Living Fully Through Creativity, Healing, and Resilience | Susanna Peredo Swap

In this inspiring episode of Shaping Freedom, host Lisane Basquiat sits down with award-winning producer, journalist, and filmmaker Susanna Peredo Swap—a cultural force dedicated to uplifting San Diego’s creative community. Susanna shares her powerful journey from surviving a childhood spinal cord injury and growing up as the daughter of a young immigrant mother, to becoming the founder of Vanguard Culture, a nonprofit championing the region’s creative workforce.

With over 25 years of experience across arts administration, performance, and advocacy, Susanna has curated 80+ exhibitions, co-led Arts & Culture for World Design Capital San Diego Tijuana 2024, and helped position San Diego as a cultural destination. She opens up about resilience, collaboration, and her vision for the arts as an engine for community transformation.Her story is one of grit, creativity, and living with intention—a true reminder of how art shapes freedom.

Learn how to set boundaries without guilt. Join Lisane's next Protect Your Peace Shaping Session today: https://shapingfreedom.com/boundaries-workshop

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
Lean hard, double down on San Diego's a cultural destination,
and so that's what Vanguard Culture tries to do. We're
trying to put it all in one place that Hey,
we've got these cool, underground, funky things happening that you
need to know about. And it's almost like I'm giving
everybody like the insider. Hey, come here, let me show
you something having us known as the cultural destination that

(00:29):
we deserve to be. And I'm going to play a
role in that to the extent that I can.

Speaker 2 (00:37):
Welcome to the Shaping Freedom Podcast, where we dive into
conversations that inspire personal growth, transformation and clarity and challenging times.
I'm your host, Lisan Basquiat. Today I get to sit
down with my friend, Susanna Perito Swap. Suzanna is one
of those people who lives and breathes creativity, not just

(00:59):
as an art but as a cultural force. She's an
award winning producer, journalist, and filmmaker with more than twenty
five years of experience across arts, administration, performance and advocacy.
She has curated over eighty exhibitions at the San Diego
International Airport. She co led Arts and Culture for World

(01:22):
Design Capital, San Diego, Tijuana in twenty twenty four, and
she founded Vanguard Culture, a nonprofit that has earned seventy
two awards for excellence in journalism, two Gold Anthem Awards
by the Webbies, and even a feature in National Geographic.
But Susanna's personal journey is as expansive as it is inspiring,

(01:45):
from being raised by a single immigrant mother to navigating
a spinal cord injury to summiting Mont Blanc, to building
a family and a legacy that champions creativity, community, cultural connection,
and a deep commitment to building a thriving creative ecosystem. Susannah,

(02:11):
Welcome to the podcast. I'm so excited to have you here.

Speaker 1 (02:15):
Super happy to be here. Thank you for the opportunity.

Speaker 2 (02:18):
You're welcome. It sounds very formal. We're friends outside of bail, right, and.

Speaker 1 (02:25):
We're the tequila shots. Let's start there.

Speaker 2 (02:27):
I know, right, we should have this should have been
like talking tequila, because had we done that, a different conversation, right.
I always have like an overarching question for the episode,
and it's really in it, and it's just more of
a like a guide post and one of the questions
that I'd love to have answered. To have our conversation.

(02:49):
Answer is how do the arts serve as a bridge
not just to beauty and to culture, but also to resilience, healing,
and the shaping of legacy because there are apps solute
direct ties and so that's kind of like the overarching
question that we'll think about during this conversation. But I figure,

(03:12):
let's start with kind of your own journey, right. I
did not realize that you had a spinal cord injury
until I read your bio.

Speaker 1 (03:22):
Yeah, most people don't know.

Speaker 2 (03:25):
Yeah, so tell us about that. Let's start with I mean,
what a place to start, right, Yeah, let's talk about
your journey a little bit.

Speaker 1 (03:31):
Well, it's interesting because you know, it was a car
accident when I was five years old, and I don't
remember much of it. I remember bits and pieces of
that day. And it's funny because connected to the arts.

(03:51):
When I think about my injury, I shattered to vertebrate.
It was devastating. I started to lose feeling in my
left arm and in my legs. I was in a
wheelchair for a while. I wore a full neck and
body brace for months. And as a child, you know,

(04:12):
you're five, you just want to jump around and run
and all of that, but I wasn't allowed to. My
cousins would be you know, swimming, and I wasn't allowed
to get in. So that journey was I don't remember it.
It's so long ago, you know, I really don't remember
most of it, but the scars are definitely there physically,

(04:38):
and because it's on my back, it feels like it's
literally and physically behind me, you know, metaphorically and literally
behind me, and so I hardly ever pay attention to it.
Yet there's been something that has driven me. I think
because I almost died. I think because I almost didn't

(04:59):
walk from ever and all of those things that happened.
I've always had this drive in me too where I
like live the most that I could and do the
most things that I possibly could. And even even with
you know, growing up in a single parent household, you know,
young very very young immigrant mother, I never I always

(05:24):
somehow had this idea that I was going to see
the world and do big things. And you know, I
never thought, oh, I'm just going to have whatever job
comes to me. You know, I just had this vision
of living to my absolute maximum. So that has driven
me and I cut and the part that connects to

(05:46):
the arts. Which is interesting is that a few years ago,
I want to say, about five years ago, this friend
of mine artist who was doing this series. She's a
textile art and she started doing this series where she
would highlight women who had dealt with some sort of

(06:07):
traumatic event in their life, some sort of physical injury,
but she would create like a really beautiful moment of
textile beauty at the juncture, at the point where it happened.
And she started asking me, She asked me if I
could be.

Speaker 2 (06:25):
Part of it.

Speaker 1 (06:26):
I said yes, of course, and then she started asking
me questions, oh, like which vertebrae were was it? And
exactly where like all these things, And I realized I
didn't have these answers because this happened in nineteen eighty two,
you know, and all the documents are in Mexico City,
who knows where, and you know, getting a hold of

(06:46):
the doctor. I mean, like, good luck, you know, finding
all this out. And because it is, thankfully I recovered
and I'm fine. I never went down that rabbit hole.
So I realized I didn't have any answers to all
of these questions that she was asking me. So I
started going down that rabbit hole and interviewing everybody and
my family just out of curiosity, and it took me

(07:08):
down the most beautiful route and it was just so inspirational.
And the crazy part is that my dad has kept
in touch with the surgeon all these years and you
didn't know, and I just never thought to ask. Wow.
So I actually had an opportunity to go to Mexico
City and meet him and thank him. And that was beautiful.

(07:31):
That was beautiful. So now I'm writing a book and
it's a sort of a short fiction. It's nonfiction. It's
based off of my story, but it's fictionalized. And through
that journey, I've gotten a chance to interview an actual
spinal surgeon thanks to my husband's introduction of that person.

Speaker 2 (07:51):
And.

Speaker 1 (07:53):
Getting to create worlds, world making, and this journey has
been Wow. I feel like I just walking around looking
for content, you know, looking for Oh, that could be
a good story, that could be a good story.

Speaker 2 (08:05):
Yeah, you know. I think there's something about being first
of all, being first generation that just by virtue of
the fact that you're navigating the world in a different
way or through a different perspective, and then a having
navigated something happening, a traumatic event happening to your physical

(08:30):
body at such a young age. There's something about that
that really helps to set the stage for the way
that you encounter the rest of your life, because it's different.
You know, you were a little girl sitting and watching
other children play and swim and jump around, and there's

(08:50):
something to that, not bad or good, but there's something
to that that I would imagine really helped to shape
the way that you see the world and yourself in it.

