 So we have a tradition in our Friday plenary where we've always left a little bit Undetermined because so much happens over the course of this week and conversations emerge themes emerge What we really try to do with all of so cap is be responsive to the conversations that are happening in the field And this last conversation is responsive to what we heard during the week at so cap So we don't even pick the panelists in advance. That's why you don't see very many names under the plenary in your program But we have an amazing set of folks who have risen through the conversation over this week have important Thoughts to share and a very skilled moderator in Penelope Douglas who moderates this panel for us every year and Pulls out some of the insights from the week and helps us all think about where we are moving forward Please welcome Penelope Douglas Cynthia Mueller Kim Clemens in and Clyde Valentin. Hi, everybody If by any chance you want to come any closer feel free It's warmer up here than back there if that's any kind of inducement, but It's so great to see you all and I am so happy that I get to play this role again this year as part of our Final hours of so cap our tenth so cap I'm going to briefly introduce these three amazing people who are spontaneous enough and Game enough to join me for this traditional final Conversation, but I'm going to also ask them to briefly introduce themselves and then we'll and then we'll converse and It's very likely that we'll do some conversing with you as well So we'll welcome that I will say that I have to moderate this So if one of you becomes too conversational be prepared. I've done this. I will leap off this stage I will run down there, and I'll hug you back to your seat So just just a warning don't take it too seriously, but I am prepared. Okay, so that way we can all have a conversation I wanted to briefly make sure that I introduce Kim Clemenson who's the general manager of public news service Thank You Kim Cynthia Muller whom I have the have had the pleasure of being on in a conversation with several times in the last Few weeks the program and portfolio officer for the Kellogg Foundation and Clyde Valentine who is the director of Ignite Arts? As part of the Southern Methodist University's Art Center the School of the Arts, so thank you all and welcome We have a theme for this conversation, which is basically What's on the horizon? But I have been considering carefully a couple of Themes that I think fall nicely under and in that That I've reflected upon during the last few days and the first of them Which I've told these three a little bit about in terms of preparing briefly for this conversation it's an overwhelming number of Conversations that created the theme for me that I I just can't help but bring out and it's the theme of fragility Can you all hear us? Do you want to come over this way? I don't want to like to have my back to you. Is everything okay? All right The In various ways and of course it's literally true that it's a very fragile state right now here in northern, California In various ways people have articulated Something about fragility and in some cases they've seemed to be saying it as a kind of preparation for rebirth And in other cases they seem to be expressing it to me anyway as My god, what's happening? Is is is this literally the moment in time when the world that we've created sort of falls apart around us? So I wanted to ask the three of you from the perspective of your Service from the perspective of your work Not so much looking back, but as you think about what's next and particularly what's next as an invitation to so cap What are you experiencing about that and how does it relate and I'll just start with you? Okay, Kim? so my Running joke in my office is I want a t-shirt that says I survived the 2016 election and you know coming back to work then in in 2017 and facing You know the first ten days of a new administration and what 17 executive orders and and working with a team of independent Journalists where our question is how do we cover everything? How do we how do we do this? How do we get the microphone in front of the unheard person to to connect people still and It's it's it's a challenge It's um, you know, it's a humbling experience being here. It's so cap and I've met So many people working in grassroots organizations that are really feeling Exactly what you're talking about that sense of of what's gonna happen to us Where what are how are we gonna continue to do this work that needs to be done? I think from our perspective as independent journalists It's moving forward and getting that microphone in in front of who it needs to be in front of and telling their stories. I Kind of do want to ask the audience This is something I've been dying to know and so by a show of hands I would really like to know who in the audience is not from one of the coasts How many people here are from? Yeah, fantastic fantastic, and so that gives me a sense of I think Where we need to focus our communication that we don't just continue to be on our echo chambers and in the coasts And and find more connectivity between all of us Kim I I should have been better at this, but could you just briefly explain what we do? That would be great sure so public news service is an independent media outlet and we operate in 37 states We've been in existence for 20 years We're a fund-to-beat model So we work with hundreds of organizations across the country And they will be interested in funding a particular beat whether it's immigration. It's water All sorts of different beats and that allows us to hire a producer that produces news stories that we send out to about 8,000 other media outlets for free So our pickup right now is about 40 million people a week That's great hoping to get to 50 states and and find the right partners to do that with Clyde First of all so that I don't botch it a second time take a moment to tell people about your work, but and Then would you please? Help us talk about this question of fragility. How how do you see that? Particularly as a really unusual citizen facing Arts Institute Could you talk about both your work and then about the question? Sure. Can you all hear me? Okay? Yeah pick this up a little bit so SMU metal school the arts as a result of a report on Dallas that they commissioned via creative time Which is a public arts organization out of New York City kind of gave birth to this idea of what a New center at the school would look like They hired me as their inaugural director to kind of come in and and