This conversation addresses the significant gap created by language barriers in the implementation of sustainable business practices and explores ways to make sustainability culturally accessible.
Guest: Melisa Báez, Co-Founder and CEO at ELUME and Teacher Assistant at Bard Graduate Programs in Sustainability
On LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/in/melisa-baez
Hosts:
Alejandro Juárez Crawford
On ITSPmagazine 👉 https://www.itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-podcast-radio-hosts/alejandro-juarez-crawford
Miriam Plavin-Masterman
On ITSPmagazine 👉 https://www.itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-podcast-radio-hosts/miriam-plavin-masterman
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Episode Introduction
Delving into Melissa Baez's inspirational work with small businesses and entrepreneurs, this episode discusses the importance of language accessibility and the need for a cultural shift in mindset and sustainable business practices. It further addresses the significance of music and entertainment in transforming communities and the value of mentorship and opportunities for up-and-coming artists — particularly emphasizing the role of influential figures in making sustainability mainstream and accessible to all. Last but not least, it highlights how being a lifetime learner and maintaining curiosity are essential for personal and professional growth.
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Resources
ELUME: On a mission to decolonize sustainability: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/elume-mission-decolonize-sustainability-elume-llc/?trackingId=f0ZrAz5lIGMr%2F5%2F%2BSVrPlA%3D%3D
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Episode Sponsors
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For more podcast stories from What If Instead? Podcast with Alejandro Juárez Crawford and Miriam Plavin-Masterman, visit: https://www.itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-podcast-radio-hosts/alejandro-juarez-crawford and https://www.itspmagazine.com/itspmagazine-podcast-radio-hosts/miriam-plavin-masterman
The Invisible Barriers to Going ‘Green’ | A conversation with Melisa Báez | What If Instead? Podcast with Alejandro Juárez Crawford and Miriam Plavin-Masterman
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (00:02)
Mim, there's so much about you that often doesn't get mentioned in these podcasts and I keep hearing rumors that you're playing Tomorrowland this year or one of these major European -based festivals. Am I getting this right?
Mim Plavin-Masterman (00:14)
Okay. Funny. no? Yes? Somewhere in between? We're playing PorchFest.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (00:23)
Somewhere in between. it's Porchfest, which is almost the same as Tomorrow on Bland. Like, same idea, right? Is this the idea?
Mim Plavin-Masterman (00:26)
Portfest, sure, except that if we're... I mean, it's people walking by that nobody pays us money, so, you know. Yeah. No. Something like that. Yes, that is true. That is true.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (00:36)
Okay, so you're not getting paid. You're giving up food for funk, as we used to say. Yeah? Okay, all right. We're, in a moment, we're gonna introduce our amazing guest, one of my favorite people, whose background, if you're watching the video version of this, is not fake. It's actually behind her, and we may pick on her a little bit to see which of these many, this large collection of vinyl she's gonna bring out when forced to choose, because in the end,
Life is about choices. You can't have that many records. Music's been on my mind today because the artist who created the song that we use on What If Instead, it's a song called Technology from the album New Future. And the artist Navaris and the band that he did with that album, it's called Loud Apartment, just worked with, I knew this guy since he was a kid, right? And he just worked with an artist that is a legend to me.
So I'll leave it with that, but know that our theme is no accident, technology is for the people. And on that note, I gotta tell ya that we're on a mission here. And the mission is to make experiments of your own feel as normal as watching videos on your phone. Welcome to What If Instead, the podcast.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (01:56)
So our guest today is the incredibly creative and talented Melisa Baez. And Alejandro was not lying. Her wall of records is epic. And I feel like it speaks very highly of someone to have that many records and they're all real. So aside from her amazing record collection, which I definitely want to hear more about.
Melisa Baez (02:06)
you
Thank you.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (02:15)
Wait, are they all real? Are there maybe just a few that are in there that are just like empty jackets?
Melisa Baez (02:18)
They are, they're all, they're all real. All of them.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (02:19)
Real.
There we go. There we go. There we go. It's amazing. Melisa is joining us today to talk about her role and her work as, as co -founder and CEO of a company called Allume, which is helping small businesses become sustainable in ways that are embedded in their business practices and not keeping it separate from how they do it. And what she does is incredibly creative and takes people in all kinds of journeys, both literally and figuratively.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (02:22)
Hahaha!
Mim Plavin-Masterman (02:50)
So we're really excited to hear her talk about her work, how she got into this and where she wants to go with it. So thank you for joining us, Melisa.
Melisa Baez (02:58)
thank you both for having me. I'm so excited to be here today.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (03:02)
So as we get started, can you tell us a little bit about kind of who you work with, how people find you, how you find them to do the work that you do?
Melisa Baez (03:11)
Sure. So I'm currently based in Lancaster, PA. I was raised here. This has been my hometown. I stepped away for a little bit during college and shortly after that, but something kept pulling me back to this town. And this is kind of like the flagship of Illume and where, you know, I was inspired to really create these experiences for the entrepreneurs that I serve.
Where you could find me, we are based in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, but we have a footprint here just in the United States. We have our network reaches outside globally, to be honest, in South America and Europe. We've in Japan and Africa, just with our network and the people that we have connected with and have inspired the work of the Loom.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (04:05)
Wait, that's an amazing point right there, Melisa. Do you mind if I just kind of like dig into that for a second? Because you used this amazing phrase. You said something's pulling me back to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, right? Which is a fairly small and local place. And yet you're working with people all over the world. Can you tell us in terms of your mission in a loom and what drives you, what's the pull and what's the outward force? And talk to us a little bit about this idea.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (04:08)
Yeah.
Melisa Baez (04:10)
Let's, let's try it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (04:35)
of these little moments of fate that I.
Melisa Baez (04:39)
Ooh, so growing up in Lancaster, I always noticed that change can happen within your lifetime. Like while you're here, people have generated ideas or they've been inspired, they've generated ideas and they've been able to implement it. And you can see the change happening within like a few years. And that's something really beautiful that's capable of being done in a local, hyper localized community.
