This Month’s Featured Article

For those of our readers who aren’t necessarily in the know, we here at Main Street also have a podcast called Main Street Moxie. (It is available everywhere you listen to podcasts as well as on our website.) So far this year, we’ve released three episodes, but hope to have at least one more before the end of the year. That said, our podcast focuses on moxie. We talk with people from all walks of life and discuss their moxie, however they define it. 

This year we have spoken with three amazing and very different individuals who were gracious enough to share their stories, experiences, and to give advice about how one can cultivate their own courage, strength, and moxie. Here is a little bit about each of our guests from this season.

Silda Wall Spitzer

Our first episode of 2026 dropped in January where we spoke with the former First Lady of New York State, Silda Wall Spitzer. Silda’s moxie comes from a lifetime of engagement, a willingness to evolve, creativity, and a deep trust in the power of people to catalyze change when they are seen, supported, and brought together. She has a strategic approach to moxie that is purpose and service-driven.

Silda has spent her life working at the intersection of civic responsibility, community, and conscience. Trained as a lawyer and shaped by decades of public service, she has long been driven by a commitment to environmental stewardship, social justice, and the belief that strong communities are built through shared responsibility and mutual care.

As First Lady of New York State, Silda championed initiatives that elevated dignity in work, expanded opportunity, and highlighted the essential role of public institutions in supporting people and places. Her advocacy has always centered on listening closely, amplifying voices that are too often overlooked, and creating spaces where meaningful change can take root.

That same impulse led her to found New York Makers, the first digital magazine dedicated to celebrating the artisans, growers, and entrepreneurs shaping the state’s creative economy. The magazine was born from a simple realization. Extraordinary makers were doing inspiring work across New York, yet had no shared forum to learn about one another or to be seen as part of a larger ecosystem.

Silda’s Jam grew naturally from that mission. For years, Silda had a family tradition of making jam for friends and loved ones each holiday season. What began as a personal ritual became a way to support the magazine and the communities it uplifted. She turned that tradition into a small business rooted in care, craftsmanship, and connection.

Made in small batches in the Hudson Valley and sweetened with local maple syrup, Silda’s Jam reflects her values. It honors local sourcing, thoughtful production, and the joy of sharing food as an act of generosity. More than a product, it is an extension of her belief that building community can start with something as simple and human as gathering around the table.

CB Wismar

It takes a particular kind of moxie to show up every day for someone you love, while watching them decline and diminish, and your life takes on new responsibilities and roles.

CB and his wife, Kathy Wismar, were living a full life on their family farm in rural Northwest Connecticut – she painting and throwing ceramics, he writing and producing, both of them deep into a rich second act after raising two thriving kids and tag-teaming their way through over five decades of marriage. Then Kathy received a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s, and everything changed. CB became her full-time caregiver, joining the 63 million Americans navigating that same unexpected role in 2025.

In this episode, CB talks about what he calls caregiving moxie – the quiet courage it takes to get up each morning and do hard things out of love, partnership, and loyalty. He shares what he’s learned about leaning on family, friends, and healthcare professionals, sitting with a wide range of emotions, and trying to make sense of a chapter neither of them planned for.

CB brings a lifetime of storytelling to this conversation. His five-decade career in communications spanned radio, television, and film. He led the events team at AARP and co-founded a creative agency that worked with Fortune 500 companies. He continues to write for Main Street Magazine and produce content for the National Partnership for Healthcare and Hospice Innovation. 

Kelly Finley

Kelly Finley’s moxie comes in hot. As “The Queen of Spice,” she’s built a readership on shameless love and heroines who refuse to be intimidated – and she wears that crown, black leather and all, with pride.

By day, Kelly is a Senior Lecturer and Undergraduate Advisor for the Women’s & Gender Studies Program at UNC Charlotte, where she’s taught for over two decades and guided one of the largest WGS programs in the country. Her research and courses dig into female adolescence, virginity, body image, and women and work – the same threads that run straight through her fiction.

In 2020, Kelly turned to writing fiction, using her knowledge and training in gender studies to underpin her romances featuring bad*** women and grown-a** men. Nineteen books later, she’s built a catalog of FMCs and MCs readers champion: complex, brave, whip-smart, and never, ever weak.

In her books, Kelly flips the script. Not satisfied by heroines who need saving, she writes women who are strong, layered, and unintimidated, who embrace their autonomy and communicate their needs, and men who can be real partners in the relationship.

That same instinct to amplify girls’ voices led her to found the Charlotte chapter of We Rock (formerly Girls Rock), a nonprofit that helps youth ages 10–16 find their voices through music, film, and community. It’s the same mission wearing a different hat: give someone the tools, and get out of the way while they become who they already are and use their voices to make change happen for themselves and those around them.

Kelly’s moxie is consistent – she’s spent her whole career making room for women and girls to be loud, complicated, and completely unapologetic. •

To learn more about Main Street Moxie and all of our guests, or to listen, please visit mainstreetmoxie.press. You can also find us on Instagram @mainstreetmoxiepodcast. To listen, you can find us on all podcast platforms like Apple Podcasts and Spotify. You can also listen directly on our website, mainstreetmoxie.press.