How Loss Turned Me Into a Leader | Yamani Yansa Hernandez

HSU Yamani Hernández 

Natasha Nuytten: All right, everyone, today I am very excited for what I expect to be a really thoughtful conversation about leadership and social justice and all kinds of really cool things with Yamani Yansa Hernández. I'm very excited to introduce you to her. She is the CEO of Groundswell Fund and Groundswell Action Fund, one of the largest funders of reproductive, gender, and racial justice organizing in the United States, directly funding nearly $200 million in grants to organizations led by women, indigenous, black, and transgender people of color. What makes Yamani so unique and her story so compelling isn't just the scale of the impact that she's had through the roles that she's held, but it's really her own journey. She's someone who started in public service at the age of 16 and was inspired to take action in her own community through her family and the things that they were experiencing. And she spent tons of time and the decades since moving through every level of the nonprofit sector from neighborhood organizing to national leadership. And she has been a grantee, a coach, and now a funder. And so she has this really unique perspective that's really a 360 degree view of how change actually happens. So I'm excited to talk with her about how her leadership has really transformed organizations like the National Network of Abortion Funds. They grew from 12 to 60 people and a budget from 2 million to 20. The work that they're doing at Groundswell, how she has coached other folks from being visionaries to executing against that and helping to bring people along. Yamani really embodies, I think, what it means to rewrite the rules, not just by abandoning systems, but by really reimagining them from the inside out and always centering them on the voices and experiences of the people who are most impacted. So she's a plant mom, a dog mom, a human mom, an artist, and an introvert. So I really appreciate her making time to talk with us. And I hope you enjoy this conversation. 

Natasha Nuytten: All right. For those of you who are as excited as I am about today's conversation, I'm very interested and eager to introduce you to Yamani Hernandez, doing amazing work and just in so many different spaces and really pioneering in a lot of spaces. And I'm very eager to learn from you today. So thank you so much for making time to talk with me. 

Yamani Yansa: Thanks for being interested in talking to me. 

Natasha Nuytten: Yeah. So one of the things that we really typically will kick things off with in this pod is, what is it? There's a question because I think we're so much more than our resume and our professional experience. And so the question I'd like to ask is, what are one or two things about you that we might not see on your resume or your CV that are true about you that you'd use to describe yourself? And when did you start to own them as true about you? 

Yamani Yansa: Yeah. Thank you. I think and I don't know if it's apparent from my resume, but I am artistic. I'm an artist. I sometimes say I used to be an artist, but I'm trying to get out of saying that. Yeah, sometimes people will see like I have a master's degree in architecture and they'll be like, oh, there's some work. Is there a design somewhere in there? So I would use that word to describe myself as just artistic. And another word is just that I'm introverted. I'm shy. And I don't think people realize that because I have been in public facing roles where I'm expected to be, out front and be a talking head. But I'm a pretty shy person. So that may not be apparent from my resume. 

Natasha Nuytten: Yeah. That makes me extra grateful that you've opened yourself up to conversation. I promise to respect your space so you can tell me to back up if I need to. I'm curious how the artistic sort of nature of who you are and this introversion, how have those played out? You are in such public roles where people are in your business all the time. How do you manage that? 

Yamani Yansa: Yeah, it's hard. It is. I feel like my roles and my leadership is like a duty and a responsibility. And so I welcome the opportunity to do good, important work. And but to be honest, I think it's something that I've tried to run from many times. I've tried to hide from leadership roles. I've tried to hide from being seen. And so it's just like grappling. It just never works. Like when I try to put myself behind or try to be less visible, somehow it always leads back to being in some kind of role that requires leadership. So it's been difficult sometimes, but I just try to balance it with a lot of alone time and time doing things that fill me up, creative things in nature, spending time with loved ones. And I just kind of balance like all the kinds of energy going out with also putting energy in and it works out. 

Natasha Nuytten: That's good. I appreciate that because I do think that, just thinking about leadership as a whole, it is so rare that we find. It's so rare historically, I will say, I feel like it is changing that organizations will appreciate the leadership of someone who is an introverted human, right? Because so often it is just easier to go with the louder voice in the room, the more sort of gregarious energy. And I think it's been really interesting in the last few years to watch organizations like, obviously, you all are an example here, but it's pretty uncommon that people will pull back into, oh, we're going to put the Tim Cooks of the world into leadership roles, versus Steve Jobs. And I think it's been a really interesting transition to like to find that we as we very slowly, I would like to say, in business evolve, how we think about leadership, have started to move into, OK, it's OK to think about these other folks who in the room who are the sort of quiet strength that we miss. So that's really cool. How did or who did maybe find that in you and say, listen, Yamani, like you need to step into this. Oh, into leadership? 

