Building Attachment Through Trust in an Unattached World
with Next Gen Leader Zoë Jenkins
Is trust the foundation of the future?
In this episode of How We Future, Lisa Kay Solomon sits down with Zoë Jenkins, Director of Civic Trust and Recruitment at Civics Unplugged, to talk about how the next generation is reimagining democracy from the ground up.
Zoë’s journey started early—she joined Civics Unplugged as a high school fellow, went on to write her own job description fresh out of college, and now leads programs helping young people build community through civic trust, a term you’ll learn all about in this episode.
Zoë and Lisa cover:
Why democracy depends on trusting your neighbors, not just voting with them
How young people are turning frustration into innovation
The difference between attachment and affection, and why it matters
How flattening hierarchies and “breaking the model” unlocks leadership at every age
This episode is a call to action for anyone who wants to strengthen the bonds that hold our communities—and our futures—together. Zoë reminds us that democracy isn’t just a system. It’s a daily practice of showing up, listening, and believing in one another.
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Lisa Kay Solomon: I'm Lisa Kay Solomon, and this is How We Future, where I talk to some of my favorite changemakers about shaping tomorrow starting today.
Today, I'm so thrilled to welcome Zoë Jenkins to How We Future. Zoë is the director of civic trust and recruitment at Civics Unplugged, an innovative organization empowering young people to design the democracy they want to be a part of. What's remarkable about Zoë is that she's been leading this work since she was a teenager. From joining the Kentucky Student Voice Team in middle school to delivering two TEDx talks before finishing college, Zoë built her career on one core idea, that trust is the foundation for every thriving community.
In our conversation, Zoë talks about writing her own job description straight out of college, why we need to move from affection to attachment when it comes to democracy, and how small, local acts of connection can ripple outward into real change. It's a conversation about courage, empathy, and the everyday ways young people are already shaping what's next. Let's jump in.
Zoë Jenkins, welcome to How We Future. I am so excited to have you on today because we are going to do some time travel today, Zoë. We are going to start with the present, we're going to go back to the past, and then catapult to the future. No better person to do that with, particularly when talking about civic futures, than you. Thank you so much for being here.
Zoë Jenkins: Oh, thank you for having me. I'm so excited.
Lisa: Zoë, I want to start with this incredible position that you have with this unbelievably inspiring organization called Civics Unplugged that we met at over five years ago. Currently, you are the director of civic trust and recruitment for Civics Unplugged. Can you tell us a little bit about Civics Unplugged and also how this unique position came to be?
Zoë: Yes. Civics Unplugged, we've been around for, I guess, coming on six years now. Our mission is to cultivate the next generation of civic innovators. I got my start in the program, actually doing the fellowship back when I was a junior in high school where I got this incredible experience to develop as a leader in my understanding of democracy, what is civics, and how can young people build the future that they want to live in and deserve to live in. I did that program back when I was in high school.
I don't know, I just stayed in the orbit of Civics Unplugged. When I first applied to join the program, I thought I was going to learn how to register people to vote and very quickly learned that civics is so much bigger than that. That was just an aha moment for me, especially during the pandemic when it felt like everything civic was falling apart. Stayed connected with CU. Then as I was going into my last year of college, I was like, "Oh, I need a job." [chuckles].
I think I had the most fortunate situation possible if I was talking to Josh, who's been a mentor of mine since I started the program. I was telling him my dream and my vision of, "Look, I think the problem with civics right now is trust. People do not believe in the good intentions of their fellow citizens. We don't trust institutions. It's like young people cannot build a democracy they want to build if we can't even be in the same room with other people." I was like, "This has been my dream, I want to do this," but I was like, "I just don't even know how to make that happen."
Josh, I think believing in young people in the way he was, he said, "Look, if you want to do it, you can do it here. Write the job description, make it happen." That's how the Director of Civic Trust and Recruitment title came together. I began to do my dream job for the last almost six months, which is a real blessing to get to do alongside the great team at Civics Unplugged.
Lisa: I think that story really captures everything I've experienced about you, Zoë, which is just so much passion for the future, passion for other humans, belief that just because it doesn't exist yet doesn't mean that it can't or shouldn't, and how do we go for it, and also the trust that you build along the way. I've gotten to meet a number of people that have worked with you over the years, and I've had that pleasure of working with you over the years. There's just such a desire to invest in you and believe in you.
