[00:00:39] Dawn Crawford: Welcome to this episode of the create good podcast today with us, we have an amazing activist and all around awesome nonprofit communications professional Anna Castro.

[00:01:29] Thank you so much for coming today.

[00:01:30] Anna Castro: Thank you so much for having me. It is always a wonderful, and I think cathartic opportunity to talk to folks not just about the work we do as progressive communicators, but also how we do it, how we keep it going. Even amidst like, How many times are we gonna have to say unprecedented or horrific or, you know, shocking.

[00:01:52] Even when it’s not so shocking. This year, you know, I I’m, I’m tired. I’ve lost count.

[00:01:57] Dawn Crawford: Exactly. I know. Yeah, exactly. So go ahead and share with us your current title and your new consulting business.

[00:02:06] Anna Castro: Yes. So I’ve been a communicator in nonprofits for the last decade. Have worked in organization at the, ACLU of San Diego and Imperial counties. With Mi Familia Vota, the Transgender Law Center most recently with Building Movement Project. And right now I am a full-time communications consultant, working with folks doing incredible work in the LGBTQ space specifically on trans liberation working with reproductive justice groups on the intersectionality of what it looks like to be able to parent in healthy, safe environments.

[00:02:41] And also working on a couple of capacity building projects in the climate justice space in which, you know, we’re really thinking about how we build narrative power. So it’s been a pleasure to rejoin the sector, to rejoin communications, work as a consultant and to get to see the breadth of our movement from the vantage point of different movement spaces.

[00:03:01] And all of that leads me to say, I’ve never felt like we are more prepared to deal with this than now, because I get to see how many moving parts there are that will lead us to living in the world that we deserve to live in, in which everyone gets care, dignity and respect.

[00:03:18] Dawn Crawford: I love that. That’s amazing. That is, it is true. And I think we’re in the middle of the stairway, right? That we’ve come a long way, but we got a ways to go.

[00:03:29] Anna Castro: We do. And I think that that’s one of the things that I keep trying to remind myself and reminding others is that, you know, as tough and as dark as things may seem, we’ve never had this level of people activated the, you know, what, we never call the general public, but the general public is primed for taking action prime for learning more about things that they are seeing happening around them. And not only that we have a sector and I think particularly in the communication space of it all, where we’ve recognized, we need to build up that bench of communicators. And for some of us who stumbled into communications like me, who learned on the job from amazing mentors it’s been a real full circle moment to be a part of training and capacity building spaces and being like, ‘Hey, this thing that took me money, you know, many months and heartache to figure out here is the way that you actually figure it out in a couple steps, in a worksheet, in a list of questions.’ So all of that to say, it’s like, when we look around and see our community of folks that are gearing up for these fights. I think it makes it feel much more doable. But we don’t often take that time to look inward into our movement and just be like, we’ve got this. It’s not gonna be easy, but we’re also real tough.

[00:04:52] Dawn Crawford: absolutely. Fantastic. So what’s your total years in nonprofit communication, now, what’s your tenure?

[00:04:59] Anna Castro: This is my officially, my, my tenure June- July 20 12 was when I started doing nonprofit work.

[00:05:05] Dawn Crawford: Great. Very good. Okay. So share with us your career quickly, shortly and around 90 seconds or less go.

[00:05:14] Anna Castro: Idealistic student organizer enters into the nonprofit space. Curious, do I wanna do communications work? Do I wanna do policy work? Do I wanna be an attorney? Enters a multifunction organization, which I get to try out different issue areas and try out different roles and comes to the understanding that all of my years of reading novels and like of just being a book nerd has lent me a strong foundation for writing, conceptualizing, building on narratives.

[00:05:43] Since then I’ve explored every part of our nonprofit sector looking for. Co-conspirators, co-collaborators to really tell the stories of our communities and by our, I mean like black, indigenous people of color, queer and trans people, low income people, women, disabled folks, you name it. What are the stories that need to be in the center that at times are in the margins?

[00:06:09] Dawn Crawford: absolutely fantastic. So why nonprofits? Why this work.

