Three years ago, Network for Victim Recovery of DC (NVRDC) began a multi-year journey to create our organizational theory of change. This past year, we’ve engaged the entire NVRDC staff in a series of “fireside chats” to further build on the ideas and philosophies we want to center as an organization. The next step in this journey will be for NVRDC to host a series of shared spaces with external partners to discuss how our field is evolving and the role we all can play in shaping progress in the larger nonprofit sector.
Over the course of the next year, we hope to bring local nonprofit leaders together for a virtual discussion on strategies to drive impact, lessons learned in organizational advocacy, culture shifting, community empowerment, and transforming systems. Our hope is that by creating this shared space for like-minded visionaries, together we can discuss and explore the ways we can promote these ideas at our own organizations while also working together to advocate for broader systemic change that strengthens the nonprofit community.
As we move into 2022 we invite national leaders to share ideas and approaches around core values that support sustaining talented and diverse staff in this mission-driven work.
Braving in Nonprofits: Sustainable Passion on January 13, 2022 at 12 pm, will focus on encouraging and retaining nonprofit staff that are passionate about their work through an organizational commitment to sustainable living and healthy work culture (e.g. living wage, mental health support, etc.)
Sustainable Passion Panelists:
Patrice Sulton, Founder and Executive Director of DC Justice Labs, is an attorney, professor, and criminal justice reform advocate based in Washington, D.C. Her career is devoted to fundamentally changing the way people think about who we punish, why we punish, and how we punish. After working to advance racial justice in the courts and alongside grassroots movements for more than 15 years, Patrice founded DC Justice Lab to advance community-rooted public safety reforms. She envisions, writes, and fights for sweeping changes to American criminal laws and policies.
Patrice has represented clients in criminal and civil rights cases nationwide. She served on the District of Columbia’s Criminal Code Reform Commission (comprehensively rewriting D.C.’s criminal code), Police Reform Commission (recommending an overhaul D.C.’s approach to public safety), and Jails & Justice Task Force (publishing a plan to decarcerate by half and bring D.C.’s residents home to a safe environment). Patrice also teaches Adjudicatory Criminal Procedure and Trial Advocacy at The George Washington University Law School.
Maya Goodwin, Senior Manager for Policy at the Markle Foundation
Maya Goodwin is an economic policy and social sector strategist whose career has centered on breaking down harmful economic narratives, spotlighting critical policy gaps and advancing reforms towards the goal of widespread economic opportunity, essential security, and empowerment. Maya's policy and social sector expertise lies in workforce development and postsecondary education, as well as labor and worker power.
Maya is currently a Senior Manager for Policy at the Markle Foundation, where she advances state and federal workforce and education strategies that break down barriers to good quality employment. Previously, Maya advised organizations in workforce development on policy, strategic execution, program development, and communications as a Senior Consultant with the social impact consulting firm, Kinetic West. She has also worked as a Senior Economic Advisor with Sperling Economic Strategies, where she advised philanthropies and economic policy expert Gene Sperling on pressing economic challenges, as well as promising investment and policy reform strategies. Notably, Maya spent roughly a year helping to produce the economic policy ideas book, Economic Dignity, that made the case that economic policy priorities should be driven by the imperative to protect and expand fundamental facets of dignity in every person's economic life. She has also worked as a fiscal policy researcher at the Pew Charitable Trusts' Fiscal Federalism Initiative, and in workforce development research at the Aspen Institute's Economic Opportunities Program.
Maya holds masters' degrees in international economic policy and political economy from Sciences Po and the London School of Economics, respectively. She also holds a bachelor's in anthropology, with a focus on political and economic anthropology, from Princeton University.