Moving Our World Forward with Chana Ginelle Ewing

In this episode of Empathetic Presence, I sit down with Chana Ginelle Ewing, a storyteller, cultural entrepreneur, and Founder & Chief Creator at littlebigworld. We dive deep into how queer imagination and care-centered politics can inform strategic marketing to move our world forward.

This conversation is personally meaningful during Pride month, as queer lives continue to be under attack. Chana shares how we can understand our identities as sources of power rather than limitations, and why bringing our whole selves to our work creates more authentic and effective leadership.

Links & Resources

• Connect with Chana at littlebigworld
• Learn more about my work at PresentVoices.com

Transcript

Lee: 0:05

Welcome back to Empathetic Presence, a podcast to liberate our voices. I'm your host, Lee Bonvissuto , and today I am so excited to share my interview with Chana Ginelle Ewing. Chana is a storyteller, cultural entrepreneur, founder, and chief creator at Little Big World where queer imagination and care centered politics inform strategic marketing to move our world forward. Happy Pride. As queer lives are continually under attack, it has never been more important for us to share our stories and use our voices. I hope you enjoy my interview with Chana Ginelle Ewing here.

Chana Ewing's audio backup: 0:51

Hi, Lee. Thanks for having me. How use my voice right now? You know, so you, I, I, I, I knew this question was coming and I had a, a. Prepared answer, but then when you said it just now, it made me pause to think about, because I don't want think it's because of the right now piece. You know, like I think how we use our voice in this moment just changes like on a day to, on a day to day basis. Um, uh, but I would say broadly speaking, um, I'm. People understand their identities as power. So essentially, you know, any deviation from dominant identities, which is like, you know, cis, white, male, Christian, um, heterosexual, right? Like this kind of like the most dominant identity that we have. And then there's all the deviations from that. Um, it's typically seen as like a limitation in this society, right? Though obviously different communities have reclaimed their identities over time, over decades. Um, but you know, my goal in the work that I do and the, and, and the voice that I have is to have people understand their unique identities and cultural backgrounds as a source of pride and power. As a source of unique genius that they can apply to all the work that they do. So not that it stops, um, in the space of our social interactions, but you can extend that to everywhere. You know, I think there was a former professional culture that sort of looked at, um, your identity as culture as like, oh, you know, we leave that at home. Right? And the work that I do is around, or how I use my voice is around. No one's ever leaving any of that at home, you know? Um, we've all adopted, you know, a professional stance, which is largely, um, a white reac unbeknownst. That's sort of what professional identity looks like. And so we leave our culture and, you know, our, our genders, our um, our race, our ethnicities, all of that at the door so that we can become this flattened group of people in order to engage in society. And so I think largely my voice. Around acknowledging that that flatness doesn't exist for anyone. Um, and that for folks who have been, you know, ably marginalized, um, is extremely hard to fit into that, you know, flat mold, um, nearly impossible. And do. We acknowledge that how they are showing up is powerful and that they have unique genius. And so I think that's essentially how I, how I. I love to hear that. Thank you so much and honestly, um, it's so cool to hear someone else read, like say the messaging out loud. So part of, you know, as a new business, one of the things that I do is I will click, I'll open up my, um, philosophy and just have it on my, one of my tasks every day because, you know, being. There's a lot of things that go in our day. And so just like, I feel like I'm the number one, um, audience for, for that, um, philosophy, like, um, it just reminds me and guides me back to why I'm doing this. Like, so what I'm creating a social media post that I don't wanna do, like, or when I'm like, you know, stuck in QuickBooks or you know, I'm doing some little tedious spreadsheet task. You know, just to kind of have that vision be to me and like keep me mindful of the, of the Yeah, so essentially, you know, um, my career has looked like, um, the intersection of like, creativity, storytelling, um, and identity, right? Like, I think, you know, my very first business was actually called Little Big Girl. Um, and so it's just fitting that this is, this is actually a callback to my very first business back in, um, 2009. And the, the business then was little big girl and it was like a riff on, um, uh, what is, uh, Seth Godin, you know, like Seth Godin's book where he, his head is coming up from the bottom of the book. I Bald, so logo. A little girl, a little black girl with a afro coming up in the bottom of the image in a circle. And the concept there was just like this, this, um, this tension between commanding presence and playfulness. Um, being very sure and of your self expression, being very sure of your story. But also, um, having a willingness to experiment and willingness to, um, express beyond your imagination. And so I think like that first, and that first, sorry, that first business really I, um, was about working with small businesses around their strategic story. Um, their journey on social media and like how they connect with audiences. That was my very first business. And then as I moved into that business, a lot of my clients ended up making, uh, films and documentaries and filmmakers. And