Community Possibilities
Community Possibilities
Building Resilient Communities Through Trauma-Informed Policy and Practice: Meet Jesse Kohler Kohler
When tragedy struck at age 15, Jesse Kohler found himself surrounded by a supportive community that helped him navigate grief and eventually discover post-traumatic growth. This formative experience set Jesse on a path toward becoming a passionate advocate for trauma-informed systems change.
As Executive Director of the Campaign for Trauma-Informed Policy and Practice (CTIPP), Jesse brings a unique perspective to our conversation. While many organizations focus on direct trauma services or training, CTIPP recognized a critical gap: the need for coordinated advocacy to transform policies at every level of government. Their innovative approach creates a "coalition of coalitions" that connects national policy efforts with state, local, and grassroots initiatives—creating a bidirectional flow of information and resources.
Jesse breaks down the core principles of trauma-informed approaches, and helps us understand how these principles can be applied across healthcare, education, justice systems, and even climate resilience efforts. Through partnerships like the International Transformational Resilience Coalition, CTIPP is helping communities prepare psychologically and socially for extreme weather events and environmental challenges.
Our conversation explores the messy but rewarding world of coalition-building and the crucial distinction between community-based and truly community-led approaches. Jesse emphasizes that evaluation must empower communities rather than extract from them, challenging traditional models that measure impacts and then depart without sustainable engagement.
Ready to join this movement? Visit ctipp.org to connect with advocacy networks, communities of practice, and resources designed to build momentum toward a trauma-informed future where healing, resilience, and community-led change become the foundation of healthier systems for all.
Guest Bio
As CTIPP’s Executive Director on loan, Jesse Kohler is in charge of organizational administration and HR, fundraising, strategic planning, public engagements, and working to create conditions of safety and empowerment for the board, staff, and volunteers in their roles with the organization. Jesse is on loan from The Change Campaign, which is a nonprofit organization Jesse founded. The Change Campaign is a multi-pronged initiative to build community and systemic capacity by facilitating the application of the science of developmental adversity and its progression through the lifespan and generations to enable initiatives that improve holistic well-being and provide strategic support to government agencies and organizations focused in aligned areas. Jesse has always had a strong vision for change that woul
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Music by Zach Price: Zachpricet@gmail.com
Hi everybody, welcome to the Community Possibilities Podcast, the place where we explore what's possible when people come together to create lasting change. I'm your host, anne Price, and today we're diving into a powerful conversation with Jesse Kohler. Jesse is a visionary leader dedicated to building stronger communities by applying the science of developmental adversity to drive real change. As the executive director of the Campaign for Trauma-Informed Policy and Practice, otherwise known as CTIP and oh, by the way, jesse is on loan from the Change Campaign, the nonprofit he founded, the Change Campaign, the nonprofit he founded Jesse is on a mission to create conditions of safety, empowerment and well-being for organizations, government agencies and the people they serve. Jesse has spent his career equipping communities with the tools and strategies they need to break cycles of adversity and build a better future for all.
Ann Price:Jesse's going to tell us how he came to work in the trauma-informed space. You know that's always my favorite question how did people come to be who they are? He has such a compelling answer to that question. Jesse has a deep passion for systemic transformation and in this episode we'll discuss the impact of trauma-informed systems on our health and well-being. Let's get started, everybody. Hi, everybody, welcome back to Community Possibilities. I am so excited to have my new friend, jesse Kohler on. Hey, jesse.
Jessie Kohler:Hey Ann.
Ann Price:Hey, so we just met and I feel like I say this a lot, but I feel like we've known each other for all of 10 minutes now.
Jessie Kohler:There's a lot of kindred spirits in our work, and it's a truly beautiful thing.
Ann Price:Yes, yes, it is. And one of those kindred spirits, one of my Resilient Georgia grantees, actually suggested that I get in touch with you and I needed to find out about C-TIP. And I'm like what the heck is that I have never heard about? Who are these people doing trauma-informed work? I must know. But before we get into all that, I want to give you an opportunity to introduce yourself. I'm always so curious how people who have so many choices about what they do with their life end up doing what they do. So, jesse, my new friend, how did you come to this?
