Putting Early Childhood Educators First
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A couple years ago, early education and childcare expert Rhian Allvin made a drastic change. After decades working in policy and advocacy, Rhian decided to start Brynmor Early Education and Preschool, which now has sites in Virginia and Washington, D.C. In this bonus episode, host Gloria Riviera talks to Rhian about what it means to truly value early childhood educators, and how that leads to quality care, a diverse student body, and a more sustainable model for childcare.
This episode is presented by The J. Willard and Alice S. Marriott Foundation and the Bainum Family Foundation.
Special thanks to our partners who have made this season possible!
This series is produced with Neighborhood Villages. Neighborhood Villages is a Massachusetts-based systems change non-profit. It envisions a transformed, equitable early childhood education system that lifts up educators and sets every child and family up to thrive. In pursuit of this vision, Neighborhood Villages designs, evaluates, and scales innovative solutions to the biggest challenges faced by early childhood education providers and the children and families who rely on them, and drives policy reform through advocacy, education, and research. Visit www.neighborhoodvillages.org to learn more.
This season was made possible with generous support from Imaginable Futures, a global philanthropic investment firm working with partners to build more healthy and equitable systems, so that everyone has the opportunity to learn and realize the future they imagine. Learn more at www.imaginablefutures.com.
This series is presented by The J. Willard and Alice S. Marriott Foundation.
This series is presented by the Bainum Family Foundation. Through their WeVision EarlyEd initiative, they are elevating the voices of families and early childhood professionals, their “proximity experts,” to generate equitable and practical solutions to make the ideal vision of child care in America real. You can learn more at wevisionearlyed.org.
This season is presented by The Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, an organization working to improve the lives of individuals living in poverty and experiencing disadvantage throughout the world. Learn more at hiltonfoundation.org.
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Transcript
SPEAKERS
Rhian Allvin, Gloria Riviera
Gloria Riviera 00:11
On this show, we talk a lot about valuing early childhood educators and how crucial it is to the healthy development of young children. This idea of taking care of the people taking care of our children by investing in them, offering benefits and a livable wage, an idea that unfortunately isn’t happening enough.
Rhian Allvin 02:50
We’ve put so much energy and effort and dollars into the systems and structures around early childhood education, but the number one driver of whether or not we’re going to deliver on the promise of quality is early childhood educators. Like period full stop.
Gloria Riviera 03:07
Today we’re going to spotlight a preschool that values its early childhood educators, and the founder who figured out how to do that through business innovation and creative thinking.
Rhian Allvin 03:18
We’ve got this marketplace that is broken, and I do have two business degrees, and I just started thinking, God, there’s got to be a better way to make the economics in this field work.
Gloria Riviera 03:33
I’m Gloria Riviera, and this is no one is coming to save us a show about America’s child care crisis. In this bonus episode, we’re talking to early education and child care expert Rhian Allvin. After decades working in policy and advocacy, rien saw positive changes in the field, but was still really frustrated. We’ve
Rhian Allvin 03:54
made so much progress in early childhood education in the last 25 years since we’ve had neuroscience very compelling, irrefutable neuroscience behind kind of what we’ve all felt and known, that these first five years of life are important, and yet most children are not in high quality settings, and early childhood educators are kind of left behind.
Gloria Riviera 04:17
So she made a hard pivot about a year ago, Rhian opened brynmore Early Education and preschool for children ages six weeks through five years old. The first center opened in Virginia, a second in Washington, DC this past July, and they’re delivering on things that have been lacking in the field for so long, quality care, a diverse student body and staff that feel valued. Just prior to doing this, Rian spent almost a decade in Washington, DC, leading an organization devoted to valuing early childhood educators. She was the CEO of the National Association for the Education of Young Children. It’s a big name, so it goes by its acronym, NAEYC.
Rhian Allvin 05:00
NAEYC is the professional association for early childhood educators. NAEYC is to early childhood educators as the American Academy of Pediatrics is to pediatricians. And I wanted to be part of figuring out, how do we invest in the early childhood education workforce. And, you know, connect the fact that you’ve got this most profound period in developmental growth for young children and educators who are making poverty level wages and have no health insurance or retirement benefits. So during my time there, I spent an enormous amount of time on the hill and working on federal policy.
