The North Star

Blueprints for Belonging: Liz Gordon-Canlas on Care, Connection, and Leading Zora’s House

• JeffriAnne Wilder, Ph.D. • Season 2 • Episode 4

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In this inspiring episode, Dr. JeffriAnne Wilder welcomes Liz Gordon-Canlas, Managing Director of Zora’s House, a vibrant hub for women and gender-expansive people of color in Columbus, Ohio, to discuss how disruption can mean building radically different spaces rooted in care, connection, and collective courage. Drawing on her transformative journey through higher education, nonprofit leadership, and personal advocacy as a transracial adoptee and community builder, Liz shares her vision for equity, belonging, and economic empowerment. Through programs like the Leadership Fellows and Wealth Builders, she is redefining what thriving looks like and challenging limiting narratives about women of color, proving that when we invest in dreaming, policy, and solidarity, we don’t just survive, we create a blueprint for the future.

  • Season focus on disruption and reimagining change
  • DLE program takeaways and Black professional cohort impact
  • Origin story from residence life to governance fluency
  • Mentorship from Black leaders shaping career pivots
  • Pandemic-era shift and readiness for new work
  • Building Zora’s House and the $6.3M campaign
  • Programs including Leadership Fellows and Wealth Builders
  • Regenerative economics and keeping talent in Columbus
  • Boundary-setting as a launchpad, not social service
  • Internal blueprint for centering Black women at work
  • Visions for policy, community, and the next decade

🔗 Find out more about Dr. JeffriAnne Wilder.
🔗 Follow the Center for DEI Innovation and Leadership on LinkedIn.
🌎Visit Oberlin College's website.
Podcast Produced by: Paradigm Media Group

SPEAKER_00:

Welcome to the North Star, a space for candid conversations on leadership, equity, and social justice. This season we're exploring disruption, how bold thinkers are reimagining what change looks like. Today, I'm joined by Liz Gordon Kenlis, managing director at Zora's House in Columbus, Ohio, a vibrant community hub where women and gender-expansive people of color gather to dream, connect, and create. Before joining Zora's House, Liz spent more than a decade in higher education and now leads an organization that's redefining what belonging and leadership can look like in practice. Welcome, Liz. Thank you so much, Debrianne. It's so great to be here. Yes. Well, before we get started and talking about Zora's House and your leadership practice, I'd like for us to kind of jump into where you and I first got connected. And that was earlier this year in 2025. We both were part of the, I'm not sure what the cohort number was, but we were both a part of Case Western Reserve's Weatherhead's Executive Development Leadership Experience Program. It was the EDLE program, which was such an amazing experience. And I was actually saying this earlier today. Part of the reason why I wanted to have you on the podcast is that when I had an opportunity to meet you through our um EDLE experience, we did not have an opportunity to connect as often as I would have liked.

SPEAKER_01:

But I agree.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah, when I had an opportunity to meet you and learn more about the work that you do, I immediately like had this admiration for you and the work that you do. Particularly, I know we both work in uh had experiences in higher ed. So I'm just really excited to have you here. And can you tell me what it was like, what your experience was in the EDLE program? For me, it was very transformative. So just to kind of walk our listeners through that experience, it was a six-month cohort program. It was pretty intensive. At least it felt pretty intensive for me because you were coming from Columbus. So you know, we met once a month on what Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays, right? Once a month, we came together, we had lots of homework, which I did not do much of the homework. I just didn't have time. I was a lot of homework. My my me showing up is the gift, right? I'm at least gonna come to class. I didn't do the homework. And for someone who's a professor, that was a horrible, horrible student. But we came together, we learned about all the different aspects of executive leadership, and we did a lot. We heard from amazing, you know, speakers and uh folks in the field. And it was just really a great time. And given sort of the heaviness that the beginning of the year kind of kind of ushered in, I think it was a great experience to be in community. And these are also happened to be folks of color. All of us were black professionals who were going through this experience. What did the experience feel like for you?