Jessie Kohler:work, yeah, and when I describe how I got into this work, the first thing that I always say is that I have the great privilege of being rooted in love. I come from a family that just has loved me as best as they could. That doesn't mean the mistakes weren't made. Parenting is almost certain to create, you know, some imperfect uh situations and decisions but they loved me with everything they had and I was supported by a community and friends and that's just kind of the orientation, the lens through which I have the great privilege of getting to see the world through Right and um through through that lens. When I was uh 15 years old, my best friend from growing up, from the time that we were three or four, um, he and his father passed away um tragically in a plane crash and um that was a devastatingly traumatic uh experience, obviously going back to school, uh missing him every single day. I I really struggled in school uh for my sophomore year after um his death and um fortunately again had co there was. There were a few coaches in particular, but the whole community and family that rallied around and provided the resources and supports to help me navigate that really, really trying time, and I know that so many of my friends and other people in the community were devastated as well. It wasn't just me, and I think that that created what I have now come to know as post-traumatic growth, post-traumatic wisdom. And as I then navigated through college, wanted to be an attorney, got arrested for something that I didn't do, which helped me see a different side of the justice system than I thought that I was going to get into. And there was a silver lining in that really unpleasant experience. That was, I had to do 25 hours of court-mandated community service, which I did at the Community Services Center, and that 25 hours of court-mandated community service turned into thousands of hours of volunteer work over the next two years of my college experience, and I fell in love with nonprofit work. I just love the idea that we could provide resources and supports without cost being a barrier to access of those services.
Jessie Kohler:And so when I got out of my, as I was graduating from my undergraduate degree, I knew that I wanted to one, move back to Philadelphia to be closer to my family. Two, to work in the nonprofit world. And there was a fellowship in Philadelphia Public High School non-profit called 12 plus that I worked at and I saw in that experience so many bright, talented students. The school was overwhelmingly living below the poverty line and faced a lot of uh like socioeconomic challenges within the student body, but they were exceptionally bright, um, but I saw how much more adversity so many of them faced than I had growing up with so far fewer resources and supports available to them, far fewer resources and supports available to them.
Jessie Kohler:And that really got me into systems change work, where I saw an opportunity for the education system to be able to help people reach their full potential. And so I got a master's in educational leadership and over the course of that year was lucky enough to have an internship with then Attorney General Josh Shapiro in Pennsylvania, and my role was developing what we called at the time the Pennsylvania Trauma Informed Care Network, and that was my introduction to trauma-informed care. And so it went from we can transform the education system to we can transform every system with this underlying paradigm. And I, you know, over the last eight years or so I have just been a passionate advocate who has learned as much as possible to do my part in trying to support the changes that not just I but, I think, so many of us who understand the power of trauma-informed resilience building community-led approaches really try to bring to the world.
Jessie Kohler:I think that I've had the unique opportunity that my introduction to trauma-informed care and everything was really really macro and high level, and so I've always seen trauma-informed care through a policy lens. I didn't start working in that space. My next job after my master's program was actually being the director of development at a community center in Philadelphia, so it was still very community-based at first. And then I volunteered for CTIPS, saw the opportunities for advocacy and just got into this advocacy policy space.
Ann Price:Well, I am super excited about talking to you about policy things, because that's something that I have been thinking a lot about in the last year. Like, oh, I think I want to go there. But before we do that, just in case people have not listened to some of the episodes we've done on trauma-informed work, let's just kind of start with the definition of what does it mean to be trauma-informed? And then what is post-traumatic growth? I think you called it.
Jessie Kohler:Yeah, so I will do my best to define post-traumatic growth as best as possible collaboration, peer support, voice, choice and empowerment, and a recognition of cultural and historical issues that come into situations. And we will never be perfect in operationalizing all of those, but I think that it is how we are working to create conditions of safety and empowerment at a universal precaution level. So that way anyone who has experienced trauma or is currently experiencing adversity, even if it doesn't rise up to the level of trauma, is in an environment where they are supported right. We know that healing happens in the context of healthy relationships over time and working to promote and create those sorts of resources and supports for what anybody's going through through a holistic lens, because we know that life is challenging and also very beautiful, but that we can support people in new ways that reduce better outcomes, both at like a service delivery level, at an organizational level, pretty much across the board, at an interpersonal level.
Jessie Kohler:Um, is is a poor definition of trauma-informed care. We could get into the four R's. There's a lot of definitions, but again that kind of like as best as I could. Layperson definition is kind of my understanding of trauma-informed care, and then post-traumatic growth is the understanding and idea that we need stress to grow. Stress is not inherently necessarily a bad thing. There is eustress, there's also distress, and when we are going through stress, right, one of the things that creates toxic stress is so frequently isolation.