Yamani Yansa: Yeah. I think that I am a natural leader. Let's see, what's the right way to say this? I would say two things, like one, I think that I come from a family of people who are very visionary, very thoughtful about change, about making social change, making, their change makers in their own lives and their communities. And so it's something that I grew up seeing that you don't just go along and get along like you figure out, you see a problem, things that you think should change and then you work on them and you try to make those things change. And so that's something I saw examples of. And like in my parents, my grandparents and extended family, it's just yeah, it's just like a theme in my family. And then the other thing I would say is, And then the other thing I would say is, that's like the positive side of it. And then there's the other part of it. It's just like I had to be a leader in my family because of trauma. And I think there's a lot of people that have stories about that, or just I'm good in a crisis because I have experienced some crisis and I had to step up and move through that. And so that's always in the coaching experiences that I've had where I was the client, I've had coaches push back on me, and be like, are you doing your are you doing your thing? Are you good going into things like your childhood condition, tendency to step up and try to, fix things, quote unquote, or, are you leading from a place of like balance and, like sharing, sharing the responsibility with other people and that kind of thing. So it's both. I yeah, I'm introverted. And when I say I'm introverted and shy, it doesn't mean that I don't have opinions. It doesn't mean that I don't see problems and think they should be solved or that I'm not a good problem solver because I think I'm all of those things and I see those things. It's just I don't necessarily get energy from doing that. I find them to be pretty draining. Yeah. And yeah. And it's like it can create imbalance for me personally. 

Natasha Nuytten: Yeah. And I really appreciate that. And in fact, I think the universe hands us conversations that we need to have when we need to have them. And a dear friend of mine is an incredible leader and just yesterday experienced this incredible sort of trauma in her team that all of a sudden needed to be managed. But like you have to do the feelings for yourself and for everyone else. But there's also this management and holding space for other people. And I think that that's where my head space is. I'm listening to you and I'm hearing, again, I believe that what we have been through teaches us and shapes how we lead. And so that young Yomani who had these experiences of walking through trauma and like successfully managing them being able to walk into spaces where hard things happen and you have to do that for teams. It's really hard. And nobody teaches you how to do that. 

Yamani Yansa: No, it's an embodied — it’s an embodied experience.You learn how to do it. And you just embody that or, yeah. Yeah. Or sorry. 

Natasha Nuytten: Yeah. Yeah. It's you know, there's a real value in having experienced those hard things. To be able to walk through them. So on that and thinking about you as a young person, you really got started and did hard work really early in your career. And it sounds to me and please correct me where I'm wrong and direct us differently. But it sounds to me like you had a lot of examples in your life, in your family of people who took on hard things and cared about what was happening around them. And Lisette Nieves was on our podcast, and she's incredible. And she said something to me when she's like, when you live in a city like New York, you don't get to opt out. And it's oh, wow. It's just right here. She's like, when you're this close to humans, you don't get to opt out. And that came to my mind as you were talking about that. And I'm curious how, as a young person, the engagement in the social sort of social justice things that grabbed your heart and have been hanging on to them for so long. How do you at 16 decide that's what you're going to walk into when you start getting into your career? 

Yamani Yansa: Yeah, there's so many stories to tell. But I think before sharing what happened at 16, that particular age, I think I just had the example of for instance, my mother is studying political science and was always doing something, some project in the community on our block or, was very entrepreneurial. And so like in the summers would just be like, oh, I would be like, oh, I want to sell Girl Scout cookies. And she'd be like, you don't have to sell Girl Scout cookies. You can make your own cookies. You can sell your own cookies. And, so it'd be like we she started like a summer camp that was called Kid Power and eight the kids on the block came over to our porch and we all decided on different businesses we were going to try to do that summer. And like I did it with my neighbor, my other kid across the street. We made these cookies. And yeah, so I just my mom raised me in such a way that was just you just decide to do something and then you do it and then you make a difference like and it's a choice. And so that's just it was always offered as a thing. 