SPEAKER_01:

First, like you said, it was transformative, it was empowering, it was timely. And it'd been a long time since I'd been in a classroom setting like that. And it always felt exciting like the first day of school. I loved getting up north to Cleveland and to Case's campus and prep for our classes, and it really invigorated the way I thought as a leader. It changed the way I thought as an entrepreneur for sure. And it made me realize that there's just this bigger network out there of people that are rooting for each other, that are doing really different and important work. And I absolutely loved it. I mean, I have so many wonderful things I could say about our cohort and our instructors and the quality of the instruction and just like how it's just been to date my most favorite professional development learning experience I've ever had. And it was really special.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. Did you do your homework, Liz?

SPEAKER_01:

Oh, you know, Jeffrey, and if we are on record, of course, girl, I did my homework. Every month. I definitely on my bookshelf behind me, I have all lots of our um good notes that we've taken and our books and everything. So it's all here with me.

SPEAKER_00:

Yeah. I mean, the speakers were dynamic. So all of the lecturers that we experienced who came from all across the country to kind of share what they knew and learned about leadership really helped to inform how I am as a leader. And so it really did help me. And it kind of like you said, it was very timely. And given everything that we've experienced so far in 2025, it really did kind of shape for me in real time what it meant to be a leader. Not to mention, like you said, the community of just other like-minded individuals and leaders that we had the opportunity to share. So it was definitely great. Part of what I learned about you being a part of that cohort experience is that you also started your career. I don't know if you started your career in higher ed, but you definitely spent a lot of time in higher ed. Let's talk a little bit about that. So I always love to ask people about their origin stories. So can you share us with us a little bit about kind of your origin story? Kind of tell us a little bit more about what brought you to this point.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah. So I will always tell people that I am a daughter of the city of Columbus. I was born and raised in Columbus and I absolutely love this city. And when I was thinking about going to school, I didn't really know where I wanted to head or what I what I wanted to do. But I ended up at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio. I was studying musical theater and thought I was going to go to Broadway, Jeffrey, and I still might. You never know. It's not too late. But at that point in my education, that's what I wanted to do. But I ended up as a student getting really involved in student leadership. I was an RA, and that was just such a wonderful experience for me. I absolutely loved the idea of transforming community and of building communities with other people. And so after I finished my undergraduate degree, I went to graduate school at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio. And I was a grad student there and I ran some residence halls. And this was at that point in my career, early career, I thought I'm going to be in residence life and housing on college campuses for the rest of my career. It was all I really wanted to do. To me, it was fun work. It was dynamic work. It was important. I was meeting so many different types of students. And then at a certain point, so many different types of staff. So I went on and I worked for a couple of years at Miami University. And that was the first time, but not the last time, that I was really privileged to be under such tremendous leadership of another black woman. So Dr. Vicabel Robinson was my director of housing at the time at Miami. And she really transformed the way that I saw women showing up at work. She had very young children at the time. I admired her leadership so much. And Miami is a really wonderful campus, but also a difficult place to work and live when you're a staff member of color. And in my roles in housing, I was living on campus. So living in staff housing all the time. I lived where I work, and that could definitely present some challenges. And so there was an opportunity that opened up at Ohio State in Columbus in my hometown. And Dr. Vicka was the one who called me and said, this position has opened at Ohio State. You're going to apply for this job. You're going to get that job. And we're going to say goodbye to you here at Miami, but you're going to go be home with your family. And so this woman in leadership really encouraging me to like think about family first and think about what I wanted to do professionally first was that was such a gift to me. And I am still in great contact with Vicca and really owe that to her. And so happy to say that publicly about just what a positive impact she had on me. And so I spent most of my higher ed years at Ohio State, first as a live-on staff member in housing, running one of the large towers that are on the North Campus. And then I moved into a more leadership role within the housing team within student life. And I loved it. I just loved how different every day was. I loved how I was able to wear many hats and think about problem solving in ways that were meaningful for students. I also loved showing up for students who looked a lot more like me and maybe were much more on the margins of campus communities and did that through advising some student groups. And so that was really incredible. But probably my most transformative higher ed experience was when I chaired the staff committee at Ohio State. So Ohio State's one of the largest employers in central Ohio. And so the staff committee was created to advocate for staff who were working at the university. And in that role, I reported to the office of the president. And at that time, Ohio State had its first Black president, Dr. Michael Drake. And so I was in this leadership role. I was in my really early 30s. I had one child, and then I was pregnant with my second baby. And so I'm this like much younger staff member working alongside this really incredible leader who was also leading during a really difficult time at the university for a lot of different reasons. And I just admired seeing his leadership transform the campus community. I learned a ton about policy, about governance, about local and state laws and how they impact public universities. And there was that time where I was like, okay, I used to say that I didn't want to do anything nerdy with governance and higher ed, that that was the boring stuff. But then I was going to board meetings and I was seeing how the decisions were made and how the budgets were made. And it was really exciting to me. And I also saw another woman in leadership at that time, and that was Katie Hall, who was the president's chief of staff. And that's where I really was like, okay, I think that's what I want to do. I think I want to be a chief of staff. I want to be this orchestrator and coordinator of the chaos and of the purpose and of the strategy. And so I left Ohio State and I became an assistant dean of students at the Columbus College of Art and Design, which was a really small art and design college in the heart of downtown Columbus. And that was a big change for me. Leaving Ohio State, one of the things that we used to do there was make a big place feel really small. And so even though OSU was huge, it felt like this really small, tight-knit community to me. And so leaving that was hard, but I needed to get a new professional experience. I needed the opportunity to make some of my own big decisions. My term position with the office of the president had completed. And so I was done with that work with him. And so I was excited to be at CCAD and to be in a really different campus culture. It was a private school, which is very different in a lot of ways in a public university. And then COVID hit in 2020. So I was about six months into my tenure at CCAD when the pandemic started. Then I worked through that period of time for the next three years. And that's kind of where my higher ed journey came to a close. I was ready for something really different after a few years at CCAD. And that's when Zora's house came calling.