Speaker 1 (09:05):
Absolutely. I mean, that moment in time became the turning
point for a lot of things. Right. So that was
when I came to the United States, not knowing any
how to speak English. I was learning English through music,
memorizing songs, you know, TV shows things like that. And

(09:30):
my mom was a very young mom. She had me
when she was seventeen, so we kind of grew up together,
and her making her choices and figuring out how to also,
in her limited English, maneuver through this country. But so
much grit, you know, I mean, just just like amazing

(09:50):
that she pulled that off and raised a I think
a good human.

Speaker 2 (09:54):
You know, not bad.

Speaker 1 (09:58):
I mean, now that I'm a mom, I can appreciate
what it took, you know, to do all of that,
of course, and I took it for granted growing up,
but absolutely, I mean, being an immigrant is one hundred
percent a huge part of my journey, and I take
it seriously, and I take I take that responsibility very
seriously in terms of reaching back behind me and pulling

(10:21):
others up and not not just sort of it's interesting,
this new generation. I think about it a lot, you know,
the we've we've been through some very interesting few years, right,
you know, through uh, you know, the cultural reckoning that happened,

(10:42):
over the pandemic, the pandemic itself, the Me Too movement,
all of these things that have happened. And I and
I think about like our our immigrant journey and the
community that had to come together. But I also think
about my generation. So I'm almost fifty, and my generation.

(11:05):
Sometimes I was the only woman in the room. Sometimes
I was the only Latin Latina in the room. And
it wasn't it wasn't like here's our token Latina. No,
it was literally like somehow I forced and maneuvered my
way in there.

Speaker 2 (11:19):
Yeah, you got yourself into that room, Yeah, and happened
to just be the only one.

Speaker 1 (11:23):
Yeah, yeah, but it wasn't performative. It wasn't like, oh,
we have to have one black person and one Latina.
It wasn't anything like that. Now, or at least the
last few years possibly has been some of that, right,
just performative like oh, we need a person on our
board that's of color rights things like that, But that
wasn't happening before. There was no expectation of that, And
so I can appreciate, you know, sometimes this generation calling

(11:46):
people out for that and saying, oh, that's so performative
and that's this, But sometimes you just have to be
grateful to be in the room and speak and while
you're there, speak your mind and have a voice, and
you're there for a reason. You know, there's maybe they
don't want you there, but you're there, so do something
with that, you know, and open doors brothers. So yeah,

(12:08):
I do take that very seriously.

Speaker 2 (12:10):
Yeah, And I think part of it is also, you know,
in my corporate career, I often found myself as the
only woman and the only black person in technology, which
is kind of the early part of my career. And
I think there are people who believed or who would

(12:30):
believe that it had to do with anything other than
what it had to do with, which was that I
was really good at what I did and had been
asked to come and do you know the work that
I was doing. But I think that I'm bringing that
up because I think it's so important to own what
you want to get done. And I think that's one
of the things I don't think that is one of

(12:53):
the things that I really admire about you is. And
it's even the way that we began to develop a
friendship because we got introduced by a mutual friend, Greg Snare,
and it was at the early stages of Van Guard Culture,
the nonprofit that you founded that I'd love to hear

(13:14):
more about in a moment, and you just had this
incredible grit. You are not accepting a no, You were
not you know, you were just like, I really want
to talk to you about this thing. I really want
to talk I'm really passionately connected to and committed to
bringing the creative community together here in San Diego where

(13:36):
we are. And I think that that is the thing, right,
that's the way that you have carved out a space
for yourself in whichever room you're choosing to be in.
And I think it's inspirational, and it's an important lesson
for those folks who are listening. You know, if there's

(13:56):
something that you're passionate about, do it. Do it, and
don't worry about what people think. Don't worry about the
assumptions that people make or any of that, because that
says more about them than it does about you. You know,
do what you can to make it happen, and you

(14:16):
live that. You're a testament to that.

Speaker 1 (14:20):
Yeah, I'm definitely I can own that. Can we curse
on this?

Speaker 2 (14:26):
You can curse? Yes, you can curse. There's no regulation here, right.

Speaker 1 (14:31):
I always so far, I always call myself a get
shit donner because that's like the thing I do. It's like,
I am so there's so I've been to you know,
I've had his twenty five year career in or you know,
more beyond that in my performance years. But sometimes people
just want to sit and create documents and have another

(14:52):
beating about the meeting and the thing, and I'm like,
can we just do the thing? Can we just do
the thing? It's not complicated. So I really lean into like, Okay,
who do I need to bring in the room into
the room in order for the thing to get accomplished, right,
who are the doers, the shakers, the people who actually
accomplish things in San Diego? And I just I mean

(15:17):
speaking about when we met, I just I'm very determined
about that. Like when I find somebody that I just like,
admire and am inspired in awe of I feel like, okay,
you're gonna be in my life.

Speaker 2 (15:29):
Oh yeah, that's how it was. Yeah, I mean, and
I was like, I think I'm going to be in
her life.

Speaker 1 (15:37):
Okay, this is happening.

Speaker 2 (15:40):
That's happening. Okay, that's good.

Speaker 1 (15:42):
Yeah, but if you notice, I'm surrounded by people like that,
like that's where I stay im myself with Like everybody
in our world for vanguard culture are all like these powerhouse, interesting,
worldly like dynamic humans that get shit done. And it's
and so I just gravitate towards those kinds of people,
especially women, especially women, right because and women of color

(16:06):
especially too, because we have a whole other layer that
we navigate and there are so few spaces like that
of mentorship, a friendship, of like lifting each other up.
So yeah, we I mean, and when you met me,
I love that, or when we met I love that

(16:28):
you called me out and I tell this story because
I just I.

Speaker 2 (16:32):
Was like, oh, what did I call you out? I
don't even remember.

Speaker 1 (16:35):
Here's the thing, like, I lived in New York for
a little while, so I and I and I you know,
was raised between here and Mexico City. You know, I
went back and forth with my divorce parents, and so
I spent a lot of time in Mexico City and
we you know there, when you when you have lived
in these big cities, you can appreciate people who just
say the thing right. Sometimes you're here in California and

(16:57):
people are like so nice and you they kind of
likes around the thing they want to say and all that,
and I'm like, and then they turn around, and I
mean not everybody's this way, but sometimes they'll turn around
and do something else. Yeah, And I really just appreciate, like,
give it to me, tell me the thing, you know, Like,
I'm not afraid of good criticism, you know, especially if

(17:18):
it's meant to serve you right, to support you. And
at the time, you know, we had been an all
volunteer organization for many years and one of the things
that we do and have done for years, is professional
development for creatives. So we teach people. You know how
to do your taxes and marketing and branding and finance

(17:38):
management and all these things that you don't learn in
any art school, no matter what your degree is. And
so I said that, you know, as part of we
do our arts journalism, we do professional development, we do events,
and you know, we help teach artists how to make
a living doing the thing that they love. And you said, well,
you can't do that if you're not paying yourself a sout.

(18:00):
You can't. Oh, I'm telling other people how to make.

Speaker 2 (18:05):
And I was like, oh, I forgot.

Speaker 1 (18:07):
I feel oh. But it changed the trajectory of the
organization because I think I might have met you, I
don't know, maybe the summer or spring of whatever year
that was. And then by the end of and I
told myself, Okay, by the end of this year, I
like starting next year, So I'm going to give myself

(18:27):
the rest of this year to find a way to
give myself a salary. And I did, and by February
of that next year, I had a salary. Was the
first time we had ever had an employee. And we
went down the HR rabbit hole all the things you know,
to make it official, and now we have two employees

(18:48):
and we're growing. I mean, we're in a beautiful new
office space in downtown and it's like you just changed
the whole trajectory. And I and I and I really
obviously appreciate you for calling me out.

Speaker 2 (19:02):
Wow, I don't even remember saying that, And I'm glad
I did. Yeah, I'm really glad that I did.

