Owning Our Story with Dianne Myles
About This Episode
What happens when a single act of courage alters the trajectory of a life—not just for one person, but for an entire community? What if the stories we tell about ourselves—about our struggles, triumphs, and histories—aren’t just personal narratives but blueprints for something greater?
In this, our premiere episode of season 10 of Mission Forward, Carrie sits down with Dianne Myles, a documentarian, storyteller, and the newly appointed Social Entrepreneur in Residence at Mission Partners. But Dianne’s journey is not the one you expect. It’s one of movement—between communities, between identities, between imposed limitations and self-defined futures.
Born and raised in Colorado Springs, Colorado, Dianne learned early the subtle, unspoken art of code-switching—navigating between affluent white spaces and vibrant Black and Latino communities. But it wasn’t just about survival. It was about adaptation, about connection, about the power of story to bridge divides. At 26, a moment of reckoning: the sudden loss of her mother. A life recalibrated. A decision to abandon a stifling corporate path. A leap into the unknown, driven by an insistence on joy, on purpose, on owning the narrative.
Carrie and Dianne are in a conversation that is as much about storytelling as it is about agency. It’s about why AI will never replace the human voice. It’s about the questions we ask—and the ones we don’t. And, ultimately, it’s about what happens when we decide—fully, unapologetically—to take hold of the pen.
Links & Notes
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Speaker 1:
The only thing that's going to matter...
Speaker 2:
Look at what you're doing right now.
Speaker 3:
The more we divide and silo ourselves, it's at our peril.
Speaker 4:
Did we miss something?
Carrie Fox:
Hi, friend, and welcome to the Mission Forward podcast. I'm Carrie Fox, your host and CEO of Mission Partners, a social impact communications firm and certified B Corporation. If you are new to listening, I am glad you are here. On this season 10, yes, season 10 of the podcast, we are talking with inspiring leaders across media, philanthropy, business and society, social change thinkers who are shaping big ideas, social change leaders who are living through their values and social change makers who are navigating the way forward and advancing progress in these divided times.
Today my friend, we are talking social change storytelling with a new friend and a colleague who I am so excited for you to meet Dianne Myles. Dianne is mission partners, new social entrepreneur in residence. She's a brilliant storyteller and documentarian who uses the power of human focused story to unite people, celebrate humanity, and promote genuine connection. All things we need right now.
In a time when AI generated content is all around us, and it's harder than ever to tell fact from fiction, the truth is essential to find, to keep, and to amplify. And Dianne is a truth-teller through and through. I have loved learning from her and I know you will too. So enjoy this conversation with Dianne as we learn more about her path, her passions, her work and her values, and be prepared to feel completely inspired by her courageous acts.
Dianne, welcome to Mission Forward.
Dianne Myles:
Thank you. I'm happy to be here. You make me sound amazing.
Carrie Fox:
You are amazing, you are. Well., I want you to take us back. I've had a chance to learn a bit about your incredible story and your path to forming this great company that you now lead, but take us back however far you want to and tell us how you found yourself in such a cool line of work.
Dianne Myles:
I like to say, take you all the way back and then I'll bring you up here. I'll bring you present. I'm born and raised in Colorado Springs, and while I was growing up, I don't think you realize that you have this moment of awareness when you realize you were code-switching. And I had done it naturally my whole life because I went to school up north in very affluent white communities and with my mom and then down south I was with my dad in the predominantly Black and Latino communities. And so I couldn't be the same in both of those places. So I had to figure out how to show up and be loved and make friends in both of those communities.
And then I became a mom at 16, I got pregnant at 16 with my son. And I think that reshaped just how I engaged with the world. I had to get into the workforce and figure out life and grow up really fast. And then got pregnant with my daughter at 18, had her 21 days after I turned 19 on the 19th, I call her my sweetheart baby. And now being a mom of two at 19 and trying to make sure I wasn't a super statistic because I was already a statistic and I was well on my way to being a super statistic. I wanted to make sure that I made my kids proud. And so there's a lot in this story.
