 Hello, I'm Eric Bustos, the Board Chair of the Future Forum. Welcome and thank you for joining our annual discussion on women in leadership. In LBJ's words, we are the doers of today and the builders of tomorrow. The Future Forum is an organization that brings together individuals with different backgrounds, experiences and points of view to have informed and bipartisan conversations about the issues affecting us today. Our events are made possible, though, by our members and sponsors. So if you're not a member, I strongly encourage you to sign up and learn more at lbjfutureforum.org. This fall, we'll have even more virtual programming and we look forward to sharing more about those events soon. But during today's program, we'll hear from five women and how they are leading through their pandemic and what they've learned during this time. I'm Raven Douglas. I am the political director at Move Texas. And right now, there's definitely, this is a new, normal and unprecedented time. But I'm really doing my best to kind of just roll with the punches, try to find the best out of each day and continue to move forward. In our team, we've always kind of worked remotely. We have team members in San Antonio and Dallas and Austin. I'm in Houston, and so kind of our face-to-face interaction hasn't necessarily changed. But one of the things that we have kind of set up at Move is that, you know, we're not just working from home, but we're trying to work in the middle of a global pandemic and being very sensitive to that. And so if a team member needs extra day, we give it to them. If they just need to talk through things, we've created spaces for that. Hi, my name is Emily Ramshaugh. I'm the co-founder and CEO of The 19th, a nonprofit newsroom at the intersection of gender politics and policy. We are launching The 19th this summer in the midst of both a global pandemic and what I hope is a modern-day civil rights movement. It has been extraordinarily difficult for a whole wide range of reasons, trying to get a brand new venture off the ground, hiring most of your staff via Zoom, navigating this really sort of tough politics and policy, really human moment, truly across the interwebs. So it's been an extraordinary time, an enormous challenge for a lot of us. My day-to-day right now looks like the life of anyone who's trying to launch a startup with a four-year-old at home with no childcare. So I am navigating, you know, parenting and trying to keep a kid away from me with a stiff arm when I'm on the phone or on the Zoom with donors or, you know, journalists on our team. I'm navigating the sort of rigmarole of getting a kid into some kind of childcare setting while I'm running to one of my colleagues' houses to sort of quarantine with her as we work to launch this venture. You know, I'm spending a ton of time navigating relationships and progress on our team via Zoom, really, via conversations on video conference, you know, ensuring that everybody is managing this moment as best they can, looking at mock-ups of our new website, of our newsletter, via shared screens, you know, really trying to navigate all of this in a highly unusual screen-focused lifestyle. Hi, my name is Kate Garza and I am the Director of Advocacy and External Affairs at Ascension Seed and Ascension Providence. And in the middle of the pandemic, we're feeling a little bit overwhelmed, but also see it as a great opportunity to step up to the challenge and an opportunity to serve our community. Every single day is a new challenge and opportunity. A key component of my job is problem-solving. And so our Ascension Mission calls on us to commit to serving all people with special attention to the poor and the vulnerable and to be advocates for a more compassionate and just society. I see each day as an opportunity to put our mission into action through service, through connecting people to resources and identifying opportunities for advocacy on behalf of our healthcare system and also our community. At the beginning of the pandemic, it was identifying resources that we needed in our hospitals and seeing if they were available in the community. It's also been helping the many, many generous members of our community who wanted to donate items and meals for our healthcare heroes in the hospitals. And then also, the part of my job is advocating for legislative and regulatory changes that help our healthcare heroes do their jobs every day and do them safely. Hi, my name is Karen Reines. I'm the Executive Director for NAMI Central Texas. And in the midst of everything going on these days and the impact of the pandemic, I think I'm like a lot of folks where life is sort of this roller coaster. I think certainly there are good days and then there are days that are a little more challenging. One of the things that I recognize is that a lot of people are talking about mental health in a far more proactive and positive way than I've ever seen before. People that ordinarily might not talk about mental health are talking about it. And because of the nature of the work that I do, I see this great opportunity to provide some new programming and opportunities for education and support for people in this time that's really critical. I'm Nicole Conley. I'm the Chief of Business and Operations for the Austin and Apprentice School District. Of course, I'm feeling with living in a state of flux with tons of uncertainty. It has a lot of us feeling angst about the future and what school looks like. So we're in a sort of constant state of planning for the unknown. Contingencies on top of contingencies. At the same time, trying to be a mom in homeschool while I'm working on Zoom up to 16 hours a day. So a little overwhelmed, uncertainty about the future, but very confident in our ability to deliver what's needed for our students and families in Austin. I have two middle school boys. And so in between those days, I'm checking on my kids, making sure that they're following up on their