Transcript

Kerrien Suarez (00:07):

Well, welcome everyone to the inaugural episode of Going Beyond DEI. I’m here today with my two colleagues from Equity In The Center. So, I’m going to ask them to introduce themselves. Herna, why don’t you start us off?

Herna Cruz-Louie (00:24):

Sounds good. Hello, everyone. My name is Herna or Herna Cruz-Louie. I’m the Vice President of Operations here at Equity In The Center. My pronouns are she/her and siya and I’ve been working here at Equity In The Center for almost two years now.

Niki Jagpal (00:39):

Hello everyone. My name is Niki Jagpal. I use she and her pronouns, and I am Executive Vice President at Equity In The Center. I’ve been working with Kay and the team for, at this point, almost three years, and looking very much forward to talking with you all about what we’ve been up to, where we are and what’s next for us.

Kerrien Suarez (00:59):

Thanks, Niki. I’m Kerrien Suarez, president and CEO of Equity In The Center. And to begin, we thought we’d share a little bit about the origin of Equity In The Center. So, back in 2016, Monisha Kapila, who’s the CEO of ProInspire the organization that incubated Equity In The Center for several years before we spun out, was part of a grant portfolio at the Annie E. Casey Foundation called Talent Pipelines.

Kerrien Suarez (01:29):

That portfolio was held by a program officer named Ashley Stewart. I lovingly call him the Godfather of Equity In The Center. I was not part of Equity In The Center or ProInspire at that point in time, but Ashley brought together, I believe it was nine nonprofit organizations that focused on talent in the social sector to workshop the lack of diversity at the highest levels of the social sector.

Kerrien Suarez (01:57):

So, why were so many nonprofit organizations serving disproportionately black and brown communities? And yet when you looked at their c-suite and their boards, there were significant disparities in representation.

Kerrien Suarez (02:11):

So, the grantees got together three or four times, I believe, over nine to 12 months to learn together to talk about the context of the challenge around the lack of diversity in the sector and Equity In The Center was the capstone project that the grantees created through their work together over the course of a year.

Kerrien Suarez (02:32):

So, the program ended with a white paper, which proposed to launch Equity In The Center, and Ashley was generous enough to provide ProInspire with a startup grant to launch the work. So, I became part of the team at ProInspire, in the last quarter of 2016 when what we now refer to as the launch team came together to road test the contents of the white paper to see if we could actually stand it up as an initiative.

Kerrien Suarez (03:04):

And we made the decision at the end of a retreat that it was worth investing in. Ashley was a part of the retreat and made the commitment to give us startup funding and to support us in securing additional grants. So, at the beginning of 2017, I started working as director of Equity In The Center of the project full-time, and then became a staff person at ProInspire in March of that year.

Kerrien Suarez (03:26):

And that was when our inaugural round of funding from Annie Casey and others kicked in. So, over the course of the next year, we set about, along with Ericka Hines, the lead researcher on the project, who was part of the group that met at the end of 2016 to decide the future of the project.

Kerrien Suarez (03:47):

We started gathering together stakeholders from across the social sector to engage in what a lot of folks would call participatory research and what it took for organizations to, as we say now, center equity in their policy process practice, culture and overall operations.

Kerrien Suarez (04:08):

At that point in early 2017, the focus of Equity In The Center was still explicitly on the lack of diversity at the highest levels of the social sector. So, over the first half of 2017, as Ericka started doing a literature review, we started engaging advisors, talking to folks in the field and ultimately bringing on Andrew Plumley, who was part of the team that first year as we were kicking off.

Kerrien Suarez (04:34):

We realized that we needed to shift the language from talking about the lack of diversity to the lack of racial equity because the lack of diversity was actually a symptom, not the root cause. The root cause was structural racism.

Kerrien Suarez (04:47):

So, we shifted our language to talk about dismantling structural racism in the social sector, so that over time the race-based disparities that we were seeing at the highest levels of the sector would be mitigated by working intentionally to dismantle the extent to which institutions replicate patterns of structural racism. And that gave rise to the race equity cycle.

Kerrien Suarez (05:11):

So, over the course of a year and a half, we gathered together nonprofit leaders, philanthropic leaders, and race equity practitioners to give us feedback on the framework as it came together. And as I described, Ericka Hines was the lead researcher. So, she led what we called design and dialogue sessions, where our stakeholders gave us feedback on the extent to which the framework aligned to their experience trying to operationalize equity in organizations on a daily basis.

Kerrien Suarez (05:40):

So, we had three in person and one virtual session over the course of the year, and that contributed to the paper, which was published in April of 2018.

Kerrien Suarez (05:49):

And our stakeholders over the course of the next year made the decision that Equity In The Center had enough momentum that the role it played in the sector in terms of convening nonprofit leaders, philanthropic leaders, and equity practitioners through summits and virtual and in-person spaces, as well as the significance of the race equity cycle framework, warranted striking out on our own, so to speak.

Kerrien Suarez (06:14):

So, a hundred percent of our advisors voted for us to spin out of ProInspire. And so, in October of 2020, we became an independent 501(c)(3). And at that point we had a regular slate of trainings on the race equity cycle and had begun to engage our advisors as what we now call partner facilitators.

Kerrien Suarez (06:36):

So, folks like Whitney Parnell, Heather Hackman, Nicola Chin, who facilitated workshops at our very first public summit in 2018, came onto the roster of regular trainings that we facilitated virtually. So, we facilitated on the Awake to Woke to Work content, folks on our team. Ericka primarily facilitated that initially.

