, we were isolated in different communities. Some of us were in rural locations, some of us in urban locations. But what we shared was that we had we had a particular type of mission. We shared the enthusiasm to be of service. And eventually we shared a love of the country, a love of Costa Rica, um, and a love of the work. Wow, that's so powerful.

SPEAKER_00 2:40

How big of a group is that?

SPEAKER_01 2:42

Um, about I want to say there are 25 of us um who started out, and most of us are still um in good contact. Wow. Have you ever gone back to Costa Rica and met up? We haven't, we we keep talking about it. We seem to only do our reunions here in the States, but eventually I think we will need to.

SPEAKER_00 3:01

Um we'll need to do that. Wow. Wow, what a great example of of creating belonging through serving others and probably you were creating belonging for everyone you touched on the path. That's beautiful. So, what about a time in your life where you didn't feel like you belong? And how did that shape you?

SPEAKER_01 3:22

It's interesting because with that question, it really takes me back to childhood. We had it like many families. We had a chapter where we moved to a new community and I attended a new school early in the elementary school years. And the experience of that, it's funny because I I look back on it now and I think there's something about it that made me feel particularly small. I I was six or seven at the time, so I was physically small, but there was something about going into a new space that made me feel small, probably physically, and then not knowing who to turn to, who who would be friendly, who would not be friendly. I remember that experience. And at first it really made me feel alone. And then it made me curious about who else doesn't belong. Like so I think it was when I started to recognize that in any space, we often have someone who feels left out or is deliberately being left out, and how to help them overcome that. How how do you help them out overcome that by seeing them, right? By recognizing who is outside of the circle. And I I have found this in quite a few settings that, you know, you can go into a you can go into a meeting, a work meeting, and all the people who know each other collect over by the table with the sandwiches. And then there's other folks who are like sitting by themselves at, you know, a table, right? So it's how do you then just go over and speak to them, introduce them, make sure that they know where things are. You know, once you are an insider, it's really easy to identify who the outsiders are. When you're an outsider, you develop the skills to to understand who insiders are.

SPEAKER_00 4:58

That's true. I'm just thinking through certain social things that I'm involved in, and from both sides, like if you just take a second, especially being an outsider, maybe a lot more people look like insiders than are, but it certainly looks like I think that's very true.

SPEAKER_02 5:15

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 5:17

But then as an insider, it doesn't take a lot to smile, include like you said, just see them. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, I love that. Well, let's transition into the work that you're doing. First, explain to us a little bit what the OASIS Leadership Network is, and then we'll get to some specific questions about your work there.

SPEAKER_01 5:40

Yeah. Um, the Oasis Leadership Network is a group of women and gender-expansive folks who work in state legislatures. They are elected and they are folks who are values-aligned, who champion equity and justice, um, legislative agendas. So legislative agendas that expand democracy, that expand um services in order for folks to be able to thrive in whatever communities that they live in. So this is a group that has been growing for about four years. And it started as a pilot project to see if bringing together state legislators from around the country who were isolated in their own chambers, bringing them together and helping them provide each other support. And what we've really co-created is a group that is um, they see each other. When we get together, they the legislators drop into conversation immediately. For anyone who's been in elected office, very often when you speak to people who are not in elected office, there's a little bit of like, how much do I need to explain? And how much attention span do they have? And for these folks, they come together and they drop into the big conversations and really are able to see each other and support each other. The purpose of Oasis really is to help values-aligned women and gender-expansive state legislators stay in their seats longer and grow their power so that they can affect the change that they were elected to affect. One of the things that we know about women, LGBTQIA plus folks and people of color is that they tend not to have legislative careers and public service careers in elected office that are as long as their counterparts and their white and their male counterparts, they often do not grow to positions of power. Even though they may have tenure, uh, they often are excluded from positions of power or resources. So by having a supportive network, folks can learn from each other. But also, what our programming does is we focus on making sure we're helping them develop the skills to navigate the power and influence landscape, whether it's formal or informal power, and also understand how to do collaborative governance work. There's nothing that gets passed from a legislative point of view without um without a number of votes. You have to collect the votes. It's one person can't get a bill passed. Um, so the folks who are part of the network also learn those sorts of skills. Then the final piece that we work on is um well-being, resilience, and safety. Because if you if you can't feel comfortable in the space, if you don't feel well in the space, if you don't have the skills to bounce back from all of the things that you have to deal with working in the elected space, um, you're less likely to stay long enough to achieve your goals.

