Event Insight

Leader to Leader – Lunch and Learn

  • Date
Thursday, January 25, 2024
  • Resources
Contact us
  • Time
11:30 am
  • Venue
1505 E.17th Street Santa Ana, CA 92705 United States

Leader to Leader – Lunch and Learn

  • About Issue Table

Orange County Grantmaker’s is pleased to extend the invite to join us for an upcoming Leader to Leader program. This new learning series is specifically dedicated to supporting our BIPOC nonprofit leaders, providing them a dedicated space to learn from and with one another, navigate their unique challenges and opportunities and build a community in Orange County. We are thrilled to host this Lunch & Learn! About this Lunch & Learn Session: Join Tania Bhattacharyya, founder of Lumos Marketing for an insightful learning session! LinkedIn is like a 24/7/365 available networking event, and many of the people who can make your social impact dreams come true are on there. They might even be connected to you already. You know, the folks who can provide a transformational grant, refer your next client for mental health services, interview you for their wide-reaching podcast, or get you up on a panel with your heroes. However, when you finally find the time to open LinkedIn, you don't know where to start. In this session, we’ll talk about why and how to strategically get in the limelight on LinkedIn (to reflect that light back onto your mission for real impact.) In this conversation, we’ll cover how to scale your communications around your social change work to attract an audience ready to roll up their sleeves and help you make shift happen. Come with questions!

  • Reflections

The Leader to Leader Lunch & Learn session appears to be a well-thought-out and valuable initiative by Orange County Grantmaker's to support BIPOC nonprofit leaders. The focus on providing a dedicated space for learning, networking, and community-building is commendable, particularly in addressing the unique challenges and opportunities faced by BIPOC leaders in Orange County.

The choice of Tania Bhattacharyya, the founder of Lumos Marketing, as the speaker for the session is promising. The topic, centered around leveraging LinkedIn as a powerful tool for networking and advancing social impact goals, aligns well with the professional development needs of nonprofit leaders. The emphasis on making strategic use of LinkedIn to connect with individuals who can contribute significantly to the mission of social change is timely and relevant.

  • Resources
  • Feedback
OCOI-2020-Strategic-Plan1712287844-0-350
OCOI 2020 Strategic Plan
The-State-of-OC-Philanthropy-Report1712287942-0-350
The State of OC Philanthropy Report

The Leader to Leader Lunch & Learn session appears to be a well-thought-out and valuable initiative by Orange County Grantmaker's to support BIPOC nonprofit leaders. The focus on providing a dedicated space for learning, networking, and community-building is commendable, particularly in addressing the unique challenges and opportunities faced by BIPOC leaders in Orange County.

The choice of Tania Bhattacharyya, the founder of Lumos Marketing, as the speaker for the session is promising. The topic, centered around leveraging LinkedIn as a powerful tool for networking and advancing social impact goals, aligns well with the professional development needs of nonprofit leaders. The emphasis on making strategic use of LinkedIn to connect with individuals who can contribute significantly to the mission of social change is timely and relevant.

How do we build a compassionate and inclusive America in an age of distrust? WAJAHAT ALI knows from personal experience that when we come together to be the superheroes of our own stories, we can create honest social change. The beloved TED speaker has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, and The Atlantic about our urgent issues—immigration, politics, parenthood—with boldness, hope, and humor. His memoir Go Back to Where You Came From, one of Amazon’s Best Books of the Year, follows his life as a Muslim Pakistani-American on a surprising, emotional, and challenging quest for the good life. Iconic journalist Katie Couric says that “we are all so fortunate to be on the receiving end of his intellect, his humanity, and his heart.”

Wajahat Ali

“With wit and charm, Ali delivers a masterful meditation on growing up brown in America...he gives us a clear-eyed affirmation of the country America could be.” — Mara Gay, New York Times

Mara Gay, New York Times

Wajahat Ali uses his platform to fight tirelessly for the social change we need in our country—and he isn’t afraid to get personal while doing it. The Daily Beast columnist and former New York Times writer, TED speaker, award-winning playwright, and Peabody-nominated producer of the documentary series The Secret Life of Muslims offers us his experiences of triumph over hardship as a beacon of hope and resilience in the face of life’s impossible situations. From his experiences of Islamophobia growing up as a Muslim Pakistani-American to his two-year-old daughter’s liver cancer diagnosis, Wajahat is living proof that when we share our authentic stories, we build the America we wish to live in.”

In his memoir Go Back to Where You Came From: And Other Helpful Recommendations on How to Become American, Wajahat teaches us how to create our own superhero origin story, invest in hope for the future of America, and enact real social change. The book was called “biting and funny and full of heart” by NPR. Representative Ilhan Omar called Wajahat’s work “hilarious” and “deeply moving”, and legendary writer Dave Eggers said it was the book he’d “been hoping Wajahat Ali would write for ten years—hilarious, stylistically fearless, deeply humane.”

Wajahat is also the author of The Domestic Crusaders—the first major play about Muslim-Americans in a post-9/11 world. He was the lead researcher and author for the Center for American Progress’s seminal report “Fear Inc., Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America,” and served as a national correspondent for Al Jazeera America, where he told stories about communities and individuals often marginalized or under-reported in mainstream media.

As Creative Director of Affinis Wajahat Labs, he worked to create social entrepreneurship initiatives to support and uplift marginalized communities. He also worked with the US State Department to design and implement the “Generation Change” leadership program to empower young social entrepreneurs. Wajahat initiated chapters in eight countries, including Pakistan and Singapore. For his work, he was honored as a “Generation Change Leader” by Sec. of State Clinton and recognized as an “Emerging Muslim American Artist” by the Muslim Public Affairs Council. 

He has given keynote speeches around the world such as TED, The Aspen Ideas Festival, Google, the United Nations, and The New Yorker Festival. His writing appears regularly in the New York Times, The Atlantic, the Washington Post, and The Guardian. He’s a Senior Fellow at The Western States Center and Auburn Seminary and co-host of Al Jazeera’s The Stream.