get this off the ground in our mission is Simply to ignite the imagination of our students and citizens to imagine more just in vibrant communities And we do that through highly collaborative art projects That intersect across health Journalism policy and between artists and other organizations We launched about two and a half years ago. So our work is really just kind of coming online right now the fragility question is for me the the the counterbalance on that is, you know, the resilience question, right, right and In Dallas, we've also often talked about, you know, what's the thing that happens? What's the disruptive moment and Oftentimes it you know for us it may have been July 7th last year, right, right when you know when when an individual, you know purposely killed five police officers at a Rally for and against rather police brutality But you know, we've had several disruptive moments in our country, you know post the 2016 election and You know, I think the notion of fragility on an individual level because I I know, you know My wife cried that evening You know in November and and then You know, I'm also Puerto Rican. So and I have family in Florida and Three hours away from Houston and I have people in Houston. So it's kind of onslaught of Natural disasters and we flew into San Francisco a few days ago and you know smoke is all around us in the midst of doing this work, right, which is the work that actually needs to happen so creating I think the space to Identify the more The resilient options and opportunities in front of us have to go hand-in-hand with just Recognizing where we might be at the moment Because we're also human and we need the energy to continue to do this work, right? So I think from an arts lens Creating those spaces while we continue to Identify solutions and invest in those solutions has to go hand-in-hand So one of the things that I heard you both say strongly is that We have to continue to find ways to To evolve our sense of ourselves and our humanity and I know that sounds really I Don't know for me. That's a profoundly complicated thing. You know, it's not as simple as as simple as saying well If we all express our humanity Then our state of fragility will be a state of constant resiliency and transformation, so I have a lot of questions about that that will continue to explore But Cynthia, maybe you can you can help us with that first of all briefly if you don't mind tell us about your work at Kellogg But then maybe help me a little bit kind of consider that question again about fragility. I would really appreciate it I'm with the WK Kellogg Foundation. You've heard from a lot of my peers this week We at the Kellogg Foundation are focused on Supporting low-income children their families in the communities which they reside so all day and all night we think about the kids and for us We understand our role as you know being a nearly nine billion dollar endowment We are in the business of funding and supporting great ideas great entrepreneurs great leaders and so As we use our grant making our endowments our networks to amplify the brilliant folks that are trying to address, you know, systemic Racism systems that leave out many of our fellow citizens We are Constantly faced with the fragility of this of this country and it's been so incredibly Amazing at this particular conference to see it's so Open in a way that I don't think in the past years and maybe because we're in a different place Yeah, because we're all I agree with you though. We have that. It's energy and we're the problem solvers We're the ones that are trying to figure this out and I think we're we're all struck with At the foundation that We can't do this alone, right? We know that none of you would talk to us if we weren't at the foundation, right? Let's just call it out But we we understand you all are that the incredible folks that are doing all this work and in order to Support that we can't we can't leave that and none of the the foundations. I think Art can leave this alone And so It does take us, you know, we're going through our own kind of fertility check as a funder thinking about how do we support you? How are we more responsive how I think to? Previous speaker's point. How do we not drag people out? How do we actually deploy capital on the way that's? Meaningful Systemic and also relevant to what they need to run. We can't take you know ten ten months to make a decision on a grant when You know various folks that have to get worked on today And so, you know in our own kind of assessment of our role and now starting to talk through this Particularly around racial equity within our investees and our grantees it requires, you know organizations individuals to to really look at yourself and Can't hear me. Okay Really So we have to look at ourselves to really to really understand what our what our communities what our Peers are our our folks who you know, we're our beneficiaries and what they need and so We we believe this is a part of the process so one of the things that I was thinking about while I was listening to the three of you is something that I think really just helped me a lot which is is Is that if we can all figure out together how to be? Transformative as it relates to the relationship. I'm gonna say this very starkly because it's part of what socaps about each of you in some ways address the relationship between supply and demand the relationship between Community and individual the relationship particularly between investor and entrepreneur, you know, these are all these these are questions that I think are critical to us because to the extent that we can start to shift the system It's going to have a the Relationships and how we think of the relationship how we think of it differently We don't just think of ourselves as a foundation and therefore you'll come talk to us because we're a foundation We're an arts institute and therefore we provide a venue to view art. None of you were talking that way Independent journalism is not a way of providing Media it's it's something much more important about transforming the relationships between Again the investor broadly speaking and the entrepreneur broadly speaking the citizen broadly speaking and the institution And that's something that I would like socap to really consider carefully and get really strategic about I mean We have a lot of infrastructure We still need to build for this movement to be something everyone can participate in And I think that's a good segue to the to the to the next set of questions, but before I go there