Spitfire Sparks

Has anything been more polarizing than the wearing of masks? Instead of a simple and effective public health tool, it is a political statement, a social badge, a point of solidarity or conflict. During the past year, I became interested in how the request (or requirement) to wear...

After more than a year of quarantine, fear and anxiety, people across the country are clamoring for the excitement brought by the parades, marches, parties and events celebrating LGBTQIA+ Pride Month in the post-vaccine era. While joy is important to Pride, celebrated every June...

I am often asked to run strategic communications planning sessions. Anyone who works with me knows I am disciplined about starting with strategy and not tactics. The author of and evangelist for the Smart Chart, I always design agendas to spend much more time on goals and...

Over the past year, advocates across the country have cried out for bold progressive change. Advocates working for gender equity, racial justice, fair wages, climate justice and voting rights swept the nation with a progressive agenda. Driven by dedicated community organizers...

Today is National Grilled Cheese Day, an annual celebration that honors one of the most popular sandwiches in the United States. Americans eat approximately 2.2 billion grilled cheeses per year. In 2012, one man set a new world record for eating 13 grilled cheese sandwiches in...

As we come to the close of Women’s History Month, we must acknowledge the pivotal elongated moment in women’s history we are currently living through: the unbelievable challenge working moms are collectively facing to keep our children and our country afloat. When the threat of...

You’ve seen it before. You’re scrolling through your Instagram feed and you see a celebrity you follow sharing a testimony about a product you’ve never heard of, or maybe they’re advocating for a cause that’s close to your heart. In recent years, influencers have risen as key...

“You should care about what Facebook is doing, regardless of whether you're on the platform or not,” Brandi Collins-Dexter, Visiting Fellow at the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, told me on the newest episode of Spitfire’s tech and society podcast, Keep...

2020 was a year marked by language like, “in these challenging times,” and “unprecedented.” Now that we find ourselves living through the start of 2021…well, we are still using this same vernacular. The acts of violence, injustice and consistent threats to our humanity we saw...

From the pandemic, to racial justice movements, to massive changes in local races, the presidency and the Supreme Court, 2020 was a year of devastation, but one that reminded us of all the weak structures in our country that need bold changes. Social justice leaders continued...

2020 is officially (and thankfully) behind us, but the work that last year left us remains. Beyond the persistent uncertainty of COVID-19 and the shift towards action to address systemic racism, as we began the new year, we still had two items left in the 2020 electoral season...

In acts of violent domestic terrorism, white supremacists gathered in our nation’s capital, and a mob of extremists illegally entered the U.S. Capitol in a continued attempt – led by Donald J. Trump – to change the results of the presidential election and disrupt the peaceful...