In this episode of The Social Leader, Fr. Justin Mathews talks with Kansas City, Missouri, Third District Councilwoman Melissa Robinson. They discuss the intersection of place, policy, and people and unpack Councilwoman Robinson's "Righteous Agenda", the importance of embedding reconciliation into our systems and structures, and the role of leaders to work for change.
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EPISODE 12 — TRANSCRIPT
Father Justin Mathews: Good afternoon everyone, and welcome to The Social Leader podcast, episode number 12, where our goal is to help you learn to lead with greater social impact. I'm Father Justin Mathews. Hey, real quick before we begin today's episode, I want to let you know that this podcast is presented by Reconciliation Services, which is a nonprofit social venture based in Kansas City, working to cultivate a community that is seeking racial and economic reconciliation so that we can reveal the strength of all. You can find out more about our programs and even support our work at rs3101.org. Also today's show is sponsored by Thelma’s Kitchen, Kansas City's first donate-what-you-can restaurant, open for lunch again, hopefully, starting in July. Okay, let's jump into episode number 12!
Fr. Justin: Welcome back. I am so excited to have my guest today. She's a longtime friend and somebody that I really admire in the community. My guest today is Councilwoman Melissa Robinson. Welcome, Melissa.
Councilwoman Melissa Robinson: Thank you for having me. Hello.
Fr. Justin: Hello. Well, I want to make sure people know who you are. You began your social service career at the Ad Hoc Group Against Crime, where you served as the Director of Crisis Intervention and you assisted families in navigating the region's social service and criminal justice system. You went on and became the President of the Black Healthcare Coalition and you've been leading efforts for years to address the social determinants of health in our community. You have spent time in so many different organizations and on so many different boards. I couldn't begin to name them all, but just a few. You've received leadership awards from a variety of different institutions and organizations including the Environmental Protection Agency, Kansas City Missouri chapter of the NAACP, Southern Christian Leadership Conference, just to name a few. I'm sure I missed a bunch. But you were also named in Kansas City’s 40 Under 40 by Ingram's magazine. You formerly served as a member of the Public Improvement Advisory Council with the city, the Health Care Foundation of Greater Kansas City Community Advisory Committee, and you were also the former Board President of the Kansas City Public Schools. Of course, not the least of which, now you serve as Councilwoman in the third district for Kansas City, Missouri. So again, Melissa, thank you so much, and welcome to The Social Leader podcast.
Melissa: Well, thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate the opportunity to share and to be with you always and to have conversation.
Fr. Justin: Absolutely. Welcome! Well, I want to dive right into our conversation and really get into what we want to talk about today. So first and foremost, on this podcast we're really trying to learn how to be social leaders, meaning how do we begin as leaders, as community members, no matter who we are, in every sector, to begin to lead with greater social impact. So I would love for you just to share with our listeners a little bit about how you got on this trajectory of being a social leader, how you got to the place where you could, as you said in a recent speech, connect the dots and really lead people for social change. Where did that begin for you?
Melissa: Thank you so much for the question and the opportunity to just share my story, my personal story in that I grew up here in Kansas City and I experienced the throes of adolescence and had challenges. My father actually was looking for opportunities for myself and my brother to connect in ways that will help us to advance our academics and he came up on the Ad Hoc Group Against Crime. I was a client of the Ad Hoc Group Against Crime with their Runaway Prevention Intervention program and as I graduated from high school, many of my friends were getting retail jobs and looking for places they could go out of town to go to college and I really wanted to be able to give back to the community that so much gave back to me. And I wanted to also look at how do I provide a foundation for my career in a way that is embedded in social service? And so that led me to reaching out to Mr. Alvin Brooks, he was then the President of the Ad Hoc Group Against Crime and I asked him for a job. He didn't really know me that well, I participated in programming and things of that nature for a couple of years. And he said, “well, if you could write a grant…” And you know this, being an Executive Director, when you bring on staff, it's like, “where am I going to find the dollars?” So he said, “Well, if you could write a grant to help fund the position, then we might have a place for you.” And that was when the Kauffman Foundation had a Youth Advisory Board and they had these very small grants, not nearly enough to be able to fund the position. But I wrote that grant with my home ec teacher at North Kansas City High School, and it was funded and the rest is history. But always thinking about what are things that you can do that are very immediate right in front of your eyes in which you could step in to provide some leadership for. At the time the Ad Hoc Group Against Crime didn't have a runaway program and because I was a product of that program, I wanted to add some innovation to it from a real perspective, as from the client perspective, and so I did that. I served as the Coordinator of the Runaway Prevention Intervention Program, helping to get to what were some of the things that were happening me as a young person graduating from high school, having conversations with parents about when this started out when they were eight or nine and not providing structure for them, and now they're 14 and 15, and you don't have that physical ability to restrain them. The structure that wasn't provided is providing this area of chaos. And so how do you then go back and rebuild those structures with now kids that are 14, 15, and 16. And so I really immensely enjoyed that work. And then just evolved from there, working with homicide victims, and then ended up the Black Healthcare Coalition. And so I don't want to just kind of take up so much time talking about story after story, but there were some really critical pivotal points. I was a part of the Urban League of Greater Kansas City. They had a Leadership Development Institute that was fabulous and that's where I learned that everyone has a leadership lane. And so you just have to be able to walk into that leadership lane. Whether you are the janitor of a company, an accountant, wherever you are on that spectrum, you have a voice in which you can lead and you can influence.
