In this episode of Second Chances with Christy Belz, Christy sits down with Dr. Jean East, a seasoned social worker, academic, and co-founder of Project WISE. Dr. East shares her wisdom from a lifetime dedicated to social work, leadership, and creating meaningful change through community engagement and empowerment. From the founding of Project WISE to her current work at Angelica Village, Dr. East’s reflections on leadership, mentorship, and service offer deep insights for listeners seeking to make a difference in the world.
In this episode, you will learn the following:
- The role of mentorship in shaping careers and personal growth.
- Founding and impact of Project WISE: empowering women through social change.
- The intersection of race, gender, trauma, and poverty in social work.
- Dr. East’s current involvement with Angelica Village and the work done to support immigrants and refugees.
- Insights on leadership: balancing head, heart, and soul.
- The importance of lifelong learning and finding purpose through continuous engagement.
- Reflections on aging, legacy, and the role of spirituality in leadership and service.
Learn more about Dr. Jean East & Loretto Community:
Website: https://www.lorettocommunity.org/jean-east-my-job-my-vocation/
Learn more about Christy Belz Social Communications:
Website: https://christybelz.com/influencer/oh-god-of-second-chances-here-i-am-again/
Course: https://christybelz.com/uproot/
TRANSCRIPT
00:00:00 Christy: Welcome to Second Chances with Christy Belz podcast. I’m your host, Christy Belz. Enjoy our array of talented, open-hearted guests and their thoughtfully curated stories of second chances, life-changing choices, and new perspectives. We are here to empower you on second chances in your life.
00:00:38 Christy: I know I say this every single time, but I have to tell you this series of talking to sage wisdom of the women that I am so blessed to have in my life who have been in my life for a very long time, who have mentored me, supported me, helped empower me, believed in me. I just, I’m just so blessed. So so blessed. And today we have Dr. Jean East with us.
00:01:03 Christy: Jean East was my professor when I started graduate school, six months pregnant with my son, Charlie, is when I first met Jean, and I completed my two-year program at DU and ended up graduating with my master’s degree in social work. And I flippantly said to her in advising one day, you know, I think you should just hire me and I could come run this mentoring program for you, which was quite funny because I thought I was kind of being funny, but she took it literally. And the next thing I know, I was at this amazing organization called Project Wise that was co-founded with Dr. Jean East and Susan Kenny, formerable co-founders of this organization.
00:01:41 Christy: We did some amazing, remarkable work. So blessed to be a part of that in the beginning time and ultimately helping to transition that organization leadership wise when the co-founders decided to step down. So I am so excited that you’re with me, Jean, and that I get to share you with my audience and share your wisdom. Thank you for being here.
00:02:04 Jean: Well, thank you, Kristi. It’s a pleasure.
00:02:07 Christy: Yes. Let’s reflect. What do you remember about the early days, you and I meeting each other and graduate school and Charlie and Ed Stroller in your classroom, which you were so nice to allow me to bring him?
00:02:20 Jean: Yeah. Well, I actually do remember the specific classroom that we were in. I taught at the University of Denver Graduate School of Social Work for 27 years. And I can remember the students that really stood out for me that I connected to. And almost always, it was about their potential and their enthusiasm and the fact that they had some ideas about how to be good social workers, how to change the world, how to make a difference. And so I remember in that particular room, the building was quite old then and that room was very funky. And we were kind of crowded in that room and you were kind of sitting in the middle of the room and you paid attention, you know?
00:03:15 Jean: And I think paying attention is really an important quality in leadership and in life. And I could always tell, students thought I couldn’t tell, but I can tell who’s paying attention. You know, who’s with me and who’s kind of, well, today it would be on your phones, but whatever it is that they’re not there. I’ve always been drawn to the students who are paying attention and want to learn. And so I remember that about you. So I often did what I did with you. They had an idea. They were excited about something.
