Becoming The Vision

Aug 13, 2026 · 44m

Chera and Trinel sit down with Fiona Kanagasingam, Vice President and Chief Equity and Culture Officer at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, for a wide-ranging conversation about power, institutional change, and what it really takes to move philanthropy toward racial equity and collective liberation. What does it mean for philanthropy to confront its own history honestly? Who benefits when a foundation examines the origins of its wealth and the interests it has protected? How do power, identity, and institutional culture shape who gets to lead transformation?--EPISODE TRANSCRIPT--Join us on Substack @ freedomdreamsinphilanthropy

Aug 4, 2026 · 53m

In this conversation with Edgar Villanueva, founder and CEO of Decolonizing Wealth Project, we explore listening as a transformative practice—from listening to our own experience and the wisdom of elders, to listening for spirit and the quiet intuitions that guide us toward healing, courageous leadership, and institutional transformation.Edgar reflects on his Southern childhood, where countless Saturdays at the library sparked a lifelong curiosity about worlds beyond his own. He also shares about his Indigenous roots, the elders who grounded him, their teachings on healing, and how listening helped him recognize his calling to transform money from a source of harm into a form of medicine.Together, we explore how these experiences intersected with difficult institutional realities, inspiring Decolonizing Wealth and opening a conversation that gave voice to stories many in philanthropy had lived but few had spoken publicly.Edgar also reflects on the spiritual dimensions of his journey, including his time in seminary, the heartbreak of becoming estranged from institutional religion, and the path of reconnecting with inner guidance through nature, intuition, and spirit. Along the way, we consider how institutions can shape the stories we tell ourselves about where guidance comes from—and what becomes possible when we learn to listen again.As Edgar reminds us, listening is more than hearing. It is a practice of grounding that can reconnect us to wisdom, clarify our calling, and open new possibilities for personal and institutional transformation.---TRANSCRIPT---Join us on Substack @freedomdreamsinphilanthropy

Jul 8, 2026 · 24m

In this episode, Chera and Trinel explore the role of confirmation in the work of transformation: those moments, relationships, encounters, and insights that remind us we are on the right path, especially when the road ahead is uncertain.Drawing on stories from their own journeys, from first meeting more than a decade ago to unexpected encounters with fellow travelers in the work of justice and liberation, they reflect on how moments of confirmation can reinforce our sense of purpose, deepen our connections, and sustain us across the long arc of change.Along the way, they ask:-How do we recognize confirmation when it appears?-What happens when we act on it?-What relationships, opportunities, and possibilities might be waiting just beyond our hesitation?-And how might confirmation help us trust in our collective capacity to build the future we deserve?At its heart, this conversation is about faith, possibility, and the courage to follow what calls us forward.Join us as we reflect on the people, questions, and unexpected connections that helped shape Freedom Dreams in Philanthropy—and the confirmations that continue to guide the work today.Subscribe to our newsletter @ https://freedomdreamsinphilanthropy.substack.com/

Jun 2, 2026 · 20m

The work of Freedom Dreams in Philanthropy is, in many ways, a gesture of faith: faith in the capacity of aligned leaders and lovers of justice in the philanthropic sector, faith in ourselves and our questions, and faith in the sector’s ability to answer back.In this episode, Chera and Trinel explore faith not as religious doctrine, but as belief in what is unseen: the trust that transformation is possible even amid uncertainty, backlash, and constraint. We reflect on how faith and agency are intertwined, why real questions matter, and how faith helps us remain courageous, grounded, and aligned along the long arc toward justice.Join us for a conversation rooted in the origins of Freedom Dreams in Philanthropy and the lived and field-gathered insights that continue to shape our work.Watch this episode on Youtube!Find us on Substack @ Freedom Dreams in Philanthropy

Apr 28, 2026 · 56m

The future we long for is possible. Not because it arrives, or even will in our lifetimes, but because we learn to live into it now.In this conversation with ⁠Mia Birdsong⁠, we explore what it means to practice the future: in our organizations, our rituals, and in the ways we move through and make meaning of time. Mia shares how ⁠Next River⁠ is creating room for the world it seeks to build, from rethinking organizational calendars and rhythms to grounding freedom in deeper humanity, purpose, and community. We move beyond nostalgia for a different time and into the work of practicing the future now. Along the way, we locate each other as fellow travelers on the arc toward justice and liberation, and invite others to join us in the unfolding of our freedom.Together, we move back and forth between future and present, exploring abolition and invoking ancestral memory to ask what it means to practice freedom in an unfree world. As Mia reminds us, “what we practice is the world we’re building.”---

Feb 26, 2026 · 19m

In this special episode, Chera takes us back to the time she met Nikki Giovanni, as a twenty year-old undergraduate student at the University of Virginia. This is a story about putting yourself out there a little more than you thought you could and what happens when people in positions of power reach back. Chera offers us a glimpse into one of the roots of her freedom dreaming.---TRANSCRIPT

Jan 27, 2026 · 50m

Autumn Brown is an artist, facilitator, mother, and theologian. The front woman of the eponymously named soul-pop band, AUTUMN, she is a queer, mixed-race Black woman, a gifted facilitator and orator, and a freedom worker who grounds her approach to building movements for liberation in her belief in the innate capacity for healing that emanates from the human heart. With her sister, adrienne maree brown, Autumn hosts the beloved podcast, How to Survive the End of the World. In 2026 she'll release her new book, Temper: A Fugitive Guide to Freedom. (Pre-order here). Chera and Trinel dive deep into Autumn's creative origin story, her concept of fugitivity, the generative potential of sabbaticals and the importance of embodied practices, like aikido and yoga in navigating this complex moment.

Jan 13, 2026 · 28m

Happy New Year!   In this episode we’re joined by Angelique Power, President & CEO @ The Skillman Foundation for a conversation about seeding change and embracing the power of people.Power for a conversation about seeding change and embracing the power of people.Angelique reflects on her Chicago roots, ancestry, and the importance of owning what makes you unique—learning to hold being both apart and a part as a source of strength and grounding for leadership. We talk about her place in a lineage of leadership at the Skillman Foundation, where she is the third Black woman, in succession, to lead the organization—following Carol Goss and Tonya Allen. Angelique speaks candidly about what becomes possible when women of color lead, and how she carries forward the impact, vision, and inspiration of those who came before her.We explore how Skillman stands on vision and with visionaries. Angelique shares a pragmatic look at the foundation’s People Powered Education initiative, underscoring that social change requires both grassroots and grasstops strategies. She speaks about partnering with Detroiters—who deeply own the identity of their city—in shaping education policy rooted in lived experience.We also talk about Detroit youth: their desires for change, their hope for the future, and their insistence on building new systems rather than waiting on old ones to deliver.Angelique describes her role in this moment as creating the conditions for authorship, agency, and lasting change to take root in Detroit.

Dec 24, 2025 · 35m

In this episode of Becoming the Vision, we sat down with Chung-Wha Hong and Sara Mersha, co-executive directors  of Grassroots International, for a timely conversation on what it means to be in solidarity with social movements.Drawing on decades of experience supporting collective efforts to transform systems in service to justice, they offer the concept of “Solidarity Philanthropy” to reimagine philanthropy’s role and relationship to social movements and activate the sector’s transformative potential.In the conversation, we discuss solidarity as not an end state, but an ongoing practice and active commitment that goes beyond grantmaking. True solidarity with social movements  involves the sector interrogating its own relationship to power, listening to those most proximate to injustice, seeking alignment on core values, and organizing itself in peer networks defined by  deep collaboration. In this vision, philanthropy emerges as more than a benefactor, becoming a comrade, ally, and protagonist in the struggle for justice.