Natasha Nuytten: Yeah. 

Yamani Yansa: But in 16, I had a friend in the neighborhood that was on his way over to visit. I grew up on the south side of Chicago. I had a friend who was on his way over to visit and he got shot and killed on the way to my house. And it was the first time that I really had to like it. I think the first time I was confronted with not just a problem in my household or a problem with a particular relationship or in my household or in my family, but just like in my community oh, there's this bigger thing that just happened. Like it brought up all this stuff like gang violence and guns and community safety and all of these things. And it was a personal trauma. But my mom at that time was trying to help me move through the grief of it. And, also her own grief, as a parent watching her teenager experience that she was just like, we're going to do something, we're going to this is going to we're going to organize like we're going to organize around gun violence. And she ended up running for alderman in Chicago, like on a platform of community safety and gun violence prevention. And we did this memorial project where we tied green ribbons around trees that was his favorite color. And we put these little signs with his name and its story. And that was like my first organizing project, and then it, and then it just kept going from there. In school, they would be like, oh, we have this public service project where you can volunteer with other students and do mentoring or tutoring. And, it just started just picking up stuff after that, like doing. So I guess you call it service work, public service work, but yeah.

Natasha Nuytten: Yeah, I love that. I'm super interested in your mom as a human being to like, that's a whole separate podcast, I'm sure. But I love that she was like, all right, let's do something about this. Thinking about that, and that transition into community engagement, for lack of a better term, right? Like social justice as a real thing. You have such a unique blend of experiences because of the roles that you've had, that position that you sit in now as a funder and helping organizations achieve goals by partnering with them and coming alongside them to grow. But you've got this perspective of the grassroots version, the sort of, okay, maybe small nonprofit, then the very large nonprofit, and I was funded, and now I'm funding the Venn diagram. That is, it is very unique, but also really pretty powerful, right? To be able to lead those organizations differently and think about their growth differently. I'd be curious what, from your perspective, what you think the impact of having been on the other side as a grant recipient, a fundee, has changed about how you lead the organization who is now partnering with these or these others to help grow them and drive their success? 

Yamani Yansa: Yeah, thank you. That is, it is a great question. And I think it's something I'm still new, or I consider myself still new in my role. I've been here for about two and a half years. So maybe it's not brand new, but I'm new to being in a leadership role within philanthropy. So I'm still learning how to make sense of that, the Venn diagram. And I don't want anything that I say to sound like I've totally figured it out, because I think we're, it's very much in process and, trying to figure that out. But I think probably one of the bigger themes is just, one of my entry-level positions was at a family foundation. I was only there for a short time, but they had a tagline that was said, it's a partnership, not a power trip. And I think that grantmaking, yeah, it was like grantmaking is a partnership, not a power trip. And I do think that I've experienced both of those things in different, in grantmaking relationships. I've definitely experienced the folks who do treat it like a power trip and they make you want to jump through 80 million hoops. And, it was very much about, yeah, like holding the power over you, as a grantmaker versus I think what Groundswell, where I work and lead, is very much about like partnership of we're not trying to be on a power trip about the fact that we're giving a grant, like it's not our money. We raised it, we're a public foundation, so we raise every dollar that we give away. And yeah, we're just like conduits. We're trying to be in solidarity and that is like part of the frame that we're really trying to embrace now, is like movement solidarity. It's not just about giving, who's giving and who's receiving, but who's showing, like we're just showing up for each other in different ways. And if we have financial resources or training or other things that we can support, that's just a partner, that's just being a partner to all the other work that grantee partners are doing, their organizing work and, their direct action, their mutual aid organizing, all of that. It's just like you put the two things together and you get movement. And yeah, that's just, that's how I think about it. I put myself in the shoes of, I try to put myself in the shoes of folks who are doing the things that we asked them to do if we asked them to do it. And I'm constantly pushing back on like, why do we have to ask folks to do that? And I do think that's not just unique to me. I think there's quite a shift happening in philanthropy more broadly where folks are just like, why, especially people who take like a reparations frame and they're giving off just like this wealth that they didn't even deserve — doesn't belong to the people who have it and have hoarded it. It definitely should be given freely and without a lot of restrictions and let folks do what they need to do with it. Yeah

Natasha Nuytten: Oh. Yamani, now I'm like, OK, that's the rabbit trail I want to take, but I'll try to stay focused because there's a lot there. How do you do this philosophy that you've embraced, that you're working towards and developing for yourself as a leader? How was that already in groundswell's culture? Is that something that was there partly and you're infusing your own thing into it? And how are you trying to be really practical about leadership here? And like, how do you help bring your team along if that isn't where they've come from or isn't the perspective that they necessarily had prior to your leadership? 

