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Meet the change leaders: Katie Hyten of Essential Partners

Katie Hyten
Essential Partners

Nevins is co-publisher of The Fulcrum and co-founder and board chairman of the Bridge Alliance Education Fund.

Katie Hyten is the co-executive director of Essential Partners.

She completed her master’s degree in international negotiation and conflict resolution at Tufts University’s Fletcher School, where her research addressed foreign policy in religious conflicts. Hyten has held appointments as a visiting fellow and lecturer at Tufts, where she developed and co-taught “Dialogue, Identity, and Civic Action,” and as a consultant for Harvard Medical School’s Scientific Citizenship Initiative to co-design a course on science communication for ethical community engagement.


During Hyten’s tenure at Essential Partners, she has served as the program lead on collaborations with local grassroots groups, churches, foundations and colleges, training stakeholders to design, convene and facilitate dialogues across differences. She has helped communities hold dialogue about topics such as the role of guns in American life, ethnic violence and civil society, racial and ethnic diversity, as well as campus inclusion and belonging.

Prior to joining Essential Partners, Hyten served as a mediator and independent consultant in conflict resolution processes and helped develop and manage the first university-wide interreligious institute at Pepperdine University. She was awarded Harvard’s Program on Negotiation summer fellowship to support her research and work with Search for Common Ground in Lebanon.

Raised in a military family, Hyten lived in six states before entering college. She and her partner now live in Massachusetts when they’re not visiting family in Colorado, Alabama and Australia.

I had the wonderful opportunity to interview Hyten in April for the CityBiz “Meet the Change Leaders” series. Watch to learn the full extent of her democracy work:

The Fucrum interviews Katie Hyten, the Co-Executive Director of Essential Partnerswww.youtube.com

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The Great Political Finger Trap

Protesters gather near the White House on November 24, 2025 in Washington, DC. The group Refuse Fascism held a rally and afterwards held hands in a long line holding yellow "Crime Scene Do Not Cross" tape along Lafayette Square near the White House.

(Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)

The Great Political Finger Trap

In the wake of Charlie Kirk’s assassination earlier this year, a YouGov poll was released exploring sentiments around political violence. The responses raised some alarm, with 25% of those who self-identified as “very liberal,” and nearly 20% of those polled between the ages of 18 and 29, saying that violence was sometimes justified “in order to achieve political goals.” Numerous commentators, including many within the bridging space, lamented the loss of civility and the straying from democratic ideals. Others pointed to ends justifying means, to cases of injustice and incivility so egregious, as they saw it, that it simply demanded an extreme response.

But amidst this heated debate over what is justified in seeking political ends, another question is often overlooked: do the extreme measures work? Or, do acts of escalation lead to a cycle of greater escalation, deepening divisions, and making our crises harder to resolve, and ultimately undermining the political ends they seek?

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High School Civic Innovators Bridging America’s Divide

At just 17 years of age, Sophie Kim was motivated to start her organization, Bipartisan Bridges, to bring together people from both ends of the political spectrum. What started as just an idea during her freshman year of high school took off after Sophie placed in the Civics Unplugged pitch contest, hosted for alumni in Spring 2024. Since then, Sophie has continued to expand Bipartisan Bridges' impact, creating spaces that foster civil dialogue and facilitate meaningful connections across party lines.

Sophie, a graduate of the Spring 2024 Civic Innovators Fellowship and the Summer 2025 Civic Innovation Academy at UCLA, serves as the founder and executive director of Bipartisan Bridges. In this role, Sophie has forged a partnership with the organization Braver Angels to host depolarization workshops and has led the coordination and capture of conversations on climate change, abortion, gun control, foreign aid, and the 100 Men vs. a Gorilla debate. In addition, this year, Sophie planned and oversaw Bipartisan Bridges’ flagship Politics and Polarization Fellowship, an eight-week, in-person program involving youth from Tustin, Irvine, Costa Mesa, and Huntington Beach, California. A recent Bipartisan Bridges session featuring youth from both Los Angeles and Orange County will be featured in Bridging the Gap, an upcoming documentary.

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Two speech bubbles overlapping each other.

Democrats can reclaim America’s founding principles, rebuild the rural economy, and restore democracy by redefining the political battle Trump began.

Getty Images, Richard Drury

Defining the Democrat v. Republican Battle

Winning elections is, in large part, a question of which Party is able to define the battle and define the actors. Trump has so far defined the battle and effectively defined Democrats for his supporters as the enemy of making America great again.

For Democrats to win the 2026 midterm and 2028 presidential elections, they must take the offensive and show just the opposite–that it is they who are true to core American principles and they who will make America great again, while Trump is the Founders' nightmare come alive.

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Mirror, Mirror On the Wall, Who's the Most Patriotic of All?

Trump and the MAGA movement have twisted the meaning of patriotism. It’s time we collectively reclaim America’s founding ideals and the Pledge’s promise.

Getty Images, LeoPatrizi

Mirror, Mirror On the Wall, Who's the Most Patriotic of All?

Republicans have always claimed to be the patriotic party, the party of "America, right or wrong," the party willing to use force to protect American national interests abroad, the party of a strong military. In response, Democrats have not really contested this perspective since Vietnam, basically ceding the patriotic badge to the Republicans.

But with the advent of Donald Trump, the Republican claim to patriotism has gotten broader and more troubling. Republicans now claim to be the party that is true to our founding principles. And it is not just the politicians; they have support from far-right scholars at the Heritage Foundation, such as Matthew Spalding. The Democratic Party has done nothing to counter these claims.

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