Does anyone from the audience have something that you'd like to contribute to this part of the discussion this question of fragility a shoutout a question for socap Okay Anything that the three of you want to ask one another about this question before we go to our next sort of theme Yeah, hi, I have a question for you all and and maybe for folks in the audience and you know We we invited Russell Simmons to we have this festival every year that we're a partner in called the Dallas Festival of ideas and we kind of bring in thought leaders from Outside, but it's really about you know the conversations that happen locally and then there's ongoing conversations that happen between the year One of the folks who brought out was you know, Russell Simmons for our entrepreneurial track, right? and and the organizers like Russell we want you to talk about entrepreneurship and he was like I don't know That's a doing action right and and I can't talk about Dallas in the context of entrepreneurship because I haven't spent any time there So I don't know what the needs are and you know what I'm good at is identifying You know a niche to fill or you know a need to solve a problem to fix And and I thought that was a great response, but you brought up the word complexity. Yeah So part of what how we've defined complexity in some of our work is How many geographic points are we hitting because we want to engage our students and citizens But we also want to connect them to the region and the country Right, so we think about those sort of concentric circles whenever we look at a project And that's a kind of simple way to you know define complexity for us in the projects that we take on so I'm curious How does complexity factor in to Solutions and Things you decide to invest in You got something one of yeah, I mean I Mean 500 years of systemic racism. I mean there was still complexity in that I mean we we were very very we I think of many of you may know we We have several named places across the country and these are places where we see systems particularly Oppressing, you know low-income kids and you know they most for the most part tend to be low-income kids of color and for us We have to really unpack how we show up in those communities So, you know whether that's in community engagement and helping to support, you know, the voice of the community that actual needs of the community to The intermediaries that are helping to create capacity For a lot of the nonprofits and and social enterprises that we were supporting then then thinking about Communications right how are we communicating this with our other investors other partners? How are we bringing in who are we missing and so we were constantly operating and in complexity and I think We want to fund Organizations and individuals that are really unpacking it. We're not looking we're not looking for easy fixes here, right? We're looking for systemic change. That's why a lot of our funding, you know when we're in we're in we're in the support These organizations because we understand how hard this is if it wasn't if it was easy then we'd have addressed this a long time ago So I think for us it's really embedded in everything we do now. Do we want to make it more complex for our own process? Oh, absolutely not right so and and that's what we Strive for and I think quite frankly a lot of us in the investment field need to often take a look at I'm constantly checking myself and making sure am I am I springing this out a little too long It should we just like Eliminate like how many steps, but I think for us it's looking at the you know, how how are the Social enterprises fund managers and whatnot thinking about this. Are they making it more complex that they are they addressing this in a way? That's you know actionable that's actually going to support that that incremental change. We're going to need so Yeah So I'm a I hail from New York City. I tend to be really direct The complexity the complexity for me and and the work that we do is our first amendment rights are under attack right now and our press is being attacked in ways that We've never seen That's a complexity for us when you're competing against somebody's Twitter wars when you're Constantly being fake news It's it's challenging and it's you got to get you know cooler heads have to prevail And you have to sit back and remember the work that we're doing and and that it matters I think you know where? The challenge for us is that when you look at Media and a state Sort of a state basis, you know 20 years ago you used to have a courthouse reporter that in your state Sat there and covered your legislative season and what was happening So you as a person living in whatever state you're living in you were able to read your local newspaper You had local, you know lots of different people that you could get opinion from that's gone It's been on the decline by over 35% You know from my perspective and I think probably the perspective of you know my my fellow people I work with and my colleagues and probably a lot of people in this room How do you support a? Democratic Society without an informed population you really can't right And that for me is the complexity of okay great We're not gonna fund newsrooms anymore Where do we where do we go and get those journalists that no longer have that job that sit there? And they are dedicated to telling you what do you need to know before you go to that poll and before you hit a button? That for for us. I know specifically at public news service That's our goal before we get to the mid-term elections in 2018 How do we get that person back into your courthouse and the complexity of trying to fund that and getting those stories out? That's what we'll continue to work on It's really it's really been interesting to me to consider a lot I'm having been here for all of the ten years of SoCAP one of the things that I'm gonna keep Parping on you'll hear me say it a few more times before our little session here is up is the need to be incredibly Exponentially more strategic as a movement building group of thousands of people About the infrastructure that we need to create in order for this not to be just a Niche in order not to be accused of neoliberalism in order not to have all the other sort of Names attached to what is clearly some of the most important work I think that's going on for a sustainable prosperous future for for us all Emphasis on all and I I thought a lot recently about how important in that infrastructure building process Data is I mean not and I don't mean so much