SPEAKER_00 8:34

Yeah, I could see that. I I'm just imagining how difficult I stat on a state board would be the highest, you know, serving I ever did in the political realm. And I think as a non-political person in my space right now, you know, you see legislatures that like it, it's somewhere over there. And, you know, of course, we get to hear all of the us and them and you know, all of the division that people try to cause for whatever to s I look at it all as about a like kind of like a bunch of salesmen, like distract from this so that I can sell you this. There are a lot of different interests. And from right. And so from a distance, I don't think until our first conversation, you know, last month that I had really thought about what it is like for a woman to walk into a seat like that. It's hard enough to on the day you're starting a new job or when you're walking into a new social gathering. Like that's hard enough, but add on top of it all of the um tension and all of the things you need to accomplish, like the platform you ran on and the people you're representing, how difficult must that be when you walk in and you don't look like the majority of the people there? Um so I have so many questions around this. So let's first start with um is belonging even in this conversation? Like, or how is belonging in this conversation? Belonging is critical to the conversation.

SPEAKER_01 10:13

Um, you know, each legislative chamber is unique. And so I served in my state's legislature. So I'm located in Rhode Island, um, and I serve two terms in the House of Representatives. Each chamber has its own culture. And if you when you walk in and many women, not all, but many women walk into the legislative chamber from having been in the activism and advocacy space, that's a very different culture than being in a chamber. You are ostensibly members of a chamber, but then there are there are a lot of informal and formal rules that you would need to learn. And the rules are applied in different ways over time. The rules on the first day of the legislative session really seem to perform a bit differently than the rules during the last week of session when there's the tension of the final bills and the budget and all that. And to be able to learn that and navigate that, along with learning and navigating all of the personalities, the power structure, most people when they get elected, don't have the background to understand what the leadership team is about, what the, you know, what is a what does the majority whip do? What does the minority leader do? There's a lot to learn. So it can make you feel, you know, going back to the insider-outsider language, you definitely feel when you first arrive that unless someone is taking you under their wing and teaching you how to be an insider, you might not be effective. And that very often you are either on purpose or inadvertently being left out of important conversations. So trying to figure out how to navigate that while also showing up authentically, while also showing up to represent your community, it's a bit of a juggling act. And most folks spend a lot of their first term trying to figure that out. And that's not a comfortable place to be. The rules of that workplace are so different from the schedule and the seating and the process. It just doesn't act like any other workplace. So, how to feel like you belong from the beginning. Um, it takes a a lot of uh discernment, um, a lot of patience with yourself to get it wrong sometimes, and a lot of figuring out how to work in relation with folks that you may not agree with and who will have different incentives to be there, to be present and to be doing what they are doing and prioritizing what they're prioritizing.

SPEAKER_00 12:33

Wow, just so many different um, I'm gonna say spaces. So I'm just imagining this one legislature new, they're trying to represent the people who voted them and you know, their citizens, and they're trying to represent interests that drove them to even run for legislature. And then they're working within a larger system of government they're not familiar with yet, and with people who all came to this circle with different ideals. Absolutely. Wow. I love seeing it this way to see them so human and with the best of intentions. I don't think many people go into service for bad intentions and how complicated it is and how that can really create the culture that unfortunately exists today.

SPEAKER_02 13:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 13:19

Um so when somebody first comes in, how do you learn the ropes? Are there any systems set up in government to help a newly elected leader get um get warmed up, so to speak? Is there anything that exists right now, or is that something that maybe needs to happen?

