A Hub for Community Impact.
Welcome, friend.
The Inspiration Alley building is a landmark in the community. It started life in the 1940’s as a post office, then entered several decades operated by different flavors of automotive shops before becoming home in 2002 to Oliver Russell, a social impact branding agency.
Its next phase of life is to become a community hub to learn, to share, and to make a difference through your work. In addition to coworking, it will feature programs and events to inspire, inform, and introduce people to new ways of working and ideas for solving social and environmental challenges.
On any given day here, you might meet an architect, a sound engineer, a startup founder, a B Corp leader, or a civic activist — all united by creativity, a collaborative spirit, and the desire to help one another — and to improve our community.
This is just a starting point. We will build this place of purpose, together. Please join us.
And please keep scrolling! You’ll learn more about the lives and work of the heroes honored through public art by the Inspiration Alley Project.
Inspiration Alley is operated by Oliver Russell, a social enterprise and certified B Corp.
Inspiration Alley is the culmination of a lifetime dream for our founder, Russ Stoddard, who has been an active participant in Boise’s civic engagement scene for more than 40 years.
The Inspiration Alley Project is a public art initiative to honor champions of social and environmental impact who have shaped a better and more just world through their lives and actions. Their large-scale murals grace our building in downtown Boise and elsewhere around the city. Take a minute to learn more about these inspirational individuals below.
Dolly Parton
Everybody loves Dolly. 😍
Of course, there’s her trailblazing career as one of the most accomplished singer-songwriters and actresses in history. Hello, Jolene!
What many don’t know about Dolly is her pioneering path as a philanthropist. She hasn’t merely rested on her values — she’s brought voice to them as an activist and by providing significant funding to fuel the good works of nonprofits around the country.
Often working through her Dollywood Foundation, she has supported literacy, healthcare, wildlife and wildlands conservation, and LGBTQ+ rights.
Through her Imagination Library program, she has gifted more than 2 million high-quality, free books to children around the world. During the pandemic, she even played a major role in the advancement of the Moderna vaccine by providing a $1 million donation at a critical juncture in its development. Go, Dolly!
You can read more about Dolly here.
Dolores Huerta
At 94 years of age, Dolores Huerta is the godmother of the farmworkers’ rights movement - and so much more.
Along with Cesar Chavez, Dolores co-founded and steered the United Farm Workers to prominence in the 1960s and helped lead the successful Delano grape strike in 1965. Along the way, she created the longstanding “Si Sue Puede!” slogan (Yes, We Can). She has been arrested for her activism on behalf of farmworkers’, immigrants’, and women’s rights 22 times. In 1988, she was severely beaten at a legal protest, for which she won a judgement against the San Francisco Police Department and the City of San Francisco. Proceeds of the judgement were used to benefit farm workers.
Dolores has been honored many, many ways, from the nontraditional (corridos, or Mexican ballads) to a Presidential Medal Of Freedom. She is still active as president of the Dolores Huerta Foundation, a community benefit, grassroots organization that develops and engages natural leaders in the areas of health and environment, education and youth development, and economic development.
You can learn more about Dolores here.
Malala Yousafzai
If you’re looking for the face of courage, you can find it in Malala’s visage.
Malala got her start championing human rights early in life in her native Swat, a district of Pakistan. Her focus was providing education for young women and children. Because of her open advocacy for this cause, she received numerous death threats. Nevertheless, she continued her work. She was targeted for assassination by the Taliban, and a Taliban gunman shot her in the face and head, which nearly killed her.
Malala miraculously persevered through a long recovery and, undeterred, renewed and strengthened her commitment to promoting education for young women around the world. In 2014 she became the youngest person ever awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
Perhaps a quote from her appearance on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart best sums up her remarkable life force when confronted with the question of whether or not to continue her work after the death threats. “I started thinking about that, and I used to think that the Talib would come, and he would just kill me.” But then I said, “If he comes, what would you do Malala?" Then I would reply to myself, "Malala, just take a shoe and hit him." But then I said, "If you hit a Talib with your shoe, then there would be no difference between you and the Talib. You must not treat others with cruelty and that much harshly, you must fight others but through peace and through dialogue and through education." Then I said I will tell him how important education is and that "I even want education for your children as well." And I will tell him, "That"s what I want to tell you, now do what you want.”
