Mike Bernhardt is an award-winning writer whose work has appeared in many print and online publications including DIVE Magazine, Journey Beyond Travel, GeoEx Travel, and Hidden Compass. He’s also the editor of “Voices of the Grieving Heart,” an anthology of grief poetry. His new short story for Hidden Compass, “The Tides of War,” explores his search for what happened to his wife’s grandparents during World War II.
Hear Mike discuss:
1. The motivation behind writing “The Tides of War”.
2. The challenges that he faced in researching and writing this story.
3. How can we learn from past mistakes and look at individuals, rather than their racial or ethnic affiliation, when determining who is a risk to public safety?
Too many of us don’t take an interest in our elders’ past and stories until it’s too late. History is far more interesting when viewed through the eyes of those who lived it. In times of war or conflict, societies tend to fear and even criminalize innocent people.
Robert Chelsea was born and raised in Los Angeles, CA where he lived and was educated as average black person, but became a Burn survivor, Amputee and Face Transplant Recipient. Hear his passion for advocacy in Transplant Technology and what caused him to advocate for the disabled diaspora.
Patrick Donaldson is a church Elder, husband and father. He has worked in the financial services industry for over 20 years, focusing on retirement benefits and financial literacy. In addition to his Bachelor of Science degree, he has a Masters of Human Resources, holds a Tennessee insurance license and is a FINRA Securities Registered Representative with Primerica Financial Services. He has volunteered his expertise to the Chattanooga community with hands-on education workshops at numerous local churches and recreation centers, as well as actively working with the Citizen Safety Coalition.
Kimberly Rollins is the wife of Pastor Donald Rollins Sr. of Chattanooga’s Born Again Christian Church. She worked for 23 years for the City of Chattanooga, acquiring the leadership skills that she taught co-workers and the women of her church. Then 7 years ago, she expanded her calling to help others by working in finance, helping as many people possible to accomplish their goals and dreams with the knowledge that she’s acquired over the years.
. What Financial Concepts do you teach?
2. What is your passion & motivations?
3. What do you do for fun?
We don’t always have the time we think we have (I have a personal story) 2 Get your affairs together while you have time
Name 3 issues that the audience should continue to discuss. 1. Transparency about where they are emotionally, spiritually, and financially. 2. What small consistent changes are they willing to make to be better? 3. Take the time and care to prepare for the inevitable.
Christopher Johnson is President of Global Financial Services at Pitney Bowes, where he manages the financing and lending businesses, as well as the consumer and merchant payments and risk management functions across the company. Christopher also holds leadership responsibility for Pitney Bowes Bank, a state chartered industrial loan company.
Hear Christopher discuss how this is the time to make changes to ensure inclusion in the future. The pandemic, super high inflation, and high interest rates are changing the dynamics of our economy. Economic prosperity will need leaders committed long term to their communities, customers and employees, including actionable DEI.
Difficulties accessing capital continues to mount for SMBs, but especially with Black and minority owned businesses. How can we make access to capital more equitable? Is this possible to achieve?
How do we use diversity to adjust to the changes in generations currently in the workplace and the growth of small businesses?
How can we begin increasing participation for minorities in industries like financial services? What’s one thing business leaders can implement today?
Daphne Jones serves on the Boards of three public companies—AMN Healthcare, the Barnes Group, and Masonite International—where she offers critical business savvy, cyber security expertise, and digital insights. Previously, she enjoyed a 30+-year corporate career at some of the world’s most recognizable companies, such as GE, Johnson & Johnson, IBM, and Hospira (now Pfizer).
Daphne has presented strategies to CEOs, boards of directors, and corporate officers, led global teams, and generated hundreds of millions of dollars of value. At GE Healthcare, she became the highest-ranking African American woman in GE IT. She was the first woman and person of color to report to the Chairman of the Board and CEO, shattering the glass ceiling at Hospira.
Daphne shares her insights and experiences in her book, “Win When They Say You Won’t,” launching in Fall 2022 from McGraw-Hill. It equips women leaders to take ownership of their careers and overcome critics to win.
Questions Daphne Jones will answer:
When you started your career as a secretary, did you ever imagine that you would someday become a CIO and a board member at major global companies?
Why did you title your book Win When They Say You Won’t?
What was the hardest part of rising up the ladder as a black woman in STEM.
Sandra M. Moore is managing director and chief impact officer at Advantage Capital. The firm focuses on high growth and high wage business investing in communities where access to investment capital has historically been hard to find.
Businesses in the United States owned by Black and Brown entrepreneurs typically begin with just one-third the capital of the typical White entrepreneur-owned startup, and as a result, receive far fewer investment dollars because they lack collateral. How can entrepreneurs of color gain greater access to capital and resources to grow and build their businesses, and ultimately have a greater impact on the local communities where they live. *What are the measurable outputs and outcomes of impact investing in businesses located in distressed areas, and how are we pushing the envelope of what’s possible to set the industry standard? *What is the power and potential of public-private partnerships that can help fund minority owned businesses that often lack equitable access to capital; how are we advancing the legislative landscape for local economic development?
