OUR MISSION
We create, incubate and launch projects to heal divides, restore compassion and strengthen self-government.
Leadership
Tom Cosgrove
President
Tom Cosgrove has decades of experience as a grassroots organizer, campaign manager, media consultant, strategist and civic futurist.
Board
Leila Laasiri
Ernest Crim III
A Human Rights Advocate, native of Milwaukee. Senior Entertainment Marketing Executive
Anti-Racist Educator and hate crime survivor
Publisher of newstaco.com and a board member of Latino Public Broadcasting
Community organizer, author and designer
Ray Ramirez
Sean Bradshaw
Retired after a quarter century of working at the Native American Rights Fund
Aerospace engineer
Nancy M. Yanofsky
Founding member of Seniors Taking Action
Shabd Simon-Alexander
Gilberto S. Ocañas
Joseph Thibodeau III
Terre Thomas
Police Lieutenant and police academy trainer
Non-profit executive
Our Projects
SOLUTION STUDIO™
Solution Studio™ is a program of New Voice Strategies (NVS) that enables students to challenge public figures—candidates, elected officials, government leaders, and experts in their fields—to propose solutions to issues facing the community and country.
Solution Studio™ Forums, Colorado
In October 2022, New Voice Strategies held four Solution Studio™ forums where a panel of students from Metropolitan State University of Denver (MSU) interviewed Colorado’s then-candidates for governor and U.S. Senate. MSU hosted the events. In addition to MSU, NVS partnered with the Colorado League of Women Voters and Colorado Latino Leadership and Advocacy Organization to organize these focused conversations.
Two Solution Studio™ forums involving each of the Denver Mayoral runoff candidates are scheduled to take place in April 2023, sponsored by the same partners.
The student panelists in these Solution Studio™ forums were MSU Denver college students. Future forums are planned in other communities and will be hosted by college and high school campuses.
Solution Studio™ videos from the October 2022 forums were shared with NVS media partners Colorado Public Radio, Colorado Sun, PBS12, and Colorado Univision.
The media partner for the Denver Mayoral runoff forums is 9News Denver. More information about the forums at MSU can be found at msudenver.edu.
PREAMBLE PROJECT: DIVIDED WE FALL
In 2022 schools in 42 states used the curriculum created by New Voice Strategies with the Close Up Foundation to celebrate Constitution Day. Our curriculum builds a shared understanding of what it means to be an American through an exploration of the preamble to the U.S. Constitution.
The curriculum includes this original film, Who Wrote We the People?
Re-imagining Boston Public Schools
Following a year of living through the COVID-19 pandemic and its upending of much of what school has looked like, leaders of Boston Public Schools and Boston Teachers Union reached out to their staff/members to gain insight into how the district might best reimagine its schools moving forward.
“This report should be read by every health care and political leader in our country. If we listen to nurses, protect nurses in their workplace, and give nurses a voice at the table, we will all be safer and healthier.”
–Maureen “Shawn” Kennedy, MA, RN, FAAN, Editor in Chief of the American Journal of Nursing, published in the Lippincott portfolio by Wolters Kluwer.
Frontline Nurses
Wisdom from Nurses So We Never Again Mishandle a National Healthcare Crisis
This was supposed to be the Year of the Nurse and the Midwife. Instead, it has been the year of COVID-19.
Nurses across the U.S. were tested by COVID-19. Some broke down. Others found energy and pride in the struggle to care for COVID-19 patients without adequate protective equipment, staff, or support from hospital administration or the federal government.
The US already faces a shortage of nurses—the Bureau of Labor Statistics projects we will need 11 million more nurses by 2026. That is partly the result of demographic realities: an aging baby boom and an aging nursing population edging closer to retirement. Equally important are skyrocketing rates of burnout among nurses. Add the stresses of COVID-19 and a steady trickle of nurses turning away from the profession could turn into a stampede.
Nurses often put their patients’ needs before their own. That didn’t change during the pandemic. What did change is that nurses saw the level of sacrifice asked of them and denounced their working conditions under COVID-19 as both unfair and dangerous.
Through the recommendations in this report, nurses ask for three things: Listen to nurses. Protect nurses. Support nurses. None of those is hard to do. However, they all require that policy makers and healthcare administrators who are unused to soliciting nurses’ input learn to take nurses’ ideas seriously. And they require elected leaders to ensure nurses have the supplies and supports they need to do their work safely and with integrity.
This WikiWisdom Forum report is the first step. It started with a unique online forum that asked nurses on the frontlines to share their stories, challenges, fears and joys from caring for COVID-19 patients. There are dramatic stories of nurses who risked their lives to help their patients despite a lack of adequate PPE. There are disgraceful stories of insufficient support from management, even retaliation for steps taken to protect patients and staff. And there are heartbreaking stories of nurses who didn’t hug their children for weeks in an effort to keep them safe.
Standing Up For Truth
The Role of Libraries in the Mis/Disinformation Age
This report lays out the support needed to help librarians do their part to create an informed and engaged citizenry.
The Restoring Joy NETWORK
A network of caregivers and resources to foster personal well being and return joy to nurses, physicians and other health care professionals.
Divided We Fall
A television docu-series created to match the challenges Americans are now experiencing in our political and public discourse.
The VIVA Teachers Project
A collaborative report from National Education Association members of nine states recommending how to confront the problem of school violence and protection of students and staff.
Center for Women and Business Idea Exchange and Report
“Civility is not a sign of weakness, but of civilization.”