Lancaster over the past 20 to 30 years has become this beautiful, diverse community where we have recently been labeled refugee, welcoming community for refugees. we've had been recognized as I think in a Forbes article that came out a few years ago as like the up and coming Brooklyn.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (05:25)
Amazing.
Melisa Baez (05:35)
Just because of how quickly we've developed. It's just been an incredible experience.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (05:39)
So you got like nine months before you're fully gentrified. Is that what we're talking about? Then, no.
Melisa Baez (05:42)
Listen, we haven't, well, we're hoping that that's not part of the, you know, the shaping of the culture here in Lancaster, but I'm telling you, you want to come here for a really interesting, like, food tour, we got you.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (05:58)
Awesome.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (05:59)
But you just brought something up that's amazing. And if you were going to say something more interesting than what I'm about to ask, you jump in. But you use the phrase hyperlocal, right? But you're also welcoming and you're connecting to people from all over the world. I'll never forget when Lenin Mazonde came with his vision for digitizing library access in Zimbabwe, where his native country and other places around the world. Can you talk to us about that relationship between hyperlocal,
and connected globally and welcoming.
Melisa Baez (06:32)
Right, so we have, because of this beautiful dichotomy of the global to local, local to global, I think it provides this very beautiful open space where people can bring their culture and their passions that they had back at home, wherever that may be, and to be able to launch or expand their ideas here in Lancaster. People have left Lancaster.
and experienced the world and have brought new and creative ideas and new innovative solutions and have experimented and tested them out here in Lancaster. While working at Assets, which is an economic development nonprofit that focuses on helping startups kind of like grow their business with a heavy focus on women and minority -owned businesses. I had this beautiful experience by meeting Lenin. You know, he came from
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (07:08)
Mmm.
Melisa Baez (07:29)
Just a really interesting background of building an online platform for small local communities in Africa, taking their libraries, digitizing it, and then allowing so many other people to access that information and that knowledge. Open source sharing is what his mission was, what he was trying to accomplish.
So when he came to the United States, he realized that there's a lot of small communities that resembled his hometown. And his mission was to find funders, to scale his business. And so while at Assets, we were able to help structure the social enterprise model.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (08:07)
Mmm.
Melisa Baez (08:20)
And man, there was something so special about him, his desire to grow, his desire to learn and any challenge that you gave him, he would just take it. And part of that was putting him, offering him the opportunity to pitch at Bard MBA because they have a pitch competition, which you're obviously familiar with. And he got second place. And it was so incredible to just see his growth and to see how ambitious he was.
which then led him to a second pitch here in Lancaster, actually with the great social enterprise, but just something that we run. And he did win fourth place at that time, but still he was able to expand his reach and just get that exposure in front of hundreds and hundreds of individuals. But he ended up moving to Switzerland because I...
him and his wife got married. He got married at that time and they moved out of the country, but we still remain friends and he's still doing amazing work with his company.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (09:27)
So to go back to something you had said initially before the sidebar, how did you get to found a loom and get started on the work that you're doing with these entrepreneurs? Like how'd you get here?
Melisa Baez (09:39)
man, how far back do you want me to go?
Mim Plavin-Masterman (09:41)
I didn't, well,
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (09:42)
Well, honestly, do backstory. We want to hear backstory. This is a six hour podcast. No, but seriously, give us some roots and even connect it to these ideas we've been talking about with Lenin and local and global. And by the way, Lenin, if you're hearing this, just shout out. Nice to, nice to, we got to reconnect.
Melisa Baez (09:47)
Please.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (09:47)
I want, I do, I like that. I like a good backstory. Yeah.
Melisa Baez (09:55)
Ruh!
Shout out to Lenin. He has a place in my heart, that man. All right, so I'll take it back because I think the earliest memory of inspiration came while I was in undergrad. So I went to Temple University and I was studying to be a sports and recreation major. And at that point, literally was in school because I wanted to make money watching games. I just was in love with the sport. I was in love with sports. I was...
fascinated by the experience that you had when you walked into a stadium and.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (10:35)
Wait, what was it about that that was fascinating? The experience of walking into a stadium.
Melisa Baez (10:37)
my gosh, just the entertainment and there was just that feeling of excitement that you get and seeing the, I love the competition of the game first off, but then like you're sitting in the seats and it is like that energy you get from everyone like cheering on these guys that they don't know anything about, but it's like something about the game that's just so magical, right? Yeah. There's.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (10:57)
Right.
So you're there with everyone in a sense, right? You're all, there's a kinetic thing. What do you think that is?
Melisa Baez (11:06)
I love that. And also like when you played the sports for so long and you can't anymore, which was the case for me, just being in that environment was just as exciting as playing. Like being able to pick up on the game and whatnot. But it was just, it was really, that just, that energy caught me. And then I had some experiences in the classroom where we had these amazing opportunities to go and volunteer at the Sixers or with the Phillies.
And during that time, I was able to connect with some of the athletes. And so many of them were talking about, you know, the adversities that they had to overcome. And one of their purpose in becoming an athlete and making money was so that they can go back to their communities and help solve a lot of the problems that they personally had experienced. And at that point, I started to...
I started thinking about my pathway a little bit differently and thinking about, you know, if this was me, I would probably want to do the same thing because, you know, growing up, it was really rough for me. You know, we were a family of four living in poverty. I was the first one to go to college out of my family, first generation, right? And it was very difficult. And I always had that altruism that...
desire to give back and that servitude. That's the type of leadership that I kind of embodied. So I connect. Yeah.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (12:40)
Wait, wait, so talk to us about that. So you're relating the desire to be of service to some of the struggles you went through yourself growing up. Can you just talk to us about that? Yeah.
Melisa Baez (12:46)
Sure.
