Episode 4: Burnout + Boundaries + Baltimore Corps Fagan Harris, President & CEO of Baltimore Corps

Fagan Harris

Closed Captioning for this episode is available on YouTube.

Did you notice it took 3 weeks to release this episode? Well, guess what? We intentionally took an extra week because our podcast show schedule was starting to burn us out. So we decided we should actually start making positive changes. Now.

Today’s guest is Fagan Harris, the president and CEO of Baltimore Corps, an organization that enlists talented people in public service and social entrepreneurship in Baltimore City. Fagan co-founded the organization with Wes Moore in 2013 because he believes deeply in every individual’s right to opportunity and is committed to realizing a more just and equitable society.

Growing up, Fagan overcame a culture of low expectations, which pervaded his working-class community. As he puts it, “I grew up in Baltimore and lived the reality of post-industrial America. I was educated in public schools that barely graduated half of its students and watched close family members battle addiction and gang life. I lost friends to those forces. Caring individuals pushed me to reach higher, which led me to Stanford University.”

He is a graduate of Stanford University and the University of Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar. He has received numerous awards, including fellowships from Ashoka, Echoing Green, and The Aspen Institute. But, despite all these experiences and qualifications, it was the 6-months it took him to land a job in the non-profit sector — and his return to his native Baltimore — that finally spurred him to focus on re-imagining the social impact sector’s talent pipeline.

“Know what your goal is. Know why you’re going into it: what you’re trying to achieve or what needs to be different and try to stay proximate to that goal as you can.”

Fagan Harris, the President and CEO of Baltimore Corps

Here are some of the highlights discussed on the show:

  • We go deep into the root causes of burnout
  • We explore whether gender plays a role
  • We talk about the importance of boundaries
  • Christina rants about the presentation of perfection
  • Fagan shares his journey to founding Baltimore Corps

Links to Fagan:

Other links mentioned in this show:


Music Credit: Ryan Levin