Rad Ops - The Podcast

The Rad Ops Podcast is one component of a dialogue-based tool that supports organizations assessing and discussing the possibilities and limitations of putting liberatory values into practice. Each guest will share their Rad Ops lineages, their expertise on today’s pressing operations questions and leave listeners with resources and discussion questions to take back to your teams. In this closing episode of season one, we take on the tough topic of the Life Cycle of Organizations with our guest, Raquel Laviña, Consultant, most recently with the Grassroots Power Project. Resources from this episode: Transforming Our Organizations, Transforming Ourselves article by Sha Grogan-Brown contains many links to resources that can support organizational culture shifts When you are leading with other people, try out this somatic practice called CFEEB (Center, Face, Extend, Enter, Blend) together Rad Ops Workbook - try out these activities with your colleagues Visit the Rad Ops Resources page Discussion questions to…

The Rad Ops Podcast is one component of a dialogue-based tool that supports organizations assessing and discussing the possibilities and limitations of putting liberatory values into practice. Each guest will share their Rad Ops lineages, their expertise on today’s pressing operations questions and leave listeners with resources and discussion questions to take back to your teams. In this episode we talk about Culture of Care with our guest, Adaku Utah, Director of Movement Building Programs at the Building Movement Project. Resources from this episode: Solidarity Lessons from a Year of Crisis and Change How to Build Solidarity Infrastructure for the Long Haul by Adaku Utah and Deepa Iyer Solidarity Is This podcast Social Change Ecosystem Map - Building Movement Stories for Power Podcast: Durham | creative interventions Communities of Care article by Yashna Maya Padamsee Transforming Our Organizations, Transforming Ourselves article by Sha Grogan-Brown Book: The Future is Collective: Effective Workplace…

The Rad Ops Podcast is one component of a dialogue-based tool that supports organizations assessing and discussing the possibilities and limitations of putting liberatory values into practice. Each guest will share their Rad Ops lineages, their expertise on today’s pressing operations questions and leave listeners with resources and discussion questions to take back to your teams. In this episode we talk about Resource Mobilization with our guest, Allison Budschalow, Consulting Partner at Dragonfly Partners, Co-facilitator at Securing the Roots, and co-host of the podcast Movement Money. Resources from this episode: The team at Dragonfly Partners takes a 360-degree approach to support the work of resource mobilizers, including assessing our most valuable resources—our relationships with one another through: In It Together—a toolkit and workshop that helps movement-building groups navigate conflict, strengthen accountability, and work together in healthier, principled ways. When We Fall Apart—a workbook and…

The Rad Ops Podcast is one component of a dialogue-based tool that supports organizations assessing and discussing the possibilities and limitations of putting liberatory values into practice. Each guest will share their Rad Ops lineages, their expertise on today’s pressing operations questions and leave listeners with resources and discussion questions to take back to your teams. In this episode we talk about the Role of Assistants (and so much more) with our guest, Felicia Martinez, freelance consultant and co-founder of Rad Ops social media network. Resources from this episode: Rad Ops Workbook – Putting Rad Ops into Practice activity (pages 16–20) Choose and use a tool with teams of two or more people (such as a Director and an Assistant) to discern division of labor and coordination: DARCI/MOCHA/RACI Check out descriptions and a comparison of these three models in this guide by Nonprofit Learning Lab DARCI: DARCI ACCOUNTABILITY GRID Tool What it is What it can do How it works MOCHA: MOCHA Framework: How…

The Rad Ops Podcast is one component of a dialogue-based tool that supports organizations assessing and discussing the possibilities and limitations of putting liberatory values into practice. Each guest will share their Rad Ops lineages, their expertise on today’s pressing operations questions and leave listeners with resources and discussion questions to take back to your teams. In this episode we talk about Human Resources with our guest, Tara Shuai Ellison, Founder of Shuai Strategies and co-founder of Rad Ops social media network. Resources from this episode: Shuai Strategies The Equitable Hiring Guide & Toolkit Webinars: Be Strategic, Not Scared webinar with Tara Shuai Ellison and Kehsi Iman Wilson Strategies for Equitable Hiring webinar with Tara Shuai Ellison and Kehsi Iman Wilson RadHR Community Vent Diagrams Books: Leading for Justice & Supervision Matters (Rita Sever) Discussion questions to take to your team from the Rad Ops workbook: If you find yourself pitting concepts against each other, or…

The Rad Ops Podcast is one component of a dialogue-based tool that supports organizations assessing and discussing the possibilities and limitations of putting liberatory values into practice. Each guest will share their Rad Ops lineages, their expertise on today’s pressing operations questions and leave listeners with resources and discussion questions to take back to your teams. In this episode we talk about Non-Compliance with our guest, Roberto Tijerina, Organizer Journeyman/Popular Educator. Resources from this episode: LGBTQI+ CFO Network RoadMap Consulting Resources Movement CFO Sustainable Economies Law Center (SELC) Alternative Entity Structures Guide (English, Spanish) Movement Protection Strategies Guide (English, Spanish) Discussion questions to take to your team before tackling non-compliance: What is the organizational mission/north star? Is there political agreement around it? Is there political agreement around non-compliance? Have you gamed out consequential scenarios and prepped…