Yamani Yansa: Yeah, I would say that a lot of it's I would say much of it is part of just how groundswell's groundswell started. It was meant to be an intervention in philanthropy, meaning that, doing philanthropy differently, having prioritizing women of color and gender expansive color of leaders of color and also giving in places that were less popular to give. Like we focus on the south and the Midwest and are giving. And because those are the places that are most impacted by political repression. And you see a lot of other foundations that are like, oh, it's a lost cause there, so we're not giving there. So instead, we're like, no, we're still getting there. That stability is really important. Yeah. And. But I will say that there are some, I was a grantee of groundswell for 10 years at two different organizations before I came to the helm of groundswell, and there were things that were changing under my leadership, there was a lot of heavy emphasis on evaluation. And that was for a reason. I'm not saying that in a critical way. Like I think the earlier years in groundswell, we really had to make the case for why the investment in women of color leadership, trans people of color was like there's a return on investment. We had to say this number of policies were changed. And these were the number of people that were impacted. And this is the number of people that. And now I think. We've just moved to a different place where it's already evidence like we don't need to make the case. And also so many other people fund women of color leaders, trans people of color. Not enough, but more than used to. And so now we're more so it's more about the relationship. We're trying to get the money for folks, but we don't necessarily need to badger them about every little evaluation point to make it. To give a justification for why they deserve the money or why the money was used well, like it's just all this reporting and, it requires it puts more barriers on grantee partners. So we have just moved away from that. And people call it trust based philanthropy, where, it's just like we trust you. We have a relationship with you. We know that you're going to know best how to use this funding to benefit your community and to move to advance your mission. Here's where it is. And, let's stay in touch. Let's continue to support you in other ways. Lift up your voices, and it's just that's a shift. I think the other thing you asked was just like, how do you bring people along? And I will say that we have always prioritized hiring organizers and people from the organizations and movements that we serve. So that is also a little bit of a difference in how we approach the work. So I think if anything, like our staff is more, we don't have to necessarily bring them along on, the sort of power dynamics. I think they even push, push us as leaders to do more to be more. And that's what they're supposed to do as organizers anyway. 

Natasha Nuytten: I love that. That's good. Interestingly, I'm also based in the Midwest. I live in Omaha, Nebraska. My co-founders are from Chicago. And so we're local, right? We're feeling the corn sweat right now, for sure. But I'm curious about philanthropy and giving, it's really interesting. I actually have found I've been in Omaha about 12 years now, though. I was born in South Dakota. I haven't lived there for thirty five years, but I was born there. So this is in my blood for sure. And there are in particular and in Omaha, there are some really amazing family offices and folks who are really engaged in philanthropy or intelligently, I think, and moving towards many of the same things that you're talking about. Which I really appreciate. I'm curious about your experience when I talk to, for instance, VCs and things like that are on the coast. There is a very different way of engaging with organizations in those areas than in the Midwest, and I'd be curious. There's some really great organizations in our space that are doing something that is specific to the region, that is specific to people who are from here, serving here, et cetera. I'd be curious if you could for people who aren't familiar, who aren't from here. What are some of the differences that you see in doing philanthropy work in the Midwest or the South versus in some of the other areas of the country where we tend to our brains go to, right? Or there's your very large family offices or very large funds. It is different than it is here. I'd be curious if there's anything that you would call out as four points of awareness for those of us who are not familiar. 

