Borrowed Wisdom with Robert Barry Fleming

Robert talks to Stacey Wade, founder and CEO of Nimbus, and Dr. Dawn Wade, Chief Strategy Officer at Nimbus, about their approach to connecting cultural nuance with brand and marketing strategy, defining strategy as connecting goals to success, and how their successful personal and professional partnership ticks. Learn more about Nimbus. https://hellonimbus.com/ Actors Theatre of Louisville: https://actorstheatre.org https://www.facebook.com/ActorsTheatreofLouisville 📷 Instagram: @actorstheatre, @robertbarryfleming 🐦 Twitter: @atlouisville, @flemingrobertb3 Produced by Elizabeth Greenfield Edited by Paul Doyle Original music by Omega Latham III Opening song written & performed by Erica Denise

Chandra is the Executive Director for the Center for Peace and Spiritual Renewal at Spalding University where she provides institutional vision and strategies for personal spiritual renewal, inward liberation, and social transformation within and beyond the Spalding community. In 1994 she established Irvin, Goforth & Irvin, LLC, a consulting firm which has helped individuals and Fortune 100 organizations throughout the U.S. and internationally to: clarify ambiguities in relationships; overcome chronic difficulties; resolve conflicts; and build meaningful relations across diverse groups. Following the shooting of 9 worshipers in Emanuel A.M.E Church in Charleston, SC, she served as consultant, designer and facilitator to the city’s acclaimed “Illumination Project,” a year-long city-wide process to strengthen community/police relations; and she is presently engaged in a similar endeavor in Louisville called, “The Synergy Project.” Chandra has authored and contributed to several books and articles on peace, human relations, and polarity thinking including, “Finding Peace in Life, Work, and Love, Listening to the Voice Within.” She describes her “sacred innate identity” as Peace. Employing her experience as a licensed minister, certified strengths and life coach (ICF), facilitator, and master consultant in polarity thinking, she journeys with individuals and organizations through uncertainties and disruptions to establish greater peace, purpose and wholeness in their lives. Chandra and her husband Nat have three adult children: Nate, Jovian (George), and Roman; and they look forward to their first grandchild in January. 📚 References: Jesus and the Disinherited by Howard Thurman (1949) Louisville Synergy Project The Illumination Project - Charleston Polarity Management: Identifying and Managing Unsolvable Problems by Barry Johnson (1992) More Beautiful Than Before: How Suffering Transforms Us by Steve Leder (2017) Actors Theatre of Louisville: https://actorstheatre.org https://www.facebook.com/ActorsTheatreofLouisville 📷 Instagram: @actorstheatre, @robertbarryfleming 🐦 Twitter: @atlouisville, @flemingrobertb3 Produced by Elizabeth Greenfield Edited by Paul Doyle Original music by Omega Latham III Opening song written & performed by Erica Denise

Beth Howard is the Organizing Director of Southern Crossroads. She is from a working-class family in Eastern Kentucky. She has over 12 years of experience in grassroots community organizing and leadership development. Beth began her organizing career as Lead Organizer at Fighting Against Injustice Towards Harmony in Daytona Beach, FL where the organization won campaigns to secure a substance-abuse treatment program and mental-health services for incarcerated people in the county jail. After five years, Beth moved back to her home state of Kentucky and worked for nearly seven years as a chapter organizer and later as Deputy Organizing Director of Leadership Development for Kentuckians For The Commonwealth. At KFTC, she worked on winning campaigns to raise the minimum wage in Fayette County and to restore voting rights to more than 200,000 Kentuckians with felonies in their past. She also created an organizing apprentice program and a community organizing 101 intensive training program for KFTC”s grassroots members. In 2019, she graduated from Catalyst Project’s Anne Braden program, a transformational anti-racist organizer training for white social-justice activists and served as the lead staff support for KFTC’s organizational racial justice assessment and visioning process. She is deeply committed to liberatory organizing strategies to build a multiracial poor-working class people’s movement in the American South. She lives in Lexington, KY with her partner Andrew, their faithful dog Sandy, and their defiant cat Tadpole. 📚 References: Southern Crossroads An Appalachian Reawakening: West Virginia and the Perils of the New Machine Age, 1945-1972 by Jerry Thomas (2010) Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America by Ibram X Kendi (2017) Owsley County, Kentucky, and the Perpetuation of Poverty by John R. Burch Jr. (2007) Combahee River Collective adrienne maree brown Actors Theatre of Louisville: https://actorstheatre.org https://www.facebook.com/ActorsTheatreofLouisville 📷 Instagram: @actorstheatre, @robertbarryfleming 🐦 Twitter: @atlouisville, @flemingrobertb3 Produced by Elizabeth Greenfield Edited by Paul Doyle Original music by Omega Latham III Opening song written & performed by Erica Denise

