Podcast Episode - Restorative Justice, an interview with Howard Zehr

In this episode of News from the Peak, we are joined by Howard Zehr, a foundational practitioner and theorist of restorative justice and the coauthor of the recently published book Still Doing Life: 22 Lifers, 25 Years Later.*

The book combines two sets of interviews and photos of people serving life sentences without parole. Zehr gathered the first set in 1990s and published them in his 1996 book Doing Life. About five years ago, he went back to talk to and photograph many of the same people.

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Podcast Episode - Community Table Talks IV, Child Welfare

This addition of Community Table Talks is focused on Child Welfare. We invited 4 great guests and asked them to answer two questions in about 5 minutes. The questions are 1. What is the most pressing issue we are facing in child welfare? And 2. What is the number one way we can make a substantial difference?

Joining us on this episode is Judge Ann Meinster, Korey Elger, Ángela Quijada-Banks and Bill Delisio.

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Joe MamlinComment
Podcast Episode: An Interview with OCSE Commissioner Tanguler Gray

In this episode we proudly present the first podcast interview with the new OCSE Commissioner Tanguler Gray. In this episode we celebrate her success, talk about her background, and get just a little preview of her approach to this new and exciting role. We get to also get a sense of her warm and welcoming personality, her sense of humor, and her commitment to the program and child support professionals across the country.

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Joe Mamlin Comment
Is Executive Coaching Right For You?

Do you feel it? The touch of coolness in the breeze as the leaves begin to change hinting at what is to come. The change in seasons allows us to take time to pause and begin to look at what we might want to transition or change in our professional and personal lives.

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Liz BullardComment
Social Work as a component of Child Support Programs

As most of our listeners know, the child support program has been evolving since it’s creation as part of the Social Security Act in 1975. One of the most significant changes we have seen – and probably the hardest to accomplish – has been the transition from being focused on enforcement to being focused on families. The Child Support program, and the people we serve in the program, has contact with more families than any other social service program and with that we have both a great deal of responsibility as well as a great deal of opportunity.

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Joe MamlinComment
A conversation about Compassion

I am so fortunate to be part of the amazing Leif Family and have so many extended Aunts, Uncles and cousins. Our Uncle Greg is a Catholic Priest in Minnesota. Our daughters called him Uncle God growing up which thankfully, he found to be comical! I have gotten to go on many fun hiking adventures with Uncle Greg over the years and we have the most amazing in-depth conversations about the world, politics, life, and recently we have talked a lot about compassion and empathy.

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Maureen LeifComment
Podcast Episode - Thinking about the Next Step

They say time flies when you’re having fun. It seems like one day you are the new kid starting your first job at the local county office, then you wake up the next day and suddenly you are the wise veteran, with enough years of service to think about the next chapter. As retirement becomes a reality, what things should you be considering? What options are available to you, and how do you want the next few years to look?

On this episode, we welcome 4 guests (5 including me) who have all retired in one sense, but have moved on to something new.

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Robert RiddleComment
Finishing College During a Global Pandemic

Being a college student during a global pandemic has had its pros and cons. Since the pandemic began college life changed for students everywhere . In this article you will be able to get a look into the life of a college student during a pandemic. I’m Jasmine Robinson , Marketing Strategist for Grays Peak Strategies and a Spring 2021 College Graduate. My senior year at UNCG included a whole year of restrictions and precautions because of COVID, this affected us in many different ways whether it was financially, mentally, socially and even academically.

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Community Table Talk III - Talking about Hobbies

We are pleased to announce the third installment in our “Community Table Talk” series. In this episode we talk about hobbies people have outside of work. This topic was of particular interest to me as I know how important my time away from work is, and how it makes me better at my job and in so many other ways. In fact, everyone at Grays Peak has some kind of interesting hobby that they are passionate about. In the GPS Family, we have people who enjoy skiing, hiking, traveling, music, art, wine, fishing, horseback riding, kayaking and much more. We do our best to encourage these things, and provide space for people to pursue what they love, which in turn makes us a happier and more cohesive team.

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Maureen LeifComment
Podcast Episode - Ángela Quijada-Banks

We were so pleased to welcome to the podcast Ángela Quijada-Banks.