instruction, their online instruction. They're running in and out of the kitchen for food every day. Early on in COVID, my office was in the kitchen, so we could all kind of work together and I didn't have to be too far away from them to make sure that they were doing their online instruction. I try to get up during the Zooms because otherwise they're sitting all day. They always sit and now they say sitting is the new smoking. So it's been difficult to maintain healthy habits quite frankly unless you're sort of consciously doing so. So my day, unfortunately, is end-to-end Zoom meetings, trying to navigate online instruction for my kiddos in between and just trying to stand up every now and then. Now I've learned how to sort of take those coffee breaks on Zooms. I will say that my team, I feel like we feel more close than ever because we're kind of all in the same environment. I'm going through the same things. But we have really allowed space in the organization to give time as people have needed it. And so I really see my role, I think a big part of a leader is being the supporter. And so I really tap into that characteristic in my leadership to really ensure that my team has the things that they need not only professionally but also personally and immensely as well. I think most days I'm just barely keeping the wheels on, honestly. I mean, look, when I left the Texas Tribune in January to launch this new venture, I already was pretty risk-averse. It was a huge leap for me. And the reality that I've now taken this leap into an enormous unknown in the midst of a pandemic where nothing is the way it was before and all of the projections we had for what our revenue would look like, what our audience might look like, everything has shifted in the span of a few short months. So I'm extremely lucky to have support systems. I'm extremely lucky to have a husband who is an engaged dad and can divide the time with me. My parents live in Austin, Texas, so they can share the time. My sister and brother-in-law are here to help. You know, all of us are really just piecing this together. We just have day jobs. We spend a lot of time training spaces. And beyond just the basics of childcare, which is an enormous responsibility in the midst of trying to, you know, keep your income coming in the door, we're navigating the emotional stressors that play a role in this. I mean, it's, these are three-year-olds and five-year-olds who are asking questions about germs and when they're going to be able to see their friends and when they're going to be able to go back to the park. I think, you know, the emotional toll, the psychological toll this pandemic is taking on all of us, including the littlest among us, is an enormous responsibility we're shouldering right now in addition to just trying to keep the wheels on in our own professional lives. I'm not going to be shy. I'm going to be honest and say that it's really tough to manage. It's a lot of different things to worry about. If I wasn't worried before just about the district's finances, now I've got to worry about health conditions and safety and, you know, pandemic effects. And so I think what allows me to sort of, you know, not, you know, work and thrive in this kind of condition is the fact that there are some silver linings. There's some bright spots. It's made me realize that it's created innovation in my team. Like we're doing work differently. We're utilizing technology and tools that we probably would have never accessed before. So we're doing a lot more check-ins with each other. We're, you know, trying to do sort of care and center support. We're trying to avail more health services online or not to our staff so that they can sort of talk through these things. So, you know, I feel like our level of caring and responsiveness to each other, that social and emotional support has really brightened and sort of, it's beaming throughout this whole trauma of going through this pandemic. From other people, I think sincerely, the thing that I hear most frequently is just the immense amount of gratitude from the community for the really hard job our healthcare heroes have to do. There are so many people who want to help, whether it's providing resources and PPE or meals or helping families find childcare. It's been really incredible to see the diverse ways in which people are stepping up to say, can we please help? The other thing that I hear from people in the healthcare community is that things are changing really, really fast. You know, there's a lack of information out there and what you know today may be different this afternoon or tomorrow and so how important it is that people have access to good information, that they know that the healthcare system is safe, that if they need care that they're going and they're getting it when they need, that they're not afraid to access care. I've participated in the Council of Race e-Schools so I'm in conferring with superintendents and CFOs from Miami-Dade, New York, LA, all of us are sort of trying to muddle through the effects of the pandemic, not only just operationally in our schools in terms of what is school going to look like going forward, but the financial impact that it's had on the entire economy. We have to be more conscious about our decisions because we serve such a diverse range of students, economically, racially diverse, diversity in religion and languages. So for us, we just can't make these unilateral decisions because we have a much more heterogeneous student population, a family population and like Austin and like many districts across the state, Austin is the feeding program for our community. We know that sometimes our kids have to come to school to get meals so we've sustained our school feeding program throughout the entire pandemic. We serve families, adults, and other non-ISD students during this time. Other districts feel the same pressures. We're probably the largest food chain in the city of Austin right now. Without our