Fr. Justin: Absolutely, you hit the nail on the head for what we focus on with The Social Leader podcast. And it's that idea that everybody no matter who you are, what sector you're in, what your job is. You can be a social leader, it just takes a lot of intention, it takes moving away from sort of charitable intentions to integrated priorities, and really getting serious about making your leadership count. And I love that you're connecting the dots for us. So I'd like to ask you though, connect one or two of those stories. What did you see or what did you hear when you were working with those homicide victims or with those parents of runaway kids, or you were doing that education work? What did you see or hear that really set the trajectory for you to become the leader that you are today?
Melissa: Well, place matters, right? And I think that that's one of the biggest things that I learned. For example, remembering my time at De La Salle High School at the time, and talking to the young people about taking them out of experiences and building up their ability, their resilience, their thoughts in their self esteem about what they could achieve, and showing them and providing that exposure. But then having those conversations with the young people about, “okay, I'm doing this while I'm with you, you're teaching us how to do these things. But there's somewhere that I have to go back to. And let me tell you about where that place is.” And so for me, it's how do we rebuild communities so that when young people do have opportunities, when they're coming back to those places and spaces, that they're ones that give life and they're ones that will continue to allow young people to blossom. We could provide all of the opportunity in the world, but if we're not getting to the root of what's happening that is causing our communities to be desolate and in despair, then we're not getting to the root of the matter. So that kind of shifting. And then even with the Black Healthcare Coalition, we were working a lot on the frontlines of being a voice to a lot of the safety net hospitals and talking to them about how do we best achieve the best health outcomes. But until we went and talked to the neighborhoods and the individuals that lived in communities that are experiencing these health disparities, what they wanted wasn't about a positive response from their doctor or positive interaction, they wanted education for their children, and they wanted sidewalks and streets and things of that nature. And so that's how I got into public policy, through the Black Healthcare Coalition and saying, “Okay, if we're going to be here another 10 years, we've been around for at that time 20 years, what's going to be different?” And it all centers around what types of policies were able to dismantle and rebuild.
Fr. Justin: Yeah, you're really talking about that intersectionality of our life. I really believe that, we really live our life at the intersection between place, policy, and people. And in my experience, you’ve got to have all three of those in order to have vibrant life. You’ve got to have that intersectionality, right? So when I see policy being made, like if we're looking at some of the police policy, we're looking at some of the development policies, if we're looking at some of the things that are in the news right now, you often get solutions that are proposed where you've got the intersection between place and policy, but you leave out people and the voice of the people or you'll have the voice of the people in the right place, but you're missing the policy and what we've got to get to, and I think that you've spoken about this so well recently, is that intersectionality. So I really want to get to what you've called your righteous agenda. But before we get into the details of that, you're proposing as a city council member, this idea of a righteous agenda, but as a social leader, how do you begin? Where did you begin in formulating a comprehensive and an intersectional plan that brings together place, people, and policy? Where does that start for you as a leader?
Melissa: Really a place of listing and connecting to people. You cannot just jump into the places where people are and begin to define them, you cannot just jump into policy, but really looking at the connection to people. We have an Infant Mortality Program at the Black Healthcare Coalition, and every mother, no matter what their socioeconomic status is, no matter what their academic achievement levels are, we all want the same things for our children. And so connecting to the people, and what it is that people have for their own aspirations, and how do I insert myself into making that happen? It might not be the city council person or the school board member, it might be the activist that's out there in the community that is continuing to raise that protest, or it might be being a coordinator of a program or it might be me really delving down into a volunteer role in which is not showing up but I'm shifting and creating change so that those aspirations become a reality. So for me, it really started with the connections to the people and being able to to galvanize that into a righteous voice.