SPEAKER_00:

Before we get to Zora's house, I just in you sort of kind of narrating your story, your career story. Is that an internal kind of compass for you? Or, you know, you mentioned Dr. Vica. Are there other people who are kind of assisting you in making these decisions? Or is it just kind of this internal feeling that you feel it's time for me to make a shift?

SPEAKER_01:

I've always really felt like professionally, every pivot and change that I've made has been really intentional and authentic, but it has often caught me by surprise. So I remember my move from Ohio State to C C A D was also under some really tremendous guidance and encouragement from someone who was special to my career. And that was Chris Mundell. He's still at C C AD. I actually first met Chris forever ago. I used to, I babysat for his family when his children were really little. And it's always amazing to see kids grow and get better because his kids are in high school and college now. But Chris was one of the first black male professionals I knew in higher ed. And I watched his career kind of from a distance. We were involved in some Ohio professional organizations for higher ed professionals, but we never worked on the same campus. And then I ran into him at a conference. I was so excited to be at this conference. I was representing Ohio State. And he said to me, I need a new director of housing and a new assistant dean of students. And I've always wanted you to be on my team and this is going to be the right time for you. And I thought, I have never thought about working at CCAD. I've always loved CCAD as, like I said, a kid from Columbus, but C C AD is an incredible part of our creative community. It produces these wildly talented artists and creative professionals. And so from a distance, I knew about the art college, but I wasn't familiar with it for many years. And so that was a time where someone else who I really respected, who I admired for the way that they showed up in a way that there certainly were not a lot of other black men leading units in student life across our state and across the country. And so I admired Chris for that work. And so I was, I was ready to like take the leap with him and go to CCAD. But I would often, yeah, sit and ask myself, like, what type of skills am I still missing? What haven't I had the chance to do? And, you know, in particular with CCAD, I knew I had not had a lot of business operations experience yet. I had had a lot of HR experience, a lot of leadership and event planning, a ton of crisis response at Ohio State. You learn a lot about crisis response when you work in housing at a big school. But I didn't have some of the contract and business decisions and the financial decisions that I knew. I needed to possess that in my portfolio to move forward. And that was scary to me. The money stuff always made me nervous professionally. But I wanted to have that challenge and I certainly was able to get it during that time.

