Work

I was a civil rights lawyer for a really long time and our client communities were you know, majority of the global majority, right? And, and yet our staff was not representative of the communities that we served. And I do a lot of work in my organization to help management and the attorneys think about how to build better relationships with the clients that we served and did work to try to have the staff better reflect the communities that we were working with. So, I did that work informally for a long time. And then five years ago, I decided that’s what I should actually be doing. And so, I started Promoting Good on a leap of faith [laughs] thinking there was a need for organizations that want to be inclusive…or maybe don’t always want to do it. A bit of both. And so, I started a company that just does that. So, it started out with just me, and now there’s five of us. All women of color, and we are trying to help organizations do their work differently.

I think I ended up writing about that because it was a way to help me - it was like my therapy and then taking what would be possibly a messy journal entry and taming it and shaping it into a poem that would have some meaning to someone else. It's like when you're really focused on some task, then all this swirl of anxiety all around you kind of goes away because you're just focused on this one thing and then with poetry you get a poem out of it in the end. So, when I had enough of those, I realized oh I have enough for a book, and I made my first collection.

There are JCCs all over America. In fact, we are all connected.  When I go on my email, I have a list—there are lists of people doing similar jobs to yours. And I have colleagues that I know and some I don’t actually know them sometimes, but I know them from being just connected to them. I know what my colleague in Cleveland, Ohio might be doing, and I know what my colleague in San Francisco might be doing, and I know I have a colleague in fa- well there’s no JCC there but she’s part of a reform there like a temple. Now that there’s the whole virtual thing, we have done a lot of virtual programming together. When the [Covid] pandemic started, well first of all, I thought I might lose my job because we work with people, and you couldn’t work with people! But we just kind of - everything kind of morphed on to Zoom as you know. And because I have colleagues all over the country, I was doing programs with people in Atlanta, and Florida, and Cincinnati, and just people who wanted to do like similar kinds of programming. In particular, I do an author series, a Jewish author series, and Jewish meaning the author could be Jewish, the content could be Jewish or thematically it could be Jewish, it doesn’t – or it could have a non-Jewish author but it be something like about World War II and of interest to the Jewish community. So, I plan these book things and it’s a thing, JCCs all over the country do these book things.  Once we were on doing virtual stuff, we could all sort of partner together and get a bigger audience because anyone could get on the Zoom.

When I opened by office, I said, “Okay, I want to find my niche in real estate, how can I combine my passions.” My passion is real estate, my passion is charity. So, I said, “Alright, lets combine the two.” So, basically our mission here is giving back one sale at a time. So, Kindness Coalition was formed when Castinetti Real Estate was formed. After every sale all of my agents donate to a local charity under our client’s name. So that is one way we give back. And then we have a huge network of Kindness Coalition – you can add us on Facebook and check them out – but we do signature events throughout the year for the homeless, for DCF [Department of Children and Families], for Thanksgiving, for Christmas. So, we have signature events, and we do a summer event. We are always trying to do our part and do what we can in the community.

We've started some of the processes to make that expansion out there. I don't know because I like how we're small; customers know us. They know who they're talking to. They know our faces.  I've gone to other marinas and in Boston everybody can now go to the other people's boats at the other marina. So, I'll be cleaning at one and I'll see some of my customers from Salem. I’ll be like, “Oh, hey, guys.” I appreciate that small—so I do want to expand to a point and I can do that any time really. And I've actually been contemplating if this year will be that. But I don't want to lose that small, one on one, just non-corporate feel. You know, it’s non-corporate. You know, I can show up with a messy bun. I always wear my Anchors Away shirt, but you know that they like that non robotic like they'll call me, “Hey, can I get you a coffee? But no, I already brought you one.” You know, it's like this. They like that. Just kind of like I'm a friend, you know, it's a friend business relationship type. It’s more personal.