00:03:55 Jean: They knew they had a kind of direction, even though they didn’t know exactly what it was. And Christy, you’re probably one of, I would say maybe 10 over my, all those years of teaching of students that not only have I kept in touch with, but that I could sense that excitement being creative and creating something. And that for me was one of the most precious gifts of being a student of social, a teacher of social work and having those students. Well, and a school, because I learned, I always learned too while I was teaching.
00:04:39 Christy: Yeah, we learn more probably when we’re teaching something than when we’re in the student seat, but I loved learning, you were absolutely right. I just loved it. And I’d still be in school today if my husband hadn’t said, nope. No more for you. But you were such a great teacher. Like there was just something about the way you engaged the students, the way you were really non-traditional in your, I just remember the books that you would bring and the readings you would do in the front of the class of the room.
00:05:10 Christy: And you had the academia, of course, we were there to learn whatever it is, whatever class we were in when we were doing it, but I think you really made learning fun. So I really appreciated that. Yeah, and congratulations on your tenure at DU. You actually were the associate dean at some point, or assistant dean.
00:05:28 Jean: Yes. Associate dean.
00:05:29 Christy: Yeah, associate dean. Really took on the helm. And I can’t tell you, anywhere I go where I meet a social worker, your name always comes up. I have a current client, actually, who is a past student of yours right now that I’m working with. So yeah, well, congratulations. And are you retired?
00:05:45 Jean: I am retired. I retired in June of 2018.
00:05:50 Christy: No way.
00:05:51 Jean: Yes.
00:05:53 Christy: You still are so involved in so many things. I can’t believe that.
00:05:57 Jean: I know.
00:05:58 Christy: Are you still doing stuff at DU? Are you still advising, mentoring?
00:06:06 Jean: Yes. So I loved teaching, and I miss teaching. But I was ready to retire from academia. But I wasn’t ready to retire from social work and relationships.
And, you know, as you were talking about the teaching and we were talking about our relationship, I was recently at the university for a lecture given by one of the clinical faculty who I hired and has gone on to do great things there. And he talked about his first year there and how he was struggling with teaching after having been a practice social worker for all those years.
00:06:47 Jean: And he came and talked to me and I mentored him and he remembered that I said to him, which I had forgotten of course, don’t worry about the content, it’s all about the relationship.
00:06:59 Christy: Amen.
00:07:00 Jean: Or that’s what you just described in terms of my classroom. And so that’s not left me. Yes, I’m not in front of a classroom students anymore. I did a little teaching, continued to teach a little bit after I retired. But as more and more teaching has gotten more and more online, that just wasn’t, it just wasn’t for me. So what I’m doing now is very much like Project WISE. I had a student in my class back in maybe 2016 or ’17 who had an idea for a non-profit. And so I encouraged her and we did an independent study and she went on to take some jobs because she wanted some more direct experience, but we continued to meet and about five years later, I said, I think you’re ready, let’s start the nonprofit.
00:07:57 Jean: And so we started that nonprofit. It’s called Angelica Village. And it’s here in Lakewood, Colorado. And we are a rather unique, we are an intentional community as well as a nonprofit which makes us very hard to explain to some people, especially found in friends. They don’t quite understand that combination. And the combination is that we provide housing and intensive wraparound support services for persons who have been homeless or needing some more to move along in life have ended up now taking in a lot of immigrants and refugees who have come to this country for a variety of reasons.
00:08:48 Jean: And so, yeah, that’s where I now spend a fair amount of time. I’m chair of the board and have been since the beginning. We’re getting ready to move that to somebody else. And then I still like the direct engagement with the community members. Just talking to them, teaching, tutoring, of course I love that. You know, some still finding resources, being an advocate. I mean, one of the blessings of our education, yours and mine, is that we know how systems work in communities and that’s a hallmark of the social work profession. And so we leverage that knowledge all the time.
00:09:36 Christy: All the time.
00:09:37 Jean: To help people. And that’s a gift I feel like that I have. And I’m still continuing to use. I don’t know how long I’ll be able to do it, but I’m going to do it as long as I can.