Speaker 1 (19:11):
Wow. Look that you were very honest about it.

Speaker 2 (19:14):
Sometimes I drop to I'm putting this in air quotes,
direct statements and keep it moving, and sometimes they come
back to me and folks are like, do you remember
when you said this thing? And I'm like I don't.
Was it good or that? Did it work or not?
Like which way did it go? Wow?

Speaker 1 (19:33):
Well it worked.

Speaker 2 (19:47):
Let's talk about vanguard culture. What is it? What are
you looking to accomplish through this nonprofit? What's the work?

Speaker 1 (19:54):
So the organization started actually thirteen years ago. I've lived many,
many worlds. I've had many careers. I started in the
theater and I studied at the Royal National Theater in London.
I taught at the Old Globe here in San Diego.
I'm also a jazz vocalist. I had a band and

(20:16):
I was gigging around all over. So I made a
whole career for about ten years just being a creative professional,
paying rent, doing all of that. It was my livelihood.
And then somehow I landed as a series of happy accidents,
i'll call them, I ended up working as a curator,
and so I worked in various arts administration kind of roles.

(20:40):
One of them was the Airport Authority, where I curated
eighty exhibitions that you mentioned, and we had a very
robust performing arts series as well. So I started getting
connected to the rest of the performing arts community in
San Diego, and like, I'd bump into artists all the time.
Now I was connected to all these industries, right, and
I would need somebody like a film festival director that says, hey,

(21:01):
do you know any like a dancer who can do
this one specific thing? And then I'd meet a dancer
that's like, do you know anyone with a projector? And
I'm like, oh, yeah, here, you know you. You talked
to each other, and it kept happening over and over
and over again, and I'm like, y'all just need to meet,
Like how do I get you in the same room
at the same time. So I started this little series

(21:21):
called the Foody Stores, and it was just very basically
a pot luck, right, but it was a potluck that
also encouraged So everybody brought a dish to share with
fifty people, little mini bites, you know, in that kind
of format. And of course artists are artists, so the
food ended up being also beautiful and creative and delicious

(21:44):
and all the things. So I was like, oh, this
is a like this is great. But also we would
encourage people to share their talent. So if you're spoken
word artists, bring that, if your dancer shows something whatever,
it was monologues, and so it started very cash just
getting everybody together. We limited it to the first fifty
people that would RSVPs. But my list was in the fact,

(22:07):
like it's now in the thousands, at that time, it
was about a thousand people that I was sending these
invites to first come, first serve. You never knew who
was going to be in the room. Sometimes it was
a lot of dance community or a theater community or
visual arts community, and then slowly because of who was
in the room. Right, these are now like executive directors
of big arts institutions and all that. The level the

(22:30):
quality started getting elevated. So for example, I mean, we've
had huge art installations in people's backyards. We've had opera
singers that have performed at Carnegie Hall in the Sydney
Opera House, and people's living rooms. I held one in
my home once, and I had the California Ballet performing
in my living room with the director of a museum

(22:51):
on the floor, sitting on a pillow, you know, watching
the show. And so even though it's very casual, it's
also very like high level, and we've continued the tradition
so that that series continues. If we just have always
have to find someone who can host fifty people in
their home. So that's where the idea started, and that's
the essence of us. It's like, how can we just

(23:13):
come together and create community and know each other and
feel comfortable picking up the phone and saying, hey, I
know a filmmaker who maybe they can help us, you
know that kind of vibe. And then it slowly started
turning into art journalism, like, hey, you know I'm a writer,
would it be okay? I know you have a website,
So we started creating that. We created this website with

(23:34):
the intention of highlighting those quirky, underground, funky, interesting things
happening in San Diego that are super unique that don't
get much visibility because usually the folks that get the visibilities,
like the zoo and SeaWorld and like the big attractions
and those the big institutions, tend to get more coverage.

(23:57):
So I was like, okay, well, let's focus on the
vanguard culture, the quirky, funky things going on.

Speaker 2 (24:03):
Oh wow, I guess the first time I'm hearing this story.

Speaker 1 (24:07):
Yeah. And so one of our writers, you know, one
of the gals, started writing and doing coverage and then
we submitted it to some awards. We won an award.
We're like, oh, that's interesting, we could win awards for
this thing, Okay, you know, and then more writers were like, hey,
I saw you. Ever. So now we have like thirteen
writers that review shows and interview artists. As you mentioned,

(24:28):
we've won a bunch of awards for excellence in journalism.
We open up the floor. We give opportunities to emerging writers,
but we also have brought in a lot of seasoned
journalists that are touching arts coverage for the first time
and giving them a platform to cover something that they love,
not just their jobby job and we do professional development

(24:49):
for creatives. So we've done that for years, all of
our contents on YouTube for free. And then the last
thing we do is our events, and that's kind of
what we're known for. We're really very intense about bringing
together film, theater, fashion, dance, visual arts, music all to
one place at the same time and encouraging creative collaboration
will give them like a theme or something to work from.

(25:12):
So we've had some really wild, interesting events where from
a small scale to huge festivals where we bring the
community together and kind of showcase little nuggets of everything
that they do, and that builds community because they're bringing
their audiences and audiences and rubbing elbows, like the spoken
word audience is rubbing elbows with the San Diego Symphony audience,
and they're rubbing elbows, you know, with the culinary community,

(25:34):
and all of a sudden, it's been just a beautiful
journey and I love the creation part of what I do.

Speaker 2 (25:42):
You put on incredible events, incredible and they are everything
that you describe. Where for those folks who want to
be in within the diversity of creatives, I'll say that
right your events provide such medicine for that because you

(26:04):
get to go. And there was an event that I
went to I don't know, a few months ago of
yours where it was like there were there was a
choir singing, and there were like people dancing, and there
was like something happening in every corner of the space.
Really really beautiful. You have one coming up, yeah.

Speaker 1 (26:24):
So every two years we host a big conference called
the Mashup. This is a creative industry symposium where we
really focus on bringing the best of the best of
arts leadership, business leadership for panels, workshops, everything from you

(26:44):
know business business mindset type things to mental wellness to AI,
you know, having difficult conversations about what the future rings
and how and the disruptions that are happening in the world,
how we come together as a community and tackle those
and so as a two day conference taking place October

(27:06):
fourth and fifth. It's at the Soap Factory and Logan
Heights in person but virtual the second day and all
of the in person sessions will be recorded and available
for future viewing, so you can still register no matter
where you are in the world and get two entire
days of incredible speakers and conversations and workshops that are
going to help you take your arts hobby and turn

(27:30):
it into an actual career, like take it seriously, which
is what we're always encouraging people to do. And I'll
just share I come from a long line of creatives,
creative professionals, which has been an interesting backwards journey because
I always hear the opposites. So everyone in my life,

(27:50):
in my family, almost everyone are all like musicians, actors, models, hosts,
you know, person TV person. Now, these those types of
people the only group that has kind of a real job,
or the architects. We have some architics in a real job,
you have a real job. But you know what a

(28:11):
traditional job, right.

Speaker 2 (28:14):
I want creativity to be the tradition.

Speaker 1 (28:17):
Which but even so, you know, even but of course
that's also a creative job, right, I mean, that's that's
still a creative job. So when I got my first no,
I don't know what to call it, not a real job.
But when I got my first government I worked for
the city of National City was my first government job.
And you know it, as an immigrant young lad, I

(28:41):
thought I was like I made it, like I have
a job that has a salary, and you know, benefits
and you know, a retirement plan, which I didn't even
know anything what that meant. You know, I have no
idea what all that meant. And so I went to
my family, I like, I got this job, you know,
gret I just graduated, and they're like, oh, no, oh,

(29:04):
you're not going to sing anymore? What about your theater? Oh?
They were so worried about me, And I just thought,
this is the most backwards ass totally, totally, it's so funny.
But it was still in the arts, Like, it was
still an arts administrative job. But I somehow had created

(29:24):
this narrative in my mind that that's what they wanted
from me, that that's what they hoped for me and
expected from me, you know, to go and get a
good job that's settled, you know, a good, I don't know,
solid foundation type of job instead of the gigging thing.
But it was the total opposite. They were like, no,
we love gigging. This is amazing. I love my life.

