This Is Not Charity: Telling Turnaround Tuesday’s Story With Dignity, in Alignment With Their Communications and Fundraising Strategies

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Citation Mumby, Yasmene. 2020. This Is Not Charity: Telling Turnaround Tuesday’s Story With Dignity, in Alignment With Their Communications and Fundraising Strategies. Doctoral dissertation, Harvard Graduate School of Education.

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This Is Not Charity: Telling Turnaround Tuesday’s Story With Dignity, in Alignment With

Their Communications and Fundraising Strategies

Doctor of Education Leadership (Ed.L.D.) Capstone

Submitted by

Yasmene Mumby

To the Harvard Graduate School of Education in partial fulfillment of the requirements for

the degree of Doctor of Education Leadership.

May 2020 2

Dedication

This is for Baltimore. You taught me all I needed to know to live in and understand this world.

What follows is a counter to the narrative about the people of Baltimore. It’s the story of Turnaround Tuesday—the jobs movement for and with Baltimore’s residents who have been excluded from earning a living, years after incarceration. It’s the story of change hidden beneath the headlines about our city. It’s a story of Baltimore that only Baltimore can tell. And we intend to tell it like it is.

Higher Purpose, A Visual Portrait of the Jobs Movement Turning Around

Baltimore: https://youtu.be/WLxl8OqEHRI ​

Higher Purpose, The Audiodocumentary of the Jobs Movement Turning Around

Baltimore: https://www.wypr.org/programs/higher-purpose ​

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Acknowledgements

I acknowledge and thank my family for your endless and unconditional support.

After all that we have been through, I am convinced that this is everybody’s doctorate. I know Grandpa wanted to be with us as we crossed this finish line together. He is here. I am so grateful that we made it through our battles with coronavirus and didn’t lose anyone. We are survivors. And it is now our time to thrive and be well. I love each and every one of you.

I acknowledge and thank my doctoral committee. Wow! What a powerhouse team.

You each have my unparalleled respect for you; your work; and its far-reaching local, national, and global impact on people and their lives. I chose each of you because of your contributions to my learning and the world. I am honored to follow in your footsteps.

Thank you for journeying with me.

I acknowledge and thank BUILD and Turnaround Tuesday. There is no better

Baltimore without your organizations’ relentless organizing of people power in our city. No one does what you do to build power with community leadership. My training and discipline as a leader undoubtedly is rooted in the organizing universals you all share and teach. Thank you for seeing in me what I did not see in myself.

I acknowledge and thank the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. I have long looked toward your institution as an anchoring model of the unbounded possibilities that await when scholarship and art are encouraged to flourish together. Thank you for providing me the opportunity to create, lead, and facilitate a seminar with your talented team. I know and feel that we will work together again.

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I acknowledge and thank the Education Leadership program at the Harvard

Graduate School of Education. Your vision over a decade ago to create a doctoral experience to prepare and further develop senior-level leaders in education extends beyond limits. You all knew I needed this program before I knew I did. “Visionary” does not begin to describe your work as EdLD program leaders. Thank you for seeding the opportunity for us to continue to grow for years to come, long after our time on Appian Way.

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Table of Contents

Abstract………………………………………………………………………………..pg. 6 ​ Introduction…………………………………………………………………………....pg. 9 ​ Organizational Context………………………………………………………………..pg. 14 ​ Research Knowledge for Action and Theory of Action………………………………..pg. 22 ​ Analysis and Evidence to Date………………………………………………………...pg. 34 ​ The Why………………………………………………………………………………pg. 52 ​ Implications for Self…………………………………………………………………...pg. 58 ​ Implications for Site…………………………………………………………………...pg. 63 ​ Implications for Sector………………………………………………………………...pg. 65 ​ Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………….pg. 67 ​ References...……………………………………………………………………….....……...pg. 71 ​ ​ Appendices...... pg. 75 ​ ​

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Abstract ​ Baltimoreans United in Leadership Development (BUILD) is radically pressuring institutions of power to rebuild and support Baltimore’s families with livable-wage employment through their jobs movement, called Turnaround Tuesday. The organization has secured over 800 living-wage jobs for its participants, with a 2-year retention rate of 83% with partner employers. I met BUILD 8 years ago when I left the classroom to organize in

Baltimore. The organization helped found the Baltimore Education Coalition, which worked on the campaign to address dilapidated school facilities in the city. In 2012, the coalition elected me to cochair the Baltimore Education Coalition. We led the unification of 3,000 people, then-Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, Baltimore City Public Schools under the leadership of Dr. Andres Alonso, and three quarters of Maryland’s Legislature to secure

$977,000,000 in funding to renovate and reconstruct school facilities for Baltimore’s 85,000 students. Right after the school construction win, BUILD’s organizing for jobs that pay living wages for people with legal system records started moving deeper into the beginnings of the movement that is now Turnaround Tuesday.

As a resident, I developed and created media content about the organization’s impact that served to educate and inspire funders, employers, and city officials to partner with

BUILD’s Turnaround Tuesday. My storytelling centered on the inherent power, dignity, and agency of the people supported by Turnaround Tuesday. I sought to not use tactics like shock, guilt, pity, and anger to capture people’s attention and motivate them to donate. I was interested in telling Turnaround Tuesday’s story with dignity and strength. I used Professor

Emerita Dr. Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot’s portraiture methodology to discipline my approach

7 to producing a four-episode audiodocumentary series, now officially hosted by Baltimore’s

National Public Radio station, and a short visual about the jobs movement. To inspire viewers and listeners of the audiodocumentary and short visual to act and support

Turnaround Tuesday, I leveraged Single Grain, a top digital marketing agency, as an out-of-education industry example for guidance. The agency’s marketing funnel framework illustrates how potential customers can go from awareness of a product to purchase of a product. The marketing funnel framework aligned the media I produced with Turnaround

Tuesday’s communications strategy, leading up to the fifth-anniversary celebration of

Turnaround Tuesday in December 2019.

Additionally, I led a team at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard

University to organize and host a 2-day seminar of inspiration, planning, and strategy to develop a blueprint for training and retaining another 1,000 Baltimoreans in quality jobs. Ten key corporate and philanthropic leaders from Baltimore attended the Radcliffe seminar in

January 2020. The purpose of this event was to build working partnerships between

Turnaround Tuesday and the key leaders in order to increase funding support and employment opportunities for the organization.

Together, the audiodocumentary series and short visual were used during the

Radcliffe seminar and Turnaround Tuesday’s fifth-anniversary celebration as media to engage potential funders, employers, and political leaders and further inspire them to become active supporters. As a result, the organization secured over $100,000 in donations within 4 weeks after the fifth-anniversary celebration. The key corporate and philanthropic leaders who attended the Radcliffe seminar committed to significant next steps with

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Turnaround Tuesday and Baltimoreans ready to get back into the labor force. To date,

Turnaround Tuesday has received $496,000 in donations.

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Introduction

“Hello, how y’all doing? How are you? My name is JC. Can I talk to you about employment opportunities? Are you employed? Are you looking for a job?” Jermietra

Carroll, JC for short, eagerly offers a young man, who looks 18 but is 26, a brochure for

Turnaround Tuesday. The jobs movement grew from Baltimoreans United in Leadership

Development (BUILD), a 42-year-old community organizing powerbase known for achieving the nation’s first living wage. JC is wearing BUILD’s teal-blue T-shirt with a tree sprouting out of the logo. A declaration at its trunk reads:

Rooted in Community. Committed to Change.

JC, the part-time administrative assistant on Turnaround Tuesday’s small staff, leads the promising jobs solution to crime, poverty, and pain in the city. We walk through the indoor Avenue Market in the Upton neighborhood of West Baltimore. Her high-pitched voice lightly dances with her deep, plentiful smile. The young man’s brown eyes glance at her, me, and back at the black-and-white photocopy folded three times into a rectangle. “We help people with criminal backgrounds, and if you don’t have a criminal background … if you want a job and are really serious about getting your life together and looking for employment, come visit.”

Many Turnaround Tuesday participants live in communities with high incarceration rates, almost 4 times the national average, and high unemployment, where about half of residents between the ages of 16 and 64 do not have jobs. He takes the brochure in the same hand as his lunch packed in a white styrofoam container. One by one, JC greets people like she has been longing to see them. Some she has not seen since she left her job as a prison

10 officer years before joining the Turnaround Tuesday staff. A woman in a billowing white

T-shirt and long dark brown cornrows runs over to JC and excitedly shares that she is now in school. The woman and JC hug each other. JC lets out a full-throated and lengthy, “OK!

You finally did it! I’m so excited!” Each person, new and familiar, gets respect and a warm welcome. We continue past stalls of Chinese food carryouts, hot dog stands, and fried chicken stations to go outside, looking for more people to recruit into the movement.

Baltimore Augusts are blisteringly hot and unforgiving. The heat beats down on my shoulders and ricochets off the tarred parking lot pavement.

I watch JC persist in the heat. She’s masterful. Not one person refuses her. I lose track of the rest of the team and do not notice Bri Johnson, director of operations and job developer for Turnaround Tuesday, trying to recruit one of my former students from the

West Baltimore neighborhood of Park Heights. She comes up on my left and tells me the young man asked about me. “What’s her name? With the gold hair? Ms. Mumby.” I am ecstatic, eager to find him, and confused to find myself in this story about Turnaround

Tuesday. Then, I see him. Rakim. I recognize his thick black-rimmed glasses. He still slumps down and rounds his shoulders the same way he did at 12 years old in my social studies class. I used to teach him and his brother in the seventh and eighth grade. I yell out

“Hiiiiiiiiiii, gimme a hug! How are you?” My voice is high and screechy. It cloys. Rakim is a man of few words. What he does offer comes out low and distinctive, drawn out like a frog’s ribbit, “Gooood. How are you?” He’s here, kind of. Up close I struggle to find him underneath. “You a reporter now?” He looks much older than his age. His belly, his cheeks, his eyes, look swollen. They sag. He looks like he has lived beyond his short time here. I am

11 happy and upset to see him. I feel tears coming and sadness rolling up my throat. My voice smells desperately sweet. I try too hard to stuff it back down and ask if he is looking for a job. He says he is, but I don’t know if he tells me the truth. We invite him to Turnaround

Tuesday anyway. I say goodbye and start walking away. I think this is the last time I will see him. My chest fills too fast for me to breathe out, and my throat feels like a balloon tied too tight. I push out to JC “… I need a moment” and turn quickly to get one last glance at him.

He does not see me. He’s busy at work, too. She catches me, “What? Heartbreaking? … It’s like that.” I hope he shows up at a Turnaround Tuesday like he says he will.

My Residency Role in BUILD

This residency project centers on my hometown of Baltimore and the leaders charting their journey home after incarceration. BUILD is radically pressuring institutions of power to rebuild and support Baltimore’s families with livable-wage employment through their jobs movement, called Turnaround Tuesday. I met BUILD 8 years ago when I left the classroom to organize in Baltimore. The organization helped found the Baltimore Education

Coalition, which worked on the campaign to address dilapidated school facilities in the city.

In 2012, the coalition voted me to cochair the Baltimore Education Coalition. We led the unification of 3,000 people, then-Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, Baltimore City Public

Schools under the leadership of Dr. Andres Alonso, and three quarters of Maryland’s

Legislature to secure $977,000,000 in funding to renovate and reconstruct school facilities for Baltimore’s 85,000 students. Right after the school construction win, BUILD’s organizing for jobs that pay living wages for people with legal system records started moving deeper into the beginnings of the movement that is now Turnaround Tuesday.

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My role as a resident was to develop and create media content about the organization’s impact and story that will educate and inspire funders, employers, and city officials to partner with BUILD’s Turnaround Tuesday. I used Professor Emerita Sara

Lawrence-Lightfoot’s (1997) portraiture methodology to discipline my approach to producing a four-episode audiodocumentary series and short film about the jobs movement.

To inspire viewers and listeners of the audiodocumentary (Mumby, 2020) and short film

(Mumby et al., 2019) to act and support Turnaround Tuesday, I leveraged Single Grain (Siu,

2019), a top digital marketing agency, as an out-of-education industry example for guidance.

The agency’s marketing funnel framework illustrates how potential customers can go from awareness of a product to purchase of a product. The marketing funnel framework helped me align the media I produced with Turnaround Tuesday’s communications strategy leading up to the fifth-anniversary celebration of Turnaround Tuesday in December 2019.

I was interested in overturning a common development tactic of leveraging narratives steeped in charity and pity for nonprofits working on behalf of predominantly

Black people. Similarly reiterated in a 2018 op-ed in The Guardian titled “Yes, Charities

Want to Make an Impact. But Poverty Porn Is Not the Way to Do It,” the author wrote,

“Our job is to tell compelling stories without trivialising people’s lives––and to promote a more nuanced narrative about how to achieve lasting change” (Lentfer, 2018, subheading).

Poverty porn

exposes something in human life that is as delicate and deeply personal as sexuality,

that is, suffering … It puts people’s bodies, their misery, their grief and their fear on

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display with all the details and all the indiscretion that a telescopic lens will allow.

(Lissner, 1981, para. 7).

It was beyond important for me to write about Turnaround Tuesday with the same power and agency it demands of itself.

Additionally, I led a team at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard

University to organize and host a 2-day seminar of inspiration, planning, and strategy to develop a blueprint for training and retaining another 1,000 Baltimoreans in quality jobs with

10 key corporate and philanthropic leaders from Baltimore in January 2020. Together, the audiodocumentary series and short visual were used during the Radcliffe seminar and

Turnaround Tuesday’s fifth-anniversary celebration as media to engage potential funders, employers, and political leaders and further inspire them to become active supporters.

