SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hello, I'm Jamie Lee. I'm an executive coach for smart women who don't like office politics. And I help them get promoted, get better paid without throwing anyone under the bus. How? By blending proven communication strategies with brain-shifting neuroscience techniques. In this podcast, we explore the stories and strategies of Gutsy women and allies who've braved speaking up and navigated their careers forward. We're here to de-risk the conversations that feel the most daunting. Advocating for yourself and your growth. Let's dive in. Welcome to Risky Conversations with Jamie Lee. And why risky conversations? Because everything worthwhile is on the other side of a risky conversation. And today I'm so thrilled to have my friend Alexis Morin. I'm sorry, I almost said your name wrong. Too excited. And Alexis is the founder and principal of Soul Work Coaching. Okay. I have coaching practice name Envy right now. Soul Work Coaching, where she supports leaders, growing nonprofits, and those transitioning careers to follow their callings, spiritual callings, right? Oh, this is this is good. We want to talk about this. And she combines concepts from executive coaching, spiritual care, interreligious theology, and community organizing. That is a potent mix. And Alexis received her Master of Divinity from Divinity from Union Theological Seminary, where she received the Interreligious Engagement Prize for her groundbreaking thesis on how spiritual but not religious folks feel about the sacred. Her background includes co-founding and growing students for education reform into a national student organizing force for over a decade and consulting on growth strategy for multiple nonprofits. She's a Draper Richards Kaplan Fellow and has been named to the four 30 under 30 list twice. And Alexis lives in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. Welcome to Risky Conversations, Alexis. I'm so happy to have you here. It's like having a star in the room. 30 under 30. Like I always wonder who are these people who get selected for 30, the 50 under 50. I want to be part of 100 under 100 sometime. So proud that I got to live, you know, that long and be part of like 100 names or just happy to be living under the age of 100.

SPEAKER_01 2:54

But, anyways, there's the New York. I think it's New Yorker parody, like satire column. I think it's like 12 under 12, and it's actually the perfect send-up of that whole award.

SPEAKER_00 3:09

But in anyways, I I love what you do. You blend executive coaching, spiritual care, interreligious theology, community organizing. This is a lot, you know, and I love that your thesis is on spiritual but not religious, because I always love to make that disclaimer. I I love being spiritual but not religious. I love like putting my hands together in front of a Buddha statue, even though like I'm not really religious. I love going to Shinto shrines when I'm in Japan and just like having a moment to myself. And it's very for me, it's very spiritual, very grounding, but not religious. There's no dogma, you know. And the Buddha was he's not a guru, he's not really a god, he's just the person who said, we're all connected, we're all one, right? So I see you nodding your head in agreement. So that's really cool. Tell us about how you got to do the work you're doing now. So you you were a nonprofit executive under the age of 30. That's like, what? Who does that?

SPEAKER_01 4:14

Yeah, I I co-founded when I was in college, like a student group, and then ended up growing with those students what we were doing into a multiple chapter campus network, and then took a summer, the summer before senior year, to build a plan to support that campus chapter network. And from there, I actually founded a nonprofit. And that was sort of like the story of my 20s, and I did it until I was 29. And it was incredible. That's where I learned about community organizing as we went through this process of thinking like, what is it we want to see in our school system? Why does it create such unequal outcomes? And how can young people who have made it into college in the US take that experience and the privileges of being in college and use the time and space you have as students when you're thinking about like really big ideas and you're also building all these skills to advocate for K through 12 schooling to be more equal? So that was the project we were up to across a lot of cities and a lot of different campus chapters. And throughout that experience, my questions about inequality grew. I think I started with a very naive idea that they would lessen. Like, you know, we'll do activism and advocacy, and we'll arrive at this place of more equality. And I didn't lose the idea that we together can form and shape a better world, but so much more complexity, at times despair, like overwhelm came through the process of getting in there and rolling my sleeves up and learning. And I ended with questions that I realized were questions I needed to take into a spiritual space and maybe a to r different religious traditions. Like I was sort of like, I personally feel too brittle with just materialist concepts around me to really think about what it would take for us to socially and personally transform vis-a-vis this level of inequality. And there was especially moments where like Black Lives Matter protests happened, Donald Trump was elected, and different donors who were funding all this nonprofit work about racial equality and income equality in schools were either silent or some were low-key supporting these forces of injustice. And so my brain was really scrambled. And I realized these questions I had were big, big, big. They were bigger than how do we divide the pie that we have. They were questions that had more to do with transformation and sort of like followed a little breadcrumb trail and ended up getting curious about seminary. But I thought seminary was very rigid and dogmatic. And I had to learn that there were seminaries that were more open, more multiple, more fluid, that had progressive values. And when I learned that was possible, it was like, I must, I must go there. I must follow these questions to that environment. So that that's part of the journey.

