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VOICE OVER: This is Alumni Aloud, a podcast by Graduate Center students for Graduate Center students. In each episode we talk with a GC graduate about their career path, the ins and outs of their current position, and the career advice they have for students. This series is sponsored by the Graduate Center’s Office of Career Planning & Professional Development.  

 

My name is Hilarie Ashton and I’m an English Ph.D candidate at the Graduate Center. Today I’m interviewing Lindsay Green-Barber, who graduated from the Political Science program with her Ph.D in 2012. She is the founder of Impact Architects. 

 

HILARIE ASHTON, HOST: Lindsay Green-Barber is the Founder and CEO of Impact Architects. Welcome to Alumni Aloud!  

LINDSAY GREEN-BARBER, GUEST: Thanks so much for having me.  

 

ASHTON: So, to start off, I like to ask people to tell us one adjective they’d use to describe themselves. 

Um, I think for me, I might choose something like “curious,” in general. Yeah. Curious about lots of things. 

 

ASHTON: That’s a good one. I like the “in general” qualifier. (laughs) That’s great. 

GREEN-BARBER: (Laughs) 

 

ASHTON: And tell us what you do for a living, how you would describe your work. 

GREEN-BARBER: So I’m technically a consultant, and also a business owner and manager, but we do strategy and research on the impact of journalism and media more broadly. And so, a consultant in the journalism and media impact space, which is quite niche. (Laughs.) 

 

ASHTON: Yeah, that’s so interesting.  

GREEN-BARBER: Yeah, it’s a field that is, you know, growing, kind of slowly, but it’s been a really interesting space to be in for almost nine years now, and so, I’ve seen a lot of change in the sector. 

 

ASHTON: That’s great. Um, and what’s your academic background? 

GREEN-BARBER: My academic background is in political science. Both my undergraduate degree from Clemson University was political science and then my graduate degree from the Graduate Center is also in political science; and it had more of a focus on comparative politics and international politics. 

 

ASHTON: Always an application of that somewhere! (Laughs) 

GREEN-BARBER: There is! Although in the field I work, you know, people ask what my background is, and they assume that I have training, you know, as a journalist, or in something journalism-adjacent, or in communications, so, you know, when it comes down to it, when you think about social sciences and the humanistic social sciences, those research methods that you can use and approaches really span all the different sectors and fields. I feel like I’m often having to explain both why I can work in journalism without a journalism degree and also how, you know, political science is the study of power and what that means is actually incredibly relevant when you’re thinking about journalism and its effects on society. 

 

ASHTON: Absolutely, and sometimes it’s underanalyzed when it should be more front and center. So we initially interviewed you back in 2014, um, when you were an ACLS Public Fellow. You’re our first return guest, which is very exciting. What was — can you tell us what you did in that role and what that was like? 

GREEN-BARBER: Yeah, so I was super fortunate to have an ACLS Public Fellow position and I was at the Center for Investigative Reporting, and at the time, the Public Fellowship program was a two year program that put you you into a nonprofit or government agency where you held a position for two years; you had to apply specifically for that position.  

 

So I was media impact analyst at this nonprofit newsroom out here in California, in the Bay Area, and, you know, two years is really nice ’cause you have a lot of time to both kind of figure out what is an organization about, how can you fit into it, and then to also really take ownership of some projects and and hopefully make a difference in your organization, and potentially stay on afterwards, which I chose to do for another two years.  

 

Through that program, you know, it’s about half of people choose to stay on the organizations and about half move on. And it’s been kind of rebranded now, it’s called the Leading Edge fellowship, and so it’s adjusted a bit over time, but it, but it is still there and I wanna make sure folks know: it’s now the Public Fellows Leading Edge Fellowship insert they’re interested in that that certainly check it out. And I know there’s been quite a few GC grads who have, who have done both the Public Fellows program and Leading Edge fellowship now. 

 

ASHTON: Yeah, that sort of, the amount — like you said, the amount of time to stay in a place and like, absorb and learn and get to really understand how things work is so important. What are some of the skills and tools that you use now — this is another big question (Laughs) 

GREEN-BARBER: Yeah, oof. I was — 

 

ASHTON: Maybe things that you gained in the ACLS time or just, from elsewhere  

GREEN-BARBER: Yeah, I mean, I think from grad school in particular, you know, obviously I learned a lot about different research methods and I use those all the time. And, you know I find even things that aren’t particularly exciting, but — you know, like survey design (laughs)  is something that we use all of the time in our work — developing surveys and helping organizations think about how they can be more thoughtful in their survey development, so that’s, you know, one really concrete, you know, tool. Also, you know, thinking about how to structure interview. We do — you know, we do a lot of kind of research and evaluation consulting projects where there’s lots of interviewing that happens, and so being able to bring even a little bit more rigor to how qualitative interviews are done and qualitative research is structured, I think is something that both I draw on all of the time and something that we bring into this field is sometimes lacking.  