00:09:50 Christy: Yeah. Again, I was just talking to another Sage wisdom woman, and she said, she’s still kicking it at 83. She’s a clinical psychologist and she’s still seeing clients and she’s like, if I fall over dead in my chair, point my finger at my client, I’m like, they’re going to know I died happy, right? She’s just, but I love that as the hallmark, right? Of longevity and what you love to do and doing it in a way that’s meaningful. And yeah, love it. Love it. Well, I can’t wait to learn and get to, I want to come visit Angelica village. So we will make that happen.
00:10:24 Christy: But let’s back up because I really want to talk to you about Project Wise. Right. Project Wise was founded by Loretto sisters, which I called like the badass of the sisters. They are just so, they’re just mighty. You know, they just are incredible and they sold their big property and they seeded Project Wise to start. So I would like you as the founder, share a little bit about the idea of Project Wise and then you and I could have the conversation about the years spent there. And I know you’re starting to archive some of the-
00:10:58 Jean: Yes, we are. We are. So we are in the process of putting together and archiving all the information about ProjectWise. And that’s been really fun because when we closed ProjectWise, that was very hard for me and sad. And yet now I can look back and look at, we fit in a certain time and space, which was really important. And that has something to do with our roots.
00:11:31 Jean: Partly because I was at the university and studying, I was really interested in research that was happening in the early ’90s about the intersection of race, gender, trauma, and poverty or income insecurity. And they were just discovering at that time how many women who had been homeless or had other kinds of things going on in their lives, or who were receiving welfare assistance, had all these other barriers in their lives. I called them the hidden barriers. So I was doing that research. And at that time, the city and county of Denver was investing in how to think about helping the people on public assistance in new ways.
00:12:27 Jean: Ironically, at the same time, Bill Clinton was the president at the time, and he passed new legislation that changed how mostly women and met mostly women of color, certainly as time went on, he was going to change the system that was put in place in 1935 as a result of the social security work that was done at that time with another benefit assistance program that people could only have for five years. And that was monumental. And I didn’t like that legislation at the time. I thought that was not very humane.
00:13:11 Jean: However, we were able to use that legislation in combination with being part of the Loretto community to highlight this issue, get the initial funding and offer something in a window of opportunity. And we did that for 20 years. And over that 20 years, a lot of things did change. And so in some ways, as I look back, the timing was probably right to, not that those needs aren’t still there, but it’s very different now and the number of women on welfare has dropped tremendously because of that legislation.
00:13:52 Jean: And we were able to say there are some people who are never going to be able to support themselves. One of them was somebody at Project Wise that you and I know very well. And we were able to get them on other kinds of disability programs and insurance. So we were right. We had this idea. Sue, Kenny and I had had the idea for many years influenced by our social perspective that we’re not only about personal change, we’re about social change. And that was what made us unique. And then as we went along, we developed all these new ways supporting women and mentoring was one of them.
00:14:34 Jean: And you took that on and it was very successful. I was recently looking at pictures of some of the mentors and the mentees. You know, having one person believe in you and support you unconditionally, which, you know, many of us had from our parents, but a lot of people never had that. And we were able to do that in numerous ways.
00:14:59 Christy: Yeah. We did good work. We did good work. We’re going to take a quick break here. So yeah, we’ll be right back with Dr. Jean East.
00:15:09 Christy: This is your host, Christy Belz. Many of the people you meet on my podcast have participated in my online curriculum called Uproot. This 15-week course takes you through my transformational process of understanding our roots, reviewing our path and collecting the tools for life success. I would love to help you on your journey. Learn more about the Uproot course, take my quiz and explore my transformational retreats at christybelsz.com/approve.
00:15:47 Christy: All right, welcome back with Dr. Jean East. We don’t have enough time. That’s all I can think of right now. I’m like, how am I gonna get all of this in? I don’t know how I’m gonna do all this. So yeah, Project Wise was amazing. So I also wanna tell your book. You wrote a book called Leading Head, Heart and Soul. And you were very kind to ask me to contribute part of my story, which was my journey in Project Wise about being a leader and how challenging it was.