(29:46):
Why would you want anything else?

Speaker 2 (29:48):
Wow?

Speaker 1 (29:49):
Yeah, it's been a journey.

Speaker 2 (29:51):
That's interesting. You once said, I heard that. You once said,
you can dispute it that arts are more than entertainment.
They're an engine for community transformation. What did you mean
by that?

Speaker 1 (30:04):
Yeah, arts is an engine. Arts is an economic engine,
and I thank you for asking that question. I think
that the journey of being an arts advocate has also
been something that I've stepped into unexpectedly. But it's important
to realize the impact that your work has on not

(30:28):
just individual lives, but the entire region. So I'm on
the board of Women in Tourism and Hospitality International, and
one of the things that I get passionate about is
cultural tourism. So cultural tourists. It's been shown again and
again and again. Cultural tourists stay longer and spend more

(30:50):
money in the cities that they visit than the traditional
leisure tourist.

Speaker 2 (30:53):
And what is a cultural tourist.

Speaker 1 (30:55):
Right, So, a cultural tourist is someone who is there
for an operaper form, a specific event, a specific cultural event.
Like they flew to your city because they want to
go see the opera, the symphony, the ballet, a big
art show, a big exhibition. Right. They flew there to
see it. And while they're there, they will tend to
go to a nice restaurant. That weekend, they will go

(31:18):
to a museum. The next day, they'll make a whole
thing of it. They'll stay a couple extra days and
make a whole weekend of it, like a three day weekend,
versus someone who's here for the weather. We have amazing
weather in San Diego. If you're here for surfing, you're
probably going to stay at an airbnb. This is a
big assumption but or big generalization. But of course you're

(31:39):
probably going to stay at an airbnb, which brings no toot
dollars to the region. You're probably going to have a
couple of tacos and beers by the beach, call it
a weekend, and go home and have and say you
had a fabulous time in San Diego. But if you're
for the opera, you're here to spend money in restaurants
and hotels, in all the auxiliary spaces. You're going to

(32:00):
try to get as money. If you're an arts and
culture person, you're going to try and gather as much
of arts and culture as you can. And I think
about this because I've had incredible you know, the blessing
of having lived in Paris, London, New York, Mexico City,
like these big cultural meccas of the world. So if
you go to Paris. Even if you are not an
arts person necessarily, you know your visual arts is not

(32:23):
your thing, You're going to go to them to see
them on Lisa. You're going right, no matter because why
because the city told you that if you come to
Paris and you didn't see them on Lisa, you didn't
come to Paris, right. And so that's what I mean
is the impact of cultural tourism is that people like
that money that the TOT dollars, the transient occupancy tax

(32:47):
that is collected from hotel stays in San Diego. It
funds infrastructure projects, programs, homelessness issue, you know, resources, all
sorts of things, and the city, the way that the
city here in San Diego is structured, we get almost
one penny out of every dollar that comes through the

(33:07):
TOT to TOT tax. And we've been fighting for penny
for the arts this phrase for like ten years, and
we still haven't gotten our penny for the arts. But
we're trying. We're still fighting it and we're still working
on it. So call your legislators. But that money is
the money that goes to the department that it's now rebranded,
used to be called the Commission for Arts and Culture

(33:28):
the city's Department of Cultural Affairs, and that's the money
that gets just redistributed to all of the arts institutions
in San Diego. So your cultural tourism literally funds the
arts in our region. But it's an economic engine to
the tune of ten billion dollars that we've brought to
our region here alone, just in cultural tourism.

Speaker 2 (33:50):
Wow, So how can people help to get Maybe let's
start with the penny on the dollar. How can people
help and support that.

Speaker 1 (34:00):
I don't think a penny's enough. I'm being honest, you know,
I think it should double or triple. I don't think
that that's that's the argument that you can That's the
speaking point that you're welcome to borrow and share when
you're talking to a business person that doesn't believe in
the impact of the arts in the in why we

(34:21):
should why should we support the arts? We have all
these issues we have, you know, potholes and homelessness and
all these things like let me tell you why. Let
me tell you why, because we're we If you invest
in cultural tourism, you're going to attract tot dollars to
the region, which then reverberates and gives you the bottom
line funding that you need to tackle those issues. That's

(34:42):
your speaking point right there. That's right, So share that widely.

Speaker 2 (34:46):
That's a good one. That's really good. How do you
see San Diego's creative ecosystem evolving and where do you
think it needs the most investment or support? So, I
know we're talking about the dollars from t but where
else where else does the creative ecosystem need help?

Speaker 1 (35:08):
Well, the City of San Diego recently had this year
long study. They went to I don't remember how many communities,
I want to say it was over fifty communities in
the region had these workshop sessions asking them about their needs,
and they identified the top two needs in San Diego
were affordable artist housing and affordable events baces. Those are

(35:34):
the top two needs based off of our region here.
I see, I've seen the evolution, right. I've been an
arts advocate and I've been programming here for over twenty years,
and I think that the culture of competition is where
we started. I'm starting to see that evolve and I'd

(35:55):
like to say that we had something to do with that, right,
and just the bringing of communities together over and over
for over a decade, we've slowly I'm so happy to
have introduced so many people to one another and they've
done project taken off and done projects together. And I
think that there's a lot of mutual support to our

(36:18):
organization because of that, because we've been givers for ten
years and connectors for ten years.

Speaker 2 (36:23):
Did you say the culture you said the culture of
You meant to say the culture of collaboration.

Speaker 1 (36:28):
Well that's where it started. The culture of competition is
where it started. So now I definitely see that it's
evolved to this culture of collaboration. And interestingly, during the pandemic,
that was one of the that was a wild ride, right,
I mean we were all seeking convinced.

Speaker 2 (36:52):
I'm not convinced that we're not off of it quite frankly.

Speaker 1 (36:54):
Sure, Yeah, it feels like.

Speaker 2 (36:57):
It still feels like the pandemic in any way.

Speaker 1 (37:00):
Yeah, or maybe a second wave of like a second pandemic.
You know. But when we were deep in it and
nobody knew, there was this moment in time right where
for the first like three months that nobody knew anything.
And my husband's an r doctor, so he was like
front and center. We were all terrified, you know that

(37:21):
he was going to bring something home, whatever this thing
was that nobody knew anything about, you know, to our
young children, and it was a wild rinde. But people
were seeking, you know, the film studios shut down, museums closed,
all these things, and people were they realized. It was

(37:43):
a moment when we realized that we were the second responders,
that creatives were the ones that people were seeking for beauty,
for joy, for delight, for inspiration. And we watched everything
on Netflix, every little thing because nothing else was being made.
We were watching everything. We were watching Octopus Teacher, you know,

(38:05):
and like these crazy tiger shows or whatever that was.
You know, even I watched it because I'm like, well
the internet ran out. I guess we're this.

Speaker 2 (38:17):
I think I watched more tea. I think I watched
more screen more movies and shows during the pandemic than
I had in all my year, all my previous year,
prior years put together.

Speaker 1 (38:29):
It was right same. I'm not even a TV watcher,
but I was like, well, yeah, there's literally nothing else. Yeah,
well but there was. But there was this moment that
so what we did is we leaned in harder, Like
we instead of pulling back, we stepped up because it's
exactly when the community needed to come together. So we
were hosting these creative industry round table similar to what

(38:52):
was happening what happened at your space, where we got
to meet all these creative leaders, but we were hosting
those virtually monthly throughout the endemic to bring the community together,
just to have these conversations about, Okay, how are you
moving bodies through spaces? Like what are you going to
do with the anti maskers? How do you where did
you get you know, did you get that COVID grant?