Yeah, I saw, sure. I saw myself in some of their stories. Obviously not in the fame light like some of these athletes did, but the giving back. I always felt like, you know, throughout my life, I met one or two people that really influenced or shaped me or were willing to kind of bring me under their wing. And I think because of these, what I call divine moments or interventions,
it helped elevate me and helped me learn and see the world in a different way. And just naturally, like just wanting to go to college and be able to continuously develop myself and develop my career, there was always that goal of like giving back. And so when I was in college and I saw these individuals, these athletes who were also very selfless and were giving back, I aligned myself with that. And so my,
That was the first time that I kind of had this little shift in where and how I wanted to shape my career. And again, I didn't know that you can kind of have a social enterprise. I didn't know that that existed. And I didn't know that you could, that this whole charity mindset was like very traditional for me and how I saw it. But I saw a lot of these people like,
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (14:13)
Hmm.
Melisa Baez (14:16)
going back home and building businesses and then hiring some of the young kids who weren't able to go to college or just providing opportunities in a way that was helping them shift generationally what opportunities could become of them. And I was fascinated with that. And at that point, and this is like my junior, senior year of college, right before I was graduating, where I was like, I would actually love to do more of this.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (14:22)
Mm.
Melisa Baez (14:45)
Like to not just get paid for watching the games, but more so how can I work alongside of these entrepreneurs or these athletes who have an entrepreneurial mindset, but also wanting to give back to their community in some capacity? How can I work alongside of them and help make that possible? So graduating from Temple University.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (14:57)
Mm -hmm.
Melisa Baez (15:12)
You know how I was saying, like you just have these like moments where you magic and you meet certain people that kind of put you in the right place around the right people at the right time. I had one of those moments shortly after I got back home. This was like in 2011 where I was just telling people, I was like, did anyone know I like want to work in the sports industry, but more so on charity or more so in...
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (15:19)
Hmm.
Mm -hmm.
Melisa Baez (15:42)
foundations and things like that. And I got connected to this young man who's the same age as me. He graduated from Conestoga Valley, which is a local high school, went to Maryland, was a quarterback there for a few years. He also came back home and decided to start a nonprofit called Children Deserve a Chance. And at that point, he was working with first generation students who were
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (16:00)
Hmm.
Melisa Baez (16:12)
matriculating into college, but needed additional resources. As first generation, there's a lot of barriers, not knowing about the college process, financial aid, grades in high school, and when it was most important to focus on your grades. Those are so many things that he was creating in that program. And he and I got connected, hit it off, and I became the program director there.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (16:28)
Yeah.
Mmm.
Melisa Baez (16:41)
And, you know, that hooked me for a good four years. I was committed to that mission. And to see it grow from like 15 students in this tiny 300 square office into a 1200 square foot office space with a hundred students rotating in and out. We were working with middle school to high school. It was just incredible. Our reach was around the entire county. It was...
It was beautiful in the sense of a pivotal professional experience for me to see what the nonprofit sector was doing and creating impact in the world. And going back to my comment about that hyper local impact, being able to see a difference in such a short period of time, I was only there for four years and I got to see these students go to college.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (17:28)
Hmm.
Melisa Baez (17:37)
I got to see students actually realize that college wasn't for them and that they were able to find an alternative that worked best for them. And us suggesting like what success meant for us in that sense too. And it was just very, it was like one of the best learning experiences that I had. I learned a lot about the nonprofit world, what I liked about it and what I didn't like about it.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (18:05)
We hold that thought about what you liked and what you didn't like about nonprofits. In a few minutes, I want to delve into this idea that you've described in terms of the moments when you meet certain people who take you under their wing and help you along the way. But before we get there, I think, and how Elum helps with that, I think, Mim, you had a question, if I could tell by your eyes, that was following up on what we've been saying.
Melisa Baez (18:08)
Thanks.
Hmm.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (18:32)
I mean, my question was definitely about how the moments, so you're talking about these moments that are inspiring you, how do those moments inspire you to say, okay, now I'm gonna found a loom or now I'm gonna go, so to me, it's still like a big leap of wanting to help people to be like, it's gonna look like this. How did the this, if you can see my air quotes, develop? Do you know what I'm asking?
Melisa Baez (18:55)
So when I transitioned, so I experienced a nonprofit sector for two of like the biggest career shaping moments of my life. Okay, so after I worked at Children Deserve a Chance Foundation, I worked at Assets. And at Assets, listen, the door opened for me to learn about what social enterprise was, to learn about B Corps. We had Jay come and speak to our entire.
business community about what B Lab was doing. And at that point they were just kind of touring the country and sharing the mission of B Lab. Jay is a co -founder of the B Corp movement and to have him come and speak in Lancaster. And to me, I'm like, it's just little Lancaster. It was like a celebrity coming and giving a speech to the business community about.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (19:33)
Tell everyone who J is if you don't mind in case.
Melisa Baez (19:53)
how business should be shaped to do business for good and create good and use it as a tool. And at that moment, like all these little, I call again, like these little pivots in my life, small pivots and interventions, were learning moments. I was seeing things in a different way. My perspective was shifting of like from nonprofit sector being as like,
a mode for change and creating solutions to a lot of the toughest problems in our community to then assets being something that was uplifting, right? We were seeing the businesses transform their communities in a for -profit model. And I started to go to conferences and meeting more incredible people like in on the global sense who are doing similar work. And
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (20:37)
Mm -hmm.
Melisa Baez (20:50)
between what I was learning from certain bad experiences, from good experiences, from the people I was connecting with, and also my own personal experiences of like how I learned best, you know, a loom was formed when I started to explore the world of sustainability and the definition of social and environmental impact, right? And how business,
should be a player in creating that change, right? It should be supporting the change and the movement of sustainability. And though it has been for many, many years, it still wasn't mainstream. And I live in a community that's highly read, right? It's very conservative. And when you start talking in the language that we do in our MBA programs or that we typically do with...
