Today we’re welcoming Liz Brown, President & CEO of YWCA Columbus, a nonprofit focused on housing, youth development, and social justice. Liz is also a former Columbus City Council member first elected in 2015 and reelected in 2019 before leaving in 2023. In this first part of our conversation, we discuss Liz's time on council, her thoughts on our housing shortage, her work at YWCA, the impacts of the current federal administration on nonprofits, and, among everything happening, what keeps us hopeful.

Sources:

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/147907/let-america-be-america-again

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/645871/there-is-no-place-for-us-by-brian-goldstone/

https://www.csb.org/

For part two of my conversation with Tasha Booker, CEO of Action for Children, we begin with a commentary on the brevity of pilot programs like Success Bridge and Healthy Beginnings at Home that get so much initial funding, impact a few hundred people, and then are never scaled up or extended. From there we make a call to action. As our community faces higher costs of living and our social service sector is threatened and weakened, it falls on all of us to do whatever we can to protect each other. American civil rights activist Marian Wright Edelman famously said “Service is the rent we pay for being. It is the very purpose of life, and not something you do in your spare time.”

Today on LVL With Us, I am joined by Tasha Booker, Homeport board member and CEO for Action for Children. Tasha has been a part of our board since 2021, ran CityYear Columbus for more than six years, and joined Action for Children at the beginning of this year to become more engaged in education here in Columbus.

Tasha actually grew up in an affordable housing community once called Agler Green, now named The Heritage Apartments, right near Homeport’s current headquarters. During our conversation, we discussed how housing affects educational outcomes, the challenges faced by our school system, and the changes we can make as a community to better care for our children and families.

Action for Children is a nonprofit organization that supports parents, caregivers, and teachers in the pursuit of better educational outcomes for the children they care for.

Sources:

https://www.cleveland.com/news/2025/09/see-2025-ohio-school-report-card-grades-for-every-district-in-the-state.html

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/education/u-s-high-school-students-continue-to-lose-ground-in-math-and-reading-as-yearslong-decline-persists

https://www.nationwidechildrens.org/about-us/collaboratory/addressing-inequities/kindergarten-readiness