support and supporting our community in this way, we wouldn't, our students and families, wouldn't have secured meals. And so we're offering meals, we're delivering hardware and Wi-Fi to students to make sure that they can access online instruction. You would be surprised the lack of internet access across many of these urban centers. You just sort of take it for granted that it exists. And so that can compromise students' abilities to access the learning. And we know that the most disproportionately, the students that are most disadvantaged are going to be the most disproportionately affected. And so we're worrying about that. And also being sort of an economic center, we're the largest employer in Austin. Many of our school district counterparts are in urban cities and they're large employers. But our private entities and businesses are waiting for us to make the call because parents need childcare. And so businesses don't even know if they can operate with their employees because they're grappling with the childcare issue, is school going to open? So there's these enormous pressures, like economic, providing childcare, making sure students don't continue to experience trauma. I'm worried about kids are probably at home by themselves, right? Because if there's no childcare, there's no schools. What we are hearing across the state from young people is one, there's kind of a lot of uncertainty around what's happening with school. So whether it's high school or a vocational school or a university, young people don't know where they're going to be on November 3rd and they don't know where they're going to vote. So it's super critical that we are really strengthening our vote by mail process to ensure that those young people can vote if they're not in the county by which they're registered in or they're out of state because their campus is doing online classes. And so Texas is only one of nine states that has not expanded vote by mail. And with those states there are restrictions around vote by mail. And so we are going to be working with elected officials, young people and community partners to really see if we can expand that by November because this is really a time where we should be trying to make voting as accessible and easy as possible while young people are worried about their job and the economy and their health and their school and their education. This is not a time where we should also be questioning our democracy. And so those are just kind of some of the things that we have been working on or paying attention to and what young people are telling us. One of the things that you're seeing is people, whether it's conscious or not, I think really creating the space for people to be vulnerable and open about what's really going on. Because I think so often, yes, we live in a culture in which somebody says, so how are you doing? And we say, I'm fine. And I think we're doing more of that. No, really, you know, what's going on or sometimes we don't even have to ask. People will just say, actually, yesterday was a really rough day, but I feel better today. And I think the reason for that is that we are having this very unique experience. We all know that if somebody says, yeah, yesterday was a rough day. The chances are it has something related to the fact that we're in the midst of this pandemic. Maybe it is that someone that they love and care for has lost a job or is suddenly ill or they're just super stressed because they're still working from home and feeling overwhelmed because the kids are in the other room and they don't feel like they're doing any of their roles very well. They don't feel like they're really the employee that they want to be and providing the kind of work that they're accustomed to, but they also don't feel like they're doing family life all that well. And so we all understand that we're all navigating that. I think this pandemic has really put added pressure on managers to ensure you're doing the human resources work you need to be doing to take good care of your team. The reality is the colleagues on my team are grappling with so much more right now than just trying to work and just getting their work product out the door. They are navigating small children with no childcare. They're navigating elderly parents who they're trying to keep healthy and out of the Costco so they don't get COVID. They are trying to navigate all of those additional challenges of working from home. But this moment is also exceedingly difficult for people who aren't navigating childcare, for people who live alone, for people who are managing the emotional toll of solitude. And so I think we have a responsibility as managers right now to be going the extra mile, to be ensuring we're taking care of the entire employee, not just focusing on the work product. We are trying to take care of the whole employee at the 19th by doing a whole lot of extra Zoom check-ins, by really requiring video FaceTime as much as we can versus just being on the phone. Even if you're still in your pajamas and you've got your dog or your cat or your kid on your lap, that's just great. I was on a call with one of our colleagues a couple days ago and she was sitting on her kitchen floor feeding her baby a bottle while we were having the work call and it was about the sweetest part of my day. We are hosting, you know, virtual happy hours every week where everybody comes and they bring their own coffee or their own cocktail and there's no work talk. It's just ice breakers. It's just the ability to sort of develop rapport and inside jokes in a non-work setting. So we are trying to go the extra mile right now, but I'd be lying if I said it was easy. Managing and meeting during the pandemic has really clarified for me or highlighted for me how important communication is, how important clear expectations, communication about challenges and regularly checking in with folks to see how they're doing. You know, before the pandemic, those things were