SPEAKER_00:

So now you are the managing director at Zora's house. And I'm really, really excited to get into this because this is what seems to me a dream position, right? And I don't want to put words in your mouth, but as a sociologist and someone who focuses in on the experiences of folks of color, and in particular women of color, to think about the mission of Zora's house and the work of Zora's house. So to kind of back up a little bit, Zora Near Hurston, for folks who may not know, was a writer, an anthropologist, a filmmaker, all of the things, right? Written prolifically, lived from 1891 to 1960. One of her most kind of commonly known works is was Their Eyes Were Watching God. We could spend another hour talking about Zoranel Hurston and the impact that her work has and continues to have in a lot of different spaces. So you currently work at Zora's House, which of course is named after Zoran O'Hursten, right? And of course, honors her work. And Zora's House serves women and gender expansive people of color in deeply intentional ways. I'll let you talk more about the work of Zora's House, but I did want to just kind of share an excerpt from your 2024 in a report, which to me was deeply impactful when I was reading more about the work. And it and it states at Zora's House, we believe that to dream freely is to resist and to create what does not yet exist is an act of liberation. In a time when the very notion of equity is being challenged, cultivating a radical imagination is not simply visionary. It is necessary. So first, tell us about how you got to Zora's house and tell us about the work that you all do.

SPEAKER_01:

You know, so throughout all of my years in higher education, I would often sometimes, you know, I'd hear from headhunters, I'd hear from mentors or colleagues on other campuses who would have, you know, roles that were DEI facing, you know, multicultural offices that were looking for an assistant director or different types of work on a campus. And would often reach out to me and say, Liz, I think you should look at this role. I think you should consider this. And this really draws on a very separate part of my professional life that involves the public speaking I do around foster care and adoption. So I'm a former foster youth. I'm a transracial adoptee. I talk a lot about the experiences that people of color have when we're adopted and raised in white families. And so people tend to think like, oh, Liz wants to do this work in communities on college campuses that would be focused on identity, on culture, on equity and inclusion. And throughout my career, it just wasn't something that I was ready or wanting to do. I really wanted to focus on community engagement, on housing, and on that experience for students. But I first met our founder and CEO, Lsy Johnson. We were at a birthday party for like a friend of our children. Our children are around the same age. And I was always just rooting for anything that made Columbus bigger and better. I was always imagining what are the best things that are happening in our city for women of color. And I had seen that Zora's house was this space that had been built in the Wyland Park neighborhood, which is one of the neighborhoods that's adjacent to Ohio State. And I thought, that's amazing. How cool. I love that this is happening. I have a minor in women's genetic studies, and so I knew the work of Zora really well. And I love the fact that her voice and her legacy continues to get to be a part of our community. I thought that was amazing. And I thought, all right, I just want to check this space out. But I didn't have a deep familiarity with Zora's House prior to knowing about the role. And so I was really feeling like I was ready to move on to a new position. And so I was on LinkedIn and I saw this posting for the first managing director at Zora's House. And I kind of squealed and was like so elated because I thought to myself, this is my next position. This is where I'm going to go next. I'm going to be able to continue to build community. I'm going to use all of my operational skill sets, my leadership skill sets. And I'm going to go and join this really new and growing team. And it's going to be different for me to leave higher education and to, you know, move out of this space, but it'll be awesome. So I applied for the position and shortly after met with LC. And I think that was probably end of August or early September. And then I joined the team in December three years ago. So in 2022. But there was that internal monitor again, right? Yeah. And I definitely felt this intense, like both excitement and sense of calm when I saw the role and thinking to myself, this this has to just be the next opportunity for me. So it's fun to think back to that memory because it's very vivid for me for sure. Okay.

SPEAKER_00:

Zora's House, a 10,000 square foot space, is that right? That's right. So it's a huge space. Right. And tell me more about exactly what Zora's House aims to do. So it's a community space, it's a gathering space. What types of programs does Zora's House offer? And what kinds of what kinds of things have you all done over the past, is it three years, three and a half years?