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (21:20)
Mm -hmm.
Mm -hmm.
Melisa Baez (21:46)
on like if you're at the World Economic Forum, like when you start using this language in the community that I live in, people automatically check out. They don't relate to that language. It's very liberal and it's not us. And that's how they're doing it. And yet the values were there, right? People believe in this. People want the wellbeing of individuals to be a primary focus, but there were a lot of barriers there. So,
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (21:57)
Yeah.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (21:58)
Right.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (22:06)
Hmm.
Mm -hmm.
Melisa Baez (22:17)
As I was experiencing these, I went to Bard and I got my MBA and I used my three years there to learn. Yeah.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (22:26)
Wait, before you get to your three years at Bard, can you, don't hold that thought. There's three things you've brought up which we gotta dig into, can we? So, do you wanna go first, Mim? So the first and foremost is you said this amazing thing. You said how business should be supporting the movement for sustainability in the mainstream. I wanna hold that thought because then you followed it with something I'm hoping actually to delve into a bit, which is you said.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (22:35)
You go.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (22:55)
that we can't afford to use this exclusionary in language that we might use in just one place because there are people even I don't even I shouldn't even use the word even right there are folks across the various politics who who want to be and have the values to be a part of it did I get that right can you elaborate on that a little bit yeah so your idea that
Melisa Baez (23:20)
Say that again? They cut off. Say that again?
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (23:25)
Business should support the movement for sustainability in the mainstream and that in order to do that, we can't be using language that only appeals in certain circles, right? You, I think, used the word of the World Economic Forum you gave as an example. So instead, it sounded like you were saying we need to come up with ways of talking about these things, which are values that can transcend some of our divisions. And so I wondered if you could pick up on that, that what you learned,
as you got into doing Elum about how to take the jargon out, take the exclusion out of the way we think and talk about sustainability.
Melisa Baez (23:58)
Yes.
So this is that discovery I had during my, some of it like, there were things I always thought about during my, you know, time leading up to Bard, but while I was at Bard, I recognized this and it actually became like the thesis, like the core hypothesis and focus of my thesis was language as a huge barrier to access of sustainability. Because what I found was here in Lancaster,
People are doing this, people are doing the work. So I'm sitting in class and we're going over all these theories. We're talking about our strategies. We're talking about leadership in these frameworks. And I'm just like, you know, it was beautiful for me to have this awakening that says I'm putting language, universal language or sustainable language to the practices that I've seen.
And I'm able to see a lot of the small businesses in the case studies that we're going over. And I started to connect all of these and I, the common issue that I found and started to recognize was the language. And we make things and I mean, if you look back and you know, read like Donella Meadows, right? Thinking in systems. She talks about that a lot of the,
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (25:07)
Hmm.
Melisa Baez (25:28)
initial foundations to sustainable in business came from like the science context because a lot of it's all science based and that just happens to be a huge barrier that type of language with how small businesses are running and operating. We're talking about mom and mom and pop shops. We're talking about small enterprises and locally owned businesses and you know,
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (25:36)
Hmm.
Melisa Baez (25:57)
they're running their business as usual, but so many of them have heart. So many of them just naturally are taking care of their employees. So many of them are thinking about the quality and the supply chain of their products, yet they're not labeling it in the same way that some of these B -corps are or certified certifications and using the jargon that we're using like on this side of things.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (26:18)
Hmm.
Melisa Baez (26:26)
And it was just really interesting to me that like, when we look at the politics or we look at this polarization of sustainability and climate change and all these things, it's when you take out that language, people at the core still care about it. So the values and the mindsets are there. It's just that what's opposing is a lot of the language that unfortunately, because of the climate of our political.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (26:43)
Mm -hmm.
Melisa Baez (26:56)
landscape at the moment, it's making it more of a challenge.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (27:03)
So to pick up on that for a bit, so you have all these small businesses that are trying to do things that are sustainable. Can you give us some examples of the kinds of sustainable changes that they're trying to make? Maybe even how you help some of them in the work that you do at Elume.
Melisa Baez (27:19)
Sure. So, Allume right now, one of my favorite clients, and he's a young guy, he's very ambitious, him and his partner, they run a company called Ripple Hub. They're focused, it isn't like the music, the creative economy, so music and entertainment and things like that. So what they found was they connect a lot with artists and they understand that...
artists, there's a lot of stigma around like the starving artists or things that are so hard for them and but they have such incredible talent and it's not just the talent but it's what their talent does for a community, right? Like what music can do to transform their communities but also like the value of music and entertainment for young kids, for
here in the Southeast end, like even it's just the entertainment that happens here in Lancaster, like at the core of everything, there's music. So their whole mission is to create platforms and events where up and coming artists will get so much exposure and hopefully land a gig or a contract or whatever their goals are, help mentor them and create these opportunities for them to.
kind of take that next step. So it becomes almost like a springboard. They've also found that like, if they go into the school systems, cause they saw an opportunity there, where schools have cut huge budgets in the arts. So they have gone into after school nonprofits, they have gone into school and have created programs where they teach kids how to not just record, you know, music, but...
the whole industry, they teach them about the history of music, how it ties into their culture, how to write lyrics, how to then do the technical work of producing the music. And then they create community events where they literally bring the whole community out and they get to perform. So they get to, again, going back to experiences like what Elune, you know, prides itself in. It's creating behavioral mindset shifts in the process of developing these programs.
So they saw that how successful it was with some of the adults. They wanted to try it out with students and they saw an opportunity, a huge gap with what was being cut in the programs or in the schools. So now here we are. They started off with one or two nonprofits that they were going in and running afterschool programs. But most recently, helping them organize and restructure some of their internal systems and focusing on their program development. We helped shaped their
One, how their leadership and team navigates the work, help restructure that, help utilize their resources in the most effective way considering their bottom line, but most importantly, develop a way for them to measure their impact so that their mission is completely aligned with the work that they're doing. How are they showing the change in the students and in the communities? Quantifying this impact is still, you know, always a challenge when you're working with social entrepreneurs.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (30:16)
Mm -hmm.