SPEAKER_00 7:32

Incredible. Wow. You know, when you talk about inequality in the school system, like, you know, who I am now, who I've got to become, is definitely a direct. What's the what's what what am I trying to? I I am the the direct effect of the American public school system that at one point, hopefully still now, embraces multiculturalism. And also, you know, now it's not as much, but there is there was why am I blanking on this word? Where I affirmative action. Affirmative action because I got to go to a really, really elite private college, and my mom paid a fraction of the the tuition because well, I I came from a lower middle class single parent family because of my immigrant background, right? And like I I'm so deeply appreciative of that, but also everything you just shared, right? The injustice seems to be growing, not lessened day by day. And I'm I'm thinking about that younger 20-something Alexis or an 18-year-old, 19-year-old Alexis, who's like, we can change the world, we can make it more equal, it'll be better for all of us. I mean, that's not naivete, that's idealism, you know. But to confront and to and to be forced to reckon with the brutal realities of this broken world, you know, at such a young age, and really have to confront with it like day by day as a leader of an organization. I I just have to imagine that must have been really, really hard. Even what's what's it's not soul crushing, maybe soul challenging.

SPEAKER_01 9:31

Yeah, soul sucking in a particular way. And I think a lot of people that work in nonprofits who care so much about what their programs do and yeah, sh showing up for community, like that's the kernel of almost every nonprofit. Yeah. And then as you try to grow it and fund it and lead it day by day, even though you're many people running nonprofits exist more in like a middle class or sometimes even upper middle class, depending on the nonprofit class status, and people they may be serving communities of people with lower lower incomes, more mixed class status. The nonprofit managers, at least many that I know, are facing, they're touching the sort of like wall of inequality in a very particular way, often through the fundraising work. And so you could spend, you know, the morning with your constituency or staff hearing all about. I remember one day college students talking about walking over people sunbathing on the lawn on their way to their second campus job, thinking about how much money they can send back and trying to think about what to do with the knowledge they're learning in their classes and feeling like just incredible pressure about being a first-gen low-income college student while other folks are literally sunbathing and holding.

SPEAKER_00 10:59

That was me. Yeah. That was me 22 years ago. That was me. You know, I I would be, you know, working my butt off, washing pots and pans, and correcting my my professors or helping to proofread the professor's uh manuscripts. And at lunch, I just felt so alienated listening to these other students talking about their, you know, their ski trips and their travels abroad and all the privileges that like I never had as you know as a as a Lashkey kid from a single parent home. And yeah, that was me. So yeah, tell me more.

SPEAKER_01 11:48

That experience that I was learning about from students I was organizing with.

SPEAKER_00 11:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:55

Because I was often the sunbather. Like I was coming into this work from a different class background where I hadn't experienced financial or food insecurity, but I was now organizing with and alongside people who were helping me understand realities that I hadn't faced or confronted. And as we worked together, we were like knitting our commitments together in a way. And then on the same day, in that nonprofit executive role, you could spend the afternoon with a donor who's like, I'm not really sure how bad it is that Trump was just elected, like the stock market's up. And I was sort of like, whoa, somehow we're trying to knit together this coalition of students from different backgrounds and experiences to take action against the political system. And we're trying to mobilize resources ideally from folks that are aligned, but there's moments that really show us who is not aligned or where they have to grow before they could be aligned. Like they might say, Of course I want the public schools to work for everybody, but then they're sort of like, My only metric in life is as the stock market goes up. And you hear that and you're so horrified, but you don't exactly know how do you fund this organizing work from entirely aligned sources? And so yeah, I think that was sort of like some of the experiences that woke me up quite a bit, and then also helped me realize I wanted to, for me at least, since I was never religious, take some unconventional turns in life to try to figure out like, what do you do with all this?

SPEAKER_00 13:32

I have so many more questions about that, about the spirituality aspect. But before I do, I I'm curious. So, as you were navigating this through this journey, what was perhaps one of the riskiest conversations you've engaged in? And tell us why it was worth it.

SPEAKER_01 13:51

Yeah, I love I love this question. And when you suggested it, I thought about some risky conversations that were about fundraising and like at the time asking for some of the biggest gifts I'd ever asked for. Being so scared, nervous, and then excited, triumphant. And I thought about some questions that were about like self-advocacy, asking for, for example, like a title or a role that I I felt I was performing, but I didn't know what the answer would be. And I kind of thought those through, but then I actually realized the risk, the risky conversation I want to share about, and potentially like the riskiest, the fulcrum one, was more a bit more subtle in the moment. Like it didn't require me to put my big girl pants on and like gather myself in the same way, but it fundamentally shifted my reality. And it was a time I was meeting with my coach at the time, who was a Buddhist and had a really serious commitment to his spiritual life and had been a community organizer himself. And I came in ranting about a meeting with a donor, and I didn't know if they were gonna fund or not, and I felt so under the thumb of this person, and I was just raging at the inequality of the system of fundraising. But then another part of me was like, This, I mean, I guess wealth hoarding is a social problem, but it's also his money. Like, what can I really either we share this or not? Like, I was just kind of trapped in this maze of resentment and frustration. And my coach kind of like took a deep breath and sat back, and then he asked me, What would it feel like if you really believed the universe was benevolent? I I probably like tried to answer really quickly because I was all spun up and anxious. And he was like, No, don't don't answer me right now. He was like, breathe. And he was like, I'm asking you to sit with that question.