Fr. Justin: I appreciate what you're saying though, that you don't wake up as a social leader, and have this birth of all the ideas at once. What I'm hearing you say is that it's a process of continual activity over the course of a lifetime, over the course of a lot of listening that really leads you into being able to be in a place to speak confidently about a righteous agenda. Let's break that down. First of all, I love that phrase righteous agenda, because it speaks to me on so many different levels. But tell me about your righteous agenda. And in particular, as a councilwoman, educate us about what the role of the city is in making change.
Melissa: I'm so glad that you asked that. Because another piece in order to do this work, you have to understand processes and you have to understand how to actually technically get things done. And that's different from me being an activist, someone that drove me to this place, right? And now me being a governor of deciding on who gets what and when. So it does take time and that's kind of a drawback of the term limits for city council. We are allocating resources, we're developing policies that help to govern people's lives on a very intimate and local level. It takes time to be able to understand how to do some of those things. And so when you think about the third district in which we have the highest unemployment rates, we have the oldest housing stock, we have all of these issues as it relates to poverty, and we also are segregated in that we have the most Black and brown people that are residents of the third district. And so when you look at the leadership that we've had, it hasn't been consistently each council member being able to fulfill their eight years in their term and what that means is when you don't be able to do that, it's it's you have to start all over from ground zero. So that's one of the challenges. But when you think about, again, developing that righteous agenda, it takes time. I've been in office, I guess, for eight or nine months now, but understanding what that process is in order to get these policies passed. And so what are we looking at? We're looking at, yes, we know that black lives matter, and we know that we have to be able to demonstrate that we have policies in place that help to address the undercurrents of what is actually happening locally and nationally when we think about African Americans, descendants of slaves in America, and so looking at the lanes that the city council has to be able to operate in that I was able to introduce and start to work on some what I believe are righteous policies. I don't know if you want me to go into one or two?
Fr. Justin: Well, let’s name a few of them, because you've talked about number one, there are seven righteous policies or a righteous agenda policy items. But one of them is you've talked about progressive action to bring police control locally. Talk to us about that, because there are listeners from all over the world and all over the interwebs. What you need to know if you're listening and you’re not in Kansas City, and especially if you are in Kansas City, is that Kansas City doesn't have control over its police department locally, that's done in Jefferson City, Missouri. And that's a whole history based in Pendergast and big corruption of yesteryear. But why is that important now? Why did that make number one on your righteous agenda?
Melissa: Sure. So we were responding to, obviously, the civil unrest that's happening, but I started this process before the current civil unrest as it relates to local control. We introduced this many, many, many months ago and we were able to get the council to agree to begin to look at, is now the right time for local control? But now with all that's happened, we have to progressively look at, what are we doing in order to gain local control of our police department? And so our current police board has control from our Board of Police Commissioners. They're all appointed by the governor. And so when people say, “well, you do have local control, we looked up the resident addresses for the individuals that are on the Board of Police Commissioners!”, not everyone has a voice. And so you have to think about taxation without representation, if you will. And then at the same time, I was debating the issue several months ago regarding local control with some folks that have been on the Board of Police Commissioners and I asked them, “how many times have you heard from the governor regarding policing matters?” One person had been on the board for over 10 years and they had talked to the governor or a representative from Jeff City about policing matters two times. Two times!
Fr. Justin: This goes back to your point earlier, if we don't have the voice of the people in the right place, from the right place, and shape the policies that affect the people in the place, then we really missed the mark. And I think that’s a very important thing that you're advancing. I want to talk about the second righteous agenda item because this one is super interesting to me. You said that you want to put forward that there should be an Office of Reconciliation that would actually review policies and things that are happening in the city. Melissa, when I went to Vancouver, a couple of years ago, I was able to actually sit and visit with their city director or minister, whatever he was called. And he was in charge of a city wide or regional Office of Reconciliation that was bringing forth issues and reviewing things. What is that? How would it manifest itself locally? And what would be the role of this Office of Reconciliation in Kansas City?