so, um, so moving, you know, a lot of crossing turns here. Um, I also had a business that was Genie, that was a beauty business around identity and. Self expression to like promote small businesses that you care about and also buying from small brands that you care about. Right. So I think they, all of those businesses and threads kind of come back to this concept of connecting stories to identity and to creativity. So when I closed Jeanie back in, I. Three. So when I closed Genie in the middle of 2023, I thought, thought a lot about like, where do I wanna go from here? Right? Because I had veered off into this startup path and the startup path though it was fun and it was, I guess it was values aligned in some way. It really, it, it. I was authentic, fully authentic to me. And so I said in my new business, what I wanted to do was like center my own creativity. So part of what I've done for the last few years has been marketing others, right? Like, like marketing brands. Marketing businesses, marketing. So in 2023, let business, what I. So I freelanced for about a year and I started writing. I launched a subset, I think middle of last year. And after I started moving my voice forward, like my authentic writing and voice, I was like, okay, now this business is gonna build from, right? Like it's going be reflect. Home for my own creative, creative endeavors and, and also for the support of other like-minded brands and organizations. So I think I did that pretty intentionally because I think a lot of times we think about, um, our creative output or our passions as like these side hustles that have to exist. Separately from your business, and I'm, I'm a writer at the end of the day, so the way I see the world is through a writer's lens. That's what I'm applying to marketing. And so I'm like, this business needs to intentionally leverage Chana, the writer, if it's gonna succeed, so that I have a platform for myself to showcase my own thinking, but also to connect that very intentionally to. The, the clients and, um, partners that I work with. A hundred percent. And that's what keeps me honest, right? So like if I were to try to perform, you know, at the end of the day when you're, obviously it's, you know, you, you coach folks, right? So obviously it's a little bit different when you're coaching someone who is working within an organization, right? And how they think about their relationship to their job and their career, right? Um, and how they are in partnership with the brands that they work with. You know, not necessarily centered, it's somebody else's vision that they're working with, right? But in the case of an ENT entrepreneur and a business that you're building, it doesn't necessarily, you know what I think I had to learn is that, um, because all like Jeanie was like this. I did another business called Michelle, or Jim was a couple of businesses before this, where even little big girl, to a certain extent, even though I had the logo that looked like me, I still was doing this sort of like professional identity versus like personal identity. And I was keeping myself separate, right? And I was like, I, you know, I don't want the business to be about me. Hire little big girl. I want people to like buy from Genie. I want people to like come to Michelle o brunch or whatever it is. Not, not because of me. And it's like the reality is when you are a business owner, it's you, right? Like it's very much you, you know, it's like, um, and especially if you're in sort business. It doesn't make sense for me to like try to present something that is divorced from me or that is apart from me. I, you know, I want it to be fully aligned and people be like, oh yes, this person in this business makes sense for me to work with and to, and for them to support my, my brand journey. You know, so. A hundred percent. So the reason why, you know we are. Specifically talking about queer thinking changes everything is, because for me, queerness is beyond de beyond desire. Right. It is, it's an approach to life. Right. And it's, it's how we think about our relationships writ large. So you know, it's going beyond traditional understandings of like gender, of family, of self-expression. Um, who we relate to, how we relate to them, who we center, um, and really stepping into mutuality, trust, care built around these ex expanded understandings of our connections. Right? So it's not thinking, it's not, it's not just looking at like, okay, it's not accepting traditional default modes of being. Right. Like it's the ability to be able to think about, this is a binary. Can I go beyond that Binary like this? Okay, I, so folks say you express yourself this way. Can I express myself that way? Right? Like it's having the ability to like see for yourself who you wanna be in the world and also to. Build connections that are not based off of assigned roles that are default given to you. Like, this is my mother, this is my father, this is my husband, this is my girlfriend. And so therefore it means this, right? Like this queer queerness is, is beyond any of those. Kind of understanding, right? So it's a, it's a politic in a, in many ways. And so I really like that framing. And unbeknownst to me, it's like, honestly, how I was approaching marketing and creativity and storytelling anyway, right? Like it's, and it became more clear to me that that was my lens writing an ABC equality, right? Um, and like the work around that children's book, it was like, really, it clarifi. The way I'm seeing the world is very expansive and I'm in purposefully and intentionally trying to push myself out, you know, wherever I'm doing, um, either or thinking like I'm, I'm intentionally trying to live a world, live in a, live in a world that thinks in terms of like, right. Um, and so I think like that's. You