Gloria Riviera 05:37
Through that work, Rhian helped almost double federal child care development funding from 2.8 billion to 5.2 billion in 2018 Rhian was also at the helm of the organization during the start and peak of the pandemic.
Rhian Allvin 05:52
I mean, the child care field imploded during covid and I think they see played a really important role with all of its polling data with the work we did to get $50 billion in ARPA funding. And it was just after kind of the covid crisis kind of started to die down a little bit that I wrapped up my time at NAEYC.
Gloria Riviera 06:12
I mean, you’ve just listed some pretty remarkable accomplishments for those nine years. So I’m curious what happened during year nine? What? What made you think, Hmm, okay, my work is done here. What do I do next? Because it sounds like things were going pretty well at naci. So why leave?
Rhian Allvin 06:31
Yeah, I loved NAEYC, and I still love NAEYC, and I’m a proud member of NAEYC, but I guess it got increasingly frustrating for me to just be marching on with this very decisive neuroscience and to know that we still only have 7% of child care centers in the country that are naci accredited, and to know that over 50% of the Early Childhood Education Workforce qualifies for public health benefits. And you know, fewer than 15% have employer sponsored health insurance. And I mean, you can probably count on a couple hands, like, how many folks have any kind of retirement benefits? And so I just it was my background. I do have two business degrees. And I just started thinking, God, there’s got to be a better way to make the economics in this field work. And how is it that we can’t solve this? And so for me, it was looking at the market in early childhood education and to say, I will always care deeply about policy and advocacy, and we’ll continue to advocate from my new vantage point, but it was really getting to me that we’ve got this marketplace that is broken, and even you know, we’re always going to need more public dollars, but the market itself has choices to make in how it shows up for young children and for early childhood educators and for families. And why aren’t we doing better? And so I just started, like, weekends, just kind of running various Profit and Loss scenarios. And like, could you do this differently? Like, could this look differently? And I think one of the issues in early childhood education, in terms of the economics and the financing of early childhood education, is that 90% of the market are one site programs, and some of them are super high quality, like a lot of them are really high quality, a lot of them are not. But regardless of quality, even if you wanted to, it’s really hard to make the math work, because there’s no economies of scale. You’re not being able to spread your HR function out over multiple sites, or spread your accounting function out over multiple sites, and so the fact that these are single site programs makes the math not impossible, but tricky.
Gloria Riviera 08:50
Most childcare and preschool programs, whether it’s in someone’s house or in a center, have only one site programs with multiple locations are not the norm, and those programs come with their own unique challenges.
Rhian Allvin 09:03
When you’re that large, you also have investors that care about what your returns are, and if you’re publicly traded, you have a marketplace that cares about what your returns are, and it’s hard, not impossible. It is hard to get the kind of returns that those entities demand and still make the investments in the early childhood education workforce. It was like, how do you do this differently, and what’s the sweet spot, and how do you build the economies of scale, but invest back in your workforce? And so that’s what I started really. I always, I’ve got to try to do this. I have to try to do this. And so that was the birth of Bryn Mawr.
Gloria Riviera 09:43
Bryn Mawr has two sites, the first in Lorton, Virginia, and the other in the heart of Washington, DC. The preschool stands out for a few reasons.
Rhian Allvin 09:53
The two biggest pieces of the Bryn Mawr model are having children across socioeconomic spectrum. From who can afford childcare, who have access to high quality and then secondly, the investments we make in the workforce. So we’re paying for really generous health insurance. We match a retirement plan, we have FSA accounts. We do 410, hour days as part of our model. We have really doubled down on and it’s an experiment like what we’re hoping will attract and retain, we’re trying to pay wages and salaries that are like, at least at the bottom of what early child educators going into the K 12 system could make.
09:53
You opened its first location in 2023 and I’m curious what it was like for you to shift from all your years in policy work to running a preschool. And you know, I’m thinking, are you there seeing these kids come through the doors every day? I mean, that’s, yeah, that’s adorable. What was that like for you?
Rhian Allvin 10:48
It’s been humbling because it’s really, really hard Gloria, but so I’m where I’m supposed to be, and I’m loving it. And there’s a part of me that has an operational brain. So being able to get in the weeds in the operations of an entity like this has been really exciting, too. So yes, we opened our first center this last October, and the first center is here in Northern Virginia, and it was 100 year old maximum security prison.