00:16:16 Christy: For me, in leadership, partly because ProjectWise was such a unique organization. We worked with the women as employees. We created a lot of equanimity, a lot of sense of, we’re all in this together, which some days made it really hard to lead an organization, particularly when I was coming from a more business background, even with my social work degree. Anyway, thank you for that opportunity. I just want to tap and we’ll put the link to your book in the notes, the show notes too.
00:16:44 Christy: So thanks for that contribution. And you’ve written many research articles and things, so we’ll make sure that we get those for people to want to garner more of your intellectual wisdom and brilliant thinking. Yeah, I wish we had a whole time. Maybe we’ll just do a whole segment. Maybe get Sue on board and do a whole segment on Project Wise, particularly since you’ve just archived them. So you have, and part of why I wanted to do this series with women who are older and hold this wisdom that I call it sage wisdom.
00:17:14 Christy: I’ve been blessed with women in my life, they’re all 20 years older than me. So that makes them 80 this year. I just traveled with them. Do you mind sharing how old you are this year?
00:17:23 Jean: I’ll be 75.
00:17:24 Christy: 75, yeah.
00:17:25 Jean: So a lot of wisdom in there, Jean. Like, let’s just talk about the journey. Like, what was the journey that made you want to be in social work? And then we’re gonna talk about some of the sage women that you would pass along, that you’ve garnered after these years of teaching and being a social worker and leading organizations, et cetera. So yeah, tell us a little bit about.
00:17:44 Jean: Well, yeah, it’s interesting. I do think about that quite a bit. I wrote in the foreword to my book that I never growing up would have seen myself as a leader. However, my mother told me a story that when I was in nursery school, it was Easter time, and we had this little play, you know, and the boys were the bunnies and the girls were the chicks, little chickies. And all I remember about that was that the costume I had to wear to be a little chick was itchy and I hated it. And, you know, we went out on the stage and apparently, and apparently the boys forgot what they were supposed to do.
00:18:27 Jean: And so I went over and coached the boys to tell them what they were supposed to do. And then they did it. The nursery school teacher was like, you know, look at your little girl. You know, she’s such a leader. That’s certainly not how I saw myself, although it was nice that I had that story in my repertoire somewhere, because I’m very introverted and I was very shy growing up. My church was influential on me in a variety of ways, particularly now we’re talking the late ’60s, and a lot was going on in this country, a little bit similar to today, which I find very interesting.
00:19:08 Jean: And I was drawn to that and I took the opportunity my senior year in high school to be part of a group of kids, young people my age, from churches throughout the city of Philadelphia. And so we were an interracial group and we worked that summer on the playgrounds in Philadelphia teaching about racial prejudice. And there was something about my stepping into that experience that changed my life. It allowed me to not only know kind of what I was here for in terms of giving and caring for people. I think that partly came from, I grew up with two grandmothers in the house.
00:19:55 Jean: I always say I had Nana upstairs and downstairs. And so there was caretaking there. It just also gave me the courage to kind of move forward in that direction. The second thing is that I chose to go to a women’s college and I feel like that was absolutely the right choice for me. We were all the leadership people. And again, I wasn’t in the outgoing whatever whatever space, but I did other things and it just allowed me to sort of find myself. And then after college, I joined VISTA at the time, it was kind of a joint VISTA Peace Corps opportunity. And again, here’s this shy kid that’s, you know, I’m wondering what I’m doing. And I was sent to Puerto Rico and I cried the whole way on the plane.
00:20:50 Jean: And I thought, who cries when they’re going to Puerto Rico, it’s all tourists. Now this is out of work. And this is weird, but that again, just set me on a trajectory. So there’s this theme of putting stepping into the water when it was pretty uncertain between the ages of 18 and 23. And that really then set a trajectory for my life. And I knew then that I want I wanted to do social work. And so, and I, before that, I probably didn’t even know what social work was, but it became really clear to me. That just then led me to getting my masters, doing various kinds of social work for which I’m very grateful. Did family counseling, learned family therapy, did a lot of that initially.