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Organizational Context

Many of the participants in Turnaround Tuesday are unemployed and have had difficulties securing employment that pays a living wage to support themselves and their families. Sixty-five percent of Turnaround Tuesday’s participants have served time in jail or prison. More than 5,000,000 children in the United States have lived with a parent who has been incarcerated. For children who are Black and live in low-income households, 1 in 9 has a mother or father who has experienced incarceration (Murphey & Cooper, 2015).

Particularly, the financial impact of incarceration on families whose fathers are behind bars can be devastating; a family with a father incarcerated sees their household income drop

22%, and after the father comes back home, the “family’s income is 15% lower than it was the year before his incarceration” (Western & Pettit, 2010, p. 44). In the classroom, students with parents who have been incarcerated or unemployed are more likely to have lower school engagement (Hill et al., 2011). Turnaround Tuesday’s efforts to rebuild Baltimore’s workforce support families’ ability to get back on their feet and create a financially secure household that can better support their children in and outside of the classroom.

Turnaround Tuesday has secured over 800 living-wage jobs for its participants, with a 2-year retention rate of 83% with partner employers. BUILD’s Turnaround Tuesday reaches many of those left out of Baltimore’s workforce through its unique combination of workforce training, leadership development, and specialization in supporting citizens reentering society after incarceration. Nicki McCain, chief of staff at the Johns Hopkins

Hospital, one of the organization’s major employers, shared:

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To have an organization like BUILD [saying], “No, these are good people, they’re

doing good work,” it’s been tremendous, for us, for Johns Hopkins. We’ve gotten as

much out of this relationship as they have, if not more. … They have delivered on

the promise of getting us job-ready candidates. (personal communication, August 14,

2019)

The organization is now looking to double its capacity to provide job opportunities for 1,345 additional people over the next 5 years, with a $2,800,000 investment from the

New World Foundation. Capitalizing on the New World Foundation investment to scale

BUILD’s jobs work through Turnaround Tuesday, BUILD has embarked on an 18-month fundraising campaign with Cambridge Heath Ventures, “a strategic advisory firm that works with private sector companies, purpose-driven organizations and governments to help them overcome their most pressing challenges (Independent Media Institute, n.d.).” Together,

BUILD and Cambridge Heath Ventures will work to raise upward of $1,000,000 in matching funds from local and regional high-wealth individuals.

BUILD’s Turnaround Tuesday programming is driven by eight staff members, three of whom are part time. It is astonishing to watch the small yet mighty Turnaround Tuesday staff successfully support hundreds of under- and unemployed participants. The incoming investment from the New World Foundation will help the organization hire full-time staff whose roles will help relieve a passionate team stretched thin. The team is looking to hire a retention specialist to follow up and track all the Turnaround Tuesday participants.

Additionally, they want to hire an organizer to lead recruitment on the west side of

Baltimore. The attendance at their second location is noticeably low. The church no longer

16 has a spiritual leader either. The organization’s staff bandwidth is stretched. The additional money from New World Foundation covers costs to scale BUILD’s Turnaround Tuesday work. They still need money to fully staff the current programmatic work and operations full time.

As a resident, my role was to develop and create media content about the organization’s impact to educate and inspire funders, employers, and city officials to partner with BUILD’s Turnaround Tuesday.

Every Tuesday from 9:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. in the basement of Zion Baptist Church in East Baltimore, the lean eight-member Turnaround Tuesday team collectively gathers anywhere from 50 to 80 participants, new and returning. The weekly communal sessions serve to uplift the minds, bodies, and spirits in the room. William Glover-Bey, a community health worker at Johns Hopkins Hospital and past employee of the year award winner, continues to return to the Zion Baptist Church basement on Tuesdays he is off from work:

“There’s a healing that takes place here. People are being healed from the pain and suffering of whatever experience they had in their lives” (personal communication, August 6, 2019).

He was one of the first participants to secure a job because of Turnaround Tuesday.

William’s pain certainly is a testimony to Turnaround Tuesday’s powerful healing. Currently in recovery for a drug addiction that drove his life for almost 35 years, William has lived through 15 years behind bars and survived being shot four times during three different occasions. He believes in Turnaround Tuesday and encourages others to turn their lives around, just as he did.

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Attending Turnaround Tuesday is one part of a participant’s average 6-week journey to an interview with a Turnaround Tuesday partner employer. Before interviewing for jobs, participants must engage with and get to know the Turnaround Tuesday staff by completing an assessment with the case manager, two individual meetings with staff, 30 hours of essential skills workplace training, résumé and interview preparation sessions, and an individual goal-setting meeting with the job developer. Unlike in most workforce development programs, attendance isn’t mandatory. Instead, in the words of Bri Johnson, participants must “own their process” and be motivated to show up for themselves, not because a program or agency dictates they must (personal communication, July 25, 2019).

Successful participants are those who consistently attend Turnaround Tuesday, meet with staff, and take the initiative to prepare for their interviews. The staff attend to their relationships with employers and participants. They want both to be set up for success.

Building such a relationship takes time. Melvin Wilson, codirector of Turnaround Tuesday, made it clear:

This isn’t your typical workforce development program. It’s not you sign a piece of

paper, you go to 5 weeks of training, you get a piece of paper, and pray that you get a

job. This is organized where people come in, we meet them where they are. You can

come in if you’re high, drunk, or whatever, we’re not going to throw you out. We’re

gonna work with you. But, we know you’re not ready to go to work. Those that are

ready, we are going to expedite it as quickly as possible. But the important thing is the

relationship. Because of the strong relationships we have with these anchor

institutions, it’s important that we keep those. We want to make sure that people are

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ready to go to work. And because of that, we have an 84% retention rate over a 2-year

period for people that we help place into jobs. (personal communication, July 9, 2019)

Sometimes, local politicians, current and potential employers, interested funders, and reporters join on a Tuesday, curious about the successful jobs movement that grew out of

BUILD’s persistent and consistent organizing of Baltimore’s top employers to be fair and stop passing over the city’s residents for job interviews. People were making money as best they could, given employers were not hiring them because of their records in the legal system. In 2013, then-Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake and her staff worked to develop and support BUILD’s initial jobs proposal that aimed to keep people off the corners. BUILD secured $1,200,000 in wages for construction work with ReBUILD Metro, a nonprofit redevelopment organization. They then called on the city to invest the remaining $594,000 over 3 years to build what would become the Turnaround Tuesday of today. Yet unexpectedly and for reasons not publicly disclosed, on April 8, 2014, Mayor Rawlings-Blake withdrew her support of the jobs proposal. This bruising experience led BUILD to no longer depend on the expectation of public funding. Turnaround Tuesday’s current workforce development model is funded through periodically awarded grants from local

Baltimore-area foundations. A 2014 article from the Baltimore Brew captured the mercurial ​ ​ relationship between BUILD and then-Mayor Rawlings-Blake:

It’s hard to imagine how relations between Baltimore Mayor Stephanie

Rawlings-Blake and the faith and community group BUILD could have deteriorated

more dramatically. Last summer, BUILD had been working with staffers from the

mayor’s office at City Hall to develop a proposal to put 50 residents of the Oliver

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community to work––a pilot transitional program aimed at keeping people out of

jails and off the street with construction and other jobs. But last night, BUILD

members were blasting the mayor before a crowd of about 200 in an East Baltimore

church, saying she reneged on her promise to help fund the program in the Oliver

neighborhood and has now refused to meet with them. (Shen, 2014, paras. 1–3)

BUILD was left to reorganize its strategy to put Baltimore back to work. Pastor

Prentice remembered when

the deputy mayor said, “The Mayor is not going to fund it. She’s not going to find

the money.” And we were embarrassed. I was, because we made commitments to

people. We took God’s word. We told people, “God’s gonna make a way, you’re

going to get a job.” So God’s reputation, Zion’s reputation, mine’s and Terrell’s

[codirector of Turnaround Tuesday and BUILD Organizer] and BUILD’s … We

gotta do something. What BUILD taught us, you go. If one power group doesn’t do

it, whether it’s civic government, or business, you go to the next. Because the

political powers were not going to do it, we went to Johns Hopkins and challenged

them. (personal communication, August 13, 2019)

The Johns Hopkins Health System, the second-largest private-sector employer in

Baltimore after Johns Hopkins University, had been hiring some people with criminal records to fill entry-level positions since the late 1990s. Given this history, BUILD went to

Hopkins to organize the rest of Baltimore’s leaders in education and medicine to hire people with criminal records. It was an opportunity for the city’s corporate leadership to invest in

Baltimore’s returning residents and their families. In 2015, the president of Johns Hopkins

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Health System, Dr. Ron Peterson, and president of Johns Hopkins University, Ron Daniels, hosted a breakfast for ex-offender hiring with over 100 of the top “eds and meds” executives. Returning citizens from Turnaround Tuesday sat with the corporate leaders at each table. William Glover-Bey sat at one of those tables. He was one of the first participants to secure his position at the hospital through Turnaround Tuesday, shortly after the breakfast.

The strategic partnership between hospitals in Baltimore City and BUILD, while opportune for Turnaround Tuesday participants like William, was formed out of necessity and a shared interest in hiring people for jobs. Nicki McCain added, “We have positions that we can’t fill. Why are we turning these people away? And yes, they deserve a second chance.

But, there was a need on our part as well … we can’t sell these programs as charity (personal communication, August 14, 2019).” Hearing Nicki reminds me of Terrell’s conviction:

What we had to help [employers] understand is this, this is not charity. We’re not

asking you to do charity. We’re asking you to be fair. That is it. Because if you give

our people the opportunity at the entry level to get the interview, they’ll get the job.

That’s what we know. Not only will they get the job, they’ll stay in the job. And,

where you have a 30% retention rate at the entry level, we’ll give you an 80%

retention rate. Who’s winning? You’re saying to us that it costs you a year’s salary to

get the right person at the entry level in a job. We’re saying to you, “You don’t have

to do those three turns. Do one …” (personal communication, July 15, 2019).

Five years since Turnaround Tuesday’s founding, the City of Baltimore has an interim mayor, Bernard C. “Jack” Young, in the wake of former Mayor Catherine Pugh’s

21 stepping down on May 3, 2019, amid a state and federal investigation into the profiting from her self-authored children’s book series in exchange for city contracts. Three mayors later,

BUILD’s Turnaround Tuesday now holds a favorable reputation as the go-to workforce development organization that specializes in helping people with criminal records gain employment at anchor institutions like Johns Hopkins Hospital, University of Maryland

Medical System, Medstar Health, and Blueprint Robotics.

I see the organization’s problem of practice relating to the scale and growth of their impactful jobs work with Baltimore’s residents who are under- and unemployed in a city with little mayoral leadership. Currently, the organization is understaffed. To achieve scale and right-size the staff, it may help Turnaround Tuesday to consider amplifying its external story, image, and impact as a way to attract the interest and secure the financial investment of potential funders, specifically high-wealth individuals.

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Research Knowledge for Action and Theory of Action

I employed a variety of research methods to learn how I could be effective in my work as a resident. I hit the ground running with leaders in the organization, and I observed and attended meetings. True to my roots as a community organizer, I spent much of my time understanding the tacit knowledge about the organization that could only be learned experientially with leaders, side by side. I learned deeper, noticed nuances quicker, and began to understand the organization’s way of operating closer and sooner than I could have by reading any literature from other people and experts outside of Turnaround Tuesday and

The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. I learned Turnaround Tuesday on the ground.

That knowledge allowed me to become a more informed consumer of traditional research and scholarship for action. During my residency, I sought out tacit knowledge and scholarly research to address Turnaround Tuesday’s sustainability and encourage more support from funders, employers, and city leaders by focusing on the external narrative about their jobs movement impact and work in Baltimore.

Tacit Knowledge Learned With BUILD’s Turnaround Tuesday

My first day at Turnaround Tuesday, I sat in on a board meeting. One of the newly elected board members said that more people should know about Turnaround Tuesday.

More employers, participants, and funders should be at their door. He mentioned that

“Turnaround Tuesday was Baltimore’s best kept secret that nobody knows about” (personal communication, June 6, 2019). He then asked about Turnaround Tuesday’s story and whether someone was working on writing about Turnaround Tuesday’s successes, stories, and impact. A number of people turned toward me and looked. Rob English, lead organizer

23 of BUILD and my EdLD residency supervisor, said that helping to tell Turnaround

Tuesday’s story was part of my role here as a Harvard doctoral resident over the next 10 months. My media work would be used in service of helping them raise money to fund operations that would scale and grow the movement.

In the first meeting to kick off the 18-month money campaign, I learned that it is rare for a national funder to invest in a city-specific intervention that has not received as much local foundation investment. Baltimore’s local foundation community is small. Certain established workforce development and reentry projects are funded over sustained periods of time. Turnaround Tuesday is relatively new to this work. Despite its successes, the organization’s leaders think it will have to be around for another 5 years before it will garner multiyear million-dollar investments from the local foundations. So, the team is turning to individuals in high-wealth networks to invest in Turnaround Tuesday.