Jessie Kohler:But when we have the right resources and supports around us that help us navigate through that, through whatever it is that we're dealing with, right, Adversity, stress, rise up to the level of trauma.
Jessie Kohler:Sometimes, when and as we get through that, we change right, we actually grow through those experiences. We change right, we actually grow through those experiences. We learn new things about ourselves, about life that we then navigate the world differently. Of course, we know that at the same time, when those resources and supports are not available, when we are under overwhelming amounts of stress and chronic adversity, that can also crush us, which is why we need environments to support right being able to navigate through those times. When Doug passed away, I would not have been able to get through that the same way if I was navigating that alone. But when we have the right supports, it doesn't make them good experiences, but we do recognize that we can grow and transform through those experiences and I think that it's Dr Bruce Perry, I don't mean to misattribute if I am doing so that I at least learn the terms post-traumatic growth and post-traumatic wisdom from.
Ann Price:Yeah, and I can so relate to that, because I'm kind of having a little bit of a flashback to being in high school and losing a couple of friends to cancer and just remember, like just walking down the halls of high school during that time, like why are these people like laughing and smiling?
Jessie Kohler:Because how can anybody act like this is normal? Yeah because everything just feels. So I remember that so vividly as well.
Ann Price:Yeah, it's always, I don't know. I just love this question so much because I always feel like we are all called to this work for a reason, so I appreciate you sharing that. So let's talk about CTIP. What is CTIP? What are you doing there? I'm all about coalitions. I know you're into that. You're into policy. Let's start with what the Campaign for Trauma-Informed Policy and Practice is and what you do there.
Jessie Kohler:Yeah. So CTIP is a wonderful organization that I have had the wonderful opportunity to grow alongside in so many ways. It was founded back in 2015 by a lot of leaders in the trauma-informed movement for two main reasons. They recognized that there was a missing advocacy voice where practitioners were doing a ton of trauma-informed work and there was a failure for policymakers to support that work that was going on that really addressed at a root cause level so many of the issues that policymakers were trying to figure out how to deal with. We look at violence, we look at substance misuse and we know that trauma and many, many other issues. We know that trauma-informed support are fundamental in helping to heal a lot of those community and cultural traumas that we are going through, and that advocacy piece was just absent that CTIP was developed to help fill. The other piece is that even within the trauma-informed movement where it was happening again, one of the principles of a trauma-informed approach is collaboration and so much of the work that was being done in trauma-informed care was happening in silos right. There was work in trauma-informed healthcare and different elements of healthcare. There was work in trauma-informed education. There was trauma-informed work happening in the criminal legal system, but there wasn't really a comprehensive vision of what a fully trauma-informed society could look like, and that's really where the organization is rooted. And so now what we do today is we have a campaign, our community advocacy network, ctip. Can is where advocates come together and we mobilize together around different policy opportunities.
Jessie Kohler:As an organization and I will get into this because we're small our biggest focus is around promoting cross-sector trauma-informed community coalitions. There are two bills that have been introduced in the last several congresses that have helped to do that. But we also know that there is so much more trauma-informed legislation that can happen, and not just at the federal level but at state and local levels as well, not to mention within organizations. And so we, you know, lead in the areas of trauma-informed policy that with our capacity we are able to. We also work to support advocates in embedding trauma-informed approaches and mobilizing around what they see opportunities for within their expertise and build the trauma-informed approaches and mobilizing around what they see opportunities for within their expertise and build the trauma-informed movement as a whole really as more of an intermediary organization to in a little bit. And so that is developing a coalition of coalitions. Recognizing that I'm standing 100 feet above the ground, less than a mile from the Capitol in Washington DC. There's some work that we can do at this national level, but, again, like we said earlier, healing happens in the context of healthy relationships. Right, that is going to happen, embedded within communities, not just working at the Capitol. Right, we can help promote and develop conditions that lead to healing practices and trauma-informed practices on the ground.
Jessie Kohler:But the vision for Press On was created by one of our founders, dan Press, who unfortunately passed away, and we want to honor him through this work.
Jessie Kohler:But it's the idea that he developed in his last year of life that we can create a social infrastructure, if you will.
Jessie Kohler:Infrastructure, if you will, connecting the national level to states, who then connect to local governments that then connect into the grassroots and create a bidirectional flow where we're learning what is and is not working at a practice level and then we're informing policymakers of what is and is not working so that we can mobilize resources and synthesize information to then mobilize communities, which then further promotes the opportunity to pass policies, and it creates this bi-directional flow that can help propel the movement forward.