Melissa: So in 1968 we had a commission that was developed to address recommendations regarding the civil unrest there. The challenge is oftentimes when you have these emergent events that come up, you put together a task force, you put together some commission, they come up with some recommendations, it goes on the shelf, it goes away. This office has to be embedded in the way that city council in the city of Kansas City does its work and what this office would be responsible for is looking at every policy before it's voted on by the City Council to talk about, is it equitable? What are some of the undercurrents of how it's going to impact everyone in our city? And then we have to have ongoing reconciliation as it relates to bringing this city to a place in which everyone is valued. And we can begin to reflect on what has happened in the past, we can begin to innovate and think about, what is it that we're going to do differently? We have to stretch ourselves in saying that, “hey, this is going to be uncomfortable” and we have to elevate. And so I didn't make that reconciliation model up, I think it was made maybe in Alaska, but they have this rise model for reconciliation. But it needs to be embedded in everything we do at City Council, and not just this one-off task force that will someday go away.
Fr. Justin: Well, you took an awesome first step, I think, in your first weeks when you were on city council putting forth a resolution that was adopted that had to do with structural racism and mental health. Tell us tell us about what that was and how that would dovetail with this Office of Reconciliation that you're proposing.
Melissa: Well, again, this goes back to leading in your lane, where you are. When I first got on the council, and again I still knew very little, but I thought to myself, what could I do to begin to start this conversation about racism? Yes, I do have all of these ideas, all of these policies that we talked about on the campaign trail, but how do I begin to lay the foundation so that there's some common understanding? And in that vein, I began to do research. The city of Milwaukee did something around racism as a public health crisis. And I just started from there and really began to dig into what that meant in Kansas City and introduced the resolution around racism as, again, a foundational point of, this is what I'm here to do. This is my main objective of being on the city council, how do we bring this reconciliation back in the community so that everyone is seen, they have value, and they have worth?
Fr. Justin: Obviously, I'm somebody who's a huge believer in what you're putting forward. Our whole organization is called Reconciliation Services and I think you're making another really good point for social leaders and people wanting to learn to really advance their social impact. You have to pick something, right? You’ve got to pick something that you're going to stand for and then get educated. We had a wonderful conversation a couple episodes back with Gwendolyn Grant of the Urban League, you used to work at the Urban League. Gwen really unpacked like three or four things that you needed to do in order to become a social leader, and one of them, just like you said, you got to pick something. You’ve got to focus. And right now, I think there's a lot of people that are waking up to the reality that race, structural racism, the issues around the need for reconciliation are social determinants of health and they're protesting. Now, I want to talk a little bit about protests though, because I think that there's a lot of different versions of protests. I'm somebody that says what I've dedicated my life to is my protest, but there’s also a role for physical protest. You were on the steps the other day at City Hall and gave an impassioned speech and you've participated in protests. Let's talk about protests. After the protests are done at City Hall, what do we need to do if we want to be social leaders to actually live a life of protest? What would that mean? What would that look like?
Fr. Justin: What you're what you're really talking about, I think, is that we have to make it count. We have to live a life. I think when people hear the word protest, some people get fired up in a good way, some people get fired up in a negative way. And I guess that probably has to do with your lived experience. But I think what I'm asking you to speak about is really that concept of protest that is a way of life, not about necessarily aggression or signs or chanting certain slogans, but when all of that is done, which is important, by the way, and I'm a believer in that, but when all of that is died out, what are we doing day to day to make a difference? And Melissa, I think a lot of people, that's where they start to lose hope. I'm old enough to remember back to Rodney King, I'm old enough to remember back when there were protests in LA, I remember when all of that happened. I remember there was great desire and hope for change. And now here we are all of these years later, what's changed? What's changed since those protests? Here we are in this protest now, with Breonna Taylor, with George Floyd, all these situations. How do we actually live a life of protest such that things might change?
Melissa: One of the things is we always say “hashtag stay woke.” And so one of the things is not being lulled back into a place of complacency, but ensuring that we are really aware of what's happening. And we are inserting ourselves from an intentional place to make sure that we're bringing about a change. Not episodic, but again, it's a discipline, right? And so when you think about disciplining yourself and when we teach our children discipline about every day you gotta get up, and you got to make your bed, and then they're disciplined to do that over time and throughout their lives. And so that's the same thing you have to start out with. You being a social leader and making protests a part of who you are is, how are you building that muscle and starting small to say, it might just be that I'm going to come to Thelma’s Kitchen every Friday at 10am and talk to people and begin to reflect on, how is it that I can make things better for the individuals that I'm in relationship with, for the individuals that are in my community? But making sure that it's consistent, it’s not episodic, it's not something that you can get in the mundaneness of, “Oh, I joined this group and we meet every month.” What are you doing to make sure that you're raising your voice and you're making a change?
