Topic: Ep. 216 – You Chose to Celebrate Our Beautiful Country – From Sea To Shining Sea!
When: Tuesday 6/18/2024 at 2:00 pm ET
With July 4th just around the corner, we asked our listeners, “Why do you celebrate America?” Join us for our podcast series, “Celebrate America,” as we share and explore our listeners’ inspiring answers – and yours! Sign up below for our fun and interactive first episode, “You Chose to Celebrate Freedom!” Why do you celebrate America? Let us know on our live Q&A!
Constitutional Chats are hosted by Janine Turner, Cathy Gillespie, student ambassadors, and experts who join us weekly to discuss hot-topic issues! The audience is not on camera, but you may ask questions!
Meet the Guests
Lindi Harvey
Lindi Harvey has enjoyed a vast career ranging in executive management for entrepreneurial and private companies, senior-level positions for the federal government, and in leading national nonprofit organizations. She leverages her three decades of professional experiences and strengths in creating measurable impact, solutions, and outcomes in business development, coalition building, outreach efforts, effective communications, public policy, civic engagement, and collaboration with stakeholders, strategic partners, and the public. She currently represents the Global President of Tech Mahindra, a $7B tech and telecom business, as Chief of Staff leading strategic business initiatives, from development through successful execution. Some her career highlights are as follows:
Prior to joining Tech Mahindra, Lindi led and expanded a temporary hunger-relief initiative at the start of Covid in March 2020. Get Shift Done offered living wages to newly unemployed hospitality and restaurant workers to provide skilled shift work to
food banks and other nonprofit organizations giving critical resources for hunger-relief during the national lockdown. Her generous donors included the Nationals MLB Team, Marriott Hotels, Mark Cuban, Capital One, Wells Fargo, and several other community leaders to create 12 regional branches serving over 60 million meals in the first six months of operation. Fast Company ranked Get Shift Done as the #1 Global Most Innovative Nonprofit Organization. A significant highlight in Lindi’s career and life experiences was when she was selected to serve in the George W. Bush Presidential Administration (2001-2009) and lead initiatives designed to provide positive impact and sustainable outcomes for two federal departments. Her first appointment was as Deputy Director for the Office of Global Women at the Department of State. In this role, Lindi led diplomatic initiatives, public diplomacy outreach, mentoring, and training programs designed to empower and spotlight the role of women with programs directed to widen women’s economic, entrepreneurial, educational, political leadership, community, and civic engagement opportunities in developing and post-conflict countries (Middle East, North Africa, Eastern Europe, Asia, and Latin America).
Lindi was then appointed as Deputy Director for the National Park Service, at the US Department of the Interior. She had executive oversight of visitor experience and tourism strategies, education and interpretation of historical/cultural/natural resources and visitor services, American Indian liaison, higher education partnerships, international relations, volunteer relations, youth and student outreach, 185 community groups, donor and foundation partnerships, and philanthropic stewardship on behalf of over 400 parks. During her tenure, she led the National Park Service Centennial Initiative designed to prepare the parks for another century of conservation, preservation, and recreation as it reached its celebrated and historical benchmark anniversary in 2016. She launched innovative programs that increased visitation, enhanced visitor experiences, and broaden the NPS brand to a younger generation. Lindi’s Kids in Parks national initiative was designed to engage children and their families in park settings, in their classrooms and online with effective and customized youth programs and interactive activities. She created and launched the Junior Ranger
Passport providing fun facts and activities, identifying the diverse types of parks, resource stewardship, and help reconnect kids with the outdoors and their heritage through active education and education. She also established partnerships with Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts to earn the new Scout Ranger Resource Stewardship badge for volunteerism and created the annual National Scout Day in Your National Parks. One of her many goals was to develop a pipeline of future visitors, supporters, and employeesby showcasing the grand scale of the parks and career opportunities. Lindi is a committed community volunteer where she serves on boards and committees for nonprofit and community/civic engagement-based impact and fundraising organizations.
Karla K. Morton
Karla K. Morton has sixteen poetry collections. A National Heritage Wrangler Award Winner, twice an Indies National Book Award winner, Foreword Book Award winner, SPUR Award Winner, Betsy Colquitt Award Winner and E2C Grant recipient, she is guest editor for TCU Press’ Selected Works of Walt McDonald. She is published in journals such as The Southern Review, Atlanta Review, American Life in Poetry, Alaska Quarterly Review, Southword Literary Journal, Boulevard, Lascaux Review, Comstock Review, New Ohio Review, the New Mexico Poetry Anthology, and is short-listed for Ireland’s O’Donoghue International Poetry Competition.
Her book with fellow Texas State Poet Laureate Alan Birkelbach, “The National Parks: A Century of Grace” (TCU Press) is historic, as it is the first book of poetry ever written in-situ by poets who traveled to all 63 of 63 National Parks. They give a percentage of royalties from this book back to the National Parks. She is a graduate of Texas A&M University, a member of the Texas Institute of Letters and Western Writers of America.
She is the 2010 Texas State Poet Laureate, a songwriter and a Nominee for the National Cowgirl Hall of Fame.
Meet the Hosts
Janine Turner
Actress Janine Turner is famous for her role as Maggie O’Connell in television’s Northern Exposure. She is the Founder of Constituting America which launched in 2010. She is still acting but is also actively teaching kids about the U.S. Constitution and has given over 540 speeches to classrooms across the country.
Cathy Gillespie
Cathy Gillespie is the Chair of Constituting America, a former Congressional Chief of Staff and former Commissioner of the White House Fellows Commission. She is currently serving as one of 16 private citizens serving on the U.S. Semiquincentennial Commission, helping organize the celebration of our country’s 250th birthday in 2026!
Tova Love Kaplan
Tova Love Kaplan is a student at Harvard University. She currently serves as the National Youth Director for Constituting America and runs the National Youth Advisory Council. She is a three-time winner of the “We The Future” Contest and is passionate about educating and empowering young people to use their constitutional rights!
Jorne Gilbert
Jorne Gilbert is a recent graduate of Moravian University where he designed a major entitled Dramatic Production and Musical Performance. He used what he learned to further develop the charitable organization Sing For America which he co-founded to produce musicals portraying the art of Truth and Light.
Jewel Gilbert
Jewel Gilbert is Executive Producer of Sing for America, a charity founded by him and his family. Sing for America reveals the Art of Truth and Light through live performance. He is the Operations Director for a new business venture, J. Barker Paving. Jewel holds a BA in Musical Performance/Dramatic