PathBreakers is a video podcast from The Kresge Foundation featuring community leaders who are reimagining what's possible in American cities. Hosted by Tracey Pearson and Jamie Bennett, with special guest hosting by Rip Rapson, each episode is an intimate conversation about the vision and determination it takes to create change. Season 2 goes into four cities with one central question: Who has power to shape what happens in their city? Detroit. New Orleans. Memphis. Fresno. Sixteen conversations with the community leaders and mayors building the future of their cities block by block.
Mayor Helena Moreno is closing financial deficits while supporting civic and cultural infrastructure
Cities across the country are confronting one of the defining questions of our era: Who has the power to decide how a city prepares for – and survives – climate change? And New Orleans is a city that lives on the direct shoreline of that question. It is a waterfront city below sea level, ringed by industrial corridors, and still managing the health and economic ripple effects of Hurricane Katrina 21 years later. Yet it is also a city of extraordinary cultural resilience and community ingenuity.
To begin our New Orleans city series, Kresge President and CEO Rip Rapson sits down with Helena Moreno, the current and 63rd Mayor of New Orleans, to discuss:
How stormwater management and ways of “living with water” are on the near-daily meeting docket
The opportunities she sees for New Orleans as an aerospace and biomedical hub
The importance, potential, and early successes of her investment in New Orleans East, including progress and success in small business development
Prevention strategies that have brought violent crime to a historic low
Finding efficiencies and partnerships after inheriting a $200 million dollar budget deficit, and how she is supporting programs that don’t traditionally fit under the umbrella of “essential city services”
How students are her biggest inspiration for keeping “this amazing historical magical city moving forward”
Next episode (out October 14th) we meet the first of our three featured New Orleans PathBreakers.
In this city series, we are talking to leaders across New Orleans who are building climate solutions with community self-determination. Next week Tracey and Jamie will be back in the host chairs and talking with Mina Seck, Community Food Director at Sprout, about who gets to control community land and build food sovereignty in New Orleans.
Subscribe to PathBreakers on [Spotify] | [Apple Podcasts] | [YouTube]
Learn more about Mayor Moreno: https://nola.gov/next/mayor/home/
Listen to all of Season 2 at https://pathbreakers.kresge.org
Host: Rip Rapson, President & CEO, Kresge Foundation
Co-Hosts: Tracey Pearson and Jamie Bennett
Producer: Juliet Hinely
Managing Editor: Krista Jahnke
Production support: Jennifer Kulczycki and Tracey Pearson
Video interview captured and edited by by Gumbo Productions
Logo animation: Collin Leix
Special thanks on this episode to Frederick "Wood" Delahoussaye and the team at Gallier Hall, Jennifer Kulczycki Director of External Affairs and Communications at Kresge, and to Kresge’s American Cities, Health and Environment Programs, especially Monica Valdes Lupi, Alejandra Hernandez and Jan Delatorre.
Thanks for listening! And please stay tuned for more from New Orleans.
30 Sept 2026
Danielle Bergstrom is building a newsroom around transparency
Danielle Bergstrom began her career as a city planner. That work, which she did in Fresno for 10 years, put her up close and personal with the goings-ons of City Hall. And seeing the “sausage making” there, as she says, convinced her that city residents needed the same insider understanding of what was happening in local government. That is when she started Fresnoland – a nonprofit, paywall-free investigative news platform now serving 1.5 million residents across Fresno and Madera County, dedicated to transparency in local politics.
In this episode, Danielle shares:
Why she left policy work to build a newsroom
The values that guide Fresnoland’s reporters and why they don’t aspire to be “objective” in the traditional journalistic sense
The challenges she and her staff face while reporting on City Hall, and how Fresnoland is taking on Fresno’s culture of closed-door government
How a new Fresnoland live event series is broadening the public’s civic imagination
Plus the backstory behind some big, recent local headlines and how Fresnoland got its name.
Next Episode, we head to New Orleans. Stay tuned for conversations about climate justice in one of the most climate vulnerable cities in the country.
Subscribe to PathBreakers on [Spotify] | [Apple Podcasts] | [YouTube]
Learn more about Fresnoland at Fresnoland.org
Listen all of Season 2 at https://pathbreakers.kresge.org
Co-Hosts: Tracey Pearson and Jamie Bennett
Producer: Juliet Hinely
Managing Editor: Krista Jahnke
Production support: Jennifer Kulczycki and Tracey Pearson
Special thanks on this episode to Kresge’s American Cities Program, especially Chantel Rush Tebbe and Anand Sharma.
Thanks for listening!
Our final stop on this Season 2 PathBreakers Tour is New Orleans, coming out in October.
23 Sept 2026
Dr. Sarait Martinez is leading with language justice
More than 200,000 immigrant farmworkers power Central California's agricultural industry, including over 60,000 people from many diverse and distinct Indigenous Mexican communities. Across those communities, more than 16 unique Indigenous Mexican languages are spoken, bringing issues of access and translation to the front and center of daily life – navigating work, civic engagement, and social services. When Latino communities are treated as linguistically homogeneous, much critical information remains out of reach.
The Centro Binacional para el Desarrollo Indígena Oaxaqueño (the Binational Center for the Development of Oaxacan Indigenous Communities, or CBDIO) was founded in Fresno in 1993 because Indigenous farmworkers in California’s Central Valley could not access social services offered only in English and Spanish. Since 1993, their mission and services have grown tremendously beyond language justice to also include building community power through economic justice, education justice, health justice, immigration justice, and worker justice. The CBDIO has also entered its second generation of leadership with Dr. Sarait Martinez as Executive Director.
In this episode, Dr. Martinez shares about:
The invisibility that Indigenous Mexican communities face even within Latino spaces
What “language justice” means in practice and how they work to ensure people can participate in decisions about their lives regardless of what language they speak
How the CBDIO transformed the “3 sisters” farming method into their “4 sisters” organizing framework
CBDIO’s recent wins recovering over $50,000 in stolen wages and expanding interpreter access.
Next Episode, meet Danielle Bergstrom. Danielle spent a decade as a city planner before deciding the most powerful way to shape Fresno was to start her own news platform and tell people what was actually happening in their city.
Subscribe to PathBreakers on [Spotify] | [Apple Podcasts] | [YouTube]
Learn more about the CBDIO at https://www.centrobinacional.org/
Listen all of Season 2 at https://pathbreakers.kresge.org
Co-Hosts: Tracey Pearson and Jamie Bennett
Producer: Juliet Hinely
Managing Editor: Krista Jahnke
Production support: Jennifer Kulczycki and Tracey Pearson
Special thanks on this episode to Kresge’s American Cities and Arts Programs, especially Kara Elliott-Ortega and Katie Van Dusen.
Thanks for listening!
Who has been a guest on PathBreakers
Names identified in recent episode analyses. Showing up to five guests.
Marcia Black
Damien Wilson
Favianna Rodriguez
Elizabeth Birr Moje
Reach and audience
Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.
YouTube views
687,356
Score snapshot 15 Sept 2025
Apple Podcasts (US)
5.0 / 5
13 ratings
Spotify
5.0 / 5
4 ratings
Podcast Authority Score: 66 / 100
A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.
Quality
76
Social presence
0
YouTube
86
Engagement
51
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