[00:06:16] Anna Castro: Honestly I went to a predominantly white institution elite liberal arts college in Western, Massachusetts, and everyone around me was going into finance. Everyone around me was going, you know, straight into grad school, law school, et cetera. And I wanted to be an immigration attorney my whole life, since I was a kid.

[00:06:39] Because I grew up in the nineties in California in the aftermath of prop 187 a horrible proposition that would have made it so that undocumented people could not access any public institution, including schools, hospitals, etcetera. So I grew up wanting to be an immigration attorney found myself on a scholarship to a, you know, institution that I had, kind of no business being in and yeah, looked around and was like, some people really know exactly what they wanna do and are so comfortable with the idea of power.

[00:07:12] And I was like, I still don’t understand like what my relationship is to that. And I don’t want to. It just seems so easy, to me, to go take a very linear path to like law school and practice. But I also felt that I would be devoid of the actual experience of working in communities and therefore nonprofits.

[00:07:35] I was like, before I decide what next step I wanna take. I wanna actually be in community. I felt so much of my experience in undergrad was the idea of kind of removing you from community and like socializing you into being comfortable with power. And I was like, I need to undo a lot of this before I decide.

[00:07:57] I want to like engage, particularly for me, as someone that’s thinking about law school before I engage with something that has like been a tool that has been both used for good and great harm. I really need to be very sure of myself and sure of my analysis. And that only comes from me from being in community.

[00:08:16] Dawn Crawford: Absolutely. That’s a very good point about college and how it’s about making yeah. Conform to the system and if you don’t succeed in that environment, that’s a pretty good tip of like, wow. I’m probably gonna work in business for-profit world very well. That’s a good point.

[00:08:31] Anna Castro: yeah.

[00:08:31] Dawn Crawford: So what’s your favorite thing about what you do now?

[00:08:35] Anna Castro: My favorite thing about being a consultant is that I can get to be in different spaces. And as someone that was kind of consistently looking at just overlapping systems of oppression The work that I did while I was at the ACLU of San Diego, was focused on voting rights, criminal legal system reform and immigration, and just seeing the intersections of all of those things, how folks were disenfranchised in California as a result of a criminal legal system reform that deprived, they disenfranchised folks that had been on parole or on probation. So just seeing that overlap, knowing that a lot of people are put on the pipeline to deportation because of interactions with the criminal legal system. That just like, for me, it was always like when you think of this as a Venn diagram of like systems overlapping, who is living at the center of multiple systems.

[00:09:32] And so for me, that led me to a lot of different organizations. And as a consultant, I’m like, I get to live there. I get to look for projects in which people are focused on, where, how do we take in all of this knowledge that we have based on folks’ lived experiences and analyze systems and therefore produce solutions, campaigns, organizations that are geared at looking at the whole individual and not just through one particular lens.

[00:10:00] Dawn Crawford: And it is just a special project it’s the things that teams want to do, but need that extra boost. Okay. Magic wand time. What’s one thing you wish you could change about your job.

[00:10:10] Anna Castro: One thing I wish I could change about my job. I do at times, wish that I was able to actually be in-person in spaces at times. I feel like when I do spokesperson trainings, particularly with directly impacted folks so much of that requires building trust and being in community.

[00:10:30] And I can do that over zoom. , but it is just always been much easier to do that over some pastries over like a little Zumba break which is actually one, one spokesperson training. I did like five years ago the community members were like, yeah, we do Zumba during our, meeting breaks.

[00:10:49] You wanna join in? And I was like, yeah, of course I’d love to. So I, I missed that, but I also recognize just how important it is to remember the lessons that we’ve learned as a result of the pandemic that accessibility and disability justice are not just like, ‘oh, we used that during the pandemic and we learned so much from it.’

[00:11:07] It is absolutely more so, like, we learned a lot from that and we need to continue using those learnings in how we structure our work. So I feel like I’m evolving in terms of how I build community, but still, you know, I loved getting to share a meal with folks when I would do things

[00:11:23] in person.

[00:11:24] Dawn Crawford: absolutely. Yeah. I recently had, yeah, our first luncheon with client in two years and, it was so nice and they were like, ‘well, what, work should we get done?’ I’m like, no, we’re gonna talk about like life and where you’re going on vacation. And like, not every moment of every day needs to be filled, right. So, yeah. Okay. So what are you looking forward to in the next year.

