Greetings Glocal Citizens!

In this two-part conversation, Natasha Johnson, shares her impressive experience in both the nonprofit and academic sectors. For over two decades, she has been an activist, educator, lawyer, and artist working primarily on intersectional gender justice. She served as the executive director of several nonprofit organizations, as an anti-trafficking legal specialist drafting reform legislation in the Solomon Islands, and as a director of education working to support homeless LGBTQ youth. She is skilled at creating arts-based programming that integrates human rights and social justice awareness in elementary through graduate school environments. She has also taught courses in law, ethics, policy, civic engagement, education, nonprofit leadership, business development, and more. in her scholarly roles, she has been a professor and a director of academic programs at multiple colleges and universities, including Metropolitan College, St. Joseph’s College, Adelphi University, and Medgar Evers College.

In 2015, she founded Globalizing Gender, a nonprofit organization committed to creating a just world and preventing gender-based violence through capacity building, law, governance, and awareness. In 2018, she organized New York City’s inaugural march to end female genital mutilation and cutting (FGM/C) in the United States and was one of the lead contributors to a local statute that created a mayoral-appointed culturally aware task force on FGM/C, the first of its kind in the country.

After years of selfless work in diverse communities across the globe, Natasha is at an inflection point in her career and we’re fortunate to get a glimpse of how she’s approaching finding and settling into a new next.

Where to find Natasha?
On LinkedIn
On Instagram
On Facebook
Her TEDxFlatbush Talk on YouTube

What’s Natasha reading?
All the Sinners Bleed by S.A. Cosby
The Revelation of Dionne Daphne by Mara Brock Akil
Delicious Foods by James Hannaham

Other topics of interest:
About Flatbush, Brooklyn
About Brooklyn’s oldest High School - Boys and Girls High School
About the Solomon Islands
Melanesian, Polynesian and Micronesian peoples of the Pacific
Revist Glocal Citizen, Brigitte Perenyi’s own personal experience in the trokosi system
What defines Gender-based Violence?
What is FGM/C?
What is a B-Corp?
About Tower Records

Special Guest: Natasha R. Johnson.

Greetings Glocal Citizens!

In this two-part conversation, Natasha Johnson, shares her impressive experience in both the nonprofit and academic sectors. For over two decades, she has been an activist, educator, lawyer, and artist working primarily on intersectional gender justice. She served as the executive director of several nonprofit organizations, as an anti-trafficking legal specialist drafting reform legislation in the Solomon Islands, and as a director of education working to support homeless LGBTQ youth. She is skilled at creating arts-based programming that integrates human rights and social justice awareness in elementary through graduate school environments. She has also taught courses in law, ethics, policy, civic engagement, education, nonprofit leadership, business development, and more. in her scholarly roles, she has been a professor and a director of academic programs at multiple colleges and universities, including Metropolitan College, St. Joseph’s College, Adelphi University, and Medgar Evers College.

In 2015, she founded Globalizing Gender, a nonprofit organization committed to creating a just world and preventing gender-based violence through capacity building, law, governance, and awareness. In 2018, she organized New York City’s inaugural march to end female genital mutilation and cutting (FGM/C) in the United States and was one of the lead contributors to a local statute that created a mayoral-appointed culturally aware task force on FGM/C, the first of its kind in the country.

After years of selfless work in diverse communities across the globe, Natasha is at an inflection point in her career and we’re fortunate to get a glimpse of how she’s approaching finding and settling into a new next.

Where to find Natasha?
On LinkedIn
On Instagram
On Facebook
Her TEDxFlatbush Talk on YouTube

What’s Natasha reading?
All the Sinners Bleed by S.A. Cosby
The Revelation of Dionne Daphne by Mara Brock Akil
Delicious Foods by James Hannaham

Other topics of interest:
About Flatbush, Brooklyn
About Brooklyn’s oldest High School - Boys and Girls High School
About the Solomon Islands
Melanesian, Polynesian and Micronesian peoples of the Pacific
Revist Glocal Citizen, Brigitte Perenyi’s own personal experience in the trokosi system
What defines Gender-based Violence?
What is FGM/C?
What is a B-Corp?
About Tower Records

Special Guest: Natasha R. Johnson.

