EPISODE 28: BRIDGIT ANTOINETTE EVANS

MM: Hi, everyone, and welcome to another episode of “Gathering Ground.” On this month's podcast, we're pleased to welcome someone brand new to the “Gathering Ground” community; coming to us from New York City, changemaker, storyteller, and CEO of the Pop Culture Collaborative, Bridgit Antoinette Evans.

Bridgit, welcome to “Gathering Ground”!

BAE: Hi, Mary. It's so good to be here. I'm so glad we were able to make time.

MM: Absolutely. This is going to be a great conversation. I've been looking forward to it for a while.

And what we like to start with on “Gathering Ground” is some understanding of your journey. You know, how did you get to be the CEO of Pop Culture? Did you, you know, grow up saying, oh, I want to I want to deal with pop culture? Or how did this happen? How did you get here? (Laughs.)

BAE: The short answer is no, I don't think I could have quite imagined my trajectory. But what was at the seed of it — there were two things, actually, that were at the heart of how I ended up on the path. The first thing was, you know, growing up with a mother who was — and, quite frankly, her entire sibling family was deeply involved in the civil rights movement in Savannah, Georgia. My uncle is Benjamin Van Clark, who was a brilliant young activist in Savannah at that time. And so their entire family really saw very clearly their role and their power to be a part of this incredible transformational moment where, you know, the pillars of Jim Crow and white supremacy in this country were being contended with. And so I grew up — my sister and I, we really were clear that we had a particular mandate handed to us by our parents, which was, like, you can strive to do, to be whoever you want in the world, but you need to be contributing to social justice while doing it.

I was very shy and struggled to sort of speak up when I was a child. I was just so afraid of what people would think of me. Was I smart enough? Did I know enough? You know, was I funny enough? All of those kinds of insecurities were overwhelming for me as a child. And so my mother sort of kicked me with a foot into drama and speech classes when I was in elementary and junior high, and I found my place. So suddenly, inside of these other story worlds and other characters, I could be the bold person that I kind of secretly wanted to be, and so I became an actor. And what I didn't know yet was how does being an actor translate into, like, advancing social justice? But I slowly began to understand that being an actor and telling stories was an incredibly powerful way that change happens. And that is how I got on the path that led me to the Pop Culture Collaborative, because I was an artist who wanted to be a part of creating more justice in the world, who confronted profound injustices even within our industry — right? — habits of exclusion, misogyny that undermined my own ability to be freely expressing my craft and artistry, and I wanted to change that. So the melding of movement and the need for movement within the creative industries, really, sort of is what caught fire.

MM: So let me just say, as you we continue, that we have very similar — (laughs) — similar backgrounds in terms of our family life, which I've never heard anyone sort of articulate in quite the way that you have around feeling shy. I was very shy, and look at us now. I was very shy! And I also grew up in a family with a mother who was an activist, and I started taking drama classes and it changed my life. And it's, you know, nice to meet someone who had a similar start. So how did the trajectory move forward toward the Pop Culture Collective?

BAE: You know, I had an experience as an actor that was, like, particularly catalyzing. I was cast in a workshop off Broadway of a play by Suzan-Lori Parks called “Venus,” which was about Saartjie Baartman, a black indigenous woman from the area we now know as South Africa, who was trafficked to Europe and displayed as the “Venus Hottentot” in freak shows all across Europe, and ultimately was sold to a scientist in Paris, who studied her to prove the lineage between Africans and primates and after her death performed an autopsy and donated her body parts to a museum, the Natural History Museum in Paris, where they stayed on display until the mid-20th century. And I was given this opportunity to dive into this lead character. And when the show closed, I went home and I thought, well, that's that; as actors we know, you know, you’ve got to close the book on the character and move on to the next show, except the character wouldn't let me go and just stayed in my mind, stayed in my imagination, to the extent that I really felt like this woman was still around me and needed something more from me. And so I partnered with Suzan-Lori Parks and got her permission to bring the story around the world. I spent 10 years telling this story in South Africa, in London and Paris, even in Croatia, in Zagreb, Croatia, and in Harlem in the U.S., through a variety of different projects. And that project told me two things: number one, I realized that, yes, a story can actually change the way that a person thinks and feels about other people and about themselves in the world. Yes. And I also understood that a story that is outside of the context of other power-building work, like the work that happens within movements, doesn't necessarily have the capacity to change the systems that drive personal experiences of injustice. So I became really curious about movements. And I started to build a community of other creative collaborators, movement leaders from across different social justice and human rights movements, and began to collaborate on storytelling projects with them. And it was through those collaborations that I began to conceptualize and see myself as a part of the culture-change field that really was the driver of the creation of the Pop Culture Collaborative.