You can read more about Malala here.
Maya Moore
What do you do when you’re at the top of your game in the world of professional athletics? You push the gas pedal to the floor and see how much higher you can elevate your performance, right?
Not if you’re Maya Moore.
In 2017, she started Win with Justice to advocate for prosecutorial reform.
In 2019, the same year Sports Illustrated magazine named her “Performer of the Year,” Maya stepped away from her all-star, Women’s National Basketball Association career to fight for the release from prison of a family friend, Jonathan Irons, who was imprisoned as a 16-year old and whom many believed to be wrongfully convicted.
In 2020, her efforts, along with those of others, were successful and Irons was released from prison. Maya and Jonathan were married later that year.
Maya continues to work for prosecutorial reform. Her story was told in an ESPN 30 for 30 documentary, Breakaway, in which her mural on the alley played a minor role.
You can read more about her life here.
Colin Kaepernick
Take a knee, and they take away your livelihood.
In 2016, Colin Kaepernik, a quarterback with the NFL’s San Francisco 49ers, took a knee during the playing of the national anthem to protest police brutality and racial injustice. When the season concluded, his contract was not renewed and, curiously — or perhaps not so curiously — no other team claimed him. Given that Colin was in the prime of his career, it was an unusual situation that brought calls from many of collusion among team owners to black ball him for his activism.
Colin never played another NFL game. In 2017, he filed a grievance against the NFL, which the NFL requested be denied. An arbiter rejected this request, which meant the case would go to trial. In 2019, he reached a settlement with the NFL and the grievance was dismissed.
Today, Colin continues his advocacy through three vehicles, Know Your Rights Camp, Ra Vision Media, and Kaepernick Publishing, all of which work to advance the liberation of black and brown people through storytelling, systems change, and political education.
Colin gave up his career so that he could to live up to his values. Would you?
You can read more about Colin’s life here.
Homero Gómez González
At first glance, Homero might not appear to be someone you’d like to hang with. He’s got a tough look, like the former logger he used to be. But if there is an afterlife, we hope to spend an afternoon (or more) with him, lazing about in a Mexican forest with a kaleidoscope of monarch butterflies all around us.
You see, Homero was known as the “Guardian of the Monarchs,” and he very likely gave his life to protecting this beautiful and threatened species.
Homero was an environmental activist and manager of the El Rosario Monarch Butterfly Preserve, part of the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Preserve in Michiocan, Mexico. Formerly a logger, part of his job now entailed protecting this habitat from illegal logging. This often put him at odds with dangerous elements in Mexico, which have increasingly targeted environmental guardians, civic activists, and human rights advocates for violence because of their work.
Homero disappeared on January 13, 2020, and after an extensive search was found two weeks later, floating dead in a well with a head wound suffered before his death. While no one has been charged with his death, it remains suspicious; another Butterfly Sanctuary activist, Raúl Hernández Romer, was also found dead several days later.
Homero’s is honored not only by his mural, but by the “ghost” butterflies on the back side of the building, which are outlined in a simple, soft white to honor and remember his spirit of service .
You can learn more about Homero here and watch a Netflix documentary about his life here.
Rosalie Fish
Every human born runs a race, even though each race may be different. For Rosalie Fish, this race is one of fighting to end the epidemic Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women (MMIW). According to the Bureau of Indian Affairs, more than 4,200 cases of MMIW have gone unsolved in this country.
Rosalie’s activism began when she was a high school senior. A member of the Cowlitz Tribe and a track and field athlete, she painted her face with a symbolic red handprint over her mouth to draw attention to the issue while competing at the 2019 Washington State 1B Track and Field Championships. She not only accomplished her advocacy mission — the symbolic gesture created headlines internationally — she also took first place in the 800m, 1600m, and 3200m races.
Rosalie went on to compete collegiately for the University of Washington. She continues working for MMIW by speaking at events and has broadened her lens to advocate for indigenous LGBTQ rights as well.