I've seen you build the trust with others that say, "Yes, it doesn't exist yet, but why not? Of course, let's go for it." I love that you invented your own job coming out of college, which I think some people don't think they get to do until they're much, much older. That alone, I think, is super inspiring.
Zoë: That's exactly what I thought when Josh was like, "You can build your own job." I was like, "You're funny." I was like, "I'm 21. Who gets to write their own job description?" It's a real gift to get to build alongside an intergenerational team of other young people who are also getting to do their dream jobs. I think this is the way work should feel for everybody. I just feel very lucky.
Lisa: I also think that given the state that we're in right now around our civic discourse and our societies, I feel like every organization and community needs a director of civic trust. That would be a step in the right direction. I wonder if you could share a little bit about some of the stuff that you do day to day. What is the goal of the director of civic trust?
Zoë: I should back up and talk about where civic trust even came from for me. When I was at the University of Virginia working in my last year of college on my senior thesis, I decided to write about civic trust, which basically is how much should we believe in the good intentions and potential of our fellow citizens? Because democracies are inherently fragile. It's a very difficult thing that we do to go to the ballot box and hope that no matter what the outcome is, other people will look out for us.
That requires a really high level of trust. That's just hard. That's not like a deficiency in our society. It's just that that level of trust is hard to achieve. I was writing my thesis, and I was thinking about all these things like, "How do we just get people in communities together where they start to believe other people are worth working with and worth sharing this democracy with, and that no matter what happens, we can work together and imagine a better future together, and that it's worth imagining that future with other people included, not just your small group of people who are just like you."
What does that look like for my job? The recruitment piece is the obvious part of we want incredibly talented, civically minded kids to join our fellowship. How do we reach those kids who maybe don't think that civics is for them or don't think that they're a civic leader, but in fact they are? How do we help convert those kids into civic innovators, because they have all the tools? They just might not see the ingredients coming together.
Then the civic trust piece is helping kids build that in-person, local community that is so necessary for democracies to flourish, because you can talk about national politics all day, but the building blocks of democracy are, does your neighborhood come together for an annual potluck? Do your kids carpool together? Do you talk to the other people on your school bus? Do you play in the park with other people? Just how do you build that level of community that then can be supercharged into civic innovation when the time is right?
Lisa: I love that focusing on the local, the hyper-local. We're going to talk a little bit about your orientation from your roots of working in Kentucky and really being an advocate of that, even before high school. I have been so impressed by Civics Unplugged. I wonder if we could just take a moment to talk about the organization in and of itself. You mentioned it was started six years ago. I learned about it during the pandemic. One thing that struck me about it was how it talked about the future and how it talked about the role that young people had in the future.
Then, alongside that, the business model it had in thinking about the future around literally investing in young people. It struck me from the very beginning that this was not adults telling young people, "Eat your beets and get involved in civics and go vote." It was something totally different. I wonder if you could just share a little bit about the roots of Civics Unplugged and some of the things that make it so unique.
Zoë: I think, Lisa, you just captured all of it. I think what I really admire about Civics Unplugged is that we really walk the walk in terms of we want young people to build the future, so young people are going to build the future. I think that's been reflected in, back in the early days when I was in the fellowship, having a steering committee of young people, so high school students deciding which of their fellows were going to get funding for projects. I was with a group of four other kids, and we were deciding, "Okay, we have a $10,000 budget. Which youth civic projects are going to get funded, and why are we picking these projects over other projects?"
The invitation to have direct feedback on lessons and direct contact with the team. I think something I've always really enjoyed about our learning model at CU is just how deeply flat the hierarchical structure is. I was 16 and able to message the chief program officer on Slack and say, "Hey, I have questions about this, that, and the other." At any other learning institution, that's completely unheard of. You have to go through all of these levels of bureaucracy.
I think at CU, because we flatten everything and you're supposed to connect with adults directly and there's no waiting your turn to make change, we were inviting you to do that right now. That was just my early experience, which felt different from school, felt different from any other learning experience I had had. To your point about investment, I think that's something else I've always really appreciated is that there are often so many barriers for young people to get funding.
There's all this, "Oh, where are your parents? Is someone 18? Do you have an official nonprofit?" At CU, we don't let those barriers stop us from doing anything. It's like, "Okay, you don't have a nonprofit, we'll fiscally sponsor you. We'll find someone to fiscally sponsor you. You're not 18? Okay, let's find a different way to get you this money or help you support this project, or, oh, you just have an idea but you don't know where to start. We'll find people who can help and support and join your team."