SPEAKER_00 16:08

Right.

SPEAKER_01 16:09

And I think that was the first theological question that anybody ever asked me that I noticed at least. Like that word theological, I always give it some context because to me it still feels like jargon, even after studying theology. Like a word about how we attempt to understand God, the sacred. And I think he asked that, and he kind of like lobbed this good grenade, like at my world. And I think that was the first time that I was like, oh, okay, I'm struggling here, really truly, I think, under a very capitalist theology. Like, money is at the end of the day, the be-all end-all, and we're all trying to care for each other, kind of under a system that's fundamentally governed by money. And therefore, what this donor says this year around this particular gift is gonna rule my emotional state, more so than how powerful our organizing is, how we're connecting, how we're taking care of each other, et cetera, et cetera. And he like gave me that question. I thought about it a lot, and then fast forward a few years, I ended up in seminary, really, to like look at that question more deeply. And I talked to a lot of people who had done community organizing and nonprofit work and asked them if I'm not particularly religious, would you recommend I check out seminary? And one person even said to me, I honestly don't know how do people do community organizing without seminary, like without some deep space to think about values, desires, what's the truest thing, ethics, the sacred. Like, don't you need that space in order to go work together to try to improve the political situation that we're in? And that was like flipping everything I had thought previously upside down. So it was risky, not in that anything was immediately on the line for me in a balance sheet type of way, but it was risky in that it actually like put me on the back heel to think about how I understood value in my life in a way that had a very enduring impact.

SPEAKER_00 18:24

So I love nerding up out about coaching. So as soon as you shared what your coach asked, like in my mind, I was like, oh, yes, this question, we're expanding the scope of the problem to not just this fundraising cycle, not just the nonprofit, but the entire freaking universe. Yeah. And it really landed and it completely changed your life and your career in a sense.

SPEAKER_01 18:50

Yeah, yeah. I mean, it didn't in the short term relieve me of my anxiety around fundraising. Right, right. It has taken a lot of time to seep in.

SPEAKER_00 19:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 19:05

But it totally widened the scope. And like it was so effective. He saw me spinning on that resentment, and he brought me a question that was so much bigger than that like victim persecutor dyad idea that I had going on.

SPEAKER_00 19:20

Yeah. And it's easy to even like dismiss it as a kind of whitewashing, or like, how do we just make ourselves feel better by assuming it's a benevolent, like almost like a Polly Anna-ish sort of shrug, the injustice and truly, you know, yeah, true injustice in the world. But but what what you just shared with me, it's no, it goes beyond that. It goes beyond the surface, it's not about making yourself trying to feel good and forget about it's not avoidance, in other words.

SPEAKER_01 19:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 19:58

Like, no, what if even even the pain, even the suffering, even you know, things that we we think shouldn't be happening? Like, what if all of it in the context of a much, much bigger universe is just part of the whole?

SPEAKER_01 20:17

Yeah, and the fact that I knew his his integrity and I knew his work background and his community organizing experience and credentials, I knew he wasn't saying it as a bypass, as a spiritual bypass, as a floaty, flitty, like so heavy. You want to talk about inequality, wealth inequality, poverty. No, he wasn't saying that at all. He was trying to probe around that question. And also asking that question doesn't mean he wasn't imposing a way to make sense of pain and inequality and suffering on me. He was more asking, what might change for you if all that is part of life and fundamentally the universe is benevolent. I I mean, I still have to like giggle. It's almost like exciting and absurd. What a massive question that is.

SPEAKER_00 21:12

Yeah. This makes me think of my favorite teacher, uh Byron Cady. Whenever I get depressed or anxious or resentful because something's not going well, I always have to go back and read her book, A Thousand Names for Joy. And in the book, she says the universe is a friendly universe, and everything that happens happens for you. And so her fundamental philosophy, well, she wouldn't even call it a philosophy. She's like, it's just how it is. It's a friendly universe. Yeah. Let's go back to you. So, so this good grenade that your coach threw at you while you were in the maze of resentment and frustration eventually led you to seminary store. And I'm curious, genuinely just uh. I just don't know. What do you do at seminary?