all really important, but I would see all of my team members on a daily basis. That's not true anymore. One of the things our team has done is we start every day by meeting on Zoom and checking in not only about how are we doing with our work, but also how are we doing as human beings? How do people need a little time off, a little break? Is there a project that they're working on that they need a little extra support? Our home lives are permeating our work lives in more obvious ways than ever before. And as a result, I think we celebrate, engage, and empathize more over little things than ever did before. And in many ways, it's brought our own team closer together. Managing and leading during the pandemic requires me to be more thoughtful about both managing up to my leaders and my managers and managing the team that I'm a part of. Making sure that we are all working together towards the same common goal and asking for help or asking others if they need help more frequently. I think in my role as leader, one of the things that was really fundamental to me from the very beginning was to gather that team together. And that's sort of what we did was we, as soon as we knew that we were going to have to start working remotely, you know, we gather together. And what I said to the team at that time is this will be hard and there will be a lot of unknowns, but we're going to get through this together. And then as we made that transition to working remotely and again facing a lot of uncertainty, one of the things that we made a priority for ourselves as a team was to really make sure that we were doing personal check-ins with each other and really creating that space for people to be vulnerable about the things that they're working through and dealing with whether it's work-related or personal. And I think that that's really important because it's recognizing that we're people first before we're employees. You know, we're people who have our own needs, challenges, concerns, and in order for our staff to really be able to function well and to be able to do the work that they need to do, they have to be fully supported in who they are as people in their own human dignity. I definitely think that the way that my management has shifted is doing some more check-ins, you know, understanding that there are some things that we're going to have to be prioritized and, you know, everyone's not working 60 hours a week anymore and that's okay. And, you know, what does, you know, not everything is going to be five-star work all of the time, but what are some requirements that need to be included in that? And so I think that there's definitely been much more communication, much more transparency, and also an emphasis on just because we're sitting at home doesn't mean that you can't take PTO. And so I've required all of my teams to take PTO before August comes and the election. So, you know, it's really important and crucial to me that I'm supporting my team during this time. I think one of the things we have to recognize as leaders is that we have to walk the walk, right? I think I can talk about self-care and encourage that, but if I'm not doing it myself, then I haven't really modeled what it looks like. So I have to do that part myself. I know for myself it meant I really did take, even though it felt at times like, is this the best time for me to be taking two weeks off? And in spite of the fact that all I did was have a staycation because my vacation got canceled, I still kind of pivoted and said, look, I was supposed to do this in June. I'm going to do this in July now. And because I need that, I need to recharge my battery. We've been going and blowing quite a bit. And so that's one of the ways that I have to do that is to model that and to some weeks say, hey, you know what, it's been a really rough week. I've been putting in some long days. Friday I'm flexing my time and I'm just taking the afternoon off. Who else needs to do that? And so really not just encouraging, but creating the space for it. The best way to sort of cope with COVID-19 is, one, I look forward to my, I have a group of college friends and we have a virtual happy hour. And that virtual happy hour is something that I look forward to at the end of the week. And then every day I spend at least 10 minutes just looking at myself in the mirror and naming everything that's great about me. You know, I had this tendency of like looking, you know, you look at yourself in the mirror, you say, oh, this could be done. I'm a little too chubby here. Oh, why was I so dumb? I didn't do that. Why did I think of it then? I've totally tried to get into this discipline of looking at myself and saying everything that's right about me and everything that I did right and how I'm going to do better the next day. So that 10 minute exercise, along with my virtual happy hour, has saved my bacon through this pandemic. I am a terrible coper. So I am probably the wrong person to ask about great strategies to calm yourself down. But I think the one that's most effective for me first off is I truly get offline between five and eight p.m. every single day and try to give my child that complete one-on-one, two-on-one attention that she doesn't get the rest of the day when we're all distracted and scattered and leaning heavily on the iPad and the TV to get by. I also, every single night, I try to stop the doom scrolling on Twitter that is a very common occurrence between 11 p.m. and midnight. And instead, I take a big sniff of some lavender and I do a crossword puzzle. That's my self-care. The best thing that I have found to cope with everything is to try and spend a little bit of time outside every day, whether it's with my kids to play or to take a walk around the neighborhood after they're in bed. We also started a garden at the very beginning of the pandemic. And I love that it kind of requires me to go outside every day to check and see how things are doing. My kids love to see the things