Legacy of Love

 

Dr. Izabel Olson shares how she found her calling through both family tragedy and protective factors, and how she built Salt & Light Coalition to give survivors of trafficking a path to thriving in the world.

 

Episode Notes

[6m41s] Izabel describes the wrongful imprisonment of her father in Brazil, and the impact it had on her and her family

[9m13] The legacy of her mother’s warrior spirit, resilience, and love

[13m40s] Why Izabel puts storytelling at the heart of Salt & Light Coalition’s curriculum and its efforts to build empathy and trust

[17m40s] The importance of non-judgment as a culture value

[19m15s] Izabel describes the healing program that thrivers participate in during their first six months at Salt & Light

[22m26s] The story of Salt & Light’s founding, including an unexpected insight gained when teaching yoga at Cook County Jail

[26m20s] The intentionality of building an all-female Board of Directors, and the necessity of maintaining a diverse staff

[27m56s] The coalition’s heralded successes, including 80% workforce placement after graduation 

[30m04s] How Salt & Light adapted and developed a more flexible format during the pandemic 

While teaching yoga at Illinois’ Cook County Jail, Dr. Izabel Olson discovered a startling insight: over 70% of female inmates had been victims of trafficking. And when she looked around at the resources available in the Chicago area to trafficking victims, she found that there was a substantial gap in programs that offered rehabilitative services. Shortly afterward, she embarked on founding Salt & Light Coalition to fill the need.

In her talk with Jesse, Dr. Olson describes how she came to understand the conditions that enable trafficking in part through the lens of her own lived experience; how she built Salt & Light on the cultural foundations of empathy and non-judgment; the profound effect that Salt & Light has had on the lives of its graduates; and lessons learned from trying to keep the coalition’s critical support network open and available during the pandemic. Izabel’s story is an inspiring journey of love and understanding and a powerful reminder to build toward our life’s purpose with both an open mind and open heart. 

Guest Bio

Dr. Izabel Olson is the founder and CEO of Salt and Light Coalition, a grassroots organization breaking the cycle of human trafficking through mind-body restoration and workforce development. Dr. Olson is dedicated to the empowerment of women, especially survivors of human trafficking as they reframe their traumatic experiences and find success in the workplace and throughout society. Prior to establishing Salt and Light Coalition, Dr. Olson was a researcher at Northwestern University, where she earned her Ph.D. in the Learning Sciences. 

Helpful Links

+ Episode Transcript

Izabel Olson [00:00:00] ... and then COVID hit, and we really had to focus inwards. Our thrivers were really struggling. Depression was really high and trafficking went up by 20% all over the country at a time where 84% of providers actually closed their doors, 84% of providers to trafficking survivors closed their doors. And we didn't do that. We were like, we're going to figure this out. We are going to continue to support women, remotely if we have to, but we're going to do this. We did this in 48 hours, by the way. It was like, "Okay, we're going to do this and it's going to be done by Monday." And we did it. We did it together. We did it as a team.

Jesse Purewal [00:00:46] From Qualtrics Studios, this is Breakthrough Builders, a series of conversations with people whose passions, perspectives, instincts, and ideas, fuel some of the world's most amazing products, brands, and experiences.

Hey builders, it's Jesse. Today on the show, my guest is Dr. Izabel Olson. Isabel is the founder of Salt & Light Coalition, a grassroots movement, mobilizes individuals and organizations to empower survivors of trafficking, to live meaningful and purposeful lives.

Today on the show, Izabel and I talk about the life lessons she learned from a father who was unfairly imprisoned when she was young, and from a mother who embodied a warrior spirit, the protective factors Izabel discovered in her life that helped her identify and define her purpose, the story behind the founding of Salt & Light Coalition and why Izabel felt that starting it was her calling, the role of deep empathy and helping the victims of trafficking begin to heal and imagine a new life for themselves, the intentionality Izabel brings to building an organization by women, for women, and her vision for the future of Salt & Light Coalition.

Enjoy Breakthrough Builder, Dr. Izabel Olson.

I am here with Dr. Izabel Olson.

Izabel, thank you for coming on the show.

Izabel Olson [00:02:11] Thank you for having me, appreciate you giving visibility to my organization.

Jesse Purewal [00:02:14] Yeah, you bet. Can't wait to get into it.

Before we go there, talk to me about how you landed in Chicago. You and I share a common connection in Northwestern University. So as somebody who grew up in Brazil, you got to talk to me, start me out with how you found your way up from Brazil through Florida into the cold Midwest.