MM: Now, let's talk about that connection and why it's important to the success of the collaborative?

BAE: Well, you know, we discovered, I think, in the culture-change field, which encompasses people who are artists, people in the entertainment industry, people who see themselves as cultural strategists, researchers, and organizers and activists — we are all of those people together working with a basic premise, which is that when people are allowed to immerse themselves in new realities, new realities that are shaped from the stories and other narrative experiences that we are engaging with, we have the opportunity to imagine ourselves and the world into new being. Right? So that's the kind of nutshell of the theory of change, that that imaginative space is absolutely critical to any process of deep structural or transformational change in this world. And so as a field, we've all for years been operating in silos. You have artists in L.A. who are making movies and making television, et cetera. And so, the collaborative, the Pop Culture Collaborative was created to be the sort of connective tissue and to begin to invest in the infrastructure that would allow the entertainment industry to be creating stories in collaboration with activists and with the support of strategists and researchers, so that collectively we could create whole new narrative oceans that are reinforcing ideas that help people to imagine our way into a pluralist and just way of being, way of life together.

MM: So when you say pop culture for social change, what does that mean?

BAE: It means that the storytelling, the other kind of pop culture experiences that are created by people who are yearning to activate and motivate and really embolden people to imagine a deeply transformational experience for our society. So it's a field that's defined by a group of people's desire to see the world differently, who clearly understand the role that their storytelling and strategy have to play in getting to that different world. We often think of ourselves more generally as the culture-change field or narrative-change field for social justice. Pop culture is quite simply the most powerful arena in which people are engaging with narratives and ideas and new ways of being. And so pop culture sits at the heart of any culture-change or narrative-change field and any strategy, and that's why we've chosen to focus on that area of work.

MM: So let's say I'm moving to New York City, I have a new gig, and I think I want to get involved in some work that is connected to the nonprofit I work with. But I also have a background and interest in entertainment; I'm a filmmaker. How would I get involved with the collaborative?

BAE: Well, I think there's a range of ways. You know, we were conceived originally as a donor collaborative, as a fund. And so a lot of our work is about moving resources to people just like those you described, people who have hybrid passions, so to speak, and really want to meld their their love of art and culture with their desire for social justice in the world. So people come to us to help them to support them to build out new ideas, new organizations and companies, new infrastructure, research, et cetera, and we partner with them as a traditional funder. But we also are an important convener and host of networks in the culture-change space, and so a number of our partners are a part of either networks or cohorts or genius banks that we organize. Our largest network is called the Becoming America Fund and that is a network of dozens of content creators who are focused on igniting public imagination about this society's pluralist future. But we also have cohorts for television show runners and fandom architects and experiential designers. We have networks of local cultural artists that we fund who are working on immigration, gender justice, and other issues. So we really try to be a home for different configurations and groups and networks who want to come together to share knowledge and build power and collaborate. We also have a huge funder community of people in philanthropy who come together to understand how to leverage the resources of philanthropy to support this field. So there's a variety of different ways, pathways in, and once you're here, we operate like a family and people find all sorts of different spaces within our ecosystem to continue to build and forge relationships.

MM: So let's talk a little bit about philanthropy, since that is certainly part of the work that you do. How have you seen the changes that philanthropy made at the height of when we were in the pandemic, and when we still are, clearly? However, in that first year, foundations in particular really had to figure out, are we going to make some changes in how we operate? Are we going to not require those onerous reports? Are we going to be able to do some rapid responses? What have you seen in your work, and particularly as it relates to the work of the collaborative with regard to the funding community, philanthropy overall?

BAE: There was, actually, genuinely an incredible, very, very quick reorganizing of process and assumptions about relationship between funders and grantees that happen in order to clear the way for resources to move into different communities and fields, just to support the emergent moment of that pandemic. So like others in this work, we launched a relief fund for people in our community — activists, organizers, artists, researchers, cultural strategists, people in entertainment — and moved resources just to help people to be able to meet basic needs, as we were all kind of restabilizing ourselves, and a lot of foundations did that as well.