[00:11:45] Anna Castro: One particular thing that I am working on that I’m looking forward to sharing is ASO communications, Transgender Law Center and Lake Research Partners produced a messaging guide that is called the Race Class Gender Narrative. A lot of people may be familiar with the race class narrative that Anat Shenker-Osorio has been, you know, spreading the gospel of far and wide because it is so effective to acknowledge that we do not win by not talking about race in class.

[00:12:13] We must talk about race in class, and we must talk about the fact that our goal is to live in a multiracial society in which we all have, what we need. Added onto that the Race Class Gender Narrative. I think for most people, you know, in terms of understanding LGBTQ folks, particularly trans and gender nonconforming folks, there may still be some discomfort.

[00:12:35] I think well-meaning discomfort around. How do I talk about this? How do I talk about the issues impacting trans folks? I’m hearing all of these tips from people about like what to do, what not to do. How do I proactively incorporate this into our work. In comes the Race Class Gender Narrative and this was a tool developed this year in particular addressing the fact that, you know, We’re hearing a lot of about anti-trans legislation.

[00:13:02] And so we know how to, how to talk about it in the sense of like, this is an attack, but how do we talk about what the vision is of the world we wanna live in, in which transgender or not, again, we are all receiving what we need to live fulfilling lives. And so I’m gonna be doing some trainings on that along with We Make The Future we’re gonna be talking a lot more of it. I’m working with Transgender Law Center again on just spreading the gospel of the Race Class Gender Narrative. And I’m excited to get that tool out there to a lot of people.

[00:13:32] Dawn Crawford: That’s fantastic. Agreed. , I think that’s what we need. And I think, you know, that folks who are yeah. Outside of community, but want to support that community is we just need a guide. Right. And we don’t know how to ask for it, for sure.

[00:13:45] And so I think those sort of tools are fantastic. So great. . Okay. So you’ve achieved a lot in your career so far. What else do you feel like you really need to achieve.

[00:13:54] Anna Castro: I was thinking about this because I do some coaching for BIPOC communicators and it is a question I ask folks, I’m like, well, what do you wanna do? And they’re like, well, like in terms of work, I’m like, yeah, that’s like a great, great goal to set, but. You know, I guess a better question, I always reframe it for them. It’s like, well, how do you wanna feel about the work that you do? Because when I think back to things I’ve accomplished in my career, I’m like, this was incredible. What else was I doing at that point in time? What did my I’m like? I’m pretty sure I didn’t do laundry for like a month when we were running that campaign.

[00:14:30] So what do I wanna accomplish in, you know, what do I, what do I wanna do? I want to figure out. If there is a compatible mode of leadership and supervision that creates cohesiveness during times like the ones that we’re living in. I think it’s been many years of us in the progressive sector being like, this is the worst thing possible.

[00:14:58] Like this is unprecedented and that message is true. And I’m not saying it’s not, but it’s also like we’ve had enough years of this to know that this may be how things continue to be for a bit. And so. You know, I wanna be a leader that responds to the time with tools that allow us to effectively build teams and to develop a type of leadership that, addresses some of the things that we’re hearing across the sector of, you know, how, how are nonprofit spaces potentially a model for how we would want other workplaces to be like. Us as a sector when we, and in particularly the progressive sector, when we talk about workers’ rights, when we talk about, you know, a lot freedom to thrive, freedom to be you in whatever spaces you’re in. How can we use our nonprofit spaces to create the models for that? And I think it’s extremely hard, extremely hard because we know how. Urgent our work is but can we turn this into the campaign? Can we turn this into a campaign as well?

[00:16:12] And I think particularly thinking about how we know that sometimes things haven’t worked well, sometimes ways of doing things haven’t worked well. So many people, these days are afraid to own up to mistakes. Rightfully so because they feel like that’s the only thing that anyone will ever see of them.

[00:16:31] Like the mistake that was made. Our institutions should we want them to change. And by that, I mean our public institutions, our educational system, our healthcare system, our every single system you know, are going to have to go through some sort of repair, reconstruction of some kind. How do our nonprofit spaces, how can we practice what we’d want that to look like in our nonprofit spaces?

