Amanda Cage has spent three decades working alongside frontline workers, from hog processing plants in North Carolina to Head Start classrooms in Boston to construction sites where women were breaking barriers in the building trades. Today, as President and CEO of Shift Work Forward, she leads a national network of over 30 communities working to redesign how workforce systems operate so that economic opportunity reaches everyone, not just those who already have access.
Her conversation with Anthony explores a question that cuts across every industry: Is individual influence enough to create lasting change, or does real influence require something collective? Amanda makes a compelling case that collective influence produces better solutions because it forces leaders to persuade, listen, and refine ideas through genuine pushback. She challenges leaders to check their ego, use language that respects the people closest to the problem, and stop designing solutions for communities without including them in the process.
Amanda also shares what she learned leading Shift Work Forward through a major rebrand, including why the process is always harder, more expensive, and more emotional than you expect, and why it forces an organization to answer the most fundamental question: Who are you?
Takeaways:
- Build influence through movements, not personalities. Individual leaders come and go, but a committed base of people sustains change over time.
- Collective decision-making produces better ideas because it forces you to persuade, defend, and refine your thinking through real pushback.
- Check your ego before trying to lead. Your experience is often not the experience of the people you are trying to help.
- Use language that respects your audience. Jargon and acronyms signal membership in a club, but they lock people out of the conversation.
- Disruption is not destiny. History shows that who is at the table during times of change determines the outcome, not the technology itself.
- A rebrand is soul-searching. It costs more than you expect in money, time, and emotional energy, but it forces you to define who you really are.
Quote of the Show:
- "What's important to me at this stage is thinking about how we create the next generation of influencers? How do we create the next generation of talent to be influencers? And how do we create a group of people who are listening, who have access to, or who have experience, or who have a broader perspective because of the kind of experiences they were allowed to have?"
Links:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amandacage/
- Website: https://shiftworkforward.org/