Robert and Kellie dive into the local impact of the Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron's announcement of the grand jury decision in the murder of Breonna Taylor. Kellie shares her personal and professional perspectives on civil service, violence, and community activism. Kellie R. Watson was the first Chief Equity Officer for Louisville Metro Government, providing strategic, visionary planning and oversight to advance racial equity in Louisville Metro Government and she oversees the Department of Human Resources and the Human Relations Commission. Prior to this, she was the General Counsel/Legislative Liaison to Mayor Fischer. She was also the Director of the Human Resources Department/Labor Relations within the Fischer administration. Kellie has served as the Director for Office of Human Resource Management/Acting Director of the Office of Civil Rights and Small Business for the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet. Kellie’s early years in City of Louisville, were as the Director of the Louisville Metro Human Relations Commission for several years, as the Director of the Office of Affirmative Action. Kellie is a member of the Kentucky and Louisville Bar Associations; Zeta Phi Beta Sorority, Inc. serving as the Executive Board Chair of Beta Alpha Xi Zeta Chapter; Legislative Liaison for Derby City Chapter of Jack and Jill Inc. 📚 References: “The 1619 Project” The History of White People by Nell Irvin Painter (2010) Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents by Isabel Wilkerson (2020) Actors Theatre of Louisville: https://actorstheatre.org https://www.facebook.com/ActorsTheatreofLouisville 📷 Instagram: @actorstheatre, @robertbarryfleming 🐦 Twitter: @atlouisville, @flemingrobertb3 Produced by Elizabeth Greenfield Audio Engineer and Editor: Paul Doyle Cover art by Mary Kate Grimes Original music by Omega Latham III Opening song written & performed by Erica Denise

Robert and Eric share their perspectives on the narratives surrounding BIPOC leadership, the roles of allies versus accomplices, and disrupting dominant culture legacies and systems in non-profit arts organizations. Mr. Ting is an Obie Award-winning director, Artistic Director of California Shakespeare Theater. He previously served as Long Wharf Theatre Associate Artistic Director. Recent credits include the world premiere of Sam Hunter’s Lewiston (Long Wharf Theatre), To Kill a Mockingbird (Cincinnati Playhouse), The World of Extreme Happiness (Manhattan Theatre Club / Goodman), Appropriate (Mark Taper Forum), Kimber Lee’s Brownsville Song (LWT / Philadelphia Theatre Co), A Great Wilderness (Williamstown), Nora Chipaumire’s Miriam (BAM Next Wave), Jackie Sibblies Drury’s We Are Proud to Present a Presentation… (world premiere, Soho Rep / Victory Gardens) and Rising Son (world premiere, Singapore Rep). Ting is a founding member of the artists’ collective INTELLIGENT BEASTS. Upcoming: Othello (Cal Shakes), Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower with Toshi Reagon (National Tour) and Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ An Octoroon (Berkeley Rep). He is a recipient of a TCG New Generations fellowship, a Jerome & Roslyn Milstein Meyer Career Development Prize, a NEFA National Theatre Project grant, and (with Meiyin Wang) a MAP Fund Award. Additionally, he has served on grant panels including the Doris Duke Charitable Trust, Jerome and McKnight Foundations, NEA, TCG, PONY, Creative Work Fund and Alpert Awards. 📚 References: California Shakespeare Theater: https://calshakes.org/ The Third Wave by Alvin Toffler (1980) The People’s Institute for Survival & Beyond: https://www.pisab.org/ Macbeth, 1969, directed & adapted by Eric Ting (Long Wharf Theatre, 2012):  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDYVg0NZcz0 Narrative and Dramatic Sources of Shakespeare by Geoffrey Bullough (1975) Actors Theatre of Louisville: https://actorstheatre.org https://www.facebook.com/ActorsTheatreofLouisville 📷 Instagram: @actorstheatre, @robertbarryfleming 🐦 Twitter: @atlouisville, @flemingrobertb3 Produced by Elizabeth Greenfield Edited by Paul Doyle Cover art by Mary Kate Grimes Original music by Omega Latham III Opening song written & performed by Erica Denise