 

I think, you know, there are also skills like project management (laughs) and how to — you know, as an independent consultant running a business, it’s, you know, just having had the experience for years, like, how do you keep your project on track, how do you manage teaching together with research, together with, you know, class papers, all these things. You know, being able to juggle a lot of different projects all at the same time and keep things moving forward is, you know, something that I do every day now, and so it’s certainly something that I was able to develop and hone while I was in grad school.  

 

ASHTON: Yeah, well, and we often say in our office when students are considering — I guess it applies within academia but especially when people are considering a move out — that project management is very specifically one of those phrases that you might see in a job ad and go, I don’t know that I can do that, and you do do that; you do that all the time with all of the things you just said. Everything about teaching and research is project management in some respect. 

GREEN-BARBER: Totally. Totally, and, you know, one of the things that I end up doing very often and one of the things people come to us to hire us to do, it’s like often work that they could hypothetically be doing internally, but they really need someone to own it and move it forward and keep it on track, and so that is, that is part of the service that we’re offering. 

 

ASHTON: Yeah, that’s great, and being an outside eye for that gives an extra perspective that I’m sure is, you know, part of the value — but maybe also people don’t wanna do it (Laughs.) So what does a typical work day look like for you? 

GREEN-BARBER: It’s, you know — they’re more consistent since, you know, about this time of 2020. (Laughs). Prior to the pandemic my days looked a lot different, I traveled a lot for work and so, there’s a lot of, you know, going on site with clients or participating in conferences or other field building activities, and so things were a lot less predictable then. And, you know, in the past years, both everything has shifted and the organization has grown, and so my own personal days look a little bit more consistent now, where, you know, I’m kind of at my desk in the morning, checking in with the folks who work with the company to make sure everybody is kind of on track for the day.  

 

Doing a lot of client management, so that can be everything from new inquiries that are coming in from folks who maybe want to partner on projects to just managing questions that are coming up from projects that are ongoing, clients, and then there’s like, you know, the actual work or the real work, which is getting in there and kind of getting into the research or the strategy work. And that is, you know, sprinkled throughout any day as well and lots of meetings, lots and lots of meetings (laughs) but it’s — you know, I think one of the things that, you know, has come out of these past two years is this recognition that it’s possible to do a lot more remotely with, with you know, zoom meetings. You know, they’re so kind of face to face than we had been doing previously, which also means that our services are are a bit more accessible, because there’s less — it costs less if you don’t have to travel, and so we’re finding we’re able to work with more diverse kinds of organizations, that, you know, maybe have smaller budgets or different types of nonprofits than we would have been able to previously, and so, if there’s, for us, a silver lining of this work is that we’ve been able to figure out how we can work with and serve more organizations. 

 

ASHTON: That’s fantastic. Really like, broadening access is not a — not a side effect I would have expected from this, but I’ve seen it happen in, like, educational settings too and it’s like, oh yeah. It’s great to all be in a room together, but there are — you know — that can be a barrier 

GREEN-BARBER: And access to information has always been one of the core principles of the work that we do and a tenet of the organization, and one of the things that, you know, I became really passionate about when I was inside of academia and grad school and, you know, frustrated sometimes at how siloed the information would be, that, you know, we’re creating inside of research institutions. And so leaving academia and and doing kind of applied research in the real world to me felt like this way that you could make that those learnings and and things more accessible, and there are still barriers to that for sure ,but you know — publishing whatever we can, putting it up on the website, you know, being out there at conferences and sharing our findings was always part of the work, but it has been great to be able to find ways to be able to work more directly with organizations and make not only the learning successful, but actually some of the approaches that we’re taking with organizations accessible as well. 

 

ASHTON: Usually we ask questions about people’s job search, um, which, clearly, you know, you did for the, for the ACLS work and maybe also other work that you did, but what is it like to start and run an organization? 

