Finding Passion: Make Every Day the Best Day

11/22/17 • 43 min

Have you ever wondered how people who motivate others stay motivated themselves? In this episode of Add Passion and Stir, two high-powered changemakers talk about what drives them as they inspire those around them. Dr. Clint Mitchell, Principal at Mount Vernon Woods Elementary School in Fairfax, VA works in a low-income community school. In a career that has unusually high turn-over (statistics say most teachers will quit after three to five years) Mitchell finds he has to hire teachers who are passionate about the work and willing to go the extra mile for underprivileged kids. “It’s my job to keep them positive,” he says. Relating it to passion in the cooks he hires, Zack Mills, chef at Wit & Wisdom in Baltimore, jokes, “It’s a slight craziness. You have to be slightly off to be that passionate.” Host Billy Shore asks his two guests how they themselves avoid burnout. Chef Mills considers himself lucky because he’s always had a passion for cooking and enjoys helping those who work for him achieve success. He uses the Japanese term Kaizen - trying to be better than the day before - to describe his philosophy for work and life. “We’re always learning. If we think we’re not learning anymore, then we’re in the wrong place,” he concludes. Dr. Mitchell echoes that sentiment. “I tell my teachers, ‘every single day we get a fresh start and the kids get a fresh start. So every single day, make that day the best day.’”

Both Mitchell and Mills are long-time supporters of the No Kid Hungry campaign. Mitchell is on the frontlines of the battle against childhood hunger in our schools; 91% of the kids in his district receive free or reduced meals. “When kids are hungry, they shut down. It becomes a behavior issue...but the root cause is hunger,” he points out. Mills recently participated in a No Kid Hungry impact trip in Northern Virginia. He says there is nothing like bearing witness to the kids in need and the work that is being done to help them. “Everybody was so passionate about making sure the children were fed. I wanted to get even more involved after that,” he says.

Get back to basics through this conversation about school hunger with two changemakers who not only share their own passion, but bring it out in others.

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Get back to basics through this conversation about school hunger with two changemakers who not only share their own passion, but bring it out in others.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Previous Episode

The Ripple Effect: Making a Difference in Someone’s Life

Have you ever wondered how helping another person can cause a ripple effect of positive impact? In this heartfelt episode of Add Passion and Stir, host Billy Shore and guests celebrity chef Curtis Stone and attorney and foster care advocate Miles Cooley discuss the far-reaching effects that occur when we act as an advocate for people in need. Cooley, who experienced profound neglect as a young child and lost his mother at age five, grew up in the foster care system in California. “The great part of my story, and why I think an advocate can make such a difference, is there was a school psychologist...who took an interest in me. Her name is Leslie Cooley and she is the woman I now call Mom.” Stone has seen an advocate make an impact in his own family. “It’s really unbelievable, isn’t it? ... It’s just that one decision a person makes to say ‘I’ll give a damn about this person and I’ll actually go out on a bit of limb,’” he says. He recounts the story of his own mother-in-law, a Korean War orphan who lived on the streets of Korea for five or six years following the war and then was adopted by an American family. “If it wasn’t for that family deciding to adopt this little girl from Korea, my wife wouldn’t exist, I wouldn’t have met her and my kids wouldn’t exist,” ponders Stone.

In addition to being a long-time Share Our Strength supporter, Stone - who owns two restaurants in Los Angeles (Maude and Gwen) - works with Chrysalis, an organization dedicated to creating a pathway to self-sufficiency for homeless and low-income individuals. For Stone, this provides an opportunity to impact individuals in need by mentoring. “We employed our first Chrysalis employee at the restaurant four years ago as a dishwasher. He’s now a supervisor, he looks after 15 employees,” says Stone. Recently, he shared the Chrysalis story with other leaders in the restaurant industry and says there are already six or seven who have begun working with them. For Cooley, paying it forward is part of his DNA. “Having come from a foster care experience...once I was in a position to think outside myself and had the wherewithal, it was a forgone conclusion that I was going to be invested and involved in trying to help kids who came up like I did,” he explains. He works with a number of organizations that advocate for foster kids including John Burton Advocates, Peace4Kids, and First Star.

Listen to this authentic and powerful conversation that will make you consider the far-reaching effects of advocating for someone less fortunate.

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Next Episode

Make It Personal: The Names and Stories Behind the Numbers

Do you think beyond the statistics to the individual lives affected by conflict, poverty, and hunger? In this episode of Add Passion and Stir, two powerful and passionate advocates, Abby Maxman, President of Oxfam America, and Tatiana Rosana, executive chef at Outlook Kitchen & Bar at the Envoy Hotel in Boston, discuss national and international humanitarian problems through the lens of personal stories of suffering, courage, and hope. Both women rose to the top of male-dominated professions and believe their work ethic was in part a response to having to work harder than male counterparts to gain the respect they deserve. This fierce determination informs the work they do helping others. Maxman, who has spent her career doing international development and aid work, recounts meeting a woman named Faith in South Sudan who walked an entire month with her four children after being displaced by conflict, all the while making decisions like which child gets to eat today. “It fuels a sense of urgency, passion and inspiration to do the work,” she says. Rosana found that growing up in an immigrant family from impoverished Cuba made her acutely aware of the issues of poverty and hunger. Feeling fortunate and helping others was ingrained in her from very young age, and as a chef she became a long-time supporter of the No Kid Hungry campaign. “I’m doing what I can with what I have to help. It takes nothing more than your time to invest in these children,” she says.

Host Billy Shore asks Maxman how Oxfam is able to tackle the overwhelming problems of conflict and poverty in areas where governments and the UN cannot. “We use our voice... we make sure that all of our polic[ies] and messages are grounded in the stories of Faith and many others,” she says. Staggering statistics alone — 65M refugees, 880M people going hungry every night – are not effective. “We’re talking about human beings,” she emphasizes. Clearly moved by the discussion, Rosana agrees “When we put names to the numbers, how can you not want to speak up, how can you not want to help? They’re not just numbers, they’re human beings that are going to bed hungry,” she pleads.

Listen to these two dynamic women talk about why getting personal helps fuel their drive to help those in need.

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