Gloria Riviera 11:20
Yeah, you heard that, right? Rhian’s childcare center in Lorton is part of a development that was once an overcrowded prison. It was built in 1916 and the last prisoners were removed in 2001 now it’s a mix of single family homes, apartments, recreational facilities, and Bryn Mawr.
Rhian Allvin 11:40
I have to tell you, from the day I left Macy till when the Lorton location opened, was about 18 months, which, by all accounts, was fast like it was. We had a cold, dark shell. It was an old prison from, oh my gosh, we’re using 100 year old blueprints. Is the plumbing going to be the way it says it’s going to be when we break open the floors and all these things. I mean, still to this day, I look back and I was like, Oh, wow, I’m glad that worked out, because that was a super risky decision to do, and I’m just I have, I had a lot of partners who were cheering me on and supporting me in so many ways. It was just everything from the ground up. So for the first six months of brynmore, in addition to doing all of the external work and that sort of thing, I literally opened up the center every morning, and was the receptionist and the operations associate, and very gladly turned that role over to and one of our amazing team members who is now doing that. And then we opened our second center the first week of July. We began operations on July 5, at Diplo tots in Washington, DC.
Gloria Riviera 12:48
I mean, these are not small things. I mean, can we talk about how much you did have to raise for the Lorton site? Is that, like public knowledge?
Rhian Allvin 12:54
It is not, but it is, it is multi millions of dollars I had to raise for the Lorton site.
Gloria Riviera 12:59
Yeah, okay, but now we know. Now you know what it what it costs, right? Like, that’s a helpful piece of information, right.
Rhian Allvin 13:07
Well, so, so a year and a half, blood, sweat and tears, the first summer I was really trying to raise the money in the capital, oh my gosh. Like, I’ll never forget that summer. My husband calls it the Valley of sorrows, because I was like, I just, I’m not going to find this money. What was I thinking? Like, why did I think I could do this? Like, and so it has been such a personal emotional journey as well doing this.
Gloria Riviera 13:30
And then you have the Washington, DC location to open. I mean, what was that like? Was it as rough as opening the first one.
Rhian Allvin 13:37
With Diplo tots, the previous provider moved out on a Friday. We had one week to load and train our staff, and then we started serving children again that following Monday. So it was literally a week transition, with about a two month runway working with the board to get licensed by DC and all of the things and so monumental difference in time, we were so fortunate, you know, we brought most of the team from the previous provider. We got resumes and letters of reference and interviews. They just had a stellar team. And so we brought a lot of them over with us. And so it couldn’t have been more two more polar opposite experiences.
Gloria Riviera 14:23
Both experiences involved finding unique partners. That’s part of Bryn mawr’s business model. We’ll hear more on that after the break.
Gloria Riviera 16:45
Part of Bryn mawr’s business model involves finding intriguing partners.
Gloria Riviera 16:51
For Lorton, it was a developer. It was investors who are willing to have smaller returns than what typical private equity requires.
Gloria Riviera 17:53
In DC, it’s the federal government. Through a contract with the State Department, the federal government pays the occupancy costs of Diplo tots Bryn mawr’s second location, that allows Rhian to put funding she’d otherwise pay for rent towards employee benefits.
Rhian Allvin 18:08
Being able to partner with the federal government in the space and the materials and the equipment allows you to be able to have margins to reinvest in the workforce, which is like I would love to work. I mean, we’re not profitable yet. We are getting close to being profitable, but I would love to implement profit sharing when we are part of this is an experiment in business models that reinvest in the people who are making the business work in the first place.
Gloria Riviera 18:34
You know. You said that you’re able to and you do say it’s an experiment, but I mean 401, K, I mean all these benefits that you’re able to offer your workforce, that’s your decision. You’re able to do that because it’s a legit business and and why do we not have that in in so many other early education centers?
