TOGETHER WE: champion all voices
An interview with Wise Ink's Amy Quale and Dara Beevas
Dec 31, 2016

Words by Morgan Mercer | Photos by Sarah White

Pollen is celebrating the 15 businesses that have come together in support of Pollen’s mission to build better connected communities. Together, these businesses challenge Pollenites to raise $15,000 by December 31, which they will match dollar for dollar. 

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In second grade, Amy Quale fell in love with words. Every Friday, her elementary school teacher asked every student to memorize a poem to recite to the class. One week, Amy chose Shel Silverstein’s Where the Sidewalk Ends. She was hooked; but it didn’t stop there. In high school, she latched onto books by Margaret Atwood, and then romance novels like Forever Amber. While working at a small publishing house in Minneapolis, she met Dara Beevas, a co-worker with an affinity for literature that matched her own. In 2013, the pair co-founded Wise Ink, a boutique publishing house with a bent for supporting diverse authors who challenge the status quo. “No one book can change every problem in our world, but every book can impact the world for the better in at least one small way,” Amy says. “The authors we work with understand this and believe in their potential to create positive change.” To date, the company has published more than 130 titles, including a children’s book for families with a mother who has cancer, and a soon-to-be released title from a Cameroon immigrant whose book provides stories and tools to help other refugee and immigrant women.

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Pollen: What responsibilities do you feel as a business leader in your community?

Amy Quale: With every book that comes across my table, I look at it as a new opportunity to deliver a message to the world. As a curator of content and stories, I take this responsibility very seriously. Words can do much good, but they can also be quite destructive. I feel personally responsible for helping positive and compassionate messages reach audiences.

The authors I work with are brave risk takers, and it’s such an honor to be in a position to guide them and help shape their message into a product that can go out into the world and do something.

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Pollen: What’s the culture of your team and how did it develop? How do you support one another?

Amy Quale: I want every person on our team to be the most joyful, passionate, and best version of themselves. I believe that if we are all growing and experiencing joy on a personal level, we will do so as a company as well. This means every team member should have independence and be encouraged to work with a spirit of “intrapreneurship” (bringing entrepreneurial creativity to one’s employed position). I want everyone on our team to experience fascination and excitement in their work, whether that means reaching out to a cherished or admired author to bring them on board; creating a new product, network, or tool that fosters creativity and supports our clients; or taking the initiative to seek new educational opportunities for personal development and growth. When people find personal fulfillment in their work, we can go so much further as a team.

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Pollen: What’s your favorite way to get someone to talk about their story?

Amy Quale: I ask the question, “What do you want your book to do in the world?” This question gets people to think about the impact of their voice and their story, and to begin noticing the greater change they want to effect. This is a great way to help people see how the small pieces of their story can make a large-scale impact. Every story is different and has a unique gift to deliver to the world; this means listening—really listening—when people are sharing their stories.

This is how we can discover the unique intricacies in a story and in the person telling it.

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Pollen: What do you think is the secret to connecting across difference?

Amy Quale: When we can recognize those things that unite us as human beings—those universal experiences of loss, companionship, achievement, failure, and creation—we can begin to have compassion for our fellow human. Recently, we published the book Humans of Minneapolis, a photography project by Stephanie Glaros that features portraits and stories of people in Minneapolis. The photography subjects come from diverse backgrounds, experiences, and adversities, but their stories bring to light those things that unite rather than divide us. In this way, stories are mirrors for us to see ourselves within others. This act can move mountains within our individual and collective consciousness to bring compassion to our fellow humans.

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Pollen: Why are you a Pollenite?

Amy Quale: Because, quite simply, we are kindreds. Storytelling is the first step in change, and we both exist to reveal as many life-changing stories as possible. I also wholly live with Pollen’s philosophy that businesses have a responsibility to create goodness. Capitalism is a transactional system that only works when there is an equal balance of giving and receiving. If someone is taking too much, others are not getting enough, and our economy suffers. Many people see capitalism as a system that encourages taking, but I see the opposite. Businesses have a responsibility to the people they serve and employ to give as much as the gain, to have a mission of positive impact beyond financial gain and to approach their decisions with the greater good in mind.

Pollen lives this philosophy, and so do I.

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Posted by Pollen on Dec 31, 2016
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