Greetings Glocal Citizens!

This week’s encore episode revisits a conversation with a fellow teammate and black woman in real estate, motivational speaker, 5-time Olympian representing the Bahamas, and #ChocolateCardinal, Jacqueline "Jackie" Edwards-Flowers.

As an adjunct to our collaboration with Black Women in Real Estate, which, so far taken us from London, via Nigeria and Barbados, to The South Bronx in the United States. Keeping local in the US, we’re traveling across the country from New York to California, via the Bahamas (and Jamaica) where we get into real estate from the value-added perspective. With a professional background spanning competitive sports, personal training, entrepreneurship--she founded a compressions socks company, and event planning, Jackie’s path in real estate is grounded in the know how and passion to apply her marketing, design and project management skills in getting to “Sold!”

Be sure to continue following our #BorderlessBuilding series, back next month, with another scaffolding conversation and Pan-African women’s real estate story (pun in tended 😉).

Where to find Jackie?
Gold Medal Home Staging and Design
On LinkedIn
On Instagram
On Facebook
On Thumbtack
On Wikipedia

What's Jackie watching?
HGTV
The Bachelorette
The Bachelor
The Real Housewives of Atlanta

What's Jackie reading?
Crushing: God Turns Pressure into Power by T.D. Jakes

Other topics of interest:
Thomas Robinson Stadium
Frank Rutherford
Jackie Joyner-Kersee
Brooks Johnson
Mike Powell
Meet Dr. Ross Flowers
Altra Running Shoes

Special Guest: Jacqueline "Jackie" Edwards-Flowers.

Greetings Glocal Citizens!

This week on the podcast we’re getting to know Robert “Rob” North, a U.S. Marine Veteran, All–American, lovable off-the-wall, skilled carpenter that has truly carved out a niche for himself. Born and raised on Chicago's South Side, Rob inviites us through getting to know his story of becoming a Marine, to a TV personality, and an all-around global builder.
Taking the world of DIY by storm and making home improvement affordable and accessible to all, in his projects Rob breaks down home repairs and improvement, inspiring his audience to follow his motto, “If you can’t find a way, make a way!” Teaching his audience how to make that way, Rob has built a large television and online following as a finish carpenter on HGTV’s Designed to Sell, as a Co-host on Frank Fontana’s Down and Dirty, Co-host on Reality Series Skrew’d, as well as spokesman and DIY Guru for Craftsman.

He is currently featured as one of the main hosts of the popular BYU TV humaniitarian travel show, The Fixers – think Habitat for Humanity meets IShowSpeed. In each episode he goes around the world helping non-profit organizations improve their work to help others. From the Kingston’s Inner City Streets to a remote riverside village in Ghana, Rob and The Fixers are making the world a better place one project at a time.

Listen, learn and discover how Rob’s diverse experiences and investments shape his approach to life, work, and making a difference worldwide.

Where to find Rob?
@ Ron North on TV
On The Fixers
Seed & Stone Builders
On LinkedIn
On Instagram
On Facebook

What’s Rob listening to?
Theater for the Mind Podcast

Other topics of interest:
Native American an and Irish interactions in American History
GI Joe the cartoon series
BCII Productions
About Hempcrete
Check out Mrs. North aka Cissa Paz Music and @Aurora Planning
About the Mackinac Sailing Event
Fun Facts about Lake Michigan
What exactly is a Square Wave?
Black Americans and Bow Hunting Traditions

With the tragic landslide and flooding in Nepal, it’s heartbreaking to think about how already limited resources are impacting those with longstanding needs for assistance. As Rob mentioned in the conversation, he is about a third of the way to raising the funds to support his apprentice with the lifesaving procedure for his niece. Check out Rob’s appeal and the GoFundMe he started to help this family in need.