that we're growing into harvest, the vegetables and things that we have out there. And then it's also helped them eat things that I don't think they would have normally. My three-year-old now loves cherry tomatoes and I'm not sure that ever would have happened before. I've tried a lot of different things. So I've done painting and coloring books and things like that. But I think what has really worked for me the most is one, really keeping a schedule. So, you know, going out to bed at the same time every day, waking up at the same time, making sure I actually get dressed, making sure that I eat breakfast every morning. That has been super helpful for me. I mean, I've also got to say that I have been outside more in the past four months than I have ever been probably since I was a kid. And so it's been really great for me to rediscover, you know, the parks and trails that are here in Houston. And so that has been really, really great. And I think it's really important for me to be a part of this project after this pandemic. This is incredibly difficult and it's hard for all of us for a variety of reasons. Whether you're like me and you're at home working full-time with two little ones and everything seems to be a demand on your time and attention or you're at home by yourself and you're not being able to socialize with your friends and families the way you did. And so be kind, be kind to yourself, be kind to others. And then if you need help, ask for it. Somehow I think we've come to a great success in leadership with not needing anyone. But the reality is we all need help sometimes and really good leaders and managers know that and are willing to ask for help when they do. So ask for help. Ask others if they need help and be kind to them. Sometimes it feels impossible to carve out space for ourselves. It seems like there isn't enough time or hours in a day to do the things that we need to do. I think it's important to figure out what works for you and your situation. For me, my kids rise with the sun every single morning. So getting up early really is not an option. That just means that I'm going to plan on it so what works for me is to find a little bit of time after I put my kids to bed and carve that out for myself. I find that if I'm not intentional about prioritizing that space for me, then all of the other things that I need to do take up all of that time, all of that space. So, four nights a week, I can have a little bit of time to myself whether that's taking a walk around the block or checking on my garden or just tidying up my space because that's what brings me joy. And then I also try to be kind and give myself some grace if it doesn't work out. So some weeks I knock it out of the park and other weeks I can't make it happen and that's okay. I try and celebrate the nights that I do and recognize that I have tomorrow to try again. I wish I could say I'm finding time for myself right now but I think one of the most difficult parts of this pandemic is that there truly is no time for yourself. There is no retreat. There's no safe place to go with a small child at home. It's truly even impossible to just close the door. You can't even go to the bathroom or take a shower by yourself. I can't remember the last time I took a shower without being interrupted. I can't even go to the gym. So I mean I do think the overwhelming sentiment for me right now is the sort of inability to claim any kind of personal space and I think for moms for dads for all parents that is probably the reoccurring theme you're going to hear over and over again. No space. Sorry that one wasn't good news. I have no free time right now. Well I think it is really challenging because as women I think we often are trying to do it all. You know we've got that cape on and so we're trying to be really good and really passionate about the work that we do and then also balancing the family life and the personal life and remembering birthdays and celebrations and all of those things and so it is really hard because we put a lot of stress on ourselves and I'm certainly guilty of that and so to be honest with you I'm not sure that I'm always doing that really well in terms of doing that self-care piece. I really have to challenge myself to say am I doing that. I will say that there are days when I find myself falling into bed and realizing that I gave 150% to everything around me and didn't do anything for myself and I try not to beat myself up about that but rather say okay well tomorrow's a new day and I'll try to do that differently tomorrow. So I've found a lot of silver linings in this really terrible pandemic era that I really hope that we take forward with us into the post-pandemic era. I've learned that slow mornings and slow evenings with my toddler are about the best gift on earth and I had truly missed those for the first few years of her life either because I was sitting in traffic or because I felt like I had to be in the office early or had to be in the office late. Not having that responsibility has created this whole gift of earned hours, earned time with my child. I've learned how to slow down honestly and that's been a fascinating part of this transition is I'm someone who's just go, go, go and I'm always on and I'm always giving that 110%, going 110 miles an hour, being forced to go closer to 60 or 70 miles per hour is a real gift for those of us who've never experienced that before. What I've kind of learned during this time that I definitely want to continue to keep with myself and continue to do as time moves forward as we move into this new normal first thing is definitely the importance of people. You need people and so whether that's your co-workers that you're leaning on or your parents or your partner or your friends, I think it's super important that we have community in some capacity in some way and so during this time I've built a lot of community circles and solidarity circles that I'm hoping to continue to keep and have. I'm