Jessie Kohler:And so that's where our work is based, within advocacy and coalition building. And then the last programmatic area is what we call ideas lab, and that's where we synthesize ideas, come out with reports. All of our work is free and accessible. Accessibility is a core part or a core value of ours and wanting to make sure that anybody can access, we are not doing deep technical assistance. There are so many people that do coaching and training. We want to be the tide that helps lift all ships and make sure that the trauma-informed movement continues to grow as time moves forward that's a lot, that's a big vision, that's some kind of strategy.
Ann Price:So there's got to be some kind of strategic plan around there somewhere. I'm sure that ties all that vision together. So, and you know, I told you I'm all about a coalition, so I don't know where should we go. Should we talk about C-TIP CAN first? Where should we go?
Jessie Kohler:Yeah, C-TIP CAN. Press on, Can first, when should we go? Yeah, C-TIP Can.
Ann Price:Press On it's all interrelated Okay. So we can do C-TIP, can? It's our oldest program. I told you I was noodling around your website last week. I listened to a couple of calls yeah, so let's start there. So it's a network of is it? Coalitions, coming in like a community of practice is what I think about. Is that correct?
Jessie Kohler:So that's what is in press on CTIC-CAN is more of like.
Jessie Kohler:We just have advocates that come in. We have a lot of advocacy supports to mobilize around, not just understanding the advocacy and legislative process and doing some level of civic engagement and education, but then also bringing folks together to co-create a shared agenda, to make sure that we're gleaning insight from one another and then connect for peer support opportunities to be able to continue to move forward in this work. Right, we know that advocacy work is not easy and being connected in a network really helps. Our C-TIP CAN calls themselves have evolved to where, during COVID, we were doing a tremendous amount of webinar style calls, and over the last four years, especially in the last couple years, zoom fatigue is such a real thing, right.
Jessie Kohler:And so we have tried to adapt and evolve to where they're a little bit more network coalition based, but it's some coalitions join. But we can also have individual advocates who are mobilizing or thinking about how to mobilize around specific advocacy opportunities and then again, as federal bills are released that we are working on, we certainly help to mobilize around those opportunities that we're focused on at the federal level through C-TIP-CAN.
Ann Price:So give me an example of a micro let's go micro and macro here Like a trauma-informed coalition might be doing what at their community level?
Jessie Kohler:trauma-informed coalition might be doing what at their community level? What might that look like? Oh man, I mean it can look anywhere from just having like block parties and bringing people together to mobilizations around. Certainly, we've seen a lot of groups do like ACEs and resilience trainings and doing kind of. One of the core elements of a trauma-informed environment is that there's a common language and understanding about how trauma, stress, adversity impact the human mind, body and spirit, and so doing a lot of those education events, holding convenings and working in many, many different ways to what I would call weave the social fabric, so that fewer people are falling through the cracks and we have greater community cohesion right At more of a micro level. Many of them mobilize around particular systems at particular times. We know that the education system there's been a tremendous amount of trauma-informed advocacy around right workplaces there's a tremendous amount of trauma-informed advocacy around as well, and so you know the work that coalitions do can look a lot of different ways.
Ann Price:Yeah, depending on what the community needs Exactly.
Jessie Kohler:Every community is going to look different because each one has different populations, needs, resources and desires, right and so you know their wisdom, their wants, kind of mobilize around what's biggest for them yeah, what they need.
Ann Price:Okay, I, um, I I've had um trauma-informed training myself. I've talked to a lot of trauma uh, folks on this podcast who know certainly a lot more than I do the idea of trauma-informed policy and advocacy. Wow, that's I'm not going to lie, that's new. What is that I'm trying to like? Okay, what kind of legislation does that look like?
Jessie Kohler:Yeah. So I think that right now the legislation, what it looks like, is creating conditions for communities to really decide what their work is going to look like Grant programs to fund cross-sector community coalitions. At an education level. We've seen programs to fund trauma-informed schools, For instance, in the bipartisan Safer Communities Act was a big piece of that legislation. There was a lot of money that was available to be able to be used by school districts for that. So it can look any number of ways.
