After a failed bid last fall to become Durham’s next mayor, longtime state Senator Mike Woodard faces his next challenge: a Democratic primary opponent in the NC Senate District 22 race.
Sophia Chitlik, a first-time candidate for a seat in North Carolina’s General Assembly, is running against Woodard in a newly-drawn district, which now only includes parts of Durham County. The two will square off leading up to primary election day on March 5.
Abram worked as a political organizer for the Obama campaign in 2008 and later for the Obama Administration as a strategist at the U.S. Department of Labor.
Originally from Burbank, California, Chitlik moved to Durham in 2017. She primarily works as an impact investor and philanthropist, supporting women-led businesses in the health and wellness sector.
The INDY spoke with Chitlik earlier this week following the launch of her campaign. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Why are you running for the NC Senate District 22 seat?
We need someone representing this district who is aligned with our values and priorities. We need new energy. People are policy. When you put a working mom in office, somebody who cares deeply about women’s health, about maternal health equity, who’s been building a career in this field, who’s been an advocate, those policies change. We just lost 155,000 [childcare seats]. We have a cliff that just happened January 1. I represent policies that prioritize working families. I’m running on a platform of care for our communities, our children, and our caregivers.
I want to be able to bring resources to our community. I built my career in public private partnerships, philanthropy, and investing in the nonprofit sector. I have a lot of cross-sector expertise and I’ve made a career working with people who are very different from me. I believe in coalition politics, and that the best policy comes directly from community members. I have deep expertise in maternal health and in education, but I don’t know everything. But we’re really lucky to live in a community that holds all the answers.
Your opponent has decades of service representing Durham residents, as a city council member and state legislator. Why do you think the district needs new leadership?
You look at progressive legislators who are voting something like 40 percent against the Republican Party, but then you look at somebody like Senator Woodard who’s voting against Republicans 30 percent of the time. There’s only maybe two other Democrats who are voting at that kind of rate. That just doesn’t feel like it’s a full match with our community. Why are we voting like somebody who’s living in a tight swing district? That doesn’t make sense to me. When I see advancing the charter school omnibus bill that reauthorizes chronically-low performing charter schools that disproportionately trap Black and brown kids, or sponsoring a Farm Bill that strips 2.5 million acres of wetlands from protection, I don’t think those kinds of votes are in line with what we’re trying to do here.
What is your experience in politics? How has that motivated your decision to run for office?
I came of age during this incredible, hopeful time in American politics where I learned how to be an organizer. I learned that first of all, young people can do anything. You will see that as a throughline in my whole career. We need to trust them and support them to find their passion, their purpose, their power, because it is right there. Young people are our greatest resource, and Durham has this in spades.
Another throughline of my career is just how important it is to work to build intergenerational teams that are diverse in age and race and ethnicity, and often in ideology, but connected in shared values.
I studied social movement theory and network theory, social movements in America, the Civil Rights movement, and then tried to apply some of those principles to the rest of my career. I went on to work at the U.S. Department of Labor during the economic crisis, and at the White House in priority placement, trying to hold the most diverse administration in history. There, I learned about the barriers to talent and tried to tackle some of those barriers head-on.
The bulk of my career has been in education, working with nonprofits to try to put resources into our public schools, building volunteer programs, creating the infrastructure for DREAM directors, or donating to organizations that are making that possible for young people. My big thing is connecting more young people with caring adults. The more caring adults a young person can have in their life, the better. We have to trust and believe young people. And it can be really validating to have another adult do that.
You’ve lived in Durham for seven years. What work in the community has helped you build the coalition necessary to be successful as a campaigner and as a legislator, should you be elected?
I’ve been on a deep learning journey to try to understand social finance and reparative capital, and learning about Black Wall Streets all over the country, including here in Durham. I’ve been working on investing in early stage women’s health companies and other women entrepreneurs and people of color. How can I use my skills and my resources and put them where my values are? I’m proud to invest in different amazing social entrepreneurs. Durham has an unbelievable network, right? People like Joy Spencer at Equity Before Birth or Camryn Smith at Communities in Partnership or Jill Madsen at Jewish For Good, all doing really amazing things.
My biggest project here in Durham has been working with Tina Braimah to build Aya Birth & Community Wellness, which will be North Carolina’s first Black-owned birth center. We’re trying to build that into a scalable network that can build community wealth and community health. Tina is an incredible entrepreneur and incredible midwife. Trying to partner with her to build Aya has been an incredible privilege.
The birth center model of care, and the expansion of midwifery generally, has the power to absolutely transform our crisis. We have spent three years studying this. Why do we have a maternal health care crisis? Why does it impact Black and brown families at three to five times the rate? Why is that happening here? What can we do about it? We actually have a lot of answers to those questions. We just need to listen to the people in the community who already have those answers. If you asked Camryn and Tina, they can tell you exactly what to do. So I want to take that advice and implement it into real policy. We’ve reached the point where only the government can scale some of these solutions. There are real policy challenges standing in the way of communities like ours here in Durham from being able to implement their own solutions.
Editor’s note: Following publication, we altered a response in the first question to clarify that 155,000 childcare seats were lost in North Carolina, not 150,000 childcare jobs.
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