Tacit Knowledge Learned With The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study

Three months before my residency began, Dr. Kaia Stern, practitioner in residence at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and my other EdLD residency supervisor, said that the new dean of the Radcliffe Institute, Tamiko Brown-Nagin, was interested in having

Radcliffe engage more with the greater community in and outside of Boston. The strategy is now called Radcliffe Engaged:

Radcliffe Engaged is a vision of both continuity and change. It embraces the

Institute’s legacy and leverages its existing strengths, including our unique founding

mandate to unite pathbreaking scholarship across academic disciplines and the

creative arts with critical work in applied fields such as law, public health, education,

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and medicine; our established reputation as a preeminent research institution and a

sought-after interdisciplinary convener; and our history as Radcliffe College—an

institution founded to ensure that the excellence embodied in Harvard was accessible

to students and scholars then excluded from the University. The legacy of Radcliffe

College is not merely coeducation at Harvard; it is the recognition that universities

will always be greater when they draw wisdom and talent from the widest possible

pool of individuals. (Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, 2019, para. 3 )

Specifically, Radcliffe launched two focus areas within the Radcliffe Engaged strategy, one on youth leadership and the other on law, education, and social justice. Radcliffe describes the law, education, and social justice focus area as follows:

[It] reflects a growing consensus that historically high rates of incarceration in the

United States constitute a crisis with broad social, educational, and family impacts.

Initially, the Institute will provide a physical space and intellectual infrastructure for

students, fellows, faculty members, and outside experts to build community, develop

programs, and launch multidisciplinary research projects. The goal is to translate this

work into real-world impact, including by engaging directly with individuals and

communities affected by incarceration and its educational consequences. Dean

Brown-Nagin’s background as a legal scholar makes her uniquely suited to guide a

body of work that has been pursued at Radcliffe, albeit in a decentralized manner,

for some years. The Institute has advanced scholarly research and public

understanding of issues related to mass incarceration by investing in the work of

scholars such as Tayari Jones, Devah Pager, Kaia Stern, and Bruce Western (among ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​

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many other Radcliffe fellows); by designing seminars that tackle specific policy

questions (such as how the war on drugs has influenced drug policy); and by

providing access to materials of critical research importance (most recently, by

acquiring the papers of the activist Angela Davis, whose work is the focus of a major ​ conference at Radcliffe in October 2019 and the subject of an exhibition curated by ​ ​ ​ ​ the historian Elizabeth Hinton). (Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, 2019,

Racliffe Engaged Focus Areas section)

Dr. Stern’s appointment as the first practitioner in residence marked the beginning of a more community-engaged Radcliffe with an interest in supporting an organization like

Turnaround Tuesday that achieves real-world impact within communities affected by incarceration and its educational consequences. Dr. Stern and I saw the announcement of

Radcliffe Engaged and the law, education, and social justice focus area as an opportunity to leverage Turnaround Tuesday’s successful approach while directing more resources its way and encouraging other potential supporters to demonstrably take action as funders of the movement or employers of participants seeking jobs with livable wages.

Scholarly Research: Using Media for Social Impact

I knew I wanted to support Turnaround Tuesday by creating high-quality media work that could be shared across their networks and used during the funding campaign.

Specifically, Turnaround Tuesday made it clear that they wanted to feature the media I created in communications leading up to and during the fifth-anniversary celebration in

December 2019. I also wanted to incorporate the media I produced in the seminar for influential Baltimore corporate and philanthropic leaders on Turnaround Tuesday’s

26 workforce development approach hosted by the Radcliffe Institute, which was coming up in

January 2020.

However, I wanted to make media that did more than raise awareness of a social concern. Instead, I was interested in creating media that compelled people to act using their strengths as potential employers, volunteers, or funders. As quoted in “Transformative

Stories: A Framework for Crafting Stories for Social Impact Organizations,” the Center for

Social Impact Communication says “reading a story on social media” was the primary motivator leading donors and volunteers to offline actions such as giving and volunteering

(Dixon, 2013, as cited in Bublitz et al., 2016, p. 237). Social impact organizations can be

nonprofit organizations, government and public policy agencies, and for-profit social

benefit enterprises [that] work to address some of the world’s most pressing social

problems: poverty and health disparities, addiction and overconsumption,

accessibility and food well-being, sustainability and waste, and racism and social

justice. (Bublitz et al., 2016, p. 237)

I looked for frameworks about how to craft stories of transformation and change for a social impact organization’s media campaign that specifically focused on prompting the listener and viewer to act.

I used the individual stories in the social impact organization story portfolio framework to guide my thinking (Bublitz et al., 2016). The framework (see Figure 1) helped me organize the individual stories about the staff, volunteers, and participants in Turnaround

Tuesday. For a story to effectively encourage a listener and viewer to act, it must be connected to a specific audience and outcome. Turnaround Tuesday specifically wanted me

27 to craft a series of emotionally driven stories that told the impact of their work on people’s lives while driving their current and potential supporter base to give money, jobs, and time to the organization.

Figure 1

Social Impact Organization Story Portfolio Framework

The audience who would be the listeners and viewers of the audiodocumentary and short visual are far removed from the realities and challenges that participants of

Turnaround Tuesday endure. The majority of the targeted audience are upper-middle-class, generationally wealthy white people who do not live in the Baltimore city neighborhoods where most Turnaround Tuesday participants live. I knew I had to delicately convey the experiences and stories of people whose lives changed the moment they chose to trust

Turnaround Tuesday with power, dignity, and agency. I did not want to invoke feelings of pity for those who shared their stories of their lives through Turnaround Tuesday. Just the opposite. It was important that the subjects of the media work were revealed with respect and honor. I wanted the disconnected listener to recognize themself in each story, inspired knowing that There but for the grace of God, go I. (Or more appropo to life during one of the ​ ​

28 deadliest pandemics in our generation, There, go I. Now more than ever, our world is ever ​ ​ aware of our connectedness and dependency on one another for survival.) I did not want to leave any opportunity for the audience to be able to reduce another’s life to alien or foreign.

Not at all. Regarding another’s state of life as alien could enable the audience to justify lack of action, disregard, or withholding of additional resources. I sought to create and build a visual and auditory narrative that the watcher would find unavoidable to turn away from and act on.

Scholarly Research: Leveraging a Marketing Funnel for Media Distribution

But, how could I use the media I created to influence the viewer and listener to act in support of Turnaround Tuesday? To help me answer this, I contacted Alex Covington, brand director of The Wing, a women’s coworking and social club with locations in cities across the United States and United Kingdom. Known successfully for her marketing and brand acumen, Alex directed me to Single Grain’s marketing funnel framework (see Figure

2), which illustrates stages of engagement with potential customers. “A marketing funnel is a way of breaking down the customer journey all the way from the ‘awareness’ stage (when they first learn about your business) to the ‘purchase’ stage (when they’re ready to buy your product or service)” (Siu, 2019, What Is a Marketing Funnel? section).

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Figure 2

Single Grain’s Marketing Funnel Framework

Scholarly Research: Portraiture as Methodology

Whenever I write, I center the voices of those trusting me with their stories. I operated the same way as an organizer. The voices and experiences of people most affected by an issue drove my work. I take the same approach to my writing. It was essential that the voices and perspectives of Turnaround Tuesday’s staff and participants were the focus of the writing about the organization. I wrote their lived experiences within detailed accounts of the spaces, room temperatures, sounds, hairstyles, clothing, and scents that surrounded each story and observed setting. I wanted their truths to come out in the contexts of their lives, and I wanted the reader, listener, and viewer to understand and connect with the person behind the voice who shared their delicate experience through my writing. I turned to

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Professor Emerita Dr. Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot’s portraiture methodology to guide my listening, observation, data collection, sense making, analysis, and writing:

Social Science Portraiture is a method of qualitative research that blurs the boundaries of ​ aesthetics and empiricism in an effort to capture the complexity, dynamics, and

subtlety of human experience and organizational life. Portraitists seek to record and

interpret the perspectives and experiences of the people they are studying,

documenting their voices and their visions -- their authority, knowledge, and

wisdom. The drawing of the portrait is placed in social and cultural context and

shaped through dialogue between the portraitist and the subject, each one

negotiating the discourse and shaping the evolving image. The relationship between

the two is rich with meaning and resonance and becomes the arena for navigating

the empirical, aesthetic, and ethical dimensions of authentic and compelling

narrative. (Lawrence-Lightfoot & Davis, 1997, pg. xv)

Portraiture’s emphasis on empiricism and aesthetics drives the story. The knowledge gathering, context, and data about a subject come from the subject. There is no outside theory or framework. There is no singular inquiry into what is wrong and not working with the subject. Instead, it is the portriatist’s role to craft a narrative mosaic that generously and critically reflects the essence and what is good of the subject. I chose to use portraiture as the method of study and delivery of Turnaround Tuesday’s story because of the focus on the observation of the subject—the subject’s perspective and experience. There is so much good that comes out of a subject like Turnaround Tuesday. Using the portraiture methodology complements Turnaround Tuesday’s work in a city that rarely is celebrated for what is good.

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Scholarly Research: Short Film and Podcast as Storytelling Media

Turnaround Tuesday made it clear that they wanted me to help them tell their story visually. They confirmed at the first planning meeting with Cambridge Heath Ventures that I would produce a short video about their work by December 3, 2019, the fifth-anniversary celebration of the organization. The team was clear about the purpose of telling their story visually. They wanted people involved with Turnaround Tuesday to be recognized as important contributors, from employers to volunteers.

While it was clear that Turnaround Tuesday wanted to use visual storytelling as a tool to share their work, I was curious about using a newer form of media growing in popularity each year. An estimated 144,000,000 Americans listen to podcasts, and that number is growing; over 51% of the country is trying out this relatively new way to consume content

(Edison Research, 2019). A podcast is “a digital audio file of speech, music, broadcast material, etc. made available on the Internet for downloading to a computer or portable media player; a series of such files, new instalments of which can be received by subscribers automatically” (Oxford University Press, 2005). Podcast formats are similar to public talk radio as a medium used to convey heightened emotion and broadcast information to a single listener, within the intimate convenience of one’s car or home. Unlike radio, podcasts can be listened to whenever the audience wants, not based on a radio station’s programming schedule. Anyone can create a podcast as long as they have a microphone. Digital platforms

32 like Apple Podcasts and Spotify make it easy and free to upload podcasts for listeners to search and find to listen to on their way to work, the gym—wherever their day takes them.

Many marginalized voices and stories of experiences that have been typically left out of traditional media have found podcasting as a platform to make themselves heard.

Racism, mental illness, sexuality and climate change are all issues that have

found new voices through podcasts. While it’s too early to say if all of these

will have a genuine impact on political debate, crime podcasts such as Serial

have affected legal outcomes. This can be traced to the unique qualities of

podcasting’s form and its focus on personal storytelling supported by solid,

journalistic research. (McHugh, 2017, para. 4)

Perhaps podcasts provide more space for more stories to be told from other perspectives because of the low barriers to produce and distribute episodes.

I knew I wanted people who had never been to Turnaround Tuesday or heard the stories of the many participants whose lives had changed to feel as though they were sitting in the basement of Zion Baptist Church. I sought to invoke what Green and Brock (2002) call Narrative Transportation, “ [a] convergent process, where all mental systems and capacities become focused on events occurring in the narrative” (p. 324). I wanted the viewer and listener to feel compelled to metaphorically jump through the screen and join

Baltimore’s movement for jobs. In telling Turnaround Tuesday’s story visually and auditorily, I wanted the audience to feel as if the narrative transported them to East

Baltimore and sat them next to a participant listening on a Tuesday morning.

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Turnaround Tuesday, Radcliffe, and I envisioned using a podcast audiodocumentary series and short visual during the Radcliffe seminar and Turnaround Tuesday’s fifth-anniversary celebration as media to engage potential funders, employers, and political leaders and further inspire them to become active supporters.

Theory of Action

If I interview and write about Turnaround Tuesday participants, key employers, and staff to learn of the organization’s current impact and origin story; equip myself to create a portraiture-styled audiodocumentary series and short visual that tell Turnaround Tuesday’s story and programmatic effectiveness to a regional and national audience of potential funders, employers, participants, supporters, and academics; and distribute the media using a marketing funnel framework that aligns with communications for the fifth-anniversary celebration and Radcliffe seminar, then the organization’s storytelling will be strengthened and their leaders will be better positioned to communicate, amplify, publicize, and financially sustain their work, and potential funders and employers will be encouraged to take action to support Turnaround Tuesday.

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Analysis and Evidence to Date

My residency project with Turnaround Tuesday supports Turnaround Tuesday’s goals to raise more money and recognition of its work and my goal to create media that educates and inspires action for social impact. I pushed those goals forward through the following three streams of work:

● Capture Turnaround Tuesday’s story and media for potential employers and funders

by December 2019.

● Distribute audiodocumentary and short visual with fifth anniversary and Radcliffe

seminar communications that align with a funding campaign to raise upward of an

additional $1,000,000 with BUILD, Turnaround Tuesday, and Cambridge Heath

Ventures through March 2020.

● Amplify Turnaround Tuesday’s impact on reentry and workforce development

efforts through convening funders and Turnaround Tuesday staff at an all-day

seminar with Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University during

the spring 2020 semester.

Beginning in June 2019, I started attending staff and board meetings to begin learning the organization’s leaders and their interest in my working on Turnaround

Tuesday’s narrative. I wanted to learn whom staff and board member’s listened to, what those who had everyone’s ear were saying about Turnaround Tuesday’s story, and the interests of the staff and board members in order to craft a strategic project that was squarely in the middle of what was relevant and useful for the organization.