the mom of a six-year-old and a three-year-old, a wife. I work full-time. I'm very active in our community. Our lives are beautiful, full and incredibly hectic. What I noticed early on is that when things really started to unravel it was usually because I was trying to do too many things at the same time and I found I can do a better job at balancing all of those things. If I am at a good, safe, place, I found that I'm much better at responding if I'm grounded and steady and can take care of the other things that need my attention. So when things start to unravel, I try to stop and collect myself before I respond to any of the things that are asking for my attention. You know whether that's five seconds, so I take a deep breath, collect my thoughts, mentally prioritize what are the things that I need to respond to right now or it may be I'm on a conference call and my three-year-old is crying and the five-year-old is running away with something and I have to say I need five minutes. I will call you back, get myself settled, take care of my children then come back and deal with whatever it is that I'm doing. It's really about making sure that I'm at a good place and I know what I'm trying to accomplish and feel grounded in doing that. The other thing that I've learned in responding to COVID is I can't be everywhere and do everything that I need to say no when I have a lot of competing demands. So learning to say no, learning that I can't be everywhere and do everything and just accepting my own limitations has been a really important lesson of COVID and I think it's something that I definitely want to take forward even when we get back to our new normal whatever that may look like. Well, there's a couple lessons that I want to sort of keep out of this new normal. One is the whole notion of self-care and having that emotional support and recognizing that as a need in our daily lives and making sure I share that opportunity and goal, create those opportunities and goals within my staff and my colleagues. The notion that has to be there is that we're not working grinding 24, when I was younger it was all about the grind climbing to the top no sleeping was for when you're dead I mean it's constant grind but now I really recognize the importance of like that's not the key that's not the answer I made a lot of sacrifices in that grind it's really nice being home with my kids I think those things that I'm going to take with me for care, their appreciation for being around my family or just physically having my kids here it's really good, it's really good I complain about it but honestly I'm not a teacher online instruction has been difficult for me but to have the ability to connect with them at any point in the day just to take a break we kind of walk around the whip around the room sometimes just to get up from our Zoom screens but the ability to have them near me has been a good relief, a good positive outcome with all this a lot of times I was a single mom and I was always worried about childcare and if my kids were safe while I'm at work for wee hours into the evening it's nice to have that relief of knowing that my kids are safe they're here and I can check on them but also nice to know that seeing in the insides of my my colleagues and their love and care for their families and making sure that everybody's alright in the midst of all this we've got business to do but we can't do our business without each other I think there's something about being confined to your home and having sort of a less sense of control of what your day looks like has really forced me again to sort of be more in the moment and pay more attention when I'm talking to people and engaging with them and having a meal or whatever it is that I'm doing I think because in many respects my world has gotten a little smaller you know during this time it's made me realize that so often I'm blowing and going and going 150 miles an hour and not taking that time to really appreciate and be focused on whatever is happening in the moment and I definitely want to keep that as I move forward you know I hope that that will be a lesson that will still stick with me you know hopefully a year from now when things are different that's my great hope right that will definitely stick with me I think one of the other things that I've learned is I'm much more flexible and resilient than I realized and that I am less in control of things than I actually thought because I think so often the things that stress us out, at least for me anyway is this notion that I can control things and that in order for me to be successful I've got to have control over many different things and so one of the things that this experience has been like for me in the last few months is recognizing oh you know what there's actually a lot of things I don't have control over and that's okay that the reality is the one thing that I consistently do have control of is how I respond to things and that is the one thing that is always mine we're all spending a lot of time together in close proximity sometimes with just a few people and we have to recognize that our friends and family and support system can't always be our therapist and how important it is for us to be comfortable reaching out and maybe talking to someone a clinician and how telehealth has really made that possible for me more people to access that so I think that's something to consider and I think recognizing that sometimes we don't know until we reach out and ask like here's the experience that I'm having and I'm concerned I don't know if therapy is enough and really being able to be comfortable about recognizing hey you might actually also need to see your primary care physician and maybe potentially even need a referral to psychiatrist during this time and that there's no shame in medication to address what is essentially a health issue we wouldn't have any shame about using insulin for diabetes nor should we have any shame in