Rebuilding Trust and Community Through Creators
The Exchange: A Conversation with Jason Llorenz and Linh Nguyen of Rise United
Today, the second installment of The Exchange, our new interview series with influential thought leaders, organizers, advocates, and others who are shaping the future of civic life, features Jason Llorenz, Executive Director, and Linh Nguyen, Chief Strategy & Programs Officer at Rise United and co-founder of CreatorCon LIVE, of Rise United in conversation with Murmuration’s Chief Marketing and Operating Officer, Michael Slaby. Rise United is a networking and training hub for content creators who engage their peers in national, statewide, and local issues.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Michael Slaby: Welcome, Linh and Jason. To kick us off, can you share a bit about your work at Rise United?
Jason Llorenz: My work at Rise United is driven by the idea that talent is everywhere and the ability for young people to engage in civic life is not equally distributed. The creator economy can act as a connecting tissue that gives people bridges into thinking about civic life, values and leadership, and we’re building Rise United into a place where the creator generator can do just that. Rise United‘s programs build around the idea that there is an entire generation of untapped talent and opportunity and voices that need connection. Our programs offer supportive opportunities for creators to come into community with each other, to be led by their peers, build their skills, and to form and solidify civic identity. We think leadership starts with who you are. When we build our creator cohorts we’re looking for folks who are go-hards for their community. Folks who are already talking about their values, they already care, they’re building an audience and all they need, what they’re really craving is connection to others so that they’re not alone, they’re craving opportunities to build and get better. And they’re looking for a table that says, “You belong here.” That doesn’t exist today.
Linh Nguyen: We’ve learned that the highest level of influence is peer to peer. We’re not going to need someone in the White House telling us what to do, what to believe, how to act. Oftentimes, it is our most trusted inner circle of people we know and we intimately know. But that peer-to-peer lateral influence is something that I feel is so deeply misunderstood within this creator ecosystem.
Through Rise United, we’ve been building place-based fellowship models where the hope is that no, we’re not gonna parachute and tell y’all how to vote or what to say to your audience, or here’s your one-page memo about how to talk about immigration and education. Our hope and our purpose is to reverse the playbook a little bit.
We’re looking upstream at creators and those becoming creators. We’re looking for people with community trust — local “go hards” for their city or town who might lead niche communities organically but they haven’t quite launched themselves as an influencer or a creator. For Rise United Education Fund, investing early in untapped leaders with an audience who care about what’s happening where they live will be a huge and unique contribution to civic life.
Developing their civic and political identity through our program is our big bet on the future of American civic participation
Michael Slaby: Obviously, we’re in a very heavy moment for America. A few weeks ago, Renee Good was killed by an ICE agent in Minnesota. Sense-making and finding a shared reality feel difficult, or sometimes it feels impossible. Can you talk about how storytelling and creators help us build trust and can help us find the shared reality that we are craving to help us build community?
N.B. This interview was recorded prior to the murder of Alex Pretti on January 24, 2026.
Jason Llorenz: We are in a barrage right now against our senses, against our values, our belief in what is real, and even the idea of what should happen when we know something is real.
We are in a barrage right now against our senses, against our values, our belief in what is real, and even the idea of what should happen when we know something is real.
There are the sense makers like Brian Baez who do very well researched pieces that are trying to connect this attack on ourselves to a framework that says, yes, there is a legal and a policy in a kind of democratically grounded way of thinking about this. I see him as an example of someone who tries to connect cultural resonance with a very well-researched, grounded approach to thinking about these things.
I think of people like the Korean Vegan, who is doing some of the most powerful storytelling from her personal experiences while making beautiful food in front of you, translating her personal anger. There’s a visceralness to that beautiful storytelling around food and the connection between that sense-making and civic life. Think about how we all get stories or we come to things. We either see them, we smell them, we feel them, we think them, but we only have a certain number of senses on social media. We are competing for nanoseconds of attention as people are scrolling. The beauty of the connection powerfully invites us into an experience that is so palpably raw for her. It makes her content creative and undeniably irresistible.
She’s just one example—the beauty of the creator environment is you’ve got people who are experimenting in a thousand ways about how to draw us into conversation and bring us into something that maybe we would not have stuck around for. Maybe it’s about voting, maybe about power, maybe about beauty, maybe about relationships, maybe about money. There is an immense and unique opportunity in this culture to bring us into new ideas, new ways of being, and new types of power.
The beauty of the creator environment is you’ve got people who are experimenting in a thousand ways about how to draw us into conversation.
Linh Nguyen: After the 2024 election cycle, we did a wellness check on our creator networks and got very visceral feedback that a lot of people felt paralyzed, alone, and unsure how to make sense of what had happened in Minnesota. They just witnessed, and likely participated in, their first presidential election and saw Trump win again. Many doubted whether they should continue their work. But at Rise United, we believe that sharing information can help make sense and the way that information starts to move people to really show up is incredibly important. We’re trying to carve out an experimental lab that pushes young people to think differently and challenge probably everything that they have understood in this moment to have them unlearn it, and then walk their thousands of followers through that process too.
Jason Llorenz: Today, we have a thousand ways to bring people into civic life versus the idea of working with an established creator with a million followers. We’re trying to support creators that are new and diverse in cracking the algorithm. Right now, it’s all about creativity, trust, and authenticity in breaking through.
Michael Slaby: I’m curious about your recruiting process. How do you find creators and how do you invite people into the Rise United network?
Jason Llorenz: We’re looking for creators with a smaller, growing audience. It’s usually folks with under a hundred thousand followers, at that early early stage, but who show in their own content or their grid that they care about their community, that they’re talking about their values or they’re building a community. Our vetting process is to bring them in to ask them to create a one-minute video that talks about what you care about or what your community deserves. Ultimately, our vision is that in the years ahead, we are able to support creators across the United States who are working together and are linked in both a local and national network that can have immense narrative power.