SPEAKER_01 13:35

So each chamber has some version of an orientation, a new legislator's lunch or an orientation day or something. And those tend to really focus on the mechanics. You know, how do you submit language for a bill to be introduced? What, you know, what services are available to you in the statehouse. I would be shocked if there is any orientation that is adequate to make you feel ready on day one. First of all, there's so many things changing with every term, and sometimes year to year, depending on special elections, the folks in the chamber will change. So there is a leadership election, there are dynamics of what's happening in the state, what previously passed legislation will be going into effect this year, different budget impacts over the past five years. Every state has been impacted by the changing economic landscape due to COVID funds, due to inflation, due to energy costs, due to health care. So it is a fluid landscape. Even in the best of opportunities to orient folks when they first come, it's really hard to get them so that they're really ready to go. There are some national organizations, the Council of State governments, the National Council of State legislatures. There are places where you can get some training, but again, for folks who tend to be marginalized in their chambers, the folks who leadership didn't want elected, the folks who were not the party favorite, folks who represent communities that have traditionally been left out of power and resources, those folks may not have the resources to go to a training like that. Or they may not have, they may not realize those are available. So our representatives who have worked really hard to get themselves elected, who didn't come from socioeconomic backgrounds where they had everybody, everybody able to donate to them, right? They scraped together, they got themselves elected. They're going to be representing an underrepresented community. We know that women are less able to raise the amount of money that their male counterparts are as candidates. We also know that candidates of color tend to have been unable to raise as much as their white counterparts. We know that folks are coming with a little bit of a disadvantage. And those are the exact people who need access to resources, whatever training is available. And sometimes you get the tap on the shoulder from leadership in your chamber to say, hey, I'm going to send you to that training, or I'm going to connect you with this person. There's mentoring. And I know that in some chambers, there's sort of a mentor program. I don't think in any chamber is it structured in such a way that the politics doesn't play a role, right? Um, that someone who has political capital is probably not paired with someone who has very little political capital. And so uh folks who have struggled and are representing populations who are generally underrepresented, those are the folks we want to keep in the chamber because that's where democracy happens. If we have all privileged white representation or all privileged male representation, then there are a lot of policy agendas that just can never get taken care of. And we know that when we have more democracy, we have more thriving communities, we have more participation. And that's when our government can work at its best. We know there are always forces with more financial capital that try and get in the way of that. The more we can make sure we are keeping folks in office who've worked hard to get there and who are going to be not just in it for transaction, but in it for that transformational work of taking care of their communities and their states.

SPEAKER_00 17:21

That's that's what the ideal is, right? Yeah, absolutely. If our citizens have voted someone in, then we want to make that person be able to be part of the system of creating laws and governing. I mean, just as a country.

SPEAKER_01 17:35

Everybody fairly, right? Everyone should get a chance to be a part of that if they've gotten themselves elected. Where within the chambers, very often it's not a particularly democratic process because of the power structures. If we send folks in there without helping teach them how to navigate those, then we've put them at a disadvantage.

SPEAKER_00 17:54

Absolutely. So with Oasis, are you just working with people in Rhode Island or is this national?

SPEAKER_01 18:01

OASIS is a national program. Um, and as of right now, we are working with um legislators in 13 states. And uh it's great. It's great to see them cheering each other on from afar. When you're feeling isolated in your own state, there's nothing like getting support from elsewhere. And we have worked with over over two dozen legislators at this point, and it's been great. We've provided in-person programming for them. We do quarterly convening series so that they get can get the energy and some skills um as well as supportive practices that they can take back to their their own legislatures. And we are looking to continue to expand. This is our fourth year. Um, and we recruit legislators every year. The folks who are in the program nominate some folks, and then we are open as well to finding out, you know, it's not a program for everybody. Uh, not everybody can. This just isn't something that fits to be leaving home and getting that support. So we're trying to figure out other ways. We do some virtual programming. We'll be building that out over the next year so that folks can understand what support's available. Sometimes you just need to say, here's what's happening in my chamber. Does anybody have any ideas on how to manage that? There's some of that, as well as some of the well-being and resilience and mindfulness work that we do.

SPEAKER_00 19:24

I can see how important that is. You know, there's these people who've become leaders in their community, stepped up, gotten elected. And so they technically have a seat at the table. But then the reality is that they probably don't feel safe or seen or fully welcomed there. And so by creating an additional table where they can get together and learn from each other and say, wow, this worked for me, or I've been here a little bit longer, I tried this, or have you looked at that resource? I can see how powerful that is.

SPEAKER_01 19:52

I have been working with a a coach for a couple of years now who has a great saying, which is you can't read the label from inside the jar. Sometimes it just really helps to have someone who can who knows how to read it to say, you telling me about that story of what happened in your committee hearing, here's what I see, right? Because we can we can be hard on ourselves. We can see only what we haven't been able to get accomplished in the political space, especially in the legislative space, there are many ways to measure success and measure progress. And not all of it is just how many bills did you get passed, right? There is the changing of the environment so that it becomes more inclusive, more democratic, that it is more responsive to voters. And so being able to say, look, I know you didn't get your bill through committee, but that is the first time that in your state there was a committee hearing about homelessness, right? It's great to have folks who were who are familiar with this workplace to be able to say to each other, yeah, that was terrible. They shouldn't treat you that way. Or look at how far you got, even though you didn't get everything across the finish line, we can see that success comes in many forms. Um and the other thing is that this has become increasingly high-risk work. So people who are legislators, I always say that there are many workplaces when you're a legislator in the chamber, also outside the chamber, in the committee hearing rooms, in the hallways of the statehouse, but there's also near grocery store, near community, at community events. And that is a place where a lot of legislators of all stripes, of all backgrounds, can feel very much at risk because the public is changing, not always in good ways, how people are approaching the folks they see as leaders who work for them, right? There's a bit more aggression. There's a bit more risk. We know that there's truly harm that has come to a number of legislators. So there's the need for community to help cope with some of what's happening, as well as a community to help with guidance and ideas for how to stay safe.