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I was interested in creating long-form media pieces that went deep into the organization’s story. I quickly learned that people had their own interpretations of what my work was going to be. During the first board meeting, I had a chance to introduce myself and share that I was a Harvard doctoral resident joining the organization. My role was to write and produce media that shaped the external narrative about Turnaround Tuesday and its impact in Baltimore. To one board member, my work sounded like I was going to lead the social media digital marketing for the organization. He offered that “Turnaround

Tuesday needs to be doing more social media and have short video clips that share what they do” (personal communication June 10, 2019). Afterward, it was during the first staff meeting that Terrell Williams, the codirector of Turnaround Tuesday, introduced me as the historian for Turnaround Tuesday: “Yasmene’s going to help us tell our story” (personal communication June 7, 2019). Eyebrows went up, and a few audible goods and ohs made their ​ ​ ​ ​ way around the table. Later, in the first meetings with Cambridge Heath Ventures Founding

President Simon Greer, he shared a practice that is trending within networks of high-wealth individuals. Simon mentioned the importance of building an archive of media content to forward to supporters who would then discuss them at dinner and cocktail parties with other high-wealth individuals. When I heard Simon, I knew he was referring to viral marketing, which is defined as:

the strategic release or seeding of branded content into the socially networked online

consumer ecosystem, followed by the potentially multiplicative spread of the content

through the ecosystem as hosts (consumers) receive the content and are motivated to

share the branded content with other consumers. (Mills, 2012, p. 163)

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From the start, I communicated to all that I would be creating three pieces of media: a long-form written portrait; a four-episode audiodocumentary series; and a short, less-than-10-minute cinematic visual. Turnaround Tuesday’s story and impact would be the central storyline throughout all the pieces. I explicitly chose to focus on the strength, dignity, honor, and power of the participants and the organization. I was not going to create short video clips for digital marketing campaigns to build organic followings on Instagram and

Facebook. That is an entirely different skill set and labor investment that I chose not to practice and develop during my residency. Additionally, BUILD’s Turnaround Tuesday does not have a strong social media presence. At the time I joined the team, they were working on their website. Instead, I chose to focus on distributing my media content through their established and active communication outlet: email. We had less than 5 months to create, edit, and distribute the work. I determined that prioritizing building a social media following was not a targeted approach to reach high-wealth individuals in Baltimore who are less likely to be active on social media; it would not accomplish the fundraising necessary to power the next phase of Turnaround Tuesday.

Knowing that Turnaround Tuesday was interested in generating viral marketing and circulating my media work to high-wealth individuals through their email newsletters, I wanted to write and produce humanizing portraits about the individuals who sought

Turnaround Tuesday’s help during some of the toughest moments of their lives. These humanizing portraits could be shared via social media secondarily. I had already started researching Turnaround Tuesday’s past media exposure. To me, the news stories were light,

37 superficial fluff pieces. No writer or producer had spent months embedded within the organization and created a thoroughly written piece that captured the unearthed essence of

Turnaround Tuesday. I was interested in the story underneath the flashy headlines about helping “ex-cons” and “former drug addicts” off Baltimore’s mean streets. It was in these first moments with the staff and board members that I understood that I would have to show my work for some to understand my work. Trust had to come from production and time. My narrative production would redirect others who misunderstood early what my work product would be. I knew once the team saw my first drafts of the media I produced, they would love it. All outside expectations and interpretations of my work would become clear once my work became real and no longer a concept. I continued to reiterate that I would be creating three pieces of media about Turnaround Tuesday: a long-form written portrait; a four-episode audiodocumentary series; and a short, less-than-10-minute cinematic visual.

I began carrying my Zoom audio recorder with me to Turnaround Tuesday sessions and staff meetings. Here I listened for the undercurrents that moved the place. At every weekly staff meeting, the team would gather to discuss the agenda for the next Turnaround

Tuesday session. They would share updates about participants and feedback from employers. The information became the foundation for the next session’s teaching. In one particular staff meeting on June 13, the team discussed a number of participants who wanted to leave their jobs because of workplace conflict and strained relationships with their supervisors or colleagues. It had taken some of these participants several months and beyond to secure employment. The staff chose to address workplace conflict and

38 persevering on the job during the next Turnaround Tuesday session, on June 18. I remember

Terrell sharing the heart of the day’s teaching:

We have a lot of people that have waited years to get a job, and we help them get a

job. And we get a call 6, 7 months later, “I’m getting ready to quit my job.” “Why

you getting ready to quit your job?” “Cause I can’t stand this supervisor … cause I’m

having a problem with this colleague.”

He continued, “Well, you goin’ be quitting every job.” A few mmhmms, hmphms, and ​ ​ yups threaded the room. “Because I don’t care where you go. You are going to get all ​ those kinds of people” (personal communication, June 18, 2019).

The Turnaround Tuesday staff masterfully set the tone for participants to engage fully with the teaching. The sessions did not sound like a dry lecture on navigating workplace culture. They were the opposite: lively, accessible, unguarded, and fun. The people in the seats were encouraged to participate and offer their honest insights, concerns, worries, and breakthroughs throughout most of the teaching. What the room offered became the material for the teaching. Before anyone spoke, they had to stand up, speak into the microphones, and say their names. The practice served as a recognition of who they are and their forthcoming contribution to the room. It was also good practice for interviews with potential employers. Capturing audio was the most rewarding part of the process for me. I loved embedding myself within Turnaround Tuesday’s environment. I loved being with people as they were exploring the fullest expression of who they could be without barriers to employment. Folks became used to my moving in and out of rooms and being by their sides with my audio recorder. At the beginning of each Turnaround Tuesday session, Melvin or

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Terrell would announce that I was recording and working on my strategic project for the doctoral program at Harvard.

In July and August 2019, I began my interviews with employers, Turnaround

Tuesday staff, and current participants and alumni of the jobs movement. I had amassed hours upon hours of audio and started turning my footage into an audiodocumentary series about Turnaround Tuesday. Knowing that the ultimate goal was to share all the media I created to help spread the word about Turnaround Tuesday, I committed to producing a short visual about the organization. During this time, I started building the team of creatives who would help me produce the audiodocumentary and short visual. I hired Justin Mayfield as the audio engineer and music composer and Gabe Dinsmoor as the cinematographer and visual editor, who then brought on Clarke Lyons as the production assistant. Later, I asked

Peter Moffett to join Justin to create the music for the visual.

The team of creative technicians that I brought on to help me create the audio and visual media pieces about Turnaround Tuesday was unmatched. I could not have produced high-quality work in a short amount of time without the talent and commitment of Gabe

Dinsmoor, Justin Mayfield, Clarke Lyons, and Peter Moffett. The four of them put in hours of technical work to meet deadlines in time for the fifth-anniversary celebration and

Radcliffe seminar communications. I was familiar with each of their individual work before my summer start date with Turnaround Tuesday. I had approached them separately in April

2019 about working with me on what was then a creative proposal to craft an audiodocumentary and short visual. I am not technically trained as a cinematographer, visual editor, audio engineer, nor musician. I had a vision for writing and telling Turnaround

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Tuesday’s story differently. The three of them were interested in crafting the story together with me. Their work was central to why my strategic project was successful and received well by audiences.

Creating the Immersive Multimedia Project Titled Higher Purpose ​ From August through October 2019, I wrote the in-depth portrait of Turnaround

Tuesday. The literary portrait served as the base script for the audiodocumentary series about the movement. I spent over 212 hours producing what would become a four-episode audiodocumentary series about Turnaround Tuesday. I interviewed 37 individuals connected to the jobs movement and captured over 45.5 hours of interviews, field audio, and narration from my 12,608-word long-form written portrait that was the base script for the audiodocumentary. Out of all the sit-downs with employers, participants, staff, and volunteers, my favorite interview was with Terrell Williams (Appendix A). He crystallized

Turnaround Tuesday’s entire journey from an organizing campaign to help people off the corners to one of the most impactful workforce development organizations in the country.

Only he and Pastor Prentice have lived through to tell the stories of the beginnings and the current impact of the jobs movement.

Cambridge Heath Ventures joined full time as development consultants to the senior leadership team of Turnaround Tuesday in September 2019. Together we crafted a communications arc leading up the fifth-anniversary celebration of Turnaround Tuesday on

December 3 at the Parkway Theatre in downtown Baltimore.

However, aligning the distribution of the audiodocumentary and short visual was challenging. Even though the strategic project was an overall success, I had to push various

41 members of the Turnaround Tuesday leadership staff to release my material to the organization’s network. I do not know the particular reason. I can only speculate that there was hesitation to share the audiodocumentary because of its length and the inclusion of a scene about several of Baltimore’s darkest days.

During one prep call for the fifth-anniversary celebration, members of the team made a collective decision, on an earlier closed-meeting call that I was not invited to join, to not release the audiodocumentary episodes with the first email invitation. One member mentioned that they did not want to confuse the email recipient with two calls of action: one to RSVP for the fifth-anniversary celebration and one to listen to the new audiodocumentary. Yet, the group wanted to include a PBS video clip about Turnaround

Tuesday in the email. The leader apologized for the sudden news at the start of the whole-group prep call, and we settled on a plan to release episodes with the next email. After sending multiple drafts of Episodes 1 and 2 of the audiodocumentary, 1 month after I had finished them both, I received feedback from the same leader that he thought the episodes were long. Another leader shared that he feared people would not listen if I released the two episodes together. I reiterated to both men that I was not going to shorten the episodes, which were 14–35 minutes, to 3–5 minutes because—as I had communicated from the beginning of my residency––I had committed to crafting an in-depth portrait that was unlike some of the external media stories about Turnaround Tuesday, which felt superficial and steeped in pity. To achieve a compelling portrait, the episodes needed ample time. A person listening to a podcast is not necessarily turned away from a limited series where all the episodes are released at once. Some listeners like to listen to all the episodes in one sitting,

42 and some prefer to break up their time when commuting. Whatever the case, we should not limit the consumption preferences of the listener because they might not match our own.

That is part of the convenience of podcasting for the listener.

Additionally, it was suggested that I consider removing a scene in the audiodocumentary that referenced the 2015 death of Freddie Gray in police custody and the uprisings that resulted from public grief and mourning. The teammate mentioned that the scene could make the listener upset and sad that I brought up a troubling time in our city’s history. He wanted listeners to feel hopeful about Baltimore and not left feeling low. I disagreed. The scene placed the listener in the context of a post-uprising Baltimore that failed to convict any of the involved police officers and now faces a Department of Justice consent decree for police reform. Turnaround Tuesday does not hide the fact that they partner with police for referrals. Why would I reconstruct history and, in turn, uncomplicate our city’s and Turnaround Tuesday’s relationship with the police for the comforts of the listener? Again, that would discredit me as a reliable narrator and undermine the evidence that supports my analysis and writing about Turnaround Tuesday. The scene appears in

Episode 2. I learned, when asking for feedback, to specify that I am looking to hear of any factual inaccuracies and that I am at liberty to choose which creative and editorial notes I will include in my art.

During this episode, I felt blindsided and discouraged after spending well over 200 hours securing funding, researching, writing, recording, editing, scheduling interviews, screen testing, drafting questions, traveling to locations, and interviewing people. It was not easy to

43 confront the two men in leadership. I did not feel appreciated for my craft and knew I had to speak up for myself in a way that led to an actionable next step.

As a result of our conference call, we decided to create a communications arc that outlined when the audio and visual pieces would be released with the emails sent to

Turnaround Tuesday’s network. It was important to put this agreed-on communications and media layout in writing. The arc provided a timeline of Turnaround Tuesday email correspondence to Baltimore-area funders, supporters, political leaders, and employers. The

December 3rd event and the scheduled emails began the kickoff to Turnaround Tuesday’s campaign to raise $1,000,000 for the organization. The team chose to include the short visual in the email to supporters thanking them for attending the December 3rd event. I secured the agreement of the team that the audiodocumentary I produced was to be included in the scheduled emails as prerelease episodes. I updated everyone on the progress of the audiodocumentary episodes and shared drafts of each piece. Along with each update, I provided dates when each episode would be complete and ready to share.

At the second board meeting I attended, a board member pulled me aside and said that they used to be on the board of Baltimore’s National Public Radio local affiliate. The board member offered to introduce me to the new director of the station with the intention of officially releasing my audiodocumentary on air. However, I did not hear from

Turnaround Tuesday’s leadership nor the board member about the follow-up and making the connection with the radio station. Not one to wait for life to happen, I sent the audio series to an award-winning producer at Baltimore’s National Public Radio station. The producer emailed me within a week asking me to meet with him and discuss my work.

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Within minutes of sitting down, I learned that the station was interested in officially hosting, distributing, and promoting the audiodocumentary series. I received word that the producers of the show On the Record with Sheilah Kast wanted to schedule an on-air segment for me ​ ​ and whomever I would choose from Turnaround Tuesday to join me to discuss my work and their jobs movement.

Members of the team started to receive emails reacting to the first two episodes of the audiodocumentary within days of releasing them. A known philanthropist in the

Baltimore area and leader in education sent Rob English this one-line email: “I was in tears listening - very well done and moving. I hope it gets enormous attention city wide and beyond.”

Some listeners who were introduced to the audiodocumentary by way of the coordinated email communications from Turnaround Tuesday wrote reviews on the hosting platform, Apple Podcast:

Wonderful series so far Can’t wait for the last 2 episodes. The stories, the people and the healing happening in Baltimore.

