Fault Lines

Too many “helping” systems are built to extract knowledge instead of create change. Keara Cormier-Hill breaks down how trauma-informed, equity-centered research can shift power back to the people most affected, and why that changes everything for safety, trust, and real community care.
Keara is the founder and principal researcher at South Design Research Studio, where she works with mission-driven organizations to bridge the gap between what communities say they need and what institutions actually build. Her path runs through nonprofit community engagement, public education, UX research, service design, and civic tech, giving her a rare ability to translate lived experience into systems-level action.
You’ll discover:
How participatory methods to bring together people who are usually never in the same room,
Why “safe” data can still miss what families are actually living through
How a report on family safety exposed the limits of crime rates, response times, and child welfare assumptions.
She also shares what changed when a district realized it was serving a multilingual community with only one language in mind, and how that mismatch led to interpreters and better access. We break down the difference between co-creation and extraction, why some institutions unintentionally turn care into surveillance, and how small human gestures like a neighbor’s note or a shared hello can help but never replace structural change.
Keara also explains the Spanish concepts of compartir and acompanar, which capture something deeper than “share” or “accompany” and point to the heart of her work: being with people, not just studying them.
If you care about trust-building, public systems, community engagement, or research that leads to actual change, this conversation will stay with you.
Essential listening for leaders, researchers, educators, and anyone trying to build services that truly serve.

Trust does not collapse because people disagree. It collapses when people believe the truth was hidden. In this episode, Dr. Richard Roman shares findings from his dissertation on how state legislators decide whether public universities deserve their trust and continued support.
Drawing on 25 interviews with legislators across seven battleground states, Richard explains why outcomes matter, why dishonesty can become a turning point, and how a problem disclosed through the news can look more like concealment than transparency. He calls this turning point the deception threshold.
You’ll learn:
Why legislators judge universities by results and public impact
How trust can break when institutions conceal, minimize, or deflect
Why trust violations can shape an institution’s reputation long after the event
How relationships built before a crisis make honest disclosure easier to hear
Why extension services and community partners can serve as trusted bridges
What leaders can do to rebuild credibility through transparency, consistency, and follow-through
Although the research focuses on public land-grant universities, the lessons apply to any organization accountable to outside stakeholders, including funders, regulators, boards, and communities.
For leaders seeking practical ways to strengthen stakeholder trust and institutional legitimacy, this conversation offers ideas they can put to work right away.
Find Richard on Substack and at Trusted Arc Labs for more writing on trust, leadership, and institutional legitimacy. His dissertation research, Trust at the Threshold: Stakeholder Confidence and Institutional Legitimacy in Public Land-Grant Universities, is available upon request.
 

Higher education is facing a steep decline in public trust Dr. Kathryn A. E. Enke explains why the problem goes beyond public relations, and what colleges and universities can do to rebuild confidence through clearer communication, effective governance, and stronger ties with their communities.
As Vice President in the Office for Leadership and Strategy at AAC&U, Dr. Enke supports leaders across a diverse range of institutions. She and Richard discuss the organization’s work to advance public trust and shares why small, mission-driven colleges can offer important lessons for larger universities.
In this episode, we explore:
Why prestige does not always translate into public trust
The difference between accountability, transparency, and clarity
How colleges can bring campus and community voices into governance
Why advertising alone cannot persuade people who doubt higher education’s value
How affordability, administrative burden, misinformation, and institutional decisions have shaped public confidence
Dr. Enke also discusses the trust agenda she co-authored with Jeremy Young, including the need for higher education to demonstrate its value through meaningful, local action, not just tell a better story. The conversation offers leaders and anyone interested in institutional trust a practical perspective on what rebuilding credibility can require.

Trust can break long before anyone admits it. The real danger is not only a headline-making ban or complaint; instead, it’s the quiet retreat that follows when people start teaching, speaking, and making decisions as if the worst-case scenario has already arrived.In this episode, we explore how restrictive state laws and uncertainty around academic freedom can lead faculty to self-censor beyond what the law requires. Drawing on Madeline Rowe's research at the University of Minnesota, he examines why early-career faculty may change their teaching, which topics draw the most caution, and how a single complaint or public controversy can shape behavior across an entire campus.
Richard also considers a different perspective from sociologist Neil Gross, whose work emphasizes student sorting, peer dynamics, and campus polarization. Together, these perspectives raise a bigger question: when people face ambiguous rules, what evidence tells them whether their institution will stand behind them?
Richard closes with practical steps for leaders: clarify what remains protected, create a visible process for handling complaints, strengthen peer support, put protections in writing, and measure what people have stopped raising.
Because when trust is thin, silence can look like compliance, while concealing what an organization has lost.

The hardest part of a doctorate is not the coursework. It is the moment the cohort disappears, the dissertation begins, and the quiet isolation hits all at once.
Madeline Rowe, PhD and Richard unpack what really happens after structured support fades, why so many PhD students experience a shift from belonging to burnout, and how peer relationships can matter more than formal advising when it comes to surviving the long middle of doctoral work.
Madeline shares how a politically charged undergraduate course first pulled her toward academic freedom, higher education policy, and the systems that shape what gets researched, taught, and said on campus.
Richard adds his own path through admissions and advising, where student-by-student problem-solving eventually pushed him toward policy work and a PhD of his own.
Together, they explore:
Why the transition from coursework to dissertation work can feel like being sent out on a marathon alone
How cohort belonging can weaken once students begin independent research
Why strong PhD peer relationships depend on mutual support, encouragement, and honest reality checks
How imposter syndrome can affect early-career scholars
Why accepting “good enough” research can be the difference between finishing and getting stuck in perfectionism
How small rituals, friendships, and community help doctoral students keep moving forward
Madeline also discusses balancing a doctorate with a master’s in public policy, navigating different academic identities, and learning to trust the evidence that her research was meaningful. Richard reflects on teaching while writing a dissertation, the pressure to meet competing responsibilities, and the institutional policies that shape students’ lives.
If you are a graduate student, doctoral advisor, higher education professional, or anyone interested in PhD completion and student belonging, this candid conversation offers a thoughtful look at what helps scholars persist ... and what can quietly push them away.