Yeah.
Melisa Baez (30:42)
So we sit down and we really work with them. Like we look at what's the change that they want to see in students. What's the change that they want to see in artists and help get them to write these things down on paper so that their activities align with that. Go ahead.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (30:56)
It feels feels if you're you're this triangle, Melissa, between Melisa, my values are, the sort of language I use to talk about them, and the ways in which I actually can demonstrate or measure my impact. Values, language, measurement. And I wanted to focus on the first two for a second and then go back to the third. You kind of blew blew my a few minutes ago because you were talking about...
Melisa Baez (31:13)
Mmm.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (31:23)
people, business people whose values were right there with certain goals and sustainability, but who would be alienated if you talked about it using certain language, right? And then you made me think about, have you ever had the experience where you're, there's this music you like, but because it's a certain genre that you think of as not you, you don't allow yourself to like it? And if you had this experience, you have this private moment and you're like, wait a minute.
Melisa Baez (31:49)
Yeah.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (31:52)
This is amazing. You know what I'm talking about for me when I was a teenager?
Melisa Baez (31:57)
It's movies. I connect with that with like movie genres. I okay, so Okay, I have recently gotten obsessed with Korean drama so don't judge me but for the longest time I was like no like, you know I grew up watching novellas and then I just got to a point where I was like I can't like that's so dramatic. I don't want to be associated with that. Like it's so cheesy.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (32:01)
Okay, give an example.
Melisa Baez (32:24)
One of my friends got me in a Korean drama and it's changed my life like my hands Let's see lovely runner just came out that's a pitch so if anyone's into it love a little cute
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (32:28)
Wait, what Korean drama are you allowed to say?
That's what people tune in to What If instead for. It's like, what should I be watching instead of what I'm watching on Netflix right now? But wait, seriously, this is amazing what you're doing here, right? And you know that I, I don't know about you, Mem, you might have grown up in a situation similar to mine, but I was so tempted to snark on you, right? When you're like, don't judge me, right? Because if someone says don't judge me, I want to go right into snarky mode, right? But.
Melisa Baez (32:58)
Of course, I know I always set myself up for that.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (33:00)
But it would have completely gone against everything we're saying, right? In this idea that there's the thing you love that you can't love because it's associated with something you don't say, this is not my thing, right? And the connection that's blowing my mind that I hear you making is that that might be for streaming Korean drama, it might be for a certain genre of music, but that it's also for something as urgent.
as sustainability. Stephen Williams, do you remember Stephen? You first, what were you going to say?
Melisa Baez (33:31)
And so.
Well, I was gonna say, so like what if instead it's like the, you know, the topic of your podcast. Like I always, when I think about a loom, how we got here, the biggest question for me that I wanted to answer is, first it started off, you know, is sustainability accessible? You know, the resources, the framework, the language, like I, that's what I focus on dissecting. Like, is it accessible? And.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (34:01)
Let's just pause there for a second. Is sustainability accessible? Now there's a question, keep going.
Melisa Baez (34:06)
So I went on, you know, I studied my hometown and when I realized that so many people taking the language away were doing it, the values were there, you know, the heart was there, the strategies were there, the language wasn't. When I went to Oaxaca and I went to the Dominican Republic, the belief, the cultural expectation around how we should treat
the land, how we should treat the people, how we treat the water, you know, that was there. The business side wasn't, didn't really match up to like the level that we wanted to. Like that was a gap that we saw, an opportunity that we saw. The same thing in the Dominican Republics. There were some cultural components that we saw there. And so when I think about what if,
After thinking about the initial question of whether or not sustainability is accessible, I mean, the answer for me was yes, but, and then it was yes, and how can we just make this the norm? How can we just make this practice a cultural norm where the mindset, we focus on the mindset shift, where we focus on the business practice.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (35:14)
you
Hmm.
Melisa Baez (35:31)
and then that our communities recognize that this is just how things are. Because at the end of the day, a lot of the practice that I saw here in Lancaster, I saw in Oaxaca, I saw in the Dominican Republic, I see in other communities around the US, but the biggest challenge and obstacle is this language.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (35:53)
it's, wouldn't it be the most tragic thing in the world if we failed to convert our economy and our community sustainability because of how we talked about it? Right? Like, if you're a kid, right, and you, you know, there was food we ate in my household and people who weren't from our culture, right, we ate Mexican -American food, right? And they'd come and they wouldn't know what to do with certain things.
Melisa Baez (36:05)
Yeah.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (36:22)
These weren't like, you know, store -bought tacos. These were often food that people didn't know what to make of it. And so, like, you'd see them have to get past. Have you had that in food from another culture where you have to get past it, right? Or, you know, we were just making a Bangladeshi dinner recently, and you eat the rice in ways that you soak up all the sauce with your hands to make it more delicious. And for some people, it's like these practices will stop you.
Melisa Baez (36:32)
Mm -hmm.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (36:48)
But I don't wanna digress from where you're going because Melisa, I think you've taken us to this incredible place. Wouldn't it be the saddest thing in the world if we didn't do it because of how we talk about it? I mean, this is so stupid, right? But the flip side is can you reframe it? Go ahead.
Melisa Baez (37:03)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm. And so...
And that's, that's where we're getting at. And that's part of the work of the loom. So, you know, we're working with ripple effect, ripple hub. And. You know, we've also have gotten contracts. So in the sense, you know, Alejandro, you kind of talked a little bit about, you know, a loom. Yeah. We do things a little bit different. Our whole mission has become by asking, you know, what if, and how can we, you know,
Our mission has become how do we get small medium enterprises to just do business for good. And the aspiration is to be a B Corp. Cool. We can help you do that. We'll provide that roadmap for you. But that's not the, that's not always the case for people because you know, that there's a lot of challenges just to get there, but the goal should just be as you as a leader running and operating a business.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (37:46)
Mm, mm.