the data that we've often thought about at SoCAP But now I'm talking about the kind of information that independent Factual journalism can provide us and I think that's a really Important part of solving some of this complexity The other thing that I want to quickly say before we move on is that for years here at SoCAP We've had a conversation glide about how to develop the operating system That allows some of this complexity to be solved and I continue to Want to challenge those of you who have answers to that to try to figure out how to create the Principles and operating rules of an operating system And I mean that in the technological sense for a platform the power of The digital platform for this movement is couldn't be more obvious but so difficult to create and I also mean it in terms of You know kind of just the kind of rules of engagement for for us to all be in this sort of Building process together so that the concentric rings around Dallas can also be the same Fashion of concentric rings around any place, you know so that we can do this faster and more effectively great segue to the second theme that I asked these wonderful people to help me consider which is a Topic that's always important and I'm gonna say it the best way I can which is this is this is the theme which is at every SoCAP We're left considering How we ensure that the right people are in a conversation the people who have the skill the body of knowledge and the Expertise to move an important conversation forward and at the same time We're constantly challenged with the equally important question of how we ensure everybody is In the room and everybody is included in the conversation and that we're bringing everybody into the conversation And so I can't think of three better people to sort of Consider that question for me, and it looks like we've got about five minutes left, so Each of you try to sort of maybe you could frame it as a request of SoCAP if you if we were having our debrief with the SoCAP team and a group of these people were in a focus group You know, how would you want to take that on for the next five years at SoCAP this question? I'll let you start Cynthia, and I'll watch the time carefully, so What you well one again, I want to thank SoCAP and Lindsay and Kerry and Kevin and Jamie and the rest of the team For giving us ten incredible years of conversations Oh, I gotta speak up a little bit. Sorry guys But this incredible opportunity to have Really hard conversations and really looking at ourselves as a field as we've grown as a field I think one of the things that we at Kellogg and in through many of the conversations I've had with you at the conference the last few days Just you know authentically looking at ourselves and really understanding who is benefiting and who isn't Whatever that means, right? And I know that we often we're doing we're doing the hard work here and We're doing the work that a lot of people choose not to do But we in order we have an obligation to these communities and to these people that are being Disproportionally marginalized that don't have access to capital that we're forgetting because we're becoming so We're becoming so siloed in our lives and our perspectives and obviously less the election last year You know is a great a great reminder of that we were already on that path well before the election We've been on that path and I think for us at the foundation We want you know all of you and so cap to to continue to reflect on that great and we really want to Have those tough conversations as we have if we can't hold ourselves accountable How can we how can we hold anybody else in the field? And I know that I believe and I hope I can say this out loud and make it so that Kellogg continues to be committed to Continuing the conversation real time. So that's that's something so cap can act upon for sure Clyde and I'm sorry that we I have to ask all of us to like be super succinct because I'm watching our monitor, but Ask so cap something. What would you like them to do about this question? I think This echoes some of what we've been talking about in culture bank right in terms of How do we? work with Local assets, you know help them right, you know help whoever we've identified Articulate those local assets or articulate them in a way that become transferable right as we look to make investments In artists entrepreneurs. So what I would ask so cap is who would be your? national partner To identify the appropriate young people the next generation of folks Who have known nothing about this conversation the language the space to kind of just bring them in and start Building that literacy of investment so they can bring that back Home great because then they can have conversations and it you know it kind of just flourishes from there and You Kim what how would you exhort so cap to try to help continue to think about this and face it head-on? I I think one of my favorite parts about being here was was meeting with grassroots organizations and the and the incredible work that they're doing and you know meeting people at the sacrifice of their own income and their own Sense of security that they're giving so much to other people that need assistance I want more of those voices and I want I You know less than half the room is is from the middle of the country and in my Perspective I feel like that is an opportunity for so cap to reach out into places that might not be as represented as they are today You know, it's it's it's great that Progressive through this great job of hey, let's talk about the progressive issues But are we really listening to the person that's in Iowa? Are we really listening to the people in the six states that turned from progressive states to red states? We need to hear their viewpoint and and this is a great opportunity for us to be able to do that I Love the I love the responses because I'm thinking about what each of these people do for a living and so for me what's really important is to Seek from our so cap colleagues and from all of you as Helpful to this convening to really imagine that these are three practice areas that are part of strategic Infrastructure that allows this conversation to not be among Those of us who are fortunate enough to be here by virtue of skill or opportunity And I think that's really what you were all saying. So I Actually don't know the answer to whether I'm inviting someone else out here. Am I inviting someone else out here? Oh, so cap There we go. So thank you all very much and here's Rosalie to help us close. Thank you You