Kerrien Suarez (06:58):

And then we had a calendar of complimentary partner trainings that also supported folks in developing a more robust skill set to build a race equity culture. So, that’s how we came to be an independent entity. I’ll stop there. Herna, Niki, did I miss anything in terms of the origin story of Equity In The Center?

Niki Jagpal (07:21):

Didn’t miss anything, but just a couple of things that really stand out are the fact that the relationship that you built with Ashley up front and then also with other colleagues working in the space, that centering of relationships has always just been an integral part, I think, of the way that Equity In The Center comes into the space that we work in.

Niki Jagpal (07:44):

And the second piece that really strikes me, because it is different for an organization to have the recognition that diversity is a symptom of a larger structural problem as the organization is forming, as opposed to coming into an org that’s already set and reflects dominant culture. So, just two things that really stood out for me as I heard you telling the story again.

Kerrien Suarez (08:10):

Thanks. And that was Monisha at the outset, sort of building relationships when she was part of the talent pipelines cohort, and Ashley really is the Godfather. He believed in Equity In The Center from the beginning, and he invested a lot in transferring relationships that he had to Equity In The Center so that we could get and sustain funding.

Kerrien Suarez (08:36):

And Monisha did that as well, particularly when we were creating the group of advisors, that list of folks that still lives on the website. Those were a lot of folks that were in relationship with Monisha or with ProInspire before Equity In The Center became public.

Kerrien Suarez (08:51):

And I do think it characterized folks experience of us at the outset, and hopefully, at least in terms of the feedback we get, that that’s carried through over the years is the centering of relationship.

Kerrien Suarez (09:05):

Cool. Well, let’s talk about the origin of the Beyond DEI Podcast, which is a relatively new undertaking for us. So, we are about to celebrate our fourth anniversary in October of this year. We’ve been a hundred percent virtual, since January of 2020.

Kerrien Suarez (09:26):

So, prior to the pandemic, we started offering some of our partner trainings virtually after trying it out a couple of times in person, so Whitney Parnell and Heather Hackman both had oversubscribed workshops at our in-person summits, which happened for the last time in 2019.

Kerrien Suarez (09:48):

And so, we started with them saying, “Well, why don’t we just offer them, every month or so and see who shows up.” Initially in person. And then it moved to virtual. So, we’ve been in this virtual space a lot longer than some other organization, well, maybe a quarter longer than folks who had to make the pivot in March.

Kerrien Suarez (10:08):

It was a lot easier for us when the pandemic began because we had already started laying the groundwork for doing things virtually. And we didn’t launch a podcast at that time, which I think folks have asked about over time.

Kerrien Suarez (10:23):

So, now it’s June of 2024 and we are recording our first episode. So, Niki, maybe you want to share a little bit about why we thought now was the opportunity to launch a podcast, and how it fits into our strategies.

Niki Jagpal (10:42):

Something that we’ve been hearing a lot both in the field and then also participants in our workshops is we get requests all the time for additional resources for people to respond to the ongoing pushback against “DEI work” all the way from Supreme Court decisions down to ongoing local battles, especially at universities right now where DEI work is just under attack.

Niki Jagpal (11:10):

And as we’re at this critical juncture in our political sphere with a really critical important upcoming election, I think we felt that we wanted to be able to continue to provide some additional resources and tools that address sort of specifically how we can be working both individually and in community, and to try and build more of those connections across people who we still haven’t even come into relationship with.

Niki Jagpal (11:43):

So, the idea was to both provide tools and resources, and then also to continue to build community and build relationships with folks who we work with, which comes back to what we started to say at EIC, which is that just relationships are central to both who and how we are.

Niki Jagpal (12:01):

And I think that’s reflected in sort of the roster of the guests that we have for our first season and after. And I think it’s a real important opportunity for us to be able to include our voice in spaces where we can be of help at this time, where we might not currently have some reach.

Kerrien Suarez (12:19):

Thank you. And Herna, I’m going to toss it to you in a moment to talk a bit about how the resources that we provide land for folks in organizations who are working to build a race equity culture. Because you’ve been with EIC for more than two years now, but prior to that, you were at a nonprofit and you used our publication and our tools and resources to help build a race equity culture there.

Kerrien Suarez (12:43):

One thing I wanted to name in terms of our decision to launch the podcast and to call it Beyond DEI, is that in February of 2023, we wrote a response to an article, an op-ed that had been published, talking about how DEI was actually doing more harm than good. And so, our response to that misguided op-ed was to write a piece on our blog that was called It’s Time to Shift from Transactional DEI to Transformational Race Equity Work.

Kerrien Suarez (13:12):

So, what we really hope this podcast is, as well as all of the other resources, the trainings, the cohort programs, the assessment that we have on our website, we hope that this will be a tool to help individuals and teams and organizations shift their perspective from that focus on transactional DEI, so representation primarily, but generally only, to a more robust transformational orientation toward race equity work.

Kerrien Suarez (13:44):

And we can talk a bit more about what that means. But Herna, if you could share a little bit about how the tools and resources that we provide, support folks who are doing this work on a daily basis.

Herna Cruz-Louie (13:57):

Absolutely. Thanks, Kay. I think the biggest, for me, especially coming from an organization which had 400 plus people, 9,000 volunteers, over 16,000 youth, was that the tools and resources were absolutely necessary and much more aligned with the non profit sector.

