It might seem that a lot of the conversations that we had about privilege, land acknowledgements and racial politics have been forgotten, co-opted or pushed to the wayside since 2020, but that’s not entirely true. There are some people out there still working, thinking and trying to find valuable ways to create more equity in our modern world.

On this episode of Braver New Worlds, Nathan talks with writer, facilitator, and author Hilary Giovale about what it can look like for white descendants of American settlers to engage honestly with the history they inherited—and to move from shame and defensiveness toward healing, relationship, and repair.

Hilary’s own journey began when she discovered a family genealogy documenting her ancestors’ arrival from the Scottish Highlands in 1739, their receipt of land grants, and their ownership of enslaved people. She describes the discovery as a “life assignment” and traces how it led her into ancestral work, storytelling, grieving, questions of place, and eventually the writing of Becoming a Good Relative: Calling White Settlers Toward Truth, Healing, and Repair.

Our conversation explores the defensive reaction many people have when confronting painful history, important reframes for how to confront it, and the possibility of reconnecting to our place in history in the process.

Hilary shares her own advice towards making personal reparations, entering existing community work quietly and humbly, and growing these actions as practices so they can become less like individual acts and more like a way of life.

Nathan and Hilary also discuss reparative philanthropy, wealth redistribution, ancestral memory, and the possibility of learning from Indigenous leadership without becoming appropriative. Hilary closes with a hopeful observation: even when the political climate feels discouraging, a grassroots groundswell of people is continuing this work.

Links

• Guide to Making a Personal Reparations Plan
• Becoming a Good Relative book page
• Decolonizing Wealth Project
• Article about peak name change
• Website: https://www.goodrelative.com/
• Events: https://www.goodrelative.com/events
• Book: https://www.goodrelative.com/book
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hilarygiovaleauthor/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hilary.giovale/

Hilary Giovale is a writer, community organizer, facilitator, and white American settler who lives on Indigenous land in Flagstaff, Arizona. As an active reparationist, she seeks to follow Indigenous and Black leadership in support of human rights, environmental justice, and equitable futures. She is the author of the award-winning book Becoming a Good Relative: Calling White Settlers toward Truth, Healing, and Repair, now in its second edition. Learn more about Hilary’s work here: https://www.goodrelative.com/

What does it mean to act beyond the edge of our comfort when there is genuine risk involved?

And what does courage look like when the stakes are real, the systems around us are powerful, and the outcome isn't guaranteed?

For this episode we welcome Karim Bouris, Principal of Strategy and Advocacy at Mixte Communications. He joins Nathan for a wide-ranging conversation about storytelling, propaganda, media, identity, values-driven work, and the difficulty of staying engaged when the world gives us plenty of reasons to disengage.

That leads to a deeper conversation about the stories Western culture tells about individualism, success, and responsibility. Karim and Nathan explore how the idea that “the problem is you” can obscure the systems and structures surrounding us—and how collective forms of courage can be harder to recognize when we're accustomed to looking for individual heroes.

The conversation eventually moves into Karim's Palestinian and Lebanese identity and his advocacy work around Palestine, Israel, Lebanon, and media coverage of the conflict. Karim discusses the importance of language, the politics of naming, the distinction he draws between Zionism and Judaism, and what he sees as the consequences of applying different standards and terminology to different groups.

Throughout the conversation, the question isn't simply whether we should be more courageous. It's what conditions make courage possible—and what stories, communities, and practices can help us keep showing up even when we don't know how the story ends.

Karim Bouris is Principal of Strategy and Advocacy at Mixte Communications, a boutique communications firm that works with organizations focused on justice, health, and freedom. With more than 20 years in advocacy communications, Karim works at the intersection of strategy, storytelling, public relations, and social change.

Karim describes himself as 100% Palestinian, 100% Lebanese, and 100% American. His family history, experience as the child of refugees, and search for language to describe his own identity have deeply shaped his approach to advocacy and communications.

At Mixte, Karim and his colleagues work with organizations whose missions they believe in, including tribal nations, labor groups, housing advocates, and civic organizations. His work centers on helping people hear difficult messages, understand why they matter, and engage rather than tune out.

Links:
Mixte Communications — gomixte.com
Karim on LinkedIn — linkedin.com/in/karimbouris/
Karim on Instagram — instagram.com/karimbouris/
Karim's essay on Arab identity and the “Shami” framing — gomixte.com/blog/arab-identity-shami

What kind of world are we building through the way we move money?

It’s a question that gets at the heart of everything. Because unless we finance the world we want, we’re unlikely to get it.

This week Nathan is joined by Alexander “Brave Journey” Sterling. He is Co-Founder and CEO of Turtle Island Community Capital, a financial service organization working to build the monetary infrastructure for Indigenous communities to have greater agency over their own capital, rather than simply greater access to existing financial systems.

Alexander argues that capital is infrastructure. Communities need more than money: they need trust, relationships, knowledge, technical assistance, institutions, and long-term support that allow capital to actually work.