Great, immersive storytelling An absorbing and extremely well-told story about a great organization. I find myself getting lost in my headphones from the engaging storytelling and live audio.

To date, the audiodocumentary I created and narrated about Turnaround Tuesday has been downloaded 2,163 times on Baltimore’s National Public Radio station.

By the end of November 2019, I had completed a 12,608-word long-form written portrait; produced a four-episode audiodocumentary series; and finished casting, directing, filming, and editing a short visual about Turnaround Tuesday’s movement leaders,

45 amplifying their voices and lived experiences after imprisonment. I saw each media component as part of an immersive multimedia project called Higher Purpose: A Portrait of the ​ Jobs Movement Turning Around Baltimore. ​ Cheryl Finney, chief strategy officer for Turnaround Tuesday, after reading my long-form written portrait, shared with me in an email: “Yasmene, this is an outstanding capture of our work and the essence of who we try to be. I am so so grateful to you!”

(personal communication, November 21, 2019). This was the single most important feedback I received about the work. I cared only to hear how my literary, audio, and visual work landed on the staff and participants in Turnaround Tuesday. If they did not say that what I created was a reflection, an essence, of who they are and what they are up to on this planet, I was not interested in releasing the work nor calling it successful. I painstakingly took my time to intentionally create a portrait of the organization that reflected a critical and generous lens of their dignity, strength, and power.

On December 3, Turnaround Tuesday hosted its fifth-anniversary celebration at the historic and renovated Parkway Theatre in Baltimore. Higher Purpose: A Visual Portrait of the ​ Jobs Movement Turning Around Baltimore premiered before a crowd of over 300 people laughing, ​ crying, smiling, and applauding at the essence of Turnaround Tuesday reflected back to them with power, dignity, and agency. The next day, a thank-you email was sent with a link to the visual on YouTube. It has been viewed over 750 times to date. Turnaround Tuesday secured over $100,000 in donations within four weeks of the fifth-anniversary celebration. Additional development meetings were scheduled with those who attended the celebration and had the capacity to give if asked. To date, Turnaround Tuesday has received $496,000 in donations.

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Radcliffe Seminar

Near the end of October, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study’s Practitioner in

Residence Dr. Kaia Stern contacted me with a team of Radcliffe staff interested in two opportunities for Turnaround Tuesday: a closed 2-day seminar in January 2020 for

Turnaround Tuesday and invited guests, and a convening of multiple cities for a public seminar on municipal approaches to developing a workforce of people who have been incarcerated. Baltimore’s model has the potential to catalyze other cities to radically shift, reconsider, and rebuild their municipal approaches to better support individuals returning home after being incarcerated. In collaboration with Kaia, the Radcliffe Institute presented us in Baltimore with the opportunity to widely share BUILD’s Turnaround Tuesday jobs movement, contribute to a scholarship of practice, and convene stakeholders focused on education and workforce development with people after imprisonment.

Given Radcliffe’s unique convening power and commitment to justice, they saw engaging Boston- and Baltimore-area organizations, funders, and the Harvard community in the scaled impact of BUILD and Turnaround Tuesday in Baltimore as timely and relevant.

For BUILD, the opportunity to present at Radcliffe would increase exposure to their work nationally and possibly attract more funding. Additionally, I saw the opportunity as a way to share more broadly the media work I had produced. In late November, I began teaming with the Radcliffe Institute staff to plan the first of the two meetings featuring Turnaround

Tuesday and its approach to supporting people with jobs after incarceration. Invitations to the meeting were sent two days before Thanksgiving to key leaders in philanthropy and business in Baltimore.

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Remembering the lack of clarity around the distribution of the audiodocumentary, I sent the following email to Cambridge Heath Ventures and Turnaround Tuesday in advance when it was time to turn our attention to the BUILD: Turnaround Tuesday seminar at

Radcliffe:

I’d like us to communicate regularly and outside of the Friday call to plan and

execute Radcliffe effectively. There are many moving parts up here that I am

coordinating. I want to set us all up for success and know we need more

collaborative time together. After the new year, we can get going planning the agenda

and confirming that the Turnaround Tuesday team has secured their flights and hotel

arrangements.

Together we joined multiple planning conference calls in the weeks leading up to the event. I learned that verbal agreements did not always translate to practice. It is better to have a written record so that the team can refer to and track the changes to the agreed-on direction.

In the 7 weeks leading up the Radcliffe seminar, I approached our preparation like I was trained to approach a major public action with a political leader, where we as a disciplined, focused community unit faced the leader with pointed yes/no questions and proposals to partner together to act on a solution to a widely felt issue. I took much time to go over and over why it would be in the interest of the attending key corporate and philanthropic leaders to partner with the Turnaround Tuesday team. I am not talking about toothless community involvement or engagement where community is asked to be present but not asked of their strategy, proposed solutions, and leadership to act together as equal partners with political leaders. I am referring to real, respectful partnerships akin to Dr.

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Karen Mapp’s work on school–community partnerships, where families are regarded and treated as partners with valuable insight into their children’s learning (Stringer, 2018). In preparation for the Radcliffe seminar with key corporate and philanthropic leaders, I thought it was essential that Turnaround Tuesday be treated as a contributory partner with valuable insight into jumpstarting Baltimore’s workforce, particularly among people who have been incarcerated.

In the world as it is—not in the world as it should be—many leaders with the power to act do not act without analyzing their self-interest: Is it in my interest to work on this?

What is my interest? And, is this something that I can accomplish on my own, or do I need the partnership of community? 1 It is not enough to speak truth to power. How do you get that power to act on the truth you speak? Acting in partnership with community may require the political leader to see it in their self-interest to team up. I worked with the Turnaround

Tuesday team over several conference calls to build, script, and rehearse their presentation to the guests. I weaved the media components, Turnaround Tuesday presentation, and

Harvard-affiliated scholar practitioner sessions within the seminar agenda to stir up interest, knowledge building, and future action (Appendix 6). Many seminar participants were not deeply familiar with Turnaround Tuesday’s impact, opportunities for growth, nor challenges.

The audiodocumentary and short visual were among their first introductions to Turnaround

Tuesday. I knew it was crucial that Turnaround Tuesday follow up with the interest generated by the media components with a strong opening session at the Radcliffe seminar.

1By the way, analyzing your interests before acting is not inherently right or wrong. We all do it at times. I did. I asked myself what kind of residency I was interested in and whether partnering with Radcliffe and BUILD’s Turnaround Tuesday provided the opportunity to act on that interest.

49

Otherwise, we run the risk of interest in Turnaround Tuesday petering out after the initial media engagement.

I took on the role of project manager: drafting agendas, talking points, and

PowerPoints, and commenting on and editing Google Docs while scheduling conference calls to rehearse the presentations. The process helped strengthen Turnaround Tuesday’s team-disciplined approach to preparation. Through repetition, the team became clearer about who they are as an organization, the value in the services they provide for and with community, and why future investment in the organization is in the invited leaders’ interests in the growth of a robust workforce in Baltimore City.

After winter and the holiday break, Turnaround Tuesday, Radcliffe, and I narrowed down which Harvard professors would receive an invitation to give a talk at the January seminar. Dr. Cornell William Brooks, Dr. Kaia Stern, and Professor Greg Gunn accepted the Radcliffe invitation to craft and give a talk to Turnaround Tuesday and their invited guests at the BUILD: Turnaround Tuesday Seminar at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced

Study. All January invitations that were sent at least 2 weeks before the seminar encouraged guests to listen to the audiodocumentary series for background and history of Turnaround

Tuesday.

Thursday, January 30, through Friday, January 31, I hosted and facilitated the first student-led seminar at Radcliffe before a closed group of philanthropic and corporate leaders in Baltimore to plan Turnaround Tuesday’s scaling strategy for training and retaining another 1,000 Baltimoreans in quality jobs. We began the Friday seminar watching the Higher ​ Purpose visual. The invited corporate and philanthropic leaders reacted positively to the ​

50 audiodocumentary and to the short visual shown in preparation for the seminar. Several participants submitted feedback about the seminar and future engagement with Turnaround

Tuesday. Below are answers to the following questions: What worked well at the Welcome

Dinner? What could have been better? What else would you like to share about the event?

● “It was a great dinner. Perhaps a less wide table might have enabled a little more

dialogue between participants.”

● “Yasmene’s design for the dinner worked perfectly as a forum to enable the

participants to get to know one another (some knew some; none knew all). She

managed the evening smoothly. Dr. Brooks’s remarks also acted as a catalyst for

open and curious conversation, again setting the tone for a highly productive next

day.”

● “I found Thursday’s [dinner] an opportunity to engage and relate. I met several

people who were not in attendance Friday. I believe I would have felt differently if

not for the relational dinner.”

Below are answers to the following questions: What worked well during the Friday seminar?

What could have been better? What else would you like to share about the event?

● “Thought it was a great discussion regarding TAT. Good mix of background and

anecdotal information. Might have been helpful to have a deeper dive on financial

and outcome data, but I think we made progress on identifying those needs for

future meetings.”

● “Again, Yasmene’s design for the day worked well. Starting with a ‘going around the

room’ opening comment by each of us, transitioning into specific presentations by

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each of the TurnAround Tuesday principals provided both the context and

substance necessary for the balance of the day to be constructive. Shifting from the

‘principals to the professors’ enabled a wide ranging, creative, and curious

conversation.”

● “The sharing of ideas. Just listening to how we see ourselves and how others see our

work was invaluable. I could identify gaps and threats that previously were blind

spots. Having some of Baltimore’s great thinkers in the room framing our problem

around employment and the systemic and those barriers the impacted individuals

bring was quite effective.”

At the end of the day, the group requested that I continue to work with them on the next steps back in Baltimore.

52

The Why

The strategic project with Turnaround Tuesday was successful overall because I focused my efforts on crafting media content that centered the dignity, agency, and power of

Turnaround Tuesday’s staff and participants using portraiture while connecting the distribution of such media with direct follow-up action for interested potential funders and employers using a marketing funnel.

Portraiture

From the beginning of the project with Turnaround Tuesday, I aimed to gather more audio and narrative notes than I needed. These notes and audio served as the basis for anything I would create. Every sound and observation together were my pieces of evidence that I would use to analyze the good happening in Baltimore. I knew that if I strayed away from exactly what I saw and heard, then I would be an unreliable narrator and my media content would not hold up to scrutiny by those inside Turnaround Tuesday. And if the media I created lost its credibility inside the organization, there would be little hope to capture the trust of potential supporters and encourage them to donate money or hire participants. My base of evidence was the foundation.

Never do for others what they can do for themselves.

I remember learning that organizing universal when I began organizing in Baltimore with BUILD. I have since carried that understanding to my artwork and the words I choose to write about others’ lives. It was essential that I crafted audio and visual pieces that depicted Turnaround Tuesday with dignity and not pity. As mentioned before, I was not interested in creating a superficial, inch-deep 30-second profile of yet another workforce

53 development organization in an under-resourced and politically unstable city doing miraculous work. That approach would undermine the significance and intentionality of the work undertaken by staff, participants, and partner employers in Baltimore with Turnaround

Tuesday.

The tension here for me was between brevity and breadth. What scenes do I keep in the portrait? What do I describe using the audio of life happening, unfolding in front of me?

What do I let go of? And then, after writing each portion of the written portrait, take a step back and ask, how does this read of Turnaround Tuesday? Of Baltimore? Of the people in

Turnaround Tuesday who are predominately Black and live in Baltimore? All of those questions hung in my mind when I listened back to the audio and put my pen to paper. I kept writing until I felt the portrait was complete. I felt driven to complete the art when I felt it had nothing more to say. I was not going to sacrifice quality for subjective palatable consumption. I felt strongly that my work would stand on its own and find the audience who would read and listen thoroughly. I aimed for the written portrait to be between 10,000 and 13,000 words. I used Professor Lawrence-Lightfoot’s 20-page requirement assigned for portraits written in her class, Portraiture, during spring 2019 as a reference too.

In the notes below, I wrote to the editor of the short visual and emphasized the inclusion of particular quotes by Turnaround Tuesday participants Kevin and Darlene that might speak to some funders’ and employers’ interest in building a strong workforce in

Baltimore. I wanted Kevin and Darlene’s voices and stories of dignity, meaning, and agency to come out strong in the final edits during the post-production phase.

54

● @1:24 Move Darlene’s employer statement to the end. “To potential bosses and

employees, you need to know that a person’s background and where they come

from doesn’t determine their future and where they’re going. Anybody can

change. Anybody has the opportunity to grow and become better than they were

yesterday. It’s a daily process, and I know I’m still working on it today. Like I

work on it every day. I want to become better. So as long as I get up, I pray. I

thank God and I come here and I set an example for not only myself, for my

kids and my coworkers and that I know that I’m better than I was yesterday … I

know that I’m trying to become better than I was yesterday. I’m not going back

in my old footsteps, and I’m not making those same decisions. I’m not hanging

around those same individuals. I’m standing in a house and I’m trying to provide

for my family the best way I know how, getting up every morning and coming to

work.”

● It’s strong. I love how she faces the camera. Let’s leave the room with her words’

aftertaste! Let her have the last word after Terrell.

● Then Kevin can come in STRONG with his line that I LOVE LOVE: (23:43)

“And I’ve always believed that everybody, everybody deserves the chance to take

care of themselves and their families. Man. Like everybody deserves that. Like

that’s something that I believe that everybody deserves. Like, shouldn’t nobody

go without their necessities and the day-to-day things that they need.”

