ABOUT
B-CHANGE
This podcast is for leaders and emerging leaders who care about social change and about how to make a greater difference in the world. The podcast explores strategies, tools and stories to help you strengthen your social change and nonprofit leadership skills. In particular, B-Change looks at how individuals can lead in ways that reflect their values such as democracy, inclusivity and transparency.
B-Change also explores positive psychology, which is about embracing people's strengths rather than focusing on weaknesses. It's based on the notion that people want to live meaningful lives and to be their best selves. When leaders approach their staff, volunteers and organization as a whole with positive psychology principles and tools — when they believe in the power of their people — it can have a transformative effect on the organization and its impact. Positive psychology also offers tools and techniques to help leaders persevere and renew themselves as they engage in physically and emotionally exhausting work.
ABOUT
THE HOSTS
Warren
Goldstein-Gelb
Marcy
Goldstein-Gelb
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Marcy Goldstein-Gelb has been a social justice organizer for thirty years. From 1999 to 2016, she served as executive director of the Massachusetts Coalition for Occupational Safety and Health (MassCOSH), and is currently co-executive director for National COSH. At the many nonprofits in which she worked or volunteered, Marcy has been inspired by leaders who brought out the best in their members and staff — and appalled by those who led by bullying. These experiences motivated her to delve deeply into effective leadership — both through conversations with leaders from a wide range of fields, and through the masters in community economic development at New Hampshire College. Marcy teaches leadership at the Harvard Trade Union Program at Harvard Law School, with a focus on practices for leading the nation’s unions in ways that reflect labor’s values.
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During her years at MassCOSH, Goldstein-Gelb helped establish the organization as a leading statewide voice for worker safety, leading campaigns to win new laws and regulations to ban hazardous workplace chemicals, win new protections for temporary workers, and improve safety standards for public employees.
Warren Goldstein-Gelb is a social justice activist and writer, who has worked in a wide range of nonprofits settings — the Boston environmental justice nonprofit Alternatives for Community and Environment, a collective progressive paper the Somerville Community News and currently at the Welcome Project, a local immigrant rights organization. In 1999, he earned his masters in Tufts Urban and Environmental Policy program. For his 50th birthday, in 2013, Warren was inspired to explore approaches to organizing in ways that brought out the humanity and strengths in all of those involved — from those organizing for change to those who were the “target” of the organizing. He pursued a certificate in positive psychology from the Whole Being Institute to develop those skills and tools. Drawing on the lessons from his nonprofit, Tufts and positive psychology experiences, Warren created B-Change, a podcast to integrate social justice and positive psychology. Two years later, Warren experienced a life-threatening stroke. To continue the podcast, Warren recruited his wife, Marcy, to co-host and co-create B-Change. The podcast launched publicly on June 16.