September carries some weight this year, and we want to name it plainly. This is National Student Parent Month, it is Suicide Prevention Month, and on September 15, we step into Hispanic Heritage Month together. While these are three different callings, there's one shared thread: the people who hold everything together deserve to be seen, supported, and never left carrying it alone.
This September issue is full. It includes a policy win that we get to help institutions implement. In addition, we welcome a new partner organization to our ecosystem. Our latest podcast series discusses intimate partner violence (IPV), and we hope you will not just listen to the series, but also pass it along to someone who needs it. Lastly, we close this issue with premium drops waiting for our Impact Collective and Legacy Lab members.
Let's get into it.
Student Parent Advocacy: Meeting the Moment
NATIONAL STUDENT PARENT MONTH
There is no better month to spotlight this work than the one built for it. Wishful Doing, in partnership with Ascend at the Aspen Institute and the Maryland Higher Education Commission, has spent this year walking alongside institutions preparing to meet a new standard for parenting students.
Maryland's Pregnant and Parenting Support Act (SB420) requires every public institution of higher education in Maryland to develop and publicly post a support plan for pregnant and parenting students by October 1, 2026. That is not a small lift, and no institution or person should have to figure it out alone.
If your institution registered for our June webinar, "Forward With Families: Increasing Attainment for Maryland Parents," you already have access to the recording, an Implementation Guide with Sample Plan, FAQs, and additional tools on our dedicated landing page. The Wishful Doing team is offering two free hours of technical assistance to Maryland colleges that have downloaded our guide to support implementation at their institution.
Join us for a pop-up session co-hosted with the Maryland Higher Education Commission (MHEC) on September 15 at 1:00 pm EDT--From Guidance to Action: Implementing Your SB420 Parenting Student Support Plan.
We will walk through the implementation guide, unpack key requirements, and answer your questions live. You can also reach Yoslin Amaya Hernandez directly at yoslin@wishfuldoings.com to get started.
REGISTER FOR THE SEPTEMBER 15th POP-UP SESSION
This work is part of Ascend's Forward With Families, a multi-year strategy to align policy and practice around what works for families and to ensure parents have real pathways to opportunity.
Rise Room Pop-Up: Get More Out of Your Hub Membership
You joined the Rise Room for a reason. This session makes sure you are actually using everything that comes with it.
Join us September 8, 12:00–1:00 PM EDT for a live walkthrough of the Hub: Learn where to find new drops the moment they land, how the community spaces work, and how to move from browsing to belonging. Bring your questions, and bring a friend who has been on the fence about joining.
Symptoms of Diabetes You Might Be Ignoring
What's your Risk for Diabetes?
Thursday, September 17, 12:30 PM - 1:30 PM EDT
Join this interactive one-hour session to learn more about your risk for diabetes and what you can do next. Complete a brief diabetes risk assessment in real time and discuss what your results may mean. You’ll also learn about the different types of diabetes, common signs and symptoms to recognize, and practical next steps. Come with questions and leave with a clearer understanding of your diabetes risk and how to take an active role in your health.
September Mastermind Roundtable | The Founder's Arc: Nonprofit Founders, Every Stage of the Journey
Legacy Lab Members
You're invited! Join us September 23, 2:00–3:30 PM ET inside the Legacy Lab. This roundtable brings together founders and executive directors at different points in their own arc--from first spark to sustained impact--for an honest conversation about what it actually takes to build something that lasts.
Featuring:
- Diamond Crystal, Back2theWater
- Rachel Needle, The Hope and Light Collective
- Patricia Watts, WeModel
- Tony Covington, I Am Underdog Inc.
- Beverly Smith, Momma's Safe Haven
- Candace Wheeler, Restoration 199
- Dr. Bruce Purnell, The Love More Movement
- Natalie Clayton, Fair Girls
Not a Legacy Lab member? Join now for access to this event--and every room built for leaders who've outgrown doing it alone.
Open Office Hours with Dr. Linda Chambers
Open Office Hours are live, supportive leadership sessions designed to help executive leaders pause, think strategically, and receive real-time guidance around the challenges they are actively navigating. These sessions create space for reflection, coaching, collaborative problem solving, and practical leadership support within the Leadership Strategy Collaborative community.
Participants can bring questions, leadership dilemmas, organizational challenges, decision-making concerns, or ideas they want to strengthen. Office Hours are conversational, interactive, and grounded in executive coaching principles, offering leaders an opportunity to gain clarity, perspective, and actionable next steps in a trusted leadership environment.