Izabel Olson [00:02:32] I was a young dancer in Brazil, and I got a scholarship when I was around 15 years old to come to the U.S. back in 1994. So that's how I landed in Florida many, many, many, many years ago. But after my stint at [inaudible] , I actually went back to Brazil and ended up a few years later in 2001 meeting, who is now my husband, Tony. And that was a chance meeting during carnival. And after seven years of long distance dating, going back and forth and lots of drama, I ended up here in Chicago where I ended up at Northwestern.

So getting a PhD was a long term goal of mine.

Jesse Purewal [00:03:14] And how long is longterm for you, Izabel? How long did you seek to get a PhD, and how did you know what fields of study were going to be the ones that you would pursue?

Izabel Olson [00:03:23] So since I had my bachelor's actually, I knew that I wanted to pursue a PhD. I knew I wanted to understand a little bit more. I was in the field of education. I was a teacher for many years and I really wanted to make a difference. And I thought that education is one of those channels that you can really make a difference. And so I kind of always seeked that my whole entire life. When I was in Brazil, I couldn't because I had to work so much to make ends meet and support my son. But then I found myself having just moved to the U.S., I had that opportunity to pursue higher education. So I was very excited about it.

Jesse Purewal [00:04:00] And Izabel, talk to me about the roles that your respective parents played, and maybe that your broader community played in your upbringing in Brazil. I mean, you've talked about discovering dance, getting into teaching, what were the kinds of forces that were the wind in your sails in your early years growing up?

Izabel Olson [00:04:16] Yeah, for sure. So my mom is a huge part of who I am today. I have this very high risk tolerance and I really do think it's because my mum loved me so hard and so deep, and she would always tell me, "Izabel, you can do anything you want. You just got to put your mind to it. You got to work hard and you're going to be able to get it done." And up to today, I truly believe that, and it's just such a big part of my being because I grew up with her telling me how much she loved me, how much she knew that I could accomplish. And that belief is just such a core part of who I am. So even when I started Salt & Light Coalition, I look back and I'm like, "Oh my gosh, I had no business starting Salt & Light Coalition. Why did I do that?" And I really believe it is because she taught me to see life that way.

And even the way that she approached her life, my mom has just such a big warrior spirit. Through everything my dad went through, she just stuck by him and she fought through it. she just stayed with him. She didn't have to. As a wife, she could have loved him, but she didn't. And just kind of seeing that has been such an inspiration for me, and just a role model to follow as a woman.

And my father, he was a lawyer in Brazil. He was a labor lawyer and then always worked for the little guy, for the factory workers, for the people that had no money. And oftentimes, would pay him in interesting ways. I remember this story, and I tell this story a lot, when I was little, he would bring chickens home as payment, and eggs. And one time he brought a baby alligator, I've seen a baby alligator up close. And my mom put it in the shower, didn't really know what to do with this baby alligator. And it was a gift from a client because oftentimes they couldn't really pay for the cost and he would actually pay for everything upfront and then would take the money from the [inaudible] .

And I think that's where my spirit of wanting to advocate for people comes from actually, from my father, because I've always seen him advocate for other people. Early on in my childhood, I actually wanted to become a lawyer. And so had Izabel not come to the U.S. as a young dancer, I think that I would have likely had followed his lead and become a lawyer later on in life.

Jesse Purewal [00:06:32] So Izabel, tell me in brief, if you could, the story about what happened to your father when you were young and the impact that it had on you at that time?

Izabel Olson [00:06:41] Yeah. So back in 1992, as I said, my dad always worked for the little guy, for laborers, and I think that he created a lot of enemies because that was back when a lot of the factories and things in Brazil, they were state owned. They were not owned by people, by businesses, but instead they were owned by the state. And in a very corrupt government, he was accused of committing crimes that he did not commit. And even though he had all the proof, he went to jail. I was 12 years old, he went to jail for about nine years. And he didn't come out until I was about 21 years old. And not having a father when you're 12, it's actually really, really, really hard. You don't have guidance from a male parent, a male perspective.

Years later, I actually asked my dad, "So if you could have a choice of redoing your life, would you still have done what you did and protect the labor and went to jail for nine years?" And he said that, "Yes, that he would have done it all." And I was like, "Wow. Okay." And at that moment, I kind of struggled a little bit. As an adult I thought, "Wow, so he's basically choosing other people over me." But I'm also, at the same time, very proud of who he was and very proud of the choices he makes. So they're kind of contradictory feelings that I deal with a lot.