(39:12):
Like how are we support? Can we come together? Can
we support? And in other spaces, and the most amazing
things started happening. It's like you'd have museum directors that
are like, I have this museum that I can't open
the doors to, like does anybody need a building? And
then you'd have the dance community like, yo, over here,
we could use it, you know, And then you'd have

(39:33):
the filmmaker that's like I'll record it, and then we
can all create content and everybody wins and and so
then you know, the museum got their beautiful virtual content,
the dance company got it, the filmmaker got credit, like
everybody was happening. So these connections were started happening, and
then in the theater community now was fascinating. There there

(39:53):
was this there was this treaties that happened, this this
uh I think that's what it's called. But it was
like this statement that came out after the murder of
George Floyd. There was this statement that came out. It
was something like, I see you white American theater something

(40:14):
like that. But that started this whole movement of having
the deep, hard conversations about casting in theater, about who
is in leadership positions in theater, just practices that had
been very antiquated and not inclusive and all of these things.
But what happened is that because of that, they started

(40:38):
this series that was all for theater, just theater community,
theater companies, and for the first time you had major
institutions like this was led by the La Jolla Playhouse,
the San Diego Repertory Theater, and the Old Globe Theater,
like our top three theaters at the time. The Lyceum

(40:58):
was now defunct because of construcuction and other things. But
these are Tony Award winning theaters that had come together
and they led these conversations, and all of a sudden,
in the virtual room, you had the teeniest, tiny little
theater companies that had never been in the same room
together with these leaders that they looked up to, having
monthly conversations about how to open up their spaces, how

(41:21):
to share resources, how they could collaborate. New arts residencies
started taking place in people each other's venues. It was
wild and it was beautiful. There were tears, there was joy.
It was and so I was just sort of listening
in because I'm not you know, I don't have like
my theater career going right now at this moment, so
I was I was just sort of like, I just

(41:42):
want to hear what everybody's talking about, you know. So
I was just in there. But it was it was
hard stuff. Like some of the conversations they were having
were really powerful, and I took that as inspiration for like, Okay,
we need to have the hard conversations to overhear but
across all industries, like how do we lead that? And
that was It's like one of the coolest things we've

(42:03):
ever done, for sure.

Speaker 2 (42:05):
And I think that's a beautiful thing, a beautiful thing
to come out of a challenging experience, which is the
opportunity to get together and have this conversation around this
common goal of art and culture, the arts and culture
and being able to talk about what some of the
challenges are, which I would imagine led at the smaller

(42:27):
companies to see that the issues are all the same.
It was just a matter of scale, and that's an assumption,
you know. So I think that that's one of the
beautiful things that it came out of that experience, because
why when else would you have been prompted to encourage

(42:48):
those conversations. It didn't matter before, you know.

Speaker 1 (42:53):
Yeah, And I think that's similar to this series that
we kicked off in your Space of bringing to other
executive directors from all these different industries and they realized,
weren't there just some incredible aha moments where it's like, oh,
you're you're you're dealing with that to me too, but
totally different industries, right, And that's been the that's been

(43:16):
the coolest part of what we've Our organization is sort
of morphed into this, uh sometimes people call us like
the Chamber of Commerce of arts and culture, you know,
for seeing.

Speaker 2 (43:28):
Which is what you see, what you are that's what
you're doing.

Speaker 1 (43:32):
Yeah, I mean, I'll loan that because it's it's been
this okay, just coming together across industries, but at that
but I hear that all the time where people think
they're alone in this bubble suffering, you know, and they are,
you know, they're they're but they're not the only ones.
And if you were to come together, you can solve,

(43:54):
you can help deal, you know, deal with it together
and come out of it together. And so that that
collaborations or that that event that we held in your
space where we brought together all these executive directors. Thankfully
they had a moment of mindfulness with you. They had
an opportunity to just sort of center themselves and be present.
I didn't see anyone on their cell phones for two hours,

(44:14):
which like never happens, right.

Speaker 2 (44:17):
And we didn't even mention that, yeah, yeah, yeah we didn't.

Speaker 1 (44:19):
We didn't mention that, you're right. We didn't even say
put your phones down. Whatever. We just said, let's be present.
And they were present because the conversation was good and
it was important, and I'm excited about what came out
of there. I know that those are going to happen
again and again and I have big ideas about how
we're going to implement some of those for another time.

Speaker 2 (44:56):
I want to kind of bring it back to you
for a moment. You are a mother, a producer, an
incredible producer, a business woman, a singer and actor, you know,
doing all the curator. How do you merge or integrate
all of these different identities that you have in all

(45:19):
these different roles? How do you do that? Because you're
up to a lot of things, a lot of beautiful things,
and you manage a lot of beautiful roles.

Speaker 1 (45:31):
Yeah, I always have this vision of having a busy, creative,
loud home with lots of stuff going on, lots of kids.
I sort of always thought that it would just like
have you cool married to somebody, you know that that

(45:51):
was like my I imagined what it would be like,
and I think I got exactly what I wanted. So
in this house when I met my husband, uh so
he's an er doctor, but he's also an incredible pianist.
And where we where we connected was the hiking. We

(46:11):
love like hiking mountains and nature and all these things.
So that's sort of how we met. And then and
then I go I went to his house for the
first time he had this beautiful piano. I'm like, oh,
you play piano? Like you never mentioned it. I'm super
shy type guy. And he sits there and he's like sure,
he I'll play for you. And he was amazing. It

(46:35):
was just wow, and I thought, oh my god, I
have to marry this man. That was like I thought,
I this is like to have music in your life
every day, Like how amazing? Right, So that opened my

(46:56):
heart for sure. I was like, okay this. I didn't
know this about you at all, Like he never mentioned it,
and he would never perform in public or anything. Like
he's definitely not He's very shy, but he's so good.
I'm not exaggerating like I know good musicians. He's great.
I believe you. So you know, we have a ten
and an eleven year old and they're all creative. My

(47:19):
son is a is a composer, a piano composer. He's
been composing since he was four, these big dramatic soundtrack
they sound like movie like film soundtracks, these big dramatic things.
Since he was four, he's been doing these things. And
I'm like, oh my god, like this is where I
start to believe in you. Know, this is your second

(47:40):
or third life, or like he's an old soul or
whatever those ideas are, because he hasn't he hadn't lived
that much to experience anything like this. But the feelings
that were coming out of him were just like you
know how you know creatives, right, It's like you don't
do it because you want to, It's like you have to,
like it comes out of you. Yeah, And so he's
always been that way. And he's composed seven original pieces

(48:05):
that are we're sending it to the Library of Congress.
We're gonna package it up, have a little CD release party,
We're gonna do the whole thing, and I don't know
what happens after that. But he recently got a commission
to do the soundtrack for an original independent film, and
so he's done that and we're now pitching it there.
They are pitching it to film festivals and we're waiting

(48:26):
on that. And he's eleven, right. And then I have
this ten year old daughter who from day one has
been dancing and singing, dance like everything is like hi, mommy,
how's it going? Just everything is in this movement form,
you know, and I've always you know, watched her she's
been in contemporary dance now for many years. And then
she's a singer, but she's she's shy like her father sometimes,

(48:51):
but when she thinks no one's listening, oh it's good.
She's got a voice. So I'm excited. I'm excited to
be surrounded by that create activity, not only at work
but also at home. So that piano is always an
action except for right now, as I told him, But

