Building Community Power: From Trauma to Transformation with Camryn Smith and Jen Zuckerman

Welcome to The Hive Collective Podcast with your host, Beth Ellen Holimon. In this episode, we explore how nonprofits can shift power dynamics by centering those directly impacted by systemic injustices. Today’s guests are:

Cameron Smith – Writer, anti-racism activist, and co-founder of Communities in Partnership (CIP) in Durham, NC. She shares her powerful story of how a tragic event led to the creation of a "community-rooted" organization.
Jen Zuckerman -Advisory board member at CIP, consultant on power reorganization, and former philanthropy executive. She discusses her journey from traditional power structures to understanding and supporting community-rooted movements.
Join us for a deep dive into how these leaders are reshaping narratives, building relationships, and rethinking the role of nonprofits.


Full Bios:
Camryn Smith is a proud resident of Old East Durham and a community activist & organizer. She has been serving in place-based development work for over 23 years both stateside and abroad. Camryn is one of the founding members of Communities In Partnership (CIP), a community-rooted organizing and education group based in Old East Durham and serves as the Founding Executive Director. CIP focuses on addressing policy and systemic inequity for BIPOC and materially poor people within Durham focusing on social determinants of health, economic development, gentrification, and housing. Camryn is a RWJF Culture of Health Leader (Cohort 3), and an Aspen Institute Healthy Communities Fellow (cohort/2022). She also serves locally as co-chair of Organizing Against Racism-Durham as well as serving as a member of the Racial Equity Taskforce for the City of Durham and the Built2Last/Durham Compact Board of Advisors. She also serves on the Executive and Steering Committees for the Equitable Food Oriented Development (EFOD) which is a national collaborative of food systems organizations run by black and brown communities to reshape the narrative surrounding food, community and economic development centered in black and brown liberation.  To see more, go to the CIP website.  

 Jen Zuckerman is owner of Zuckerman Consulting, working with philanthropic, academic, and community organizations on issues of power, connection, and authentic relationship building. As part of her work with Zuckerman Consulting, Jen contracts with the DEI Works Collective.  Her work focuses on institutional organizing, concentrating specifically on recognizing power and operationalizing power shift strategies.

 She previously served as the Director of Strategic Initiatives at Duke University’s World Food Policy Center, focusing on people-first policy development for equitable food policy in the US.  There, she supported research to demonstrate the racialized history of policies that have created the inequities in the food system of today, identifying strategies that shift power and decision making to community leadership.  

 Jen’s background is in philanthropy, spending twelve years at the Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina Foundation as the Senior Program Officer for Healthy Living and the Director of Strategic Partnerships and as a Board member/Board Chair of the Sustainable Agriculture and Food System Funders Network. 

The Hive Collective is a strategic partner to nonprofits and NGOs all over the world. Reach out to us at info@hivecollective.net

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