Head of People & Organizational Development, North America and Global Seeds, Syngenta
How did ANYTOWN shape your high school experience?
I walked out of ANYTOWN with more confidence to be myself. High school is a hard and beautiful time of self-discovery. I started speaking my mind more openly, I asked more questions, and I showed up at football games by myself and trusted I would find someone/something to entertain me. I was much more comfortable in my own skin.
Did ANYTOWN influence where you went to college, or your choice of major?
I always wanted to go to UNC, but my choices after I arrived were definitely swayed. I joined the Carolina Leadership Development program and ultimately ran it when I was a senior. That program was an opportunity to learn from peers as we created our own sense of purpose, and I was always working to incorporate inclusion. I went on to receive a Masters at American University in Organization Development, and I left with goals in mind (that I maintain today): to help people to lead, to innovate, and to include (and they are all inextricably linked).
How has ANYTOWN shaped your career choices?
In my role now, I focus on creating an inclusive environment for employees to thrive, on giving them creative outlets (to look at the world, our industry, and our processes differently), and on giving them tools as leaders to give their team members the space to be themselves and build upon their unique strengths. I also led the creation of Syngenta’s Global D&I strategy and accompanying five-year plan. ANYTOWN planted the seed for all of this.
How has ANYTOWN shaped you as a person?
I think without ANYTOWN it would have taken me longer to find self-awareness about my own biases. To this day, in all the work I do with inclusion, I constantly find strong implicit biases dancing around in my mind. I think the earlier we can find our stumbling blocks, the more we can do to negate them with good.
What would you say to a parent/guardian who is considering sending their child to ANYTOWN?
I might borrow from Desmond Tutu here and say: “My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together.” How do you plan to teach your child that we are all of the earth, and at the end of the day we must treat one another as such. It’s a very hard lesson to give, and ANYTOWN can provide a path, a faster path, towards this understanding… with friends along for the ride.
NCCJ has served this community since 1937. We are North Carolina’s oldest human relations organization, and the one with the greatest depth of experience working with teens on social justice issues. NCCJ (originally short for “National Conference for Christians and Jews”) was formed in the 1920s to promote interfaith tolerance at a time of deepening divisions between religious, racial and ethnic groups. Over time, NCCJ’s focus expanded to include aspects of diversity like race, gender, and sexual orientation. We became “National Conference for Community and Justice” in the 1999s.
In 2005, the national “umbrella” NCCJ organization dissolved and Greensboro’s NCCJ (which had long been one of the strongest NCCJ chapters in the Southeast) became an independent nonprofit focused on serving teens in Guilford County. After 2012, we were the only NCCJ entity in North Carolina. Our strong reputation as a trusted convener of respectful, nonpartisan conversations led to invitations and requests for help from across the state. Between 2015 and 2020, our focus began shifting to statewide expansion. In August 2022, we changed our full name to North Carolina for Community and Justice to reflect our increasing reach beyond the Triad and across the state.
Selected Recognitions + Milestones
2011 – Nonprofit of the Year by the Guilford Nonprofit Consortium.
2020, 2021 & 2022 – Recognized Duke Energy as one of 40 North Carolina nonprofit organizations committed to social justice and racial equity and awarded a $25,000 grant
2023 – We celebrated the 35thanniversary of Anytown, our flagship leadership and human relations program for high school students.
2023 – NCCJ, the Kellin Foundation and GCS awarded a 3-year grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to support students’ mental health at 6 pilot schools
2027 – We will celebrate NCCJ’s 90th year serving North Carolina
A Deeper Dive into Our History
NCCJ has been active in the Triad community since 1937. However, our roots go back another 10 years.
NCCJ was founded in the 1927 in response to a wave of religious intolerance sweeping the nation.
At that time, fascist movements and hate groups like the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) were becoming more visible and influential. Anti-Jewish and anti-Catholic prejudice and violence were on the rise. Anti-Catholic propaganda and violence spiked when a Catholic man, Al Smith, ran for president.
To push back against religious intolerance and fascist propaganda, a diverse group of faith leaders and social activists came together to form an organization first known as “The National Conference of Christians and Jews for the Advancement of Justice, Amity and Peace.”
This name was later shortened to “The National Conference of Christians and Jews” and the group was often known simply as “NCCJ.”
Our founders included activist and reformer Jane Addams and U.S. Supreme Court Justice Charles Evans Hughes. They worked to counteract religious prejudice by bringing people of different faiths together to bridge their divisions and build positive interfaith relationships.
1930s
One of NCCJ’s most famous early efforts was the Tolerance Trio. The Trio was a group of three faith leaders – a minister, a rabbi, and a priest.
Beginning in 1933, the Tolerance Trio visited hundreds of audiences across the country, asking Americans to embrace interfaith understanding.
In 2018, Public Radio International interviewed a few historians about the Tolerance Trio and NCCJ’s impact on American culture during its first decades:
“[The Tolerance Trio] would travel the country, rent out halls and talk about the stereotypes of Jews being overly interested in money and Catholics wanting to overturn democracy,” says Kevin Schultz, a professor of history and religious studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago. “They would make jokes, and it was entertainment. People would learn how false these stereotypes were. And they would preach tolerance.”