The conversation moves from fundraising and storytelling into much bigger questions about power, risk, philanthropy, Indigenous economic sovereignty, ecological stewardship, and what it means to finance a future that does not yet fully exist.

The conversation also examines why storytelling matters so much in fundraising. Alexander argues that what moves people is often not another quantitative metric but a story about how something became possible. Changing the stories funders encounter about Indigenous communities can therefore change not only perceptions, but where capital flows.

Alexander “Brave Journey” Sterling is Co-Founder and CEO of Turtle Island Community Capital, a Native-led financial institution building the capital infrastructure Indigenous communities need to shape their own futures. His work sits at the intersection of impact investing, community development, and national field building, advancing models that move power, resources, and decision-making closer to communities.

Alexander works across movements to strengthen relationships among investors, funders, CDFIs, and community leaders, championing a more relational and regenerative financial system rooted in sovereignty, reciprocity, shared prosperity, and long-term community resilience.

Links

Website: turtleislandcommunitycapital.org
LinkedIn: Turtle Island Community Capital
Instagram: @Turtleislandcc
Threads: @Turtleislandcc
Facebook: Turtle Island Community Capital

What if business wasn't primarily designed to maximize value for shareholders, but to help people, communities, and the planet flourish? Wild idea, right? But maybe it’s possible?

In this conversation, Abraham Chen, Executive Director of B Local San Diego, makes the case for rethinking the role of business in our society, and for questioning the economic assumptions we've come to treat as inevitable.

Abraham explains how the B Corp movement challenges shareholder capitalism by instead prioritizing how businesses treat workers, communities, customers, governance, and the planet. But he is also clear about B Corp's limitations. Certification isn't a silver bullet, and even mission-driven companies can eventually be pulled toward the pressures of the existing financial system. That leads to a deeper question: who owns a company, who controls its governance, and how can a business protect its purpose for generations?

Abraham describes B Corp as “the doula for the next economy”—a transitional movement helping people experiment with structures that could eventually produce a more regenerative and equitable economic system. We explore examples including Patagonia, Tony's Chocolonely, Mondragón's worker-owned cooperative system in northern Spain, and the emerging world of AI governance.

The conversation ultimately becomes aspirational too. We all have a limited amount of time on this planet. How do we want to spend it?

Abraham Chen is the Executive Director of B Local San Diego, a 501(c)(3) focused on economic systems change through the B Corp movement. His work centers on redefining business as a force for good and helping companies move toward models that benefit workers, communities, and the planet alongside financial stakeholders.

Connect with Abraham

Website: www.blocalsandiego.org

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/abraham-chen/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/blocalsandiego/

Company LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/company/b-local-san-diego

Linktree: https://linktr.ee/blocalsandiego

What does it actually mean for someone to belong?

For Daniel Aguirre, founder of Pueblo Collab, the answer goes beyond a workplace saying it values inclusion or creating a “sense of belonging.” Real belonging means not having to wonder whether you belong at all.

In this conversation, Daniel and Nathan explore what happens when organizations take an honest look at the difference between how they imagine their culture and how that culture is actually experienced by the people inside it. They talk about why some so-called diversity problems may really be problems of leadership and accountability; and why meaningful change often requires slowing down long enough to listen.

Daniel and Nathan also discuss power, disruption, leadership, mistakes, and the skills required to create change. Daniel argues that leadership and accountability are not traits some people are simply born with. They are skills—and people need room to stumble, learn, recognize harm, and actually change their behavior.

Daniel’s ultimate vision is a world where people can exist in their neighborhoods without worrying about whether the air, water, or environment is harming them—and where the next generation can imagine a hopeful, joyful future.

Daniel Aguirre (el/he) is a community-engagement and relationship-building strategist, organizational-change practitioner, and founder of Pueblo Collab. Through Pueblo, he helps organizations build genuinely inclusive cultures and authentic relationships with the communities they seek to partner with. His work focuses on the relational side of change: facilitating honest conversations about bias and equity and grounding partnerships in care, effective listening, reciprocity, and demonstrable accountability. He works across grassroots, science, research, and institutional settings, approaching inclusion as an ongoing practice rather than a box to check.

Website: pueblocollab.com

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/daniel101

Email: daniel@pueblocollab.com

EPISODE SUMMARY

Lindsay LaShell calls herself a ‘doula for the matriarchal economy’ — helping purpose-driven entrepreneurs move away from top-down, patriarchal, and extractive business practices into ones that are more equitable, regenerative, and abundant.

In this conversation, Lindsay and Nathan trace the difference between patriarchal and matriarchal values and get concrete on what this might look like when applied to business. This includes compensation models built on shared profit negotiation, a delegation framework built around clear "asker/doer" roles, and an honest look at why so many well-intentioned leaders are quietly afraid of power itself.