I think that just speaks to this go, go, go. We're building something here, and we're not going to let the traditional confines of what are young people supposed to do or what is civics supposed to look like keep us from empowering young people to build the democracy they want to see.
Lisa: So inspiring. Time and time again, I would see Civics Unplugged breaking the model and moving beyond, again, as you just said, the constructs that we're used to. I think the civic infrastructure might call that active learning or have an academic name for it. To me, it was just entrepreneurship on steroids. It was like, "We are just going to back the values that we say that we care about unapologetically. If there was some sort of disconnect between what we said and what we do, then let's break that and let's examine that." It struck me that from the beginning, it was really about honoring core principles that you relied on and then giving leeway to the high school students to figure it out.
That was such a powerful model of engagement, authentically and holistically. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about what that was like in practice, particularly during the pandemic, where that was where a lot of the early action happened, and you were doing a lot of it virtually, and what you've even noticed since then, from that early exposure to a very different way of engagement. What have you noticed with some of your alumni from those early times?
Zoë: I think to speak to core values, we have these four Cs that we like to call them at CU of commitment, collaboration, curiosity, and community. I think something I've always really admired about Civics Unplugged, especially with that commitment aspect, is if a kid shows interest, we're going to just let them do it. There's not this false sense of like, "Oh, you need to have a 30 on your ACT and you need to be in X, Y, and Z clubs." It's if you're showing up and you show interest, we will reward that with leadership opportunities and chances to drive things, which is the way that this work should work.
I think that was really modeled perfectly in all the work that we did during the pandemic with our Commence 2030 campaign to help fund youth civic projects is that the young people who-- When the pandemic happened during this digital fellowship and we were supposed to be going to Georgetown that summer, and then obviously that wasn't going to happen, the group of kids who all came together and said, "Hey, I know we're not doing this Georgetown thing, but can we still do something? We should still get together, celebrate what we accomplished. The world needs us more now than ever," those were the kids who then got to drive the ship on, "Okay, how do we get celebrities like The Rock and Andrew Yang to come and be in the event?"
Lisa: It was amazing.
Zoë: "Who are our dream speakers we can get to come and engage?" We had young people MCing the event, deciding where the money was going. That wasn't the kids who were going to go off to the Ivy League colleges or had certain AP scores. Those were the kids who just were showing up, who said, "Hey, I want to be involved. Here are my talents. How can I engage?" I think that really is emblematic of just how we operate. You can, I think, see it even now with our alums of just that level of agency of, "We don't have--"
Something I think I'm really proud of a lot of our alums, is they're not afraid to ask some of the questions that need to be asked about why things are working this way. To put on my Kentucky Student Voice Team hat from my education work, we talk a lot about learned helplessness. We teach students for 13 years that you have to ask for literally everything. You have to ask to go to the bathroom. You have to ask to speak. You have to ask to disagree with the teacher. You're not allowed to do those things.
At Civics Unplugged, we're trying to break that. I love watching our kids challenge us. We gather all of our kids in the summer for our Civic Innovation Academies. You'll have city council members, sitting Congress people, and these kids are asking the most direct, hard-hitting questions that if you ask that in the school setting, you'd be told to hush, or that was disrespectful. I'm really proud of just how much agency they feel like they have of, "No, I have a question," or "I want to do this, and I'm going to make this happen." We just open up and make the space for them to do that.
Lisa: It's so inspiring to hear. I know I've personally benefited from just that vibrancy. Literally, our young people are our future. There's a lot that's unknown about the future, but one thing we know for sure is that young people will not stay young people. We all get older. That's just a fact of life. The investment that CU and you are making in allowing our next-gen leaders to practice the skills that they need to practice from those foundational ages is just so critical.
Also, to your point earlier about modeling a very different structure or scaffold than they were used to. Really appreciate you bringing up that work of learned helplessness. I think that comes from Martin Seligman over at University of Pennsylvania. He's one of the big thought leaders behind newer movements in psychology, positive psychology, and even this idea of prospection, this idea that we can, as humans, imagine new futures. That's something that's really unique to our species, that's allowed us to come together and build new narratives.
I think this idea of just giving the experience to see what it's like to be rewarded for your instinct, for showing up, for building bridges, something that might not ever show up, as you said, in a standardized test or in the way that some people call it a used future, a future of the past, might reward. Really exciting to see that now there's thousands of alumni that are out there that have had practice modeling a totally new way of showing up. It's super exciting.
