 Thanks so much to all of you joining us for another episode of The Nonprofit Show. We start every episode by extending our sincerest appreciation and gratitude to each and every one of our presenting sponsors. You can see their logos right in front of you on the screen. I like to say that these companies, these sponsors, you know, they like Julia and they like me, but they love you, right? Like they love the work that you're doing. They love the missions, you know, that you have and hold close to your heart. So they're here to support you. They have certainly leaned in throughout this pandemic or pandemics, plural, and they're really here to support and elevate your causes. So please do check them out. Thanks so much to Julia Patrick, CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy for having this crazy grandiose idea last March. So we're coming up on almost our 300th episode. She said, would this be great, Jared, if we did this for like two weeks? I don't know, but I've been counting and it's way more than two weeks, Julia. Well, you know, the truth of it is, I kept saying, and we need two more weeks. Right, two more weeks. We just need another two more weeks. And then we had, I knew that we were in trouble when we had people like Katie Warnock who had been a guest in like the first week or two. And then we're like, hey, can we talk to you again? And then we were like pulling back in people that were, you know, in an interview. It's been great. The journey's been fun. Thanks for allowing me to serve alongside you. I'm Jared Ransom, also known as the non-profit nerd, CEO of the Raven Group. And we've had an action-packed week so far. It is Wednesday, that's right. I had to check because I still forget what day it is. And we've had a lot of amazing guests and I am even more so excited and honored and privileged to introduce Liz Brillsford, our guest for today. Liz is the president and CEO of World Affairs Council Dallas Fort Worth. Welcome, Liz, and thanks for joining us. Thank you so much, happy to be here. Okay, now I have to like break in and you have to witness that you two have known each other since you were little, little girls. Yes. The lives went apart and then we come back together. We grew up in a really small town outside of Columbia, South Carolina, have continued to follow one another's journey and professional careers on LinkedIn and other social media platforms. And so Liz, I would love for you to tell us because you were previously in DC and this position for you as president and CEO at World Affairs Council Dallas Fort Worth is new. So tell us about that. Well, first of all, thank you so much for having me on here. I am honored and thrilled to be here. And Jared, it's been a privilege to watch your career and keep up with you through the years you are a role model and an inspiration. And I really appreciate you. Also, congratulations on your show. I mean, to think about starting it two weeks or having it two weeks and then all of a sudden you're at 300 shows that's quite the accomplishment. So thank you. And I was checking out your website and of course preparation of this and the shows are phenomenal. So excellent work and kudos to both of you. I... Steve, Julia. Yeah, tie yourself on the back. So I am new to the Texas area. I used to be in the private sector years ago. My career has fanned private nonprofit and public but years ago I was in the private sector and I would come to visit clients here in Dallas and Houston every once in a while but still have never lived in Texas. And so I've had this role for two and a half months almost to the day. I started on February 15th which if any of you may remember a little bit in the news we were in Texas was just a little bit in the news with this winter storm. So that was my welcome to Texas. Not at all what I was thinking but anyway, it was memorable. I started off as president and CEO here but I am not unfamiliar with our mission and our network because I worked at the umbrella organization of our member network in Washington DC for a number of years. And so I was chief operating officer at the World Affairs Councils of America. It's a mouthful. And then found out about this role and got hired. And now I am here at the World Affairs Council of Dallas, Fort Worth. Wow. So that's really cool because you bring from, a lot of times we see leadership go from as I call it like the chapters to the mothership and not from the mothership to the chapter. So what an incredible view that you have and that you're bringing to this chapter. And that's really awesome. Yeah, thank you. It is an interesting viewpoint that I have because I was for a number of years at the umbrella in DC I really got to know this council here in Dallas. And honestly, Dallas is one of the best councils in the network. We're one of the most robust and we have one of the largest staffs and we do a lot of programs and excellent work in education and city protocol work with their international delegations. And then we also are a big participant in the international visitors leadership program. It's a state department program called IVLP. So our four programmatic areas of the council are wide and deep, but Dallas does a lot. And what being at the umbrella organization allowed me to do is see all of the work across the network. And we've got some phenomenal councils. And so yeah, I think I have a unique perspective. I think that helped me get this job actually was that insight that I'm able to bring. But yeah. Share with us, for those that aren't familiar with the councils, share the mission and the vision of this amazing program. Yeah, yeah. So our mission essentially is that we are educating and engaging our community and the nation, especially during the pandemic in all things international affairs. So we engage in domestic and international affairs. And we're really just work to educate. We're nonpartisan. We are not advocating policy. We're not running to Capitol Hill and DC to argue aside. We are essentially laying out the international issues for you and you make up your own minds. We don't specialize in a topic. We don't specialize in a geographical area. We are bringing all the international affairs to you and you make up your own mind. I've