Adam Torres and Laurie Meadoff discuss the Milken Institute Global Conference.
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Show Notes:
Listen to Milken Institute Global Conference coverage. In this episode, Adam Torres and Laurie Meadoff, Founder & President at The CityKids Foundation, explore The CityKids Foundation and the Milken Institute Global Conference.
About Laurie Meadoff
For over four decades, Laurie has been at the forefront of youth empowerment, impact investing, media innovation, and strategic advisory.
Laurie is also a multi-award winning and 3 times Emmy nominated Executive Producer who has worked
globally and has produced for MTV, VHI, ABC, Sundance Channel and National Geographic.
After receiving a Rockefeller Fellowship for Next Generation Leadership, Laurie co-created the innovative
television series, Chat the Planet, linking young people around the globe. ‘Chat the Planet’ programming
reached over 350 million viewers as well as creating the critically acclaimed and multi award winning web series “Hometown Baghdad”.
As part of the Brookings Institute on Cultural Diplomacy, she worked with global dignitaries on the use of the arts and media to build bridges between people and she has spoken at events from the US to Hong Kong to Bangalore.
As the Founder & President of The CityKids Foundation, she has led groundbreaking initiatives that amplify young voices, train leaders, and cultivate social change through artivism, media, and leadership training.
With extensive experience in executive production,resourceful collaboration, and strategic planning, Laurie masterfully uses her vast network to build bridges and devise projects with significant and resounding societal influence.
About The CityKids Foundation
Founded in 1985, CityKids is a pioneering youth organization dedicated to providing high-quality arts experiences to underserved young people. What began as a platform for creative expression has organically expanded to include leadership development, community service, educational support, career guidance, and mental health services—ensuring holistic youth development into adulthood.
Today, CityKids engages more than 800 youth annually through free after-school, in-school, weekend, and summer programs. Beyond direct engagement, the organization reaches tens of thousands each year through dynamic performances, multimedia productions, and workshops—all created, designed, and produced by the youth themselves.
CityKids remains committed to empowering the next generation through creativity, leadership, and community impact.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to apply to be a guest in the show, just head on over to mission matters.com and click on be Our Guest to Apply. All right, so today’s guest is Laurie Medoff and she is the founder and president of the City Kids Foundation.
And this. Particular interview will be part of our Milken Global Conference 2025 series, where we’re highlighting and featuring participants and attendees that were at the Milken Global Conference and supporters. So first off, Laurie, welcome to the show. Thank you so much, Adam. Good to hear your voice.
Alright, Laurie, so we got a lot to talk about today, so I definitely wanna get into your work over with the C Kids Foundation and also I know you have some other things that you’re doing in media and otherwise and in Africa and, really globally. So we’ll get into that too. And but just to get us kicked off here, I’m looking Global Conference.
, you were in the Beverly Hills conference this year. Is this your first year? Have you been before or I just, just curious about your experience. It’s actually my first year at the big one. I was able to go to a few conferences during Climate Week in the past. Mm-hmm. And I was also a, a speaker and a facilitator at the Wellness Garden, which is kind of a side event at, Milken.
Mm-hmm. That was amazing because people were so blown away by so much conference. They had a moment of rest and of breathing with incredible experts from around the world, so That’s amazing. That was really great. I missed that guard. I don’t not know how or why, but I’ve had a couple people on, somebody said about something about a sound bath or something.
I don’t even know. There was, yes, they did. How did I, was busy working and everybody’s over here playing. No, I’m just playing. Well, it wasn’t playing. I feel like it was digest. They had a moment, their chest. Yeah. I’m like, this is messed up now and next year I know what to look out for. Now I have the inside track.
So I love talking to a first time participant in the act, in the, in the big conference. Like, like I’m sure through your career and like your distinguished career, you’ve been in many, many conferences. What made this one stick out, like as your, first time? I like to call it to the big show, or for me it’s the Super Bowl conferences every year.
So what made it stick out to you? Well, super Bowl is right in the pure numbers that were there. I am addicted to learning and I love learning anything that is in health, media, wellbeing, education, use. Those are my sweet spots and I go to the Lake Nona Festival every year and the impact, and I’ve gone to Sages and scientists and I produced some for the Dalai LA in my past and been at Brookings Institute.
Part of that in cultural diplomacy. And so to me, Milken represented, you’re right, the Super Bowl of, all of this. It was a very overwhelming because there were so many things to choose and to be part of. But I think the level of work is so astounding of what Milken is doing, and I just love what they’re building with the American Dream in Washington.
And I hope, mm-hmm. I’m actually following up now to be part of that. Amazing. I think what he’s doing is phenomenal, what all of them are doing. I also was able to attend the Philanthropic Investors Forum a day before and just was so blown away by the CEOs discussing various issues among, within cutbacks in the world and what strategies and collaborations they were doing, which seemed to be, you know, the name of the game is Collaborate on all sorts of different topics with funders.
