Where It Began
Meet the co-founding Listener Poets who helped shape the early visions of The Good Listening Project and bring it to life. Beginning in 2018 in hospitals and healing centers around Washington, D.C., these Listener Poets — and the early team that soon formed with a shared dedication to this work — responded to an urgent need in their community: for healthcare professionals and patients to feel seen, heard, and understood.
Through the simple but profound act of listening deeply and reflecting back in poetry, they created meaningful connections – offering care in a new form by listening to and writing poems for those working in or receiving care within the healthcare system.
A Conversation with the Co-Founders
We talked with Frankie Abralind and Kay McKean, the co-founders of The Good Listening Project, about how it all began — what inspired the first Listener Poet sessions, and what they saw in those early days that made them realize how needed this work was.
Frankie Abralind and Kay McKean at Memorial Sloan Kettering
How did The Good Listening Project begin?
Frankie:
I started writing poems for strangers in Washington, DC after being inspired by the street poets I saw in New Orleans in 2013. In 2017, I brought my folding table, two chairs, and two typewriters to Burning Man. I invited people to sit, tell me what was on their mind, and let me write them a poem about it. That’s where I met Beck Klassen, another first-time Burner, who immediately understood the concept and jumped in head first. Every day that week, Beck came back to hold space with me and write poems for people.
The following summer, I invited Beck to intern with me at Johns Hopkins Sibley Memorial Hospital, where I was developing the concept in my job as an experience designer. Beck’s success proved to me that being a hospital Listener Poet wasn’t just something I could do — it was something that I could teach, share, and expand. At the end of that summer, I brought my typewriters back to Burning Man for a second time. There I met Kay, when I wrote a poem for her and her husband. She and I instantly recognized in each other a shared understanding of what this work could become.
Kay’s background as an executive coach — her deep belief in compassionate, human-centered leadership — gave us the grounding to grow intentionally. Her support gave me the confidence to commit fully to building what would become The Good Listening Project.
Kay:
I’ve always been intrigued by the human experience of healthcare. I studied healthcare administration in college, and was always most interested in the often unquantifiable part of healthcare — the feeling of providing and receiving care. . When I experienced what happens in a Listener Poet session, I was struck by the feeling it created: the safety to speak and be heard without agenda.
Frankie had found a way to create a form around a feeling — a structure that made this kind of healing listening accessible. From our earliest conversations, we talked about how to bring this into organizations, because we could see how it transformed the way people feel at work and, ultimately, how systems succeed.
When I first set up as a Listener Poet at Memorial Sloan Kettering in the fall of 2018, I was moved by the sacredness of being in that space. There’s an honor in listening to people share their stories in these environments. The recognition of that sanctity, and the devotion to honoring it, has always been at the root of our work — doing it well, and doing it right, for everyone involved.
Kay McKean at Memorial Sloan Kettering
When did you realize this work was truly needed?
Frankie:
The first time I went out to write poems for strangers on the street here in Washington, D.C., back in 2013, I thought the gift I was offering was the poem. Very quickly, I learned that the real gift was the listening.
Since I began, I had always invited a friend. I’d give them a short primer on how to hold space, how to conceive a meaningful poem, and how to use the typewriter I set up for them. When I brought Andrew Yin,* one of the design interns at my hospital, everything changed. He came back to work that Monday and couldn’t stop talking about it. My boss — who knew me as a designer but had never heard about my “Listener Poet” hobby — asked, “Why aren’t you doing this at the hospital?”
A couple of weeks later, I set up in the lobby of the hospital on one of my days off. I figured that I’d be serving patients. More than half the people who came to talk were staff. They were nurses, physicians, and administrative staff saying, “I could really use this.”
A nurse practitioner then asked if I’d present the idea at a nursing conference. The project really began to pick up momentum after that. It was only a matter of time before I left my job and fully dedicated myself to launching The Good Listening Project.
*Andrew Yin went on to study internal medicine at Cornell Weill Medical School and is now Dr. Andrew Yin, MD.
Frankie Abralind and Andrew Yin
Kay:
When we started in 2018, there was a growing awareness in healthcare about burnout and compassion fatigue. People knew it was a problem but didn’t always know what to do about it. Frankie and I both saw that this work — listening, reflection, connection — could actually address the root of that. The challenge was helping organizations realize this was foundational work.
There’s a philosophy that I love, from Danny Meyer’s Setting the Table, which says that the experience of the guest starts with the experience of the employee. The same is true in healthcare. When staff feel safe, seen and valued, it directly correlates to the care patients receive.
Since COVID, this idea has become even more clear and urgent. Creating space for people to express themselves — without fixing, diagnosing, or judging — is powerful medicine.
Frankie Abralind and Kay McKean at Memorial Sloan Kettering
Looking Back
The Good Listening Project grew out of a shared belief that poetry and listening can help people feel human again — especially in the most demanding and complex places. In the year that followed establishing The Good Listening Project as a nonprofit, the co-founders were joined by a growing team of Listener Poets whose dedication and creativity shaped the foundation for the work we do today.
As Kay and Frankie reflect on those first conversations and the spaces they held, one theme remains constant: this work has always been about honoring the truth of human experience — and building systems that make room for it.
Learn more about Frankie and Kay