(49:12):
really it's always an action. If it's not me singing
and accompanying myself, it's my daughter, or it's my son,
or it's my husband, and so that it's just a
source of a lot of joy. And how do I
merge all, merge it all? I don't know. I'd never
Nobody teaches you how to be a mother. No book

(49:32):
could ever prepare. Yeah, yeah, I mean to zero, Like
we come in having all these expectations of ourselves and
I'm gonna be I'm gonna bake, I'm gonna I'm gonna
be the pta whatever, I'm gonna survive, and that is
my goal for the day, you know, Yes, But yeah,

(49:54):
I think we've done a really great job. I married,
I married well, he's a good kind human and that
has been the I think that has been probably my
biggest accomplishment is marrying like a good good man, you know,
a good person who And that's so important because sometimes
in our in my culture anyway, there's so much pressure

(50:17):
to get married, like hurry up, you know, you're running
out of time. You're almost thirty. Oh, now you're almost
thirty five. Oh you know, and you feel all this pressure,
even if you're with the wrong person, even if you're
like you know, it's like, don't get don't do that.
I used to be that person that's like, oh, you
should have more kids, or oh you should get married. No, no, no,
But once I realized what motherhood and marriage really meant,

(50:41):
I was like, are you sure? Is this? Like is
he good to you?

Speaker 2 (50:45):
It's so important, it's so important, And thank you so
much for I didn't even expect us to dive into
that conversation, but thank you for bringing it up. Because
there are so many people who it's all about the
clock and they see it as a checklist item, right
like I'm single, I have to not be single. I

(51:06):
have to get snagged, I have to be with someone.
And I think that if you're going to I know
that if you're going to be with someone, make sure
your picker is working, make sure your pickers working well,
make sure it's not dull, make sure that it's not dull,

(51:27):
and make sure that it's not disillusioned. You know, it's
better to be alone for a while, be alone so
that you can really figure out what works for you.
I really strongly believe that a lot of what happens
with relationships, with divorce rates and all that, it's less
about the institution of marriage not being necessarily not being

(51:55):
a bad thing. I think it's the culture of forcing
people into that institution as a way of being accepted.
That's the problem. Because I believe that if more folks
were to wait to learn yourself, to really make the
right decision for themselves, those numbers would change. That's the problem.

(52:17):
It's not the institution, it's the way we we get
pushed into it, jump into it, you know.

Speaker 1 (52:24):
Yeah, it's it can be It can be really toxic,
you know, to have these expectations of like you you know,
aunties and things that like will say, dias right, And
I'm not just saying my family, but I'm saying in general,
like our culture.

Speaker 2 (52:44):
No, in general, this is the culture like.

Speaker 1 (52:45):
This, this this culture of like you can only be
fully fulfilled as a woman if you bear children and
have a husband, And that's so not true because marriage
is not for everybody's children are not for everybody. Not
everybody should be a parent, that's right, Yeah, I mean
if you, yeah, I mean, it is an incredibly selfless job.

(53:10):
You it's hard work. It's also often rewarding, but it's
also often exhausting, and you and you, you know, have
to give up some of your own needs, most of
your own needs in order to just Yeah, I mean,
now I'm in a different place with my children because

(53:32):
they don't need me as much, and they're they're taking
off into their own creative spaces and they're getting to
do their own things. When you're when they're much, you know, younger,
you just try to keep them alive mostly exactly.

Speaker 2 (53:44):
They still need you, They still need you. It just evolves,
Oh for sure. Yeah, they're going to need you forever.
I think. One of the things that I really appreciate
about you as a human, Susannah, is the fact that you,
or in my observation of you, you are heart forward,

(54:04):
You're passionate, you're passionate about what you do and the
work that you're doing. While I'm sure you know it
can be exhausting. Being an entrepreneur is not easy, right,
It can be exhausting, but your heart is in it.
You know, raising children, curating a family exhausting, but your

(54:25):
heart is in it. And I think that it's such
an example of what life can feel like, even when
it's overwhelming, even when there's a lot going on, even
when you know it's tiring. It's a great example of
what life can look like when you live from your
heart and when you do the things that you can

(54:49):
passionately pour yourself into.

Speaker 1 (54:51):
Yeah, I think it's a it's intention you know, very
I'm very intentional about outcomes, and I feel, Yeah, to
wrap up that sort of conversation about marriage and children,
it matters so much who your partner is. It's so

(55:13):
important to you know, we have the type of relationship
where we hardly ever, like ever argue about how we're
going to raise our kids, Like we aligned on morals
and values really early on, so that that's never the
you know, that's never a question. But if you don't

(55:35):
have that, oh my gosh, how stressful I think about x's,
you know, sometimes and I'm like, oh thank god, imagine,
oh god, I'm living in night Mary now no.

Speaker 2 (55:52):
Right, So that's how you wind up with ten of
your energy going toward your family. What I'm observing. And
for those of you who get to watch this on
YouTube and you get to see the video, this is
a woman and you can hear it in her voice. Also,
this is a woman who is fully in her life.
Because you're so intentional about your life. Because you're so intentional,

(56:16):
you are fully in it. When we're not intentional, or
when we're doing things because of expectations and obligations and
all of that, that takes up a piece, a huge
chunk sometimes of how of your ability to actually show
up and be present.

Speaker 1 (56:34):
Yeah, that's so true. I think, you know, I think
about my mom, who she was married, She was married,
she likes to be married, she married five times and
so young, and sometimes made choices that were primarily about

(56:55):
let me just be married. Probably she never said these words,
but probably for stability, for the sake of like just
having stability of some kind. Unfortunately her picker was off,
you know. But the intentionality part is that even if
you have not had the example, that by creating intention
and saying okay, but what do I really want and

(57:19):
sort of like reverse engineering that, right, being super honest,
and I think as women, for example, you know, in
my dating life, and it happens so much. It happens
so much where we're like, well, we're just dating and
I don't know if he wants kids or not. I
don't know if he wants to get married. We're just
gonna see how it plays out.

Speaker 2 (57:40):
We'll just see what happens. Go with the flow, see
what happens.

Speaker 1 (57:43):
Yeah, And meanwhile, you're wasting years and years of your
life with this person that has zero intention of ever
getting married, zero intention of ever having kids, because you're
so worried that if you say the words, he'll run away,
you know, or he'll fly away, or you'll scare him
off or whatever these things are. And it's actually the opposite.
It's like scare away the ones that you don't want.

(58:06):
You're never going to change somebody's intention, like personal values, right,
that's never going to happen. You meet a person and
it's almost like right away saying you know. And with
my husband, it was the first time in my life
that I had ever had that super clear conversation. It
took a lot of courage to say those words. You know,

(58:29):
when we were first dating, I said, listen, I just
want to like put this out there, like I know,
I just want to know, like do you ever want
to be married? And do you want kids? And it's
okay if you don't, like it's fine, it's something that
I want. And if and if we're not a good fit,
that's cool, Like you know, it's cool, Like I'm fine,

(58:51):
you know, but just be honest, like it doesn't have
to be with me, and I'm not rushing you on anything,
but I just want to know, like are we on
the same path?

Speaker 2 (58:58):
Know who you are?

Speaker 1 (58:59):
Yeah, like we're walking the same path. And he was like,
oh yeah, I definitely want those things. I was like, okay, cool,
and then we just kept going you know it, and
it did turn into that. But it's that fear that
holds us back of having those hard conversations that makes
it impossible for us to actually get the thing that
we want. What do you what are you going to manifest?

(59:20):
You have to speak it.