Another great thing, as you pointed out, that came of it is that people realized that the burden of the sheer level of paperwork and process involved in accessing funds was really insurmountable for organizations that were reeling inside of this crisis. And so there was this, like, bright opening moment where foundations just said, enough of that; just tell us what you need, essentially, and we will move things quickly. Now, the thing that's interesting is that a number of foundations in the current year have begun to circle back to older ways of relating and older ways of demanding paperwork and such from their grantees. And I think we really, as a sector, we have to sort of contend with the question of why we can't hold on to this kind of brilliant opening that happened. The collaborative has always had a number of ways for people to access resources, one of which is that we offer video proposals. So we have a process whereby people can actually just talk to us and we transcribe, and actually, we take on the work of actually turning the transcriptions into the documents that we need for our due diligence. And some other of our managing partners or the donors who contribute to this fund have also moved into that model where people can actually apply in the method that works best for them. But we need to see more of that. And I also think at the collaborative that we are acknowledging that we can go even farther and farther into creating a wide range of ways for people to access resources.

MM: Exactly. And so that — I love that idea of the video proposal. Just a little bit about that: So is it an interactive video or they are recording the different pieces and sort of sending that off to you?

BAE: It's an interactive video. So we jump on a Zoom or some other format, they receive questions in advance, and then they have, you know, 20 minutes to tell us about themselves and their project. And then we have a set of questions that we ask and then we take hold of that and create the transcript, feed it back to them, they get to approve the transcript, and then we move forward with our due diligence process.

MM: That is a great example of how to meet organizations where they are because, you know, as we've been discussing, foundations, in some cases, are moving back — right? — to those methods that were very antiquated. And it seems as though there's really not an understanding of what it means then to truly be equitable, because, of course, you know, if we're going to make sure that people have the access and the resources they need to be successful, one of the things you're going to think about doing is, how can we come up with some different ideas and different strategies on how to get the information from our grantees that it's not so onerous and burdensome? And I love this idea. We do, you know, work with foundations on a regular basis and I know we work with some foundations that would really like to do something like this. So I will be sharing that with them. That's a great idea. I really love that. And again, it's something that is just, you know, something that hasn't been done over and over again; that's a wonderful idea.

Let's talk a little bit about current projects. You mentioned a few, but let's talk a little bit more about current projects and then we're going to take a break and we'll be right back with “Gathering Ground.” But I want to just hear, before we take the break, what are some of the current projects right now that you would point to of the Pop Culture Collaborative?

BAE: So one that I love that literally does bring me joy is a project called Joy to the Polls, which we funded. The Working Families foundation came to us with a concept that was developed by a group of cultural strategists led by Paulo Mendoza and they had an idea of bringing the concept of civic joy into an election process in 2020 that was so fraught and so full of very, very, very hard emotional energy. And they thought, what if we actually turned that on its head and brought joy and art and dance and music into the the experience of civic participation and democratic process? So everyone from Rachel Maddow to ABC News and others were covering all of these celebratory acts across the country. And we really do believe that that story became a kind of permission granting which enabled people to continue to celebrate democratic process. People flowed into the streets in the days after the election to celebrate the fact that every vote was counted. That story of abundance was an incredible counterpoint to stories of real division and trauma that so many of us had experienced over the course of the prior year. So the idea, the rebellious idea that joy, that abundant thinking is what is going to actually help us transition out of the malaise that we are all feeling is a radical idea and that is what our community has chosen to center and what they've asked us to center in our funding strategy in the coming year.

MM: This kind of strategy, this kind of activity is going to continue to be really important, certainly in the next election year. How do you continue support? How do you bring support from other funders to work like this? Is that also part of your work to make those kinds of connections? Because certainly we're going to need that again in the next year or so.