Then fast-forward, I got into HR. I built my career there, but I always had this love for storytelling, so I'd always come back to it. And when I was a kid, my mom got me this book called Little Miss Chatterbox, probably because I talked too much and she was like, "Shush child." And I have been a storyteller my whole life. It's how you build relationships and connections and like I said, having to go between the two communities, it was the way I found myself getting to know new people as I told stories and I shared myself with people.
My mom passed away when I was 26 suddenly, and it sent me through a whole healing journey, self-discovery, who is Dianne? How does Dianne how to show up in the world? Then I really looked at finding my happy and what that meant for me in my life. My mom was an amazing mom, but I know she never found her happiness, and she died unfulfilled and unhappy. And the lesson I learned from her passing and her suddenly passing at the age of 53 was I wasn't going to live my life like that. I was working in just a horrible industry. I staffed truck drivers. That's a whole other episode.
Carrie Fox:
We'll have to talk about that.
Dianne Myles:
But I was dealing with a lot of all the isms, and one day I went outside, I said a prayer and I heard my mom like, "Forget that job." And I went inside and I typed up my resignation letter and sent it to everybody in the company, the president, everybody I could think of, the whole company. So there was no going back. You couldn't unquit. And I'm a mom who's single. I pay for my whole life and my children's lives. I went home without a job, without a plan, but I knew I was going to find my happy. My son was like, "Mom...," like after a couple days of taking him to school in my pajamas, he was like, "Do you not have a job?" And I didn't. And I went home after I dropped him off and researched some schools and went to school for video production and editing.
And I fell in love with being behind the scenes with telling the story behind the camera, but the intention was to be in front of the camera and to know how to do all the things. And I fell in love with it. And I had a story told, I received a scholarship and they did a story on me and the story that they told, I was so ashamed of my story being out there, and I was like, "I will never give anybody the opportunity to make me feel like I'm not the asset ever again." And then I was like, "And I'll make sure they don't make anybody feel like they're not the asset ever again." So now I'm going to tell stories. We're going to make the people the asset of their story, the hero of their story, and we're going to do this honoring humanity first. And so that is the journey of becoming now Human Focused Media.
Carrie Fox:
I have gotten to hear pieces of that story before, and I could listen to that story many, many times over and every time still get full-body chills listening to it because you know, we talk a lot here about courageous acts and the power of courageous acts and that one courageous act. You took many, but that one courageous act to say, "I can find happy, I can change the ending, I can change the story," and doing it right. What must've been going through your head, but you were focused on the future and what you were going to make for your kids and with your kids. I just love, I love your vision and your passion and your focus on finding happy because so many people, Dianne, spend their whole lives waiting for that and you took the reins and said, "I'm going to find it."
Dianne Myles:
Well, I think it's shifting your mind frame from like, "Oh, I'll be happy when," to, "I'm choosing happiness right now."
Carrie Fox:
I am certain there's a lot of hard days. There's a lot of hard days. Running a company and being a parent, and we know these things, what you have done, and what you are building is so inspiring. And we've had now a chance to see some of your work in action and it is just so incredible how you tell stories. And we're going to talk a little bit about that today. But I'm going to make one connection for you first.
We worked with many for many years with an organization called Theatre Lab. It's a nonprofit theater organization in Washington DC and we had their founder on this show a while back, and we talked a little bit about one of the programs they have called Life Stories, where they give people an opportunity to play out, literally, play out their life story on stage, and the power that has when we can change or control how our story is told. And I love the piece of your story that you said, you saw someone else tell it and you were going to reclaim it. Like that's not the story you wanted to tell. And again, that's another courageous act, right? To determine and decide that you wanted to tell a different story for yourself.
Dianne Myles:
Yeah, I get to choose. You don't choose for me.
Carrie Fox:
You get to give that gift to other people. So I want you to tell us a little bit about the work you do and how you give that gift of human focused storytelling to other people.