These traveling Tolerance Trios were a novelty for those Americans who had never seen a rabbi or a priest in person, let alone three clergymen on one stage joking around with each other.
“The idea was to model for the rest of America how people of different faiths could encounter each other respectfully … and show that these were three equal religions,” [says historian] Ronit Stahl.
…
It was so popular that it spawned more of these trios, which ultimately led to the creation of a National Brotherhood Day in the 1930s, timed to coincide with George Washington’s birthday to underscore the “Americanness” of the day.
This method of fostering dialogue proved successful and popular. Before long, local NCCJ chapters began forming across the nation.
In 1937, a group of Greensboro leaders founded the “Greensboro Council of Protestants, Jews and Catholics” – the organization that later became NCCJ of the Piedmont Triad.
1960s
In the 60s, NCCJ of the Piedmont Triad followed the example of other NCCJ organizations across the nation and began organizing an annual event, the Brotherhood/Sisterhood Citation Award Dinner, to recognize and celebrate local leaders for their extraordinary actions to make our community a better place for everyone.
In 1987, we held the Triad’s first ANYTOWN youth leadership program. First developed in the 1950s, ANYTOWN gives young people a framework for tackling issues of diversity and inclusion through the sort of honest, respectful conversations that have always been central to NCCJ’s work.
We became “the National Conference for Community and Justice,” a name change that reflected our work on a broad range of human relations issues.
2000s:
By the early 2000s, the national NCCJ office was facing financial trouble. By 2005, it had dissolved. Individual chapters either closed or became independent nonprofits, moving from a unitary structure of governance to autonomous 501(c)(3) organizations.
After the national organization closed, our local chapter of NCCJ became an independent organization – NCCJ of the Piedmont Triad.
2020s
In 2022, we changed our full legal name to “North Carolina for Community and Justice” to more accurately reflect who we are: an independent North Carolina organization serving North Carolinians. However, we are still best known simply as “NCCJ.”
Today
NCCJ has evolved over the decades to meet the challenges and opportunities of each new era. While interfaith cooperation remains a key part of our work, we’ve greatly expanded our focus significantly to encompass aspects of identity such as race, class, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability status, and more.
For more than 85 years, we have promoted understanding and respect among all people in the Piedmont Triad. As the region’s oldest human relations organization, we’ve formed close relationships with people and organizations from many different parts of our community. We have strong ties to this community’s past and we are deeply invested in its future.
NCCJ was born out of the belief that respectful dialogue between people from different backgrounds can bring about positive changes in our communities. Today, we remain committed to that core ideal.
For more than 30 years, ANYTOWN has been giving young leaders in the Triad the tools and knowledge they need to create more compassionate communities. ANYTOWN is NCCJ’s flagship youth leadership program. Twice each summer, we bring a diverse group of high school students up to North Carolina’s beautiful mountains for a week-long program. During that week, the students get to know one another as they tackle tough topics like gender, race, and religion.
Watch the video to learn more about ANYTOWN and hear from some ANYTOWN alumni, ANYTOWN parents, and community leaders about how ANYTOWN helps create compassionate communities.
Since 1937, NCCJ has promoted understanding and respect among all people in the Piedmont Triad. As the region’s oldest human relations organization, we have a long history here. Over the years, we’ve cultivated close relationships with people, companies, and organizations from many different parts of our community. We have strong ties to this community’s past, and we are deeply invested in its future.
Watch the video to hear more about NCCJ’s mission, history, and the community we serve from some of our staunchest supporters, including past executives, board members, and donors.
NCCJ of the Piedmont Triad supports protections offering safety and opportunity for community members brought to the United States as children.
Our organization is dedicated to building compassionate and inclusive communities. We support public policies that promote fairness and justice for everyone, including the most vulnerable among us. The Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program did exactly that; it was created to protect people who were brought to the United States when they were children. NCCJ stands in solidarity with the “Dreamers” (the name given to these young people), and we wholeheartedly support the protections DACA offered them.
DACA has helped hundreds of thousands of young people across our country, including many here in our community. More than 27,000 North Carolinians have relied on DACA to safely attend school, go to work, and care for their families. Ending DACA protections will have devastating consequences, eliminating these basic yet essential protections and leading to the potential deportation of thousands of young people who have lived in the U.S. for most of their lives, making it the only home they really know. Several ANYTOWN graduates here in our community are among those at risk when DACA expires.
Supporting the Dreamers carries forward our community’s proud tradition of welcoming people from all backgrounds and cultures. Together, we can continue building a community based on inclusion and opportunity – a community where all people of goodwill are welcomed, respected, and encouraged to contribute to the common good.
Without a program like DACA, we deny Dreamers the ability to be fully engaged members of our community. We urge our neighbors and our elected officials to embrace the Dreamers and to support the passage of new legislation that offers them protections and opportunities no less than what DACA gave them.
