The NGen Leadership Series kicked-off on January 25 with the first webinar, What the Heck is the Common Good Anyway? This engaging conversation with NGen leaders focused on how this generation defines the “common good” and how nonprofits and foundations advance it – or don’t.

What the Heck is the Common Good Anyway?
Wednesday, January 25
Speakers:   Ai-Jen Poo, National Domestic Workers Alliance
                  Billy Wimsatt, Rebuild the Dream
                  Nick Troiano, AmericansElect
                  Kristen Soltis, Winston Group

In the midst of profound economic and social shifts, the “common good” is not often common across organizational, sector and political fault lines. NGen leaders have a central role in advancing both this conversation and the steps we take together to make that common good a reality. Participants joined in a generative conversation with dynamic NGen leaders to grapple with these important questions together. What do they – and you – see as the common good, and what role does the sector have in promoting it?

Speakers for this webinar included Ai-Jen Poo, director of the National Workers Alliance and 2011 NGen Leadership Award winner, Kristen Soltis, director of policy research at the Winston Group, Nick Troiano, National Campus Director for Americans Elect, and Billy Wimsatt, Strategic Partnerships Director at Rebuild the Dream.

Ai-jen Poo has been organizing immigrant women workers in New York since 1996. In 2000 she helped start Domestic Workers United, an organization of nannies, housekeepers and elderly caregivers in New York organizing for power, respect, fair labor standards and to help build the social justice movement.  In April 2010, she became Director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance.   She was the 2000 recipient of an Open Society Institute New York City Community Fellowship, the recipient of the Ford Foundation Leadership for a Changing World Award, the Ernest de Maio Award from Labor Research Association, the Woman of Vision Award from Ms. Foundation for Women and in 2009 was named as one of Crain's "40 Under 40" and New York Moves Magazine "Power Women" Awards.
Kristen Soltis is the Director of Policy Research at The Winston Group, a strategic consulting and polling firm. She has conducted opinion research for clients such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. She is a senior fellow at the Independent Women's Forum and has been a panelist at the American Enterprise Institute. She currently serves on the board of the America's Future Foundation and is the vice chair of strategic planning for the Junior League of Washington.
Nick Troiano is the National Campus Director for Americans Elect, a non-partisan organization that will hold the first-ever online presidential nominating convention to put a third ticket on the ballot in all 50 states in 2012. He is currently pursuing a master's degree in Americans Government at Georgetown University, where he graduated in 2011. Nick is a co-founder of myImpact.org, a Twitter-based platform for volunteers to track and share their social impact, and the Georgetown University Social Innovation and Public Service Fund. He is a former Public Policy Fellow with Civic Enterprises and United States Senate intern. He is a member of the Concord Coalition's Youth Advisory Board. Nick is from Milford, Pennsylvania and enjoys bike riding and photography.
Billy Wimsatt is the Strategic Partnerships Director at Rebuild the Dream. With more than 70 partners in the American Dream Movement, Wimsatt is part of a dream team that organizes Americans to rebuild the middle class and ladders of opportunity for all. Previously, Wimsatt founded, co-founded and/or managed several organizations including: League of Young Voters, Generational Alliance, Coffee Party, and Ohio Youth Corps (a joint project of the Obama campaign and the Ohio Democratic Party). Author or editor of six books with more than 100,000 copies in print, including: No More Prisons, Wimsatt’s writing has also appeared in: Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Vibe, Huffington Post, and The Nation. He was named by Utne Magazine as “Utne Visionary” and to The Source Magazine’s “Power 30” and has spoken at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, MIT’s Graduate School of Urban Planning, Yale, and Stanford -- although he is a proud college drop-out.