Melisa Baez (38:07)
that has a purpose, that has or that leaves a positive impact, whether it's social, environmental, climate, whatever it is, whatever makes sense to you, because you are running this business.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (38:21)
So can you give a couple examples of how it illum in your practices? I've had the privilege of the journaling practice using it with people all around the world that you Created in the self -exploration modules on rebel base That's the Illume method and and I've watched people put this in their own terms right across every culture and industry I think of this very briefly as when I was a teenager. I wrote poetry I
Melisa Baez (38:42)
Really? Mm -hmm.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (38:51)
And I remember being embarrassed because I wasn't sure if like, you know, poetry was like cool, right? But then around the same time, hip hop started getting really popular, right? And, you know, I grew up on the block where breakdancing was invented and all this stuff. And suddenly I was like, wait, this is poems. Wait, lyrics are poems. Yeah.
Melisa Baez (39:08)
Everyone had a turn.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (39:10)
I'm sorry.
Melisa Baez (39:13)
one was Carrie Eternal writing down their lyrics and they made it so cool! They made it cool to walk around and my gosh that idea for this new song just came out they whip it out start taking and it just became culturally how quickly it changed.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (39:29)
That's it.
all the poets that never would have done poetry, right? Now, can you do that? Can Illum, can we take sustainability and make it not some poem that you don't want to be associated with, but hip hop or whatever it is for the people? And how are you approaching that?
Melisa Baez (39:51)
So that's part of our method, right? Is one, we know we've worked with so many individuals, people who are bought into this, people that push back, people who understand the value of impact but are working within a shell of a business that's been around for 80 years. And at the core of it, it's mindset shift first, buy in second.
Organizational shift third, and then community.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (40:21)
Give us an example. Like tell us a story about these shifts I didn't mean to cut your four things but mindset shift or tell us the four with an example
Melisa Baez (40:26)
So here we are.
So here we are, just to kind of lay it out, this is like our flow of our method, our theory of change, right? We created this journaling experience because there's so many weird feelings that come with understanding who you are. There's pushbacks and diving into this. So we create a journaling experience for people to be able to write down their ideas on paper. We created a journaling prompts that gets them to understand their purpose.
how it could align with their business and how it can show up. It's private, it's for them and it allows them to do it on their own pace. So that's like step one, just have your own time to kind of self reflect in this safe environment that works for you. No shame, no one is going to kind of attack you and say, my gosh, this.
this is too political or this is no one's here shaming you. This is your own safe space. It's all on your own terms. And also we also understand the beautiful and the power that comes in the habit of journaling, right? And we wanted to introduce like that experience first. And then this, well, our story.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (41:29)
Yeah. So it's in your terms, right? It's in your terms. Yeah.
You know, do you mind if I go back first? You first, you first.
Melisa Baez (41:51)
Okay, let me just lay out like, so we have the journaling experience, then we offer coaching or consulting to kind of help talk things out from that experience, to help dissect a company and do, you know, impact audits and help them understand that what they're doing is a great stepping stone and reassure them what they're doing is good. But let's elevate this in the sense of like, aligning your values into potential ways of bringing impact into your into your work.
And then we offer, you know, going back to my own personal experience and selfishly, I like, I wanted to bring this into the business of a loom is travel because I found that the most beautiful moments of mindset shifts that happened for me, whereas when I went and saw what was happening and existing in the world, what success looked like or what.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (42:33)
Mm -hmm.
Hmm.
Melisa Baez (42:47)
you know, these frameworks and theories that we're learning what they look like in action. So we know that some individuals might need to see before they believe. And so we're offering these trips around the world for them to say, I know I kind of value these components to sustainability, but I need to see what it looks like in a community and how to validate my ideas and.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (42:50)
Mmm. Mmm.
Melisa Baez (43:15)
for me to be able to come back and talk to my boss or talk to my leadership and say, here are tangible outcomes and here are ways that it's truly driving value into the economies, to stakeholders, to shareholders, because it exists. And if we can create, if it's existing here, this is a great case study, so why can't we do this here?
So this, that became like this full circle approach and how we're driving change and hopefully, you know, creating that cool hip hop effect with sustainability, but by allowing people to personally explore, exploring the world and seeing case studies in real life action, and then also finding ways to integrate, you know, what resonates a little bit from both experiences, from the journaling and the travel into their own. So,
That's a little bit of, you know, the whole design of a loom. And, you know, when I say creative for me is like, yes, when we talk about integrating sustainable practice into a business could be very expensive, could be a huge change to an organization. Before you even get that, you need to work on you. You need to work on your mindsets and you need to develop really strong value system.
and a great pitch to be able to show that this is going to have a return on your business. And for small businesses who already are short on resources, time and money, they really need to think about this. They really need to think that this is going to be a long -term investment and feel bought into it themselves and be able to bring their team along with it.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (45:09)
So a couple of, well, it's an observation and then some questions. So since these are smaller businesses, are there people who are dedicated to sustainability as a job or is it just sort of part of all the things that they do? The reason I'm asking is I think it's actually a benefit if they're not segmented off. Like in some larger companies, you have someone who's like, I'm the climate person or I'm the sustainability person.
Melisa Baez (45:13)
Yeah.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (45:34)
and you're like in your own little cubicle and no one goes to see you. It's very helpful, right? So like versus in some ways there's a benefit of being small that you can't siphon or section off these concerns that you have to embed them in.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (45:41)
Ha ha ha ha.
This is the way the world ends with the climate person in their car desk in this basement like the basement and office space that's where the climate desk was
Melisa Baez (45:48)
Right.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (45:51)
I'm sorry.
Melisa Baez (45:51)
Peace!
