ACTION

Mind, Body, and Spirit are inert without action. The Action pillar is where everything we know turns into something we do. It is the part of the Institute that refuses to look away from what is happening in our own country.

Mrs Dave the Lawyer is the home of the Watch Dog community — American citizens who watch judiciary hearings, oversight committee proceedings, and the moments inside Congress that shape healthcare, the FDA, Big Pharma, food, agriculture, insurance, and the future of this country. We watch live. We chat live. We educate ourselves on what is really going on. And we do it together.

A community is not built by an algorithm. It is built by people showing up, week after week, paying attention to the work of a citizen. The Watch Dogs are American men and women — across age, region, and background — who have decided that the work of democracy is not a once-a-year vote. It is the daily act of paying attention to what is being done in our name.

Every time you join us on a live stream and watch a hearing alongside other citizens, you are taking action. You are educating yourself. You are refusing to be a passive consumer of headlines. You are doing the slow, important work of becoming a more powerful citizen.

This is what action looks like.

Mrs Dave the Lawyer did not begin with me. It began with my husband.

Dave built a YouTube channel from nothing. He went live, week after week, watching judiciary hearings and oversight committee proceedings alongside an audience that grew to know each other in the live chats. They called themselves the Watch Dogs. They showed up. They paid attention. They asked questions. They reminded each other that the work of a citizen is not a once-a-year vote — it is the daily act of paying attention to what is being done in our name.

I sat next to him through most of it. I helped him build the community organically. I watched what happens when ordinary people gather to learn what is really going on inside the institutions that govern their lives. I saw what it does to a person to wake up and understand that the work of democracy is not a spectator sport.

When Dave decided to commit one hundred percent of his energy to his legal career and his service to the justice system, he passed the torch. He chose me to carry the community forward. I was both honored and humbled to receive it.

I bring a familiar voice — and a different one. I have a Master's in Psychology. I earned my undergraduate degree from American University in Washington, DC. My entire family is originally from the DC area. I grew up next to the nation's capital, proud to be an American, proud to be a third-generation American whose grandparents arrived from Russia, Ukraine, and Poland and built businesses with their own hands.

I am also a third-generation business owner. My grandparents ran grocery stores, restaurants, and liquor stores in DC alongside hospitality businesses. My father has run businesses for five decades. I started my own career in the 2000s, after my master's, because I needed the freedom to build something that reflected my vision and my desire to help people.

What I have learned as a business owner — the hard way, in many cases — is that nearly every major system in this country has gaps where integrity should be. Oversight is thin. Execution is thinner. The scales of justice are not balanced by accident, and they will not be balanced by accident either.

My promise to the Watch Dog community is this: I will not back down. I never have. My persistence has taught me things about the US legal system, about how Big Law operates, and about how politics shapes the justice system. I will bring all of it to this channel.

Under my leadership, the Mrs Dave the Lawyer brand expands into the hearings that touch the systems I work in every day: healthcare, the MAHA movement, the FDA, Big Pharma, food and agriculture, and insurance. Because what is happening in Washington is not happening to us. It is happening in our house. And this is our house.

Welcome home.

— Jacquelyn Leah