SPEAKER_01 22:04

Yeah, great question. I had to ask the same question. Because I thought it was like where you thump a Bible, judge people, increase your bigotry. I mean, it's a lot of Christian seminaries in this country that are honestly like white nationalists, white supremacist. There's a bad, there's a bad brand, I'll say. So I was always offended, I was almost offended when a friend suggested it. But she then said to me, No, I noticed since you left the nonprofit community organizing work and went on a mini sabbatical. You keep coming and telling me about times you found yourself visiting activist events, sites, direct actions that have faith tie-ins. And she said, I don't know if you're noticing this pattern, but I'm seeing it. And you can explore it more deeply at a interreligious, meaning multiple faiths come together to study questions of God while respecting each other and grappling with the reality that we're like here on this globe, so often living cheek and jowl, like we can talk about God next to each other, too. And there's seminaries that have progressive values and commitments and activist commitments. So once I learned that, I was so excited. And what we did in seminary was study different religious traditions, texts, ritual practices. We studied the vocation of spiritual care, which I thought was so interesting. Like, what is it to bring your faith and compassion forward to someone to give them the space to feel into their own spirit? And we had internships where we practiced spiritual care and then we tried to bring in questions of what are different faith traditions approaches and you know their unique angle on this. A lot of friends went into hospital chaplaincy. So they're serving in interreligious hospitals where anyone comes in for treatment. And you could be Jewish and asked to do a Catholic anointing of a body, and you have to be prepared to support people through their grief and illness in a lot of different ways that you may not be familiar with. So that's sort of like part of the interreligious piece, one of the things people do. Some people become clergy. And then the part I gravitated to the most at the seminary I attended was like this philosophical meta-conversation. Like, wait, what is religion? What are we even talking about? And I think because I have been so alienated from Episcopalianism and Catholicism, which are my family's traditions, I had so much interest in God and the spiritual and this sort of ethical power, but I had a lot of aversion to studying it in the traditions I came from. And so this question, wait, what is religion really was fascinating to me. And one of my professors has done a lot of writing and thinking around, like, okay, religion organizes your desires towards what is actually truly going on. So you want to shape your desires to make you functional according to truth and reality. And he was like, it's very hard to argue that capitalism is not the prevailing religion on the planet right now. People might have a Buddhist ritual practice, but they're dreaming about money. I feel called out. Yeah, uh, me too.

SPEAKER_00 25:39

Capitalism is the religion of our day. And it's the reason why people work hard, stay up late, you know, forgo moments with their beloved people and pets and animals. And you know, this is the reason why we throw ourselves to illness. And I mean, speaking about myself, really, and also, yeah, whoa, I feel called out in a good way, in a good way. Okay, okay. So then how do you how do you reconcile this? Because the reason why I initially reached out because you were sharing about how you're helping nonprofit executives do fundraising. And I'm like, oh, fundraising money. And I help my clients get better paid. I like to make money too. And and and it was like the I don't know if a proper way to phrase this, but it's almost like like I I I got dog whistle is not the right phrase, maybe it's like you know, like I got I got I got like tempted. It's the siren call. Yeah, and so I'm I'm being facetious, but I I'm genuinely curious, how do you break, how do you marry this spirituality, you know, the reality beyond the capitalist religion, right? This benevolent universe. Like, how do you marry that with the with the I don't know, it's called do we call it a dirty work? Do we call it the hard work of actually asking for people with the means to donate money so that the causes and the missions and the values we believe in can be, you know, can have legs, can actually be actualized. So how do you how do you do that?

SPEAKER_01 27:37

Yes, a huge question. Question I feel like I'm living into very actively. Yeah, yeah. So the in many ways, I think trying to practice the realization that there is a truer thing than measuring ourselves in our world through the accumulation and extraction and hoarding of wealth, that something else is truer than that, even though a lot of us are operating in that conditioning. Something else is truer is very freeing.

SPEAKER_00 28:15

Yes, it is extremely free.

SPEAKER_01 28:17

Any moment we can taste that or tap into it, we often feel deep sense of well-being and can contentedness and beauty, even in sad, like when people pass in the grief, yeah, in the finitude of that, you can also have tears in your eyes. Like this is so beautiful, this experience we get to have. So, how can these things go together? I think um when we are standing more in this place of freedom, yeah, and there's a theologian whose name I might mispronounce, Henry Nowen. He wrote a book, it's actually a talk he gave to a bunch of ministers about fundraising, about the spirituality of fundraising. And he he he puts it really nicely. I would expand on some of the things, but he talks about how when you're resting in God, you can ask freely and you can handle any answer. And that fundraising is a conversion call. You are willing to go beyond your ego to ask someone to join you in a project, and they are being invited to convert themselves from holding that piece of money for their future safety or ego or whatever it might be, and to participate in changing the world through mobilizing those resources. So he gives like a really beautiful summary of this. My way I would talk about it would be like there are always people who have resources, whether it's $20, $100, $500, $500,000, a million dollars more, who are troubled by suffering in the world and want to partner with you in your vision, and will find excitement and thrill and that like spark sparkly feeling inside of them to partner with you to do it. There's always that, and you'll go right up against and meet a bunch of people who might relate to their money differently. They might be uncaring, they might be manipulative. And that's part of the work is how you can hold yourself even when you're bumping into folks whose values don't align. And there's people, there's there's, you know, everyone can struggle with values. I think if you have a lot of money, it's amplified. But my friend said, like when you learn how to fundraise through believing there is what you need in your network, even if right now it's just one more link with one person that can give $50. But once you start to see possibility and really open your heart to people and bring them into your vision and partner with them, you can through successive waves and ripples mobilize a lot of money. And most, I don't know, I shouldn't say this like I actually have studied it, but my impression is that most of the most powerful social movements that have ever happened were not really funded through a few billionaires or through hyper wealth and hyper philanthropy. They were funded through a lot of grassroots contributions and we lose sight of that. So this belief that there is enough in your network and you can continue to grow your network with aligned people, I think is like the number one thing to hold on to. And you can actually do that better from this place of spiritual freedom. But you have to you need you do need space to grapple with all the paradox and all of the contradictions. Yeah. Because you'll pull your hair out, you'll you will pull your hair out otherwise. Like you're trying to fundraise often from people who live by this, these capitalist dictums. Like you have to grow, all the charts have to go up, the numbers have to go up. What why? Why is that the only way we can care for our communities? So yeah, I could ramble about this for a long time, but those are some of the thoughts that come up.

