The Brief – January

JANUARY 2022 CONTENT Clean Slate The Forum featuring Author and Strategist Jeffrey Davis Announcing The Charlotte Center Festival of Ideas 5 Questions with Social Impact Champion Josh Jacobson, CEO, Next Stage A Word JULY 2021 Clean Slate With the approach of every new year, many of us relish the idea of getting a fresh start. It can feel like having a huge blank canvas before us where we can begin a masterpiece. In this instance, the art is our life. Resolutions are like pencils and brushes for sketching what we hope to bring about for ourselves. We all aspire to have a year to soar higher, go farther, be bolder, feel better, and get it right. The possibilities seem endless and exhilarating. But before you rush further into 2022, have you taken time to reflect on the past year? That is, to think deeply and carefully about the priorities you set and choices you made in 2021. Have you assessed your achievements and failures of the past year? Have you considered the health of your relationships with family, friends and colleagues or with yourself? The African principle Sankofa conveys the idea: It is not taboo to fetch what is at risk of being left behind. Quite literal when broken down in the Akan language, San (return), Ko (go), Fa (look, seek and take) asserts the imperative of our quest for knowledge, where we look back and engage in a critical examination in order to move forward with clarity and greater wisdom. So prior to taking a bold marker to planning out this year, take time to reflect on the past one. Celebrate your successes, both big and small. Take an account of your lessons learned, potential blind spots, harms, traumas and more. While the idea of a clean slate may be nice, conscience and memory render it less than ideal for progress. "Without reflection, we go blindly on our way, creating more unintended consequences, and failing to achieve anything useful.” — Margaret J. Wheatley American writer, speaker and management consultant Don't Miss Out On Wonder! Jeffrey Davis is an author and consultant to creative leaders and innovators around the nation. He has helped thousands of people advance their best, most meaningful ideas. Join us for this special event as Jeffrey explores the radical impact of wonder in our lives.  REGISTER TODAY! We envisioned a Festival of Ideas and we are thrilled to announce that it's happening! We are excited to announce that The Charlotte Center is hosting its first Festival of Ideas as part of Charlotte SHOUT! Our team is planning an interactive, collaborative, and inspiring weekend of events to further the flourishing of our city. Expect compelling speakers, discussions, ideation, and expressive arts. We hope you’ll join us April 8-10 in Uptown Charlotte! More information to come! 5 Questions • Josh Jacobson An interview with the Social Impact Champion and Chief Executive Officer at Next Stage BY VALAIDA FULLWOOD Josh Jacobson specializes in strategic positioning and tactical implementation, helping private sector companies and nonprofits develop the strategies and platforms necessary to advance their goals. Over the last 15 years, Josh has directly managed engagements with more than 250 organizations. His expertise is in business planning, strategic planning, social impact design, volunteer development, annual and capital fundraising, case strategy and succession planning. Before relocating to NC, Josh worked in NYC – first as Senior Officer at The Juilliard School where he worked on the $150 million Campaign for Juilliard, and later as a Senior Resource Development Director with Manhattan Theatre Club on Broadway. Today, Josh is active in the civic life of Charlotte and serves as Board Chair for Tosco Music, a Charlotte-based music nonprofit. When you reflect back, what’s one of the biggest influences that has shaped your path? That would be my roughly six years in New York City as a 20-something-year old. I call it my “master class” in social good. To spend time in New York City served as a sort of teaching hospital for young people, like me, working in any kind of nonprofit construct. You come into an organization and these luminary leaders—folks with Wikipedia articles written about their work in social impact—pour their knowledge into you.  Much of what shaped me and the path I’m on now occurred during my twenties in New York. I was an aimless young man with a head full of dreams, and what I learned there completely changed my life. You have worked in a variety of organizations, including a period at Julliard. How do the arts play into your life today? The arts will always be my first love. I found it by happenstance.  An upstairs neighbor told me about a role at the Cultural Council of Greater Jacksonville in Florida, which is like our Arts and Science Council. I hadn’t really pondered the arts until that point. I ended up making a big part of my early career focused in the arts Leaving New York for Charlotte, at the time, I actually thought, “If I don’t see any more theater for a while, I’ll be okay.” I had been seeing 40 to 50 shows a year as a professional up there, so taking a break was important. After getting some distance and broadening my focus onto different areas of social impact, I came to recognize the importance of creativity and the arts as a lens reflecting society back to us.  