In this episode, our guest Lori Robinson and I explore how sensitivity, spirituality, and lived experience shaped her journey from journalism to founding VidaAfrolatina, an international women’s fund supporting Black and Afro-descendant women-led organizations across Latin America.

Lori explains how participatory grantmaking transfers decision-making power to communities traditionally excluded from philanthropy, and she shares how surviving sexual assault led to decades of work addressing violence against Black women. Throughout our conversation, Lori offers a powerful perspective on using money in ways that are restorative, reparative, and rooted in the wisdom of directly affected communities.

• Creating VidaAfrolatina and resourcing Black women's leadership
• Addressing sexual violence through healing and institutional support
• How participatory grantmaking redistributes decision-making power
• Moving philanthropy beyond colonial models
• "Same boat, different port": solidarity across the African diaspora
• Why frontline communities must shape climate solutions
• Protecting empathy from overwhelm and burnout
• Choosing meaningful work when salary is not the priority
• Spirituality, healing, and trust during financial uncertainty

Lori Robinson is the Founder and Executive Director of VidaAfrolatina, an emerging international women’s fund that mobilizes resources for Black women-led and Afro-descendant women-led organizations in Latin America. Through participatory grantmaking, VidaAfrolatina supports culturally relevant healing services, organizational development, and community-led initiatives designed to reduce and ultimately eliminate sexual violence. Lori also serves on the Board of Directors of Women’s Funding Network.

Before launching VidaAfrolatina, Lori worked as a journalist for 25 years, reporting extensively on sexual violence and Black communities throughout Latin America. In 1997, Emerge magazine published her award-winning cover story, “I Was Raped: A Survivor Explores an Accusation that has Divided the Spelman and Morehouse Family.” She later wrote I Will Survive: The African-American Guide to Healing from Sexual Assault and Abuse. Her work has appeared in the Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Detroit Free Press, The Progressive, The Root, and other national media outlets.

In 2018, Lori was selected from more than 2,800 applicants across 155 countries as one of 35 Echoing Green Fellows, helping her develop and launch VidaAfrolatina. A bilingual speaker in English and Spanish, she has presented on sexual violence in more than 20 U.S. states and in Brazil, Costa Rica, Cuba, and Venezuela. Lori holds bachelor’s degrees in English and Spanish from Spelman College and a master’s degree in journalism from New York University.

Website LinkedIn Instagram I Will Survive: The African-American Guide to Healing from Sexual Assault and Abuse by Lori Robinson Dahlma Llanos Figueroa, Afro Puerto Rican writer

#LoriRobinson #VidaAfrolatina #ParticipatoryGrantmaking #BlackWomenLeaders #AfroLatina #SexualViolencePrevention #SocialJustice #HealingJustice #EthicalPhilanthropy #AfricanDiaspora

Click here to watch our interview on Youtube

Diana Gisel Yañez is an Investment Advisor Representative of Natural Investments PBLLC. Natural Investments is an independent Registered Investment Advisor. All the Colors is not a registered entity and is not an affiliate or subsidiary of Natural Investments. See our Disclosures and Disclaimers and read our Form CRS.

In this episode, our guest Besan Abu-Joudeh and I explore how money, education, spirituality, and social impact can come together to create more liberatory ways of working and learning. Besan shares how her training in economics led her from management consulting and international development to co-founding BuildPalestine—and how the burnout and self-doubt she experienced as a founder inspired a more intuitive, soul-aligned approach to entrepreneurship.

• From economic theory to the realities of social impact
• Founding BuildPalestine and learning to trust her own intuition
• Zakat, barakah, and the Islamic understanding of money as flow
• Birthing the School of Radical Imagination during personal and political transformation
• Reimagining education as a path to becoming better humans
• Helping independent academics earn a dignified livelihood
• Reciprocity, scholarships, and working through faculty money blocks
• Building a faculty-centered 70/30 revenue-sharing model
• Creating ventures through trust instead of overwork and control
• Energetic hygiene and sustainable leadership for sensitive founders

Besan Abu-Joudeh is a Palestinian American social entrepreneur, ICF-certified coach, trauma-informed life coach, and energy healer. Her work is dedicated to creating spaces where people can reconnect with their purpose, step into their power, and share their unique medicine with the world. Through her coaching practice, Pause Impact, she supports people in bringing soul-aligned ventures, movements, and offerings into being through intuition, inner work, mindfulness, and sustainable action.

