Join The Boston Globe, ABCD, and MassINC for a conversation focused on wealth, economic mobility and sustainable pathways to the middle class. Recent research by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, as well as research by the MassINC Policy Center, paints a troubling picture of the growing divide in Massachusetts between those who have been able to accumulate wealth and financial assets and those who have not.
Despite our extraordinary economic resources and prosperity, far too many individuals and families struggle not only to make ends meet, but to build the savings, home equity, retirement security, and other assets that provide a foundation for long-term economic opportunity.
As a continuation of ABCD’s Next Chapter series, this conversation brings community members, researchers, policymakers, and practitioners together to explore practical ways to expand opportunity and economic mobility. The discussion will examine the state of family wealth, the challenges of making it to the middle class, and the changing relationship between work, education, income, and economic mobility. The conversation will also focus on solutions: the policies, investments, and community strategies needed to rebuild pathways to financial security and sustain a strong, inclusive middle class across the Commonwealth.
Join The Boston Globe, ABCD, and MassINC for a conversation focused on wealth, economic mobility and sustainable pathways to the middle class. Recent research by the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, as well as research by the MassINC Policy Center, paints a troubling picture of the growing divide in Massachusetts between those who have been able to accumulate wealth and financial assets and those who have not.
Despite our extraordinary economic resources and prosperity, far too many individuals and families struggle not only to make ends meet, but to build the savings, home equity, retirement security, and other assets that provide a foundation for long-term economic opportunity.
As a continuation of ABCD’s Next Chapter series, this conversation brings community members, researchers, policymakers, and practitioners together to explore practical ways to expand opportunity and economic mobility. The discussion will examine the state of family wealth, the challenges of making it to the middle class, and the changing relationship between work, education, income, and economic mobility. The conversation will also focus on solutions: the policies, investments, and community strategies needed to rebuild pathways to financial security and sustain a strong, inclusive middle class across the Commonwealth.
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Alex Wolf Lewis is a cinematographer and an award-winning director. When a spot opened up on the camera team of Anthony Bourdain: Part Unknown, he bought his own ticket to Madagascar which began a 4 year world tour and his career. Since then he has DP'd commercials, narrative projects and documentaries that have screened at major festivals all over the world including Sundance, Tribeca, SXSW, TIFF, New York Film Festival, and Venice. He co-directed Snowy, a comedic short doc about his uncle’s pet turtle which had its world premiere at Sundance, played at over 90 festivals, received multiple awards including a Critics’ Choice Award nomination and was acquired by Time Studios. His debut feature documentary, Unless Something Goes Terribly Wrong, a feel-good feature documentary about a wastewater plant in Maine, premiered at the Camden International Film Festival where it received the Audience Award.Â
Kaitlyn Schwalje is a science journalist and award winning documentary director based in Philly. She received her Bachelor of Science degree in Physics from Carnegie Mellon University and completed her postgraduate studies at the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design. Before pivoting to storytelling, Kaitlyn designed haptic prototypes for the research division of the Walt Disney Company. Her stories about her disaster obsessed father, tsunamis, how archeology saved the cat, and city squirrels appear in CBC, Atlas Obscura, WNYC, 99% Invisible, National Geographic, and others. Director Credits include Snowy (Sundance ‘21, Critics Choice nominee, DOCNYC Shortlist) and Unless Something Goes Terribly Wrong (Camden International Film Festival- Audience Award).
Loren King is a freelance entertainment journalist, film critic and columnist for the past two decades, with numerous features and reviews published in: The Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, the late great Boston Phoenix, Art New England, Filmmaker magazine, WBUR’s The ARTery, the Credits, Provincetown Banner, Boston Spirit magazine and Newport This Week, among others.
Kaitlyn Schwalje is a science journalist and award winning documentary director based in Philly. She received her Bachelor of Science degree in Physics from Carnegie Mellon University and completed her postgraduate studies at the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design. Before pivoting to storytelling, Kaitlyn designed haptic prototypes for the research division of the Walt Disney Company. Her stories about her disaster obsessed father, tsunamis, how archeology saved the cat, and city squirrels appear in CBC, Atlas Obscura, WNYC, 99% Invisible, National Geographic, and others. Director Credits include Snowy (Sundance ‘21, Critics Choice nominee, DOCNYC Shortlist) and Unless Something Goes Terribly Wrong (Camden International Film Festival- Audience Award).
Lauren Hollingsworth is an Emmy-nominated documentary director and producer focused on authentic storytelling and complex human characters. Her critically acclaimed film Mothers in the Middle, an exploration of the challenges faced by working mothers in America today, earned her recognition as a creative voice who inspires viewers to reexamine familiar aspects of their lives from a fresh perspective.
During her time as Senior Director of CNN Original Series, Lauren oversaw several acclaimed series including Giuliani: What Happened to America's Mayor, Watergate: Blueprint for a Scandal, and The Decades. She also oversaw the Emmy-winning United Shades of America with W. Kamau Bell, which explores social and cultural issues in America, giving voice to those whose perspectives are too often left out of the conversation.
Prior to her tenure at CNN, Lauren served as a Director and Creative Director at MasterClass, where she brought a documentary feel to the content. She directed and produced classes featuring Madeleine Albright, Condoleezza Rice, Gloria Steinem, Pharrell Williams, Tony Hawk and Alex Honnold, among others, capturing each subject's unique stories and insights.
After obtaining her MFA in Film and Television Production at USC, Lauren spent a decade producing non-fiction and documentary television. Notable projects include R. J. Cutler's Apple TV+ series, Dear..., CNN's United States of Scandal with Jake Tapper, the CBS film Summer Dreams, and the Emmy-nominated It Gets Better.