00:21:47 Jean: Also got into my own therapy, recognizing what I knew in high school but I attributed it to not being in the popular crowd was this sort of underlying depression, not a major depression, not something that kept me from doing things, but this underlying peace. So got into therapy, which also changed my life and have done that over time as I’ve needed it. But I began to also understand what my strengths were. And I think that you don’t always know that until you get out there in the world and are doing some things and begin to see that.
00:22:29 Jean: And I realize that my strengths are in ideas. In the Strengths Finder, I’m practically all relationship and strategic. You know, I like to think big picture. I build relationships around commonalities of ideas and values, much less about social relationships. And so once I recognized those strengths, knew what they were, and had the support of the Loretto community to also further my ideas of spirituality and the broadness of those ideas. And at Sukeny, my last year in social work school, I was a part-time student. That just all coalesced and through putting together ideas and vision and values.
00:23:36 Jean: And I think when I say leadership is about head, heart and soul, that’s what I mean. I mean, you need ideas, you need strategic thinking, but you also need a passion, a heart, a willingness to be vulnerable, which you talk about a lot and write about a lot. And then you need a spiritual and I don’t mean religious base. Something that talks to your soul about who you are in this world and what that means. And you know, one of the things about aging that I have found, because being a professor is there’s a lot of pressure and there’s a lot of, well, I don’t know how to describe it exactly, but.
00:24:16 Christy: Bureaucracy.
00:24:17 Jean: Well, there’s bureaucracy definitely in academia. But talk about higher art. I mean, I have never worked in a place that there was that much hierarchy. And you come in and you’re at the bottom and then you have to scramble and there’s all this tension about being able to get tenure and all of that. And that was so not me, but my inner drive pushed me that way, but project wise kept me sane. I often said to myself, I don’t know how I would have, or even if I would have survived academia if I hadn’t had Project WISE all those years. I would drive from the university to our little office in an old church in a little neighborhood in Denver and I’d be like, okay, this helps me remember Head, Heart and Soul. This helps me stay centered.
00:25:15 Jean: So that over time, stressful as it was in those years, I can look back and say, somehow I held on to all of that. I tend to have a kind of equanimity. I’m not real demonstrative, I’m not like this. And that just, even though I took on a major administrative role, because I also learned I was good at that. I’m organized and I have the people skills and I can do the big picture thinking, but my heart was at ProjectWise.
00:25:48 Christy: Yeah, we knew, we knew that. Yeah. Well, what a fabulous journey. And, you know, again, you have touched so many lives in academia, certainly the women that we worked with at ProjectWise. Me personally, Jean, I just, you know, you have mentored me, supported me, held the space for me to grow and develop into my own leadership and my own way of being in the world. So I’m just so grateful for you. So grateful. So I’m just curious if there’s some nuggets of wisdom that you would want to offer based on all of your experiences to our listeners, what would those nuggets be? What do you think are critical for women, women’s development, women’s leadership? You already said head, heart and soul, but…
00:26:34 Jean: Right. Well, I think one thing that I think is important is to keep learning. That’s not just, of course, for women. And at the same time, I think that learning something new or continuing to push boundaries or I’m finding return to things that may have been a part of your past that in some ways are just something on your vitae or resume, but now you have the opportunity to be in that world again. For me, because I live part-time in Arizona, and I was a Spanish major in college, hence Puerto Rico, I’m volunteering at the border in Arizona because I can speak Spanish. I just do humanitarian aid, we give out water and food. I just feel like I’m part of something bigger than me, but I’m building on something that was part of me at age 20.
00:27:45 Christy: Yeah, interesting.