[00:16:58] Dawn Crawford: Yeah. And it’s so hard for nonprofits. It’s funding and like not pissing off the wrong person. And it’s like, and like, you’re not living to your mission and not living to the fulfillment of your staff and team and the people who make it all happen. That’s really interesting.

[00:17:14] Yeah. Agreed. I do think, yeah, that nonprofits have the flexibility to lead that revolution of a good workplace. Right. But. It’s hard for people.

[00:17:25] Anna Castro: It’s not easy. Yeah, no, and that’s the thing it’s like, it’s not easy. And the way that I also see it too, is like, it’s not one individual person’s responsibility to do that. It’s the entire team, it’s the entire staff and other people, obviously some people by virtue of like experience you know, position on staff will have greater responsibility for that, but it’s up to all of us to want that.

[00:17:49] And. You know, the idea of nonprofits and movements, nonprofits have fueled movements.

[00:17:57] Nonprofits are there to keep movements going nine to five, you know, ha ha

[00:18:03] Dawn Crawford: yeah. Yeah.

[00:18:04] Anna Castro: So, you know, like the, to me, the idea is if our nonprofit structure is. Struggling it’s because our movement has so many more needs at this point.

[00:18:15] And so, you know, what is the relationship between that as well? You know, there are folks that do activist work that are not a part of nonprofits. There are folks that are doing incredible policy changing work outside of the nonprofit structure in for-profit companies. . And so we’re all consistently looking around for a model for how to do these things, but maybe it doesn’t start at that.

[00:18:38] Maybe it starts at conversations of, this, and it’s the same thing as with our campaigns, right. Where we’ve become very good at naming what doesn’t work, what we don’t want. And we have to start naming, well, what do we want? And how do we make that happen? What, what is the timeline for making that happen?

[00:18:56] So, you know, my, my thought on this, it’s like, it’s not on any one person. All of us have something to contribute to that, and it doesn’t need to happen overnight, but it is something to think about in these coming years. I guess another thing that I wanna accomplish is just feeling like I interacted with people and paved the way for great leaders. That, you know, through coaching, through mentorship, through hiring, through being a resource to folks on the job search that people got to the places they needed to go and then paid it forward themselves. And so another thing, you know, besides wanting to look at the infrastructure of nonprofits and how they function, it’s like as an individual, did I leave behind a leader-full movement?

[00:19:42] Dawn Crawford: Yeah, mm-hmm.

[00:19:43] Anna Castro: You know, I don’t think I’m gonna be doing this forever in this same way. I wanna take on different roles. And so did I create the way for more people to step into leadership as well? I think that’s what I want to do and look forward to.

[00:20:00] Dawn Crawford: Okay. So reverse end. So what advice do you have for somebody who’s either entering the nonprofit sector or just starting their career?

[00:20:08] Anna Castro: My advice is. To make goals for yourself every year or every two years of what you wanna learn through the job that you’re taking. What do you wanna accomplish? What question do you wanna answer about yourself? And, you know, for me, that was how I started structuring how I thought of my entry point into nonprofits.

[00:20:29] It was literally. Do I wanna be a lawyer? Do I wanna do public policy? Do I wanna do communications? Like what role do I want to do? And how do people in these roles, like get to where they’re at? So that was my first year. I’m like, I just wanna meet a lot of people in this space. Get to know them, hear how they got to this place in which they’re doing amazing work.

[00:20:48] And determine for myself, like which path do I wanna take. And I think a lot of people go into a job and think like, I’m gonna make a home here. I’m gonna like settle in and dig deep. And I think in some ways that’s like a normal reaction to have, like I did, I’ve made friends in every job that I’ve had, that I still am in touch with today.

[00:21:12] Those relationships made it possible for me to navigate the heartache that is losing a campaign that you were so deeply invested in. They were the relationships that made it possible for me to learn things that I didn’t know, like someone taking me under their wing, I’ve had amazing mentors.

[00:21:29] So I do believe like, yes, the relationships are critical, but the space itself is not like. The getting too hung up on the idea that you need to be somewhere forever. I think also it’s like, you don’t need to be here forever. Do the job that you’re there to do set these goals then decide like, yes, this place is for me.