But during those nine years, I saw his health deteriorate and I saw him just become a shell of what he was before. He developed diabetes. You're not exercising, you're eating terrible foods, you're not taking care of yourself. And it was very, very sad to see. So it wasn't easy. I remember right after this happened, basically all of his assets were frozen by the government. My mom didn't work at the time, so we were couch surfing. I was homeless for a while. It was difficult. It was tough.

Jesse Purewal [00:08:40] And so what were the implications for the relationship with your mother as you grew up? I mean, I imagine that had to put her in a very certain posture in the community, someone whose husband is away, there's probably some sense of vulnerability, of loss, but also a sense maybe this is a family that one might take advantage of in different ways. And so I imagine that you two probably locked forces and said, "We're going to get through this." What was that like to have to get through that period between when your father was wrongfully imprisoned, and when you found your way to the States?

Izabel Olson [00:09:13] It was a very important formative period for me. I remember the way that my mother approached it, it was very full of grace. It was a very strong response. So I remember actually the day my father went to jail, I came to see where he was and visit him. And my mother was there and he told my mother, "I want you to leave now and you can take half of the stuff I have and I just want you to take our daughter and raise her somewhere, and forget this ever happened." And she said, "There's no way I'm ever going to do this. I am your wife. I love you and I'm going to stay here." And my mother would visit him every single day. There's not one day that she'd not visit him. And visiting somebody in jail is not that easy. You go through searches, it's so humiliating. And that was hard. That's who she was.

And I remember her telling me, "You have reason to just flunk off school right now, get F's. You have all the reason to just not do well, but this is not going to happen to you. You are going to do well. You're going to do better than before. And I'm here for you. You're my best friend." And that's exactly how she did, she was my support system and there was no way for me to fail. And it was true, I did better than I did before, even though the world was collapsing for me. Our friends weren't there like she was, and she is just such a strong woman. So for me to watch that, it was very important for me, for my formation as a woman as well.

Jesse Purewal [00:10:50] I love that you used the word grace, it implies so much in terms of what is given to us and also what we have to work to achieve. And I wonder how early in life you came to realize you were in the presence of grace or the protective factors that sometimes you talk about? And as you reflect on it, how much of discovering grace and of discovering these protective factors is based on working to create them, and how much is luck or circumstance, and even how much is owed to a higher power that we can't necessarily explain on this earth?

Izabel Olson [00:11:24] Those are questions that I ask myself a lot as I look back into my life, because there are so many moments that there's definitely some kind of covering. I mean, I look back on my life and I'm like, wow. Even the fact that how was not I trafficked is something that I ask myself a lot, because I was definitely right there. I could have easily been exploited and taken advantage of.

I remember moments when my father was in jail, that I would just pray for him to get out of jail almost every night, in tears. And he never got out of jail. And I always like, "Why is God not answering my prayers? What is going on?" But it's weird because even though I asked myself why is he not answering my prayers, I never stopped believing in God, if that makes any sense. I think it wasn't until years later that I looked back and I was just like, wow, that power was so present in my life in so many different moments. The fact that I wasn't trafficked even though I definitely was so close. I mean, I don't talk about this story very often, but I actually have a GED. I never finished high school. And so when I talk to the women of Salt & Light Coalition, I see so many parallels between their lives and my life, and so that's when I look back and I'm just like, wow, there was some kind of protective factor.

Jesse Purewal [00:12:51] How have you channeled patience and grace of your own, as you have tried to illuminate the struggle that people who come into Salt & Light Coalition have, and how thin that line is between misfortune and fortune, where you and I are sitting here having this conversation, maybe in a different life, it goes differently for you and Salt & Light Coalition doesn't even start? And I think many people who don't necessarily understand the foundations of historical dictatorships or societies that aren't as democratic as the one that we're lucky enough to live in, literally can't comprehend the kinds of stories that you're telling. How do you build empathy with an audience of people who often have experiences that might not overlap yours at all?

Izabel Olson [00:13:40] Yeah. I think building empathy is really about storytelling. My whole curriculum was built around storytelling. So when I'm hiring, I actually like to hire people who have stories to tell somebody that just graduated college and is from a middle-class family, likely would have a hard time teaching my curriculum because it was built to share vulnerability, because we want to invite people in. So whether I'm speaking to a thriver or I'm speaking to a potential sponsor, I definitely always use storytelling as a vehicle to build empathy and kind of invite people in to what we're doing.