00:27:47 Jean: Yeah, somehow, somehow looking at your whole life and saying, you know, what are the pieces that I want to keep doing because I love. So I tutor and right now I’m teaching a group of four Afghan women English. And so you know that builds on what I already know, but it’s a little different setting. And so you know, it’s like twisting what you know but still doing it. And so I feel like it’s all the pieces lead you to looking at where is it that you wanna be right now? And how do you look back and look at the present and say, it’s about meaning making.
00:28:34 Jean: This still is meaningful to me and this is the way I can do it now. And I’m also very aware that I don’t know what my aging journey will be. And I’m doing something that I think is fairly brave amongst my generation. I’ve discovered not so much amongst people that are a little younger than me. And that is I’ve done genetic testing because I took care of both my grandmother and my mother who had Alzheimer’s and it’s potentially in my future.
00:29:10 Jean: And so I think continuing to push your boundaries of learning that may have been outside of, that may have been in your experience, but you’re not sure where they’re gonna go. So that’s one piece of it. Another one that I think kind of goes along with that is just that wherever you are, show up. I mean, showing up. And that doesn’t mean being the center of attention. That may mean just sitting quietly somewhere, but you’re showing up in a way that says not only is this important for me, it’s important for all the other people around me.
00:29:52 Jean: And so being part of whatever it is that you’re showing up to, I think, is really important. Of course, keep learning. But I think that that’s pretty typical of what people do. I think you look at your life journey and look at the inflection points of passion and you’ve got to find you’ve got to continue to find. And it could be something new so i talked about building on your past but it also could be something you haven’t done before. That’s really what I think good for us as we age and really important to do.
00:30:39 Jean: I think some kind of spiritual practice, and I define that very broadly, that some kind of, I would call that, quieting of the mind is a practice that I think is really important. I journal, I have done that for many years. I just find taking those moments to write things down and reflecting on the day giving yourself a lot of grace.
00:31:10 Christy: Amen. Right? And self-compassion. Oh, yeah.
00:31:14 Jean: Yes. And I’m not always good at that. I can beat myself up regularly. And I have to stop, take a deep breath, give myself some compassion and say, I’m doing the best that I can. And I think, you know, I mean, these are really simple things, but continuing to find the mystery in life whether that’s the mystery of world events, and you know the other thing that comes with age is looking at the mystery of world events in a historical context. So you know you’re interviewing me in a time when a lot’s going on in the world. And I’ve been paying great attention to the protests on college campuses around what’s happening in the Middle East.
00:32:04 Jean: And yes, I want to learn about the issue and all that. But I did that in my era. And so to look at patterns and step back from them, look at the mystery of life in terms of patterns, I think is a practice that is very helpful to me. Very helpful to center me on the current. And then I get to ask myself, so what’s my contribution to that now? And part of my contribution is I still supervise students in their field work for the School of Social Work.
00:32:42 Jean: So as they were protesting on the college campuses this last spring, I’m like, okay, now let’s put this in a historical context and look at that. So you can tell for me, it’s blending, you know, my knowledge and my wisdom, a grace and a people perspective, hopefully with some humility, that I don’t have all the answers and I sure didn’t do everything. And that’s something that we all struggle with and all find a balance for in who we are. So I feel very blessed.
00:23:21 Christy: Yeah, yeah. Well, I’m glad that you feel that way because you are a blessing and that you can own that and your wisdom is just so beautiful. Like all of it just amazing. So I just thank you so much. Thank you for sharing your time with our audience with me. It’s always just a joy to be with you and be in your presence. Yeah. Namaste. Just love your pieces.
00:23:34 Jean: Yeah. Thank you, Christy. And thank you for all you’re doing. You are indeed also a blessing to us all.
00:33:52 Christy: Thank you so much.
00:33:57 Christy: It is the joy of my life to showcase the voices of people and the messy details of life’s journey. As you have experienced, my guests are thriving with purpose and style, but that does not mean that their life is easy and without challenges. I’ve dedicated my life to you and your journey. Thank you for listening to Second Chances with Christy Belz. Please subscribe and learn more at christybelz.com/Second Chances.