The Public Service Project

Mayor Sharetta Smith is a public servant, lawyer, and native of Lima (pronounced like the bean, not the Peruvian city!) Ohio. A highlight of her tenure is the successful impact of her city's Better Together Plan, a holistic set of initiatives that address economic, community, and infrastructure challenges. Her commitment to sustainable community development has inspired her to undertake the role of Vice Chair of the United States Conference of Mayors' Women Mayors Alliance, and to serve as a member of Mayors & CEOs for the U.S. Housing Investment Board.
Mayor Smith is an eternal optimist and a problem solver, and this conversation reveals the roots of her belief that with the right support, anything is possible. She is deeply connected to the community she serves - the community that raised her - and she's committed to leaving it better than she found it.

Kevin Adler is an award-winning social entrepreneur, author, and sociologist focused on homelessness and human connection. He’s the founder and board chair of Miracle Messages, a nonprofit that has reunited more than 1,200 unhoused neighbors with loved ones. He's also the author of When We Walk By, and his work has been featured everywhere from The New York Times and The Washington Post to the George W. Bush Presidential Center and the Clinton Foundation.
Nearly every mayor and community leader featured on the show this season has highlighted housing affordability and economic uncertainty as persistent challenges, and with the cost of living outpacing wages across the country (and other factors exacerbating that trend) we need to better understand the factors that drive homelessness, and the interventions that are most helpful to our unhoused neighbors.
I knew Kevin would bring the expertise, and I hoped to discover what fuels his mission when things get hard. This conversation surpassed my expectations as we veered into the spiritual and philosophical roots of Kevin's work, his thoughts on spiritual gifts and "self interest, rightly understood" (#Tocqueville FTW!) and the discoveries he's made along his journey to address relational poverty. This is a soul deep conversation about humanity and dignity, and though the topic is difficult, the vibes are immaculate.

Vivian Satterfield has over fifteen years of experience working to make people and planet based-change. She's an organizer, policy maker, and coalition builder currently serving as Chief Sustainability Officer for the city of Portland, Oregon. The impact of her work has been recognized nationally, including being featured on Marketplace Weekend, The New York Times, and Science Friday on National Public Radio.
Vivian joined us to talk about Portland's historic transformation to a new form of government and the community's role as a national and global leader in sustainability and climate action. Vivian also shares what's shaped her: from her Chinese-American roots, to her mother's work ethic, her love of her first home (the great city of Chicago), and her passion for her chosen home, Portland. Listen in for a dynamic conversation about people, power, and change.
Yes, we can.

This episode originally aired June 10, 2026.
In light of the recent wave of youth protests across the globe, we are re-airing this highly relevant episode.
Sarah Sladen is a Senior global leader with 20+ years developing and implementing strategies at the intersection of social impact, youth and community development, economic opportunity and wellbeing across government, philanthropy, and civil society. As a current Senior Fellow at Georgetown University and the most recent Senior Advisor for Youth at USAID, Sarah knows what she's talking about when it comes to implementing a Positive Youth Development framework, leading everything from training and coalition-building to grant-making, and so many other tasks that I will probably never understand.
As the granddaughter of a South African anti-apartheid activist and the child of parents with a serious case of wanderlust, Sarah brings a unique perspective to all the big questions: How are young people impacted by conflict and politics? How are brains shaped by trauma? How useful and responsible is the CVE lens? And how can we all live our best lives? It's a special gift to spend time with Sarah, and to trace the threads of conscience and courage in her family across time and place.

Mayor Lauren Simpson is the first directly elected female Mayor of the City of Arvada, Colorado. She’s also a Mom to a human daughter and countless foster kittens, all of whom benefit from her unique brand of curiosity and compassion. An international relations and comms expert by training and a true diplomat by nature, Mayor Lauren sat down to talk with us about a life and career that took her from Texas to DC to Colorado, and that challenged her to not only make sense of a complicated world, but help others make sense of it, too. She’s a community builder, a relationship manager, and she delights in winning over the naysayers. She’s also chosen to take the deeply personal experience of being diagnosed with breast cancer earlier this year, and use it to motivate others to listen to their bodies and keep up with regular screenings. Lauren wants us to know that democracy is a contact sport, and despite the polarized political environment, we can find our way to each other if we embrace the power of positive assumption.
Listen in for kittens and puns and a healthy respect for both hard and soft shell tacos, and check her out in People magazine (!!!) here: https://people.com/colorado-mayor-reveals-breast-cancer-diagnosis-during-city-council-meeting-11924500