Jesse Purewal [00:14:22] And what are the unlocks in terms of achieving honesty, and openness, and transparency that helps people get from a place of fear, and doubt, and uncertainty in themselves to the other side?

Izabel Olson [00:14:38] So with the thrivers of Salt & Light Coalition, they come in, and most of the women we work with, they have a very hard time trusting. So if I act from a position of superiority like, "Hey, I have all of the answers for you guys." They will never develop the trust that it takes to get them to the other side. And so we invite them with our own stories because we want to develop rapport. We want to develop community. We want to develop trust. And basically, when you share your story, people are more likely to share theirs. If I just sit here and I don't share any of my story with you, you likely will not tell me any of your stories, because why would you?

And so there's that perspective where you're inviting them in, but then there is more than that. There is looking back so that the curriculum that we have at Salt & Light Coalition, the first six months, is basically built on a complex systems framework, and it looks at the individual in different ways. The individual is just not one thing. The individual has relationships with their community. The individual has relationships with other people. He has relationships with their past. He has relationships with the family, with the larger community, with the culture, with the political scene, with everything. So the individual itself is so complex, and you cannot heal a trauma without looking at all that complexity, and exploring that, and then breaking it down.

So we look at the woman at Salt & Light Coalition, and we try to raise self-awareness so that she can look back and she can look at some of these patterns. Because, oftentimes, they've never even questioned why these patterns are not good patterns for them. We have women at Salt & Light Coalition who thinks that it's normal to be raped, it's normal to be raped by their families. They've been raped repeatedly by uncles, by brothers, by parents, by grandparents, and they think that's how life is. They don't question it.

And so when we have a conversation, we look back at those patterns and we try to break them down and say, "Hey, you know what? Even though this happened to you, that is not how a parent is supposed to act with their child. A parent is supposed to love their child. A parent is supposed to support and protect." And that's where the true transformation happens, is when you're able to look back at how you relate to the world and you're able to rebuild it in another light, in a more constructive, less traumatic light.

Jesse Purewal [00:17:11] And how specifically do you and your team do this in a way that creates an environment of love and non-judgment? I can imagine it's so difficult to be able to sit on this balance beam between talking to people and saying this way that you have experienced it, is not the way it should be, or that it needs to be. And they're saying, "I don't know any other way, and you can not live my life."

Izabel Olson [00:17:40] Yeah. For example, right now we just hired three new staff, and the first thing that I do is present our cultural values. I present our cultural values to the new staff, I present our cultural values to any volunteer that comes in Salt & Light Coalition. So if you train to be a volunteer, you read about our values. And one of them, one of the most important ones, is actually non-judgment. So the way that I want Salt & Light to be is that somebody is going to come in and they are never going to feel judged. It's just something that we really enforce as a community. And if we see it at any point, we make sure to address it, with the volunteer or with the staff. So I think that we have to be very intentional in creating that space and creating a space where women feel safe, where they feel love, because all that transformation, all of that dig deep will only happen if that's how they feel.

Jesse Purewal [00:18:34] And you ultimately, at Salt & Light Coalition, are equipping people to come out into the working world and be able to fend for themselves socially, to fend for themselves economically, to be able to stand up a life, a lifestyle, a family. But in order to get there, it strikes me that there is probably a healing process that has to occur in order to get to the other side, maybe for weeks, months, I don't know, even longer. Are there just times where you're all in on the listening and letting people be heard and just letting the healing happen before you even start to unlock the next chapter, say, or phase of a curriculum?

Izabel Olson [00:19:15] Yeah. So the first six months is what we call the healing program, and so that is a phase that we are not even thinking about job training at. We're basically just focusing on healing. So every day, women have these groups where they're discussing these patterns, this relationship to self, community, culture, everything. And so we take the first six months to do that. Obviously, we know that six months even is not enough to really heal all the trauma that they've undergone their lives. I mean, the women that we work with at Salt & Light Coalition, they've gotten some very traumatic experiences. We've heard of our clients being set on fire, how do you get over that in six months? You don't.

However, our focus during the six months is giving them a tool box of things that they can do for lifelong healing. So, for example, we teach them about meditation. We teach how to meditate. We give them other tools. We teach them about yoga and trauma sensitive yoga. We teach them about dance and how dance can kind of unlock trauma. So we really try to give them a toolbox that includes nutrition, that includes health and wellness, that includes looking for a therapist and working with a therapist, that includes a very wide range of things. And our goal is that they'll engage in that for the rest of their lives.