SPEAKER_00 32:03

So many things that I want to respond to, but I'll start here. When I hear you say that, it brings me back to my own journey. I'm sorry, I don't know if it's my narcissism, but but what what I remember is I was really sick earlier this year. It's something I haven't talked about on the podcast, but I was really sick and I couldn't work. And I had to, in a sense, I I love this word that you used, finitude. When someone passes, it was almost as if I had to lay my professional money-making self to a kind of death, an ego death, because I was too sick. I couldn't get up, I couldn't look at the computer screen, I couldn't write emails, I couldn't, it was coaching was like really, really hard. And just as you said, paradoxically, I'm gonna really allow myself to sink into that perceived reality of not making money and just like really just like embrace it. I'm like, yeah, zero dollars in my, you know, in the income bracket in the in the PL, right? I'm like, just make peace with it and like there's more to me, there's more to life, there's more to this universe, even if I'm not a money-making coach. And then paradoxically, that's what actually allowing that and accepting that possibility was what was actually most healing because I had to calm my nervous system down. It was the nervous system activation, was contributing to the illness. So I had to just actively just yeah, I mean, make peace with it sounds a little reductive, but it's actually very grounding. Like, I'm safe right now as I am, even with zero dollars in revenue, even with credit cards that I'm like, I'm safe, I'm protected. And yeah, that's that's when my condition started to turn around. And I'm thinking about you know, people who hire me, people who want to make more money, people who want to grow their income, right? And just like you said, paradoxically, it's that letting go of like I need it to happen this particular way, I need it to mean this about me, because according to the religion of capitalism, I am more, I am worth more when I make more. Like when you let that go, then you can become fearless about asking for what you want and asking other people, like like reaching out to your network. We just did this thing called anti-networking. It's like not being afraid to have conversations and letting people know, yeah, this is where I am, this is where I like to go. Hey, you know anyone I can talk to, right? Then you just become just free in terms of reaching out, generating possibility, and then that's that's true power, right? It's not like, oh, I'm so and so, and I have this big title and this six-figure income, then that's that's what makes me really hot and whatever. Like, we're turned off by that, anyways, when we see it in other people. Yeah, so that's that's that's what's coming up for me. Thank you so much for sharing that. Yeah, that'd be great. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 35:18

I I think that we're all struggling. Virtually all of us are struggling with this. And I had a moment in seminary where I was going to my professors, and I was like, okay, well, if we take really any of these traditions seriously from the the founders, yeah, whether you believe they're they really lived or you encounter them as sort of like mythological figures, they were all, I guess what we would call like communists or socialists, maybe not politically, but in terms of sharing resources. And I was like, what does that mean if I really want to like follow a spiritual path? And one of my professors who did not grow up middle class or upper middle class, he grew up in poverty. He was like Alexis, like he was very discouraging. He was like, I mean, if you feel like that's something you need to follow spiritually, people do, right? They take vows of poverty, et cetera. He was like, I think you can work with the tensions of not aspiring for wealth far beyond what you or your family need, but the tensions of being middle class and also trying to direct your life towards community and service. And he's like, there are real tensions, but he was like, I'll tell you when I was sleeping on couches and I didn't have housing stability, I didn't find it. Maybe my my relationship to God was more intense in that I needed so badly God's comfort. But my ability to to think with God and to serve others was much more constricted. And so I just remember that conversation was one mo one exchange. And it's a this conversation about spirituality and money is one I have with a lot, a lot of people all the time. And I definitely have it with the nonprofit leaders that I'm working with. And I don't prescribe an answer for somebody. Like for some people, a vow of poverty makes sense. For some people, they're holding already much more than they will need, they and their families in this lifetime. And some days they're really troubled by that and they're open to thinking differently about it. And some days they're just putting their blinders on and they don't want to shift that. So I talk with people that have a really wide range of perspectives, and I don't know what is right for them, but I know I want to talk to people about it and I want to sort of like pull them into the next room where they can hold a little bit more of that idea of interdependence and connection and then think about what do I do with my resources given this reality?

SPEAKER_00 37:44

Yes, yes. Please let's talk about the work you do, soul work coaching. So you're an executive coach who helps other nonprofit executives and managers balance or you know, hold the tension of needing to fundraise while also I guess holding on to or cultivating a sense of spirituality.

