On Doing Good, Giselle Hensel-Piburn explores how mentorship turns curiosity into confidence—and connects generations through the simple act of showing up.

A siren grows louder outside Santa Fe’s Lensic theater. Paramedics rush a gurney down the aisle and onto the stage. Then a teenager takes the microphone and explains the steps to save a life.

In this episode of Doing Good, Giselle Hensel-Piburn recalls that student presentation as an example of what becomes possible when adults take young people’s ideas seriously.

As director of Monte del Sol Charter School’s mentorship program, she connects students with community members willing to share their skills, time, and enthusiasm. High school students complete two years of mentorship to graduate, exploring interests that range from photography and welding to cooking and music.

The starting point is curiosity. For students unsure what interests them, Hensel-Piburn asks questions about what they would love to learn. Her instinct is to begin with yes, then work out what is possible.

The conversation explores how much learning happens beyond the chosen activity: communicating with an adult, keeping commitments, navigating unfamiliar settings, and discovering that one’s interests deserve attention. Learning to cook for family can matter just as much as exploring a profession.

The benefits flow both ways. Speaking from her experience as a mentor, one co-host describes an unexpected connection to Santa Fe and the reward of seeing her work through a student’s eyes.

For Hensel-Piburn, the work also carries personal meaning. After losing her mother in childhood, she remembers her older sister as an important source of guidance and support.

Throughout the episode, spectacular experiences sit alongside ordinary acts of care. A student’s ambitious presentation may draw applause, but the deeper achievement is a relationship: an adult listening, encouraging, and showing up.

The invitation is simple. Sharing something you love can help a young person imagine a larger future—and give you a stronger place in your community.

https://www.montedelsolcharterschool.org/mentorship/

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Cecile Lipworth reflects on how art, intuition, and human connection turn shared experiences into lasting action.

A conversation at a Christmas Eve dinner changed Cecile Lipworth’s life. An offer to help produce The Vagina Monologues at Madison Square Garden became an invitation into years of activism. She trusted her instincts, stepped through the door, and discovered how far one connection could travel.

On this episode of Doing Good, Lipworth explores the relationship between creativity, courage, and collective action. Her work with V-Day, the movement to end violence against women and girls, showed her that a performance could become more than an evening at the theater.

Community productions raised money for local organizations. Audiences laughed, confronted realities, and began conversations they had avoided for generations. Lipworth remembers hearing from families whose mothers or grandmothers disclosed experiences of abuse after seeing the play together. Being in the same room mattered.

So did joy. Even while confronting violence, she and her colleagues made space for humor, celebration, and women’s connection to their bodies. That energy helped sustain difficult work and invited people into action.

One Billion Rising brought those ideas into the streets through dance. Organizing in Santa Fe also deepened Lipworth’s relationships with local activists and community leaders, helping redirect her global experience toward the place she called home.

That spirit carries into the feminist fiesta she describes planning to honor New Mexico’s women. Through poetry, conversation, art, and intergenerational exchange, she hopes to celebrate accomplishments while giving participants concrete ways to get involved. Older and younger women, she suggests, can build something together by sharing wisdom and listening to one another.

Throughout the conversation, Lipworth returns to intuition, collaboration, and trust. The work itself energizes her, especially when people gather around a shared purpose.

For her, inspiration carries a responsibility: leave the room ready to do something. That is how the next ripple spreads.

For more information, or to tell the story of someone you know who's doing good, go to doinggood.fm

Vicki Pozzebon explores how listening, living your values, and caring for the people doing the work can help nonprofits stay true to their purpose.

In Vicki Pozzebon’s childhood home, generosity was a practice. Her Italian immigrant parents welcomed people with food, while her father taught newcomers skills in his well-drilling business. That spirit of sharing knowledge and making room for others still shapes her work.

On this episode of Doing Good, Pozzebon explores how nonprofits can keep that human purpose alive amid fundraising pressures, board dynamics, and the demands of running an organization.

Her approach to strategic planning starts with the community. Rather than leaving decisions to staff and board members, she brings in the people an organization serves, its partners, and others who can help identify what is needed. Listening requires a willingness to hear uncomfortable answers. If an organization’s services are no longer needed, she argues, its existence deserves to be questioned.

She also urges founders to investigate whether another nonprofit already does the work they envision. Good intentions become more useful when they respond to a need and build on existing efforts.

Values, meanwhile, must show up in decisions. She describes a housing initiative in Silver City connecting affordable, healthy homes with construction training and sustainable materials. Its challenge is making those commitments work together in practice.

That same scrutiny belongs inside nonprofits. Pozzebon calls for better pay, benefits, and working conditions, challenging expectations that people doing meaningful work should accept exhaustion or financial insecurity. She wants funders to take chances on emerging organizations and support the infrastructure they need to succeed.

Her approach is grounded in a framework linking the individual, the group, and the work itself. Transformation can begin with asking for support, caring for oneself, or relating differently to colleagues.

For Pozzebon, goodness grows through people who pay attention to one another and act with care. Sustaining it means building organizations whose daily choices reflect the communities they exist to serve.

For more information, or to tell the story of someone you know who's doing good, go to doinggood.fm