Speaker 2 (59:21):
That's right. I'll add to that, and ensuring for yourself
that you're not focusing so much on getting that person
to want you, that you lose sight of whether or
not you actually want that person, you know, not what

(59:43):
you know, Like are you going to ask me? Is
this person going to ask me? So sometimes the person
asks you and that's not the right person. Like what
they want is you know what they want is one thing.
But ensuring that you want the same thing. And it
seems like what you've been able to do, you and
your husband have been able to accomplish, is you've come

(01:00:04):
together to have those challenging conversations sometimes but very necessary
conversations about what you both want so that you can
really determine whether or not you're on the same page
or you know, or if there's a way to kind
of use your time and energy elsewhere. And so I

(01:00:27):
didn't expect us to have a little I always want
to give a nod and some wisdom to those folks
who are at the beginning of making these decisions, because
I think they're so important and it's so important to
have to hear that wise counsel. And I'm so glad

(01:00:47):
that you shared that.

Speaker 1 (01:00:50):
Yeah, thank you.

Speaker 2 (01:00:52):
Two quick questions for you, if you were to imagine
San Diego twenty years now and just in the thirteen
years that I've been in San Diego, it's it's going
through that it has gone through and is going through
a bit of a transformation. But if you were to
imagine it twenty years from now, what role would you

(01:01:16):
want arts to play, the arts to play in San
Diego as a place.

Speaker 1 (01:01:26):
Yeah, I think we're at a very outside of the
national politics. Just our region alone is going through an
incredible renaissance. It's an it's a it's an interesting moment
for us at this point because this is the generation
that built the Rady Shell, San Diego Symphony, the Epstein Theater,

(01:01:51):
the Joan that just popped up in Point Loma, like these,
you know, these big cultural powerhouses in our region. And
also last year was our big year where we were
on the world stage. We were designated World design Capital
San Diego and Iguana and not just San Diego, but

(01:02:12):
San Diego, Tijuana, the region itself. This we're when the
judges came to San Diego the year before we were
designated and we were giving I was part of this
committee that was like helping to curate the experience that
these judges would have in the arts and culture space.

(01:02:32):
And he walked when I before he left, I had
this conversation with him and he's like, you know, I
have traveled to however many hundred countries we've you know,
we're always doing this. I've been to several border regions
and I've never seen anything like this. This doesn't exist
anywhere else in the world, where it's the border almost

(01:02:55):
doesn't mean anything, you know, the border is just this
happens to be this thing that you have to get through,
that you cross through.

Speaker 2 (01:03:03):
It's the next exit.

Speaker 1 (01:03:05):
Yeah, it's the next exit, exactly. Like this is truly
its own third space where you go down there and
everybody speaks English. You come to this area, most people
speak some level of Spanish. You know, they've got a
few bats. You have communities down there that come here
to shop, to go to school, you know, be educated.

(01:03:27):
You have entire retirement communities of Americans that have headed
down there, and this influx of conversation and creativity it
affects all of us. Right. You have museums that are
showcasing the artists from Tijuana and back and forth, and
so that was really exciting and really really beautiful, and

(01:03:48):
we were able to be on the world stage in
that way as World Design Capital last year. And I
think that what's happening with the cuts and funding nationally
and is almost giving us that extra push to come
together again, similar to what was happening in the pandemic.
It's an opportunity. Sometimes opportunities come from the most the

(01:04:12):
strangest of places, you know.

Speaker 2 (01:04:13):
That's right, That's right.

Speaker 1 (01:04:15):
Yeah, So I'm we're leaning into that. We're leaning into
that and bring the community closer together and more often.
What I want to see in twenty years time. I
don't know if you said ten or twenty, but.

Speaker 2 (01:04:26):
I said twenty, but really like or ten whatever, But like,
how would you what is your vision for how people
get to come or those tourists, tourism, cultural tourists, how
people come to this region and experience it.

Speaker 1 (01:04:47):
I would like to see a city that is known
for as a as a cultural destination. I would like
to see the city and the tourism authority and the
airport authority and everyone and the visit San Diego, Visa California,
all of these major powerhouses that promote our region to

(01:05:11):
lean hard, double down on San Diego as a cultural destination.
We have the cultural capital here in San Diego that
is worth visiting. We have it the I think that
the issue is sort of synthesizing that story and being
able to share it widely has been a challenge because

(01:05:32):
most you know, we get a lot of attention for
the weather and the beaches and the mountains and the sand.
You know, everything's here, the desert, all of it is
all right here within an hour's drive, you know, and
so it's this perfect little region for that. So we
do get a lot of attention as this like sleepy
beach town. And so that's what Vanguard culture tries to do.

(01:05:53):
We're trying to put it all in one place that hey,
it's not just the zoo and SeaWorld. We've got these
cool under around, funky things happening that you need to
know about. And it's almost like I'm giving everybody like
the insider, Hey, come here, let me show you something.
But I would like to see the city triple down

(01:06:14):
on their penny for the arts and give us three
pennies for the arts and they will see the impact
that it will that will reverberate financially across the board.
I'd like to see, uh, the you know, just having
us known as the cultural destination that we deserve to be,
and I'm going to play a role in that to

(01:06:34):
the extent that I can.

Speaker 2 (01:06:36):
You are you are right now? I know that you
climbed a mountain. What mountain are you climbing right now?
Literally or figuratively.

Speaker 1 (01:06:48):
Yeah, there was an era of my life where I
was climbing a lot of big, tall mountains. It caught
up with me and I've gotten some foot injuries and
things that are not going to allow me to do
that maybe ever. And that's something that I'm having to
come to terms with, Like this new phase of my life,

(01:07:12):
this age that I am, you know, being a woman
that is in this transition period of my life, and
it hasn't been an easy journey in that sense, you know,
is figuring out how to still challenge my body, how

(01:07:33):
to stay strong, how to still feel strong when sometimes
walking hurts, you know, And so I'm figuring that out.
I'm experimenting on, you know, other types of exercises and
things like that. But it also connects to my mental health,
right I want to make sure that I can still
get those endorphins that take care of my mental health

(01:07:56):
and keep me calm and nice. Keep me nice, keep
me agreeable. So I think the big mountain that I've
been climbing recently is like the mental health portion of it,
because I think when women come to our age, the

(01:08:17):
age that I am, sometimes we've been gas lit by
our physicians for so many, so many decades, right that,
Oh it's just this, it's just that, and they never
really ask you, Oh, well, maybe you're impairmentopause, or maybe
you're dealing with you know this, this other hormonal change,
and all you need is teeny little pill that's going

(01:08:38):
to save you, and you're like, oh my god, that's amazing.
So I'm so glad that I that's one of the
perks of being married to a physician, you know, is
that he believes in science and can can guide me
a little bit.

Speaker 2 (01:08:51):
And help you out, help the sister out with some
of that.

Speaker 1 (01:08:54):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so he went down that rabbit
hole with me, and very grateful for that because now
I feel like I'm on the other side of that feeling.
But I was dealing with a lot of uh like
panic attacks and things that were happening during the pandemic,
and of course, right, I mean, who wasn't like it
was just an incredible especially being married to an er

(01:09:17):
doctor who's seeing people die on a regular basis, way
more than it had ever happened before, and the fear
of it all. So that's kind of where it started.
And now I'm you know, we're five years out and
I finally feel like I've climbed that mountain. Maybe maybe
I'm not at the top, but I'm like really really close,
really really close. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:09:38):
Yeah, And a lot of what is has been going
on in the world and in this country in particular,
is anxiety producing. You know, anxiety is about a fear
of what's happened, of what's going to happen in the future,
and some of that is real, and it is perfectly

(01:10:03):
understandable that the world that we would be feeling, we being,
you know, this culture, no matter what side of the
aisle you're on, you know, it's a stressful time. It's
an absolutely stressful time. And I think that what has
helped me on the other side of menopause and have
been for a bit, but what has helped me is

(01:10:27):
to pour in at as close a level, if not more,
that I'm putting out. And I'm a person who was
never told or taught that you know, it was go go, go,
go go, and there was really not a lot of
consideration for me, the person that was expected to go,