Herna Cruz-Louie (14:16):

We looked at a lot of models when I was actually trying to implement some sort of DEI programming, diversity equity inclusion is what we called it at the organization. And looking at multiple models, the Awake to Woke to Work race equity cycle was really the one that really spoke to us, that really aligned with our values, that really allowed us to look more deeply into the culture of the organization, the policies and procedures beyond the diversity.

Herna Cruz-Louie (14:44):

And so, to your point, Kay, around how folks really focus in on diversity and representation, which is a good start. And quite honestly, that’s where we started because that’s what mainly most of the resources available to us, was providing was access and opportunities as well as learning around how to provide or to build up more representation around leadership, around your hiring practices.

Herna Cruz-Louie (15:10):

But not really getting into the deep practice of actually trying to figure out how do we shift our policies, how do we shift procedures, how do we make sure that when we do bring people on in terms of such as our hiring practices that people actually want to stay.

Herna Cruz-Louie (15:26):

And I think people focus so much on the front-end stage performative aspect of diversity and representation that people forget that you have to keep people there. You can’t just hire them in and then expect them to want to stay just because they’re there.

Herna Cruz-Louie (15:42):

And so, I think that was really what Equity In The Center really provided for me as a leader in that organization as well as to other senior leaders in that organization, is really looking much more deeply into how are even our technical applications and our databases even running, how are we even setting those things up?

Herna Cruz-Louie (16:05):

And for an organization that I came from, which was a legacy organization over a hundred years, it was really hard to do. But we knew that we needed to do that and we were able to find that through all of the tools and resources that Equity In The Center was able to provide.

Kerrien Suarez (16:23):

Thanks for sharing. I’m sure we’ll come back to talking about your experience implementing this in real life, so to speak. What I wanted to point out was something you flagged in your response to my question about the transactional focus on representation and then never moving beyond that.

Kerrien Suarez (16:43):

So, one thing that differentiates, as you were describing the race equity cycle from how the average DEI consulting firm or entity or talent and culture team approaches this work is that we focus on equity explicitly as in the measurable absence of race and other identity-based disparities, in outcomes within an organization.

Kerrien Suarez (17:11):

So, as you were describing, Herna, an organization generally tracks the number of people of “diverse identities” that it has hired, and that’s where the work stops. The overwhelming majority of organizations do not track the turnover of those same individuals as you were describing, who choose not to remain because while they were hired, they are not hired into an organizational environment in which they can thrive.

Kerrien Suarez (17:40):

So, in most organizations, for profit and nonprofit, the turnover rate of people who hold a historically marginalized identity, so race and other historically marginalized identities is sometimes more than two times higher than those who, when it comes to race, for example, identify as white or identify as straight or identify as able bodied, because the organizational culture isn’t working for them because it’s not designed for them.

Kerrien Suarez (18:08):

Diverse individuals are recruited into organizations and then treated as if they’re lucky to have gotten the job and should be very grateful to be present regardless of how they’re treated. So, that was an important difference in how we talked about organizations.

Kerrien Suarez (18:24):

So, speaking explicitly to organizational culture and the need for organizations to dismantle aspects of their practice, policy, process and culture, that results in disparate treatment of folks of diverse identities and drives disparate outcomes for those folks.

Kerrien Suarez (18:46):

So, the data set that we would be looking at for organizations would be composition, which is representation, the absolute least you can do in the very beginning, compensation, promotion, retention, investment of professional development dollars, distribution of people of diverse identities from the board to the most junior level.

Kerrien Suarez (19:04):

We encourage folks to track and disaggregate by all identities, each of those internal data points, as well as disaggregating their external data. So, if you were working in a program context, Herna, we’d encourage your former organization to do that for the outcomes in the community.

Kerrien Suarez (19:20):

But our framework focuses internally to organizations, which is a big change. So, what we want organizations to do is turn the mirror on themselves and be honest about the extent to which they replicate patterns of inequity in their daily management and operational practices.

Niki Jagpal (19:41):

I think that’s actually one of the things about the Awake to Woke to Work framework that really stood out for me when I first encountered it before coming to EIC, because we talk a lot in the sector and we have for decades about culture trump strategy, and here was a framework to actually address inequities, and also the identification of intersectionality as being a very real part of the lived experience of BIPOC who are in leadership.

Niki Jagpal (20:12):

And then also just thinking about the different pieces that go above diversity. In terms of what feedback is provided to BIPOC leaders, and in what way, what other supports does the organization have for them to thrive and succeed as a leader. And I think that the framework gives us a place to start going really deep in the kind of different facets of org culture in a way that other frameworks to that point had not.

Herna Cruz-Louie (20:39):

Yeah, and I would say just to add a little bit more to that too, Awake to Woke to Work, referencing the mirror, having that mirror turned to yourself and to really look at your own organization and what your practices are. I had to learn and unlearn quite a bit as a leader myself who had been in the nonprofit space for over 20 years.

Herna Cruz-Louie (21:01):

And so, even just checking myself, checking my own privilege, checking my power as as a leader in the organization as well, did not change the fact that I am a woman of color. It also turned the mirror on myself to figure out like, okay, I’m actually contributing to some of these disparities that exist within the organization, because I didn’t know better.

Herna Cruz-Louie (21:28):

And so, Awake to Woke to Work as a framework really defined all of that for me and for the leaders of the organization, as well as being able to share that out so that we could have shared definitions and knowledge and really a path forward for progress.