Her professional background spans management consulting, economic development, research, and nonprofit leadership, including roles at Accenture Federal, A.T. Kearney, and the Office of the Quartet. In 2016, she co-founded BuildPalestine, a platform created to support social innovation and changemakers in Palestine. Her experiences in consulting, international development, and entrepreneurship helped shape her belief that meaningful outer impact must be grounded in inner transformation, local community, and an understanding of human interconnectedness.

Besan is currently building the School of Radical Imagination, a global education platform where academics can teach live, cohort-based courses without institutional gatekeeping. She holds degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and the Wharton School, as well as a master’s degree in Development Economics from SOAS University of London.

Website LinkedIn Instagram The School of Radical Imagination Thérèse Cator

#BesanAbuJoudeh #RadicalImagination #SocialEntrepreneurship #AlternativeEducation #MoneyAndSpirituality #SoulAlignedBusiness #SocialImpact #EconomicJustice #Palestine #ConsciousLeadership

Click here to watch our interview on Youtube

Diana Gisel Yañez is an Investment Advisor Representative of Natural Investments PBLLC. Natural Investments is an independent Registered Investment Advisor. All the Colors is not a registered entity and is not an affiliate or subsidiary of Natural Investments. See our Disclosures and Disclaimers and read our Form CRS.

In this episode, psychologist and Certified Financial Therapist™ Huong Diep explores how family history, cultural identity, and inherited beliefs around scarcity shape our financial lives — and why financial stress so often lives in the nervous system long after someone becomes objectively successful. Together, we unpack the tension between high sensitivity and high ambition, and what it truly means to feel financially safe from the inside out.

• One foot on the gas and one foot on the brakes as an HSS-HSP
• How money entered Dr. Huong's work as a psychologist
• Why money can feel more intense for sensitive people
• Inherited scarcity, survival, and the pressure to succeed
• Wanting wealth without betraying your values
• The narrow definition of acceptable success
• Class mobility, survivor's guilt, and grief
• Understanding money through a biopsychosocial lens
• How family messages become money patterns
• Balancing personal security with collective wellbeing
• Raising financially responsible children without shame
• Building a personal menu of restorative rest

Huong Diep is a board-certified psychologist, Certified Financial Therapist™, and wealth psychologist working at the intersection of culture, identity, and wealth. Her work helps thoughtful individuals, couples, and families understand how emotion, family history, cultural expectations, identity, and learned strategies around safety and self-worth influence financial decisions.

Huong is transitioning from a primarily clinical foundation toward a consultative role in the wealth advisory space. She is particularly interested in helping families develop the communication, emotional capacity, relationships, and shared purpose needed to use wealth well. Her clients have included high-achieving professionals, globally mobile individuals and families, and people navigating transitions involving money, identity, career, success, and belonging.

As a 1.5-generation Vietnamese American, first-generation college graduate, and Returned Peace Corps Volunteer, Huong brings a deeply cross-cultural perspective to the human side of money. Her approach draws from financial psychology, trauma-informed frameworks, and systems thinking. She is bilingual in English and Spanish and is licensed in California, Nevada, New York, South Dakota, Virginia, and Washington, DC.

Website LinkedIn

#WealthPsychology #FinancialTherapy #MoneyMindset #FinancialIdentity #IntergenerationalWealth #MoneyAndCulture #NervousSystemRegulation #SocialJustice #RestorativeRest #FinancialWellbeing

Click here to watch our interview on Youtube

Diana Gisel Yañez is an Investment Advisor Representative of Natural Investments PBLLC. Natural Investments is an independent Registered Investment Advisor. All the Colors is not a registered entity and is not an affiliate or subsidiary of Natural Investments. See our Disclosures and Disclaimers and read our Form CRS.