(01:10:52):
and that has helped me. It's helped me to stay
grounded during the more stressful time. You know, sometimes we
expect to just kind of walk around and our foot
falls off and it's like, you know, I'm just gonna
throw my foot in my bag and keep walking. You know, no,
you're limping. You're limping for a reason. You're afraid for

(01:11:15):
a reason. Things are happening, Things are happening, right, There's
nothing wrong with you. If you're you know, feeling stressed.
It is a stressful time. Feel it, feel it, and
then take more baths or do whatever it is that
you need to do. But this, this idea, this fallacy

(01:11:41):
that you know, we can be in the pit of
such a stressful time and just show up and smile
and act like everything is okay, is not good for
our mental health. I was teaching a session the other
day and it related to community. It was a communication
model session and I was thinking not just about like

(01:12:06):
the tools, so I was like going through all of it,
like the different tools that you can use and blah
blah blah, And then I said, you know, there's no
we can't really talk about how to effectively talk to
each other or how to listen to each other without
some consideration for the context or the periphery within which

(01:12:26):
we're living. And so I started thinking about and kind
of added into that conversation where we are. There's an
annual Gallop Pole called the Happiness Survey. It comes out,
I think in February, and it's the Gallop Survey, folks,
and they do a survey around the world of how
happy people are and they rank that by country, and

(01:12:53):
our country, unfortunately, this country, the United States, has steadily
moved to its lowest ranking ever, which as of the
survey year ending two thousand what year two thousand and
four brought us down to twenty four, the lowest we've

(01:13:17):
ever been. And I looked at how steadily it's decreased
over the last, you know, five years, since the since
twenty twenty, since it started the pandemic. And that's not
a political statement, it's just what is. No matter what
side of the aisle people are on, whether you're married

(01:13:38):
not married, whether you're old or younger, whatever, it is
a very real thing that people are much less happy.
And then when you factor in all of the stressors
that are going on, like funding for the arts being
pulled away, all the things that are had, the terrible,

(01:13:59):
horrible pieces of information that we're exposed to on a
day to day basis, and all the things we all
know what those stressors are, stressors are. It is perfectly
understandable that people would be on edge, that we be
on edge. You know, we're not able to just frolic
through the poppy fields. You know, we're not able, no

(01:14:23):
matter as hard as we try. There are some things
going on, and I think that we fail ourselves and
each other when we don't factor that in. And it
doesn't mean to be sitting in misery or to sit
in negativity, but as we're interacting with each other, I

(01:14:47):
think understanding where we are. If you're in a loud party,
if you're in a very loud party where the music
is super loud, the two people who are speaking are
going to shout at each other because there's a loud
music playing. Right. If you're in a library, people are
going to whisper to each other because that's what's happening

(01:15:09):
around us. And I think that let's kind of carry
with us the understanding and the acknowledgment that there are
some things happening and be a little gentle, a little
more gentle with each other, a little more patient and
kind with each other, you know, and with ourselves.

Speaker 1 (01:15:30):
I love that analogy. It's like we're all just shouting
at each other right because it's so loud right now,
it's just so loud. Yeah, it made me think of
this thing that I read about. You know, the opposite
of depression is expression, right, And if all we're doing
is consuming, consuming, consuming, concerning, of course we're going to

(01:15:50):
get depressed. We're not creating.

Speaker 2 (01:15:52):
You have to balance it out. That's the thing. You
have to balance it out. We're taking all this in
and you can either just be in, go in it
and drown in it metaphorically, or find ways to counter it.
We're not going to change it in a second. This
is these are the times. This is it.

Speaker 1 (01:16:14):
It's like curating your own life, curating your experience.

Speaker 2 (01:16:19):
You have to And if this is what it is.
If you were a person who would never nap before
and you're feeling compelled to nap, it doesn't mean anything.
Nap If you're not a bath taker, but you're like,
I really want to take a bath. Nurture yourself. Nurture
yourself because we need it. We need it. It'll help

(01:16:40):
you to be a better, kinder person to yourself, and
it will absolutely help you to be less grumpy with
the people around you.

Speaker 1 (01:16:50):
Yeah. I think most people know now that the book,
you know, the Internet, all the social media apps are
targeting you based off of like the clicks are related
to the level of anger that they can that they
can inspire in you. So you're literally being targeted with
things that piss you off so that you stay on

(01:17:14):
longer and click and watch and do the thing. And
there is there is a you have to do it
more than once, but there is a way where you
can curate your experience and unfollow certain things, start following
things that bring you joy whatever it is, that's right,
baking puppies and whatever, you know, whatever it is, there

(01:17:34):
is a way to do that where you just start going, Okay,
I want to get really good at my life.

Speaker 2 (01:17:38):
I want to feel good. I can go look at
that later.

Speaker 1 (01:17:41):
Yeah. Yeah, And so I did it and it was
great for a while, but now it's starting to create
back in where I'm starting to see some of that
hate and anger, and so I feel like I'm due
for a refresh. But it's incredible that because most people,
maybe maybe I don't know how what percentage of the
population knows that this is how we're being targeted. But

(01:18:02):
if you don't know, then it's just sort of feels
like the whole world is like this. The whole world
is hateful. The whole world is And that's not true.
It's not how, that's not really what's happening.

Speaker 2 (01:18:13):
Because when you leave your house here there are people.
You're smiling at the grocery store, people are helping each other,
people are helping you to your car with your groceries.

Speaker 1 (01:18:22):
I think you're being targeted completely different. They think that
we're the hateful ones.

Speaker 2 (01:18:26):
And that's right right. Get out of the internet, it's
really the bottom line. Just get out of the internet
and you clean up. You clean your kitchen every day,
you clean your room every day, you clean your bathroom
every week, clean up your You don't clean up your
feed once and expect it to stay clean forever. So

(01:18:46):
on that note, Susannah, how can we support you?

Speaker 1 (01:18:55):
So? Vanguard culture is a five oh one C three
no profit, so of course we're always looking for volunteers, donors, sponsors,
come attend our events, be part of our community Vanguard
Culture dot org. We are very open to creative collaborations.

(01:19:17):
We're yes people. We like to say yes to cool,
interesting ideas, so always be willing to pitch that to us.
You can send an email to opportunities at Vanguard culture
dot com. And yeah, I mean, if you don't support us,
support the arts, like whoever's bringing you joy in your life,

(01:19:37):
if you love dance, if you love theater, film, fashion,
whatever it is, support those nonprofits. They are doing really
important work right now and they need your help to
survive and continue bringing joy and delight and beauty to
the world. So it sometimes you see an organization that
looks like they have it all together, and the reality

(01:19:58):
is is that even the law our institutions, the most
established institutions, are also struggling. So please support the arts
in any way that you can, and if you choose
to do so, please support Banguard Culture absolutely.

Speaker 2 (01:20:11):
Susannah, thank you so much. I appreciate you.

Speaker 1 (01:20:14):
So thank you. I'm so happy to have had this conversation.
But I'm just really happy to have you in my life,
my friend.

Speaker 2 (01:20:21):
Yeah, same, same, same. So to those of you listening,
thank you again for listening to the podcast. I enjoyed
this conversation with Susannah so much and was so delighted
that we had the opportunity to talk not just about
the nonprofit and her life and arts in arts and

(01:20:43):
culture in San Diego, but that we also had the
opportunity to talk about life and motherhood and how to
be very intentional about curating a life that truly brings
you joy and pleasure and that allow you to live
from your place of passion. So, as always, please like

(01:21:06):
and subscribe to the podcast. And if there's things that
you're hearing on this podcast that you know of someone
that you know would benefit someone else, please let them
know about it. Thanks, as always, love and peace,