SPEAKER_00 21:57

Listening to you talk about this. in really just how complex trying to do this really important work of democracy while everything is so highly polarized and adversarial.

SPEAKER_02 22:10

If as a country we would choose if we could choose to become builders of belonging how would that affect democracy? I love the language of builders of belonging.

SPEAKER_01 22:34

Right. Um I was at a workshop in my community yet last night that was about housing and zoning and types of housing. Like what can our community um envision? And one of the things that was just like the first item to me was how do you build housing that fosters community, right? How do you build neighborhoods that feel like neighborhoods? And I I feel like that's the question you're asking. I think a lot of folks, at least folks who grew up when I grew up and went to school and learned about how our democracy works and how to vote and one person, one vote, the very first thing we can do to help our our legislatures feel they have a cultural belonging is truly believe, truly act as if everyone who's rep who's elected has an equal vote. Almost every legislative chamber has a a body of people, a small cluster of people who are referred to as leadership. Most Senates, it's the Senate president and the House of Representatives or House of Delegates is the speaker. That person ends up having a small cluster of folks who help decide the majority of what happens in their chamber. And that removes the democracy from the whole system. So belonging so that you know that every bill that comes in front of the chamber that your vote is going to be respected as one vote, that would help everybody feel like they have belonging. And it seems like a simple thing to do, but culturally it would cause change, right? It would cause sharing of power and it would be power with as opposed to power over in all of our systems, in our industrial systems, in our commerce, in our economy, in our government, in our chambers, we are so accustomed to structures that are power over structures, that there's always a jockeying and always an interplay with understanding who holds more influence and we react to that or we try to get close to that influence or we try and be in opposition to that influence. Right. But that doesn't power over does not create belonging right power with has a better chance of creating belonging.

SPEAKER_00 24:40

I really want to sit with that for a minute. It's when you said that power over versus power with I'm just thinking within a democracy, within a government within a family within a village if there's power over there's truly no belonging and how do you create power with like I I get it working with people it's it's messy and we change and we have ideas and we all have different points of view and different things in our past that make us think so for a certain way. So being with people is messy. And so leading with that's a high bar we're leading over seems a little bit easier.

SPEAKER_01 25:29

Seems a little like a kind of a fallback like you have to do a lot more work to lead with right we I mean it seems expedient right to take the power over route because then I can explain to you that like there's a guy who usually a guy there's a guy who has the decision making power and in the end we let that person make the decision. If we do things collaboratively, right? Because being in a legislative chamber it's it's one of the most important group projects you can possibly do. It's a every year, most most states most chambers every year, some states every other year. But your big group project is to deliver a budget for a state. That is what in my chamber was 75 people in some chambers it's 150 people. And so it is it is like literally a group project. We all learned in middle school and high school and college if we had the privilege of going that group projects can get a little messy and sometimes some people do more and sometimes some people care more and sometimes you get that magic where you really got the best of everybody. In order to get that magic to get the best of everybody, you have to give everybody space to be present, to be safe in the conversation and to test out what they're going to bring, right? Legislative sessions don't permit a whole lot of that, but there are ways that our legislatures can practice the power with, can practice the shared shared expertise. Very often many of the women who get elected to state legislatures have more advocacy experience, have more professional experience and have higher levels of education than their male counterparts. The only difference is that there are a lot more male legislators who are lawyers. Women who enter legislatures come in with expertise in a policy area and significant and broader work experience. So these are very talented people very rarely do they get appointed to chair a committee very rarely actually very often they are kept from the committee where their expertise would be most applicable, right? And that's a power play. We don't have we don't have to give everything but we have to stop sidelining the talent that we have so that we can use who use everyone who's here for the group project to have better outcomes. Right. So there are ways that we can start to practice power with there's ways to be inclusive. And so it doesn't yeah it's going to be hard to change from a power over model to a power with model. But that doesn't mean we can't do it and we can't find ways. And what I see in the legislators we work with with in Oasis, they are finding ways to develop their influence to support people who have power you can work and create collaborative groups, create a small group in your chamber that all prioritizes water rights access or prioritizes improvements in education or bilingual education or fire safety, right? There are way there are ways to start to build a collective around a priority and it may not look like oh in order to have influence I've got to become speaker of the house or I've got to become chair of whatever committee there are ways to just start to build the collaboration within the chamber and I see that many women who are in legislative office find ways to do that.