Kevin and Darlene hit two particular talking points that I wanted to land with the audience members unfamiliar with the reality of Turnaround Tuesday participants: (a)

55 employers hire people and do not hold their past against them, and (b) everyone deserves an opportunity to support their families and have their basic needs met.

At the end of the visual, I wanted the viewer to know that they were invited to be part of supporting Turnaround Tuesday. The second-to-last person chosen to be on camera was Melvin. I thought his comment coupled well with Darlene’s declarative call to action:

We believe that there are plenty of opportunities, space for everyone in Turnaround

Tuesday, whether you’re a donor, whether you’re an employer, whether you’re a

participant, whether you just want to come and volunteer. Our doors are welcome,

and it’s why we call this a movement, not a jobs program, because it changes every

day and there’s a space for everyone.

Marketing Funnel and Communications Arc

I extracted the concept of the marketing funnel framework as a guiding map for using the media I created to build awareness of and interest in Turnaround Tuesday for potential supporters, who could be funders, academics, and employers. I knew Turnaround

Tuesday was going to use the newly created media in its email communications to invitees to the fifth-anniversary celebration. Similarly, I envisioned using the same media in email communications to invitees for the Radcliffe seminar on Turnaround Tuesday. The fifth-anniversary and Radcliffe communications would serve as elements of the awareness and interest-building stages. Those who received the email communications and chose to attend the fifth-anniversary celebration or Radcliffe seminar would be funneled into the evaluation stage. Subsequently, those who attended the celebration or seminar and followed up with a visit to a Turnaround Tuesday session and development meeting with the

56 codirectors for a specific request for money or employer partnership would be moved through the commitment and sale phase of the funnel, respectively. I saw attending the fifth-anniversary celebration, Turnaround Tuesday session, Radcliffe seminar, and development meetings as demonstrations of action for social impact, not purchase, as in the traditional marketing funnel framework. I was interested in creating media that would ease the journey of a potential funder or employer from the awareness stage through the action stage to becoming a supportive funder or employer of Turnaround Tuesday.

The media pieces I created were part of the first two stages of the marketing funnel referenced earlier: awareness and interest. Audiences were made aware of Turnaround

Tuesday’s story and impact when the first email communications included the first episodes of the audiodocumentary. Those whose interest in Turnaround Tuesday grew were introduced to the organization’s visually compelling story during either the fifth-anniversary celebration or the BUILD: Turnaround Tuesday Radcliffe seminar. From there, Turnaround

Tuesday senior staff engaged particular and potential funders and partner employers to take demonstrated action in the form of invitations for funding and employment.

I believe that the media components were used well because they were connected to the organization’s communications and events. In the past, I learned that various media outlets had done stories here and there on Turnaround Tuesday; however, because the organization did not have an email list nor an event to broadcast the media stories, nothing happened. The team did not leverage the media exposure and share it broadly with supporters. The opportunity to leverage the media was lost, as there was no outlet to maximize the distribution and share the story. No one on the team had the bandwidth to

57 plan for and intentionally share the media coverage. I believe the same fate would have been true of the audiodocumentary and short visual. I do not think either would have been emailed to supporters were it not for Baltimore’s NPR station, the communications arc, and the use of the marketing funnel to align the distribution of the media content with upcoming

Turnaround Tuesday events.

And I still do not think we maximized the distribution of the media as best we could.

We could have better distributed the audiodocumentary and the short visual through active staff social media accounts. My networks from graduate school, former work colleagues, friends, and family shared links to both media pieces via Facebook and Instagram stories. It would have been helpful if Turnaround Tuesday staff members had done the same. When my undergraduate alma mater reached out to write a short alumni profile on me, I pitched a story about my current work with Turnaround Tuesday (Appendix F). A recent graduate read the story and donated money to BUILD for Turnaround Tuesday because of the article.

Truthfully, most of the staff do not use their personal social media accounts regularly. Only one volunteer that I know of from Turnaround Tuesday shared the link for the visual. We limited the number of people who could have shared the content because neither

Turnaround Tuesday nor BUILD had updated social media accounts nor an engaged following that frequently reacted to most of their posts.

58

Implications for Self

The role of art is to make the revolution irresistible. – Toni Cade Bambara ​ The strategic project has helped me deepen my curiosity, interest, and strength as a writer and artist. Throughout my time at Harvard, I allowed myself to explore my love of writing, public speaking, and performing. I made a commitment not to put myself in a residency that would be comfortable and doable yet not likeable, not emotionally fulfilling.

In the past, I noticed that I had built elements of a career doing work I was seemingly ​ comfortable with and was good at, when in all actuality, I did not like because it wore down my ​ ​ ​ ​ energy and creative levels. For some time, I convinced myself that earning a consistent paycheck meant doing work that was available and offered to me even if I would rather spend my days doing something else. I would live out my artistic impulses with side hobbies and jobs, here or there. It was not until I met with Dr. Elizabeth City during winter 2019 that I felt a bit more free to let go of my limiting belief. I remember her saying something to the effect of “We have to get you a residency where you can express more of your creativity instead of holding it to the side like you typically have done in the past.”

What an idea. Liz’s words coupled well with the affirming feedback I was receiving in my creative writing and Portraiture classes about my talent. For the first time in my life, in these classes, I wrote plays, short stories, poems, and essays emblematic of memories stored away and shared them in writers’ seminars and on stage. Audiences listened, cried, clapped, and thanked me for the emotional labor made visible to them in their seats. Others began approaching me with gifts of their experiences to write about and make seen through my words.

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The residency with Turnaround Tuesday and Radcliffe created enough space for me to make writing and art the center of my work. I gained deeper foundational learning of development and communications strategies from a workforce development angle. Much of my experience in media and fundraising directly connected with education funding and organizing. Here, I had the opportunity to learn alongside Cambridge Heath Ventures, one of the most successful development teams, and Turnaround Tuesday, one of the most impactful and upcoming workforce development organizations, in partnership with the renowned Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. I enjoyed weaving the complexity of the entire project and organizing the three entities in alignment with their individual institutional interests.

I was inspired to create this residency after attending Professor Sarah Lewis’s “Vision

& Justice: A Creative Convening on Art, Race, and Justice” presented by the Radcliffe

Institute in April 2019. I was overtaken by her vision to convene artists, scholars, funders, organizers, community leaders, and students together in dialogue. During the keynote panel on mass incarceration and visual narratives with Professor Danielle Allen, Professor

Elizabeth Hinton, and Professor Bryan Stevenson (2019), the conversation turned to the landmark case McCleskey v. Kemp, which considered racial bias within capital death sentencing ​ ​ procedures. In the case, the Supreme Court reasoned that “apparent disparities in sentencing are an inevitable part of our criminal justice system” (McCleskey v. Kemp, 1985). I left that ​ ​ ​ presentation with my call to action as a writer and organizer: We artists, historians, storytellers, and researchers have to get busy working on the narrative struggle to change the

60 consciousness of decision-makers so that they will be too ashamed to talk about the inevitability of discrimination.

I went home right after that seminar and wrote what would become my first draft proposal for my EdLD residency with Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and BUILD’s

Turnaround Tuesday. I wrote:

I write with joy and grief. I am a sister to two black men I call my brothers.

Daughter to a black man I call my father. When the time comes, I will give birth to a

little black child, they will call me mother.

I write with grief for us all: Rakim, Ty, Chris, Ahmaud, Sandra, Freddie, Eric,

Trayvon knowing there is little humanity, little redemption for Black people

condemned as monsters and hunted in the eyes of the law. It is of a particular

grieving pain that mothers who birth black children and light into the world feel in

our bones.

The grieving pain feels like terror in the back of my throat when you told me

to get off facebook and not speak to anyone. People were looking for you and

anyone you love. You stood between a jury who could not see Black teenage boys

terrified of being beaten to death and a prosecutor who saw you all murderous. Your

father and mother begged you to cut off your waist length locs, to change the slow

cadence of your voice that lingered in the air long after your words’ end. You knew

what your family could not admit: nothing would save you from being criminalized

at birth.

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No journalist who wrote your story could see your wounds. Wounds from

witnessing life leave your body and death takes its place...You still have not come

home in spirit. Your eyes cannot unsee what they have seen. You are not the same.

Neither am I.

I know and feel that this project comes from a weighted silence that I no

longer can hold. It is a healing, restoration for me and my city. Baltimore’s families

live in the very spaces most impacted by Turnaround Tuesday. People who have

been arrested and imprisoned are Baltimore’s grandparents, cousins, brothers, and

sisters. They are my family. Hushed away, deep in quiet shame, I know how the

criminal punishment system dealt with the men I call uncle, brother, father,

grandfather. They have been the mothers and fathers of Baltimore’s children and

young people who attend the city’s schools. Schools do not exist in a vacuum. They

are part of the community ecosystem. The teacher and organizer in me believe, when

we talk about creating schools and classrooms conducive to learning, we cannot

leave out what is happening in the communities the schools are in. That includes

housing. That includes jobs. Baltimore’s story includes leaders in students’ families

actively building a Baltimore beyond The Wire and often unheard. Their lived

experiences are the counter to the narrative about our city and our collective will to

do what is transformatively just (Mumby, 2019).

I now have the post-graduation task of seeking and securing opportunities for me to make an abundant living creating. It is my experience of organizing people to act together through

62 shared empathy and personal story that now moves me to write art that makes revolution irresistible.

63

Implications for Site

Along with Turnaround Tuesday’s plans to grow its operations staff, help more people land livable-wage jobs, and secure additional funding from local foundations and individual donors, I would suggest they invest in public relations work. The organization needs someone on staff or needs to work with a public relations firm to handle the media relations; a volunteer or overworked staff member is not the person to lead here. It will take a dedicated person whose work solely focuses on promoting and partnering with media outlets to share participants’ stories of dignity and agency along with Turnaround Tuesday’s impact.

Secondly, if building an engaged social media following is of interest to Turnaround

Tuesday, their leadership could consider investing in a digital marketing campaign. To build a following for Turnaround Tuesday, someone on staff or on contract has to intentionally develop the strategy to create and widely distribute, and coordinate staff members’ sharing of, high-quality content. This requires staff members to commit to sharing interesting, well-lit, not-pixelated content about Turnaround Tuesday often.

Thirdly, Turnaround Tuesday should share feedback earlier in the creative process when working with staff, volunteers, or consultants. Much of Turnaround Tuesday’s self-improvement communication with participants is timely, responsive, and thoughtful.

Extend that same intentionality to those working within the organization. In crafting the audiodocumentary and short visual, I think of the times I had to individually text or email multiple people in senior leadership before I received a response about what the entire group decided to do next or the times I never received the feedback that had been voiced in a

64 closed-door meeting only for it to surface within days of releasing the media to the public.

To that end, it would be beneficial to involve those directly impacted by group decisions in the closed-door meetings. I understand the staff is stretched and overcommitted. However, tracking down individuals for feedback and decisions that impacted the work ahead of me was an inefficient and time-consuming way of using my contributions as a resident.

65

Implications for Sector

Our media work must center on the inherent power, dignity, and agency of the people our organizations support, much like in the words quoted in The Guardian: “Our job is to tell compelling stories without trivialising people’s lives––and to promote a more nuanced narrative about how to achieve lasting change” (Lentfer, 2018, subheading).

Communications directors and public relations staff of nonprofits or mission-driven social impact organizations must interrogate the content of the organizations they are promoting.

We live in a media-saturated world where paying attention is the sought-after currency.

Shock, guilt, pity, and anger can capture people’s attention, but will it sustain their attention long enough to make them act and help? And if so, what does that do to the image and narrative about the social impact work and those who seek its support? In the long run, we risk further demoralization of the communities we seek to support through our work by centering on the pathological and amplifying what shocks the audience’s consciousness in anger and pity.

We have to move in the same spirit as Bryan Stevenson (Allen et al., 2019). We have to get to work on the narrative struggle that shifts the consciousness of decision-makers, funders, employers, and powerbrokers and pulls them to drive resources to support those who live on the margins. We cannot support organizations’ capacities to deliver high-impact work that transforms lives without critically examining how we craft the media that tells their story. We have to be alchemists and transmute pain into healing and agency through our words, images, and art. What we create has to land in the bones of the listener, viewer, and reader. What we create has to move the audience to act, to share their wealth and

66 opportunity so families in Baltimore can thrive and not have to organize for jobs that pay living wages, minimally.

67

Conclusion

My strategic project with Turnaround Tuesday’s movement to get Baltimore back to work focused on my developing craft as a writer and media professional. I was tasked to create media pieces that moved potential funders to give and employers to hire. The audiodocumentary and short visual content told the story of the scrappy organization’s daring impact in a Baltimore with high unemployment, incarceration, and homicide rates.

The creative team I worked with produced high-quality media pieces in time to be included with Turnaround Tuesday’s communications leading up to its fifth-anniversary celebration and the BUILD: Turnaround Tuesday seminar at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. Together, the audiodocumentary series and short visual were used during the Radcliffe seminar and Turnaround Tuesday’s fifth-anniversary celebration as media to engage potential funders, employers, and political leaders and further inspire them to become active supporters. Resultantly, Turnaround Tuesday secured over $100,000 in donations within four weeks after the fifth-anniversary celebration. To date, Turnaround

Tuesday has received $496,000 in donations. The key corporate and philanthropic leaders who attended the Radcliffe seminar committed to significant next steps with Turnaround

Tuesday to secure the next 1,000 roles for Baltimoreans ready to get back into the labor force.