The Rad Ops Podcast is one component of a dialogue-based tool that supports organizations assessing and discussing the possibilities and limitations of putting liberatory values into practice. Each guest will share their Rad Ops lineages, their expertise on today’s pressing operations questions and leave listeners with resources and discussion questions to take back to your teams. In this origins episode, we flipped the script, and guest Denise Perry interviews co-hosts Yashna Maya Padamsee and Sha Grogan-Brown! Resources from this episode: Rad Ops Workbook Rad Ops Principles Rad Ops Resources Page Sanctuary Embodied for embodiment and somatics resources (like the centering activity within this episode) Discussion questions to take to your team: What lineages do you draw from in your operations work? Who is a figure who you see as a political and/or operations ancestor? What is an event in history that you see as a pivotal moment of movement operations? Feel free to reach for the well-known figures and…

The Rad Ops Podcast is one component of a dialogue-based tool that supports organizations assessing and discussing the possibilities and limitations of putting liberatory values into practice. Each guest will share their Rad Ops lineages, their expertise on today’s pressing operations questions and leave listeners with resources and discussion questions to take back to your teams. In this episode we talk about Safety and Security with our guest, Che Johnson-Long, Community Safety Director at Vision Change Win. Resources from this episode: Vision Change Win offers many resources on community safety, including: Get in Formation Training Series is an intro level training for basic community safety skills around verbal deescalation, event safety and organizational safety. Organizational Safety Planning Risk Assessment Tool will guide your group through building a risk assessment, the first step in organizational safety planning. Fascism Barometer podcast by Ejeris Dixon, helps us understand the current political…

In this episode, Sha Grogan-Brown talks with guest Nat Smith, Finance & Development Director with House of gg and facilitator with A Bookkeeping Cooperative to offer advice to organizations needing to make major pivots to their budgets. In these wild times, many organizations are needing to revisit their organizational budget, either due to loss of funding, pivoting their work for rapid response moments, taking a strategic pause to tend to internal tensions and challenges, among other reasons. Dear Rad Ops received a question on this topic, with this context: Our organization is currently facing a series of internal conflicts and disruptions that is calling for us to go inward to tend to these challenges. As a result, we're pausing on a lot of our current activities and adjusting most of our original org-wide and departmental goals/work plans for this year. We're currently drafting an organizational development process to tend to these tensions and there's a good chance that this work (ie OD process,…

In this episode, Yashna Maya Padamsee talks with guest Che Johnson-Long, Community Safety Director at Vision Change Win, about how we can be making grounded risk assessments in these times of escalated fear. We’re in a moment where there is a chance that fear can lead our planning and decision making. It is a particularly escalated and scary time. And this time is calling for us to do clear organizational risk assessments and find, create, or improve upon operational scaffolding to meet the risk assessment, not the fear assessment. This topic has come up in many conversations throughout 2025, and Dear Rad Ops received a question with some context: I am in an operations role, and my Executive Director wants to implement a new security protocol for our organization. It seems to me like a decision based on fear without a grounded assessment of the real risk to our organization, but I don’t know how to distinguish between fear and risk in this situation. Question: How can I support my ED to reflect on whether…

In this episode, Sha Grogan-Brown talks with guest Le Tim Ly, Chief Operating Officer of Center for Empowered Politics about how building “multi-entity infrastructure” can improve the resilience of organizations. While the Left faces many crises in these times, underpinning everything is the vulnerability of the operations and infrastructure of our organizations. So many groups have chosen to establish non-profit organizations as the entity for their organizing, and now this administration is targeting the tax status of two primary forms of non-profit organizations – known as 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4). Our movement has had critiques of the Non-Profit Industrial Complex for decades. We know this is not the ideal structure for our long term work. Yet the majority of Left organizations are currently dependent on non-profit structure and on philanthropy for the operations of their projects. We’re in a time which calls on us to be nimble and pivot many aspects of our operations. With this context in mind, Dear Rad…

In a time where social justice organizations are under attack, we bring you Dear Rad Ops, a mini series advice vlog about live questions on the minds of movement operations workers. In this introductory episode, co-hosts Yashna Maya Padamsee and Sha Grogan-Brown discuss their own Rad Ops movement operations experience, and the lineages they draw from in their work to run liberatory organizations in an unjust world. Resources from this episode Explore the Rad Ops Resources page Discussion questions to take to your team What lineages do you draw from in your operations work? Who is a figure who you see as a political and/or operations ancestor? What is an event in history that you see as a pivotal moment of movement operations? Feel free to reach for the well-known figures and events, or (even better) the lesser known! How has your identity and your relationship to Operations work changed over time? When and where did you get politicized? What political formations have you been a part of? How have they shaped…

In a time where social justice organizations are under attack, we bring you Rad Ops (that stands for Radical Operations), a dialogue-based tool that supports organizations assessing and discussing the possibilities and limitations of putting liberatory values into practice. Many organizations are in turmoil as they pivot to meet this moment. Rad Ops is a multimedia series offering principles, guiding questions, and tools that organizations can use to identify ways they can and cannot practice liberatory values in this unjust world. The Rad Ops podcast is one component of a project designed for social justice organizations looking to strengthen their resilience. This project seeks to inspire people in Left movement organizations to get real with each other about what their organization can and can’t do, and make collective agreements about how they will act together when unable to fully practice their liberatory values. If people in movement organizations regularly dialogue with each other in courageous,…