You mentioned it briefly, but I'd love for you to share a little bit more about where you started doing this work with your growing up in the Kentucky Student Voice Team. I think all the way back in eighth grade, Zoë, you were finding yourself seeking a place for your voice. Tell us about that experience.
Zoë: Oh, my goodness. I grew up in Kentucky. I'll have to fastback a little bit to maybe, honestly, my elementary school days to even explain how I ended up in the Kentucky Student Voice Team. I think so much of my story is just luck. I just happened to be in the right places at the right time. My parents enrolled me at an elementary school that was a Leader in Me school. Those are schools that are based around Stephen Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective Kids.
My principal, Joel Cottey, who is still an educator in Kentucky, had this saying that if a kid can do it, a kid should do it. I was in third grade, fourth grade, running to make copies for the teacher, or someone else would be the line leader, or someone else was helping design activities for the day. That was the almost very highly agentic environment that I got to grow up in, my last two years of elementary school, when I moved to Kentucky. Then I moved into a middle school that was the exact opposite environment.
This is a middle school that was in one of the lowest-income neighborhoods in my school district. The way that they managed the school is that you had the school of the kids who were districted there, and then they would bus in the gifted kids from the other side of town. Even though I looked like the kids who were in that school, I was not taking any classes with them. I was in the gifted program. I didn't interact with that, which I think gave me this very weird sense of I both did not belong in the classes I was in, but I also didn't belong with the student body.
I was just having a really difficult time in middle school, as I think middle schoolers do. I think I was trying to grapple with these questions of, "Why am I getting these better educational experiences, but also these people in my classes don't think I deserve to be here and are asking why I'm here, or assume that I'm not the right fit because of my background." Then Kentucky Student Voice Team actually came and did a workshop about school climate.
This is a group of other middle and high school students talking about, "What are the vibes of your school, and how does school climate affect academic performance?" It was just the light bulb moment of, "This is what's wrong with my middle school. The problem here is school climate." I'm like, there are kids who are districted to this school who feel like they're being underinvested in and not being cared about, and that is reflected in how they perform academically. It's not because they're not capable, but they're watching kids being bussed from the other side of town get more resources, get more love poured into them, and not getting that same love poured into themselves."
And so I saw these students, and I was like, "Hey, look, this is awesome. I should try to get involved." I went to my first monthly general meeting, maybe two or three months after that, and have been involved with Kentucky Student Voice Team ever since. It just was this incredible watershed moment. I think the moment for me that really unlocked it was my first time doing a workshop with them. I was like an apprentice. High school students were leading the workshop, but I was just there to watch them do the presentation.
We were leaving this high school classroom, and one of the kids pulled me aside and was like, "Hey, what high school are you going to?" I was like, "Oh, I'm actually not going to this high school. I'm districted for different high schools. I'm going to be going to the one on the other side of town." He said, "I'm so grateful." Because he was like, "You seem so talented. If you came here, I don't think you would amount to anything."
Lisa: Wow.
Zoë: For a 16-year-old to have that level of awareness of "I do not have opportunities because I went to this school and I want you to go somewhere else," I think for me is the constant motivation in this work of how do we help young people feel like they do have control over what their future looks like, and that you have a say, and that you have potential, and that potential will be nourished, no matter what your socioeconomic background is? That's the work that fueled me in everything I do at the Kentucky Student Voice Team, especially our storytelling work, which I helped to lead a lot in high school.
Lisa: Oh my gosh, Zoë. Thank you so much for sharing that. Wow, so many vivid moments. First of all, I want to go back and meet your elementary principal and thank him for that philosophy, which I don't think a lot of elementary principals in particular share. What's interesting, you're making me realize I have memories from elementary school, but I can't tell you maybe three things from the last 10 years, except for, of course, our work together. The point is the imprint that that can have.
I did not even realize that there were elementary schools that were based on Stephen Covey's Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. My mother was a chief learning officer and would give me those kinds of books very early on, too. I think we share that of having proponents. I know you've talked in the past about what a support your family has been in allowing you to explore these opportunities. That story reminds me of my motivation for doing this podcast and why I think design and futures work should be made more available to more people.
One of the core models of Stephen Covey is those three levels of where you can have influence, this smaller circle of control, which I think the way you were describing a lot of our systems focus on, like what can you control and not control, and learning that there's too much out of your control, why even bother. That second circle around circle of influence, like where might you be able to make a choice that might have larger influence, and that larger one of concern, which is things that are happening around us, but we can't really influence.