Jessie Kohler:What is meant by trauma-informed legislation, which is really legislation that is promoting trauma-informed care at some level, would be having an honest and iterative process of stakeholder feedback. Making sure that we are having. We say that democracy is an antidote to trauma, so people who are impacted by systems having input into how those systems evolve is really really important in making sure that. You know, in my first class in college, Politics 105 at Oberlin, we learned about how policymaking is supposed to be a slow-moving, iterative process. Right, it's sort of ensuring that we aren't taking steps that have huge unintended consequences. There are times that that needs to happen, but a lot of times we just want to make sure that we are continually improving systems that allow for our social fabric and outcomes to continue to improve, to improve right, and I think that that's what true trauma-informed policymaking would look like. The bills that we're working around right now are really mobilizing trauma-informed coalitions for communities to be able to make their own decisions, which, again that agency empowerment is a huge component to what trauma-informed legislation can look like.
Ann Price:Yeah, now you're speaking my language. Legislation can look like yeah, now you're speaking my language. Right. The idea that we see an issue. We either have research or information or feedback from the community about a particular need, so you know there might be an intervention or a strategy. We try to make whatever that health issue or social issue better, and then we collect data and we ask ourselves did that work Right? And if it didn't work, we go back to the drawing board, right? That's what I think about when you're talking about. Legislation should be an iterative process. It actually should be thoughtful and something we test and some things are going to work and some things are not going to work. We certainly don't want to do harm, but we know that happens. Right? You're talking about like unintended consequences. That absolutely happens.
Jessie Kohler:Yeah, and that's again why I say that trauma informed approaches are about a commitment to an ongoing process of learning and growth.
Jessie Kohler:Where harm will be done and when it is done, how do we repair, how do we work to mobilize and learn from those experiences, instead of continuing to replicate where harm happens or making it worse. Anybody who's ever advocated at any point we know that in different places and in different times, advocacy is more traumatizing, potentially traumatizing, re-traumatizing than others. It's really hard to advocate. We see embedding trauma-informed approaches into the ways that we mobilize around advocacy as being really, really important to building this multi-generational movement and modeling the model, so that way we can continue to A reduce burnout, make sure that we are caring for ourselves as advocates and each other as we build coalitions that mobilize, that mobilize and then be recognizing the stresses of those that we're advocating to, really showing and helping people feel what that difference is through our advocacy process, which we think is going to really help long-term um exponentially scale the movement as we build toward creating a better world for all of us to live in.
Ann Price:So you said something just a second ago about some, if I heard you correctly, that sometimes advocacy or advocating maybe is traumatic. Say more about that. Maybe is traumatic, say more about that.
Jessie Kohler:It can be.
Jessie Kohler:I mean, you know, a lot of times we're doing work with youth advocacy right now, right, and so a lot of times what we see with youth advocacy and I think that this applies to adults as well but we see someone who has experienced a traumatic event or some sort of tragic story that calls for policy change to occur, and then that individual is I don't think that it is intentional, but it's almost like their story gets exploited where they are told to relive that experience over and over and over again.
Jessie Kohler:And sometimes those meetings when people open up and tell like a really vulnerable part of themselves, those meetings can go sideways and create a tremendous amount of harm to where we're. You know, you know, there there are also extreme examples, certainly, of where violence erupts during advocacy and and you know, I mean that's but even on the less extreme sides of that, just that process of storytelling that help people go through that and then have a group and that peer support on the back end where if a meeting goes well, we celebrate together and if a meeting doesn't go well, you're not alone and there's opportunities for heal and reparation that allow for us to continue moving forward together.
Ann Price:Okay, gotcha, that was so helpful and that makes perfect sense, because then I can picture somebody, maybe with a disability, for example, asking to come to speak to whether that be kind of put on. You know, their story is being used, maybe for a good end, maybe not, but there's a cost involved.
Jessie Kohler:Yeah, and it can be incredibly healing too. Right to create meaning out of our experiences that have caused harm. It's kind of how we go about it, but, yes, that certainly can have an impact. It does have an impact on people.
Ann Price:C-Tip. Did we talk about all of the work that you all do? Is there anything else that you want to talk about as far as the work that you guys are doing? Anything we missed.
Jessie Kohler:Within PressOn.
Jessie Kohler:One thing that I'll mention is that we've got a program we partnered with a group called the International Transformational Resilience Coalition.