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, since I've joined, well, I'll say the first thing that we did is that we we built the 10,000 square foot building and we did the fundraising behind it, the$6.3 million that it took to build this new space. And that was a part of my interest also in joining the team was I knew that Zorus House was going to build a new physical space. And as much as I loved the curriculum and education of having students be together in community, I also loved the facilities and operations work of it. And I had just finished some big construction projects in my portfolio in higher ed. And I thought, oh, I would be really skilled at helping with the building of this new space. So the old Zora's house is actually in a 2,500 square foot home that's very residential feeling. It's still in Wyland Park, right in the neighborhood where we are today. But we had really quickly outgrown that space. And so we bought an empty lot from the city of Columbus. We bought that lot for a dollar and seven cents in honor of Zora's January 7th birthday. Oh my god. So I know that wasn't that fun. Because the lot was sitting vacant. And like I think the city saw the vision that we had organizationally. And what I'll say is I was talking earlier today with someone else, and they were asking kind of similar questions about the history of Zora's house. And I said, so much of what we've done is because other black women and other women of color believed in the work that we were doing, whether that was local donors, our banker who has helped us so tremendously with our fundraising and our finances. Actually, first I recognized her when I first met her because I lived in the dorms at Wright State with her daughter. And so I felt this like immediately, like this motherly maternal energy from her. I knew she was going to help us take good care of the work that we were doing. And there are a lot of Miss Crystals involved in Zorus House, a lot of really incredible leaders of color who understand the imperative nature of our work and are willing to stand beside us with their time, talent, and treasure. So whether it's their skill set of knowing how to get it done. So we did the fundraising for the building. We worked with Moody Nolan, who is the largest black-owned architecture firm in the country, and they designed our building. Again, another incredible family in Columbus that was able to see the vision and stand behind it. And then we built our new building. And so since we've activated our space and opened the new space over a year ago, we have a lot of different programs and events and activations that are really just rooted in uplifting the dreams and the goals that women of color have in Columbus and beyond Central Ohio as well, because we have a retreat space on our third floor. And I like to imagine that a lot of the work that we're doing is around the fact that different populations in different communities offer a regenerative economy. So when people spend a dollar at a black-owned business or at a business that's owned by a woman or a woman of color, that dollar tends to last longer in the community for a lot of different reasons. And so we are able to identify different points of connection, other different social enterprises, forms of networking that are really meaningful for somebody who might have just moved here to Columbus or who's wanting to consider staying here. One of the things that I know is critical about being a city with a big university is how do you ensure that the great minds that come to the university end up staying and living in your community afterwards? And so being a space where people feel a sense of connection to other women of color, then it encourages them to stay and live longer in Columbus and call our city home. And that matters for a lot of reasons as well. So a couple of our really critical programs, first would be our leadership fellows. So leadership fellows is a six-month-long cohort. This is a group of usually 13 to 15 women of color in our community, and they are critical in activating our space. And so they're in our first floor space from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., where we do all of our programs. We have our women of color writing circle. We have these great networking events, we call those power hours. We also do rent our space. And so we imagine this sense of connection to other nonprofits that are doing really critical community work who might come into our space that we've built and they might use it for their meetings and gatherings. And so our leadership fellows are able to support those operations, but then also walk through a leadership curriculum that covers the six months of their experience. And then when they complete that, they do receive a stipend that they are able to use then to invest in themselves later on. So Leadership Fellows has really evolved over the time that I've been at Zora's House. And that's one of our big impact programs, in addition to our women of color wealth builders. So wealth builders is another cohort, multi-month-long program that starts off with the work of Kara Stevens. She online uses the name Frugal Feminista. And Kara talks a lot about how we heal ourselves as women of color, how heal our relationships with money. And so it's great to have this kind of basic financial literacy curriculum. But if you don't heal your relationship with money, especially the ways that we have to show up as caregivers and caregiving multi-generationally, right? Caregiving to elders, caregiving to children and to nieces and nephews, and thinking about how we do that in a way that's healing for ourselves and financially responsible. So Kara's work is so critical. So she starts us off with that work, and then we walk the women who are in the cohort through this different curriculum that is what Wealth Voters is rooted in. So that's another one of our programs that we tend to be pretty known for and that runs for many months at a time. I love that. Has this year tested Zora's house in any way? Absolutely. Our funding, we don't receive a ton of government funding at this time. But one of the things that we really stand by is the solidarity and liberation work that we aim to do. And we don't aim to do it alone. And so when I think about all of the other nonprofits that are in Columbus, big and small, and the important work that they do, everybody, the one thing I've learned about being at a new nonprofit that's still a little bit on the smaller side is those small programs, those small interactions, those small, a smaller donor gift that you someone may say, Oh, it's only$5, it's only$20, those contributions make such a big difference. And so when I see another nonprofit that's struggling or sharing really difficult news, it's hard to keep morale up. It's hard to feel like the mission is able to continue to move forward. But the the one thing I think we always tell ourselves is that to do this type of work, to be rooted in such like audacious beliefs of what we want to see come to fruition for our community means that we will face certainly some really challenging moments. There were challenging moments during the construction process. There were challenging moments during our ribbon cutting and we were working to grow our staff. And there's challenging moments now. And I just continued seeing us figuring out these really creative and important ways that we'll navigate.