We end up spending a lot of our energy and concern, particularly in these challenging times like these, and it robs us of our agency to think systematically about where we can control or where we can influence. One of the things that I'm really passionate about is using principles, practices of design and futures and stories like yours and learning from people like you and alumni at CU to expand, to have outsized impact, to learn actually when you look beyond the things that you're told you could control to explore what you can influence, you can actually have a more positive impact on the things that are of concern, like some of those broader issues you're talking about around how do we make education more accessible? How do we flatten the opportunities for more people?
You're just a living embodiment of that. I guess I'm grateful to know more of that backstory about the differences of what you experienced in elementary school, that middle school experience that then led to these opportunities that you say you're lucky for, Zoë, but I think that you created some of that luck.
Zoë: Oh, I appreciate that. That's what other people tell me, too, every time I say that.
Lisa: I want to talk about that because what you have experienced and what you've had the opportunity to do is just truly extraordinary. We've talked a little bit about your CU work, but you did a TEDx talk, I think, while you were still in high school. That's an extraordinary opportunity to, again, use your influence to have outsized impact. Can you talk a little bit about that experience?
Zoë: I actually had the chance to do two TEDx talks while I was in high school.
Lisa: Amazing. We will put links to those, of course, in the show notes.
Zoë: Yes. The first one came through Kentucky Student Voice Team connections, and that was a chance, I think, just for me to talk about my story of coming into my own sense of agency, which I think, Lisa what you were saying earlier of like I'm very fortunate to come from a family where my parents definitely had the mindset of, "Oh, you're worried about blank? You should do something about that. Oh, you think someone else should do this? Why don't you do it?"
I think they heavily pushed me of, "You have to build the world that you want to see, and it's better to die trying than to not have tried at all." I think that message was a lot of what came out in the first TED talk. The second one, which was in the peak of COVID, I think, was really what actually was the starting point of the civic trust train. I think that's where I started to think more critically about empathy, and it's like, is that a basis of a lot of where we are right now? It's just not being able to get into other people's shoes, understand why people are the way they are, or at least just take the time to slow down and try to appreciate that my reality isn't your reality, and that's okay.
That's just part of the complexity of the human experience. Our lives are going to be different, and accepting that humility in that. That was actually a random, out-of-the-blue email that I got that I think was related to my work with the Kentucky Student Voice Team and with Civics Unplugged. It was just a great opportunity to talk more about I think the great work that young people are doing to push us forward in terms of our lives are not the only lives that matter, and so how do we open up our sphere of understanding to think about how do we imagine futures, to use your language, with other people in mind?
It's not just me and my life and my career, it's our life, our community, and our shared future together.
Lisa: That stance that you have around welcoming others, trying to be curious about others, inviting others to build with you is something that I think is so critical in a time where it feels like we have forces that are trying to split us apart and trying to make us smaller and trying to siphon off, whether it's our attention or what we feel like we're capable of. It's so impressive, Zoë, and it's so inspiring.
I feel like every time I see something that you're posting on LinkedIn, it's like a new alliance, a new opportunity, a new connection. I wonder if you could share a little bit more about what fuels that and also maybe any advice because I really don't think that as many of our next-gen leaders have that collaborative abundant stance, not because they're not capable of it, but because they've grown up in digital media that has reduced their input to transactional moments of likes so I wonder if you could just talk about how you think about building alliances and connections and bridges, and maybe advice that you might have for anyone that just hasn't been exposed to that way of shaping better futures.
Zoë: I think there are two threads for me to pull on there, one about curiosity and then one about the “high tide raises all boats” abundance. The curiosity piece is probably the easiest one to answer. I just have always been a kid to ask a lot of questions, which my parents would get very annoyed with sometimes, thank goodness for Google, but I wanted to be a scientist when I was a kid. I wanted to be a doctor. I wanted to be a biomedical engineer.
I think that's where that just natural, "Oh, let's ask questions and experiment and try things," that aptitude came from. Luckily, I had a mentor through Kentucky Student Voice Team, Rachel Bellen, who kindly redirected me away from engineering and said, "Hey, I think there are some other things that you're really good at that you really like to do that are not biomedical engineering." You could thank her that I'm even in the space that I'm in.
I think that abundance piece, though, I have to credit that with my grandparents, honestly. My mom's parents, they were part of the Great Migration, so fled the South in the 1960s to try to start a better life for themselves and their family. They started a trash business right outside of DC that went on for 50 years, that my grandma was only able to get the loan for because she was a vet. Because she had served in Vietnam, you can't discriminate against veterans. She was able to get a loan at a time when a lot of Black people weren't able to do that.
