Dr. Joy Hogge is the executive director of Families as Allies, a nonprofit organization based here in Jackson. Joy Hogge has a master’s degree and a Ph.D in counseling psychology from Texas A&M University. She’s been the executive director of Families as Allies since 2011, where she oversees the development, implementation and assessment of family-driven, community-based services that support children with mental health challenges and their families.

Our guest this episode is Dr. Robert Luckett, a Jackson native who graduated from Richland Public Schools, left for Yale University, earned his PhD in history from the University of Georgia and returned to Jackson 12 years ago to be a history professor at Jackson State University and the director of the Margaret Walker Center at JSU. Dr. Luckett is a member of the Jackson Public Schools school board, was part of a team involved in the Mississippi History Museum and the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum, and the author of the book "Joe T. Patterson and the White South’s Dilemma: Evolving Resistance to Black Advancement."

Nashlie Sephus is a Jackson native who graduated from Jackson Public Schools to ultimately go on to earn a PhD in Computer Science from Georgia Tech. She worked in Atlanta as a co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of a startup company, Partpic, that was ultimately acquired by one of the world’s largest technology companies. Her Jackson-based nonprofit, the Bean Path, is celebrating it’s two-year anniversary soon, and she’s working on a new live-work development near downtown Jackson that promises maker spaces, restaurants and an unprecedented creative environment in Jackson. https://thebeanpath.org/ https://twitter.com/phenomenashlie http://www.phenomenash.org/

Our guest in this episode is Betsy Bradley is the director of the Mississippi Museum of Art. Originally from Greenville, Miss. https://msmuseumart.org/index.php/ This was actually the second time we recording this interview — the first was right before the coronavirus pandemic hit, and things changed so rapidly that we had to pull the episode. We spoke about the launch of a new exhibition featuring works by Van Gogh, Monet, and Degas, as well as the protocols for visiting the museum and some plans for outdoor events and exhibitions this fall.

In this special edition of Let’s Talk Jackson, Todd Stauffer spoke with Mr. Timothy Rush, who is Director of Reemployment Assistance at the Mississippi Department of Employment Security. Todd spoke with Mr. Rush about the current state of the MDES system, what they’ve gone through to deal with tens of thousands of suddenly unemployed people, including questions of who is getting federal stimulus dollars and what it means when you get a debit card with no money on it. We recorded the interview via Zoom during a busy day, so please excuse the sound quality. https://www.mdes.ms.gov/