been a part of this in my own community. And from time to time, I've been asked to open our home or maybe work with another community member to provide like, and it sounds hokey, but like an American meal, like what we do at our home experience. And they're highly educated, fascinating human beings. But when you travel and you're just in a hotel room, you don't get to see what the inside of an American home looks like and one from our region. And it has been great over the years. I've been really privileged to do that. And particularly with one of the World Affairs Council members here. And so I have to recommend it. It is really a cool way to get involved in a bigger picture. But I'm really interested in asking this question about building outside support. It seems like, and Jared and I see this a lot. You know, it seems like we have trouble getting people to support things outside of our neighborhoods, our own little community, let alone across our borders. So there seems to be a reticence in that. How do you bridge that? Yeah, you know, first of all, thank you so much for participating in that. That sounds like our IV program, our international visitors program. That's part of the State Department. And honestly, Julia, that's one of the most favorite things that our leaders do when they come to visit here in the US. Now, obviously we've had to take that virtually in the last year due to the pandemic, but I am so happy you've been doing that. It is their favorite thing to do. I don't think it's hokey at all, but I think it's essential to their trip. And I know that they love spending time with you. So thank you for doing that. In terms of growing support, so I think that over the years, you know, our country has become more polarized. And we spread the word about international affairs, regardless of who is in leadership and who is in government. We are 100% nonpartisan. We're not bipartisan, we're nonpartisan. And so we lay out all the information. Now we've had a very interesting administration that took the position in recent years that America, the America first position. And so it was more of a struggle in recent years, but essentially what we're trying to do is to spread the word that the world is getting smaller, really. I mean, through digital connectivity and innovation, the world's not going away. And so you can't just stick your head in the sand and ignore it. We need to step back into the leadership role. It's our viewpoint that the US needs to step back into a leadership role around the world and you need to work with your allies and get things done and have a united front and really bring the world to your local community. And that's how you grow. That's how you have innovation. That's how you have partnerships and you have inclusivity. And so we are trying to bring the world to North Texas and we're trying to bring North Texas to the world. And I think that the more that you can be inclusive and talk about these issues on a broad level around the community and really bring up brand awareness and increase visibility of your organization, such as the World Affairs Council, that's how you really start to bring people into your realm and realize how important international affairs is because it's not going away. Yeah. Well, and this is really two words, right? Global citizenry. And really looking at how do we become aware and not just aware but to understand the wider world, right? And really our place in it. And I remember Liz when the whole like local focus really came to be. And I love it, right? Very much into my local community. But when I thought about this, because I'm gonna be honest, I didn't really know these two words, global citizenry until I was doing my due diligence for your episode today. But I always thought like, but I know what I do here today and what my family unit does here today impacts the greater world. And therefore I was calling myself a local globalist. Yeah. Yeah. So really moving into that and I had shared with you, I have a 10-year-old and so for me, it's also demonstrating this for our younger generations. And how might we demonstrate and model these behaviors maybe through having individuals come to our homes, hosting them. But there's so many other opportunities to really not only us as an adult to participate in this but to role model this for our younger generations to come. So talk to us about, if you will, the global citizenry and how you approach this in your community. Yeah. Well, look at the base of this at the core of our organization, we are a grassroots organization that is reaching to all parts of the community. And we really wanna broaden that support and appeal. But yes, I am a huge advocate of people-to-people exchange, heart-to-heart exchange. My career actually started in Japan in exchange program for the Japanese government. I loved every moment of that time and that is quite literally why I'm sitting in front of you right now today. It was a people-to-people exchange program. So yeah, that's why we participate in the IVLP program with the State Department, International Visitors Leadership Program. That's why we do our protocol work with the city of Dallas, which is helping bring international delegations into our North Texas area and also high-level officials and ambassadors. We bring them here when they come visit. That's why we do these things because we are trying to, on a grassroots level, change the lives of people one by one and bridge the gap in our world. And really, isn't that what it's about? It's about bridging the gap and understanding the other. And as we are in this polarized world more than ever, we have a hard time seeing and understanding the other. And that's what we're trying to bridge by this people-to-people exchange that I am so passionate about and that our staff and our board is so passionate about. So it's important. You have to do it on a grassroots level and you have to do it one by one, winning those hearts. You know, so we've already had some great comments. One of them comes from Chris and Chris writes, Dallas, WAC is great, meaningful, impactful programs. Made in China was fascinating. Thank you for being here today. Oh, thank you. Thank you, Chris. I am so happy you watched