GREEN-BARBER: My answer is — I mean, I’m sure everyone who started an organization would have a different answer (laughs), but mine was, like, a lot of luck and stumbling into it, I think. I — you know, when I left CIR after four years I was still very much committed to the organization and its work, but again, I’m not a journalist by training and my graduate research looked at social movements and, you know, I’ve always been very interested in both in my personal life and professional life contributing to social change as directly as possible, and for lots of very good reasons, there are limitations to what you can do when you’re working inside of a journalism organization, from an ethical perspective.  

 

So post 2016 election, I was like, this is the time for me to leave and I — I didn’t leave with the plan, I’m gonna found an organization, I left with no plan (laughs) other than, it’s time for me to do the next thing I don’t know what that’s going to –  

 

ASHTON: What is it (laughs) 

GREEN-BARBER: Yeah, and I had a couple of organizations I’ve worked with that were interested in in hiring me to do some consulting work, so I felt like, I can make this work for a couple of months and I’ll figure it out, and as I got out there, you know, I think this is a pretty common experience for people with academic backgrounds, kind of like, my my experience is a little bit all over the place and the jobs I really want, I maybe wasn’t quite qualified for yet or they wouldn’t, you know, maybe think I was quite qualified for the job. It felt like a really heavy lift to demonstrate that I could fit there. And then the jobs people wanted to hire me for were jobs I didn’t want to do (laughs) so I found myself in this kind of catch 22, and then after about six months of just doing some piecemeal consulting, it felt like maybe there was enough that I could do that for awhile at least and so I — I got more intentional about, you know, building a brand and, you know, building a website, building an actual business out of it.  

 

And after a year, just found, you know, this is actually pretty great, and I get to do all kinds of really interesting work, and so then took the next step to actually incorporate the company and — and so it’s been really exciting. It’s also a whole other kind of learning to figure out, how do you run a business, how do you hire people, how do you comply with employment law how do you run payroll (laughs), you know, it’s like very administrative and kind of like technical things that I didn’t necessarily anticipate that I would be doing but in, in that context of curiosity and constant learning, it still means that I do something new pretty much every week. And some of it’s super annoying administrative work, I won’t lie, but still, it keeps me kind of constantly learning and and certainly it keeps me busy  

 

ASHTON: Nobody likes filling out forms in any capacity (laughs)  

GREEN-BARBER: My, my second employee lives in New York and so I, like, had to figure out California employment law, and then I had to figure out New York — two great states to be an employee and, like, very complicated states to be an employer (laughs). I’m happy about the laws and — like could you just make it easier for me to understand them  

 

ASHTON: I mean, again, back to access, like, there’s so much, like, jargon that doesn’t need to be as highfalutin as it is because people can’t turn it into practice. 

GREEN-BARBER: True. Complicated  

 

ASHTON: I love — I love where you talked about not knowing what you wanted to do and not knowing what the plan was, ’cause I feel like a lot of folks feel are in that spot when they’re when they’re finishing a degree and that’s just nice to hear like articulated — being open to what came next 

GREEN-BARBER: Yeah, and it’s — I mean, it’s a scary place to be and I — you know, when I was at CIR, I had first a fellowship with a guaranteed stipend, and then when I stayed on, you know I had a salary and it was really scary to after you know all of grad school feeling like so economically precarious the whole time. (Laughs) You’re making like just enough to like make it through in New York probably not really just enough when I think back on that tiretime (laughs) like but — it was scary to leave.  

 

But knowing — you know, some advice that I got was to know exactly how much I would need to make for six months in order to not basically not, like, have a panic attack every day, and then could I line up just enough consulting work where I could know that I was going to be able to, like pay my rent for that 6 month period or whatever it was — was a really helpful way to go into it so that I could, like, set us out a little bit of the anxiety and just try to be more open to what was going to to happen or, or to be able to look for opportunities without being quite so concerned about, you know, how I was gonna make it day to day. And so it’s — it was super challenging, I don’t like want to undersell, to see what happens like  

 

ASHTON: Wake up every day and go, I wonder what I’ll do! (Laughs) 

GREEN-BARBER: Yeah, it was — it was scary and it was challenging, but having, like, knowing I had enough of a commitment from a couple of organizations that I could, like, make ends meet for a few months made it easier for me to take that step, and having been able to put away a little bit of savings while I was — while I had a salary job so that, you know, I just felt like I had enough of a buffer where this you know, I was not like stepping fully into the deep end, I was kind of like, wading in and, you know, had like a little life raft with me. 