Kerrien Suarez (21:41):

Thank you both. Herna, you landed where I was going to ask one or both of you to focus in terms of our next question. So, why is it important for organizations to have a shared language, to have shared definitions on diversity inclusion and equity starting, for example, with the fact that diversity, inclusion and equity are three distinct concepts that are mashed into an acronym. The accurate definition of which the majority of people using the acronym don’t know.

Kerrien Suarez (22:15):

So, I don’t know which of you would prefer to take that, but how and where do shared definitions in a shared language for building a race equity culture, as we say, fit into how organizations can use our framework?

Niki Jagpal (22:29):

Yeah, so just fundamentally, if we don’t even have a shared vocabulary, we literally don’t have the ability to speak to each other. And then, as you said, there are three completely distinct things that get pushed into one acronym and treated as one, and they are not.

Niki Jagpal (22:51):

And so, I think that it’s one of the reasons that even when we train folks constantly, one of the first steps is you need to develop a shared vocabulary and have that be across the organization. Because we cannot have a conversation if the building blocks of that conversation are not uniform and agreed to.

Herna Cruz-Louie (23:14):

Absolutely, Niki. I think for me just also experiencing it firsthand was it was also a way for us to minimize further harm, because we’re able to speak to the things that we are actually trying to convey, rather than us trying to beat around the bush and not being able to be courageous about those conversations to actually point out some of the areas that we needed to continue to progress on or change or shift or improve.

Herna Cruz-Louie (23:42):

And so, I think that it was a really good first step to minimize further harm because everybody was kind of going through this unlearning, relearning phase as an organization. And I think that there’s something to be said about that when we’re able to go through that together as an organization, that everybody’s learning, people actually gave each other much more grace than I think that they would’ve typically if they weren’t in a learning phase.

Herna Cruz-Louie (24:08):

And that we were naming and acknowledging that everybody was going to be in a learning phase and unlearning a lot of things. We took that actually in a lot of stride, and we really gave that as an opportunity or used that phase as an opportunity to say like, “Hey, it’s cool. We know we’re going to mess up and we know we’re going to make mistakes, but don’t forget, here is the definition that we’re talking about.”

Herna Cruz-Louie (24:31):

And so, when folks did get misaligned in terms of how they were communicating with some of these terms and definitions, we had other folks could come in and say like, “Okay, so when you’re saying this term, it sounds like you’re actually meaning this.” And then you can actually have a much more healthy conversation about that and socialize that throughout the organization to really make it a part of your foundational culture.

Kerrien Suarez (24:54):

Thank you both for those insights. Hearing you talk about it reminds me of something that will sometimes come up when we are doing what we call open enrollment sessions, or it’s the introductory training on the content of the publication, and we’ll come back to that in a moment.

Kerrien Suarez (25:10):

But in for profit organizations and non profit organizations, the work of equity or DEI as most folks call it, is approached in a manner that would in many contexts be described as worst practice.

Kerrien Suarez (25:27):

So, in an organization or an entity that makes widgets as their core business or their core mission, all the folks who work there know what a widget is. They know how a widget’s made, how a widget functions because there’s a shared definition of a widget.

Kerrien Suarez (25:43):

One of the primary reasons that so many “DEI initiatives” are unsuccessful is because the leaders of the initiatives, not to mention the folks who are on staff at the organizations don’t have a shared, clearly defined goal for the work.

Kerrien Suarez (26:01):

And we all know as people who do things in our personal lives and in our professional lives, if you don’t have an explicit goal for what it is that you’re doing, the likelihood that you’re going to accomplish it is slim to none.

Kerrien Suarez (26:17):

And so, when we work with organizations, the overwhelming majority of them are at the point in sometimes multi-year, DEI initiatives doing a number of things, none of which have been aligned to an explicit goal beyond recruiting or hiring more diverse people. And even so, the majority of organizations that we work with struggle to achieve even that.

Kerrien Suarez (26:46):

So, most organizations that come to us, and there has been a shift in the past four years following the murder of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd. And even so, a significant number of organizations still come saying that they aspire to hire diverse individuals, speaking of them as if they were unicorns.

Kerrien Suarez (27:07):

So, even when they name that explicit goal, they have difficulty attaining it because the interim steps to get there, the more robust organizational cultural aspects of the work haven’t been clearly defined, sort of as Niki was saying, diversity, inclusion and equity.

Kerrien Suarez (27:23):

So, diversity, literal representation, inclusion, the engagement and the treatment of those diverse individuals as equal in value to all other individuals in the organization, such that you would be able to assess it in a staff engagement survey.

Kerrien Suarez (27:40):

And then thinking about equity, the absence of disparities and outcomes around composition, compensation, promotion, performance retention, investment of professional development dollars, and so on. So, those are things that you can measure. And if you don’t have clear goals, you still rarely achieve the first goal, let alone the second or the third in terms of diversity, inclusion and equity.

Niki Jagpal (28:02):

Yeah, I think you raised a really good point when it comes to measurement and metrics, because one of the things that we hear constantly when we talk about organizational culture is that it is soft and we will not know if we are making progress toward it.

Niki Jagpal (28:22):

And so, being able to articulate that we are specifically looking at erasing race-based disparities and outcomes, I think is another piece of the way that we approach the work that makes it more helpful for folks who are more towards the D end of the DEI spectrum and to help bring them along.

Kerrien Suarez (28:45):

Thanks, Niki. It’s very true. So, you set up our next topic for discussion, which is how can folks engage with Equity In The Center, and begin to utilize our tools and resources as well as our trainings and our cohort programs?