Dianne Myles:
I love it. Yeah. All the work we do has to honor people first. I always say I'm a humanist, I love people, and we are the asset. When I really sat in, we all need and require your support and love and uplifting and care and money along our journey, right? Just for anybody to be successful, you have to have people cheerleading you, supporting you, loving you, and helping you get there, making introductions, doing all their things. But at the end of the day, I wake up every day and I work hard, and I choose to show up and show out.
And everybody deserves to see themselves reflected in their story in a way that honors their humanity, honors them, and anybody who looks like them that's engaging with the content should feel empowered, uplifted, and inspired. And if the content isn't doing that, then you're not making content that's serving our greater humanity. If other people who don't look like the people that are watching this content look at the content and they're like, "Yeah, I look at those poor, pitiful people." You're doing a disservice to everybody because now you're making us that caricature that you see and you're like, "Oh yeah, that's right. That sounds about right." And so we work to honor people, their stories and them being the hero of their story while acknowledging the support and the love that they got along the way, but addressing it as such and not giving the thing the power over the person.
Carrie Fox:
Tell me about one of the stories that you've loved telling.
Dianne Myles:
I'm fortunate because we just get to tell so many beautiful stories about so many beautiful people doing work that matters. We recently completed a documentary on a lady here in Colorado, she's in her 90s. Her name is Anna Jo Garcia Haynes, and she's the godmother of early childhood education, not just in Colorado, but really the US needs to know who Anna Jo is because she influenced funding for earlyhood childhood education and preschool programs.
And Anna Jo, she is one of our displaced Aurarians. This is a community local to Denver. It was taken over by the government and they did what they do. You know, when they don't want somebody to be in there, where they've always historically lived. And Anna Jo, she was, you have to watch the documentary, but her background, she went through a lot to get to where she is today, but she cut out these little dolls and set them in all of our legislature's chairs. So when they got into session in the morning, they had all these dolls with stories from all the children in their districts that in their communities told on little cards, and they were dressed and she actually took them to the Capitol. So then it got national recognition, and she took those dolls to the Capitol and they paraded the dolls around the Capitol and did a whole thing. And really, she fought for, not just Colorado to focus on early childhood education, but our nation and to invest in children and to pass laws that made sure that these things stayed in place for our youth.
And so everybody should know who Anna Jo is, but just to still see her working and living her passion. Like at 90, if I'm still doing great work and work I love, I've done everything I needed to do in this life. And she has a beautiful family. She also made sure her family came first, and they're all amazing and accomplished in their own rights as well. So she was a mom, she was a leader, and she's a tiny woman. And the stuff she went through, man, but her heart, my goodness.
Carrie Fox:
Small and mighty.
Dianne Myles:
Small but mighty.
Carrie Fox:
So Dianne, you knew her story before at some level, right? But it sounds like you learned a lot more about her. What was something that really surprised you or stuck with you when you dug in and learned her story?
Dianne Myles:
Yeah, so I knew her family. I have great relationships with all of her family members and obviously, knew who Anna Jo was. And as a born and raised Coloradan, I think you do get to a certain point and you know who all impacted your community. The one thing I didn't realize, I knew, but I didn't realize was how she directly impacted me and so many others as people were celebrating her and talking about her impact on their lives.
My children went to preschool and it was funded through the state, and it was because of the work that Anna Jo had spent her life doing. And so then as a teen mom who needed to find a job, who needed childcare, who didn't have money, Anna Jo directly impacted me in my life. Like you can make the argument that I wouldn't be who I am today without Anna Jo fighting for the resources to support us on our journey in life and raising children and a family.
Carrie Fox:
Wow, that is such an amazing little anecdote right there, because it reinforces the power that stories really do connect us. We're not all that different from each other. We all have some connection back. Stories make the world smaller. And in this really big complex, what feels incredibly divided world and moment that we're in, stories can close those gaps. And that's where I want to go next is if we think about why human stories like Anna Jo's matter so much right now, and we know the landscape, we know that machine-generated content is all over the place, it's hard to tell fact from fiction, and yet we still must come back to truth, to truth-telling, to understanding and discovering and uplifting, as you say, the stories of the people who have built and shaped the communities that we're in.