They, I think, just embodied generosity. They are the first in their family to reach the middle class. My grandparents spent so much of their time and their money paying for other kids in the neighborhood to go to college, paying for other people's scholarships, helping to put together sports teams. I think they just had this level of selflessness of you put out in the world what you hope to get back. I think that was something that they instilled in both my parents and then also me and my cousins, is if you have things, you should be giving them away. You should not be hoarding those things.
Those aren't things that you can take with you into an afterlife. Those are things best spent supporting other people. I have that background. I don't want to call myself a public persona, but I think coming into COVID, I was starting to have more interactions with people, invited to do more and more things. I found myself growing frustrated with, I think exactly this is what you said, this transactionalness that exists of, "I'm only going to do this speaking opportunity if I get paid X amount," or "I'm doing this work so that I can post it on social media."
I don't know who said this to me, but someone made a remark of there's a spectrum of posting things on social media, getting invited to speak places, and doing the work. Where you fall on that spectrum is your choice. I think I knew, for me, it was more important to be doing the work. Obviously, you have to speak about what you do. That's how you get support for the great work that we do. I didn't want to be remembered as somebody who seemed really cool online, but then when you meet them in person, they're actually really stingy or don't have a lot of ideas or aren't willing to talk to people.
I think I just had to make that commitment to myself early on, especially for young people, that if a young person reaches out to me and has questions, I will answer because there are so many people where you can blind email them and they just won't ever respond to you. I try to uphold that. I know that a younger version of myself would have needed that. I try to model that, let's give as much as we can to other people with the hopes that it'll come back to you because eventually it will.
It may not be a tit for tat, but that's, I think, how we build better futures is high tide raises all boats. If I'm helping you, it helps me too, so let's just help each other and be transparent and giving in that way.
Lisa: It's so beautiful on so many levels, and I love that you brought in the story of your grandparents and what you saw there and how they modeled generosity as a strategic lever for better. I just think that generosity is a renewable resource that starts with our mindset of how we show up. In telling that story, just your own outlook, you're reminding me of an early conversation that we had on How We Future with leadership coach Rae Ringel, who talks about the importance for leaders to marry the audio and the video, and that if you say that you care about these things, then you've got to show up and care for those things. You have to be authentic.
The way that you make choices is reflective of your values, and people see that, and they show up. Again, I'll say I think it's a huge contributor to why these wonderful opportunities are coming your way. Yes, serendipity, luck, but also you're evoking it because it's how you're showing up in the universe. I'm having a memory, Zoë, you can correct me. This was, again, deep pandemic where we would have those Zooms that would flow one Zoom into another.
I'm having a memory of finishing up a Zoom with another guest on this show, Ahmed Best, who is a celebrated actor, an Afrofuturist, and just, wow, abundant future maker. Then you and I had a meeting right after, and then you showed up, and I was like, "Wait, Ahmed, stay here. You have to meet Zoë." This beautiful exchange happened. I know my memory's a little fuzzy for those times, but didn't that end up in you MCing a Nobel Peace Prize gathering? Just remind me of what happened then.
Zoë: Yes. That is one of my favorite, I think, serendipitous moments of you put the time into building strong relationships so that you can be invited to meet the right people. I think meeting Ahmed and Lani was one of the best. I was like, "Wow, these people are just amazing." I think that we got on that call, and he was like, "Hey, we need somebody to help MC this event in maybe two or three weeks." It was a pretty quick turnaround for the Nobel Prize Summit.
It was just a wonderful opportunity to learn from other people to do an event at that scale, because I think that's just a good experience to have, and just to see Ahmed in his element, because he is so good, so, so good at that exact thing. It was a real gift just to be in that environment, especially as a young person, because there weren't a lot of young people invited to be there. Just being able to add that perspective was incredible. Thank you. Thank you for making that possible.
Lisa: Oh, it was so fun. It's one of these things where it's like, "Oh, this is running late, but how can we turn this into an opportunity?" I remember it was one of the things I used to do a lot because, of course, the pandemic robbed us of those spontaneous water cooler moments where you just bump into someone, but it actually gave us a whole new way of potentially having them when you would have meetings that would overlap. I remember a waiting room would come up, and I'd be like, "Wait a minute, these people need to know each other anyway."