The fact that minority-owned businesses traditionally face highly uneven access to investment capital, therefore start out with a significant disadvantage in many cases. *Through leveraging government incentives, there are alternative investment dollar alternatives for small businesses that lack collateral or are deemed higher risk because they are located in distressed or rural areas. *Impact investing in distressed and rural communities can have profound effects on people’s lives, including the creation of higher paying jobs, more wealth opportunities and benefits for workers, and career training.
Reverend Fred Davie is a Senior Advisor for Racial Equity at Interfaith America, where he executes programming with a primary focus on the intersection of race and religion. He is also a minister in the Presbytery of New York City, and recently served as the Executive Vice President at Union Theological Seminary.
Hear Rev. Davie address these vital questions:
Why does Interfaith America consider religious diversity a foundational American strength?
Why should religion be front and center in conversations about both diversity and social change?
How does religious diversity help build better institutions and a better civil society?
You will be inspired to engage in ongoing discussions of …
The need for a positive conversation about religious pluralism.
How our diversity conversation should be more focused on highlighting the contributions that America’s varied communities bring to our potluck nation rather than continually centering tension and oppression.
How religion is a force that inspires many and is a bridge of cooperation between our diversity and the largest contributor to our civil society.
Born prior to WWII Giselle Roeder spent her early life in the relatively tranquil setting of a rural village in Pomerania, the most eastern part of Germany ceded to Poland in 1945. The bloody trauma of the fighting between the advancing Russians and the retreating German army in her neighborhood meant that thousands of people, including her family became displaced persons. l
Giselle lived in 3 Germanys: 1) 10 years under Nazi rule, 2) 10 years under Communist restrictions and 3) 10 years in the capitalistic West Germany. Giselle learnt early not to talk about anything she heard at home. After the Russian invasion witness to rapes, gruesome acts of murder; evicted and part of the ‘wall to nowhere’ next to the Russian war machinery on their way to Berlin & Victory. Starving, sleeping under the stars, against all odds she grew up and always found a way to save herself and her family. Escaping East Germany, and in a way, also West Germany , she married an unknown pen friend from Canada.
Be inspired, especially given current events in Ukraine, by her determination to stay alive and her courage to tell the stories that nobody wants to talk about.
See Giselle’s website for her books::
“Healing with Water” – Kneipp Hydrotherapy at Home
“Sauna” – The Hottest Way to Good Health
“Forget Me Not” – Bouquet of Stories
“Ein Mensch von Gestern” – German Poems
“Flight into the Unknown” – Part 2 of “The Nine Lives of Gila”.
Deb Hunter is a USA Today best selling author, historian & podcaster. A former executive director of the World Chamber of Commerce, she is active in Atlanta’s British-American Business Council.
Her journey with the Cherokee Nation began in 2021 when she contacted them for permission to explore their history for a Civil War discussion. That lead to numerous conversations. They even scoured records to see if there were mentions of the English communicating with the Tribe in the 1600s. Deb could include that in their history on her All Things Tudor podcast.
The latest revelation by Secretary Deb Haaland of the Indian Boarding School Initiative is synergistic as the report includes a Cherokee School in Chattanooga TN – the Brainerd Mission – and Deb is originally from Chattanooga. Note: She worked with a historian from the Cherokee Nation to verify this information.
Andrew Feiler is a fifth generation Georgian. Having grown up Jewish in Savannah, he has been shaped by the rich complexities of the American South. Feiler has long been active in civic life. He has helped create over a dozen community initiatives, serves on multiple not-for-profit boards, and is an active advisor to numerous elected officials and political candidates. His art is an extension of his civic values.
Feiler’s photographs have been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Smithsonian, Architect, Preservation, The Forward as well as on CBS This Morning and NPR. His work has been displayed in galleries and museums including solo exhibitions at such venues as the National Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, International Civil Rights Center & Museum in Greensboro, NC, and Octagon Museum in Washington, D.C.
Andrew documents the history of the Rosenwald schools program which transformed education for African Americans in the first half of the twentieth century. The founders were Julius Rosenwald, born to Jewish immigrants, who rose to lead Sears, Roebuck & Company and Booker T. Washington , born into slavery, who became the founding principal of Tuskegee Institute. In 1912 the two men launched an ambitious program to partner with Black communities to build public schools for African American children. Andrew examines the role of education as the onramp to the American middle class as well as the past, present and future of the Black/Jewish progressive alliance.
Hear Andrew discuss:
What was most innovative about how Rosenwald and Washington structured the schoolhouse construction program?
What was the impact of the Rosenwald schools program?
How he developed his approach for telling this story visually.