Nashville is booming, but these people know that doesn’t mean the city is free of problems. Our guests have spent their careers trying to solve some of the most dire issues in the city and region.
Featuring
Ron Johnson, director of the Oasis Center’s R.E.A.L. program, which aims to keep teens out of prison;
Tasha Lemley, co-founder of Nashville’s homeless paper, The Contributor, and owner of social enterprise Chai Wallah; and
Kasar
Abdulla
, American-Muslim community advocate and conflict mediator.
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Ron Johnson
is director of the
R.E.A.L. Program (Reaching Excellence As Leaders) at Nashville’s Oasis Center, an intervention program for teens in the juvenile justice system that reduces the rate of recidivism more than the national average. After serving four years in federal prison in the early
1990s
, Johnson has dedicated his life to preventing young people from making the same mistakes he did. He also works with President Obama’s “My Brother’s Keeper” initiative, the Vanderbilt trauma ward and the YWCA.
Tasha A. F. Lemley
is the founder of two social enterprises in Nashville: Chai Wallah and The Contributor street newspaper. She has experience as an outreach worker and spent years photographing and interviewing people who live on the streets. Lately, Lemley has become a budding audio producer and contributor to the
Neighbors podcast. She’s passionate about community and diversity — the answers we have for each other and those we can find together.
Kasar Abdulla is an educator, mediator and advocate for social justice. An immigrant from Kurdistan, she speaks often about her experience as a refugee and on life in the U.S. as a Muslim, and she has helped address mosque vandalism and hate crimes against Tennessean Muslims. In 2013, the White House named her a “Champion of Change” for her work helping immigrants in Tennessee. Abdulla currently serves on the board of the YWCA and is director of community relations at Valor Collegiate Academy.