If you’d like to see a poised young woman, when she was just 18, give an inspiring talk at TEDx, you can watch Rosalie’s performance, and you can learn more about her here.
Greta Thunberg
If Malala’s face is the picture of courage, Greta’s face is the picture of resolute determination with absolutely no problem speaking truth to power. Put more simply: Hers is the face of climate action.
That, of course, is why many of us love her and why others, well…there are those who don’t share the same sentiments just because of those attributes.
In 2018, Greta was a 15-year-old schoolgirl when, she skipped school and protested all by herself outside the Swedish Parliament to protest for stronger governmental action on climate change. She promised to protest every week until Sweden became compliant with the 2015 Paris Climate agreement.
Greta eventually joined with student organizers elsewhere who were also protesting climate inaction to give birth to the Fridays for Future, where thousands of students around the world began skipping class on Fridays to protest outside government venues. At its peak, more than 4 million protestors participated in climate strikes during one week in September 2019.
You can read more about Greta here.
Alexei Navalny
Alexei, like many of the other champions honored by Inspiration Alley, had no problem putting himself in harm’s way to provide a living demonstration of how someone stands of for his values.
Alexei was a Russian anti-corruption and human rights activist, which also cast him as a political adversary of Russian President Vladimir Putin. His popularity on the rise, he attempted to run for President in 2018, but was barred from doing so by the political establishment.
In 2020 he was poisoned with the lethal nerve agent Novichok, but survived and was evacuated to Germany for a recovery period. (The Oscar-winning, CNN documentary “Navalny,” which captures his life with specific emphasis on this incident, is worth watching.) This would not keep him from returning to his homeland in 2021, where he was immediately detained and brought up on charges of parole violation. He was convicted, incarcerated, and died in a Siberian prison in 2024.
You can learn more about Alexei here.
An impromptu memorial created by mourners at the mural after Alexei’s death.
Mitsuye Endo
We honor Mitsuye as one of the unsungs, potentially lost as a footnote in history though her contribution was immensely impactful during a dark period of our country’s history.
Mitsuye was an American of Japanese ancestry who was forcibly placed in a concentration camp in the aftermath of the Pearl Harbor attack during World War II. She and her family were first imprisoned in Tule Lake Interment Camp in northern California, then were relocated to the Topaz War Relocation Center in Utah.
With the help of attorney James Purcell, Mitsuye filed suit against the U.S. Government for the illegal incarceration of more than 120,000 Japanese-American citizens. Her petition was originally denied, but anticipating she would file an appeal the government offered her and her family an early release from interment.
She turned down this offer, saying “The fact that I wanted to prove that we of Japanese ancestry were not guilty of any crime that we were loyal American citizens kept me from abandoning the suit.”
This meant Mitsuye would be incarcerated for two more years while pursuing this case. Ultimately, her persistence resulted In a unanimous, 1944 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court that the government could not detain citizens who were loyal to the United States.
You can read more about Mitsuye here.
Chef José Andrés
Chef José Andrés could have been satisfied as a successful celebrity chef with acclaim from gourmands the world around.
But that’s not the kind of guy Chef José is.
You see, Chef José lives a life of service, and consistent with this he saw a need where his professional experience — and celebrity — could be of assistance to millions of people in need around the world.
A highly lauded restaurateur with establishments in several U.S. cities, Chef José founded World Central Kitchen, a nonprofit that provides fresh meals response to humanitarian, climate, and community crises. Their assistance has provided physical and emotional sustenance to survivors in Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Nicaragua, Zambia, Peru, Cuba, Cambodia, Poland, Ukraine, and Gaza.
Of note: Chef José’s mural is the first outside of downtown Boise. It is located on the Boise Bench at Red Bench Pizza.
You can learn more about Chef José here.
The Artists: Sector Seventeen
The Inspiration Alley murals were created by Sector Seventeen, aka Solomon “Hawk” Sahlein (pictured left) and Collin Pfeifer (pictured right). We highly recommend following their amazing feats of aerosol art and painting on their Sector Seventeen Instagram account or their personal accounts, @mawkaroni and @elmstatus