[00:21:50] I wanna, in the next year I wanna have done this. I wanna lead my first campaign from start to finish. I want to be our coalition convener. I want to, you know, do X, Y, and Z set goals for yourself. Ask yourself questions about what it is that you’re learning about yourself and doing this work and go from there.

[00:22:10] I think the, to me, like one of the things that I’ve been just In the periphery thinking about is that the folks that are coming into this work right now have seen some things that like all of us are like, yeah, never would’ve thought that that’s what would have happened. Never would’ve thought on pre, you know, pandemic shuts down the world.

[00:22:29] Never would’ve thought like, Oh, tearing down some foundational you know, Supreme court decisions wouldn’t have thought this 10 years ago. And so these folks are hardened and or scared in a way that I don’t remember that. Wasn’t my entry point into this. I was of my first election was the Obama oh eight.

[00:22:51] And. And I’m like, that is not what it is

[00:22:54] Dawn Crawford: no,

[00:22:54] Anna Castro: now. so also having this, like grace and empathy as like folks that have been in the movement for longer of just being like, this is a really different way to enter into social change work than perhaps like all of us may have had and so, you know, keep that in mind.

[00:23:13] We do need these folks you know, folks that are new to the job to stay and see a role for themselves in it. How do we do that? While acknowledging that like generationally, we’ve seen different things, change the world.

[00:23:25] Dawn Crawford: Yeah, absolutely. So the next section is about feedback, feedback about how you receive information on your ideas, on your work, on your writing. It’s not necessarily about, you know, HR. you know, and your review, this is really feedback on your own writing and and on your ideas, right.

[00:23:40] That core of, regardless of how it outputs, it’s really it’s about your ideas. So how do you personally process feedback and on your work, how do you, how do you kind of take that on.

[00:23:51] Anna Castro: How I personally process it for me, feedback is critical in terms of, I have such a hard time as a anxiety prone type, a perfectionist of getting something on the page. And so for me, even the feedback part starts with. Hey, having someone just to have a conversation with and be like, oh, what do you think about this?

[00:24:17] And then it helps me start writing and producing. I then love like hearing from other people’s vantage points. Like, oh, I think like you may have missed this. You like, did you think of this? I process feedback as being like a necessary part of producing something that doesn’t just reflect my, viewpoint, but reflects like the collective.

[00:24:38] Dawn Crawford: Yeah. What kind of style of feedback do you like to receive and how do you communicate that to your team?

[00:24:45] Anna Castro: I actually, this is a really great question because I feel like this is something that I’ve in general seen be a struggle in organizations. We are so kind to each other. And well, so

[00:24:57] nice rather. Nice. We’re so nice to each other and we have so much empathy in the fact that we all know that we’re working, so hard.

[00:25:05] We know that we’re having these long hours that I think at times it’s hard for people to give feedback. And so what I try to do is model feedback as much as possible when I’m asking for it. So I’ll always give examples to people I’m like, so let’s say I wrote this on the page. Like I was thinking this, but I could easily see how someone would think this.

[00:25:26] So. When you like write, you know, put that on the Google doc, share that, edit, like, write that down. Like, Hey, is someone thinking this might not get that. This is the tone that you’re giving. Can you change that? Cool. And then, you know other times I may write something and it’s like, oh my God, how did I not get that this was gonna be offensive.

[00:25:47] And you may, and you may be thinking like, oh my God, how did this person not think this was going to be like offensive? Did you not know this thing that just happened recently? And I totally get. I was like, so write that, flag that in, if you wanna have a conversation with me about it, I welcome that.

[00:26:03] But also know that I want us to produce something that reflects all of our contributions. So I’m not married to anything. Because I, again, wanna make sure it’s reflective of all of our collective knowledge. So I consistently model the type of feedback that I would like to get. And there are definitely times when it’s been like no conversation needed to be had and been yelled at and been, you know, for, you know, all a matter of things, all a matter of things.

[00:26:35] And in those moments, I usually like tell myself You know, I don’t know what wound I touched. I may have been like, you know, I may only know this person via this project, but I don’t know what they did to get to this place where they are offering this advice. And I don’t know how hard it must have been for them to give me that feedback.