I don't know that I've got a question other than I just want to hear from you on that. How do we make sure we don't lose the importance of human focused storytelling in the time that we're in?
Dianne Myles:
Yeah, I think there's so many points to be made here. First of all, AI is a tool and it should be used as a tool. It's there to support you and make your job easier, right? It's not there to take over and to create a story that it just never could. It doesn't have lived experience. It doesn't know the nuances of history other than what it's been told. So you have to give it what you need to know and then it'll support you. But it's not meant to take your place and it never could. It's not human. It's an inanimate object and it should be treated as such.
Now, I think if you talk to any great salesperson, any community builder, any advocate, anybody that you know is a part of a movement, we all know that those relationships are built by telling and sharing our stories with each other. That's how you find our commonalities. That's how you learn to look at somebody different than what you may, what the world, or the media may have told you. It's us sitting down with each other, looking at each other, having a conversation. It's us sharing our story via video and having others that can sit down and watch it and build a relationship with you. Because at the end of the day, we're all a part of the human race and we're all interconnected.
And though in a time when we're really divided, I think it's important to remember that. What did James Baldwin say? My liberation is directly attached to your liberation, and none of us are free until we're all free. And we do that right now by making sure we're telling our stories and we're listening to other people's stories outside of your bubble, really engaging on a very human level. And that's all done with the story.
They say people buy from people they know, like, and trust. How do you get to know somebody? You tell your story and then if the story's good enough, they probably will like you. And if you're a good storyteller, right, you sell a little bit better, relationships are a little bit better. I think we have to remember to use AI as a tool and not to have it replace this. This is gold. It always will be. If we think about the banking system crashing or whatever, it's going to boil down to who do you have relationships with and how can we get through these times together? And we have to come back and remember each other's humanity.
Carrie Fox:
Well, and let's just focus there for a moment because you are a brilliant storyteller, because you are a brilliant story listener. So you have such a wonderful, focused attention and ear to understand from the person you are listening to. And if we think really practically, the people who are listening today, we'll get back to formal storytelling in a minute. But to your point just there, we are nothing for each other if we don't understand one another, if we're not willing to listen and learn from one another.
So I'm curious if you have any techniques that you use when you're engaging a conversation or learning from someone or wanting to hear more about their story, how you engage in that. And maybe that's something that someone who's listening today will say, "I'm going to go to a new neighbor and I'm going to sit down and I'm going to learn from them today in our shared humanity."
Dianne Myles:
I work really hard not to ask those basic questions that generate a basic answer. So there's no, "How are you?" Where all of our immediate responses, "Oh, I'm good. How are you? How's work? How's the family?" That doesn't help us build a relationship with anybody.
Carrie Fox:
I know.
Dianne Myles:
Nobody wants that. And so I change up my questions. Today my question has been, how do you find joy? And I got it from a board meeting, but I always have a different type of question because I want to get to the heart of the person. Which leads me to another question I ask, how's your heart? Which I think is completely different than how are you? Because you have to pause. It's not something you're just going to respond like, "Oh, I'm good. Oh, my heart." And then you, it gives people a moment to pause and to really check in with their heart. And so now when they answer you with their heart in mind, that's where their answer is coming from.
And I'm also just upfront and honest. So when I ask somebody the question, I answer it as honestly as I possibly can because it gives the other person the room and the space to respond in the same way, in a way that they will feel seen and heard and honors them and is not fluff. And so those are two questions that stay in my little tool bag of questions.
Carrie Fox:
How's your heart? Oh, I love that. You're right. It does. It has just so much stopping power and it just shows that you care. I think you've touched on something really important. We say, "How are you? I'm fine." And then you walk on, it's almost an empty question now. So I love that, that you change it up and you disrupt the expected in your questioning.