Jessie Kohler:We all just like to have very long names in this work, to have very long names in this work, but we are working to build and promote community-led coalitions, to build population-level resilience to the impacts of extreme weather events and other disasters, and so there is a bill in Congress called the Community Mental Wellness and Resilience Act. And then there is also a community of practice, the practice side, which again the Campaign for Trauma-Informed Policy, and side which again the campaign for trauma-informed policy and practice. It's really an opportunity for us to show how those two pieces go together. But we have a community of practice that is working to train community coalitions and how to form coalitions, what the principles of helping to build that sort of level of transformational resilience, what those principles are and again connecting so that way there's that peer support and peer learning that is going on is another big part of our work that is beginning to operationalize that big press on vision that I talked about earlier.
Ann Price:Well one. I hope I get something named after me one day. I love that you honored him in that way by using his name, and it makes so much sense. How did you guys decide to get into the climate space?
Jessie Kohler:who was an early board member of CTIP, has become an advisor since.
Jessie Kohler:He's got an interesting background as both an ecologist and a psychologist or counselor and, over the course of a 40-plus year career, became the expert in.
Jessie Kohler:He started with climate modeling, seeing that extreme weather events were going to become more predictable, more severe, more frequent, and so, again with his counseling background, needing to build not just the physical resilience that we build to withstand, you know, extreme weather events and other disasters, but also, like the psychological resilience, the social resilience. We can't just come in after an event has happened, when people are dysregulated and expect for things to rebuild really quickly If we want to be as efficient and effective as possible. We can build these skills in advance of these events that happen, that help people regulate, that create the social connections so that way we are able to navigate sort of rebuilding right, that we have opportunities embedded within communities for healing that enable us to rebuild more effectively and efficiently. And so Bob has become a really good partner of ours to bring that into the space, and that pairs well in many ways with Dan's vision of how we can create that social infrastructure that propels the movement forward just within the space of climate disasters.
Ann Price:Right. So my head goes to fires in California, hurricane that reaches to Asheville, north Carolina what the heck. Right and my company had the honor to work with CARE in the US last year and we were in Dade, mississippi, in Perry, florida, where some tornadoes had hit on the ground, talking to people who had experienced the trauma that was those like tornadoes and just learning about who gets help after a disaster and who doesn't Right. And so where my brain goes is oh, I get it, okay, a trauma-informed approach, bringing a community together ahead of time, like how are we all going to work together if disaster hits? That makes so much sense, so that all of us are taken care of.
Jessie Kohler:Together. We see, you know, after disasters, it really becomes neighbors helping neighbors. There are, you know, emergency responders, but what do we see in North Carolina, Like neighbors coming in with chainsaws to make sure that, you know, their neighbors were able to get out of their homes and we're okay. And so, yeah, what are those plans? So that way we can respond effectively, yeah, and then yeah, I effectively, yeah and then yeah, I the, the I don't mean to talk too much, but the.
Jessie Kohler:The other place of, like you know, extreme weather and disasters that we're seeing within, uh, disruptions to our environment or we can all like the extreme weather is huge, right, but we can also look at where water tables are starting to go away. I know that there's a community in Texas that the aquifer system is potentially going to become depleted within the next decade. That is related to the climate, ecosystem, biodiversity catastrophe that we are experiencing and need to navigate around, and that creates a tremendous amount of stress and adversity too, right. So it's very complex, but making sure that we are mobilizing as communities and working together is going to be a crucial part of any response that we have that not easy, right?
Ann Price:Coalition work is not easy. Any kind of insights that you can share about what you see as kind of successful coalitions or things to avoid.
Jessie Kohler:We should avoid, right, because it is complex and then we've got to be learning all the time. So I think that we want to have it can't be so unstructured that there's no structure Correct, right. But there also needs to be a level of flexibility where we're learning and, as we try something out to what you were saying earlier, we're able to then learn from what is working and what isn't working and make minor iterative adjustments that allow for us to find a better path. I think that the other thing that we see is really important is making sure that it's again I used to work at a community center that we would call a community-based organization right, and community-based organizations have a huge role to play in helping to promote community well-being. Without a doubt, right, they are huge players.
Jessie Kohler:But there is a difference between community-based and community-led, and we want to make sure that people have an opportunity to inform the directions of the work, to have agency and empowerment again, to be able to help play a role and really have buy-in for what the process looks like over time.
Jessie Kohler:Right, and that doesn't mean that it's always just a completely decentralized structure, right, but to make sure that there is honest and authentic engagement in where things are going is so important, and then in that I think that one of the things that we see and this is somewhat influenced by philanthropy and academia more than communities themselves, but like you said earlier, it's so important to measure what is working and what isn't working and really have that level of analysis to it.
