This week, I edited last week’s interviews and filmed the final two!

On Wednesday, I had the pleasure of interviewing Tasha Booker in Action for Children’s new office space. She shared her perspectives on the importance of nonprofit collaboration and support. She also reframed nonprofits as businesses with valuable practices to share with corporate leaders, which would create stronger, symbiotic relationships. Action for Children is the recipient of the Women’s Fund’s largest grant to date, so learning directly from the CEO about Action for Children’s essential work and visions for the future was so special.

This morning, I filmed the final interviewee, Doreen Uhas Sauer, as she talked with Matthew Martin about Columbus’s real histories relating to early nonprofits, women’s suffrage, advocacy movements, redlining, immigrant communities, indentured servitude, human trafficking, and so much more. After the interview, Matthew, Arielle, and I were all talking about how we could sit there for hours listening to her stories. It was such a gift to share in her breadth of knowledge.

Matthew even stopped in the middle of the interview and pointed out the through lines between Mary Lazarus’s interview and Doreen’s. Doreen had been talking about the Lazarus family and how they had opened their department store doors to Columbus citizens and let them take whatever they needed for free during the Great Flood of 1913. Mary did not mention the Lazarus family’s generosity during the flood in her interview, but she did mention how her mother-in-law, Hattie Lazarus, did charitable work leading to the forming of Planned Parenthood. The more I watch back through these interviews and begin to edit them, the more through lines I see. I could not be more grateful to have the opportunity to learn from four change-making women leaders in Columbus.

Editing the interview videos has been a bit of a challenge; each one contains so much valuable information. I certainly have my work cut out for me (pun intended) with Doreen’s interview — it lasted about an hour, and in it she shared histories and truths that all felt equally important. I am excited to keep going through it, pacing myself as I edit. I have found that pacing myself during the editing process helps me develop a more critical eye for what to keep and what to cut.

On another note, I’ve now written 200 thank you cards to donors and plan to round it out to around 250 at the start of next week! Morgan and I have been chipping away at these thank you cards for about a month now, and we are finally almost done.

Yesterday, I went to the Franklin County Fair (Elena’s internship site), and saw the amazing manifestation of all of the work she has been putting in. It was also great to spend time with some of the other fellows and partake in general fair fun!

I can’t believe this fellowship will be over in just a few weeks. I’m going to savor it while I can!

Eva