Kerrien Suarez (29:00):

So, the very beginning would be to download our publication, which you can find at equityinthecenter.org and read the paper, which outlines the race equity cycle gives explicit characteristics for the stages of the race equity cycle, which are awake, woke and work.

Kerrien Suarez (29:16):

And those three stages are diversity, inclusion, and equity reframed. The woke stage, it’s important to name this paper was written or released in the spring of 2018, and the current, popular definition of woke as advanced by Fox and Newsmax, which I know we’ll come back to in terms of the current landscape for equity work did not exist.

Kerrien Suarez (29:40):

So, it’s important to think about awake, woke and work, but woke, especially in these times as explicitly the set of behaviors, beliefs, policies and processes and data sets that we outline in the paper, the definition of awake, woke and work, all of that is — awake, woke and work, those are defined in the paper in terms of characteristics, um, of organizational culture.

Kerrien Suarez (30:05):

So, you start by downloading the paper, and then an organization, a team or a leader or members of the board, members of the staff might attend an open enrollment training. And so, would one of you like to describe what that experience is and how folks can learn more about it?

Niki Jagpal (30:25):

Yes. So, our open enrollment sessions are basically sort of an introduction to the framework, but that goes deeper into the actual implementation of it. And what it does is it can provide an individual or a team with a deeper understanding of the framework and what they can walk away with and start doing immediately regardless of where they are in the organization.

Niki Jagpal (30:50):

And I think it sets folks up well for the work that we’ve done since the research that came out originally back in 2017/2018, and that there is actually a bit of a learning path. And I also think that it leads very clearly into our pulse check assessment, which is a way for folks to get a score based on a range of input that they put together with a cross-functional team.

Niki Jagpal (31:18):

And that is then analyzed and gives them a report on each of their levers of Awake to Woke to Work, medium, and high. And then is coupled with coaching. Coaching I think is such a critically important part of our culture because in our experience with providing people with resources and tools, including in our cohorts, which we can talk a little bit more about as well, it’s really the coaching where some of the more transformational work happens.

Niki Jagpal (31:48):

And to be frank, the coaching spaces are also one where BIPOC leaders in particular, and those with other marginalized identities often have a first sort of moment of being able to process their own experience. And so, it’s a really deep and powerful space that involves building a lot of trust.

Niki Jagpal (32:07):

And that I think is part of why the work is actually more sustainable in the long run because we’re able to couple the individual support with action plans that are at a more team or an organizational level. And there’s sort of that trajectory which I think is more reflective of the actual experience of somebody who’s in a position of trying to operationalize race equity or to build a race equity culture at their organization. I don’t know.

Herna Cruz-Louie (32:37):

I definitely agree with you there, Niki. I think I was very fortunate that when I was introduced to Awake to Woke to Work, it was a private session with a cohort that existed through a funder. And so, I was able to work very closely with the funder, but also with other organizations who were obviously experiencing the same challenges as well as the relearning unlearning, so that we could lean into building a race equity culture at all of our nonprofits.

Herna Cruz-Louie (33:06):

And so, whether you go through the open enrollment, which really dives into much more detail beyond what is written on the page of the publication, private sessions were also really, really amazing. And just being able to ask those really deep questions and really figure out what works best for you while you’re also learning from other organizations, I think was really, really key in our journey and my own journey.

Kerrien Suarez (33:36):

Thank you both for sharing that. One note on what you said, Herna, just for folks who are listening, so a private session is when our Awake to Woke to Work introductory training (so what we’ve talked about as the open enrollment training, which you can sign up for on our website, it’s a public training), is done privately.

Kerrien Suarez (33:55):

So, often an organization will have members of our team come and facilitate that content just for their team of 10, 20, 50, 100 or more folks or just for their board or for their senior leadership in their board or for division heads, and their senior leadership in their board or kind of any mix thereof.

Kerrien Suarez (34:11):

And individual organizations bring us in to do that. But as was Herna’s experience, most often we have conveners, so funders who provide the opportunity to their grantees and/or philanthropy serving organizations or networks of nonprofits or grant makers who make the content available to their membership.

Kerrien Suarez (34:38):

So, probably the majority of our stakeholders up until the last two years probably … well no, probably four years up until the pandemic, but even during the pandemic we worked a lot with conveners. Most people know us as a result of the type of relationship that Herna described.

Kerrien Suarez (34:57):

And those strategic partnerships started because of what happened in 2020. So, the murder of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and the so-called reckoning that actually was not a reckoning, but it was a so-called reckoning where funders and organizations for profit and non profit organizations were scrambling to figure out how to talk about what was happening.

Kerrien Suarez (35:20):

So, race equity capacity building had been a thing for decades before that, and the demand for it went up 200% or more in 2020. So, we had a lot of partnerships to share this content with as many organizations and leaders as possible in order to help folks navigate this time.

Kerrien Suarez (35:41):

And funders and networks stepped up to try to make space for their members and grantees to learn together as we were all navigating 2020.

Kerrien Suarez (35:50):

We find ourselves in a very different landscape now, which we can come back to. One thing it might be helpful to do now is just to finish talking a little bit about our programs. So, Niki, as you were describing at the end of the open enrollment training, which is two sessions, folks come away with a high-level action plan on how to build a race equity culture in their organizations. And you mentioned the levers.