Jessie Kohler:We don't just want to have people come in, measure things and then leave right. That gets back into that exploitative process. The community has such an opportunity to be a part of that evaluation on an ongoing basis, to see the fruits of their labor and partner with communities or within a community. When there is a plan for evaluation, we want to make sure that it is empowerment-based, it isn't just again kind of in that exploitative model of I've got what I need and now I'm going to go leave, and that we are on more of an ongoing process of learning and growth, more than just like we come in, oh, we're trauma-informed, we leave, it's like no again. It is that commitment to an ongoing process of learning and growth that we see a lot, a lot, a lot of success with coalitions that do this work well.
Ann Price:Yeah, and I love what you're talking about. When you started talking, because coalitions are definitely messy and complex. Coalitions are definitely messy and complex and if you like things to be linear, you know, think dominoes, right, coalitions are probably not your jam, right? I thought success looked like and it was a straight line and what it was really like and it was loop-de-loop. Yeah, that's coalition work for you, right? And evaluation is. You know, if you're going to, you know that is where I make my bread and butter, right? So if you are an evaluator working in coalitions, you best be prepared for all of that, the messiness and the complexity and oh, oh, yeah, all the personalities that come along with coalitions. It's yeah, and yeah, go ahead.
Jessie Kohler:No, no, I'll just say like that's where the beauty of it is too right, like it is messy, but, goodness gracious, it's so rewarding and beautiful to see how it evolves. And I will say that, like one of my talking points is and, as you can tell, I have many of them that I have developed over time but it's okay to have simple processes that we embed right there is a place for that right In terms of like training, for instance. How are we delivering the training? What are the impacts of that training? But we need to be aware of how even simple processes are fitting within complex ecosystems if they are going to be sustainable, and so somebody needs to focus on that big, messy, complex nature, even if components of them are simple measures or more simple measures.
Ann Price:So, jesse, personal question Are you a glutton for punishment? Because what I hear you saying is I love working with coalitions because it's messy and, oh yeah, advocacy is messy too. I see really similar characteristics in both those branches of that tree.
Jessie Kohler:I'll let other people diagnose me. It's probably, I'm not diagnosing you.
Ann Price:No, no, no.
Jessie Kohler:It's probably accurate. Am I a glutton for?
Ann Price:punishment. I'm just making an observation.
Jessie Kohler:It's a fair observation. It's just like when we look at the problems in the world, I feel like we've been addressing them, with trying to create simple solutions to really complex problems for a long time and I would rather not be a glutton for punishment. I very much enjoy my easy days where I get to play golf or watch baseball and just enjoy a good long stroll along the water. But I want to make sure again in that post-traumatic growth that I've experienced right and what I promised to Doug when I was 15 years old was that would do my like, keep him with me and we were going to make this world a better place. And as I figure out and continue to learn, like if I knew everything that needed to be done, the world would look fundamentally different.
Jessie Kohler:So it is that ongoing process of learning and growth, but from what I have learned, there needs to be some level of discomfort. There needs to be some of those tough processes that we really need to engage in again over time and have support so that we're not doing it alone because also can't burn out, need to take care of ourselves, because it is going to take a very long time to fix everything that is going on in our world. That has started from long before any of us that are around today were alive. Right, but getting to the roots of what really needs to happen, that's just as best as I can see of what really needs to happen, that's just as as best as I can see. That is going to rely on a complex, messy, difficult process, and I would rather be in that glutton for punishment place If that's what we want to call it then not addressing what fully needs to be addressed in our world.
Ann Price:Yeah, and that's probably pretty wise and a wise place for us to be as we record this, march 6, 2025, is it's not going to be easy. The work is not easy, it is messy and it is complex and sometimes it's going to feel like a slog and hard, and on those days we'll have to go out and take a walk and take a breath and realize all we can do is our best to add one little drop of positivity and goodness in the world.
Jessie Kohler:If everybody did that, if most people did that, we would be looking at a much different world.
Ann Price:Yeah, absolutely. So that brings me to my rapid fire questions what is giving you hope these days?
Jessie Kohler:A lot of that messy, those small pieces that we see come out right. That's where the beauty is. I think that through all the things at a very macro level that we see and there's so much division and challenges coming from a variety of angles we see where people are coming together and taking care of each other at a deep level, where people are taking steps back and really monitoring and controlling their media diet to make sure that they are taking better care of themselves, while also continuing to be informed. We are seeing new sort of evolutions of thinking and some innovation on how we can continue to improve upon service delivery and care for one another and of ourselves. And so you know, I think that always brings me a lot, a lot of hope how we are so adaptable and, at a very high level, very resilient to the challenges that we face.