And then during our workforce development program, we really focus on growth mindset. So even though we are already doing workforce development, we are still doing groups and we're still working on growth mindset because growth mindset is such an important thing for the women we work with. And then on top of that, they get a mentor in the middle of the program that is supposed to be an accountability partner with them throughout their lives.

We are also doing something called the Reignite Retreat, which is a retreat experience for graduates, where they come back with us to spend a weekend with us and talk about lifelong legacy through financial responsibility, through career, through spiritual, and life coaching. So our hope really is to be a lifelong partner of the thrivers that come to Salt & Light Coalition. We tell them that we are their families, that they can count on us, and we really mean it.

This weekend we had graduates from cohort two, cohort three, and cohort four. So now we are starting cohort nine in a week, just so you understand. These are women that have been at Salt & Light Coalition for a while, that we've stayed in touch with them, that are now successful in the workplace. And so it's just really cool to see this community come together and really be their lifelong partners.

Jesse Purewal [00:21:54] And Izabel, as you stood up the organization, were there teams, or groups, or other organizations either in Chicagoland or more broadly that you looked at and said, "That's a really interesting, informative template for me." Or, did the genesis for the structure of the program and the curriculum come more from your pedagogical studies and what you learned in the PhD program? Where did you frame what this would be and how did you know, out of the gate, what the right way to get started would be?

Izabel Olson [00:22:26] So basically how I started Salt & Light Coalition is I finished Northwestern and I applied for several jobs in the learning sciences. But at the time I was pregnant, did not want to move away, and no jobs open in the Chicago land area, like zero, not even an Illinois, not even close to home. And so at that point, I had to make a decision, either I would go to California or Iowa for a professorship, or I would say here, and I don't know, figure out my life and do something else. And so I felt that I did not want to put my family at risk and I stayed. And it was really hard for me because it was a moment where I kind of lost my identity, all of a sudden I went from Izabel the academic to Izabel I have no idea what I'm doing.

And I started trying to figure out what is it that I wanted to do with my life. And I found out that my yoga teacher was teaching at the Cook County Jail, so I went with her to teach yoga. And I found out that 70% of the women in the Cook County Jail, they were there because of charges related to trafficking. And I said, "Oh my gosh, that's insane. Is anybody looking at this relationship here, because it's a pretty strong relationship if 70% of the women here have been trafficked?" And so I started doing research and looking at the organizations here in Chicago that we're doing something about it. And what I saw was there was a lot of people doing the first step, so shelters, there's a lot of drop-in centers. There are people doing that first step, but then nobody was doing the aftercare.

And I looked around the country, actually didn't see a lot of people doing aftercare either. So I was like, "You know what? I think I want to beat that person who's going to help them get jobs so that they don't go back into the cycle of recividism that happens in trafficking." 60% of the women are under the age of 18. They never finish high school. They never get any training. And so even if they are able to get out of this trafficking situation, you can't get a legitimate employment because you don't have the training, you don't have job experience. And on top of that, you may have some arrests because your trafficker may have had you commit some crimes. So what is this woman supposed to do? If she can't find a legitimate employment, she likely will fall back into either be trafficked again and re-victimize, or she would choose prostitution because she would feel like that's the only thing she can do.

And so I came in and I started talking about this and I really feel it's kind of almost magical. I believe in God and so often times people were like, "What?" But I really think that God just meant for me to do this and it happened through his divine blessing because I started talking about it that I was going to do this thing, and then I had a lawyer contact me and say, "Hey, I'll fill out the 501[c][3] for you for free." I was like, "Really? Okay." And then I met a judge right after actually, her name was Judge Rosemary Higgins. And she had been in the prostitution court for, I think, 30 years. And she said, "Izabel, I love your plan." ... and by the way, I had no plan at the time... "I will come alongside you and help you." And after she said that, in six months, we had all of our partnerships and we started receiving women.

So that is all to say, there was some research in the beginning, I saw what was being done. But what I wanted to do, wasn't being done. And so I had to create my own program. So there was research, but a lot of imagination and bringing things together.

Jesse Purewal [00:25:59] I want to ask about your team, your board of directors, your staff, your core volunteers, every one of them is female. And many of them are people of color. How intentional is the focus on, by women for women, as people are rebuilding themselves for growth in the world?

