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Lisa Franzetta is longtime animal activist, a rescuer of cats, and a ruthless grammarian. She is director of communications at the Animal Legal Defense Fund, which is dedicated to protecting the lives and advancing the interests of animals through the legal system. Prior to that, Lisa coordinated the international fur and leather campaigns at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, and she is proud to have been arrested while protesting animal abuse on three continents. Lisa is a graduate of Brown University, where she received a degree in biology without dissecting a single animal. Camera & Interview by Gail Evenari Editing by Neco Turkienicz 

Phyllis Curott had graduated from Brown University and was studying law at NYU when her call came from a source long forgotten and utterly unexpected the Goddess. Her first memoir, Book of Shadows, recounts the story of her discovery of the modern revivals of the nearly destroyed indigenous traditions of old Europe and her training to become a Wiccan Priestess. Jane Magazine honored Curott as One of the Ten Gutsiest Women of the Year for her work as one of the first public advocates in the courts and the media for this once hidden and now rapidly growing spiritual movement, and New York Magazine described her as one of the cultures most intellectually cuttingedge thinkers. She founded the  Temple of Ara and is the first Wiccan Trustee of the  Council for a Parliament of the Worlds Religions, the worlds oldest and largest interfaith organization. Camera & Interview by Rose Rosenblatt Editing by Matt Lauterbach Produced by Rose Rosenblatt

Rebecca Neigher is a full time studio artist who focuses primarily on jewelry arts. As she says, The majority of my adult life has been spent in two cities Manhattan and Los Angeles. These cities are a visual smorgasbord and often ones energy is directed outward, not wanting to miss anything. In 1996 I moved to North Carolina. I live and work in the woods overlooking forest and meadow. Now my energy is directed inward first and flows through me into the physical, mental, and spiritual acts of making. Rebecca, who was previously an actress, is part of the Orange County Artists Guild.  Camera & Interview by Ian Kibbe Editing by Ian Kibbe & Matt Lauterbach Produced by Ian Kibbe

Tom Dawkins is a social entrepreneur, activist, organizer, burner, and dreamer. Hes the Manager of Communications and Emerging Media at HopeLab and is the cofounder of the social good crowdfunding platform, StartSomeGood.com. Tom previously founded Vibewire, an Australian nonprofit media organization and was also the first Social Media Director at Ashoka. He is also the Mayor of Black Rock City Farmers Market. He loves community, technology, music, street art, and being outdoors. 

Donn Teske is a farmer in Kansas. His story is profiled in Whats The Matter With Kansas? , a film by Laura Cohen & Joe Winston. In his Whats Your Calling? interview, Donn, who was born in Kansas in a town of 97 people, talks about family, legacy, home and his decision to take over the family farm instead of going to college.  Interview & Camera by Joe Winston Editing by Matt Lauterbach Produced by Joe Winston

Amaka Unaka, originally from Southern California, is a School Administrator at the KIPP Ascend Charter School in Chicago, Illinois.  In her Whats Your Calling? interview, Amaka talks about building up a sense of selfworth with the young people she works with so that they head to college and believe in themselves and their aspirations. KIPP is a national network of free, openenrollment, collegepreparatory public schools with a track record of preparing students in underserved communities for success in college and in life. Among many other things, Amaka enforces KIPPs school behavior expectations, coordinates social and emotional services for students, collaborates with teachers regarding classroom management, and creates partnerships with community organizations. Interview by Rachel Pikelny Camera by Rachel Pikelny & Ian Kibbe Editing by Matt Lauterbach Produced by Rachel Pikelny Extra Thanks to Adam Davis of the Project on Civic Reflection

Ethan Austin is the CoFounder of GiveForward.com. He is passionate about helping people battling cancer and volunteers for ImermanAngels.org, a oneonone cancersupport organization. He is also disturbingly passionate about burritos and currently holds the title of GiveForward intraoffice burrito eating champion. In his free time Ethan can typically be found scouring the aisles of Trader Joe’s for something deliciously microwavable or training for marathons in his banana costume to raise money for cancer awareness.