 

ASHTON: The floaties on the arms! And that’s a great — I mean, those material realities of having to have, you know, healthcare and and a wage, money coming in while you’re figuring out the next thing is is really crucial, so that’s — I love that combination of the two; that is really good advice. What part — what part or parts of your job energize you the most? 

GREEN-BARBER: Yeah. I really like people, um, in general, like, I’m — although I will say again over the past two years, I’ve realized as much as I am a people person, I also have really enjoyed having personal time and space. But I really like people, and I think one of the things about consulting is, you do have to do networking, and I think often that can feel almost like a dirty word, or like it’s, you know, purely transactional and, you know, I think I approach the work as truly curious about people and interested in kind of what different organizations are doing and how they’re making decisions and, and approaching it as building relationships with people at the organizations that then move around, and it is networking but to me it feels true to kind of what I’m interested in and, and who I am and doesn’t — it doesn’t feel transactional. And then being able to help make those connections like, oh, you’re doing this thing that’s so interesting, I know somebody else who would — who would actually be a better fit for this kind of work. (Laughs) 

 

And being able to make that connection, again, I think is a value add that we bring to the work, but also to me again just feels like something that — it energizes me, it’s interesting to me, and I find it to be kind of fun, and as the company’s grown you know it’s nice now that I’m I’m not working all alone (laughs). 

 

ASHTON: Uh huh! 

GREEN-BARBER: I have two other full-time colleagues I have another part time colleague and we have two interns and so now there is a team that we get to work with, and that’s been really nice and for me it’s been an exciting development over the past you know, three years. 

 

ASHTON: Yeah, that, that makes a difference. I’m finishing my dissertation and I’ve been having lots of feelings about the solitary nature of writing and how much more I get out of it when I talk to people about what I’m writing about. You know, in writing groups or even just like forcing loved ones to listen to me (laughs). It really makes a difference. 

GREEN-BARBER: Yeah, it’s nice, and, you know, that too can be scary — you bring people in and there are more perspectives and things take longer and you have to work in feedback and you don’t get to control everything as much as you might like (laughs). But, you know, net net it’s nice to have a team to work with and I think it makes the work better and it’s more interesting and so definitely like would fall into this energizing and exciting part of the work for me now.  

 

ASHTON: That’s great. What do you know now that you wish you had known as a grad student?  

GREEN-BARBER: A lot of things, but I think one of them was, I wish I had just had more confidence and more exposure to the fact that there are so many jobs out in the world and so many ways to to work and to contribute and to just take, you know, what I was learning and and thinking about and doing and apply it. Because I went straight to grad school from undergrad, and I’m, I’m incredibly happy that I did, but I think it — a lot of it was just, like — I don’t know what I want to do when I grow up (laughs). I’m good at school, I’m curious, I love school, I love learning and that feels like a really safe comfortable environment for me, and I don’t know anything else, like, I wouldn’t know where else to even begin, and I I wish I had had more exposure to just how many different kinds of like careers you could have and jobs you could do, that could be really meaningful.  

 

And so I’m — I’m you know I feel really fortunate that I figured it out (laughs) sooner rather than later thanks again in large part to a fellowship, but I I wish I had known that. I don’t know that I would have done anything radically different but I probably would have been a little bit less anxious (laughs) about what’s going to happen next, like, when do I need to go on the job market like, how many things I have to publish, and focused on the things that I really found most interesting and important  

 

ASHTON: That’s such great advice especially (laughs) for folks in an industry and in settings where you’re — whether you want to or not, you’re constantly comparing yourself to other people and noticing other people’s trajectories and paths, but not necessarily noticing all the rest of it — you know, like what the conditions were for them or, those things that you don’t see from from the outside. 

GREEN-BARBER: Totally. 

 

ASHTON: What traits or interests might be useful to have for somebody looking to do work like yours? 

GREEN-BARBER: I think, you know, to to be successful as, you know, an independent consultant especially, like even thinking before the company started growing, I do think that project management piece and being able to keep yourself on track is incredibly important, because, you know, again, it’s what people are hiring you to do, it’s what people are trusting that you’re going to be able to do. And it can be really challenging; it’s hard to stay motivated on projects, especially when they take longer than expected or you hit roadblocks you weren’t planning on. And, like, you have to have a way to do it and so, I think that’s — that is definitely something that yeah — a skill that I was able to develop in grad school and that is absolutely necessary for the work as it is now.  