I'd be like, "Okay, Ahmed, hold on. I'm bringing in Zoë. Don't go anywhere. You need to meet each other. Let's go," you give enough context, and the two of you are two of the most vibrant, generous people I know, and I just love that magic happened. I think, so much of it is like in this time of tumult and challenge and so much feels out of our control, there's actually so much that's in our control, how we show up for others, do we do it with curiosity and empathy, do we explore the, "Hey, what if?" and "Would you consider?" and "Is there a world in which?"
A lot of times, the answer is, "Yes, let's go. Hadn't thought about it, and that's why it didn't exist, but now you're making me think about it, so let's do it together." I think that can be really infectious in the best possible way. Zoë, I want to turn our attention to a few things about the future. We've covered some about your present and working as the director of civic trust, just wonderful things about your past, and we'll put lots of links in the show notes to your TEDx talks and others.
Let's talk about the future because so much of the work you're doing is focused on the future. I know you are part of the steering committee for Civics 2030, which is, I think, something you started years ago, but of course, still in our future. Would love to hear a little bit about that effort and how you are helping people imagine better futures with that initiative.
Zoë: Civics 2030 came out of that group of inaugural 2020 fellows who were saying, "Look, Civics Unplugged, what are we going to do in this moment when democracy feels like it's falling apart and we're not even able to physically join up together?" I think there are threads of that campaign and that initiative that still very much exist in how Civics Unplugged does what we do now. We're looking well beyond 2030 now because I know it's just a couple of years away, but I think we're still doing that imagining of what young people deserve to live in the democracy that they can envision.
How do we build towards that? We're not waiting to do that. It's not like, "Okay, you've got to wait until you're 18 so you can vote," or like, "Oh, you have to wait until you turn 35 and you can run for president." It's like, "No, what are the things you can do right now in your community?" I think that's how, at least at Civics Unplugged, we're thinking about the future is now. We don't have to wait. We're not building something to pilot it and then launch it 20 years from now. It's how do we just embody the spirit of the democracy that we want to live in?
That's a lot of, I think, what's been on my mind in that conversation we just had about building trust and showing up. I think that's part of it. I want to see a future where we have stronger civic trust, and so I try to model that idea of, "How do I want strangers to interact with me in public? How do I want other people to show up for me?" I can't wait for the world to be a better place in which everyone does that. You just have to start doing it and inviting other people to do that with you.
Some of what I've really admired about Civics Unplugged, especially in this moment, is that I know there are a lot of organizations and a lot of initiatives that are looking at the times we're in and saying, "Whoa, what do we do?" and taking a pause. Civics Unplugged, we were like, "No, we have these four Cs. We have these values. We know that what we do works, and we know that we're building the future we want to build. It does not matter what is happening outside of us."
"We are doing something that we know works and is meaningful for kids. We're going to keep doing that no matter what, and building alongside them through this moment and not waiting for this moment to somehow pass," which I think is really emblematic of something I've been thinking a lot about is how do you just keep showing up? I think that's more than half the battle of just making it through to something that we're building together.
Lisa: It so much, again, echoes Ahmed's philosophy of don't let the future happen to you. Go do, and you have all that clarity to feel empowered, and others around you. I know, Zoë, you're making a particular effort to reach rural areas, which I think is another geography that is often overlooked. Geographies, plural. I think not only are you trying to connect generations, but you're also trying to connect geographies to feel unified in their power to create better. I think that is so important.
I wonder if maybe we could end with you just sharing. I imagine lots of people here are thinking, "I want to get involved in Civics Unplugged. I want to get involved in this civic trust stuff." What recommendations do you have for people to be a part of shaping the future in this wonderfully abundant and generous way that you're thinking about?
Zoë: I'll give maybe the very basic, "Oh, here's how you plug in," but then just a more ethereal way to plug in that I always love to share. In terms of Civics Unplugged, we have a website. Please go to our website. If you know high school students, encourage them to apply. Even high school students who say, "I don't care about politics, I don't care about civics," civics is for everybody, regardless of what your interests are. We just want young people to feel like they have more control over their future because they do.
That's a different kind of education that a lot of young people don't get. Just share that opportunity with high schoolers that you know to apply. Then just stay up-to-date with our work. We're always sharing the great work that our kids are doing. They often need support from people in their communities. If you see a fellow who's in your same state or in your same city, reach out to them, reach out to us, and just help support their work. That's the more cookie-cutter recommendation.