Yamani Yansa: Oh, gosh, that's an interesting question. I work remotely in our offices, and we consider ourselves to be national, even though we focus our funding in the South and the Midwest. I do think that there is. There's definitely wealth concentrated on the coast, the East Coast and the West Coast. And so I end up spending a good amount of time fundraising in those spaces. And I don't know that I've picked up all of the nuances across, from the Midwest to the coast. I think more generally, like apart from philanthropy, I think the Midwest and South tend to be a lot more authentic, relational places. That's just been my personal experience. Just culturally, it's a place where people say hello and, people, remember details about families and, interests and all of those things, but those are also fundraising strategies and, anyway, so like on the coast, you have to, any donor relationship you need to pay attention to people in order to remain in relationship with them, especially a financial one. But it's interesting that you mentioned VC stuff, because I had a social impact. I don't know what it's called, like a pitch, like where you go and pitch to like socially focused VC people, venture capital people. And I was one of the few people that didn't have a product to pitch. Like most people were like, oh, I'm bringing this new diaper to the market or I'm bringing this new. And ours is really just about this was in my previous role. It was really just about like you should invest just because you should invest. And it was a harder sell. People were like, that was nice. But what kind of things do I get? What do I get back from it? I'm like, you get to feel like you did a really good thing and get to know that you like to help solve this problem. So it's just like an interesting space that I haven't spent a lot of time in. And I think that people think of it as like another do good thing, like a place to do good. But it's still very much like capital capitalism making money, profit and all of those things. And I haven't really reconciled that with how that interfaces with like philanthropy for the sake of. Just helping and doing good

Natasha Nuytten: Yeah. Yeah, that's a tough space. I have, and interestingly, the older I get, so I'm almost 15, 49 and embracing it and loving every second of it. And I also find that I have, I care less about a whole lot of other things. You just you settle into yourself and into what matters in this very different way. And that's very real. And part of that is your brain's not even done cooking until you're 27 years old. If you're a young man, typically with lots of testosterone pumping through your body and those types of things. But, coming up on 50, I think about the difference between like capitalism works for cultures and I want to say more for societies. And then this balance of the network, that social fabric piece of it coming to. The importance of that. And those things can sometimes really feel like they're in contrast to one another. But the reality is like. When they work together. We see so much incredible impact. And there has been this movement, right? There are B Corps and, all these different ways where business and social justice have come together. And there are so many pluses and minuses about it. Like it's still an experiment. And I think one of the challenges I'd love to get your take on is that we often, I think, on the corporate side of things, to your point around needing to make the case that it works. There are particular organizations who've done a great job of that. That's really they're leading forward with that. We see that culture in this country in particular is really wanting to embrace and lean into. People want to shop in places where they feel like their values are recognized, and they want to work in those places. And so there's a business case, right? The business case is made. And then at the same time, like we also know that more forward facing, more diverse. Companies, places where we value humans and the work that we're doing do better financially. So we know that there are all these wins. And yet. There is still this under underlying, like historical approach that we've had that sort of needs to be unpacked and we're really not very good in the US, I don't think it like looking at the past and being unpacking it, owning it, apologizing, recognizing we've maybe made a mistake and then like giving grace, right? It's that. We haven't figured out that equation, in my opinion, just yet. And so I'm curious as to the work that you're doing, that balance between the. That balance between those things, that was a very big question, but I'm curious what your thoughts are between how those things come together in your world. 

Yamani Yansa: Yeah, I think that we're solidly in the like nonprofits and philanthropic space. So not too much into the corporate or business space. But I think one of the things I was picking up from what you were just describing is I think it's not just the past but the present. One of the bigger problems that we're navigating is the concentration of billionaires, in and in this country. And, they are not doing their fair share. And like the fact that you just don't get to be a billionaire without exploiting people. It's not just about an idyllic version of capitalism that is everybody does their part and, quite unquote, pulls themselves up by the bootstraps and makes their money and decides how they want to, if they want to be values aligned and in their company, it's to be a billionaire. You have to have exploitative business practices. And yeah, like this is one of the tensions within philanthropy, that is widely talked about is like the payout. It's not necessarily applicable to us because we're a public foundation. We raise the money that we give away. But for private foundations that have amassed wealth through generational wealth or through exploitation, if you're only required by law to give five percent of your wealth. But there's these you're just like continuing to amass wealth and the little five percent is just like a it's really like a tax benefit. It's not, it's under the guise of you want to do something, really helpful to folks. But this balance of how much wealth is still continuing to be amassed and how much is being given away is pretty imbalanced. And the burdens that are put on the people that have to seek that five percent are often. Imbalanced as well. So like you're making people jump through all of these hoops to get this tiny bit of this bigger pot of money that, could be distributed, redistributed in such a way that still lets you be wealthy, but also spreads, some spreads it around so that everybody gets to feel the benefits of safety, security, food, housing, and yeah, it's just. I don't know how much I don't know if it was a question or like just a reflection. But yeah, that's how I think about some of those things. And one of the tricky things is that it feels hard to be in a philanthropic space because I don't come from generational wealth and I don't work at a public, I don't work at a private foundation. So it feels very much like an extension of what I've always been doing, which is raising money, raising awareness and then trying to spread it around. Yeah. 