Britt Bravo is a blogger, podcaster, and social media coach who believes using social media should be fun. Shes also a creative career consultant who loves to help people find and express their calling. She loves to collage, bake cupcakes, write letters, interview big visionaries, and bring groups of people together.  You can learn more about her at www.brittbravo.com, and on her blog, her podcast, Twitter, and Facebook.

Hildy Gottlieb is the cofounder of Creating the Future. Her book, The Pollyanna Principles: Reinventing Nonprofit Organizations to Create the Future of Our World, details her  approach to aiming the work of the Community Benefit Sector at its highest potential creating the future of our world. A prolific writer and advocate for the sector’s potential and a consultant to community organizations since 1993, Hildy helped develop the current Masters degree program in Community Leadership at Duquesne University, where she and her partner, Dimitri Petropolis, have taught as professors. Her previous work includes developing the Family Home Gardening Project at Pio Decimo Center in Tucson, to ensure low income family had fresh produce by teaching them to grow that produce themselves, and, along with Dimitri, founding the first diaper bank in the U.S. Hildys numerous awards include a Points of Light Citation from President Bill Clinton, and her writing has been seen in publications including the Chronicle of Philanthropy, where she currently hosts the monthly podcast, Making Change interviewing change leaders from around the world.

Dan Morrison was a strategic consultant working on Middle East policy and economic development issues before he met Reema Nanavaty of the Self Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) and took a trip to India in December 2006 that forever changed the direction of his life. Over the next couple of years, Dan created Citizen Effect, a nonprofit organization that provides citizen philanthropists with the tools and networks to execute community development projects around the world. Citizen Effect is now working in six countries around the world and empowering people all over the United States to partner with communities in need.

Beth Kanter is the author of Beth’s Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media, one of the longest running and most popular blogs for nonprofits.  She coauthored the book titled The Networked Nonprofit with Allison Fine, published by J Wiley in 2010, which received Honorable Mention for the Terry McAdams Award.  Beth has over 30 years working in the nonprofit sector in technology, training, capacity building, evaluation, fundraising, and marketing. Beth is a cofounder and partner of Zoetica, a company that serves nonprofits and socially conscious companies with toptier, online marketing services. 

Cathryn Wellner began her professional career as a French teacher and school librarian, in Idaho, Washington, and New York. Then she traveled ten years as a storyteller, mostly in the U.S. but also in Europe, the UK, and Canada. By that time she had followed her heart to Canada, where she spent thirteen years as an organic farmer, smallscale rancher, and, when she realized community organizing was really about stories, a community developer. After serving as the first Project Coordinator for HEAL (Healthy Eating and Active Living in Northern British Columbia), she moved to Oakland, California to be Storytelling Director for Stagebridge (America’s oldest senior theatre troupe). She returned to BC to take on the post of Food & Health Manager for Interior Health. Now she lives in the beautiful Okanagan Valley and focuses full time on her writing, mostly for three blogs: Catching Courage, Story Route, and Crossroads.

Joshua Stanton is a Founding EditorinChief of the Journal of InterReligious Dialogue, CoFounder of Religious Freedom USA, and a Schusterman Rabbinical Fellow at Hebrew Union College Jewish Institute of Religion. He is also a founding coDirector of Lessons of a Lifetime, a nursing homebased project designed to improve intergenerational relations. Joshua is a blogger for the Huffington Post and serves on the Board of Directors of World Faith as well as the Education as Transformation project. He was most recently made a Religious Leadership Fellow at the Council for a Parliament of the Worlds Religions.