know, when, when, when someone says, okay, um, we wanna, I always like to use this example. I wanna create a film that targets, um, NYC cycles, right? So like, that's like, oh, or even NYC black cycles, right? Like, that, that might be the, like my, my documentary targets. Who is that? Right? Like and whose story would likely, if you said n well see black bikers, who you probably would likely think of is thin, uh, able bodied, uh, probably masculine folks, right? Like, that's who you would think about. Maybe young, right? Like this, these are images that might come to mind. We might think about, okay, what about the older bikers? What about the disabled bikers? What about the black bikers? What about the trans bikers? Like what? It just enables us to think about like go past those, like prejudgments around who likes to bike and who can bike. Take into all the other rich communities that might be in New York that might like biking, right? So that, that is like built into how we are thinking about who we're serving and who's left out of a picture of a story or the picture of a, of a target demographic. Absolutely. Absolutely. Oh, it's such a good question. And you know, the thing is, what came to mind just now? Um, I dunno, I think I've read last week in terms of, I know this, I know you talked about AI specifically, but I think one of the things that AI is learning from and feeding from is the net, right? It's just feeding from general internet. And I read somewhere how. It's like sort of editing its answers, right? So like if you're, you're unable to get the full knowledge of in story, right? Because of the agenda that is in the US around like provision is history, right? Like so, you know, we wanna ignore the fact that people are in fact oppressed today and have been oppressed since. You know, this founding of this country, right? We wanna ignore that story and create a whole new understanding of what the US is. That's like quote unquote patriotic. And patriotic means to, um, not interrogate or to push your quote unquote country to be better, or, you know, living its values. Patriotic means to, you know. Unconsciously unconscious aligned to whatever it is, whatever it is that you, your government, the moment is saying is the truth of history. And so it's interesting how apparently these platforms are now aligning with these stories so that they don't get the I of, you know, of this government so that they kind of get out of harms way. So I think that that is really interesting because yeah, like what is online and what comes up in searches and what's available for knowledge is the thing that powers these large language models, right? So if the, like, if the content is inaccurate or you know, false or tells a different. Point of view, view of the conqueror, you know, the point of view of the colonizer and the point of view of the dominant folk, then that will be reflected in the AI use. And so I will always say it's really important for people to just not like, um, if you are using ai, first of all, learn as much as you can around AI and ethics. Prompts engineering. I know that that's like, you know, something that people talked about a little bit, like around like more like in 2022 and 2023 first started learning about child gt. It was like, oh, all about engineering and now people don't talk about it as much anymore because everyone's like, oh, you know, that's ai. They, you know. You just pump it in. You, you put something in it, it'll like spit it out right for you. And it's like, no, actually, you have to be really thoughtful around what your inputs are. And you also need to push back if it's giving you inputs that, you know, like outputs that you know to be false or be suspicious. Because a lot of times it's just reflecting, um, the story of the times, you know? So it's. It's very complicated situation. I think on mainly felt, we we're not even talking about the environmental impact, but like, just the point of view of like how you are using it. I think that it's not wise to just allow, allow AI to just like be your, your new sec, your new brain without you being the leader of that and you kind of using some discernment around. The information that it's gathering for you. Exactly. Mm-hmm. Um, so I don't know. Yes, I would hope I, you know, I would love to do a memoir at some point. Um, I recently have been. And that's been fun. Do, um, you know, I. Modes of storytelling that I'd like to entertain in addition to, um, a book. And I think I wanna do a book on marketing. Honestly, that would be even fun to do a book on marketing from this, from this lens. Um, I'm pretty obsessed with marketing. I think it gets a bad name. Um, mostly because, you know, one of the things I like to tell my clients all the time is like, marketing shouldn't. Uh, tell a false story or make up for gaps in the product, right? Like the marketing should, like you, like we should, you should have a great product. And all we have to do is gather the folks around that funnel to that story, right? But so often what happens is the opposite. Most people are using, uh, marketing to. Um, a story about a product that doesn't exist, right? Or to showcase values that are not real, right? Like people use, you know, they weaponized marketing, you know, this is what they do. Like they, they are telling false stories or they're trying to get people into their. Identities and ideals that are not true, or, uh, product features that are not true, um, in order to like, hopefully, you know, convince you to buy with them or buy, buy their product or buy them service. Right. And what I would say, it's like, let's not use, like, that's not the, that's not the goal. These tools, right? Uh, to bring an amazing story, an amazing product in front of an audience. Right? And if you need to think, because I think, you