Fr. Justin: I think you're right. It's like anything. There's a lot of different ways of protesting. I think you can be the person who's on City Council and advocating, like you are. You can be the person that's at the protest holding a sign. You could also be the quiet introvert who doesn't feel like being in any of those places, but who works very hard to educate herself about the issues and to contribute according to her strength or his strength. Now, there's a quote that I love and I want to bring in here that relates to what we're talking about. It's Barbara Jordan, who said, “What the people want is very simple - they want an America as good as its promise.” What does that mean to you in light of what we're talking about?
Melissa: Well, one, that there is hope, right? There is promise, there is a structure in place that we can look to, and it's all about that reconciliation to get there. What we want is thinking about how do we make America whole? And that wholeness begins with the relationships that we have for our fellow man, our fellow woman, our brother, our sister, our neighbor. And so what we want, as an African American, as a descendant of slaves, what we want, what I want is that same opportunity, the same promise when we think about what America stands for, and what America is and what America can be for everyone.
Fr. Justin: I think that gets lost on people. I really do. I think people get lost in all of the issues and all of the politics and all of the rhetoric. For goodness sake, all we're talking about, though, is that as Americans don't we all want the same thing? I've got three kids and I want them all to have the same opportunities. And when we look across our neighborhood, sure, we may not all have exactly the same stuff or exactly the same experience, but we want everybody to have the opportunity. We want everybody to be able to live into that so-called American dream that is so elusive, and really, I think you and I would agree, go further than that. The American dream has been engineered to be impossible for some people in many cases. Talk to me about that? Let's dive in a little bit on structural racism. Talk about the people in your district. Why is it hard? What are the barriers? What are the systems in place that make it hard for them to achieve that same dream that you're talking about for America?
Melissa: Absolutely. One of the things on my righteous agenda has to do with our incentive process for corporate America. In that we have to look at our educational system that we have and how we are funding and defunding our educational system by giving tax incentives to the wealthy to do development. Many of these developers, all of these developers that I'm aware of, refuse to develop east of Troost. And so why will we take money away from children, our children, to give to developers, when they refuse to develop the lives of the people that they are taking the money away from?
Fr. Justin: Let’s get specific, third district, there are hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars being dumped into developing on Troost. There's a La Quinta hotel now at 24th and Troost. I'm sitting at the corner of 31st and Troost, right smack dab in the middle of what used to be the Porter slave plantation. I'm a stone's throw from where the big house was 200 years ago or 1831. And I am now engulfed in a $70 million development. And now look, I don't think all development is bad, but if we aren't working first to prioritize the people, all the progress that we make is for nothing, right? We're just moving people.
Melissa: And all I'm saying is we want to incentivize development in the city of Kansas City, but let's not do it at the expense of children and their future, because what that is is racism.
Fr. Justin: Ok, unpack that.
Melissa: I wanted to put a pause there, because I wanted that to sink in for people.
Fr. Justin: Say it again. Let's say it again.
Melissa: So what that is when you incentivize development and take away funding from children in districts that are predominantly Black and brown, that's racism. And so, if I have to unpack it, I can break it down. But the reality of it is that we are taking funding property taxes from districts in which academic achievement is not being obtained. And it's not all about money. It's not all about dollars and cents. However, if we can adequately resource our educational centers when you look at Lincoln, if you will. Lincoln High School is one of the number one high schools in the state of Missouri, they are heavily resourced. One of the reasons why we don't have many more Lincoln's is because of the resources that we need. When you think about crime and violence in the third district and the intersections between mental health and crime and violence, guess what? When we take those real tax dollars, property taxes away from our schools, we're also taking it away from our mental health fund. So where is the balance? That's all I'm saying. It's not anti-development, anti-developer. At some point, we have to have a balance in which we everyone has what they need to be successful. The developer, the children.
Fr. Justin: We have to work hard. I hear you saying, to really have all ships rise together, which isn't going to happen just by market forces, at least not the way that I see it. I mean, the market is really an amoral thing. It takes moral men and women to move the market in the moral direction, but so often, I think, we're just allowing the market to run where it's going to go, because that's kind of the American way. We don't want to have too much legislation or restriction. But there are times when I think we do need to stop and agree as a community and say, look, these kids are important, their education is important, not just because of who they are, which should be enough, but if we have to speak about the return on investment, look, this is a superior growth model for the region, when you're gonna have people, right?