[00:26:57] Dawn Crawford: That’s interesting. That’s a good point. .

[00:26:59] Anna Castro: and so I try to keep that in mind. And I know for me, I have a natural inclination of like, but don’t you think that I want to make sure that like, we all, like, I agree a hundred percent please. But I keep that on the inside, cuz I’m like, I’m all, it’s also not that person’s job to make me feel better about a mistake I made. I’m like, I can go to a friend and be like, oh my God, you know, this happened. And I was so embarrassed and blah, blah, blah. And a friend will be like, yeah, like, obviously I know you didn’t mean to do that. And, and all of that, and I’m like, I have my friends for that kind of pick me up.

[00:27:32] The people that I work with and the type of feedback that they offer me based on their experience. And I mean, real like policy legal experience, we don’t at times like acknowledge that people that have directly lived experience have had to interact with the legal system have had to interact with unfair policies.

[00:27:50] They are policy and legal experts as well. So I’m like, it’s not just that they’re giving me that advice or giving me that feedback because they have that lived experience. They know what it’s like to interact with systems that are punitive. And so I’m not gonna be another person to add to that by being like…

[00:28:07] Dawn Crawford: yeah.

[00:28:07] yeah.

[00:28:08] Anna Castro: But don’t you think that I knew that. And don’t you think that I wanted to like, come that across? I’m like, no, whatever. I go to my friends for that someone else doesn’t need to hold those feelings for me. I can hold them

[00:28:16] Dawn Crawford: myself.

[00:28:17] It’s a good point. Good point. Okay. What’s feedback style does not work for you.

[00:28:23] Anna Castro: feedback style would not work for me. I wanna hear what you think otherwise, I, and especially as a, well, both working in organizations and as a consultant, I’m like, you know, you produce something and you spend hours on it and you’re like, I want someone to tell me, like the typo that I noticed on page two I want someone to tell me what they thought, what they made them feel, where they think this could go what could be done better?

[00:28:49] I need feedback. So no feedback would not

[00:28:52] Dawn Crawford: Yeah. Great. Okay. So this next section is really talking about burnout. I thought your kind of acknowledgement of people who are joining the sector now are coming in honestly, mid war, right? That I feel like there’s so many things and so many things to fix. Right. That there’s so much problem solving. So the ones who have been in it for a while might be getting little burned out, but also how do you proactively protect yourself from burnout?

[00:29:19] So how do you avoid your own burnout first? How do you take care of yourself?

[00:29:25] Anna Castro: I have a note on my phone in which I’ve just written down. Like every single thing that I love doing that when I do, I feel full and nourished and all of that. And. that list is what I look to when I start to feel the signs of burnout. And I’ve also kind of divorced myself from the idea that you can avoid burnout.

[00:29:50] I think , the way that I think of it now is like these things at times are cyclical and. Sometimes there will be moments where it’s like both a combination of physical exhaustion, mental exhaustion, stress that is going to lead to a burnout moment and it’s unavoidable depending on what you’re working on.

[00:30:11] So then it really is my self care plan that I have on that note. It’s like, okay, these are the things that we start to do that I start to do. Like for example, you know going out somewhere, going out somewhere in nature where there’s water. Like, I always feel reset when I am swimming in a lake or even in a pool, anything I’m like, I feel water always settles me.

[00:30:32] Getting to talk to some really good friends you know, even via text message. I’m like these things make me feel better. Netflix. You know, all a matter of binging, you know, certain television shows work for me. And so my, my mindset on, on burnout is it will happen. But can I recover better?

[00:30:52] Dawn Crawford: mm-hmm

[00:30:53] Anna Castro: Can I love myself more during those moments.

[00:30:56] What do I learn about like what I need in those moments? And then also, how do I, you know, share that knowledge with folks? Because I think we also end up, you know, all of us, again, type-a perfectionists running around here with anxiety are just like, I need to be the best at self care. And my sustainability plan needs to be first and foremost in everything that I do.