 

I think again also the — I know there are different types of consulting, different types of relationships that people can have with clients, but I do think if you genuinely approach relationships as, like, interesting and where you are — you care about the people and the work, that it, it just feels a lot more fulfilling than if it’s like, ugh, I have to go to network again. It’s like, no, I’m gonna meet people, and, you know, and there there is a transactional element to it, like of course there is — like ultimately they’re potentially going to pay you to do work yeah and like that doesn’t mean that the whole relationship has to be transactional, and so I think people will be most successful in this type of work if they’re, if they’re truly curious and interested in meeting and getting to know the people that they’re working with, and not just, you know, getting a project brief and going off and doing it on your own and kind of turning over the work and calling it a day. 

 

ASHTON: I love that as advice because attitude is like a skill that, a skill that you already have that you can apply in different ways, not something else you need to learn or or or research, just like an orientation toward the world. Um, I love that as a way to think about –  I love thinking about that as a strength 

GREEN-BARBER: Yeah 

 

ASHTON: It does make things more enjoyable, the way you’re talking about  

GREEN-BARBER: Yeah, and in our, like, employee onboarding information, you know, some of the things that I have in there that, you know — when we’re working with clients, like, we’re there to help solve their problems, and (laughs) it often doesn’t look like what they think it is ,but they’re coming with like complex questions, they don’t know how to do it they’re like tired of thinking about it they’re here it is they’re just like can this be someone else’s problem for a while, and it’s our job to just kind of say, yes! and then to think really creatively about how you could solve this problem or how you could answer their questions that they have, and often that means bringing in different, you know, research methods that they haven’t thought about before and exposed to or whatever.  

 

But that, again, it feels exciting — there’s a lot of creativity you can bring into this space, but there is something about — in that relationship that you’re you’re providing support to people in a way that, like, doesn’t have that much to do with the work (laughs). Often it is that they’re, like, I mean like — by work I mean the project itself, it is about like someone being like, help! and then like, OK we can help with this.  

 

ASHTON: Yes, I will take this off your hands. 

GREEN-BARBER: Yeah, and, and then you can get into, like, the really interesting kind of intellectual work but there it is it it is like based in this, like, human interaction of, like, help! (laughs)  

 

ASHTON: (Laughs) Which is such a universal feeling no matter, like, everybody has that moment, can someone else do this, but to get to be the person who takes that off of people — I mean that’s kind of — what a gift. People appreciate that. (Laughs) 

GREEN-BARBER: I hope so. Aside from –  

 

ASHTON: But like you said, and that’s like one layer of it, but then there’s the actual, you know, sort of, like technical assistance or the things that you’re giving as well. I think that’s a nice way of thinking about consulting that makes, that also makes the word consulting a little less transactional 

GREEN-BARBER: Yeah, and someone asked me recently — I think it was actually somebody at the Grad Center had reached out and said, hey, you know would you be up for having a conversation about your work and said, I noticed on your website used the word partnership or partners a lot, and, you know like how did you come to that language? Like, well, part of it is like it’s kind of the field trend, like people use that language all the time so there’s like a reflecting that we’re in this space, but some of it is truly that, like I don’t — we don’t talk about even in our internal meetings, like our culture is not to talk about clients, although technically sure, you you could call them that, and that’s what people are. We do talk about our different partners and many of our clients refer to us as, like, their learning partners, and, I don’t know — it’s a really subtle shift, but to me it is a better representation of the kinds of relationships that we have with folks, and honestly takes the pressure off, like, if we’re partners and we’re learning together, it’s also like, then if we don’t have all the answers it’s fine (laughs) 

 

ASHTON: Yeah yeah  

GREEN-BARBER: Again, some of it’s semantics, but it, it still feels like, you know, language is important. 

 

ASHTON: Absolutely, and the way that you talk about things shifts people’s perspectives on what’s possible. So that’s really — that’s great advice. What professional skills would you recommend that current GC students develop if they’re interested in consulting? 

GREEN-BARBER: Yeah, but those, like soft skills, you know (laughs) people talk about, um, are important and you have all different opportunities to develop those skills, so when you’re in grad school, some of it can just be, you know, interacting with your peers, some of it can be — and I think often it gets termed as like you know for interviews and stuff and it’s like, even softer than that (laughs). Like how do you engage with your students, how do you help them understand complex issues, and, like, all of those things, you can bring into a meeting with the client, as well, where it’s new concepts new information and you’re, you’re still — You know, I miss teaching in a classroom, but I feel like I get to teach all of the time in our work (laughs). It’s just framed a little bit differently, like it’s a presentation or whatever. But so, I think thinking about those skills not only as like pedagogical approaches and skills that you could use in the classroom but what — how could you apply this kind of out in the quote unquote real world or with other people.  