Mara Kardas-Nelson covers inequality, particularly regarding health, the environment, and economic development. Her journalism has taken her around the world, and her reporting has been featured in The New York Times, The Nation, NPR, The Guardian, and elsewhere. Her first book, We Are Not Able to Live in the Sky (2024), a critical history of microfinance, was shortlisted for the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize. Mara also has a background in global health, having worked with South Africa’s Treatment Action Campaign, Médecins Sans Frontières, and Partners in Health. Her time in different parts of the world informs the questions she asks, and how she frames her stories. Outside of work, she’s obsessed with the outdoors, and is a proud mom to one human and two dog children.
Cyndee Readdean is an award-winning director, producer, and writer. She produced Critical Condition: Health in Black America, for NOVA, the PBS primetime science series. Readdean also recently co-directed and co-produced the Martha Graham Dance Company: We are Our Time, a two-part documentary series for PBS. Her previous films have appeared on PBS, ABC, MSNBC, and EPIX. Readdean co-directed and co-produced The Busing Battleground and directed and produced episode two of the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University award-winning series Reconstruction: America after the Civil War and the Emmy-nominated film The FBI & the Panther. She served as the Series Producer on the four-hour series By Whatever Means Necessary: The Times of Godfather of Harlem. Her producer credits include Freedom Summer, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and won the George Foster Peabody Award, the Emmy-nominated Tell Them We Are Rising: The Story of Black Colleges and Universities, which also premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and the two-hour premiere episode of the OBAMA series.
Sarah Rahal covers health and science for the Metro desk, with a focus on the public health needs especially in underserved communities across New England. She joined The Boston Globe in summer 2025 after eight years at The Detroit News, where she reported on breaking news, local government, the COVID-19 pandemic, caregiving, and investigations into Detroit’s political and economic revival post-bankruptcy. Her 2023 report on kinship caregivers exposed critical gaps in Michigan’s social support system and helped change state laws, earning her the state’s top prize for enterprise reporting. Before joining the Globe, she was a Knight-Wallace Reporting Fellow at the University of Michigan, where she focused on immigration and health policy disparities.
Sara is a business consultant, social change entrepreneur, speaker, and author who has led systemic transformation at renowned companies around the world. She is a mother, grandmother, community leader, and has been married for thirty years. She also lives with bipolar II on the bipolar spectrum. Sara has kept this mostly secret for four decades. Until now. In her memoir, BrainStorm: From Broken to Blessed on the Bipolar Spectrum, the inspiration for BrainStorm the film, she tells her riveting story to save lives, end the stigma, and maximize healing. Sara has a BA from Brown University and an MBA from the University of Massachusetts.
As an activist in support of people living with bipolar, Sara serves is one of the first people with lived experience on the board of the International Society of Bipolar Disorders, as an Expert by Experience in the Bipolar Action Network, and a network member of CREST.BD. She is co-host of the podcast BrainTalk with Dr Jim Phelps. Her TEDx about living on the bipolar spectrum has over 133K views.
Bonnie has been involved in numerous PBS science series, including The Secret of Life (NOVA/BBC), Scientific American Frontiers, Out of the Past, and The Ring of Truth, as well as programs for the Discovery Channel and Animal Planet. She directed and wrote Super Reefs: The Future of Coral for the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and has produced exhibit media for museums around the U.S., including Niagara Falls Visitor Center, Pikes Peak Visitor Center, the Tennessee State Museum, the Nebraska State Museum, the Mob Museum, and the National World War II Museum. Bonnie has a BA in Semiotics from Brown University.
She is the award-winning senior producer and writer of the one-hour international broadcast documentary, Earth Emergency, and series of five short films, Climate Emergency: Feedback Loops, which was launched in January 2021 with a virtual event featuring the Dalai Lama and Greta Thunberg and attended by over one million viewers globally. The films have been featured in more than 50 film festivals worldwide.
Jazmin Aguilera is a host and senior audio producer for the Boston Globe. Previously the head of audio at Los Angeles Times, Jazmin has a long tenure in the audio industry spanning more than a decade. She was host and supervising producer for The Cut podcast where she produced irreverent audio essays on cultural hot button topics. She was a senior producer and interim executive producer at Conde Nast, producing for Vogue and Pitchfork as well as overseeing audio products for Wired Magazine. She was the inaugural producer fellow with the New York Times working on The Daily where she produced impactful news podcast episodes while simultaneously becoming an International Women's Media Fund grant recipient to report on the Mexican-Guatemalan border. She spent 5 years at the NPR show Snap Judgment, where she produced award winning first person feature episodes. She has won several accolades including Spotify's best podcast episode of the year 2019, Indiewire's second best podcast episode of the year 2019, Third Coast Audio Festival award Gold 2018 and Silver 2019. She and her team produced the podcast episode The Leaked TapeThat Upended L.A. Politics included in the Los Angeles Times 2023 Pulitzer Prize win in breaking news.
Rob Tokanel is a documentary filmmaker and all-formats video producer at GBH News in Boston. His work has earned seven New England Emmy Awards and two regional Edward R. Murrow Awards. He directed the 2024 film Don’t Judge Me and co-directed the award-winning 2018 short She’s Not a Boy, now streaming with The Atlantic. His previous experience ranges from augmented reality to social-first news to interactive live streaming. He is a graduate of Columbia Journalism School and a former Pulitzer Center Reporting Fellow and Brown Institute for Media Innovation Grantee.
Emily Judem is a four-time New England Emmy Award-winning journalist and filmmaker. As a senior video producer at GBH News, she has filmed and edited short documentaries on topics ranging from public education to homelessness and immigration. Her work has been honored with two Gracie awards for women in media, one national and seven regional Edward R. Murrow awards and a national award from the Education Writers Association, among others. She is a graduate of Columbia Journalism School and Colby College.