Contemporary theater, particularly, has a way of framing our times. I also have come to appreciate the artists in the community and the role of artists. Now as board chair of Tosco Music, a great organization founded in Charlotte, I have come to understand the important role musicians and music professionals play. I have a greater appreciation for how the arts are an absolute necessity to create great places to live. I didn't quite understand that  as well in my early career. I hadn’t lived long enough to place it in context. What’s your happy place and why? Hmmm…there are so many, but after this interview I’ll be drinking a glass of wine with my wife in front of the fire. Being with my wife and spending some time on a Friday evening just unwinding is certainly a happy place. I’m so lucky to have found someone in life who shares my passion and zeal for creating a great place to live and a place for prosperity for all, but also someone who understands how to unwind with me. We certainly appreciate a glass of wine by the fire, which sounds good especially on this cold and snowy day. One of your monikers is "Social Impact Champion.” What does being a champion for a cause or issue mean to you? Championing something is to be an advocate for it. I believe “advocacy” lives somewhere between activism and systems work—bridging between those who tend to be on either extreme. An activist typically is outside of the center or system, often encouraging a focus on that cause. Those in the system often are less inclined to want to address those who are not benefiting from the system. Advocates are those bridge-builders in between who straddle activism and the system. To champion is to recognize that you are trying to create change and progress by negotiating across both sides. Champions live in a practical reality while centering an ideal goal. Being a champion often aligns to leadership. These are some of the ways I believe champion and advocate are shared expressions. What’s your vision for Next Stage’s next stage of impact on Charlotte? We have been doing a lot of work recently to better articulate our theory of change. We help nonprofits define theories of change. Now that we’re working more with the private sector, we are helping those companies also define their theories of change, which is kind of a new concept for many private-sector companies. So as one, we are defining that. We are working in two areas. On one side, we ask: How are we realizing increases in all the capital—not just financial capital but also human capital, thought capital, trust capital, etc. in the Charlotte region? A big part of that is our work with private-sector companies to realize greater alignment to social impact. On the other side, we believe in the “the supply chain of social good,” which is how do resources get to the people they intend to serve. We have to think about that as a process of how are we engaging in trust-built networks that get us closer and closer to the people we’re trying to reach. The two sides of the coin for us now include: Generating sizably more resources to tackle the big things that are in front us, and then with those resources analyzing how are we smartly investing them and working to build new networks that activate those resources in community. Everything we do right now is either one or the other or both. It’s exciting to get to a place where we have such a defined theory of change for ourselves. Follow Josh! About The Charlotte Center WHERE THE CURIOUS ENGAGE FOR GOOD. Our mission is to help people and communities flourish. Flourishing is a peak state of well-being. It is all-encompassing: physical, mental, moral, spiritual, and social. At the heart of it is a strong sense of meaning, mastery, and mattering, in which all people are able to live into the best versions of themselves. The Charlotte Center accomplishes its mission by bringing curious people together to explore challenges and opportunities that affect human flourishing through the lens of the humanities and civic imagination. The humanities pose deep questions, help address complex and imperfect information, and provide critical and creative tools for problem-solving and the invention of new visions. Our programs deepen human connection and strengthen personal and civic agency. The more we know about ourselves, the wiser we are in what we do. Why must we gather? OUR FUTURE DEPENDS ON IT. DONATE NOW thecharlottecenter.org gratitude to our sponsors Thank you to all of our generous donors and sponsors that make our work possible.  A WORD Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.”  SØREN KIERKEGAARD Danish theologian, philosopher and poet   Spread the Word Please share this email with your friends, family, and colleagues who may want to join our journey of wondering, learning, and striving. Our Contact Information *The Charlotte Center for the Humanities, Inc. 620 N. Alexander Street Charlotte, NC 28202 704-807-3674 The Charlotte Center is a non-profit 501(c)3 organization. Word to the Wise is compiled and edited monthly by Valaida Fullwood Design by Goldenrod Design Co.