Izabel Olson [00:26:20] I'm very intentional about that. I don't think a man really understands what is happening to a woman when she's undergoing trauma. Just like I don't think male senators should really be voting against women's health issues. So it kind of goes with that. And I'm very, very intentional about diversity in my advisory board, diversity on my staff, because I believe those leaders are building Salt & Light Coalition, and I want the diversity of opinions. We have people that are 60 years old in our board, we have people that are 20, we have women of color, we have Caucasian women, because representation is just such an important issue.

And specifically, we have several survivors that are both in advisory board and staff. So this week I made public, I just hired three graduates into my staff. So half of my team is actually survivors. I'm very proud of that. And it is important because a survivor-led organization can create better solutions for survivors. So when I'm speaking about, for example, the curriculum, who better than people who have lived experience in trafficking to lead any effort. It is for them and it should be decided by them.

Jesse Purewal [00:27:40] Talk to me, Izabel, about the outcomes that you are most proud of. I can't help but think that, that return that you just announced of those three program alumni, is right up there. But when you get asked about what you're glad you have been able to accomplish, what kinds of things do you talk about?

Izabel Olson [00:27:56] So, especially being so young, we look at arrests. So we ask women, when they're interviewing for Salt & Light Coalition, to bring us their rap sheets. Women come with an average of 17 arrests. Since graduation of the first cohort, we've had zero arrests with any of our graduates. So none of them go back to jail, which is incredible. Even during COVID we had 85%, I think, placement during COVID, all of our graduates. And during COVID, there weren't a lot of jobs, so having 85% of your graduates placed at graduation, is something I'm proud of.

One year later, when we do a second interview with them, 80% of them are still placed in the workplace. So that's something I'm also very proud of.

But one of the things that I'm most proud of actually comes from their depression and anxiety scores. We give them the PHQ-9, which is a depression scale, and then the GAD-7, which is an anxiety scale. And we see a big movement. So if I'm not mistaken, it's 24% drop in their scores for the PHQ-9, which is depression, and about 23% for the anxiety is scale. And that is unheard of for a program to have that much of an impact in women.

I have a very close friend, she's a psychiatrist at Harvard Medical School, and she was telling me, "Izabel, I need to come and do some research with you and see what is it that you're doing, because to have those kinds of drops in scores, it's pretty significant." And so I'm really proud of that. And I think that what makes that work, is having this strong community, is having these women that are so passionate and leading Salt & Light, is having the graduates come back and work for us, the graduates be part of our board. It's all of that creates those results.

Jesse Purewal [00:29:46] And on balance, was the fact that you had to move to doing a lot of this remotely in a pandemic context, a significant negative, or a significant positive? And how will you take learnings from that time period moving forward, as you think about having impact on more and more women's lives?

Izabel Olson [00:30:04] I learned a lot during COVID, I'll tell you that much. So before COVID, my five-year plan for Salt & Light Coalition was really to expand and kind of replicate what we were doing in other places. I was starting to look for partners and finding partners in Texas, and things like that. And then COVID hit and we had really had to focus inwards, our thrivers were really struggling, depression was really high. And trafficking went up by 20% all over the country at a time where 84% of providers actually closed their doors. 84% of providers to trafficking survivors closed their doors. And we didn't do that. We were like, "We're going to figure this out. We are going to continue to support women, remotely if we have to, but we're going to do this." We did this in 48 hours, by the way, it was like, "Okay, we're going to do this and it's going to be done by Monday." And we did it. We did it together. We did it as a team and we started seeing the women remotely.

And not only we were seeing them, but we added more services. We added calls. So each woman in each cohort was getting three different calls from different people. We started doing teletherapy. We started delivering food with partnerships from restaurants. So we really had to focus on them and the results were amazing. We had our biggest graduating class ever, and I couldn't even believe that we had such a great result because COVID was so tough mentally on everybody.

So I think turning inwards really taught me a lot of lessons, but one of the things that I'm considering right now is instead of going wide, going deep, and it's something that I think I'm leaning towards going deeper now. My husband always told me, "Izabel, there's 25,000 women a year being trafficked in Chicago, focus on those first." And he's right, why go wide when there's so much community that can be built here. And so more and more, I see a future for Salt & Light that we're going to go deeper in the Chicago community. We just got gifted a building in Wicker Park. We're about to expand and to scale, so I'm really, really excited. And we're really taking note and adapting based on the COVID challenges that we received.