Trust is not something you ask for; it is something you prove, one visible act at a time.
Dr. Richard Roman breaks down why the fastest way to rebuild trust in a person, team, organization, or institution is often the least flashy one: showing up, following through, and closing the loop.
Using Hallie Thompson's real-world experience from a Missouri town, a campaign, and her own consulting work, Richard maps trust across four levels (individual, team, organizational, and civic) and connects it to the research behind what actually changes minds and behavior.
If you've ever wondered why mission statements, listening tours, and polished messaging so often fall flat, this episode shows you what works instead. You'll discover:
Why trust is demonstrated, not declared
How the ability, benevolence, integrity model explains whether people believe you
Why deep canvassing works better than persuasion alone
What Hallie Thompson's ladder-and-doorway approach reveals about community trust
How self-trust, boundary-setting, and follow-through build credibility over time
Why civic trust is hardest to repair and why most leaders get the first step wrong
Richard also puts hard numbers on the current trust crisis, including Pew's finding that only 17% of Americans say they trust the federal government most of the time or always. That matters far beyond politics because when the top layer of trust is depleted, every layer below it starts from a weaker baseline.
This episode is essential listening for leaders, managers, founders, organizers, CHROs, and anyone trying to repair trust that has already been damaged, or avoid breaking it in the first place.
If you need a practical framework for turning abstract trust language into real behavior, this one will give you exactly that.

What if the fastest way to rebuild trust in politics, science, and your community was not to persuade harder, but to listen better? Science policy professional and Boonville, Missouri city council member Hallie Thompson shares the deceptively simple approach that helped her win rural counties, launch a science-policy nonprofit, and turn local conversations into real policy ideas.Raised on a cow-calf farm in rural Missouri, Hallie learned early from her grandfather that good decisions come from close observation, careful notes, and knowing when to ask for help. That mindset now shapes everything she does, from deep canvassing in a congressional campaign to analyzing hundreds of door-to-door conversations to identify what her town actually needs.
You’ll discover:
Why deep canvassing built more trust than social media
How scientists can contribute to politics and local government
What Hallie learned after losing a close congressional race in 2018
Why historic preservation became a major issue in Boonville
How restoring a historic home helped build community trust
The small, repeatable actions that make people feel seen and heard
Why nonpartisan science policy matters
How to build trust through consistency, curiosity, and follow-through
This episode is essential listening for anyone interested in science policy, civic engagement, political trust, community building, local government, systems change, and public service. Thompson also explains how she founded the Missouri Science and Technology Policy Initiative and how she now helps connect scientists, policymakers, and communities through collaborative projects. The central lesson is simple: trust is not something you declare; instead, it is something you demonstrate over time.
Keywords:science policy, political trust, civic engagement, local government, community building

Trust is the invisible economy that holds organizations, communities, and even families together, but what happens when it breaks? In this episode, Dr. Richard Roman examines why people stop trusting institutions not because the facts changed, but because the relationship broke down first.Using the autism-vaccine debate as a case study, he separates legitimate trust failures from unsupported causal claims and explains why “more facts” often backfires when trust is already damaged. He breaks down the difference between designed extraction and designed service, showing how systems built on opacity, certainty, and emotional reassurance can feel persuasive even when the evidence doesn’t support them.
Roman also reveals why personal stories are powerful but not the same as proof, and why a good outcome does not automatically mean an intervention caused it.
From public health to healthcare, HR, government, and leadership, this episode gives you a clear framework for spotting trust breakdowns, understanding what fills the vacuum, and building systems people can actually verify.
If you lead people, care for patients, make policy, or simply want to understand why trust erodes so quickly, this conversation will change the way you think about evidence, credibility, and institutional failure.

She was told her son would never talk, never live independently, never function without lifelong care. She refused to accept it.
In this episode, Tracy Slepcevic, bestselling author of Warrior Mom, founder of the Autism Health Summit, and one of the newest members of the federal Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee, speaks with Richard Roman to trace the fault line between the families who lost trust in the healthcare system and the institutions that stopped listening.
From the 1986 Vaccine Injury Act to the design of her own counter-institutional conference, Tracy reveals what happens when a parent's self-trust becomes the only foundation left, and what it takes to build something new from the wreckage.
A conversation about accountability, institutional design, and the question every system should be asking: was this built to serve, or built to protect?

In this episode of Fault Lines, Dr. Richard Roman explores why financial struggle is often not a knowledge problem, but a trust problem. Through the story of Holly Morphew, who once carried $67,000 in credit card debt while also managing chronic illness, Richard shows how even highly literate, high-achieving people can avoid looking at their numbers when shame, stress, and survival demands take over.Drawing on research into money scripts, childhood financial socialization, debt and mental health, and financial self-efficacy, this episode breaks down why “just be more confident” is not useful advice. Instead, it reveals a more durable path: awareness without judgment, values-based commitment to a future self, and small repeatable habits that rebuild trust over time.You’ll also hear practical takeaways for individuals, managers, and senior leaders who want to better understand financial stress in themselves and their teams. If you’ve ever avoided a statement, delayed a hard financial decision, or wondered why smart people still struggle with money, this conversation offers a clear and compassionate framework for what’s really happening.Listen now to rethink financial literacy, challenge the shame around money, and understand why trust (not just budgeting) is the foundation of lasting change.