Special Guest: Rob North.

Greetings Glocal Citizens!

Back in 2013, a spark of inspiration gave light to an initiative that I went on to recruit a handful of friends to join in on the Flirt with the World’s Million Condom Giveaway at locations across Accra on World AIDS Day 2013. As part of our local press tour, I visited a local radio station, 107.9 YFM where I met htis week’s guest Amma Boakye-Danquah--shout out to her co-host, fellow Glocal Citizen,Emmanuel Gamor.

Amma, like me was a fres arrival in Ghana and over the years has expanded her professional portfolio in all manner of dimensions. As a strategic advisor and innovation leader with over 16 years of experience shaping education systems, youth leadership, and adaptive learning across West Africa, she has led multimillion-dollar initiatives at USAID , including the $22M Young African Leaders Initiative (YALI) Regional Leadership Center and the development of the West Africa Learning and Knowledge (WALK) Agenda, helping institutions turn data into action and policy into practice. Known for building unlikely partnerships across government, philanthropy, media, and the private sector, Her work sits at the intersection of systems change, evidence-based strategy, and inclusive leadership. Her career spans collaborations with organizations such as the Mastercard Foundation, Microsoft , and regional bodies including ECOWAS. She currently serves as the Associate Director of Imperial Global Ghana , where she bridges world-class research and practical market applications by fostering strategic partnerships among researchers, entrepreneurs, and policymakers across the public, private, and third sectors. Rooted in a global perspective on urban policy, education, and development, qnd with foundational experience teaching middle school mathematics in under-resourced schools in Louisiana through Teach For America, beyond her academic and policy work, she is a passionate cultural convener bringing art, history, and community together.

Where to find Amma?

@ Imperial Global Ghana
On LinkedIn
On Substack

What’s Amma listening to?
The Our Ancestors Were Messy Podcast

What’s Amma reading?
Small Worlds

Other topics of interest:
Oyibi, Ghana
Labari Data
Homeschool Collective
On Indigeneering
Commonwealth Fellowship Programme
About Ghana’s National Science and Math Quiz
Post Hurricane Katrina School Takeovers in New Orleans

Special Guest: Amma Boakye-Danquah.

Greetings Glocal Citizens!

This week on the podcast we’re visiting points east, west, north and south with my guest who began his professional career as a graffiti artist on the streets of Houston, Texas in the late 1990s at the age of 16. By the 2000s, he had evolved into an acclaimed Primitive Abstract and Primitivism painter, a body of work he calls Living Dreams.

As you’ll here in the conversation, he does not sit down and plan his paintings. He dreams them. The images, the phrases, the poetry you see on his canvases come to him in a dream state, and he wakes up and puts them down exactly as he received them. The patterns behind them are sound itself, translated into color and shape. Look closely and you will find Mayan glyphs, Native American symbols, Egyptian and Sumerian script, alongside a language he invented entirely on his own.

His work has traveled as he has. From Houston to London, from Osaka to Miami, from Brooklyn to Bogotá and Cartagena, from Santo Domingo and points beyond. Wherever he lands, the questions in his art stay the same. Wealth against poverty. Integration against segregation. Power, and who gets to hold it.

He does not just make the work for commercial purposes, he gives it away. A significant share of every piece he sells goes straight back to the people he paints alongside, the ones working hard for very little, the ones the world calls poor.

He is, in his own words, the Dreamer and the Dream.

Where to find Wambo?
mwamba-salim-wilson.com

On Instagram
In Books

Other topics of interest:
[U.S. Armed Forces Sports]((https://armedforcessports.defense.gov)
On Abstract Expressionism and Neo Expressionist Artists
Living in Thailand
Visiting Sweden
Fun times @Six Flags
On the Columbian Art Scene

In case you’re curious about the studio tour, check out the video episode on YouTube.

Special Guest: Mwamba-Salim "Wambo" Wilson.