This week's episode features a conversation with Jason Green. He shares his journey from working at the White House to creating the documentary, Finding Fellowship. His documentary explores the history of the Pleasant View Historic Site, a three-acre piece of land that his great-great-grandfather helped purchase in 1868. The site includes a schoolhouse, a church, and a social hall that were central to the black community of Quince Orchard. Jason emphasizes the importance of preserving and restoring these buildings as a way to connect with history, build community, and pass on a legacy to future generations.
There were some fun takeaways from this one including:
- How taking the time to connect with our ancestors and learn their stories can have a profound impact on our own lives.
- How giving back to your community can lead to unexpected outcomes and starting a project before you feel ready (or before you even have a camera in his case) can lead to meaningful outcomes.
Links:
Bio: Jason Green is a MD-based business executive, board advisor, and early-stage investor in future of work and economic opportunity and mobility companies. In 2013, he co-founded SkillSmart, an award-winning enterprise that empowers communities by providing a skills-based ecosystem to match employers, job seekers and education providers, and has ensured that local communities and diverse resources equitably participated in more than $100B in economic development. He also serves as the Executive-in- Residence for Zeal Capital Partners, a DC-based inclusive investingTM venture firm focused on eliminating the health, skills and wealth gap.
Before founding SkillSmart, Jason worked in local and federal government, most recently serving as Associate Counsel to President Barack Obama, advising the president and senior staff on legal, economic and domestic policy matters. Green’s work at the White House was largely in response to the Great Recession and included strategies to retrain the American workforce, enhance placed based economic stimuli, and track the economic impact of economic development initiatives. Further, exposure to local and national unemployment, policy responses and their economic effects inspired the SkillSmart platform.
Jason is the son of a preacher and public school teacher, and learned the importance of community at an early age. He serves on a number of corporate and non-profit boards and commissions, including chairing the Montgomery County Remembrance and Reconciliation Commission.
Recently Jason also directed and co-produced Finding Fellowship an award-winning PBS documentary that explores the hopeful story of an unlikely merger of three racially-segregated churches in the divided 1960s in the DC region. Green is a TEDx speaker and frequent contributor who has been featured on Bloomberg News, MSNBC, and NPR discussing workforce trends, politics and the economy.
Jason is a graduate of Washington University in St. Louis and earned a law degree from Yale Law School.
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**This episode is sponsored by www.Smartsheet4architects.com, a better way to manage architecture projects.**
Mentioned in this episode:
All Access
ArchIT
Gabl Continuing Education Podcasts
Design Vault
Emerging
Unstruct