Kerrien Suarez (36:12):

So, for folks who are listening but haven’t read the paper, the race equity cycle has those three stages I described, and there are seven levers that are part of the race equity cycle, which represent management and operational functions by which best practices, characteristics, and recommendations are essentially organized.

Kerrien Suarez (36:33):

The levers are not mutually exclusive. The levers that we find organizations begin with most often are organizational culture, because that’s mostly what we’ve been talking about. And it’s the umbrella under which everything else happens.

Kerrien Suarez (36:47):

Senior leaders, equity transformation, or even honestly transactional diversity work cannot happen in an organization without the authorization, and to varying extents the participation of senior leadership and board of directors.

Kerrien Suarez (37:04):

For many organizations that are excited to do race equity work, where senior leaders in terms of folks in the c-suite and heads of divisions and departments have authorized and funded equity work, boards of directors are cited without question as the most frequent roadblock to progress.

Kerrien Suarez (37:25):

Individuals are on any given day, individual leaders, the most likely roadblock to progress on equity work because individual leaders have the right to, can block things, they can authorize things, they can fund things. So, on a daily basis, it’s all of us as individual leaders often interrupting the progress or the trajectory that equity work is on.

Kerrien Suarez (37:51):

But generally, when we look at the field and we look at organizational characteristics, that either facilitate or hinder equity work, boards are at the top of the list because of their significant power, their governance role, and generally the overwhelming power and influence of members. So, that’s the third lever that folks often address.

Kerrien Suarez (38:12):

So, Niki, you talked about the Pulse Check cohort. So, folks can go to our website and take the Pulse Check individually as a tool. They can purchase the Pulse Check along with coaching or they can do the program that you described, where the Pulse Check is embedded in a capacity building program of about six months where you get coaching.

Kerrien Suarez (38:37):

We also have a fellowship which is for individuals, the Pulse Check cohort is for teams and an organization has to have a certain level of commitment to race equity, capacity building in order to authorize the participation of three to six members of their team to participate in a program.

Kerrien Suarez (39:00):

So, generally, folks who participate in the Pulse Check cohort are at an organization that has strategically prioritized equity work and capitalized it.

Kerrien Suarez (39:11):

Often organizations that have not yet gotten to that point, they of course will have a diversity or an equity statement like the overwhelming majority of organizations do, but where they haven’t yet become internal culture transformation and leaders are trying to make the case for that, often those folks, those leaders, those champions of equity and organization will participate in something called the Race Equity Culture fellowship, which we will be offering at the end of 2024. So, Niki, do you want to say a few words about that?

Niki Jagpal (39:41):

Yes, I think another thing is in the Pulse Check, it is a little bit of a deeper dive into specific contents, whereas with the Race Equity Culture fellowship, Kay, as you described it, because folks are earlier on in their journey, there’s sort of a broader range of topics that we get into, not to the same depth, but it is on a wider range of topics.

Niki Jagpal (40:07):

I think one thing about the cohort and fellowship experience that we hear over and over and Herna referenced this as well, the ability of folks to be in a space where they can see people on different stages of the work is actually really helpful because it one helps folks feel solid in knowing that, “Okay, I’m at the beginning, it looks really overwhelming and people do get past this.”

Niki Jagpal (40:40):

And the other thing it really brings out is just sort of the different approaches to it and different tactics that different organizations have used in order to sort of work on the broader race equity strategy.

Niki Jagpal (40:54):

And I think, again, just the relationships that we build, something that we really emphasize in our cohorts is wanting folks to build with each other beyond the cohort space because it ties in with our value of building community and of being in transformational relationship with folks, whether they come to our workshops or are our funders, because that is just the nature of how this organization works.

Kerrien Suarez (41:24):

Thanks, Niki. Herna, do you want to say a bit about our Community of Practice for practitioners and then the senior leaders tool? But I know Niki will have some thoughts on that as well, but I thought you could kick us off with a description of those-

Herna Cruz-Louie (41:39):

Yeah, absolutely. Well, our Communities of Practice is really for folks who are much more deep into their journey and our practitioners themselves. And so, this is an area of support, as well as opportunity for folks to really get together and really go even beyond what AWW can even provide for organizations.

Herna Cruz-Louie (42:00):

And so, I think that it’s a wonderful opportunity and we’ve just launched our first one in the last week or so. And then our senior leaders tool, which provides coaching as well, I think is also a great opportunity for folks who are much deeper in their practice and have really already gone beyond from transactional to more transformational and still wants to continue much deeper into the work. And so, I’ll pass it to Niki to share a little bit more deeply about that.

Niki Jagpal (42:31):

Thanks, Herna. So, the practitioner Community of Practice is actually grounded in the values of the Deep Equity Practitioner network, which is a group that we haven’t mentioned yet, but that I believe came together in 2019. And that represents folks from different organizations, different individual consultancies and practitioners.

Niki Jagpal (42:55):

These are folks who have been focused on race equity work, many of them for decades. And we’re really grateful to be able to have Raquel Gutierrez, who has been a long time EIC advisor, leading this community of practice. And as Herna mentioned, this really is for folks who are a little farther along in their journey.

Niki Jagpal (43:15):

And it’s really to focus on the practice side of it, because what we do in terms of frameworks, tools, and resources can seem sort of sterile, but there is actually a practice component to the work of being able to center equity and to actually make it a reality and to show it in our culture.

Niki Jagpal (43:36):

And so, the connections that we tie there that Raquel is helping these folks do are between race equity culture and their role as a practitioner who’s either affiliated with an org or a practitioner working on their own as well, who would be working with clients who are trying to accomplish the same thing.