know, sometimes, like you can think about, um, like what comes first, like the, the strategy or the actual marketing, right? Sometimes you could, you could bring a marketer's lens or. Communications professionals lens into your strategic product development or early on in the life stage of a product or, or early on in the life stage of a film, to kind of give you that lens around, okay, the, the end result and how that's gonna resonate with an audience. So you can use, you know, marketing from that lens, but often like, don't, don't, so that you just get the feedback of like, how to build this thing. Right. That's fine. But often that's not what's happening. What's happening is you have a poor product or poor story and you're putting a bandaid. You're trying to use marketing as a bandaid to cover up for that. And that's why I think my profession gets a bad name is because we're, you come in and we have to make false claims around something that doesn't actually in real, you know? And I. Maybe some marketers are okay with doing that, right? I would rather work with a small business or brand around helping them achieve the goal of that product or service, right? So bring me on early enough to help you with that strategic lens around who you're trying to serve in building that product journey so that it serves that audience in a way that you would like to serve it, versus on the end of that, where it's like this thing is. So something not right here, you know? two things. The first is all of these platforms have an agenda around consumption. So we know that in and of itself, right? Like they, they are all focused on consumption because at the end of the day, even though it's free, they are trying to monetize your consumption, right? Like that's their goal. End of story. You know, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, whatever the social media platform they are trying to monetize consumption. There's only really two roles for a business on social media, right? It's either as a creator, so you are willing to come on social media and create a lot of content so that it's consumed, right, so that you can then, uh, monetize the. Consumer eyeballs. You bring them on a journey from seeing you on an Instagram post to joining your newsletter, to then taking an action from your newsletter. You know, you use this brand, you use them as like top of funnel, and you bring people deeper into your funnel until they make a sale, right? So you can be a creator and you do that to monetize, right? Or you can be an advertiser. You can, and. You can, um, play ads, right? I would say that if you are not on social media doing either of those two things, then you are likely being a powerful consumer that is being, um, monetized, right? And we should all think about what that, what that means for us, right? So if I, if I'm saying that I don't wanna be a creator or an advertiser. I need to be really mindful about what my consumption looks like. Because if you just let that consumption one, you know, one pre unchecked, then you start to experience, you know, uh, mental health challenges. You know, you start to feel bad. Like there's all these like attendant. That come from just passively consuming social media all day, right? Like if you, just, like, if you were to passively sit and watch a TV show for eight hours, right? Like it's, you know, you, you, you might get some, like, you know, that dopamine hit of like joining that story, but are you really feeling good for like eight hours? Beneficial for your health, you know, to just be on your couch for eight hours watching content, right? Like, that's not, so if you think about it from that point of view, I think it helps people understand, um, why social media can be an important truth for marketers or business owners, um, and how you can leverage it for those reasons and why it may not make sense to just use. To consume, you know, like, I, I wouldn't, 10 10 will not recommend, you know, like I'm, you know, I'm personally only on these channels when I'm marketing. You know, like I barely look, use, you know, I, I have a goal of becoming more of a creator for my own marketing, right? But not to sit there and just consume content all day. And it is intentional. So these apps, these apps are built that way for you to continue to swipe and continue. You know, this how they're, they're built. Absolutely. Um, so, um, a couple things. One is I'm really trying to think about rest. I am, unfortunately, I've dealt with insomnia for years and oh, you know. Working around my rest and my sleep. And one of the things that I say to myself is like, I take rest whenever it comes to me. So like, you know, if I'm tired in the middle of the day, I would like try to go take a, a little power nap versus like, try to wait till the end of the night, you know? So really being very, uh, rest centered so that I can optimize myself and do. The other piece is that I'm an extrovert, so people, I just need to be around people. I love being with my community. I love being around my friends. I love finding the perfect coworking space to go and do work at which I, and look, I'm in a cafe right now, so I'm, I'm always, um, thinking about how I could put people so. Productive amount, work day. Those are the two things that I'm always looking at. And then for your, um, your other, I wanted to just say this last thought too, which is around the concept of your, um, podcast, which is like existing presence. And I think, like I was thinking about this a a bit, and it goes back to something which is like executive. It's really about just owning your identity, you know, like being fully in your own. So, you know, like it's like being like I am committed to my vision. I own who I am, and I can be that wherever I am. Thank you so much for having me, Lee. This has been fun.