recognizing that hey I'm dealing with something that's more now clinical depression and I might actually need not just therapy but also an antidepressant to help me and so I think it's important that we create that space as well and in the context of that NAMI Central Texas is here for you with the National Alliance on Mental Illness and we provide all kinds of great online free classes support groups education of all kinds we're doing these amazing webinars twice a month that anybody can access we have those recordings on our website so people can watch them actually on demand if they want and then we are I think one of the best sources of information as well so if you're just starting that journey and you're looking for resources and looking for information you can just call us or email us or look at our website and we've got some great resources there and we can help you sort of navigate that as well I think something that's really important to recognize right now is how privileged so many of us are to largely be inconvenienced in this moment instead of having to deal with serious illness and death the challenges that so many people are enduring right now so these are inconveniences we're lucky in so many ways but I think you know from the standpoint of management in this moment I do think we're at a turning point where we are truly learning for the first time just how challenging people's home lives can be and just how lacking our empathy for those circumstances was before I'm thinking a lot about that being able to see people's babies and their dogs and their home environments on the zoom screen in the middle of a work day really opens your eyes to what folks are grappling with and I hope in the post-pandemic era we are all a little kinder a little easier on each other and on ourselves one of the big reasons that we're launching the 19th is to give women the kinds of flexibility and opportunity and benefits in the news business that allow them to advance to the highest levels of this industry so if those are things you care about if those are values you share we would love for you to follow along with us at 19thnews.org and so it's super crucial that we are participating in the process that passes laws and Alexa representatives that represent us and impact us every day whether we vote or not and so if we can have you know just 20% of young people show up and vote it can completely change the landscape but who's representing us do they care about the issues that we care about and even when we talk about elections if you know if you don't have a sidewalk on your street if there are potholes on your street or there's a stop sign that was knocked over for months and hasn't been put back up those are your local elected officials that can really do that work and so as we look towards November not only is the presidential election important but your railroad commissioner is important and if you have city council members on your race that's important your state representatives they send it and so there's so much more than just you know the president that impacts your life every day and so even when we look at what's happening with COVID and the pandemic a lot of cities have been passing municipal funds in order to help with housing reimbursement and as well as you know utility reimbursement and so those are the elected officials that you can vote in that can show up for you and so that's why it's super crucial to get registered and vote and that's why you know organizations like move Texas are here to really ensure that you can that we make that process as easy and understandable as possible and although it may seem like there are some barriers there may just be a few more hoops that you have to jump through but we can still get you registered to vote we can still help you turn out to vote and so don't let your voice be unheard on this election because it's going to be super super critical if you want to get registered to vote you can go to move texas.org slash register and check your voter registration status or complete a new application if you need to you know we have a really great social media so feel free to follow us on all platforms at move underscore texas and visit our website at move texas.org to stay up to date on the work that's happening and what we're doing. The thing that I would like to share with the community and leaders just to really stay engaged support the school district in its various endeavors because we do so much for our community I feel like there people don't realize how much we do for our communities that goes beyond just providing an education we are providing mental health supports we are offering sort of testing sites we are the food feeding program in the city of Austin trying to make sure families are fed we're putting we have wifi on buses that are going to remote neighborhoods trying to give opportunities for them to sort of get on the internet to find out what's happening and to try to access instruction someone has to do these things and we know our students can't access curriculum if they're hungry or if they're dealing with trauma at home or they have mental health needs that they have no resources to satisfy which is why we do all these things we have a crisis fund that we set up that we're continuing to feed adults and provide needs you know for our little sort of pre-k kiddos we're trying to get them supplies and computers and we're doing the best we can and just to know that we're just trying to make sure that our students our teachers and staff are safe throughout all this and that we're able to serve our students to the best of our ability thank you again for joining us today we hope you enjoy this annual discussion featuring women in leadership this fall we will have other great virtual programming and we look forward to sharing more about those events again with you soon but in the meantime I strongly encourage you once again to sign up and learn more at lbjfutureforum.org