that. And actually that's a program that I wanted to bring up. I just thought that I would mention a few programs we've had recently. One of them is Made in China. We hosted an investigative journalist named Amelia Peng. She is fabulous. But she, so in 2012, there was a note that a Chinese person wrote basically an SOS note that he stuffed into a package of plastic gravestones that made it, made its way to a California Halloween decoration shop. A woman bought it, opened the package and she finds this SOS note from a Chinese man who was working to make these products for us here. And he was in a forced labor camp. Now- Oh my God, five chills had to tell. That's just insane. Wow. And it's incredible. And those things like that have happened, but Amelia Peng wrote a book about it based on her investigative journalism work and we hosted her to discuss this topic. And so it's just an example of how we don't specialize in a certain area or topic, we have everything. So there's Made in China, her book. Thank you again, Chris. Just last week, or we're on a new week. I still don't even know what day it is, but I'm just kidding. A few weeks ago, we hosted former speaker of the house, John Boehner. He was a Republican congressman from 2011 to 2012. As speaker, I hosted him just a few weeks ago and then just this past week, we hosted Fiona Hill. She is one of the world's most leading experts and scholars on Russia in Eastern Europe. She's phenomenal. She was a key, one of the biggest key witnesses in the Trump impeachment hearings in early 2020 and we just hosted her last week. And so as you can see, there is a wide variety of the type of topics that we have. Okay, so I'm like, this is just amazing. And I'm so interested to hear about this on a local level. Beth writes in local action, global influence. I mean, yeah, it's fascinating to know that you can be in a completely different part of our nation and doing these things and having impacts that are so astonishing. I wanna get to another one of your impacts that you're doing and Jared brought this up with mentoring and modeling for her child, but talk to us about your global young professionals network because this seems really like an interesting thing, passing the torch and kind of training up that next gen leadership. Yes, and thank you for this opportunity. I think all of us have been involved in a lot of organizations that it's really hard to reach the youth and how do you sustain your organization? How do you grow? How do you reach new members and new sectors in your community when it's so hard to reach the youth and how do you build a pipeline to bring them in to your organization? And so in 2004, we formed our global leaders program and it's really an educational program. And what we did that with that is one of the main things we did with that is to start our J-Wax as we call them or our junior world affairs councils. It's intended, yeah, and it's really cute. It's really cute. And let me tell you, Jared, I don't know what you were doing when we were at shape in high school, but this is not what I was doing. No, luckily not. No, these students are so impressive and they're involved. They are tuned into our world. And I just wish that I had been like that and that we had these types of opportunities when we were in high school. But in any case, we formed junior world affairs councils. It's really to help change their lives. But not only that, it's to help them become more globally aware, of course, but also to help us with the pipeline so that we can get them engaged down the road when they start to become adults. And so basically junior world affairs councils are formed by high school students. They're essentially chapters at a high school. You have to have a teacher host, but there are speaker programs that they go to every year. There are student led discussions, there's service projects, there's professional development, there's career days. There's academic world quest, which is actually was started by one of our councils in 2000, perhaps around by our Charlotte council and then our umbrella organization where I used to work took it over in 2003. And it's this really fun national, international affairs quiz bowl that we have every year. And so our students participate in that. And I must give the plug, we've just won the last eight out of 10 years on a national level. So we are thrilled about that. It's really exciting. But in any case, these students, if they go to any five programs out of the year, they get a global leadership certificate. That is something they can put in on their resume when they're applying for colleges. The JWAC in general is something that they can include in that. It's a wonderful experience for them. I just visited a student group a few weekends ago on a Saturday at one of our service events at a farm that helps underserved communities. They're making a real difference. They're our future. We have to invest in that. And another area that's hard for a lot of organizations to reach, as you know, I know, is that young professionals group that's 18 to 30 or 20 to 40 are somewhere around there. And so- Can you push it a little further? Can we do like mid 40s? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh boy. How many years ago did we go to high school together? I know. Don't answer that. Don't answer that. But in any case, so that's called our Meridian group. And they are, that has taken a hit in the pandemic, unfortunately, we are bringing it back now and we're really excited about it. But it's the same strategy and the same philosophy. We're trying to build a pipeline. We're trying to help the youth become more globally aware. And so we do service events and speaker programs and professional development career days. And in fact, tonight is our first program back after the pandemic. We are hosting Anne Drum of the American Promise. She will be talking about her nonprofit. She's actually the North Texas representative, but the nonprofit American Promise is a non-partisan organization that is trying to bring about the 28th amendment to our constitution to allow states some flexibility and the bandwidth to limit money and American politics. And so it's an important issue. And we're gonna be talking