Ms. Quijada-Banks is a NAACP Image Award–nominated, American best-selling author, Founder and C.E.O of Soulful Liberation (a Book publishing company and podcast), and Consciously Melanated Queens, a community to support young women of color to uncover their divine purpose and holistically heal.

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Joe Mamlin Comment
Podcast Episode - Community Table Talks II

In our second Community Table Talks episode, we ask about leadership. This is one of the topics we tend to hear a lot about but can never get enough of. The questions we posed to our guests were pretty straightforward, trying to get at how they continue to grow and learn as a leader, and also to talk about important risks during the course of their careers. But as is often the case with our show, the conversations take a lot of turns and we learn a lot about our guests, about their leadership ideas, and we gain some really good lessons that most of us can relate to.

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Joe MamlinComment
Podcast Episode - Karen Mahler and Positive Youth Development

Psychologist Karen Mahler introduced me to the positive youth development paradigm when she was brought in to shepherd along a project I was working on for the New York City Office of Child Support Services.

Our team had been tasked with completely reimagining how parents under the age of 25 enter the child support program. But we couldn’t do that in a meaningful, lasting way if we relied on arm-chair generalizing about The Youth and all the time they spend Tik Tok tweeting their SnappyGrams. We needed someone who could keep the lived experiences and developmental realities of young people front and center, while also being able to absorb the Rube Goldberg mechanics of the child support intake process and the legal and financial realities that shape everything in the public sector.

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David RammComment
Digital Outreach in Human Services

Did you know that 7 out of every 10 Americans use social media? Because of this high saturation, which only continues to rise, it stands to reason that digital outreach is a critical communication tool no matter what your message is or where it originates. Digital outreach is not only effective for eCommerce sites or businesses that produce products. The human services field can benefit immensely as well and for a number of fundamental reasons.

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Joe MamlinComment
The Runaway Truck Ramp and 4 Tips to Conquer Multitasking

Do you ever have those days where the more stressed you get, the more everything else falls apart?

One big source of stress for me at work is multitasking, and I feel like the more I do that, the more errors I make. And the more errors I make, the worse my day becomes.

I was having one of those days last Friday. I was driving up to the mountains with my family that night, a million thoughts running through my mind, and I saw this sign for a runaway truck ramp. “Yes!” I thought, “that’s what I need! A runaway ramp to slow me down!”

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Maureen LeifComment
Podcast Episode - Community Table Talks I

We are excited to try out a new podcast format called GPS Community Table Talk! The concept is simple, we invite some interesting and fun people to answer the same 2 questions in 5 minutes. It is a fun way to examine a topic in a quick way and get several different viewpoints from different people. The name comes from the idea that we are all part of a larger community and during the last year sometimes it has been easy to forget that. The table reminds us that some of our most favorite conversations take place over sharing a meal or a cup of coffee. So as you listen, imagine we are asking each other questions while we are sipping on a delicious oatmeal latte in a cozy coffee shop. Hopefully we can all do that for real sometime soon.

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Maureen LeifComment
Racial Impact Assessments from the Implicit Bias Training Institute

This past year we faced unimaginable events that have left us reeling and confused about systemic racism. Prior to the pandemic our nation was facing systemic racism that many people chose to ignore but the pandemic only exacerbated racial inequities. During the pandemic people of color are overrepresented as frontline workers making them more susceptible to Covid-19 infections and more likely to die from Covid-19 due to comorbidities, e.g., diabetes, heart problems and obesity. The pandemic has pushed people of color from food insecurities to hunger and homelessness.

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Rita Cameron WeddingComment
Conflict Style Matters

When I decided to go to law school, more than one person told me I was “too nice” to become a lawyer. “Nice” and “sweet” were adjectives I had heard people use to describe me throughout my life. Occasionally I had also been told I was a “people pleaser.” Determined to prove I could be both a nice person and an attorney, I applied for law school anyway.

During law school I discovered a practice called mediation—a process that encourages the empowerment of people in conflict to communicate with the dual goals of seeking to understand/be understood, while also maybe resolving disputes and keeping people out of the courtroom. Mediators assist parties by facilitating the process and modeling effective communication and listening techniques. The moment I learned what mediation was is the moment I knew I wanted to become a mediator.

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Holly PanettaComment