Rhian Allvin 18:54
Yeah, I do think there’s a few things. In some instances, the model in childcare is solid enough that it really, generally is a choice by the ownership on Where are you going to put the margins, where are you going to invest the margins, and what does that look like? And so there are instances where it’s a choice. There are instances where, with the current financing model in child care, it’s not a choice that you know, particularly in states where they’ve not invested more in childcare subsidy where they’ve not increased subsidy rates, or where families in general are poor, it is hard to get the margins to invest in the actual benefits it requires to attract and retain employees. And so one of the things I want to look at over time is, how do you scale this in unsuspecting places, like, how do you scale this near tribal lands? How do you scale it in rural communities? What kind of partners do you need? And I think that’s part of the experiment. I mean, my first two centers are in really dense urban settings, which there’s an abundance of partnerships, if you go after. After it, and there’s wealth in in these areas too. And so you can make trade offs and offsets in what you’re investing by also charging, you know, it’s not for those families that it’s for full fee paying. It’s not inexpensive to do this. And so, so I do think it’s both a matter of choice and just the foundational, the fundamental economics of child care in some instances are what hold us back.
Gloria Riviera 20:23
Can you tell me, in Virginia, when you opened that first center, how did you go about making the decision about what you would pay the employees.
Rhian Allvin 20:32
In every jurisdiction I’ve looked at I very first go in and see what the salary scales are for public school teachers, and then I say, Okay, can I come close to matching that? Is there a way to come close to matching that? And so that was my own personal benchmark. And then I you back into Okay, so then what do you have to charge? How big does it have to be like? I don’t see how you make this work with like a center under 9000 square feet. I think you have to have enough children in the center that, again, economies of scale is key to this. I mean, in opening, Diplo taught I now, can, you know, split my marketing costs between two centers. I can split my accounting costs between two centers. I can split my HR costs between two centers. And I’m oversimplifying it, but in essence, you start to build economies of scale, which is very difficult to do again, because most centers are single site one site programs, right? It’s hard to get the margins to then pay match 401, K plans.
Gloria Riviera 21:36
Okay, so when you look at what you are going to pay your staff, to me, it seems like you’re saying you’re reverse engineering how it’s been done, and you’re looking at prioritizing the margins for that purpose.
Rhian Allvin 21:48
That’s exactly right. That’s exactly right. It is reverse engineering. It’s like you start with, what do you want the floor of quality to be? How do you get there? What do you have to invest to get there? How do you set up pay and compensation and benefit structures, and then back into Who do you need at the table to be able to raise the kind of money you need to get that done?
Gloria Riviera 22:09
I mean, Rhian, it’s radical. It’s radical because it starts by putting the worker first, the provider first.
Rhian Allvin 22:15
I’m laughing that you say that because during my valley of sorrows, when I was raising money.
Gloria Riviera 22:21
That dark, dark place, right?
Rhian Allvin 22:24
And I heard, you know, I heard myself pitching this idea to people. I would get off the phone and be like, they’re probably thinking, like, why is this any different? Like, okay, she wants high quality and she wants to pay the workforce well, like, why is this magical? Why is this a unicorn thing? And I would hear myself describing this, and I would, you know, think, yeah, what is the unicorn thing? And so I appreciate you say that, but it’s sad that we’re in a place that this is so upending and transformational and isn’t the norm, like, if everybody in the marketplace starts to do it this way, like Bryn Mawr doesn’t need to grow a ton, you know? So I just it’s unfortunate that this is a model that is disruptive, because it shouldn’t have to be, right? It shouldn’t have to be.
Gloria Riviera 23:16
I mean, of course, what Rhian is doing at Bryn Mawr shouldn’t be considered disruptive. But the reality is, it’s not the norm. Far too many childcare providers make poverty wages, the idea of professional wages, benefits and incentives for further education that that is what makes staff members feel valued. And when you feel valued, it helps you do your best work. Brynmore currently employs about 60 staff members at both sites. That number will grow when they’re fully staffed and brynmore has the capacity to serve 262 students, the majority at Lorton, nearly half the kids at Lorton receive a subsidy or some kind of tuition assistance. I’m curious what it looks like in each classroom. Who are the students? How do you find them? How do they find you?