Jesse Purewal [00:32:17] You cite, Izabel, a lot of statistics. You also have a lot of emotion and a lot of firsthand experience in this. You strike me as someone who could lead an organization that would not only have impact at the individual level, but also potentially all the way up to the systemic level.

Izabel Olson [00:32:37] Yeah. So even though we're younger organization, we're turning four, I actually believe you're already creating systemic impact. What we see happening right now is that the women that we work with are mothers. They're heads of families. And so the impact we're making on them is also impacting their families right away. So for example, one of the graduates this week told me, "Oh my gosh, my family eats so differently now because of our nutrition classes. So now I'm feeding my son differently. He eats so many different salads and he loves arugula." I'm like, "Oh, okay." And so it's a small impact, but you already see an impact on a family that used to be fed very differently, but because of Salt & Light Coalition, their health is being impacted.

And now this woman is bringing money home and she's moving out of the south side into the suburbs, which has happened to several of our graduates. So I think that impact is already happening, and also that child will grow differently than she grew up. So her legacy will be very different and her impact into society. Every woman at Salt & Light Coalition, I would say 80% of them are mothers. And so when you impact a mother, you will impact their children. When you impact their children, you'll make a larger impact on society.

Jesse Purewal [00:33:55] Izabel, a lot of the people who listen to this show are women leaders, young women leaders, what advice or counsel do you have for that part of our audience in particular, if they're thinking about making a big career move, or starting an organization, or taking a risk?

Izabel Olson [00:34:12] I think women oftentimes are so afraid to take risks. They don't take a step unless they know that everything is perfect, and that is something that men don't do. I feel like it keeps us from taking the risks and taking the step. What I recommend is to just look at gaps around you and if you see a gap and you can fill it, even if it's something small, start doing it. For me, it was teaching yoga, and from teaching yoga at the Cook County Jail, I found even a bigger gap to fill. And I started trying to fill it. And then through that I built Salt & Light Coalition.

So if there is a gap in your community that you can fill, why not? Yes, take the step. don't be waiting until things are perfectly lined up. Don't be waiting for a perfect world around you, a perfect environment, a perfect time, because that time does not exist. Just go for it. If your gut, if your sixth sense is telling you that you should go for it, and it's something that's going to make you happier, that's going to make you more fulfilled, there is nothing holding you back except yourself. So take the step.

Jesse Purewal [00:35:21] Izabel, how can former trafficking victims or current victims of trafficking, who'd like to learn more about Salt & Light Coalition, get involved, get enrolled? Where do you like to be able to point them?

Izabel Olson [00:35:35] So most of our clients, they come through referrals of partner organizations. We work with organizations like Haymarket, TraffickFree. All of the organizations in Chicago, they come to us and they refer people to us. However, if you would like to refer yourself, you can go to our website and send us a message, send us an email and just refer yourself. And we can go through an interview process and see if it's a good fit for us. Now, our website is www.saltandlightcoalition.com.

Jesse Purewal [00:36:06] Great.

Dr. Izabel Olson, thank you for the time, energy, and candor today. I'm grateful for it. I'm better off for it. And I think our audience will tremendously enjoy your stories and be able to take a ton away from what you shared today. So, namaste, safe travels back to Chicago, and be well.

Izabel Olson [00:36:24] Thank you.

Jesse Purewal [00:36:31] Thanks for listening to Breakthrough Builders. You can subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts. If you enjoyed the show, I'd be grateful if you could spread the word by leaving a rating and a review, it really does help other people find us. And please tell your friends.

Breakthrough Builders is a Qualtrics Studios' original, presented and produced in collaboration with StudioPod Media in San Francisco. The show is hosted and executive produced by me, Jesse Purewal. Our writer is Todd Bagnull. from StudioPod Media, Deanna Morency is our show coordinator. Editing and production by Katie Sunku Wood. Additional editing and music is provided by Nodalab. Our designers are Baron Santiago and Vinsuka Chindavashak. Website by Gregory Hedon. Photography by Christy Hemm Klok. Special thanks to the entire Breakthrough Builders crew at Qualtrics, including Ali Rohani, James Wadsworth, John Johnson, and Kylan Lundeen.

Season 4Jesse Purewaleducation, finding your purpose, breakthrough experiences, salt & light coalition, chicago, charitable work, prison reform, dr. izabel olson, human trafficking