BAE: Well, the great thing is that this is not our idea. This is a field that is very forward thinking that is always seeing what lies beyond the horizon of now, like what's needed in the future, and planning for it. And so we have grantees — you know, I'm thinking now of Imara Jones, who's the cofounder of TransLash Media, who has an incredible theory that she is advancing about “transness” as kind of way of life — right? — certainly a way of life that is being articulated and experimented with within the trans community. But it's also a way of life that trans people are beginning to help other people who are not trans to understand the ways in which we can actually transform our emotional life, transform who we see ourselves in the world, you know, cross boundaries with much more fluidity and openness and curiosity. Right? Like, this way of being is something that's — quite frankly, it is the innovation of trans people; it is the innovation of BIPOC people, of indigenous people. The challenge for philanthropy is to hear the call and move into position to support them. So very powerful people, whether it's Ai-jen Poo and her work on care infrastructure, which is very much about centering the pleasure and the joy of caregiving relationships at the heart of economic justice and infrastructure conversations. Right? Or it is, you know, artists that we work with, whether it's Issa Rae or Ava DuVernay who are looking at how joy transpires in relationships within, you know, your “ride or die” friends, or your family, communities, whatever they might be. These leaders in our field are holding this strategy. And the question is how philanthropy can organize around them to bring resources to bear for them.

So we do see it as our work to not own the strategy but shine the light on it within philanthropy so that more and more funders begin to see it as real strategy that actually does have transformative effect.

MM: You know, it's interesting that you should mention Issa Rae and, of course, you know, we’ve all seen — many of us; I shouldn't say all of us — (laughs) — have seen the conclusion of “Insecure” and there was a documentary that followed that that really shed some light on many of the ideas that you're lifting here of the intentionality of Issa in filming in particular communities, highlighting communities, really looking at the makeup of the crew, who was doing, you know, which piece, in a way that I didn't really understand. I mean, I was very excited to get — what was the nonprofit she worked at? We Got Y'all. (Laughs.) I mean, we had that t-shirt because it was — I mean, we worked in nonprofit, and we were like, this is real. (Laughs.) This is real. Only someone who's worked in nonprofit would understand some of these pieces. And so really understanding — I mean, it sounds like the perfect example, in some ways, of what you're talking about, how you're bringing entertainment together and you're also lifting up communities through that work — right? — through something that was enormously popular and that many of us are, you know, sorry to see go. And so I just think it's very interesting that you mentioned her and some of the other folks because that work I understood in a very different way when I saw that documentary of some of the ideas. And you saw it on screen, but understanding the intentionality; I think that's really what — right? — the difference here is the intentionality and then understanding the impact of making those connections in a way that people didn't even realize what they were seeing, in some cases, because it was entertainment. Right?

We're going to take just a brief break. We are talking with Bridgit Antoinette Evans, the CEO of the Pop Culture Collaborative, and we're back in a moment. You're listening to “Gathering Ground.”

Hi, everyone. Thanks so much for joining me on “Gathering Ground.” We want to hear from you. If you have any questions about your work in nonprofits or any of the topics that we’ve covered here on “Gathering Ground,” send them on in. Send them to mary@gatheringgroundpodcast.com. That’s mary@gatheringgroundpodcast — all one word — dot com. We look forward to hearing from you.

OK. Well, welcome back, everyone. You're listening to “Gathering Ground” and our conversation with Bridgit Antoinette Evans, who's the CEO of the Pop Culture Collaborative.

So Bridgit, right before we took that short break, we were talking about, you know, of course, popular culture and some of the things that some of us are observing and not even understanding the impact of what we're seeing in television — right? — and how new content creators are coming forward and having an impact in a very different way than what we might have been used to from years ago. Talk about another project that you're excited about through the Pop Culture Collaborative.

BAE: Yeah, you know, I actually want to — I'm going to do that by digging in around Issa Rae. So I want to just — I'll do it as succinctly as I can, but it's a very powerful journey.

