Jared Seide on the Hero Maker Podcast

Our Executive Director, Jared Seide, was featured on a recent episode of The Hero Maker Podcast. The podcast focuses on distilling experiences from career professionals in law enforcement, public safety and criminal justice into nuggets of wisdom for the future. The podcast is hosted by Jennifer Morrison, Vermont’s Commissioner of Public Safety and Andrea Shreeman, a writer/director/executive producer based in Los Angeles. Morrison and Shreeman decided to collaborate on this podcast as a way to explore and understand more about circumstances surrounding the tragic murder of one of their mutual friends.

This episode of the podcast was a deep dive into the practice of council, the POWER Program for law enforcement officers, and Center for Council’s re-entry and prison programs. Morrison, who was unfamiliar with the practice of council prior to the episode, remarked at the end of the show that she was surprised by how impactful the conversation had been and how much she wishes POWER had been available to her and her colleagues in law enforcement 30 years ago.

Jared outlined the skills developed in Center for Council’s programs, including ways to increase self-awareness and develop tools for self-regulation, as well as improve capacity to interpret and understand social cues and situational awareness, which are things we all use to track and maintain our safety. Police officers are particularly concerned with this and are also faced with the challenge of cultivating relationships with the communities they serve. Jared noted that social intelligence, in particular, is: 
 "...an important area of skills to build that are often neglected in law enforcement training. How is it that we ask officers to step into communities where they feel overwhelmed and in a high stress state, knowing they are not resourced to be able to navigate this very complicated interaction of: ‘Who you are to me? A friend or foe? An ally or somebody that is going to give me a hard time?’”
Morrison agreed, remembering how law enforcement was never properly resourced 30 to 35 years ago, when she began her career.

Center for Council’s Peace Officer Wellness, Empathy & Resilience (POWER) Training Program provides a robust curriculum of activities and lessons that develop self-awareness and self-regulation skills and utilize council, an age-old practice that involves bringing people together in a circle to bear witness and share authentically. Council huddles become a sustainable peer-to-peer resource for officer wellness. Find out more about POWER, and hear LAPD officers reflecting on their powerful recent experiences in the course at: c4c.link/POWER.

Listen to the rest of the podcast wherever you get your podcasts.
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Hero Makers Website