Rhian Allvin 24:15
Yeah, it’s a great question. And I would say the source of sleepless nights too, Gloria. Quite frankly, if I was like if I could think of the things like, what keeps you up or what kept me up at 2am I’ve been sleeping better these days, because it is a not for the faint of heart, but the children. That was the other reason I picked that space because it’s along the I 95 corridor, and it’s a place where there is a lot of gentrification. There’s also a lot of new immigrant families. There is a lot of multi generational families that have been in that area, and there’s a lot of military families. And while I am an enormous fan of Head Start, I absolutely am. I also think, if at all possible, from a policy perspective, it’s really good to have kids. From across socioeconomic means, in classroom together. It builds social capital. It just, I think it’s it’s good for everybody. And so I really wanted to try to make that happen and and I’m so proud of what we’ve been able to do with that. We take Virginia childcare subsidy. We have Department of Defense families that get childcare, aware of America money. We have full fee paying families, and then we also have a scholarship program through a very generous partner. And so I literally have children who live in deep poverty to children whose families are paying more than college tuition for their infants to be at brynmore. And so the classrooms, they’re so joyful, and they have so much life and energy in them. And we do a lot of family engagement events to really intentional bring families together. And we’ve very intentionally sought after and hired a workforce that represents that same level of diversity as the children who are in the classroom.
Gloria Riviera 25:57
When we come back, Rhian tells us how she knows she’s doing something right.
Gloria Riviera 27:48
It sounds to me like Bryn Mawr seems to be addressing some of the frustrations that you experienced watching childcare and how it operated in the country, the undervalued workforce, the lack of quality care. How did you figure that out?
Rhian Allvin 28:04
Let me be super clear. I can’t confirm that. Nine months in, I’ve figured it out. I would say this is a really important experiment in this field that I’m compelled to do that I’m hoping we get largely right, and we’ll see. I am really proud of the team that we’ve been able to build, and seeing them gel together, seeing them work with children and families. Our director of people and culture, she is amazing at hiring folks, but it is like finding a needle in the haystack, like even with the benefits and for 10 hour days and salaries that are competitive, it’s a tough market because, you know, it’s not as enticing as other markets, and so it’s hard work and and our team does an amazing job.
Gloria Riviera 28:49
Thank you for saying, No, I haven’t figured it out. I would be worried if we were talking to you and you were telling me that you’ve solved the childcare crisis. We are in process. We are, we are in the process of solving it. That’s when you are very much entrenched in that. Are there things that you have seen at Bryn Mawr that tell you you’re doing something right?
Rhian Allvin 29:10
There are, and I want to read to you an email I got from a family. Hang on one second.
Gloria Riviera 29:19
Oh my gosh, yay. We’re having a reading listeners.
Rhian Allvin 29:26
So let me just make sure. Okay, so this is from a mom. I just wanted to drop you both a quick note to thank you for everything, and especially thank you for the environment you’ve created at brynmore. We are so happy that our son is thriving, and while it kills me sometimes, haha, it’s awesome to see how much he hates leaving school and how excited he is to go in the mornings. The real reason I wanted to send you a note is because our speech pathologist joined our son in class yesterday and texted us after singing your prayer. Raises. She said Bryn Moore is absolutely top tier, one of the best daycares I’ve been in in a long time, from the teachers to the facilities. It’s pretty amazing. We knew there was something special about Bryn Mawr, but it was lovely to hear from someone who was in and out of schools all across the area, and I wanted to make sure you all receive the feedback as well.
Gloria Riviera 30:20
Rhian you did that. Your team did that so amazing.
Rhian Allvin 30:25
I know . It’s our team.
Gloria Riviera 30:26
I mean, that’s incredible to hear from an outside source. Yeah, I will be affirmation, right? Absolutely.
Rhian Allvin 30:34
We are doing every six months, we do a family experience survey, and we did our first one in February, I asked seven questions on a Likert scale, from one to five. And the very first question I ask is, Does your family feel a sense of belonging at Bryn Mawr? And it we received 4.8 on average out of five that our family feels a sense of belonging at Bryn Mawr, and to me, in any situation, having a sense of belonging is the most important feeling a human being can have. If it’s a six month old or a 50 year old or an 80 year old, like if you feel like you belong, then we’re doing something, right.
Gloria Riviera 31:16
Are there any in person moments of connection that you carry with you that also tell you you are doing something, right?
Rhian Allvin 31:24
Oh, yeah. I was touring a couple of guests we had, and I always take them and introducing them to our educators. And one of our infant educators, unprompted, she just said, I just want you to know this is the most amazing place I’ve ever worked. I’ve been in the field for decades. I will never work anywhere else. The people here are so caring. They know me personally. They love me, they know my family, and they care about who I am as a human being, not just if I show up to take care of kids.