Mim Plavin-Masterman (45:57)
Right? Yeah. I mean, it feels like that in the wire where they put the detail in the basement and the terrible creepy cobwebby steps, right? So my point saying this was like, in one way, I think it's a blessing that you have these people that they have to do this in addition to the regular job. So they have to find ways to fold it in and the business case in some ways becomes more straightforward. But then the other pieces you are working with, as you pointed out, the shell of, or these 80 year old structures.
Melisa Baez (46:19)
Hmm.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (46:26)
and people don't like change, right? So I wanna go back to your point of like the mindset change of like, how do you get the people, how does the change happen when you have these forces pulling in opposite directions?
Melisa Baez (46:28)
Mm -hmm.
Yeah. So I'll give you an example because Lancaster is, I just think it's such a great example. So while I was working at assets, we started the B Corp movement here. People had heard about it, but it wasn't popular. We maybe had one certified B Corp at that time.
So what Lancaster did, it was part of our mission to work with the small to medium sized businesses from the design phase, but also for those existing businesses. The question was always like, how do we get them to buy in into this idea of impact? So we decided to bring in, similar to what I'm doing with the Loom in the sense of brought...
successful for -profit businesses that kind of resembled the business community here in Lancaster. We brought them into town and we held breakfast series. We held kind of like a forum where we brought in the head and the co -founder of B Lab to talk about the movement. We talked about the principles. We brought in guest speakers every single month to talk about
how their business is operating and how it starts with the leader and how the design starts within through their value system and then through their strategy, through their governance and how on onto all of these pieces and that it should be integrated into their culture and not an afterthought. And where it's not an afterthought, which...
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (48:12)
Mm -hmm.
Right, right, not an afterthought.
Melisa Baez (48:29)
In Lancaster, I would say prior to that, it was a really strong philanthropic community. We're like a nonprofit hub. But we also have a really strong thriving business community. And so what you would see is at the end of the year, the traditional write out a check, if you had like a nice additional cash flow, you would write a check to a couple charities. And businesses still do that. And it's great, right?
Everyone's intertwined and they support one another. It's beautiful. But what we were trying to do is to show that impact can actually be had within your organization. But if you were more intentional about your hiring practice and you were more intentional about how you treat your staff, or you were more intentional about where your products and your produce came from, that that can have just as a strong impact on the people that you're working with.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (49:10)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.
Yeah.
Melisa Baez (49:27)
instead of just writing a check at the end of the year. And so it just became like just that approach and just bringing in live business, like live case studies and seeing and showing our community, hey, this is a great vision for us. We're doing, here are some tangible ways that our communities can do. Where Loom comes in is we're just, we're still riding that out. You know, even though,
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (49:30)
Yeah, I -
Yeah.
Yeah.
Melisa Baez (49:56)
B Corp isn't the end goal for us. What we're doing is still working with our small businesses and working with them individually to say, let's talk about your values. And instead of just writing a check at the end of the year, let's see where in your business we could drive more impact. Where in your business makes sense for you to elevate and be more purpose focused.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (50:07)
Mm -hmm.
Mmm.
Yeah, it's really beautifully said. So it needs to be integrated and not an afterthought. And that means starting with your values, right? And so that it becomes through and through. It makes me think of Sylvia Ashton Warner wrote this book called Teacher that I read when I was a teenager and she was teaching reading to young children, Maori children.
Melisa Baez (50:35)
Exactly.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (50:46)
and they were using the British version of the Dick and Jane books, right, as these little kids sitting in London or something like that.
and nobody was learning to read and she switched it and she said, no, let me actually talk to these kids about the words that are prevalent in their lives. And it might be a word for an animal or I think she talked about the word for skeleton, right? There were animal skeletons around and then she started to tell the story using these key words that the kids brought in and suddenly the reading went through the roof, right? I almost feel like you're doing the same thing with sustainability at Elume.
Melisa Baez (51:22)
Mm.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (51:22)
you're saying we need to work with you and your values. Your values are those keywords, right? On your terms. So you have the journaling practice, you have the working with the leaders, and then you're bringing case studies so folks can see who somebody I might recognize myself in to do that. So I know that was a long thing just now, but I just wanted to kind of recap something very exciting that I'm hearing you say, but there's also a question, man.
Melisa Baez (51:27)
Mm -hmm.
Yeah.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (51:52)
The question is this, if we want to do this fairly quickly and at scale, I know that's really annoying, right? Because you've just talked about working one by one and everybody in, but like if we wanted to make that practice available in enough places to make the change, right? If we wanted, you know, again, back to, you know, writing a poem versus freestyling.
Melisa Baez (52:10)
Mm.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (52:19)
If we wanted to make a big shift like that, is there anything you're learning that could help us where in so much of America, for example, sustainability, there's all this backlash, right? And as I think you met him in your classmates, Stephen Williams once said to me, we'll never make progress unless sustainability becomes as all American as coal, right?
And like, is there a way based on your experiences, is there something you're learning that could help us do this throughout and quickly?
Melisa Baez (52:53)
So I don't know if this is cliche or not, but like I think about, you know, the, I think about me and I think about people that look like me and growing up who were some of the biggest influencers. Okay. When the Jordans came out, that man stood on that basketball court the first day that sneaker came out and that game after that game that he played.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (53:17)
Mm -hmm.
Melisa Baez (53:21)
There were lines outside of every single sneaker store with people of all races and ages waiting to spend. Like, but people who could not afford it were like saving up hundreds of dollars just to get this sneaker. Right. And that man just made sneakers so cool. And he, there was just something about.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (53:24)
Hmm. Hmm.
Yeah, and you remember you used to go up to a shot and you'd say, Jordan, or, you know, like, sometimes, yeah.
Melisa Baez (53:51)
the culture shift that he created. And it wasn't just black and brown folks, but it was everyone wanted to wear those Jordans. And I just, I really think about what's lacking in the sustainability movement. And I think about, we need more influential people who are just making this the normal way of business. And like, who is like the Michael Jordan?