Ruth Messinger is president of American Jewish World Service, an organization that works to alleviate poverty, hunger and disease in the developing world through grassroots socialchange grantmaking, public policy advocacy, volunteer service and education about global justice within the Jewish community. Ms. Messinger assumed this role in 1998 following a 20year career in public service in New York City. She was among leading antigenocide, peace and human rights advocates called upon to advise President Obama in 2009, and subsequently served on the Obama administrations Task Force on Global Poverty and Development. Ms. Messinger is a national leader in the movement to end the genocide in Sudan, and is involved in organizing faithbased efforts to secure human rights around the world. Ms. Messinger has received honorary degrees and awards from four major American rabbinical schools and awards from the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, the Womens Funding Network and the American Jewish Committee. She is an active member of her congregation, the Society for the Advancement of Judaism. For eight years, she was named among the Forwards 50 most influential Jews of the year.

Patience Salgado is a kindness worker, writer and birth photographer living in Richmond, Virginia with her dear friend and partner Jorge, and their 4 kids. When she isn’t out doing a Guerrilla Goodness mission with her crew, she can be found in a state of dreamy chaos always catching up on dishes, trying not to over think almost everything and learning how kindness is truly a way of life.

Ehon Chan is a researcher, thinker, teacher and change agent living in the Brisbane area in Australia. Ehon provides consultation on digital engagement, social media & new media, volunteer engagement & management, social entrepreneurship, and innovation and youth engagement strategies.  Ehon recently started a campaign titled, Soften the Fck Up, exploring and challenging the way Australian men perceive of their own masculinity.  You can learn more about Ehon and his many projects at his website, ehonchan.com. (Brisbane, Australia)

When he was 18 years old, Eddie Bocanegra went to jail for the murder of another man in a gangrelated shooting. Now, seventeen years later, Eddie is using the experiences from his past to stop gang violence by working with CeaseFire, a Chicago violence prevention program. Eddie is one of CeaseFires Violence Interrupters, men and women with ties to Chicagos gangs, who leverage their knowledge of the city to diffuse tensions and, hopefully, maintain peace by meeting with individuals, negotiating truces, and discouraging retaliation when conflicts erupt. (Chicago, Illinois) Whats Your Calling? camera & Interview by Rachel Pikelny Editing by Matt Lauterbach Produced by Rachel Pikelny Eddies story and others can be seen in The Interrupters. From producerdirector Steve James and authorturnedproducer Alex Kotlowitz, The Interrupters tells the moving and surprising story of three “violence interrupters” in Chicago who with bravado, humility and even humor try to protect their communities from the violence they once employed. Stills courtesy of CeaseFire and  The Interrupters,  a new documentary from Kartemquin Films . Watch the trailer for The Interrupters, see where the film is screening, and learn more here. 

Joshua Stanton is a Founding EditorinChief of the Journal of InterReligious Dialogue, CoFounder of Religious Freedom USA, and a Schusterman Rabbinical Fellow at Hebrew Union College Jewish Institute of Religion. He is also a founding coDirector of Lessons of a Lifetime, a nursing homebased project designed to improve intergenerational relations. Joshua is a blogger for the Huffington Post and serves on the Board of Directors of World Faith as well as the Education as Transformation project. He was most recently made a Religious Leadership Fellow at the Council for a Parliament of the Worlds Religions. (New York, New York) Interview & Camera by Danny Alpert Editing by Neco Turkienicz Produced by Erin Williams

Baritone saxophonist Marvin “Doc” Holladay has been creating music for over half a century. His approach to jazz has been called “at once natural and spiritual” his music described as “sophisticated, uncluttered, unencumbered music that is truly created, not forcibly produced.” In 2005, Marvin and his wife, Diane, moved to Quito, Ecuador, finding it to be an ideal location to “retire. His work, nonetheless, has not stopped. He is not only giving jazz lessons to young and adult musicians, he is actively performing with his quartet and seeking to share the music he loves and thereby to leave as a legacy, the true expression of the genre. His current goal is to create an organization in Ecuador where jazz is taught and treasured in its purest of forms, as a music meant to elevate the spirit. Interview by Jennifer Brandel Camera by Shane Lamberth Editing by Craig Rothman Produced by Jennifer Brandel 

Amy Carol Wolff is a nonprofit marketing professional and blogger who, through her world travels and experience, has found that this life is completely about loving others well and being committed to lifting others up.