The Exchange
In a deeply-divided America, urban and rural people don’t understand or listen to each other anymore. It sometimes feels like civil war is on the horizon.
The Exchange: Walk in Someone Else’s Shoes is a documentary TV series that takes viewers on a journey to meet people, and experience places and cultures they’ve never known before — in their own country.
The Exchange is brought to you by ExchangeNation.
Our first Exchange between Boston, MA and
Lawrence County, AL started in January 2017.
Interested in helping produce The Exchange?Lawrence County, AL started in January 2017.
Meet the Cast
In The Exchange, teams of citizens from participating ExchangeNation cities and counties travel to their sister-pair’s location in order to build bridges across difference, foster lasting relationships and prove that Americans get along better when they learn to walk in each other’s shoes.
TeamBoston
Bill Hughes is business executive with over thirty years experience in technology-centric innovation. For the past two decades he has…
Susanne Goldstein is a problem solver, business builder and social entrepreneur. A mechanical engineer and filmmaker by training, Susanne has…
Upon completing a two-year fellowship at MIT, Malia Lazu returned to Boston to build nonprofit models for the 21st century.…
I am involved in ExchangeNation because it is a unique opportunity to participate the building bridges in a new context…
TeamLC (Lawrence County)
Loretta Y. Gillespie is a freelance writer and columnist whose work appears each week in The Moulton Advertiser, and the…
Hello my name is Kacey Hall. I'm a journeyman welder. I've been in this trade for about fifteen years. I'm…
My name is Proncey Robertson and I have been a Police Officer for 26 Years. I also serve as the…
I'm Kristin Robertson and I have lived in Lawrence County, AL my entire life in a very small community called…
The Urban/Rural Divide
A tale of two Americas, under one flag.
Our country is deeply divided. Ask any group of people what the divide is about, and their answers vary greatly. To some, it’s a racial divide. Others think the divide is about economics, religion, reproductive rights, climate crisis, politics, gun safety, immigration or marriage equality. To everyone, the divide is personal.
But we’ve found one divide that everyone can agree on:
The Urban/Rural Divide.
In aggregate, urban areas are booming and rural areas are busting. Urban areas are leaning further left, while rural areas are leaning further right. The polarization is deep and spans across culture, geography, race and religion.
Opposing belief systems, historical perspectives, entrenched cultures, and everyday experience have left our Nation in one of its most divisive periods ever.
Pew Research on “What Unites and Divides Urban, Suburban, & Rural Communities (May 2018)
Video of Life in Rural Lawrence County, AL
Our Solution
ExchangeNation is a bridge-building culture, skills, and economic development Exchange that is creating Sister-Pairs between urban and rural American communities with the hope of healing the intensifying divide in our country.
We do this by bringing Teams of citizens from participating ExchangeNation cities and counties to their sister-pair’s location, to build bridges across difference, foster lasting relationships and prove that Americans get along better when they learn to walk in each other’s shoes.
In 1956 President Eisenhower started Sister-Cities International, with the aim of connecting Americans to their European allies after WWII.
More the sixty years later, those relationships now connect Americans to the culture and economies of cities around the globe. But nothing like this exists in our own country — to connect Americans to each other.
ExchangeNation looks to change this.
We’re building the first domestic Sister-Cities program, connecting the people, economies and cultures of urban and rural Americans, because we believe that when people have what they need to live American Dream, they no longer have a need to hate each other. And so, it is our hope that we can create more harmony in our country by introducing Americans to their fellow patriots, and make our world better in the process.
We Imagine a Day When...
Number of Urban/Rural Sister-City Pairs
Friendships Formed Across the DIvide
United Country
Our Purpose
To build a positive future for our country. For everyone.
Our Vision
We envision a future where Americans work together to create solutions that positively move our country forward.
Our Mission
We build programs that dare Americans from urban and rural communities to learn about each other’s way of life and challenge them to be better together.
Our Model of Change
We believe every complex problem needs a comprehensive solution.
We’re building our non-profit, the ExchangeNation Alliance, to help elevate cultural fluency in our country. Paired with our for-profit company, ExchangeNation Enterprises, our long-term vision is to influence a variety of levers that surround the Urban/Rural division in our country. Our Exchange programs bring Americans together to discover common values, while our docu-series The Exchange:Walk in Someone Else’s Shoes spreads awareness and supports our community-based initiatives.
ExchangeNation Alliance
Fiscally sponsored 501(c)(3)
ExchangeNation Enterprises
Social Purpose Business (For-Profit)
Our All-Volunteer Team
Susanne Goldstein is a problem solver, business builder and social entrepreneur. A mechanical engineer and filmmaker by training, Susanne has…
Hanah Kelly
Operations
Hanah Kelly is a graduate student at Northeastern University studying Global Studies and International Relations with a concentration in Conflict…
Patrick Lovett
Marketing & PR
Patrick Lovett is a multimedia reporter, storyteller, and public relations enthusiast. He is currently attending Boston University’s College of Communication,…
Colleen Getty
Grant Writer
Colleen Getty is Founder and Director of The Room to Write, a nonprofit that supports local writers and illustrators by…
Sonia Mee is originally from Boston, MA and still resides here with her husband and three children. She is a…
Christa Trombley
Social Media
Christa Trombley is a passionate young professional looking to help others improve themselves in fulfilling ways. She is a recent…
Maggie Mantus
Social Media
Maggie Mantus is a recent graduate from Wheaton College, MA with a B.A. in Film and New Media Studies. While…
About ExchangeNation
The day after the Presidential election in 2016, our founder, Susanne Goldstein, set out on a “listening tour” called Blue Girl in a Red State. At the time she was running a diversity and inclusion consulting firm, and had been working to create more equity for brown, black and LGBTQ people in the workforce. After the election, she realized that, as a white woman, she actually didn’t know the people in predominantly white rural America. Raising $35k on the crowdfunding platform iFundWomen, she hired a film crew and headed to Lawrence County, AL. Susanne learned about Lawrence County (LC) when a welder named Kacey Hall saw the original crowdfunding video for Blue Girl on Facebook, and engaged in a dialogue with other followers about White Privilege in our country.
“I don’t know about where you live,” he wrote.”But where I live, everybody’s white, and nobody has any privilege”
Susanne and crew flew from Boston, MA to LC to spend Inaguration Day with Kacey and his family. She learned about the closing of the paper mill, the loss of jobs, and the challenges the county was going through to stay afloat. Instead of heading to other rural counties, she decided to go three more times to Alabama, to learn more and go deeper into the challenges LC, and many other rural communities, face.
What was originally going to be a feature film about what she had learned on her Listening Tour, grew into a programmatic solution for healing the urban/rural divide in our country. And that is how ExchangeNation was born.
We are on the lookout for like-minded, big-hearted partners on both the non-profit and for-profit sides of our business. We know there are a lot of smart, committed people out there, and we are hoping to build partnerships that will allow us to scale our model as quickly as possible.
If you know people who are at foundations, impact investors, accelerators, business connectors, youth program administrators, manufacturers, we want to hear from you. Thanks for going on this journey with us.
Team XN