Join September 30 at 12 PM EDT
Welcoming a New Partner
We are honored to welcome I AM Underdog Inc into the Wishful Doing ecosystem. Founder Tony Convington joins our September Mastermind Roundtable: The Founder's Arc: Nonprofit Founders, Every Stage of the Journey, bringing years of work at the intersection of an NFL career, mentorship, leadership, and opportunity for young people who are too often overlooked. We could not be more glad to have him and his organization at the table.
In that same spirit, we want to point you toward I Am Underdog's fundraising event, Pour It Forward on October 15, 2026 in Columbia, Maryland. Whether you can attend or sponsor, your support helps drive impact, inspiration, and opportunity through mentorship and leadership development for student-athletes across the Washington, D.C. Metro Area.
Get your Pour It Forward tickets!
New Inside the Hub: Rooted and Rising
What if becoming a better leader has less to do with learning new techniques, and more to do with becoming more deeply rooted in who you already are?
Growth that lasts starts from the ground up. Rooted and Rising is now live inside the Hub, built for leaders who are ready to build their next chapter on something steadier than hustle. If you have been waiting for a sign to slow down and get intentional about how you lead, this is it.
Start the Rooted and Rising Course
Listen Now | The Wishful Doing Podcast
When Love Turns Lethal
SUICIDE PREVENTION MONTH | A MENTAL HEALTH & SAFETY SERIES
We're taking a closer look at intimate partner violence and how it can quietly reside beneath the surface of the relationships we'd least expect. This is not an easy series, and it was not supposed to be.
When Love Turns Lethal examines the hidden crisis of intimate partner violence, mental health, and Black families, through the lens of two guests who bring both clinical precision and deep humanity to the conversation: Dr. Marissa Leslie, Chief Medical Officer and Senior Vice President at Devereux Advanced Behavioral Health, and Dr. Timothy Golden, a philosopher whose work examines identity, moral agency, and the human condition under pressure.
“What we fail to name, we cannot interrupt.”
Part 1, Why Are So Many Accomplished Black Women Being Killed by the Men They Love?, dropped August 18 and is available now. Dr. Leslie walks us through the clinical patterns that often precede lethal violence, why high-functioning couples are not immune, and why the moment someone tries to leave is often the most dangerous one.
Part 2, When Strength Becomes Silence: Black Men, Mental Health, and the Cost of Emotional Isolation, dropped September 1. Dr. Golden joins us to explore how cultural constructions of masculinity can restrict emotional expression, and what happens when internal pressure meets no outlet.
Part 3 drops September 15.
A few facts worth sitting with:
• More than 1 in 3 women (roughly 43.5 million) and more than 1 in 6 men (20.7 million) in the U.S. have experienced contact sexual violence, physical violence, and/or stalking by an intimate partner in their lifetime (CDC, National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey).
• An estimated 24 people per minute are victims of rape, physical violence, or stalking by an intimate partner in the U.S., more than 12 million people a year (National Domestic Violence Hotline).
• The danger does not end when someone decides to leave. Research consistently shows that the risk of violence increases significantly during and after separation, and that the majority of intimate partner homicides and the most serious injuries occur at that point (Battered Women's Support Services; Jersey Battered Women's Service). Recognizing the early signs, and taking them seriously before a crisis point, is what creates room to intervene.
Here is what we are asking: listen to this series, and then do not keep it to yourself. Share it with a friend, a colleague, a sibling. The right conversation at the right time can change, and sometimes save, a life.
Companion resources for When Love Turns Lethal are available inside the Hub now.
Rise Room members can access the Discussion Guide inside the Rise Room Feed. The Awareness → Action Toolkit lives inside the Impact Collective feed for those ready to move from recognition to action. The Companion Workbook lives inside the Legacy Lab feed for those ready to do the private work.
If you or someone you know needs support, the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline is available by call or text, and the National Domestic Violence Hotline is available 24/7 (text START to 88788).
The Wishful Doing App is Here
Take the Hub with you. The Wishful Doing app is now live in the App Store, giving members a direct line to community, resources, and drops from wherever you are. Google Play users, hang tight, we are bringing it to Android soon.
Access Premium Content Inside the Hub
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If you are reading this as a Rise Room member and wondering what you are missing, this is your sign. The deeper work, the closer community, the resources built for people who are done performing and ready to sustain what they have built, it is waiting for you.
With you in the work,
The Wishful Doing Team
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