So speaking of philanthropy and collaboration I understand the City Kids Foundation recently celebrated its 40 years anniversary. I know. And I’m only 26 still. No, come on. Like, I know 40. Talk to me a little bit about this history and even the foundation, like, let’s get into this.
Like what I mean, you know, I gotta go to the beginning. Like, what, what spurred this? You’re the founder. Yes. You know, I had worked in prisons. I had graduated in educational theater with a master’s degree at NYU and I was always, born to bring diverse young people together from all sorts of different backgrounds.
Hmm. And city kids. Success is safe space where young people turn their pain into purpose. And then co-create any actions that move a community forward and that model I can’t even tell you two weeks ago, 40 year party with alumnis that are now in their fifties and grown up. And it was, you know, it was so palpable.
The love in the room and the commitment and. Almost 90% of them were doing work that had impact, right. And mission built into it. And that’s really the essence of, the kind of work that has survived. And I had left city kids. I had gone around the world. I’ve been , in Panama. I work in Africa and Japan and still came back because the, elements of safe space and really.
Especially having a touch point now with young people as AI and digital takeoff are now more needed, now more than ever. Mm. Yeah, that’s so the one other thing in, in 1986, we did the largest, I don’t know if you know the artist, Keith Herring. Mm-hmm. Keith had passed away, but we did a 90 foot by 30 foot piece of artwork called City Could Speak on Liberty.
A thousand kids painted on what liberty means to them. And I’m going back to Milken because the, Dream Center would be an amazing place to place this, tribute to Liberty, and we use it around the world now to relight the torch. It was just in Japan. And to have young people engaged in, again, dialogue on topics that are important and then co-create together.
I’m a big fan of Keith, by the way. I’m not fortunate enough to own an original anything, but I do have a couple t-shirts. I’ll send you one, I’ll send you a city did our logo. We worked a lot with him over the years and his legacy of artivism, like he was the original artist plus activist and yeah.
Now 40 years later, city Kid’s Dream is to build a center, a global school of Artivism. Oh, I love it. I think that is so key to his legacy. , I love it. And like I mentioned, like I’m a big fan of his and that’s great to hear. And I want something else that you, you mentioned to me that stuck out is talking a little bit about your media career and things that you’ve done, you know, traveling all around the world.
So maybe let’s, spend some time that as on that as well. Like, so what kind of projects or what are you working on nowadays? Well, it’s interesting because I left city kids over those 40 years because I wanted to take the authenticity of what was going on, the ground in the floor with 70, 80, a hundred kids all the time.
I. Bring it to the world. And I got a Rockefeller Fellowship with Jacqueline Gratz before Acumen Fund. And there I am in South Africa and I see this project with a TV set in Soweto at night and prior to Skype being built and they were talking to kids in Philly and I said, you could do this two weeks.
I could do this internationally. Mm-hmm. So I optioned the property and got funding by the woman who created Barney, the purple dinosaur, Cheryl Leach, and we created 12 half hour chat the planet, linking young people in, in South Africa to America, Australia, Jordan, and then Baghdad, pre and postwar.
And we reached 380 million homes and then created a short series called Hometown Baghdad. But the one story that, again. Talks about this work. We were in Armand and Jordan and one, you know, again, two cameras three cameras in two different locations with 20 somethings talking to each other. And the kid in in Jordan said my grandmother was.
Killed by a soldier, and she was just trying to save a five-year-old. And then one in America says, yo man, my brother’s in Kuwait. And every time the door opens, I think he’s gonna blow up. And there was this dead silence in the filmmaking part that I, I just said, humanity pulled up a chair and walked in the room.
And that’s what happens when we in real time, sit together. Humanity comes in and I’ve beared witness to this over and over again in all the work internationally. And we need, we need that more than ever. Hmm. Now there’s this theme of you just , from us speaking of bringing young people together, like in different mediums, in different areas, whether it’s with the city kids, whether what you’re doing in media, whether it’s a project you just mentioned.
What do you feel like that secret sauce is, or that common thread or like what brings young people together? It’s really the safety of, being in kind of creating a surrogate family for the time. You know, when you have kids share their pain and feel safe enough to talk about anything in a non-judgment environment, and that had to do with media.
I mean, I’ve three times. Emmy nominated. I’ve done, you know, international work and that brought me to Brookings Institute on Cultural Diplomacy. But my layer on top of that is the arts. I think that it’s interesting, there’s a quote about an artivist from I. Asante and, and they said the Artis uses artistic talents to fight and struggle against injustice by any medium possible.
The Artis merges freedom justice with a pen, the lens, the voice. But here’s a line that changed me. It was the Artis knows that to make an observation is to have an obligation. And that’s the spark that young people, when they talk about things and they feel like, wow, that doesn’t feel fair, that’s not right.
You know, a young person at city kids read an article where a black young person got painted white in a park. Mm-hmm. And we are sitting on the floor and Malik Yoba, who is my vice president. Now it turned, you know, major philanthropist and artist and film, you know, television Star. But Malik said, well, what you gonna do about hate?