Niki Jagpal (43:57):

The Senior Leaders Community of Practice is led by Ericka Hines, who is, as Kay mentioned, one of the original authors of the Awake to Woke to Work Report. The Senior Leaders Lever, as Kay also mentioned, is one of the three where folks often start first.

Niki Jagpal (44:13):

And so, that opportunity actually includes access to a tool that we developed that is much more granular. And the intent there is really to give senior leaders a way to start the conversation across the organization with people at different levels in the organization, et cetera.

Niki Jagpal (44:35):

And so, again, the Community of Practice side of that ties in the practice piece, but also includes important things that some of us are starting to talk about in the field, like self-care, because this work can be so exhausting.

Niki Jagpal (44:51):

And another part I think is just, again, bringing people into community and building community with people through this sort of microcosms of communities that we put together, which we believe have a ripple effect and help us actually strengthen the interconnected relationships that we have across the movement for broader equity and liberation.

Kerrien Suarez (45:15):

Thanks so much, Niki, for pulling all those threads for us. One thing I wanted to build on before we begin to wrap up our inaugural episode is your really important point, which Herna also gave us some clear examples of earlier with her experience, implementing the race equity cycle at her previous employer. It’s the question of practice.

Kerrien Suarez (45:41):

So often in Awake to Woke to Work trainings, participants will ask “What’s the most effective thing we can do to like lean into this work? Or in terms of equity capacity, building tactics, what’s the most effective?”

Kerrien Suarez (45:59):

And there’s no one thing, but there is one thing that I recommend above all other things in terms of leaders in organizations investment in race, equity, capacity building, and that, as you said, Niki is coaching. So, where inequity lives and thrives the most in the daily work of organizations like through the death by a thousand cuts that microaggressions inflict on folks, it’s in the daily management practice of leaders and managers and colleagues.

Kerrien Suarez (46:33):

Really, it’s the lack of equity practice in their management practice daily. So, the words that they use, the bias that they introduce into the words that they use, the decisions that they make, so things that seem insignificant, like who you speak to in the hallway, who you call on in a meeting, to whom you award the stretch opportunity.

Kerrien Suarez (46:58):

When you hear the feedback or the comment that an individual offers and a great example of that is when a woman makes a point multiple times and is not heard, and then a male colleague repeats the same thing, and the point is received and affirmed.

Kerrien Suarez (47:15):

Coaching helps people understand where their aspiration for equity and inclusion falls apart in their daily practice. The choices that they make that reflect how they value people as employees and human beings.

Kerrien Suarez (47:30):

And ultimately, when we’re talking about building a race equity culture and dismantling the white supremacy that undergirds our society and organizational culture, we’re talking about moving intentionally away from valuing people on the basis of the pyramid of human value or the hierarchy of human value that places people who are racialized as white at the top and people who are racialized as black at the bottom.

Kerrien Suarez (47:55):

And that doesn’t mean that all other identities don’t matter. Other people of color are valued intermittently based on their proximity to whiteness. Whiteness and blackness are what racial equity institute will often call bookends, and they are diametrically opposed on purpose so that other communities of color can be contrasted to black folks in terms of their behavior and how they show up and there is the origin of the myth of the model minority.

Kerrien Suarez (48:26):

But anyway, coaching helps folks understand how this pyramid of human value guides their decisions as leaders and managers and coaching helps you in a supportive environment. Sometimes one-on-one, but coaching can also be done very well and effectively in teams. It helps people lean into the intersection of the individual in the institutional role.

Kerrien Suarez (48:50):

So, where are my personal beliefs and biases about race and gender and ability and sexual orientation, all of which live in my amygdala, where are they showing up and how I treat the people that I lead and the people that I manage.

Kerrien Suarez (49:04):

Coaching is very, very effective at helping folks understand where their aspirations fail as a result of their practice. And one reason we made the decision to start doing cohort programs is because cohort programs make equity coaching accessible to more groups of people.

Kerrien Suarez (49:21):

To larger groups of people, individual coaching, leadership coaching can be quite expensive. I do want to note that leadership coaching and race equity capacity building and coaching are not the same. And then an individual who has a robust practice around leadership development and leadership coaching may or may not know how to coach folks on race equity capacity building.

Kerrien Suarez (49:45):

So, if you’re looking for someone to help coach you on these issues, be clear that they have experience as a race equity practitioner and not as a leadership development professional per se, because the very robust library of leadership development resources that are out there are based overwhelmingly on a standard that up upholds white males as the paragon of leadership.

Kerrien Suarez (50:07):

So, I’ll stop there. Herna, Niki, any other thoughts on our programs or partner trainings is one thing we haven’t talked about yet.

Herna Cruz-Louie (50:18):

Yeah, and I would say partner trainings was fantastic for me in my journey also, before I even came on board Equity In The Center’s staff and partner trainings really did beyond just thinking about the organization as a whole, was really looking much more deeply into how I could be a better leader.

Herna Cruz-Louie (50:39):

And to your point, Kay, I have benefited from the model minority myth. I do not deny that I likely stepped into a much more elevated role at my previous organization because I have closer proximity to whiteness as an Asian American.

Herna Cruz-Louie (50:56):

And so, being able to name that and acknowledge that and also be in space with other folks who are processing that was really, really important. I think partner trainings like Whitney Parnell with Service Never Sleeps and other partners that we work with who have provided trainings so that you can lean into practice beyond just thinking about your organization as a whole, I think is really key to the ongoing process to building a race equity culture at your organization.