 

I think, you know, when I was at CIR, one of the things that I had to do that I really did not like at the time, and now I’m so grateful that I (laughs) was forced to do was, like, grant writing and reporting and just interacting with institutional funders, which is something, you know, you often have to do in grad school and to try to get grants for funding. And so investing the time to kind of learn how to do that well and what best practices are I think are really important; a lot of our clients are non-profits and institutional funders, and so, you know I I don’t have to submit a grant application, but it’s — you know, it’s often a very similar kind of approach, so some of those things that I had to do that weren’t my favorite became really important.  

 

And the same with like all the administrative stuff, you know, I remember when I was at GC I worked in the Registrar’s Office for years, and actually really loved the job and the people there and it was great, and it was just super administrative, and, like, some of the administrative skills that I was able to just kind of work on and develop there are the things that became really useful in figuring out, like, how to set up an organization and systems, and, you know, workflow processes and things, and so — again, not the most exciting work; it’s some of the stuff that I would be able to do my current job without having had those experiences.  

 

ASHTON: You’ve already given a whole bunch of great advice for folks interested in your kind of work or even, you know, adjacent kinds of work: do you have any other advice you haven’t shared yet? 

GREEN-BARBER: One of the things I mentioned at the beginning that I might go back to is, you know — that — so I’m working in journalism and media and my background isn’t in journalism or media. You know, my, my research, it did look at how organizations use different kinds of communication and communications platforms for social mobilization, so like, methodologically, there’s a ton of overlap, but I do think especially if you’re interested in kind of transitioning outside of academia, like, the rest of the world isn’t structured in the same buckets as grad school.  

 

And so, thinking about what you’re interested in or what types of, you know, research approaches you’re, you’re most passionate about it or that you want to be kind of using, or — and just not thinking, well, I’m interested in international human rights so I — for myself — so I must work for an international human rights organization. And, you know, instead I get to work with international journalism organizations that report on human rights issues, or funders who are supporting that type of work. And so, just being able to open up kind of the aperture of what you might see as possibilities, I think is really valuable. And again, just recognizing that the rest of the world (laughs) is not organized in academic kind of language or confines or there are plenty of silos out there, but they’re, like, not the same ones, and so, just like being able to disaggregate, like my degree is in this, but here are the things I’m interested in and here are all the different places where those kind of overlap. 

ASHTON: And that segues really well into my last question — you kind of alluded to this a little bit before — what do you think is the future of your field? 

GREEN-BARBER: I think there’s a ton of opportunity in the media and journalism space for, for people with academic backgrounds or who are coming out of academic programs. It is (laughs) — I’m sure anyone who’s listening to this knows that journalism is a bit of a fraught industry at the moment in many different ways, like the economic model for it has pretty much collapsed and is unsustainable, you know, people’s levels of trust in news and information especially at the national level are like the lowest they’ve ever been, and at the same time, there’s so much interesting work happening, and really, really exciting work especially at the local level, and there are folks out there that are totally reimagining what news and information means and what journalism means, and in that space there’s — because it’s new and it’s emergent — having capacity for learning and continuous learning is really important to make sure that what’s working continues to be supported and the things that aren’t working, we know that earlier and sooner rather than later. And so, you know, I think this is a field that’s going to continue to grow even as the media and journalism sector is having a lot of challenges. I think the type of support that, you know, that our organization can offer, I hope, helps the industry move in a positive direction and, you know, we need more people that kind of work, especially in the next few years.  

 

ASHTON: That’s great. While you were talking, I was thinking about all the unionization efforts that are happening in a lot of New York media, but but in other places too, and how that shifts what’s possible for people and that kind of thing. 

GREEN-BARBER: Yeah, I mean, there’s a lot happening in the space that’s exciting and hopeful and, and like a lot more still to be done, so it is a place that I think there’s a lot of opportunity, and it can be both really intellectually interesting, and feel like you can very concretely contribute to super important things that have real world consequences. 

  

ASHTON: I think that is a great note to end on. Thank you so much for spending some time with us sharing your wisdom with our listeners; it’s been really great to have you 

GREEN-BARBER: Yeah, thanks so much for having me. Always happy to talk with GC! 

 

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