From a civic trust, putting my political theory hat on, there's this incredible but very dense book called The Public and Its Problems by John Dewey. He talks about this idea of attachment versus affection. I think it does a really good job of capturing the moment that we're in. Affection is like, I don't know, think back to high school when you had a crush on somebody, those intense, positive emotional feelings that you have that draw you towards other people. There was a place and a time for that, but democracies cannot run on affection.
What we need right now is attachment. That's like the love that you have for that family member that's very difficult to talk to, but that love is constant. This is a moment when we need attachment. I think we have floated for a long time in our democracy on affection. "Oh, we love this country," or "We love this particular president," or "We love this person." We are definitely in a time right now where affection is not enough, and because we have not spent the time building that attachment, I think that's why we're seeing some of the really disheartening things that we're seeing of people saying, "Oh, I want to lead the United States," or "I don't believe in democracy anymore."
We've not ingrained this sense of real, solid commitment to who we are as a nation, what democracy means, how to include people in that vision. There are ways in which you can build attachment. That's part of why right now I'm focusing a lot on rural communities, because I think rural youth struggle with this the most, because if you're a rural young person and you turn on the news, you're not going to see people from your background making positive impact.
There are these narratives of despair telling you that, "Oh, rural places just have nothing going on and everything's going down the drain, and you should move to a bigger city." A lot of what we're trying to do at Civics Unplugged is help these young people find a sense of purpose that is rooted in their hometowns, because you have a sense of expertise that is innate to you and your experience, and your hometown needs you now more than ever.
I think that's the message I would say to everybody, is that your communities, where you're from, needs you now more than ever. Whether that's your college alumni association, it's a hometown friend group, maybe you participated in the YMCA when you were growing up, I think this is the time now more than ever to work on attachment, of building that sense of connections that have longevity to them because I think well, one, it'll just make you feel better.
I think you'll remember, "These are communities that value me, remember me, there's change that can be made here," but also that we need those bonds to be strong to resist the tides and things that are changing up above us. There are a lot of things that you can do within that of just gathering people more, spending time doing that intentional work, just saying hi to strangers and smiling at people, and building routines with the people you love. I think that's more important now than ever is to model the kinds of communities that we want to live in and invite other people to join us in those same habits of being good citizens.
Lisa: Amen, Zoë. That's what I'm going to say. Amen. I know you didn't end up being like a traditional scientist, but as I listen to you speak, I feel like you are a civic scientist. And I also want to say you are very much in the spirit of a civic futurist. I think that is another way of showing up in the world and focusing on that attachment versus affection, that is so powerful because we can all do that. We see it happening. As you know, I've been working a lot with student athletes and trying to build on the attachments we have with sports. There's even some studies about how fans are actually better citizens, which is cool, and we'll put that in the show notes, too.
There's so much to build on that we're already doing. It really reminds me of where we started this conversation, where you were like, "Look, democracy in those words can feel very removed or can feel very narrow. It's like you're either voting or you're not." What I hear you saying is that we can all participate and do so in meaningful ways that strengthens our bonds with each other and therefore strengthens the resilience and the opportunities that our communities will have.
Zoë, thank you for being you. Thank you for sharing your time with us. Thank you for being on How We Future. I cannot wait for more people to learn about you, your work, and what Civics Unplugged is doing on behalf of better tomorrows.
Zoë: Thank you. Thank you so much for being such a big part of my journey of ending up here. I don't think I would be here thinking the way that I think if I hadn't met you five years ago. I really appreciate that.
Lisa: What an incredible conversation with Zoë Jenkins. I'm so inspired by her belief that democracy begins with trust, not institutions. I love her call for us to move beyond the quick bursts of affection and to start building deeper attachments to our neighborhoods, our schools, and each other.
Here's my invitation to you. Take one small step to strengthen that sense of connection. Say hello to a neighbor, check in on a friend, or reach out to someone doing good work in your community.
Those small acts of trust add up, and they're exactly how we future. If you've enjoyed this episode, I'd be so grateful if you rated and left a comment for How We Future wherever you listen. It helps more people find these conversations and join our growing community of future builders. I'm Lisa Kay Solomon. Thanks for listening, and I'll see you next time.
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Links from the episode:
Zoë’s TEDx Talk on “Saving the World in an Empathy Crisis”
CBS This Morning segment featuring Zoë and Generation Change
Learn more about Zoë on her website
Zoë’s partnership with Aerie to speak about “How to Contribute to Social Justice”
Article from More in Common about the role of sports fans in democracy