Melissa: And the thing that you have to think about is, if we let the market decide, we wouldn't be taking any money away from our children. Because we would not be incentivizing development, we would allow those developments to go without public subsidy. So we are intervening to give taxes to the wealthy and the rich by taking them away from the poor. That's just point blank and period.
Fr. Justin: You make some really challenging points and I wish we had four hours to unpack all of it but I want to get to a couple of other things. And I'm sure we'll get a lot of feedback in the comments on this and I'm looking forward to that discussion. But you know, as a leader when you're facing the kind of huge challenges like we're talking about now, I think there's always this nagging temptation to just give up, to give in. And if others are listening to the podcast right now, and they're feeling like they're exhausted, they want to give up, they want to give in, what are two or three things that they can do to stay in the fight?
Melissa: Oh, that is definitely a hard question. But always centering yourself back to the reason why you're in this work and relationships are so critical and so important. And going back to the relationships that you have with people, and the why of you doing this work is so critical and important. So just making sure also you're taking care of yourself because definitely it's a hard process in terms of just being able to give all of yourself and oftentimes things don't change as fast as you would like them to change. You have to give yourself grace. I was in a meeting just today and I was like, “Oh my gosh, I really could have done so much better. I could have done things differently.” It's good to have the improvement, but also to give yourself grace as you do this work. But I cannot underscore relationships, relationships, relationships, because those are the individuals that you will be able to go back to and they will be able to refuel you and be able to remind you of your why. The other thing that I would encourage people to do is to start very small, don't try to bite off “oh, I'm going to go down and I'm going to get $100 million from the city government to do X, Y and Z.” But perhaps it's “I want to be able to put some park benches in the park in my neighborhood and how is it that I can convince and encourage and influence to get those $25,000 park benches?” And so just really try to connect with other people. There is an African proverb that if you want to go fast, go alone, but if you want to go far, go together. And that net of relationships is what's going to be able to carry you through.
Fr. Justin: I really appreciate that quote. It's one of my favorites. And I think it's one of those truths that we always forget, or that we often forget in the moment. We get caught up in something, we get so passionate about it, and then all of a sudden we're out there and we find out like, “Oh wait, I didn't wait long enough to think about people, place, policy, and the people.” We lose that. Well, I always end every podcast, Melissa, with this question and I am really looking forward to hearing what you have to say. What do leaders listening need to do if they want to step up their social leadership, step up their social impact, to become social leaders? What do they need to do?
Melissa: You need to open your eyes. You need to open your eyes and not just see what you think you see going on, but really see the people that are around you, the places that are around you, and what decisions can you help to influence to make things better. We need to be able to see and hear and really think about how to insert ourselves in a way that is going to make a difference. One of the most important things that I learned about leadership and let me just share with you two, they're very quick. One is leadership is about disappointing people at the rates that they can tolerate. And so leadership does not come without disappointment. And so we have to be able to measure the heat along the way. And then finally, my most important lesson is leadership is about doing what's necessary. Because oftentimes we have this connotation in our mind of what needs to happen, but you have to step back and say, okay, what's the necessary thing that I need to do in order to move this thing forward? So you have to be willing to do that reflection and step in there in doing what's necessary.
Fr Justin: Well, Councilwoman Melissa Robinson, thank you for those good words and that powerful send off so that we can all become better social leaders. And thank you again so much for spending ample time with us.
Melissa: Thank you.
Fr. Justin: We look forward to hearing back from you again and please keep up the great work that you're doing, especially if you're here in Kansas City, in the third district where we really need your leadership. Thank you so much. Well, my friends, you have been with us for yet one more episode of The Social Leader podcast. Thanks again for listening today. And if you like today's podcast, I have a big favor to ask of you. Please follow the podcast on YouTube, iTunes, Spotify or wherever you get your podcast and hit that like button. This is really going to help us to share the show with more people. You can also tune in to watch the show live on Reconciliation Services Facebook page on every Tuesday right around 12:30pm central time. So, lastly, I want to make sure that you know about a new program that's launching soon. If you like today's show, there is a brand new e-course that can help teach you to learn to lead with greater social impact. You can go to TheSocialLeader.org, sign up to find out more about this new e-course called The Social Leader Essentials, launching really soon. Answer a few short questions and one of our team members is going to reach out to you to see if the course is right for you. So thanks again and until next time, thank you again to my guests, Melissa Robinson, and I look forward to being with you next week. Learn to lead with greater social impact. Thanks, everyone.