SPEAKER_01 38:10

Yeah. Yeah, that's that's right. And I sometimes I say I'm combining leadership coaching, so everything from what's your real vision here and what's the heartbeat of where this organization is now and where you want it to go beyond what you put in a grant report when you try to mimic the language of the foundation so they'll see you're right in line with their strategy. Like, really, what's the what's the there there? And where are you in it? And where's your team in it? So giving people space to vision, two nuts and bolts of hiring team culture, leadership teams, writing strategic plans. Sometimes I talk with people about transitions, thinking about when and how they want to leave. Um but alongside that, I'm also offering spiritual accompaniment, meaning space for people to really look inwards and think like, how am I spiritually? And mostly I work with people who are they sense that's so important, but they feel totally clumsy, even opening that up. But I'm like, I know you are driven by some kernel of spiritual motivation if you're doing this work, because you could be sitting somewhere else making a completely different salary, right?

SPEAKER_00 39:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:28

And then how can you have more space and support to deal with the fact that you're trying to build a world that's counter to the world we currently live in and you have to navigate it while holding on to those values? And that's not just gonna come to you through seminars, you're offered about how to run your nonprofit more like a business. There's not space for that sort of spiritual formation in there. So I kind of take that part from seminary and bring it in. And I also work with some people who are working in social justice, maybe nonprofit, maybe government, some people from some corporate settings, and they are doing some sort of transition, totally changing jobs, finally following a big dream that's been percolating inside them. Maybe they got a promotion, you know, some influx point. Job change is the biggest one. And I'll do a set of work with them that's a bit different than the nonprofit leaders. The work with them is much more about doing a deeper spiritual interrogation, even if it's the first time you've ever done it, doing an interrogation into your ideas of justice and injustice, which I love doing with people. It's really intense. But other than often like school, in your adult life and your career, you're not always given a chance to think deeply about that. And you might be like, what I thought would address injustice in 2008, in the Obama era, is not what I think will address injustice today, because I'm a person who's thinking and growing and reading the news and looking at the world around me. So my concepts are allowed to change too, and I want to give people a container to think about that. And then we also pull out like, what are your callings? Even the wildest ones. What do you dream of? How do you talk yourself out of it? And then we kind of end with some support putting a concrete plan to move towards that into motion. So that work is more about career change and following callings, a little bit less about like, yeah, oh yeah, you're also running a nonprofit that you're going at the same time. But I try to bring some of that kind of like green field over to the nonprofit people as well.

SPEAKER_00 41:33

Interrogation. I'm fascinated. So, how how does that look like? I'm I'm really curious because you know, I I I was once Christian, I was once part of the born-again with high school born-againers. And then I outgrew that. And now I go to a Zen temple, and you know, it's just a really welcoming open community, and we sit in meditation. It's not very dogmatic, as not as dogmatic as the Christians, for sure. But I I'm really curious, like when you interrogate spirituality, how does that look like beyond mindfulness?

SPEAKER_01 42:19

As you're talking about the temple that you go to. There was a moment in class when I was in a course on Buddhism, and I was like, Buddhism's like a very secure open relationship. Like, yeah, go check it out, see what else there is, and see about this and see what works for you.

SPEAKER_00 42:36

Like, yeah, yeah, they bring Zen meditation to monet like Catholic monasteries. They I mean it it's it's yeah, op very secure open relationship. That's a great analogy. It's sexy and kinky.

SPEAKER_01 42:51

If it really is the truth, then we're not scared. You can go and figure out, right?

SPEAKER_00 42:56

Yeah, you're allowed to be Hindu. You can come to her, you can sit in meditation. I don't care. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 43:03

So inviting people to explore their spirituality more. First of all, the first thing I do is attempt to build trust with people to say, I am all over the place with God. I studied multiple traditions. Yes, I come from particular traditions, and there's that won't change. There's that conditioning in me, familiarity. We also live in a very biased country and world when we think about the prevalence of Christianity, at least in the US. So I want to acknowledge those things, but I also want to sort of take people's hackles down by also saying, I'm not trying to convert you. I'm trying to share things I've thought about with you. I don't know what's right for you. But rather than just stay in the either like I ran away from religion and I shut down any spiritual inquiry, or I need to decide I'm gonna convert to this on this day, and then I can reignite my spirit, but just to make like a foyer, like an ante room, like. Okay, we can still look at these things. You don't need to make a huge decision. You don't need to suppress it. I can't convert you because I'm not clergy and I'm not trying to. So that's like one. And then two, I start asking people questions gently, and I offer them with this is a big piece of the work, a whole bunch of journaling prompts to start to think about what did I grow up with? How did I make meaning of what I grew up with? What do I do today? Where and how do I evaluate how it's all going? And there's a whole bunch of questions. And then I always invite people to send me that journaling. If they're comfortable, most people do. And then we'll have a few sessions talking about it and seeing what it brings up. And I always say, like, in these sessions, just release your career questions. They're they're burning, they're intense, they're so motivating to us. And I am holding them. Like, I'm not forgetting that we have a career goal we're gonna work towards. But in these sessions, just sink into this and trust this is gonna be fertilizer. Yeah. We don't need to like jam it into a career decision. We're just looking at this as part of the ground of your being and the ground of your life. And you're gonna see like, what are you yearning for? What are you drawn towards? What's not working? And it's just the beginning that you have your whole lifetime to live into these spiritual questions. But let's like build some intimacy with them and hold them closer. Um, and those sessions are so beautiful. You know, often there's like tears, and it's to me, it's way less choose the path or a belief system and way more. Oh, these questions really matter to me. And I do feel this is part of my being, but I am spiritual in some sense. And then once people have some support there, they they they go, they can take it with them.