The conversation explores challenges and opportunities when it comes to efficiency, trust, idealism, and accountability. Toward the end, the conversation opens into Lindsay's other project, Buffalo Collective, and the emerging science of epigenetics: the idea that trauma can be inherited biologically.

This is a valuable conversation for anyone who feels like the business practices they inherited and find to be most prevalent in society just don’t quite make sense, and they are looking for affirmation that maybe a different way of approaching business might be worth considering.

ABOUT LINDSAY LASHELL

Lindsay LaShell's work explores what happens when business, finance, and leadership are rebuilt from relationship rather than extraction. After years inside impact finance and purpose-driven entrepreneurship, she began questioning systems built on scarcity, ownership, and performance — and searching for models grounded instead in regeneration, reciprocity, and human integration. Through ventures including Buffalo Collective, Lindsay is building new approaches to community, leadership, and regenerative finance that challenge the separation between who people are and how they lead.

LINKS

• Substack (MBA for the Matriarchy): https://mbaforthematriarchy.substack.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lindsaylashell/
• BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/lindsaydayton.bsky.social
• Buffalo Collective: https://buffalocollective.co

What if justice isn't what happens after someone is harmed—but what we build to prevent the harm in the first place?

This is the question at the heart of the conversation with civil rights attorney Rebecca Young.

She has spent approximately two decades practicing law, much of it in civil rights. She's also a former U.S. Army soldier, writer, and speaker whose talk Crayons Before Constitutions: Because Real Justice Doesn't Color Inside the Lines challenges some of our most basic assumptions about justice and the systems we've created to deliver it.

Rebecca argues that systems naturally optimize for efficiency. They categorize people, assign roles, eliminate friction, and remove unnecessary connections. That's often exactly what makes them function. But some of the things that look inefficient from a system's perspective may be precisely where creativity, connection, and possibility emerge.

Rebecca advocates for proactive justice and the conversation explores what that might mean for community care, workplace policies, politics, technology, AI, local businesses, the ways we value different kinds of work, and more.

The conversation isn't an argument against systems, technology, work, or ambition. It's an invitation to notice what they're costing us—and to remain human enough to challenge them when necessary.

Because perhaps building a braver new world doesn't require everyone to make the same contribution. It requires enough of us, working from different places, to keep pushing in the same direction.

LinkedIn:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/rebeccayoung52/

Talk:
Crayons Before Constitutions: Because Real Justice Doesn't Color Inside the Lines

About the Guest

Rebecca Young has spent much of her life serving and defending the institutions that shape our society.

As a soldier and later as a civil rights attorney, she dedicated more than two decades to protecting the principles of justice, equality, and democracy. She believes that the most transformative ideas often come from those willing to challenge convention, question assumptions, and color outside the lines.

Through her speaking and advocacy, Rebecca inspires audiences to embrace creativity as a force for social change and reminds us that a better future is something we create together.

What happens when a skeptic sits down with an energy healer—and instead of trying to prove or disprove the practice, they start asking what might be underneath it?

Alexis Piotrowski is an energy healing practitioner whose work focuses on helping people reconnect with themselves, their bodies, their awareness, and the world around them. In this conversation, Nathan expresses his skepticism but also asks his own questions surrounding energy work: What exactly is the “energy”? How do you know what's happening? Where does intuition end and projection begin? And what separates a responsible practitioner from someone who simply adopts the label of healer?

Alexis's answers lead somewhere more complicated than a simple argument for or against energy healing. She also argues that people can learn to notice patterns in their own bodies and behavior—and that this awareness can become a powerful part of changing those patterns.

The conversation eventually moves into entrepreneurship and the pressure to turn a calling into a full-time business. Alexis and Nathan discuss the privilege that comes with having money and resources to experiment, and the strange cultural expectation that a “real” entrepreneur should only do one thing. Alexis makes the case for what she calls a multidimensional hustle—building something meaningful while allowing yourself to have other jobs, identities, and sources of income.

This conversation is ultimately about a question much larger than any particular modality: How much more agency might we have over our lives if we learned to pay closer attention to ourselves? That goes for our spiritual and emotional selves, as well as our financial and professional selves.

Alexis Piotrowski is an energy healing practitioner whose work focuses on helping people reconnect with themselves, their awareness, and their environment. She works with people navigating physical, emotional, and major life transitions, and describes her approach as grounded and accessible even when the subject matter can feel mystical or “far out there.”

Alexis is also a certified massage therapist and previously worked in high-stress hospitality environments. Her path into energy work developed through meditation, Kundalini yoga, psychedelic experiences, massage work, and a growing awareness of what she describes as energetic patterns in the body.

Her goal is not to make clients dependent on her, but to help them develop greater awareness and agency in their own lives.

Connect with Alexis:

Website: Thousand Hand Healing
Instagram: @alexisenergyhealing
YouTube: @alexisenergyhealing

Publication note: Health-related outcomes discussed in the episode are Alexis's descriptions of her clients' experiences and her interpretation of her work; they should not be presented as established medical claims.