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (54:17)
Mmm.
Melisa Baez (54:21)
of sustainability.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (54:22)
Listeners, you're hearing this, right? This is the great Melisa Baez putting out the call. Bring us the Jordan of green, right? Or whatever we're gonna call it, even if it's not called green anymore.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (54:28)
It's true.
Melisa Baez (54:28)
I mean, I am.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (54:31)
Yeah, she's throwing the... Yeah.
Melisa Baez (54:35)
But this is like the reality, right? It's like when we find someone who can make, and this is part of the work with, and this is what I love working with, like the creative economy, like entrepreneurs in the creative world, is just that they're so cool. Like they're changing the lives of young people. They're changing the lives of like millennials who are just interested in music because they're connecting with their culture.
And they're just making this impact world so cool. And like we're losing the technical language. Like they hear me saying it when I'm talking to them during like our coaching sessions, but it like to be able to just align yourself with their mission and you break down these barriers, you just realize how cool their work is. And then they find out how cool what we're teaching them is. They're like, I never thought about it that way.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (55:29)
Hmm.
Melisa Baez (55:32)
or like, I kind of heard these theories before, but it didn't, it never made sense with me. And it's the minute that we can get someone to just translate, which is what Elum is trying to do, and can make this culturally accessible to the point where people are not like, it's not a hippie thing, or it's not like, you know,
elitist thing, which is honestly like a huge issue with sustainability. Once we break down these like invisible layers, we like, it could just be so cool where it's not a second thought, right? When people feel that it's okay to just do business in this way. I think it'll take, I think it takes some Michael Jordan or for those non, I want to say LeBron James because he's like cool or.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (56:15)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Melisa Baez (56:24)
you know, Seth Curry, like, but you know how people are with it. They're teams.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (56:28)
I haven't taken an attempt at a three pointer since anyway. I've never been there saying LeBron. It's it's aging myself here. Dominique. Okay. So.
Melisa Baez (56:35)
I'm just, whatever.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (56:39)
my god.
Melisa Baez (56:40)
Yeah, I just, what I'm just, you hear what I'm saying. I think if we had more influential stars, like athletes, like once we hit this mainstream of like coolness with how this stuff is gonna just land with people, I think.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (56:56)
Yeah.
Melisa, let's make this a call to action. Keep going. You think, keep going, because I wanna actually.
Melisa Baez (57:07)
Listen, if there is, I wanna call out some, any celebrity, any athlete who is an entrepreneur to call me. To call me tomorrow and.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (57:22)
Yeah. And how do you spell a loom? How do they reach a loom is spelled E -L -U -E people. So if you're hearing this and you're one of the people that writes us on WhatsApp from somewhere in five continents and says, this is inspiring to me. This shows me what I can do. Look up a loom.
Right? If your organization has a rebel based platform, you can just find the self exploration module, self inquiry and sustainable venture, which Melisa created with her team at Elune. Either way, or you can get a physical journal from them. And this is not an advertisement. This is a call to action. I don't care how you do it, but get at that work and get somebody who is influential in your community. I don't care if they're a sports figure or a Tik Tok star. Get somebody who is ready.
to make sustainability not something that you only do if you're really good and righteous and part of some group. No, the way we do things today.
Melisa Baez (58:22)
Yeah. Yeah.
There you go.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (58:28)
Melisa, you're a rock star. We can pick the genre. You can be a country star if you want, you know, but you're a star in my world and you're calling other stars, which is kind of the best part. Maybe we can even.
Melisa Baez (58:31)
Thanks.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (58:43)
Mim, if you had a place you wanted to end this, I would love to close kind of where you started. There is this beautiful idea where you talked, Melisa, about the people who had helped you along the way and the things that you would see. And you talked about the wire, Mim. Like I think of the idea of soft eyes, right? The things we see. Do you guys remember when they would be doing surveillance and...
have to use soft eyes to see what they would otherwise miss. I feel as if there's a soft eyes opportunity here to see the person that can do that role in your community or your network. Any thoughts on that in closing? Finding those people who help you and finding those moments that you otherwise might miss to make this happen, which is really on all of us now.
Melisa Baez (59:38)
I mean, I always tell people, you know, one of the things that I learned early on in my journey that I think helped me to be open to this like wire and this connection to finding the right people is just having this mindset of being a lifetime learner. The minute that you think that you know everything or have access to everything, you end up not and you limit yourself. every day. I'm learning from both of you today. So yeah.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (1:00:03)
Wait, you're still learning, Bias?
Melisa Baez (1:00:08)
Every I... I know I always say is the minute that you step into any space, whether it's like a friendship, a coffee date with someone or a class or a meeting, you should be walking out of there with like one something you've learned or something that you reaffirmed or a question of wanting to learn more of.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (1:00:09)
Good, there's a pop quiz for all of us on each other after this.
Melisa Baez (1:00:35)
Every opportunity that you have in engaging with another person, for me, that has been the driver, that kind of concept. And I think that is a piece of advice that I would give anyone. If you want to just keep growing and developing and continue this wire and be able to kind of flow with all of the changes that exist in your life, because we all know, right? Like that.
picture of like what success looks like. It's not this perfect uphill. It's so many ebbs and flows. You just need to be open and willing to kind of challenge and welcome in new ways of thinking and learning. So I'll leave it at that.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (1:01:10)
Hmm.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (1:01:23)
I love that. I'd like to close with a quote, if that's okay, Walt Whitman, be curious, not judgmental.
Melisa Baez (1:01:29)
Exactly. I love that.
Mim Plavin-Masterman (1:01:32)
Yeah.
Alejandro Juárez Crawford (1:01:33)
Melisa, thank you so much.
Melisa Baez (1:01:35)
Thank you, Ale. Thank you, Mim.