[00:31:17] And. Yeah, there will be weeks like that, where it’s like, everything is like a balance. Everything is a flow and then everything will go sideways and you don’t wanna just feel bad. Like, oh my God, I’d been doing so well. And now I’m just like, not even taking breaks to eat lunch. It’s like, no, we start again, progress over perfection.

[00:31:39] Dawn Crawford: Absolutely. Absolutely. So what makes you come back to this work every day? What’s what’s that fuel

[00:31:46] Anna Castro: I think it comes from first, it comes from taking breaks. So I take breaks, whether it is moving in and out of full time organization work to consulting work. I let myself have life cycles in the work that I do where I’m like, yeah, I set a goal. I accomplished it. I’m ready to. Which makes it so that I sometimes don’t even get to the burnout.

[00:32:08] I, was able to like do the thing that I said I wanted to do and now I’m out. But what keeps me coming back to this work is the people both the people that I work with, the people that I get to meet through doing this work and the communities that we work in I always have to have a project that allows me to talk to people, on the ground in communities and whatever I’m doing it makes it feel real for me. I think the nonprofit bubble is beautiful. But I need to get out of it at times because I really need to see like, what is happening with folks on the ground and yeah, and the friendships, like I said, the friendships I’ve made in this space are lifelong friendships.

[00:32:48] They are folks that I. You know, they ride or die work spouses all the matter of like, these are folks that I trust to hold me down. That’s why I keep coming

[00:33:01] Dawn Crawford: That’s fantastic. Okay. We’re in our rapid fire section of questions. So we are looking for one word answers, short answers, just off the cuff, so, okay. What’s your favorite word?

[00:33:14] Anna Castro: Myriad.

[00:33:15] Dawn Crawford: least. Favorite word?

[00:33:18] Anna Castro: Least favorite phrase make no mistake.

[00:33:22] Dawn Crawford: It’s good. Okay. What’s your personal passion, nonprofit, cause what’s your, what’s your fav?

[00:33:31] Anna Castro: Right now I’m definitely living in trans liberation work. And just feeling like it is so critical for our movements to understand the role that our genders play in doing this work and that this is an issue that we need to invest in across whatever work you do. Trans people have been here will be here.

[00:33:52] Trans people exist in the future.

[00:33:53] Dawn Crawford: yes, absolutely. Okay. What nonprofit cause gets too much attention.

[00:33:58] Anna Castro: Cancel culture as a topic. I’m so over reading these think pieces it’s like learn how to apologize and learn how to have meaningful relationships that are happening offline.

[00:34:10] Dawn Crawford: absolutely. What’s your favorite curse word?

[00:34:13] Anna Castro: I love a good son of a bitch.

[00:34:16] Dawn Crawford: What profession, other than your own would you like to attempt?

[00:34:21] Anna Castro: Veterinary Assistant

[00:34:23] Dawn Crawford: Wow. Yeah. Great. And then what non-profit professional organization would you like to hear on this podcast?

[00:34:29] Anna Castro: I would love to hear from some of the folks that are working with youth particularly trans and gender nonconforming youth would also love to hear from folks that are doing. migrant justice work and indigenous sovereignty work, the overlap of it. I feel like we’re in this really amazing moment in which paradigms can shift within the progressive space of how we talk about certain issues.

[00:34:55] And I’d love to hear more from folks that are doing that work.

[00:34:58] Dawn Crawford: Cool. Well, great. Well, thank you so much for your time today and chatting with us on the Create Good podcast. It was great to have you at the conference. And so it’s been really good to catch up with you again.

[00:35:10] Anna Castro: Thank you so much, Dawn and I love. Every question that you asked and I’m looking forward to hearing all of these conversations that you’re gonna have with folks over the years. This is a necessary intervention for us to be able to hear each other. As we, we see each other’s work. It’s great to hear from the people ideating and creating.

[00:35:31] Dawn Crawford: Well, well, thank you. It’s always inspiring to talk to you. You have an amazing, beautiful way with words, and it’s just great to talk to you and also fellow curly haired girl. It’s always fun.

[00:35:42] Anna Castro: Curly gang. Yes, of course.

[00:35:45] Dawn Crawford: Well, great. Well thank you for everybody. Who’s listening and have a great rest of your day.