War is never really about what the U.S. media says it’s about. After hearing two “good liberal” friends parroting the “no good options” talking point last week, I wrote this for them: It’s about oil and money — imperialism — every time, and a military industrial complex whose shareholders will…

Here’s my invitation to you, and to myself, today: Release yourself fully from the constraints of “professionalism” and dare to consider what might be a bigger, bolder vision of creativity and leadership waiting for you. Ooof, that’s quite the ask, I know. I believe we need to connect to our…

I have been lamenting the state of the internet for a while, consciously and unconsciously, as I watch my thumb keep the feed rolling past my eyeballs. …

I dropped the coffee beans container on the floor this morning. They went everywhere. As I sat down on the floor to clean them up, I noticed just how dirty the floor was too. I thought, “I have an option here. I can try to avoid the crumbs, and spend…

In these times, it may not be the debate nor the plan that’s most important. — My mother always said that I came out of the womb contrary. With so much ire and fear in the air here in Washington, D.C. over the last few months and years, I know that being contrary is no longer what is required of me. Yes, we can argue and…

When I was a teenager, in my “obsession with the 1940s” phase in which I listened to big band music and wore retro a-line skirts and my hair in side-roll victory curls, I was in love with Katharine Hepburn. To me, she was everything I was and wanted to be…

“Change happens at the speed of trust.” In the last few weeks in particular, in a year filled with undeniable markers of how systems and institutions must fundamentally change, one of our nonprofit sector’s “automatic defaults” has become very apparent to me: the bias for action. Painfully so, at times. …

Perhaps retold settler family stories can help end the myths of “America, the great” and understand this moment in U.S. history. — The Great Plains of the United States have always signaled one thing to me: possibility. Growing up on flat lands, surrounded at all times by an unencumbered 360 degree view does nothing if not instill a sense of the possible. Fireworks are always a big part of the U.S.’s Independence…

Reflecting on ten years of how-matters.org — If How Matters has made any small contribution, I hope it’s been pointing the global development sector towards indigenous or locally-led movements and groups in the Global South. …