Natasha Nuytten: Yeah, I'm with you. And yes, it was more of a reflection on the thing. So thank you for that. Very interestingly, I was listening to Simon Sinek the other day talking about, who's been driving a great conversation for years in this country and globally about why are you doing what you're doing? And it was really interesting. He was talking about having these conversations with very wealthy people who are making these. They're giving money. They're contributing. They're being philanthropists. But he's really interesting to me. There does seem to be a divide that comes with certain things like folks who identify with this sort of more masculine piece of themselves say, I'm an investor. And folks who lean more into the feminine are like, I'm a philanthropist. And he's really interesting to me, because the way that they then talk about it is when they're investing. There are these expectations for the folks for whom they've given these dollars. And to your point earlier, the requirements around reporting and performance of the programs and things like that. Yeah. And really wanting to make sure that I'm giving my money to an organization that's going to work really hard and do really great things. And on the other side, it feels he's and he's speaking specifically from his own experience, that I'm talking to these folks. And it's more like I'm giving this money because these people are already doing great work. I don't think they're going to run off to Kenya with my dollars. Like they want that. They're doing the work they want to be doing. Unless, of course, they're working in Kenya. But and so there's just this very different kind of expectation around what that giving looks like. So it's just as you were talking about. That's how people who are in the space who have the capacity to give in these very large volumes will say it was interesting to me to hear him say, oh, investment versus philanthropy and even the language around that. It ties back to some of those things. So thank you for letting me go there. It's been something I've been thinking about for a few days. I'm curious. So recently you moved from it at Groundswell from interim CEO to permanent CEO, which is new for them, but also obviously new for you. I'm curious if there is in this leadership perspective, is there anything that you're doing differently as a permanent CEO? And let's put that in quotes versus being in that interim role. 

Yamani Yansa: Yeah, for sure. So I'll just back up a little bit. I led the National Network of Abortion Funds for about seven years. And at the time that I was leaving there, I was like, I will never lead again. If that was what it was like, I'm going to be a coach. I went to the management center and I was just like, I am more than happy to be in a background role supporting leaders from behind the scenes. And when I was invited to come in as an interim, I really was just like, OK, this is an extension of my coaching work. It's going to be still like I'm going to get in there and get out. I'm going to be it's still going to be like background, like I'm going to help and support this transition and, and get out of the way for the next person who will come and lead. And so the interim work is really really internally focused. It was really about operational systems. And we were negotiating our first union contract. And, just a lot of internal things. And I think the biggest shift from interim to the quote unquote permanent role is just phase out more outwardly. We talked earlier about just the expectations of leadership are that you are out in the public, you're seen publicly, that you people know who you are, they know, hear your voice and that, they hear your marching orders or the things that you your vision do, the things that you think should happen in the world and are called to ask other people to join on to. And so that's just a shift that I'm like, like very actively inside of it. It's why I said yes to this podcast interview. It's just, you can't just sit internally. And you can. But, there's consequences. I'm just trying to shift my attention more to being seen publicly, sharing publicly about the things that I think and believe about leadership and otherwise, and also, meeting with donors and yeah, like raising money. I think in the interim role, it was really more about let me try to rebuild the staff, let me do hiring, let me put infrastructure in place. Now, we have staff in place and it's just about shifting my attention to thought leadership and fundraising and some of the more public-facing things. 

Natasha Nuytten: Yeah, the things that are exhausting for some of us, yeah. Required and necessary and important and. On that note, I'm curious if there's anything today that I haven't asked you about that I should have or anything that you'd like to talk about before we end that we haven't discussed yet? 