SPEAKER_00:

So this entire season has been about disruption. Is there anything about your leadership experience thus far at Zora's house? And I'm sure that you could probably think of a million examples, but can you think of any particular story or experience that has really been centered on disruption since you've been at Zora's house?

SPEAKER_01:

I think just all of the work that we constantly do and that we don't exist as a social service. And so sometimes people, I'll be at an event, I'll be out in the city or wherever I am. And someone will say, I have clothes, I want to donate to Zora's house, or I have health and beauty supplies. I want to drop them off. And I'll say, Oh, we are not a social service. We don't provide basic survival needs and goods. That is a critical service. And we have partners in the city that are doing that really well. And that certainly's meant to do. We believe that women of color deserve the opportunity to thrive, not just survive. Housing, food security, educational access, those are survival needs. But don't we deserve to go beyond just surviving? Don't we get to imagine what it would be to start your own business or to go back to school for a future degree or to think about pivoting your career at a certain point in your life and getting new leadership skills and that it's not too late? You can do it. There's not a right time or a wrong time to make your own dreams come true. And so I think disrupting the idea that black women always have to be surviving, that we're supposed to always accept the bare minimum. I mean, I I see the flash in people's eyes when I disrupt that idea for them through their own implicit bias and make them think twice about what they're asking. I say if you want to donate to Zora's house, we will take a check or credit. You can send the money and we'll use that towards our programs. So, right.

SPEAKER_00:

It's um, you know, and talk about the tax implications of that, right? It's, you know, correct. I love that. So like disrupting those like biased narratives about black women and other women of color, right? This idea that why can't we think about black women and women of color building wealth, right? Building leadership capacity as opposed to like, oh, here's some clothes. And there's nothing wrong with that to your point. But thinking about that through a different type of lens is really, really disruptive. Right. Yeah. Oh my gosh. So we always close with three sort of rapid fire reflection questions, if that's good with you.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00:

So the first question, and they're always the same something that has made you smile big this week.

SPEAKER_01:

Something that made me smile big this week. So over the weekend, I have an identical twin.

SPEAKER_00:

I was gonna say that because I saw something somewhere about you being in Twinsburg. Like twin test or something like that.

SPEAKER_01:

Shout out to Twinsburg, Ohio for hosting the largest gathering of twins in the country every summer. And so my identical twin ran the Chicago Marathon this past weekend. Oh my gosh. She would not say super long, but she always is running with her chapter or the Columbus chapter of Black Girls Run. And so Chicago showed up and showed out during a very difficult time for that incredible city, the representation that they showed at the race and the support of the volunteers. It was just incredible. I think one of the things I love about being at Zora's house is the reminder that black people and black women are not a monolith. We have different hobbies and interests, different dreams and goals. And, you know, I think for the for the running community, which I'm not a part of, I was very happy to spectate. I was not running. We're a record.