about that with our Meridian Young Professionals Group tonight. What a great conversation. And we joke and say, did we have this growing up? I don't believe we did. And if we did, I honestly didn't know about it. I don't know if you've been back in a while. Our hometown has definitely changed a lot. And I would be shocked if maybe something like this doesn't now exist, because I'm seeing, and again, I speak through all of this from the lens of my own child who's 10, but he is so connected. He's so curious and he's very tuned in to so many topics around the world. So really already demonstrating that global citizenry and looking at, and he's asking me questions, and he's asking me, can we watch this on TV? Can I know more? Can you help me find these answers? So that is so great, and I'm sure tonight's conversation will be a good one. I would love for us, Liz, you talked about really a little bit about that program kind of went away, took a hiatus during the pandemic. Obviously we've had a lot of impacts over COVID. And really right now, I do believe that people truly are craving connection. We are really at a pinnacle place in our society. People are looking forward to engaging again. People are looking forward to meaningful ways to connect. And so what has your organization done during the pandemic? And I always say pandemics, because I include so much other into that recently, but then moving forward, right? Like what have been the impacts? Yeah, what a, what a bizarre time for all of us. For say the least, right? We could talk hours just about that. But, you know, our world changed here last March as it did for so many organizations. I'll never forget March 13th. That was Friday. It was the last day in the office for us there in DC. And so we went remote and it really turned our world upside down here because we are an organization that convenes. We convene. We are trying to create opportunity for dialogue. And so when your main point is to educate and convene groups, what do you do? And so I think that I am incredibly proud of my staff who pivoted at the time of the pandemic. I was not here then, but I watched them as headquarters there in DC and I was in complete awe. Dallas, our world affairs council here had such a quick seamless pivot to virtual. What we are doing right now, but I'll tell you at the office there when you walk past our programs department, they've got all of these schedules and our speakers that we were flying in to speak to us in person. That's what we do. We never did virtual programs. And so COVID had a huge impact on us. We could not bring in international delegations. We do a lot of alluded to this, but we do city protocol work with the city of Dallas and other surrounding cities to bring in international delegations and high level government officials and presidents of countries. We're not able to do that. They're still not doing that. I don't know when that will begin again. That's really affected us. That's with the city. But for Fiona Hill, for example, we planned on having her in person. All the speakers last year, we had to cancel their travel. Our revenue definitely took a hit and our numbers look quite different from what they were in 2019. And we've just closed our fiscal year on March 31st. And yeah, they look different. So it was a huge impact. I am so proud of the work though, just watching them create our virtual platform and our workflow was pretty seamless. And I think it looks very polished and professional and that's just what we did. We started to convene online. In 2019, we had over 75 programs and that's not counting the educational programs. We had 30 of those and that was all in person. Now, last year, just to give you an idea of how we've pivoted to the world of virtual amongst the landscape of COVID, we had 85 programs in 2020 and 32 educational programs. So we didn't slow down, we strategized, we pulled together as a team, we made it work and quite frankly, I think that they're really professional and well done. So I just have to give kudos to the team. Yeah, great job, wonderful. Amazing. Well, you know, this has been great and I'd love that we were able to talk with you because I did believe and I know Jared and I talk about this so much that, you know, the more we can hear about what somebody else is doing and learn from them, especially during these pandemics where we've been hunkered down, it's really, it's just such a wonderful opportunity for us to move our missions forward. So here's Liz's information, World Affairs Council of Dallas, Fort Worth. You know, you've got to check this out for your community as part of the nonprofit landscape. It's just been fascinating, the people that I've had the opportunity to meet riveting and especially when you talk to people from other parts of the world about their NGO nonprofit work. It's so interesting to see how government is involved or not involved. So Liz, wow, this has been amazing. We want to thank everybody that's been with us, especially my co-host, Jared Ransom, the nonprofit nerd, my nonprofit nerd for sure. And without all of this, we wouldn't be able to be having these conversations. I want to thank really quickly, Mary Highland for having me on the most recent episode of Inspired Nonprofit Leadership. Check that out. And again, with our sponsors, this is why you are here on this journey with us so that we could have these amazing dialogues and we thank you very, very much. Wow, okay, Jared, you are the woman of wonderlust. Doesn't this make you want to travel even more? Oh yeah, yeah. And in fact, like my social media profiles will say, you know, I'm an amazing mom. I don't use that word. I use another word that I can't say on air and a wonderlustle, right? And so I really do believe so much in our holistic world and this global citizenry. So I am adding that into the vernacular as I raise my son as well as, you know, to be a good steward of philanthropy. So thank you, Liz, for being here and joining us for the show. Have a feeling we're gonna talk a little bit more with you later. I want to thank all of you for joining us for this amazing conversation. And as we end every show, we ask that you stay well so you can do well. Thanks so much and we'll see you tomorrow.