And it became a song and someone else said, well, I want to heal the rainbow. And that became a song. And then that hit millions of people as we produced it and went out. So. Like, like the banner, like the hearing. A young person says, I put my name there, even though it’s a little name. Someone’s gonna say, how’d you do that?
So I grab young people and hopefully create that space that they could be. Part of movement building that they’re in valued no matter what your background is, that they have an authentic voice that has to be heard. And I think that the future of artivism , and partnerships, there’s so many great practices going.
If we could, you know, codify them, put them in a place, and then teach and train, we have an army of positivity out on the in the streets. Hmm. And something that you, you told, you, you mentioned just now kind of struck me, is when you’re talking about like the kids feeling or the youth feeling, you know, safe and accepted and like they have a place.
And I remember when I used to bring my mom on the podcast sometimes. So she was in, a social work. I don’t know, 40 plus years before she retired, all that good stuff. And she worked for the Covenant House in Michigan. And and she was one of their second employee there actually, and she helped grow that organization in Michigan to what it is now.
And she used to always talk about that and she’d say like, you know, meeting the youth where they’re at. Not judging, like and making them feel safe and that you’d be surprised what can happen when you do that. And she used to, I remember one thing that she, if I was to paraphrase her word, she’d like, she’s like, you know, ’cause she work with, at-risk youth, like, so the, you know, those that had in, in the United States that maybe have not the, the best deal we’ll say.
Mm-hmm. And she’d be like, man, even just. Like, you know, bringing in a McDonald’s hamburger or like doing this and sitting down and pulling up a chair, like, you’d be surprised what can happen and how you could change somebody’s life because it shouldn’t be assumed that they’ve had that experience to connect, especially with an adult, like maybe what a beautiful don’t have, don’t have other adults in their, in their life where they’ve ever been able to connect or have a conversation with it when they weren’t being judged or attacked or telling or talking about what they did wrong.
So your mom was a wise woman? I’ll tell you that. And what I’ve learned is I think that I always say pain is cross-cultural. Like we’re all ex children and we all as ex children have experienced powerlessness. And when that’s a common denominator, when you sit, and I don’t care if you’re, you know, you define leadership as that kid who’s going to Harvard without leading everybody out the back door ’cause of drugs.
Once you get into a safe space and you share something else happens. And so diversity is really the one of the secret things that have worked so well with city kids. ’cause we’re all high risk and we all need that kind of connecting tissue, whether it’s to family and friends. Plus, I’ll never forget when Nancy Reagan once came to city kids and she was just doing, just saying no.
And she said, what works? And one of the things the kid said is like, when my friend tells me to cut it out. Like, like I always call them gold nuggets. Like people, young people, they’re so smart. And once you are listening deeply as an adult, you just get guided on how to move forward with them, supporting them and encouraging that voice to be heard.
And I’ve done it. I’ve seen it all my life. I mean, right now we have a project called Take Back, the Mic Africa, and we’re just building a big film studio there. Where the young people and the will be owning their own ip. Wow. And that’s the big thing with, for me, with the artivism movement.
How do we create revenue packed in, built in to everything that we do so that the young people get money, the organizations get money, and that there’s a business that is really laid on. And that’s what I love about, you know, learning at Milken because. They’re always thinking in a 360 model, so amazing that is stuff that I’m, I’m all over in.
I might have to die and come back to build again because I’m getting that age. But that could be arranged, you know? I love it. Well, well, Laurie, this has been so much fun having you on the show today. That being said, if somebody’s listening to this or watching this and they wanna learn more about the City Kids Foundation or follow any of your work, how do people connect?
, How do they follow up? Well, I’m easy ’cause I’m Laurie, L-A-U-R-I [email protected]. Or you could go to the City Kids Foundation online and right away we are of course looking for donations. We’re partnering with this Lower East Side Girls Club that have 40,000 square feet of phenomenal space and we wanna activate it with young people as we test the waters of Artivism.
And I just found a. A actual box of Keith Herring never seen before. Footage of the making of the banner while Herbie Hancock, Philip Black. And so we’re building that in the film and we desperately need distribution for that film as well as funding. But we’re, I literally was able to film the kids, the kids.
They’re in their fifties now. The young ones who had filmed, who painted on the banner and worked with Keith, and at the reunion, they came back and 40 years later sat down and talked about that and how it impacted them. So, you know, we are about collaboration. We need funding for all this work. But I guess 40 years later, I’ve gotten to know some stuff.
That works with kids by now. Yeah. Thank you so much and thank you for sharing about your mom. I just think that’s such a phenomenal story. So thank you. Thank you. And to the audience, just so you know, we’ll definitely put the links in the show notes so you can just click on them and head right on over and and check out the City Kids Foundation and Laurie.
Speaking of the audience, if this is your first time with Mission Matters and you haven’t done it yet, hit that subscribe or follow button. This is a daily show. Each and every day we’re bringing you new content, new ideas, and hopefully new inspiration to help you along the way on your journey as well.
So again, hit that subscribe or follow button. And Laurie, thanks again for coming on the show. Thank you so much, Adam. Great to meet you.