Gloria Riviera 31:54
Yeah, I love that your story of affirmation is about an employee, right? Because we’ve had a lot of lovely conversations about these incredible young people, young little humans that are in these early education centers. But it’s lovely to hear that you’ve created a space where your workforce feels seen and cared for, right? And I would unfortunately or fortunately, I think it’s both. It’s a both. And put that in the radical category, right?
Rhian Allvin 32:27
I will say, whenever we do, I do an onboarding with a new team, which is all the time right now, because we’re hiring, hiring, hiring. I always say, like the model at brynmore is super simple, and it is about children. It’s about families, and it’s about early childhood educators. Are children loved and thriving and safe and healthy and getting what they need in a high quality early childhood environment, including experiencing joy. Are families feeling like they have peace of mind when they drop their children off here and they can go to work with peace of mind, and they feel like partners to us, and they know their children, their well being are our primary concern, and three are educators. That centering early childhood educators. They’re all super important. But I feel like the one this field has not paid nearly enough attention to since the beginning of time is educators. And it’s can be an afterthought, and we have got to flip the script on that, like we have to flip the script on that.
Gloria Riviera 33:21
I know you’ve said it’s early days yet, but do you think about what’s next? Are you actively looking to open more sites, and where would that be, and what challenges now that you’ve been through two very different openings of two different centers, what do you think the biggest challenges would be as you look to grow.
Rhian Allvin 33:42
I think about what’s next all the time. That is how my brain works. But I have to say to you, part of my thinking about what’s next is not just growth. It’s about knowing that we have to be relentless about the operating model of Bryn Mawr and staying true to why we started who we want to partner with and never compromise our ideals and how we do that. Because if growth at any moment is about compromising why we exist, or we’re letting the details go because we want to grow quickly, then we will have failed. And so yes, thinking about what next is really important, but it says as much about Okay, did every team member this month get a note on their birthday? Who had a birthday? Did we celebrate accomplishments? Are we paying attention to the details about how we’re communicating with families? Did every child who’s transitioning from a toddler room to a preschool room. Did we do that with patience and love and have the family involved, and how we do the transition? So I feel like those operating details really matter, and you can grow and keep those in place, but it’s hard to do well, and so there have been a couple. Couple of opportunities that I have, it’s been kind of painful, but that I’ve said no to, because I’m like, Okay, this is exciting, but it’s going to make us go sideways on what our plan is, and we don’t want to do that. And so I am, I am definitely not in the camp of growth at all costs. But also, yeah, if we believe in what we’re doing, we want as many children and educators as possible to experience that. So do we want to grow? Yes, absolutely.
Gloria Riviera 35:27
I’d love to see Bryn Mawr grow like rhiann says she hasn’t figured it all out yet. Bryn Mawr, with its business model and priorities, is an experiment, but Rhian is doing something, and as Bryn Mawr expands, or as the model replicates, that’s more children in high quality programs with staff who feel valued. We need more experiments and solutions like this in the child care and early education field, more staff getting paid professional wages and receiving benefits who are offered incentives to continue their path in early childhood education, as the industry struggles to retain quality staff, we need investments in these educators, so it makes sense for them to stay in the industry and in their jobs, because the more educators who stay, the better it will be for children to thrive in the earliest stages of life.
Gloria Riviera 36:29
There’s more No one Is Coming To Save Us with Lemonada premium subscribers get exclusive access to bonus content, like unheard clips from our interviews. Subscribe now on Apple podcasts. No One Is Coming To Save us is a Lemonada original produced with Neighborhood Villages. I’m your host, Gloria Riviera. Muna Danish is our senior producer, Lisa Phu and Hannah Boomershine are our producers. Bobby Woody are our audio engineers. Our music is by Hannis Brown. Jackie Danziger is our VP of narrative content. Executive producers are Stephanie Wittels Wachs and Jessica Cordova Kramer, along with me Gloria Riviera. The series is presented by Imaginable Futures, the J Willard and Alice S Marriott Foundation, The Banhum Family Foundation and The Conrad N Hilton foundation. If you like the show and you believe what we’re doing is important, please help others find us by leaving us a rating and writing a review, and most importantly, tell your friends follow No One Is Coming To Save Us wherever you get your podcasts or listen ad free on Amazon music with your Prime membership, thanks for listening, and we’ll be back next week. Until then, hang in there. You can do this. This episode is presented by the J Willard and Alice s Marriott Foundation and the Banham Family Foundation.