Dianne Myles:
Yeah, you have to right? Like in order for us to build real relationships. I always say, I don't walk away... My COO all the time. She's like, you cause a problem. Because I be like, "I left with all my friends." And my kids are always like, "Mom, why don't you call people your friend?" It just gives a different energy to help people engage with you. So when we're at a restaurant, I'm like, "Hey, friend," it just opens people up to want to talk to you. So I'm like, I always say, "If I don't like you, it's you. And if you don't like me, it's you too." Because I genuinely like people. And I think when you genuinely like people, people will genuinely like you because you have a vested interest in them. And so when we look at like, what does it mean to be a leader or any of the things, I think the best leaders like people.
Carrie Fox:
Yeah, you pop all the invisible bubbles that are keeping people apart. You're just like, I'm just going to get closer to you. And you know what? That's what we all need to do.
Dianne Myles:
Come give me a hug.
Carrie Fox:
I love it. I love it so much. All right, I got one more question for you, and then we'll go to something kind of fun for the end here. Oh, hopefully more of this is fun. But so we work, as you know, we work almost exclusively with nonprofits and foundations. And many times we are coming in when organizations are thinking about, how do I tell my organizational story? How do I set my nonprofit up to raise more money or to increase our impact or to raise awareness, very important, critical things. And we are so proud of the work we get to do when we get to partner with organizations like that.
Many times over the years, we've had to work with clients to redirect their area of focus away from what you and I talk about sometimes as a deficit based story. Thinking about what's lacking in a community to focus actually first on what's the asset in a community, what's working, what's inherently good and valuable and worth elevating and amplifying up? And when we shift our perspective, the story becomes so much richer. And yet it's really hard for a lot of nonprofits to shift that point of view and that thinking.
So I'd love to hear you talk a little bit about the difference between asset-based and deficit-based storytelling and why you continue to reinforce asset-based is always going to be the stronger, the more impactful, the more valuable way for a nonprofit to go.
Dianne Myles:
Whenever I hear, whenever I think of deficit-based storytelling, I always think of the commercials. I forget the lady's name, but she sings, I'm horrible at singing and I'm going to do this, so don't judge me. But it's like, "In the arms of an angel," and then it's like the poor, pitiful dogs are looking up and they're like sad. And you're like, "Oh my god, this is the worst. What are we doing for the animals? Why are we not taking care of the animals?"
We oftentimes tell people's story, specifically Black and Brown people's stories like that. And why is it? Because there's a savior complex. I'm coming in and to save the day. And when you shift the power and put it into the people's hands, you're changing a narrative for people who are used to seeing a message a certain way. So when funders typically go to get funding, they have to show the need, they oftentimes, their default is to tell the story from a deficit-based lens. It's we're going to go in and save these poor, pitiful people instead of these people are brilliant, empowered, and they've been left out of systems, which is why they're here. And us as an organization, we have created a tool or a system or a resource to help support them because they haven't been supported.
And it's a shift in your way of thinking, and it's a shift in the way you think of your organization and the work you do too, because you want to see yourself as somebody who's working to save somebody else. And that's not real. We're all very capable of saving ourselves. And anybody that says they got somewhere alone, they're a lie. You didn't. We all need help. And so it's just reshaping that thinking and that frame, that framework around how we're telling people's stories. And what I have found for my organizations that have changed the way they tell those stories and tell them from a human first language, asset-based language, so we're not colors, we're not incomes, we're not low income. We're people. We may have a lower income, but we're people first. Not colors, I'm a person. But being a Black woman helps you acknowledge the history and the disparities that I have faced.