Yamani Yansa: Oh, gosh. I don't know that I've talked a lot about Groundswell. I'm happy to talk a little bit more about our work. We are a public foundation that has in 20 years given about $200 million away to grassroots organizations that focus largely on reproductive justice, but also on racial justice, gender justice, healing justice. And I'm really proud of our grantee partners. We have 250 grantee partners across the United States and across our C3 and our C4. They do things ranging from birth justice to abortion access to trans justice to healing justice work. And they do electoral justice. And it's just, it's been, we were recently rated one of the best intermediary funding intermediaries by our grantee partners, which was just really heartening to hear to read their quotes about our work that were unsolicited from us. And it's been a hard time to fundraise. A lot of philanthropic dollars are shrinking right now. People are scared of the political environment. And so I'm happy that Groundswell still exists. I am still here and we are shifting our portfolio right now to do deeper, higher levels of giving with a smaller group of grantees. And I'm excited about that because people need more than we've been able to give. And so we might not be able to give everything to everybody, but we are really trying to rescale our money so that we can make the biggest impact possible. 

Natasha Nuytten: So I love that. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for sharing about that. Can you just for people who aren't in the world, what does healing justice mean? Can you give us some context for that? 

Yamani Yansa: Sure. Yeah. It means healing justice with a political agenda. It means healing with a political agenda. So not just like self-care, like going to get pedicures and manicures, but like doing somatic body work and trying to allow ourselves to do things like grieve and heal and feel the, some of the both the highs and the lows of what it means to be in this work. It means interpersonal. It means like working on interpersonal relationships and conflict, navigating conflict. Some of the struggles in our movement aren't just like external political struggles, but our own internal interpersonal issues. So it means actually taking money and time and investing and strengthening in our skills to actually be in generative conflict with each other and disagree with each other and move through it without having to destroy our relationships or destroy organizations. So it's, yeah, so it's politicized, it's not just like self-care for the sake of beauty and yeah, surface level things, but, trying to care for ourselves and our communities and our people. Yeah. 

Natasha Nuytten: Thank you for that. I'm some of, many of those words are much more familiar than others. And so I appreciate it.

Yamani Yansa: We're a movement. I think social justice is like a movement of jargon. There's a lot of jargon. And yeah, I always welcome the opportunity to just unpack something and not contribute to that problem. 

Natasha Nuytten: Thank you. And it is really hard right now. Because everything does feel political and everything does feel hard. And you said this great conversation with Megan O'Neill a couple of weeks ago and, about having hard conversations with people that you love. And so this, this engagement around it's not OK just to agree to disagree, right? Like we have to get through the thing. And we don't all have those skills, right? Like when you can't name what your feelings are or anger is like a primary emotion for you, which it's totally not, it's a secondary emotion and you don't have language to talk about why you feel that way, it becomes much more difficult. So I think that sort of healing work and being able to maybe if it's starting with really young kids because sometimes these us old folks that we're like, we're harder to lead to water to get them to drink. But, teaching how to think about your emotions and understanding how your body is connected to your spirit and your emotions and the way you walk through the world and those types of things. So I love that y'all are doing that. We will be as supportive to you as possible. So what does that look like from our community if people want to support what Groundswell is doing? If they want to connect with you directly, how would they go about doing that? 

Yamani Yansa: Sure. You can look for me on LinkedIn. That's pretty much my only social media. Imani, Ansah, Hernandez. And then Groundswell Fund, we are also on LinkedIn. We're on Instagram and Facebook and Blue Sky. And obviously our website groundswellfund.org and Groundswell Action Fund, which is our C501C4 that supports electoral work. So just join our newsletter, follow us on social media. You can always donate if called to do that. But those are lots of ways to. Oh, and we also have a partnership with Ms. Magazine. We have Groundswell and Ms. Magazine where we lift up the stories and thought leadership of our grantee partners. So you can just Google that and go to that site and read all of the op-eds that folks have uploaded there and get inspired. I love it. That's awesome. 

Natasha Nuytten: All right. Thank you so much. I appreciate you allowing me to meander and reflect as well as ask some questions. So thank you for that. And keep up the good work. It's important. Thank you.

Yamani Yansa:  And thank you for your work with this with sharing stories and having people. I think this is a way that we understand each other's humanity. And, instead of reading some talking points or talking heads on the news, digging into people's stories is really essential to people learning how to be with each other and hopefully not being so complex. So thank you for doing that work as well. 

Natasha Nuytten: Absolutely. All right. Thank you. I really appreciate it. All right. 

Yamani Yansa: Bye.