Back to Zion’s Basement

“And so now we are going to end with exercise with Pastor Prentice. So we are gonna pick up our chairs and take them to the side.” That person’s voice can barely be heard. It echoes in the basement like it has no middle. Metal chairs scrape against the floor

68 and create a low, vibrating, unwelcome brrrr. Terrell’s voice flies in, “Please don’t drag the ​ ​ chairs!” They clang against legs, instead. Melvin’s voice breaks through: “You gotta exercise ​ ​ man … that’s what you gotta do.” A quick and nasally beepbeep pops in and over the ​ ​ commotion. Towers of chairs line the now-open floor. Pastor Prentice appears. Dressed for the occasion and no longer in his light gray pinstripe suit, he commands the room to attention in a dark blue tracksuit, “Alright everyone! Alright let’s line up. Ms. Terry, what kind of music we got for today? Listen up …” Terry and her teal hair jump out: “We have two choices. Patti LaBelle, ‘New Attitude,’ or Sly and the Family Stone, ‘Dance to––”

“NEW ATTITUDE!” someone hollers. A canon of excited voices jump in and repeat after him. Pastor leads the room. We practice knee lifts, side-to-side two-steps, and high kicks, “C’mon and do a little dance. I got a back problem, but I’m still gonna do it … well, I gotta do it; I said ‘I was healed’ on Sunday. Let’s get that music going Terry, let’s go.”

We move. Some sing:

I’m feeling good from my hat to my shoe.

Know where I am going and I know what to do.

I’ve tidied up my point of view.

I’ve got a new attitude.

I’m in control.

My worries are few.

’Cause I got love like I never knew.

Ooh oh ooo oh.

I’ve got a new attitude.

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The room feels hopeful, jubilant, and new. A cathartic release at the end of each session sends participants off on their way, toward their own futures. Some go to JC to sign up to work on their résumés. Some go to Bri to check on their applications. Some go to

Cheryl and sign up for essential skills training. Melvin holds a side door open for people to file in and evaluate the session with Pastor Prentice. Terry finishes her sidebar conversation with a young man visiting Turnaround Tuesday for the first time. No matter the next step, the staff is ready to join each along their journey.

This city has to realize that it has not built the right infrastructure for people to

thrive in it. It just has not. We’re going to continue to need a Turnaround Tuesday in

this city until we change the education system, change recreation, and change [public]

safety. If we don’t change those three systems, there’s going to always be a need for

Turnaround Tuesday ’cause these systems are going to always break people, and

we’re going to have to find them, help them to put themselves together. … And so

we have to be in a repairing business all the time, constantly repairing people because

we refuse to repair the system. … That’s what Turnaround Tuesday does. (personal

communication July 17, 2019)

Terrell is right. Every Tuesday I witness a deep repair of community in a city of systems that can mercilessly come down hard on people’s spirits. Radiants of power, dignity, and agency,

I witness William and other participants return back to their center and who they remember themselves to be. Even if for a moment, I witness each participant hold and trust

Turnaround Tuesday.

70

I hope that Rakim will one day trust Turnaround Tuesday and show up in Zion’s basement. I sent him a Facebook message just after I saw him that August afternoon:

Hi Rakim, I was very happy to see you the other week when I was out with

Turnaround Tuesday. I hope you and your family are doing well. I’d like to catch up

with you, maybe you could take a break for an hour soon? I’ll be at [the] Church next

Tuesday at 2pm. Or we could meet somewhere else. Let me know. I hope to hear

from you. Yasmene (Ms. Mumby)

I have not heard back from him. I pray that I do.

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Siu, E. S. E. (2019). How to create a marketing funnel that generates sales [Blog post]. Single Grain. ​ ​ https://www.singlegrain.com/blog-posts/content-marketing/how-to-create-marketi

ng-funnel

Stringer, K. (2018, August 06). The 74 interview: Harvard’s Karen Mapp on ESSA, family

engagement, and how schools and communities can partner to help kids succeed. The ​ 74. https://www.the74million.org/article/the-74-interview-harvards-karen-mapp- ​ on-essa-family-engagement-and-how-schools-and-communities-can-partner-to-help-

kids-succeed

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Western, B., & Pettit, B. (2010). Collateral costs: Incarceration’s effect on economic mobility. The Pew ​ ​ Charitable Trusts.

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Appendix A

Transcript Excerpts of an Interview with Terrell Williams

Terrell: 00:08 PROCESS: FAST TRACK fast track does not me give the person a job. Fast ​ ​ tracked means prioritize this person.Uh, for me it means let's walked this person through because their situation is so fragile that at any time they could fall.That's why it's so important to really get to know the person, you know, so you understand is that a situation where somebody is getting ready to crack now or are they just using the language suggesting they're ready to crack, but they got a lot more to go and they're used to this and this is how they've lived.

Terrell: 00:52 PROCESS: FAST TRACK + YOUNG PEOPLE We found that young ​ ​ people do crack. They do. And so when we have young people like the, the young man we were talking about, I am clear that if I have someone that has the barrier of homelessness, the barrier of employment, the barrier of no insurance, um, I know that anything that happened on any given day will make them crash and I may not ever see them again. We may not ever see them again. And so I'll say, oh, we'll say let's fast track this person, which means let's pay special attention to this person and pushed this process, helped them to push this processFor a fast tracker they may get a case assessment the first time we need to assess him. Now we don't need to wait three weeks to assess this person that's assessed this person. Now, let's look at the barriers now and let's big round. How do we minimize those barriers or eliminate those barriers now? Because this person, for whatever the reason is, it's on a fast track to burn or to crack or to fall. And let's see if we prioritize this person. If we can eliminate a couple of barriers so at least they can stand up by themselves. They may not be able to walk, but maybe they can, they can stand and withstand these, these barriers that they have to get through. Um, but we find that young people it's really, really hard. Those, the, the, the, the act of being homeless is a real tension between getting the job and doing something that may not allow them to ever get a job again.

Terrell: 03:19 PROCESS: BIGGEST BARRIERS He single biggest issue for people, for the ​ ​ people we serve is the lack of affordable housing. It is number one, employment is number two. Because even with a good job, people still find it difficult to find affordable housing.

Terrell: 03:51 PROCESS: CONNECTING WITH REBUILD METROSo we have to ​ ​ connect with agencies that support people, um, who are at these different, uh, financial levels to get uh housing. So we work with rebuild metro, which is the affordable housing unit that is building and transforming, uh, how uh, housing in neighborhoods in many violent or distressed neighborhoods. And what would it look like to partner with someone like that who is doing nonprofit housing work in the community? We are doing the population where we're working with is having difficulty finding housing. What if we create some sort of initiative that says, one, once we get a person a job, let's look at how we put them into viable housing using the strategy that rebuild metro has used. And then let's look at maybe the first year or two is around rental. Because as we understand that portfolio, they have to hold those properties for five years less than that. Our people hold them for five years. You're six,

76 they're buying that house because we know the only way really to be a wealth is to own the home and this will allow many of them who have young children to say to buy a home and have some sort of resource to send their babies to college like many others do.

Yasmene: 05:18 AGENCY: PATHWAY TO OWNERSHIP + REBUILD METRO And is ​ ​ that the path to ownership program?

Terrell: 05:21 Yes, absolutely. Any tour on Tuesday, folk go through that process. ​ ​ Terrell: 05:26 We have six people in our homes. We have three that's on a pathway to hone a ​ ​ homeownership and we've had two people that own their own home.

Terrell: 07:43 PROCESS: MEDIATING INSTITUTION + TRAINING Unfortunately in ​ ​ our city right now that people are absolutely isolated and detached from each other. I think turnaround Tuesday allows that to happen every single Tuesday. You have a place where you can go whether you're employed or not. You have a place that is open, that is free, that is nonjudgmental, where people can just sorta iron things out in their life and talk about it. We can see our commonalities, we can see our differences and we could see how do we have options in dealing with different issues that come across our life every single day. Because every single day, many of these people are dealing with really serious decisions. And unfortunately most have one option. They think about one way of dealing with a problem. And that problem, that one way usually gets them another problem. So a mediating institution helps people to see many options cause you with many different people that make many different decisions in many different ways. So now I have a bigger tool box. I would just have three things in my toolbox. I have 23 right? So I can really negotiate now. And that's the power of a mediating institution is a place where people can negotiate with each other around what are the best ideas and solutions to help us have a great quality of life. And, and I think many of our people are missing it.

Terrell: 09:28 INTENTION: SPRIT + MEDIATING INSTITUTION Around the spirit ​ ​ really looks like we're not saying to people, you have to believe in God or you have to believe in Allah or you have to believe in a Jewish tradition. We're saying, isn't there something greater that you do believe in? And it can be almost nothing. I believe in life. I believe in love. I'll even support, and I believe you should treat people the way you used to. She want to be treated. There's a, there's a sort of a negotiated civilize way that we just coexist with each other. We may do a role play and it's, uh, it's an opportunity for people just engage in what would I do? We don't tell people what to do. We said, what would you do in this situation? And so you, you may have six, seven, eight, 10 people that come up with nine different ideas about what they would do. And we won't say, well, this is the best. We'll say, well, why this one? What are the benefits?

Terrell: 10:43 REPAIR: TERRELL’S GRANDMOTHER EVERYDAY What could happen ​ ​ that's not a benefit? And we can really negotiate around different things that are happening every single day in life. I have a little grandmother, right? And she knew that it was hard for me to live inside of this black body. Very, very dark man. Right?

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Terrell: 11:39 REPAIR: TERRELL And I would come home with all of these different ​ ​ stories about what people said about me and many cases about my color every single day. I'm saying five, six years old and she would repair me every day. She would grab me, she wouldn't wait on to come home. My mom lived, uh, three doors from my grandmother and I would walk to my grandma's house first every single day. Cause my knew my grandmother would heal me from all the scars that happened today and she would set me on this, on the sink while she's cooking. My grandmother is a mother of 18 and she would sit me on the sink and we talk about what happened today. We talk about what does it mean when somebody say you are so dark, uh, that when you stand against the blackboard, I can't see you. And my grandmother had to educate me on the fact that there are more people that are dark as I am than not.

Terrell: 13:14 And every time someone would say something, I felt myself getting more and ​ ​ more energy as I got older. And yes, it carried me those comments. I didn't forget they carried me through my twenties and thirties where I felt like I wasn't valuable based on one, how I looked and two the schools that I attended that did not give me what I needed to succeed later in college until I had to create other interventions so that it can be successful and get what my grandmother told me I deserved. And that was a great education, but it took 35 years to get there.

Terrell: 14:16 I could not write when I got to college, although, um, from sixth grade until I ​ ​ graduated from high school, I've never missed one day of school. I had perfect attendance from sixth grade through high school, did not miss one day because I knew that school is where the, my future was. Home is where the pass was. I didn't like, did not like living in poverty. I did not like living around violence. I did not like living around people who did not treat themselves and other folk like they were valuable. But it was truly a part of my experience and I vowed that my family would never grow up in a community like that.

Yasmene: 17:24 Missouri. This was, yes, St Louis. ​ ​ Terrell: 18:11 INTENTION: TERRELL EDUCATION I had gone to seven different ​ ​ universities and flunked out of every single one the first semester.

Terrell: 18:57 He said, you know what, I am sick of you and this conversation about school, ​ ​ I am just done with it.He said, yes we are. I said, yes we are. And if you can't get up right now and go to Prince George's community college

Terrell: 20:14 INTENTION: TERRELL: WHO WERE YOUR COMPETITORS I took ​ ​ the placement exam. She came out of placement exam, I think she said the re remedial classes. Um, and I said, no, I won't do that because you know, I graduated. These were my exact words. Look, I graduated from high school. I was number 27 on of 659 people. She said, well, who were, who were your competitors?

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Terrell: 20:40 INTENTION: SOMEBODY TO TELL ME THE TRUTH And it hit me ​ ​ like a ton of bricks, little old black woman who's, who really pierced straight through my chest. And no one had ever said that to me. No one cared enough about me in those institutions to really tell me the truth. And I'm like, wow, it, it just, it, I mean, it broke me in half. And in that moment I realized that it was this false sense of pride that kept me from winning all of those years. And I needed somebody to tell me the truth and this stranger told me the truth.

Terrell: 21:58 I'm not done with associates. I want, I want, I want this BA, I promise my ​ ​ grandmother Ba and I couldn't afford it. Um, and so I started searching and I found the Helen B Dennett scholarship at ubi. And, um, the next semester I would get straight A's again and I applied for that scholarship and they gave me

Terrell: 22:23 Okay. [inaudible] [inaudible] ​ ​ Terrell: 22:57 You know, that was the, um… ​ ​ Terrell: 23:46 I think that would be like the first time I ever won anything ever in my life that ​ ​ was really meaningful and it felt good and, wow. Um,

Yasmene: 24:04 Where did you just go? ​ ​ Terrell: 24:17 I think it was a first time, even just now, it's like I'm not a loser. I'm not dumb. ​ ​ Wow.

Terrell: 27:50 I would um, graduate from ubi, magna cum laude and um, decide that, uh, I ​ ​ want to go into government and public policy because there are systems, there are a lot of mes that are in community and these systems that were not created with us or for us or destroying us and only those who have real support like mom and dad who understand the system and know how to deal with the system. Only those kids would benefit from this dream. Those that didn't understand the system, they would fall and I would be, I would be one of them if I didn't have Jonathan who said, we're going to get up right now and we're going to do something. I would not be one of them if I didn't have that young lady. I wish I knew her name.