Linh Nguyen: These early-stage creators demonstrate a baseline potential. They’re already talking about their city, their campus, or other communities they belong to, not necessarily talking about civics or politics. A lot of bigger, well-established creator institutions will not place their bet on these people. But Rise United shows up to support these early-stage creators before they scale up and gain traction, well before they hit their viral moments.
Michael Slaby: Can you share a bit more about creators you’ve worked with that stand out to you?
Linh Nguyen: Last year, we hand-selected a phenomenal group of creators in Virginia primarily to participate in a Rise United fellowship cohort. They’re black and brown young creators folks. Some were fourth-year students at the University of Virginia, so they’re balancing graduation along with trying to figure out their next career moves, and some were creators who lived in more rural parts of Virginia and quite literally can’t make their way across the state.
One of the creators at the outset questioned if she was even a good fit for our program and didn’t quite see herself as a creator. She wanted to talk about voting in Virginia and who was going to be on the ballot. She was a runner and her content was framed as, “Come running with me. I’m going to run 20 miles to the polls to go vote and you all are coming along.” And she ended up being a rising star.
Jason Llorenz: There was another young man in that cohort who stands out to me for his responsibility. He applied to be in the fellowship and before he did, he zeroed out his social media channels purposefully because he wanted to start from zero. He had hundreds of thousands of followers, but he scrubbed everything to get a fresh start with us.
One of his most powerful videos said, “Come vote with me as a Latino Republican.” He knew the power that he had amongst his peers who might have voted for Trump or whatever and turned it into a conversation about where we are right now. It was a powerful invitation to say, “What are we doing?”
Michael Slaby: We often feel a pressure for constant speed and velocity in storytelling, media, and culture-making. So much of social media and communications is oriented towards scale. I’m curious about the ways small creators can focus on efficacy and the depth of context that comes from slowing down and from telling deeper stories that are a source of relationship and trust building with their audiences rather than the chase for speed.
Jason Llorenz: It’s interesting that if you look at where consumer brands are going, they’re so far ahead of those of us who are thinking about civic life and building political power. Consumer brands know exactly what we’re talking about: emerging creators are the future. Political and civic engagement work seems continuously stuck in a late cycle of last-minute investment that is the exact opposite of the type of relationships creators build over time.
If we want a different outcome in 2028, we need to make an investment of time and relationship-building today. But it seems like so much of the way that we come to building people power shows up way too late. And it’s cost us dearly.
Michael Slaby: What’s giving you guys hope for the future right now?
Linh Nguyen: What gives me a lot of optimism is that creators are dang good at asking better questions. “How do I grow as a human being doing this with you guys? If you want me to talk about these issues, how does this help me? How does it help my family? How does it help my people?” They are much more sophisticated. It’s probably the best signal I’ve seen in a pretty long time.
“I try to hold onto the idea that 10 and 20 years from now, we will have wanted to be a part of building what comes next and the belief that yes, we have lost a lot of ground. And from that will come a resurgence led by young people who say, ‘No, we want something better.’”
Jason Llorenz: What gives me hope is the fact that if you look at history, it’s the darkest times that lead to our biggest leaps forward. The repression of the 1940s and 50s leads to the 60s and in a kind of movement forward. Every leap forward comes after huge losses. And things that feel very dark and very painful, and we are in that moment today. At least that’s the way it feels to me. So I try to hold onto the idea that 10 and 20 years from now, we will have wanted to be a part of building what comes next and the belief that yes, we have lost a lot of ground. And from that will come a resurgence led by young people who say, “No, we want something better. We demand something better from our society, our government, and ourselves.”
Michael Slaby: And the work that you are doing at Rise Together is part of how we get ready. Thank you for taking the time for this conversation today and for all the work you're doing.
About Jason Llorenz
Jason is passionate about leadership and how technology is changing life, business and generations new paths to civic identity. Jason is co-founder and executive director of Rise United, a creator-powered civic and cultural organization that invests early in emerging storytellers as a long-term pipeline for civic leadership, narrative power, and community trust. Jason grew up in Red Hook, Brooklyn. He holds a BA from Cazenovia College and JD from SUNY Buffalo Law School. When not working, he finds inspiration in his two little girls and peace in the dances and musical heritage of Cuba and the Caribbean.
About Linh Nguyen
Linh Nguyen is a community organizer and creative producer, serving as Chief Strategy & Programs Officer at Rise United and co-founder of CreatorCon LIVE, a conference reimagining how creators, companies, and brands come together at the intersection of policy, culture, and tech. With over a decade of experience, she builds creator-led campaigns that shift narrative and power, spanning presidential races, barrier-breaking campaigns in Texas, and national initiatives with Live Nation Urban, Ben & Jerry’s, and AARP. Linh lives in Texas with her family and her 4-year-old daughter (her endless source of inspiration).
About Michael Slaby
Michael Slaby is a leader in how values, systems, strategy, and technology drive movements and organizations. At Murmuration, he leads marketing, fundraising, network engagement, and culture. Before joining Murmuration, he was a senior strategist and head of community at Harmony Labs where he worked on accelerating media reform and transformation. He founded and was head of mission of Timshel, a social impact technology company, and was a fellow at the Shorenstein Center at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. Michael helped lead the Obama for America campaign as chief integration and innovation officer in 2012 where he oversaw all technology and analytics and as deputy digital director and chief technology officer in 2008.
Murmuration is a nonprofit working to transform America into a nation where everyone can thrive. We organize a network of community-focused partners and equip them with the insights, tools, and services they need to help communities build and activate power more effectively. murmuration.org