So when you look at how you're going to engage me, you honor my lived experience, but you remember that I'm a human first and you engage me as such, and there's no hierarchy. And so I got to get away from using people as colors and then deficits and low incomes and just they're people. And this is a resource that is helping them. And oftentimes we find in our nonprofit partners, they raise more money that way. Because now people see themselves as, "Oh my God, I helped somebody... My little piece of support got somebody here, I want to do more of this." Instead of, "Give them $5. Look at those poor sad people." Now they're like, "No, I see my impact. I see what they're capable of doing with the right support, the right resources to support them." And it changes their giving and the way they see people and the way people see themselves.
Carrie Fox:
I love the way you define that and describe that because it's a reminder to organizations who are listening, or communicators who are listening, that you don't have to do the type of storytelling that you've always done. This is a chance to really think about the kind of storytelling you can be doing and what that could do for the future of your organization and your community. When you really start to think about the difference between systems and people. Systems are broken, people are not. Systems need fixing, people do not. There's some important distinctions in how we tell stories, and I just love the way that you define that.
Dianne Myles:
And then I'm spiritual too, so I have a very spiritual practice. And if I know to be true, what I think is true in life, like attracts like, and that's real. So when you're putting out a message that is empowering, you're going to get the... And I work with a lot of nonprofits, so obviously this is where this is coming from, but the money that you receive is going to attract what you're putting out there and the message that you're putting out there, and you get to choose.
Carrie Fox:
Right. Do you know Antionette Carroll of Creative Reaction Lab?
Dianne Myles:
I don't.
Carrie Fox:
Oh, you would love her and her work. One of the lines that she gives a lot is, the person who holds the pen holds the power. And if you actually just change who holds the pen, the story can change an awful lot in a good way. So maybe share the pen a little bit. Think about who's given the opportunity to tell the story, who's given the opportunity to edit the story, right? Think about, go back to the story you told at the top, the story of yourself, the chance to edit your own story and change the outcome, can change a lot more.
Dianne Myles:
A hundred percent.
Carrie Fox:
Well, this has been so wonderful. I love listening to you and learning from you, and you've already made me feel so hopeful. But I'm going to ask you, what is making you feel hopeful as you look ahead?
Dianne Myles:
Great question. I've always said... I've always said, like I'm just so seasoned, but one of the thoughts or ideologies that I live by is, the thing is the loudest before it dies. And my hope right now is that everybody that has been marginalized and has grown up in an oppressive system is currently seeing something be really loud as it's dying because it's afraid and it doesn't see itself in the new way of thinking and being. And so I'm hopeful because of that.
The second reason that I'm really hopeful right now for me as a Black woman to be sitting in the position that I'm sitting in, to be doing the work that I get to do, to run a successful organization, the amount of ancestors that it took for me to be here is beyond. I have it in one of my card decks. It breaks down how many great, great, great-grandparents, how many grandpas, it breaks it all down. And when I think about what they went through in America for me, little old me to be here, and all of those people that it took for me to be here, I'm working with some power, some love, some brilliance, some softness. And because of them, I am. So I can't have anything but hope.
Carrie Fox:
Dianne, this season the show is about navigating the way forward, and we can't navigate the way forward without honoring the past as you've just reminded us, how important that past is to where we're going. So you asked a little earlier, how's your heart? My heart is so much better after listening to you just for a little bit of time. So I hope everyone listening is having the same emotional reaction as I am right now. So immensely grateful for you and the work that you do and the courageous act you took one day to say, "I'm going to change this," and how lucky I feel to now get to work with you in this work. So Dianne, thank you.
Dianne Myles:
And same to all of it. It's just been an honor getting to know you, and I'm excited to work alongside you and do some really beautiful things in this world.
Carrie Fox:
Me too. Well, friends, if you are listening and you are inspired by what Dianne has talked about today, check in the show notes. You'll see some examples of her work. Reach out to me if you're interested in working with Dianne on a project together. That's what our social entrepreneur in residence is all about, is we're going to be collaborating on some really exciting projects in the next 18 months. And we would love to work with you on something if you've got something coming up in the future.
So, thanks for tuning in today to this great episode. Thank you, Dianne for being with us. And until next time, we'll see you soon.