SPEAKER_00 45:54

But I was and then when they take it with them, that informs the little steps they take in their career, in their fundraising, in their leadership, in the management.

SPEAKER_01 46:03

Totally. It shows up everywhere where they feel a different sense of freedom or values and they can make decisions that they wouldn't have made if they kept their blind, like blinders on.

SPEAKER_00 46:14

Right. In fact, and most of those people they're I I mean, I coach like very highly intelligent, highly verbal people. And and in fact, most of the time when you try to coach them at that little the the tunnel vision perspective, it doesn't land.

SPEAKER_01 46:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 46:31

Right?

SPEAKER_01 46:31

Because, anyways, can what you just yeah, yeah, go ahead. I just want to say there's like one thing where sometimes people are they're intrigued, but they're skeptical, and I find that so relatable. And they're like, But what is spirituality? And I am like, the things you can't achieve your way out of are probably in the spirituality category.

SPEAKER_00 46:53

So have you ever run into those? That's so good. Things you can't achieve with your way out of. As you were talking, uh recently I read this phenomenal book, it's called The Prism by Hollywood Intuit or Psychic Laura Day, and she has a chapter on spirituality, and she she says, in essence, everything is energy, and beyond the physical form, it's all just like a blob, it's all a blob, right? And we're all part of the blob, and we're just physical manifestation of the blob, and at the end, we all go back to the blob. So it's like blob is another word for God, and and airgo. This is the really fascinating thing, therefore, everything justice, injustice, you know, presidents, politicians, you know, pollution, like people who you find annoying, they're all in you, they're all somehow in you, and that makes sense from a uh from a like a neuroscience perspective, because everything that you perceive is your own perception, is your own neurons firing within your brain to create the illusion of an outside world. And I found that super liberating because when I started thinking about stressful situations involving other people, I'm like, oh yeah, but they're inside me. And then I could connect with that part of me that would create that kind of conflict or create the resentment, and then when I could imagine I could encompass it, then it was dissolved.

SPEAKER_01 48:46

Maybe I didn't explain it quite right. No, no, no. What I'm thinking about is that wasn't disagreement. I'm thinking about how much I've been grappling with this concept that recognizing I guess the concept that I'm more familiar with that seems similar to the blob concept, which I love blob god blob, interdependence and interbeing. Exactly. And then part of what was on my face was this feeling like once we recognize interbeing, how then we move when we encounter suffering, cruelty, inequality. You described a very compassionate way. I think I'm in a place in my life where I'm like, okay, I'm getting the interbeing part, but I'm not. Sometimes I'm finding there's situations where the compassion is so hard to reach, or it feels like still some conflict is constructive. And I I've I actually meet with a group of Buddhist friends I know from studying in Buddhist classes together, and we joke, we're like angry Buddhist people seem to like that. They're like, wait, what? But I mean, when you look at some of the most absolutely enraging things happening in our world right now, like eye subductions, the genocide in Gaza, like there's so many we can name. And then you think about interbeing and you think about, okay, how does compassion guide me then if we're all connected? And then sometimes you think about like, and there are Buddhist teachings on this too, like, when is some level of conflict constructive? Can conflict ever be compassionate? Because we hold delusions, right? And those delusions have to be challenged somehow. How you access the wisdom to discern how to move. I mean, my teachers are like, through medit meditation, that will help that wisdom and discernment be more available to you. But yeah, that was like my intense feeling as you described that was how such a profound realization still leaves us as humans with so many ethics to sort through. So it's like a beautiful toolkit, and yet we're still in the mess of it.

SPEAKER_00 51:10

Yes, because for me personally, when I'm thinking about my own conflicts, I'm thinking about like little things that people have said, and I'm not thinking about ice abductions. I'm and at the same time, as you were talking about angry Buddhas, I was thinking about, you know, I I I don't know, I don't recall the the the monks' name, but the people who really stood up, people who really took a stand, and people who, you know, the most ardent activists were the the monks who lit themselves up in protest to the Vietnam War, right? That is as angry or as flagrant as you can possibly get, you know, and that level of I I don't know what you call it, is it a devotion? Is it's it's just giving yourself literally right to to take a stand and to make a statement for a cause. And it was the people who are like, Yeah, we're all connected, right? And I can see beyond this this earthly, earthly material being, this meat suit that I'm embodying, you know. This is so cool. I I can go on and on about this myself, but tell us more. What are some causes? What are some things that people regular people can fund right now that will really have that will really make an impact? Because when you and I were brainstorming on this conversation, we were talking, you you said something that was so cool, so interesting, which is that fundraising is I'm looking I'm just looking at my notes, is a civic practice. It's a way of saying I have agency over how I show up in the world. Yeah. So I'd love for you to share, you know, what are some ways, just regular people who don't have millions or billions, what are some ways people can show up and say, I have agency? Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 53:30