SPEAKER_00 29:05

And that's the power with right that's one of the approaches to power with so I'm curious and I know this is a problem you're solving in real time or addressing in real time if we could look to the future a little bit what could we teach our youth, our citizens now? What would we need to learn to where we would all develop better leadership skills of leading with and power with instead of power over is there something we can shift in how how we talk about leadership or how we're teaching people to be leaders that would guide us to becoming power with people rather than power over I feel like there's a lot we can teach and what's coming to mind first is the where, right?

SPEAKER_01 29:58

Because there are opportunities in every one of our communities there's a parks and recreation committee there's an open space committee there's a zoning board and planning board and there are all of these spaces where we need people's interests, right? There's a bike in our town there's a bike and pedestrian committee. So if I've got a young person who's a biker who loves to ride their bike, I would love for them to get involved so that they can see where is the space that leadership is needed. And leadership can look like many things. If it's someone who you can lead because you have the expertise and you can lead because you have the ability to organize people right there's not just one reason why we lead and you can lead by showing up and supporting too there are all of these different ways to lead. And I think that's what we need to teach our younger people as well as our not young people that you don't have to you don't have to know all the answers, but showing up and being part of what's happening is part of the path to leadership.

SPEAKER_00 31:06

Now that gives me hope sounds like there's there's ways to do this. And to be intentional be intentional about looking at how am I leading?

SPEAKER_01 31:14

And be curious about leading right we need to be curious about what makes it hard to lead. When we when we look at leaders and all of us are quick to criticize because we have a little bit of information. We don't have the whole picture usually but it's very easy to criticize but how can we get curious about what were the constraints? What were that person's incentives? What were their intentions? And how do we stop making it so that our people who lead feel under attack and we can start to recognize how to hold them accountable by but also understanding what has motivated them and what can we what can we get done with these leaders it's not always a binary of this or someone else. We have to figure out how to work with who we have.

SPEAKER_00 32:01

Liana thank you so much for the work that you're doing to your Oasis and I just love that word. You're creating an oasis for women who are out there doing this hard work and being courageous and stepping up that they can find some of that little respite and peace and circle around with each other and um be able to continue to show up because the longer they can stay in those seats, the more they can get done. So I really appreciate the work you're doing. If there was one question I could ask you today that would really push put a spotlight on what you're doing what question should I ask you that I have not I think it it's I I think there's a question around what is happening for women legislators right now that the public should know? Oh that's good.

SPEAKER_01 32:57

What is happening for women legislatures right now that the public should know right now in 2026 we're in a funny spot where um we now have fewer women in legislatures than we did last year dur uh you know in the previous election cycle we are at a point where there's so much risk in person and online um all legislators face no matter who you are from whatever party or background a lot of our legislators and leaders are targets. What the public really needs to understand is we can't leave online to the trolls and we can't leave the arena to the people who will behave badly. Even if we're not the ones running for office, if we want a functioning democracy, a functioning multicultural democracy that's represented by um all genders and all races, then we play a role in making that safe and making that welcoming. So when we see people attacking our leaders in any setting we have to start to take responsibility for helping make it safe. We can't depend on that legislator to figure out how to keep themselves safe because they're they're doing the job, right? They're working for us. It's really up to all of us to help to start to change the environment thank you.

SPEAKER_00 34:26

Thank you so much for being with us. Thank you for the work that you're doing and thank you for coming on and chatting with us today about belonging.

SPEAKER_01 34:34

Absolutely thanks so much for having me. What a fun conversation Melissa and thanks for your podcast. It's really I love hearing all your guests so thanks for letting me part be a part of this.

SPEAKER_00 34:44

It is my honor every day when I record this. So thank you before we leave I want to say a big thank you to our patron Deanna Laughlin D. Thank you so much for making these conversations possible and uh creating a little bit more belonging in this world. This is it for this episode of the Belonging podcast by Elevate Villages. We're so glad you were here now let's all go build belonging together