Ann Price:Resiliency, the topic of my dissertation.
Jessie Kohler:I would love to read your dissertation.
Ann Price:Yeah, would you though?
Jessie Kohler:Remember that glutton for punishment side, how do you feel?
Ann Price:about moderating variables. So what is one piece of advice you have for community leaders?
Jessie Kohler:Take care of yourself.
Jessie Kohler:You know, I got into this and did a bad job. I lost myself in the work and I was not able to show up as fully. Um, and there are so many things that are outside of our control that it's so important, as community leaders or members of a coalition, to to take ownership and control of as much as we can, and taking care of ourselves as best as we can is one of those things, and so I think that there's a lot of things that we all need to do and it's overwhelming. And ensuring that, as we try to create a world in which everybody else has what they need to be taken care of, we ensure that we at least take some time to be doing what we need and can do to take care of ourselves. I recognize that there's a level of privilege in even being able to say that and focus on that. That I acknowledge, and, at the same time, I think that it's important. It'll look different for different people, but I think that we've got to continue to take steps toward that for ourselves.
Ann Price:Yeah, 100%. So when you feel that fight, flight or freeze right and we feel that in our body that's, that's that should be your signal folks to like okay, I need to take a breath, I need to call a friend, I need to have a cup of tea or whatever it is, that's the signal that something's going on that you should pay attention to for sure. So second favorite question when you look to the future, what community possibilities do you see, and don't we need some possibilities right now?
Jessie Kohler:So if you were to go to the Change Campaign's website, thechangecampaignorg, if you were to go to the Change Campaign's website, thechangecampaignorg, we are developing what we call the full press agenda and I don't mean to take too much time. But in building community capacity to reduce the prevalence of, we can measure ACEs differently. So I will say ACEs but it's a proxy measure for trauma, which is a root cause, driver of so many different things. But adverse childhood experiences, while not indicative at any individual level, are predictive at a social, at us at like, a macro, social level, of a lot of the health outcomes and disparities that we want to reduce right. And so aces for a government pose risks to future budgets because the more aces have, the more likely that the costs to address those sorts of ACEs are again trauma broadly and just disparate outcomes are going to be.
Jessie Kohler:And so if we have this economic model that, instead of working so far downstream, allows for us to swim upstream and invest in prevention, we can invest in building community capacity in a much more sustainable way. That then allows for us to measure that cost avoidance, to then be able to continue to reinvest and be able to grow. And I think that that social, economic sort of agenda also has a lot of policy and political oriented sort of nature, and so I do my best to encapsulate the vision of where I I find hope and where I see us being able to build more efficient and effective systems that are rooted in creating and promoting liberty and justice for all these life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, these things that are fundamental to us at just a baseline foundation, to the country type of level, I see so much hope and opportunity in being able to pursue that and that's what we're trying to build out with the full press.
Ann Price:So, jesse, how can people learn more about CTIP or get in touch with you?
Jessie Kohler:So if you go to ctiporg C-T-I-P-P, dot, O-R-G there are again monthly calls. They are free. You can sign up for CTIP Can. You can sign up for the Community of Practice Building Transformational Resilience, Coordinating Networks under Press On, and there's our contact information. We've got social media there as well. We want to help build the movement, and every advocate, every coalition means so much as we continue to build momentum toward a trauma-informed future.
Ann Price:Well, Jesse, thank you so much for this conversation. I really appreciate you coming on the show.
Jessie Kohler:And thank you so much for this conversation.
Ann Price:I really appreciate you coming on the show and thank you so much for having me. Hi everybody, thank you for joining me on today's episode of Community Possibilities. I hope you have found it helpful. You know these are stressful times we're living in and nonprofit leaders need all the support they can get. Be sure, and check out our website, communityevaluationsolutionscom. I have so many free and low-cost resources for you, from our course Powerful Evidence to logic, model templates and theories of change and coalition assessments all sorts of things that you might need as a community leader during this trying time. I hope you find the resources helpful. I hope you find the podcast helpful and, if you do, would you please like and share this episode. That helps get more ears on our podcast. Thank you so much and I'll see you next time.
Speaker 1:Thank you ©. Transcript Emily Beynon.