I was recently noting when the season finale — the series finale of “Insecure” aired that Issa actually has a really significant part that she played in the strategy for the Pop Culture Collaborative. It's not so obvious to people. When I was — before I was at the collaborative, I was a fellow at the Nathan Cummings Foundation and I was funded to investigate how to bring social justice values and work and people into television writers’ rooms. And so one of the things I did is I went out to L.A. and I sat in a lot of television writers’ rooms, of all sorts, run by white men, who obviously still run the lion's share of writers’ rooms in television. I sat in — I went to the set and sat with the producers and writers of “East Los High” at the time, which was airing on Hulu, and I went to the writers’ room for “Insecure” as they were writing the first season of that show. And I had previously worked with Issa on a project for a social justice organization that was focused on pay equity and gender justice and we'd created a short film together. And so I emailed her and said, I'm doing this research and can I just come and sit in? And the first clue that something was different is that she was like, sure! There was no, “You’ve got to talk to the people at the network and see if you can” — you know, all the permission. She was like, come on down! So I went on to the Sony lot into her room, and I sat there and I watched this group of people work together in the most profoundly collaborative, generous, kind, hilarious way. And I thought, this is not like the other writers’ rooms that I have been in. There was such an insistence upon this very equitable, egalitarian approach to leadership; it was so clear that Issa was the one who was holding the weight of the world at the end of the day. Prentice, the showrunner, was right beside her, but they created a very leader-full room, where all ideas were precious and were regarded and turned upside down and ridiculed in the way that funny people ridicule, you know, great ideas. And I watched them as they sort of, like, pulled apart these characters and tried to understand how Issa and Lawrence were going to actually, like, be molded together as sort of an iconic couple. I watched them as they sort of, like, graded through all of these different episodes. I studied this beautiful, massive — the wall of all the episodes plotted out in the room. And I remember writing in my notebook something to the effect of this is the way TV should be. And I walked out of there with a deep, clear sense that there are ways to support artists like Issa to, A, work in collaboration with people in movements and, B, to have free rein to design the workspaces according to their vision of the world with justice at its heart, with respect and dignity, kind of as sort of core operating principles.

So skip forward to the launch of the collaborative and one of the first things that we did was build a huge priority area around investing in television writers’ rooms and restoring independence and agency to BIPOC creators. What are the workplaces that BIPOC creators would create if they had all the resources to do it themselves. One of the projects that we funded was a writers’ room for a show called “Up North,” which was created by a showrunner named Emil Pinnock. And Emil has an incredible sort of driver of his storytelling. It's a series about a young black man in Harlem who is wrongfully incarcerated for a crime that he did not commit and sent upstate, up north, for a long sentence. And it is based on an experience that Emil himself had of being wrongfully incarcerated and charged with a crime that he didn't commit. And it was only by sheer grace and luck that he was not sentenced, that he was ultimately released. The charges were dropped. But that sort of trauma lived with him and became the impetus for a story. But he had an idea. He said, the people who are most capable of authentically telling this story are people who have experienced incarceration. And so he decided to hire as his writers and writing consultants in his room all other people who had been incarcerated with him. And he began to build this story arc, through these immersive, intensive sessions with incarcerated people across the country. And he went to, you know, a streaming service who shall not be named and said, this is my idea, and they said, that is not the way things are done. And they declined to finance this project. And so he decided to do it himself. And we were — we had the great privilege to be an early seed funder of this writers’ room experience that he created. We specifically invested in all of these kind of non-L.A. TV — seasoned TV writers, all of these formerly incarcerated artists and storytellers who came together to tell the story. And do you know that when it came time for Emil to take this project back out to market, it was precisely because of the process that he had designed, the writers’ room that he had designed, that he was able to attract a major cable network to come on board and partner with him around the production and distribution of the series, which will be coming out soon.

So for me, what I love about that example is that, first of all, it was artists — it was Emil who said, I want to change the way things are done in Hollywood. Hollywood was not ready for him. But because of philanthropy, he was able to independently create his story, write the entire series, season one, series bible, and sit down with a streaming service. He went in for a meeting for 45 minutes and like six hours later they were still in there talking about his project. So that is a way that artists, particularly BIPOC artists in the entertainment industry, are disrupting the system in Hollywood. And we see it as our role at the collaborative to, like, clear the path for them and to move them the resources so that they can actually change the way things are done.

As sort of a next step, we're really excited to think of the ways that we can change who they meet in those studios. Right? Like, how do you actually transform the cultural competency of gatekeepers in studios and streaming services so that the next time that Emil or someone like Emil walks into that office, they are the ones that say, this is exactly how we want to work and what we want to be investing in?

MM: What an extraordinary story, really, and how different perspectives would be if we could really lift up lived experiences, as opposed to people who have no idea. And we all know when we see something on television and we think, where did that come from? Why did you say that? That's not based in reality.

I have to tell you, just on the flip side of that, you know, sometimes when I'm at home, and I'm, you know, taking a quick lunch break, I might tune into a soap opera or two, and I literally saw a soap opera a couple of weeks ago that talked about nonbinary people and I almost fell off my chair. I thought, who's in that room? Who is generating a script that literally has the words nonbinary? It was amazing. I mean, it was completely unexpected. Yet it made me a little hopeful. Hearing this story is just extraordinary. What an incredible story and experience to share — right? — with people who are constantly being told no, and it's because of your background. And you won't be able to get a job in a — you know, you can barely get a job in a big-box store because of your background, because of your — because you're formerly incarcerated. However, there is an opportunity for you to actually help shape and develop what is going to be seen on television in so many different ways. That's an incredible story. So congratulations on that.