SPEAKER_00:

I was imagining this. I remember it. I'm just much more E D L E program. You were talking about being in the wild or something. That's what I'm saying.

SPEAKER_01:

Yeah, I'm much more into hiking and fitness, uh than not running. Hiking isn't that the same as running?

SPEAKER_00:

No.

SPEAKER_01:

Jeffrey Ann, girl. My mind, it is.

SPEAKER_00:

Ankle is the same.

SPEAKER_01:

That's not the same. If there's a certain point while you're hiking, if you're having to run, whoo, good luck to you. I hope there's not a bear out there. Oh, right. Okay. So you're just outside walking. Just outside. Right. Just outside in this. So, but seeing my sister complete. I mean, that yeah, definitely, it just wasn't just another occasion for us to share. And for and her, she was really reflective on how amazing the collective group was of the Black Runners of Chicago. They had this whole amazing like aid station that they had throughout the race course. And so yeah, I think what I love about Zora's House is the power of celebrating our victories. You know, that we share that together. We share that as biological sisters. We share that as sisters in service and community. And I was smiling big. I was happy to be there with her and to see my twinny have that victory. And it was awesome. So what's your sister's your twin sister's name? Her name is Catherine. She goes by Katie. So Elizabeth Liz, Catherine Katie. I love that. Okay. Second thing, what keeps you up at night? What keeps me up at night is my biggest goal with the work I'm trying to do at Zora's House. And that is what it means to create the ideal blueprint for supporting everybody at work based on what it means to be a black woman at work. And so I think about my current my full-time staff at Zora's House and imagining like if I make the blueprint here for the best experience that we can have professionally, how can it be a blueprint that can be used broadly for everybody? If we center our experiences in the work, how can I make this experience great for everybody else? And that's hard. The cost of benefits are challenging. Trying to figure out hybrid work, trying to figure out the ways that I support my staff. And I always say that the full-time staff at Zorse House, everybody is a caregiver. That doesn't mean that they have a dependent age child, but it does mean that everybody's caregiving. Caregiving to elders, to little ones, taking care of self, protecting and taking care of educational goals. All of those are things that matter to my staff. And so I want that to be something that comes to fruition. And leading during this time is really challenging. And so definitely gives me a few gray curls here and there, trying to make sure that that becomes possible. But it's again one of our audacious goals that we have as an organization. And I've seen us do many big and amazing things. And I think we can do this as well.

SPEAKER_00:

The fact that you're thinking about that and you're thinking really intently about it means that you're going to do it. So that's really important. And final question. When you imagine 10 years from now, how do you hope your work in spaces like Zora's house will have disrupted the status quo?

SPEAKER_01:

So I have a little girl, Paloma. She's seven. So in 10 years, when she's, you know, budding high school senior, I imagine, and getting ready to think about what's next for her. First, I I want there to be a Zora's house for her and lots of other girls and women like her. And I want her to not be held back by the idea that there are choices that are limiting her in her future. I want her to feel like she can be and do anything, that she has really the whole world in front of her and the opportunity to do that. So that kind of feels like this like out there idea. And so what I believe is that there's policy that has to inform that. There's good governance that our communities and our country need to do that, and that there's opportunities that have to come to fruition. There are a lot of incredible organizations here in Columbus, here and there in Cleveland, that are supporting the work of women and girls. And I think people finding a way to continue to support that work is really, really absolutely credible. So that 10 years from now, that does come to be true.

SPEAKER_00:

Love it. All right. Today's conversation with Liz Gordon Canless reminds us that disruption doesn't always mean breaking apart. It can also mean building differently by creating spaces rooted in care, connection, and courage. Liz is helping redefine what leadership looks like for this generation and the next. Thank you for joining us on the North Star. Stay tuned for more conversations with leaders who are shaping what's next.