So I love love helping people fundraise, especially first-time fundraisers, yeah, and helping them realize like I can raise a five-figure gift, a six-figure gift, a multi-year gift, a seven-figure gift. It's very fun. People are so much more capable of fundraising at big levels than they realize, especially when they have some support and space. That usually makes sense if they are running a nonprofit, right? They're putting that much time and energy into it. But I also have, especially in the last few years, spent a lot of time on grassroots fundraising. And at some point I was even asking: if you're someone that fundraises for nonprofits and you often credential yourself by like how many millions you fundraise, do you think you can fundraise that much through grassroots means? And in some ways, wouldn't that be a more interesting challenge of your own skills and credentials to see how you can move money through people, right? In a way that can build so much community power. Arguably a bunch of people giving $50,000 or a few million dollars could lead to a lot more sustained people power than one person moving even a billion dollars, potentially, if you think about it. So, this grassroots fundraising puzzle, I was leaning into more than I ever had before in my life, starting with fundraising with some people I went to college with and groups of friends for families in Gaza and for community kitchens in Gaza. And I was mostly fundraising from people who were totally horrified about how our country is implicated in the genocide in Gaza and where like I call my rep every day, the policy is not changing. But if you have anything more than you need, you can help people who's who are living under the threat of annihilation, and you can build connections with people that really say and move against the genocidal policies of our government. So that has been an issue I've done tons of fundraising on and built teams of people and really helped people see that they can move thousands of dollars through their own networks by asking. Anybody, even if your job isn't full-time nonprofit fundraising, any of us can learn how to allocate money we have that's beyond what we need. And any of us can learn how to lovingly invite people we know into giving alongside us. It's a skill you really truly can develop if you try. And people who didn't realize they're fundraisers raise like $5,000 in two months, like so quickly. Develop the skill, it's like you can like point a magic wand at things, which which I loved. And so whether your goal's like $5,000, 10,000, hundreds of thousands, that belief that there are enough resources that we fundamentally have enough, even if it's not allocated equally today, and that through our love and our commitment, we can invite other people to move differently. When people have that light switch go off in them, it's so beautiful. And yeah, I think it is related to our sense of ourselves as civic actors. Like if we're like this country's policies in so many respects are like a runaway train in the wrong direction, but we can move our resources differently today. That's within our power and agency.

SPEAKER_00 56:47

Power, agency, civic actors, but it's creators as well. You know, and that connects to the spirituality. And if we are truly interconnected, right? Interbeing, then, and then there's sacred within us, and then there's that that divine creative power to to wave the magic wand and make money flow.

SPEAKER_01 57:10

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and it's it's not that there won't be a whole bunch of disappointment or rejection or bullshit in the world. There will be, right. We accept that, but it's like it's still worth the belief and the faith that it's possible, and you'll demonstrate that to yourself.

SPEAKER_00 57:26

It's like the riskiest of risky quick conversations.

SPEAKER_01 57:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 57:32

Oh, wait, wait, I'm gonna reserve that. I'm gonna reserve the riskiest of the riskiest because I interviewed a friend of mine who is an estate planner, and and and she told a story of her husband with stage four lung cancer dying. And I'm like, okay, I think that that takes the cake. But I think this this is like right up there with like how can we raise money and how can we change the material world, even even if the world remains broken, right? How do we not lose hope? How do we not lose faith and how do we keep going?

SPEAKER_01 58:10

Yeah, and do what we can from where we are. Obviously, we want to win better world and different policies, but regardless of what's happening, we get to decide how to show up for each other right now. Yeah. Yeah. And I if you can build your skill and tolerance having more direct conversations about money and asking for money, that capacity will spill over into so many other hard conversations. Cause it's it's as you're saying, it's one of the most awkward topics in our capitalist religious world, right?

unknown 58:43

Right.

SPEAKER_00 58:44

Yeah. And in fact, one of my friends, another friend, said that she used to do fundraising just as a way to build her self-advocacy muscle. Like advocating for a cause, it became a transferable skill for her as well. Yeah. I can totally see that. Yeah, thank you so much for your brilliant genius. Thank you so much for coming onto the podcast. Where can people go to learn more about the work you do?

SPEAKER_01 59:13

I have a website, alexismorin.me, and Jamie, maybe you can link it or I'll put it in the comments that describes the coaching work that I do. And then I'm on Instagram, where my personal is my business. It's occasionally a bit unhinged, but hopefully all also fun to follow. And I write a lot on there about coaching and leadership. Yeah, so you can find me either of those places.

SPEAKER_00 59:37

Okay, I will link to both of that in the show notes.

SPEAKER_01 59:41

Thank you so much. This was really fun. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 59:47

Thank you for joining me today on Risky Conversations. Remember, everything worthwhile is on the other side of a risky conversation. And when done well, your self-advocacy becomes an act of service. If you're ready to de-risk your own career evolution, I invite you to book a free hour-long consultation at jamcoach.com slash apply. J-A-N-I-E-L-E-E-C-O-A-C-H dot com slash apply. We'll map out your custom blueprint to confidence and get you on the path to being better paid on your own terms. Let's make your next conversation the one that changes everything. Talk soon.