Again, I guess I'm still not clear — I'm just going to come back to this one more time before we close. If I said, I want to support the Pop Culture Collaborative, how would I do that? How would I, as an individual, do that?

BAE: What I like to say about individuals who want to support the collaborative is to really think about how you can support and help to cultivate the context for the work that movements are doing in culture, and one way is just about your own media literacy. Right? So when you are looking at a show, you just said, you know, fell off your seat because they said the word nonbinary on a soap opera. When you're watching and engaging in content, ask yourself questions about what feels authentic and not. Ask yourself questions about who wrote the show; start to know the names of writers and showrunners as much as you do the actors on the screen, and follow them and promote them and talk to other people about them.

If you think that what Issa Rae is doing in “Insecure” is incredible, make sure that other people not only know about the show and how funny it is, make sure that they also know that Issa Rae and her coproducer, Deniese Davis, created another entity called ColorCreative which is investing in the next generation of BIPOC creators, and throw your resources and your support behind those kinds of initiatives as well. Know that our field, the movement leaders in our field, are working in literally hundreds of writers’ rooms. So the extent to which you can identify television shows that are actually being created through collaboration with movements, engage with that content. Right? If you hear that Ava DuVernay has been partnered for years with Rashad Robinson at Color of Change around a whole range of projects, then make sure you know as much about Color of Change as you do about “Queen Sugar” — right? — and begin to draw those connections so that you are living a more integrated experience of pop culture and really seeing how social justice movements and the pop culture industries are beginning to become a shared space where the work of building towards pluralist and just society is happening. So let your tentacles be on fire as you're watching content and become more proactively engaged in that content.

MM: I appreciate that, the media literacy piece. I am someone, and I'm sure you know folks who the moment the film is over, they're out of the theater or the moment the credits come on — I'm like, you need to watch the credits — right? — to your point, to see who is producing, who's the writer. Another friend, an actor, Gina Yashere, who has “Bob Hearts Abishola” on CBS, really took that, you know, story to Chuck Lorre. She's now a producer and writer and is in it. Right? So this idea of being able to connect those various pieces, and it's astounding what is happening and what can happen when you have an organization like yours that is concentrating on making those connections. So I am just thrilled to learn and to know more about your work. I am absolutely a huge fan. And we'll be talking about this and figuring out ways that yes, we can we can spread this story, we can get people to be more media-literate, that people can pay attention to not only, to your point, who's in front of the camera but who's behind the camera. Right? How do we get to see these images and hear this dialogue in the first place? Really important pieces of information.

So I guess in closing, what would you like people to think about in this new year? It's still, you know, early in 2022, which I have to get used to saying, and what do you see as priorities, if you will, for this year for Pop Culture Collaborative?

BAE: Well, our biggest priority is thinking about how content that we are supporting can help people — as we started this conversation talking about — help people to bridge through this space of grief and exhaustion and even depression and move into a place where we can actually see beyond the horizon again and begin to see what could be next. We are living in this space of blinders where what is hard in every day is preventing us from seeing possibility. And so what do we need to believe in that space again? Those are the things that are on my mind and the ways in which we are funding content through Becoming America and through our broader general grant making is really to support this field to help more people imagine farther in this moment, which seems so hard.

MM: And to have the motivation to move forward to take action. Right? At the end of the day, we need people to take action. It's very, very important.

Why don't you give your information in terms of your website and how people can learn more about Pop Culture Collaborative before we close?

BAE: Yeah, if you'd like to learn more about the Pop Culture Collaborative, you can visit our website at popcollab.org. And you can find us on any of the major social networks with popcollab as our handle.

MM: Wonderful. This has been such an important conversation. I know it took us a moment to get together, but it was well worth the wait.. And I have a feeling we're going to be in contact again.

We have been speaking with the CEO of the Pop Culture Collaborative, Bridgit Antoinette Evans. It has been such a pleasure; really appreciate all the work that you're doing. And we're going to see you again on “Gathering Ground,” I'm sure.

So thanks again for listening to this episode of “Gathering Ground.” I'm Mary Morton. Until next time.