Terrell: 28:52 She said you're not good enough. She basic, you're not good enough. If you ​ ​ want to be better, you better do something and this is what you're going to need to do and get past that crap that you have in your head because it's getting in the way of what you say you really want to do. So you get some humility and understand that you're not who you think you are and you'll never be who you want to be if you don't step back in and really understand who you are and where you are. And it was, it was hugeAnd I would later, uh, become an educator and felt that I wasn't giving my students what they deserve. So I went back to school, uh, to the college at Notredame and got a masters in a special and rigid

79 regular education. And then I would go back again and get my s post certification in administration and supervision.

Terrell: 31:53 A new principal would show up and she would destroy everything. She would ​ ​ destroy everything. She didn't like teachers. She didn't like kids. She liked power and see would use that power against kids, guess teachers.

Terrell: 39:49 POWER: ORIGIN STORY TERRELL: RAT FECES Luckily for me, I had, ​ ​ um, volunteered for this organization called build, uh, when I went to Hollenberg because there I was again. I mean, this a new, a new school and the building is awful holes in the floor, rats coming into my office. And one day I'm sitting at my bladder with one of my students and I'm eating lunch with my student and I'm sitting behind the desk. He sitting on the side of the desk, he has this, his lunch. I have my lunch on this bladder, and he spilled juice on the desk and I pick up the bladder and under the blodder there's just rat feces everywhere.

Terrell: 40:42 I was so angry, and I don't know if I was angry that I had been eating at this ​ ​ table what his wet feces was here or that the students saw again, how much we did not care about them. Uh, cause I had paper towel stuck in the floor of my room to keep rats for coming in. Uh, it was just crazy. And fate would have it that I'm walking down the hall this day and I'm really angry and one of my colleagues hears me and she says, you know, you should really go to this place that I belong to this group and we're really working on creating better schools. And I'm like, look, I've been a part of every group in the nation. I'm sick of groups. They're defunct, they're very political, they're very high. You archeo n the real issues on the ground never really get addressed.

Terrell: 41:45 POWER: ORIGIN STORY: BUILD + SCHOOL CONSTRUCTION So I ​ ​ vowed not to join a group again because I have this cadre of groups. And she said, no, this is different. I said, okay. Yeah, everybody thinks different. So I would go to this meeting and I'm like, wow. Blew my mind. The energy blew my mind. The fact that there were white, Brown, black people, there was people talking about the issues that really mattered to me. And they were talking about them in a way that was different than the norm. And the norm was from this sort of victim, Vic, you know, we're victims. We're, we're pleading charity. That wasn't it. This was power. This was, we demand. This was, this is what we would do. This was less strategize about this person. This wasn't, you know, let us, Ed was, I demand that you do x. And I'm like, Whoa, I like this. So I wouldn't join and luck would have it.

Terrell: 42:55 POWER: ORIGIN STORY + SCHOOL CONSTRUCTION Or fate. What ​ ​ happened that the first group, I mean the first issue I would take up is school construction. And it was where we were talking about building an equity fund where the city would put in a certain amount of dollars and the state would put in money so that we can rebuild every single school in Baltimore city. And that just filled me. I got so energized and everybody saw the energy that, uh, the lead organize put me in the lead of trying to push the political machine to give the cities part. And I tell you that day of 500 people in the audience and me standing on the stage and 14 council people and all saying yes. And one of the main ones

80 saying no, and me, US pushing him. And the next day it's out of committee and we built our sixth or seventh school and we got 15 more to built.

Terrell: 43:57 POWER: ORIGIN STORY: NOW WORKING WITH PARENTS IN TAT ​ ​ It just did something to my soul and for me, I said, I have to do this. And the lead organizer will walk up to me and say, we want to hire you. And I'm like, wow, are you sure? It's like, yeah. And so for the next seven years, and that was in 2011 and this has been a heck of a journey and this is the only place I've ever been where, although it's been a struggle to get to the place where I feel like there is nothing that we can't undo together. There's nothing we can't build togetherThere's nothing we can't change because I understand that change doesn't happen with individuals. It happens with people, it happens with institutions, it happens when we come together around a central focus and work on it. We let Leslie and understanding that it doesn't happen overnight, you gotta stay in it for the long term game and to just understand it. I mean, I didn't know that it was possible to have a Dorothy Hyatt elementary brand new 21st century school or Fort Worthington Elementary, 21st century school. That little black kids will be walking into if they wow. Walk in and just see the future that the lights are bright, but the room smells like flowers and the seats are beautiful in their glass. You can see through an a window you can open and the air, you can feel, ah, I'm like, count me in, and now we're dealing with their parents and turnaround Tuesday.

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Appendix B

Higher Purpose on Baltimore’s Local National Public Radio (NPR) Station

https://www.wypr.org/programs/higher-purpose

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Appendix C

Higher Purpose, a Visual Portrait

https://youtu.be/WLxl8OqEHRI

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Appendix D

Communications for December 3rd

Activity Asset Notes

Week of 11/11 Personalized invite to Email template with PBS Remember to track action VIP reception link, event invite in google sheet

Week of 11/18 Personalized follow-up Three new versions of CHV to draft 3 templates invite to each person personalized email template and subject lines. divided into three groups and subject line, link to first – yeses, no’s, no replies + second episode of Higher Remember to track action Purpose in google sheet

Week of 11/25 11/26 “This Tuesday like Forward email from week Short week (if needed . . . ) every Tuesday” photo before + new subject line and email to targeted no Can TAT get a fresh replies Email all no’s and yeses with media story for next blast reminder week’s email?

Confirm speakers

Remember to track action in google sheet

12/2 We’re getting excited, Email templates “Ron Remember to track action reminder and sorry to Daniels, Ron Peterson, Matt in google sheet miss you emails Gallagher, Redonda Miller, Susan Hussey will be there, will you? / and so will you / sorry you’ll miss it media asset and/or third ​ ​ episode of Higher Purpose (?)

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12/4 Thanks for coming, sorry Email with visual and Set target $ amounts we missed you email and personalized ask for a reminder about 12/10 meeting or visit to TAT and CHV draft two templates open house news clips TAT/CHV to determine Video Tuesdays and program Glossy brochure elements Invite to Last Tuesday open house Remember to track action in google sheet

Week of 12/9 Follow-up email Email with third (+ fourth?) Remember to track action episode of Higher Purpose in google sheet and personalized ask for money or a meeting and news clips; sorry you couldn’t come to open house

Week of 12/16 End of year appeal emails Remember to track action in google sheet

Week of 12/23 Still time to give Remember to track action in google sheet

Attending:

Subject line: So glad you’ll be joining us next Tuesday!

Email language:

Hi XXX,

Today like every Tuesday hundreds of folks came together (see photo) to get training, find jobs, celebrate victories and build a movement to turn Baltimore around. On the 3rd of December, a week from today, we will come together at our VIP reception for Turnaround th Tuesday’s 5 ​ anniversary celebration at 5:45pm (doors open at 5:30pm and program beings ​ at 5:45) the Parkway Theatre. We are excited that you will be joining us and trust that it will be a very special evening.

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I hope you enjoy a quiet few days with your family celebrating Thanksgiving and taking time to remember how very much we all have to be thankful for. In advance of our time together, we wanted to be sure you have received the pre-release version of our first two podcast episodes telling the TAT story on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Curious to hear your ​ ​ ​ ​ rd reactions when we are together on the 3 ​ and thanks for your commitment to TAT. ​

Best, XXX

Not Attending:

Subject line: Today like every Tuesday . . .

Email language:

Hi XXX,

I know that you won’t be able to join us at the VIP reception at Turnaround Tuesday’s 5th ​ anniversary celebration next week. While I'm sorry you won’t be there next Tuesday I did want to share that today, like every Tuesday, hundreds of folks came together (see photo) to get training, find jobs, celebrate victories and build a movement to turn Baltimore around.

I wanted to be sure you have received the pre-release version of our first two podcast episodes telling the TAT story on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Curious to hear your ​ ​ ​ ​ reactions and thanks for your commitment to TAT.

We hope you will join us at one of our upcoming open house events and we will be back in touch about that in early December.

I hope you enjoy a quiet few days with your family celebrating Thanksgiving and taking time to remember how very much we all have to be thankful for.

Best, XXX

No Response:

Subject line:

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Today like every Tuesday . . .

Email language:

Hi XXX,

I don’t think we have heard back from you about whether you will be able to join us on th December 3rd at the VIP reception at Turnaround Tuesday’s 5 ​ anniversary celebration. I ​ still hope you can make it next Tuesday (doors open at 5:30pm and program beings at 5:45) and in the meantime I did want to share that today, like every Tuesday, hundreds of folks came together (see photo) to get training, find jobs, celebrate victories and build a movement to turn Baltimore around.

I also wanted to be sure you have received the pre-release version of our first two podcast episodes telling the Turnaround Tuesday story on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Curious to ​ ​ ​ ​ hear your reactions and thanks for your commitment to Turnaround Tuesday.

If we don’t see you next week, I hope you will join us at one of our upcoming open house events and we will be back in touch about that in early December.

I hope you enjoy a quiet few days with your family celebrating Thanksgiving and taking time to remember how very much we all have to be thankful for.

Best, XXX

Appendix 5 - Communications for Radcliffe Seminar

Dear all,

I look forward to welcoming you to the Radcliffe Institute this Friday, January 31, for the BUILD Seminar. I write with a few reminders:

Welcome dinner timing and location:

A welcome dinner will be held in the Berkeley Room at Nubar at the Sheraton Commander, ​ ​ ​ ​ 16 Garden Street, Cambridge on Thursday, January 30. Dinner begins promptly at 6:30 PM with introductions, and Dr. Cornell William Brooks will begin his talk at 7:00 PM. ​ ​ ​ Additional special guests at dinner include Janelle Ridley, Director of Strategic Initiatives in the Boston Mayor’s Office, and Beverly Williams and Taymullah Abdur-Rahman from the

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Greater Boston Interfaith Organization. Confirmed attendees for dinner are: T. Anderson, P. Bain, C. Finney, M. Gallagher, S. Greer, B. Johnson, D. Ledyard, N. McCann, Y. Mumby, J. Perkins-Cohen, K. Stern, T. Williams, A. Wilson, M. Wilson, D. Winston Callard. Please let me know as soon as possible if your plans have changed.

Seminar timing and location:

The seminar begins on Friday, January 31, at 9:05 AM with a continental breakfast available beginning at 8:30 AM. The full seminar agenda is attached. There are two guest speakers in the seminar schedule - Dr. Kaia Stern and Professor Greg Gunn. ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ Seminar location:

Sheerr Room, Fay House

Radcliffe Yard

10 Garden Street

Cambridge, MA 02138

Please feel free to contact me with any logistical questions that you may have. If you have content related questions, please contact Yasmene Mumby, cc’d on this message. For more background on Turnaround Tuesday and their 5 year history, please listen to episode 2 of ​ ​ ​ ​ Higher Purpose, the audio documentary about Turnaround Tuesday and their work in ​ Baltimore. The link is here, too: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/episode-2-power/id1486281785?i=1000456532581

Warm regards,

Amy

Amy Montilli

Assistant Director of Events

Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study|Harvard University ​ ​

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10 Garden Street, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138

Office: 617-496-2613|Mobile: 857-225-8402 ​ ​ ​ ​ [email protected] www.radcliffe.harvard.edu

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Appendix E

Agenda for BUILD: Turnaround Tuesday Seminar at Radcliffe

BUILD Seminar January 30 – January 31, 2020

Agenda

Friday, January 31 Sheerr Room, Fay House (10 Garden Street, Cambridge ​)

8:30-9:00 Continental Breakfast (onsite)

9:05 AM Welcome Kristen Kravet, Radcliffe Institute

9:10 AM Framing & Introductions Yasmene Mumby, Harvard Graduate School of Education

9:25 AM Higher Purpose, A Visual Portrait of the Jobs Movement Turning Around Baltimore

9:35 AM Pair Share Reactions

9:45 AM Turnaround Tuesday Presentation Melvin Wilson, Co-Director Terrell Williams, Co-Director Cheryl Finney, Chief Strategy Officer Shunbrika Johnson, Director of Operations Thomas Anderson, Project Organizer

10:45 AM Checking in Terrell Williams

11:05 AM Break

11:15 AM Small Group Breakouts on Key Challenges Cheryl Finney

Grp 1: Growing employer relationships to grow opportunities for Quality Jobs

Grp 2: Revenue Generation

12:00 PM Report Out- Highlights Melvin Wilson

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12:15 PM LUNCH (onsite)

12:40 PM Reconvene Yasmene Mumby

12:45 PM Turnaround Tuesday as Transformative Justice Dr. Kaia Stern, Radcliffe Institute

1:30 PM Discussion on Scaling and Sustaining Professor Greg Gunn, HGSE

2:15 PM Break

2:25 PM The Vision Terrell Williams

2:40 PM Reflection + Strategy Simon Greer Terrell Williams Small Group Breakouts: ​ Grp 1: Mediating Institutions Grp 2: Social Enterprise

3:25 PM Report Out – Next Steps Simon Greer

Terrell Williams

3:45 PM Acknowledgments Yasmene Mumby

3:50 PM Closing Thomas Anderson

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Appendix F

Johns Hopkins Magazine Alumni Profile