Kerrien Suarez (51:26):

Thanks, Herna. Niki, any thoughts or insights on our partner trainings and how they connect to building race equity culture?

Niki Jagpal (51:34):

Sure. So, I think we’re really clear about the fact that we do not have expertise across every single topic that comes up as a part of broader organizational culture. And so, again, relationships, most of our partner trainings, if not actually all of our partner trainings are offered by folks that Kay and others who’ve been with EIC for a long time have been building relationships with for years.

Niki Jagpal (52:03):

So, part of it is relational. Another part of it is being able to offer folks access to specific topics which come up as part of this. What comes to mind, for instance, are the connections between environmental justice and racial justice, and what does the work that we do look like over there?

Niki Jagpal (52:24):

Or how is anti-racism being used in your HR practices? So, it gives us the ability to get folks into a space where folks who are much better equipped than we are able to provide them with expertise and space.

Niki Jagpal (52:41):

And I think to build a little bit on what both of you said about sort of individual level versus organizational level and that sort of, that tension if you will, and how coaching plays a role there. Something that I really got from something that you modeled for me; Kay was being able to name my own complicity in perpetuating white supremacy. Something that I have known but have never actually articulated as many times and just named it in a space as much as I have.

Niki Jagpal (53:20):

And so, I think our partner trainings are just another opportunity also for folks to continue building their own relational networks and tapping into the expertise of our partners who have been doing this work for years.

Kerrien Suarez (53:38):

Awesome. Thank you both and thanks Niki for naming that how I name complicity and white supremacy is helpful. One question, that was one for consideration for us to talk about today is what are our most valuable learnings and unlearnings as part of this work?

Kerrien Suarez (53:58):

And that overwhelmingly as Herna was also talking about in terms of proximity to whiteness, is why I have this job making the transition to support Equity In The Center, after working at non profit and philanthropic organizations, the top note for me was my complicity in a system that doesn’t value people who look like me, but in which I have privilege by virtue of my education and my socio and economic status.

Kerrien Suarez (54:24):

And I had to really ask myself hard, am I actually helping or am I just facilitating a system that only advances a limited number of us who are as proximate as possible to whiteness? Because how proximate we can get to whiteness varies based upon our identities and a number of other factors.

Kerrien Suarez (54:41):

So, I had to reckon with how I, as a black person had done harm to other black people operating in white supremacy as a manager and encouraging people to do things a certain way, which at the end of the day was the way that I had learned them in predominantly white environments and been taught that I needed to demonstrate almost to deflect from the color of my skin.

Kerrien Suarez (55:03):

And so, as a manager, as a leader, it’s incumbent upon us and we share this with folks in our training and in our cohort programs. It’s incumbent upon us to model our own journey as part of supporting other folks because it’s that degree of accountability that contributes significantly to building a race equity culture. And we all, no matter where we are in our journey, continue to make mistakes along the way. And it’s important that we model that as well.

Kerrien Suarez (55:31):

Lastly, we haven’t talked about the current landscape for equity work in the United States. So, as we close, perhaps each of us could reflect on Equity In The Center’s role and contributions at this particular moment and what folks who are listening might be able to use our tools and resources and programs to support them in, at this particular moment in time.

Kerrien Suarez (55:59):

And at least in terms of when we’re recording this, this is the day after the Fearless Fund was told that they cannot continue to award funding to entrepreneurs who identify as black women as the result of a lawsuit that was brought against them. So, I don’t know who wants to start, but-

Niki Jagpal (56:19):

I think when it feels like the odds are stacked against us, it can be challenging, and it is also an opportunity. And so, I think rather than doing what the courts did with Fearless Fund yesterday, I think we actually need to double down on advocating for centering race equity and framing it in the larger context that we can show measurably and demonstrably that there are positive outcomes for people far beyond people of color when we do in fact center the people who have endured the most harm and systemic oppression, genocide, et cetera.

Niki Jagpal (57:07):

So, I think our role is to continue doing what we’re doing and to continue making the framework as available and as accessible to folks as possible, to keep at the coaching side of it because I think that piece actually becomes more important as does being in community at a time when there are attempts to pull us apart is an opportunity for us to actually build those connections to support each other.

Niki Jagpal (57:37):

And I think one thing I would love to bring up right now is just the fact that we’ve been really grateful just this year to have adopted racialequitytools.org, which our board member and — member Maggie Potapchuk has been running for many, many years.

Niki Jagpal (57:57):

It’s been one of the most critically important resources for anyone who does research on this topic, regardless of the field that you’re in. I think that keeping racial equity tools front and center at this time is also something that is part of our role and another thing that we’re grateful for. And to also just to continue to center community and compassion in the way that we are able to in the work that we do.

Herna Cruz-Louie (58:25):

Yeah, I would say community, that was sort of where my thought was going is EIC has the experience now to be able to continue to feed the community as well as create opportunities and spaces for learning and ongoing learning.

Herna Cruz-Louie (58:41):

It’s no coincidence that as folks have come back in person and folks are creating opportunities for equity conferences and diversity, equity and inclusion conferences and gatherings, that they’re always sold out. I think that there’s a lot of need and want and drive to really continue this work.

Herna Cruz-Louie (59:01):

And Equity In The Center has been huge in terms of providing those opportunities and ongoing opportunities. I think there’s a huge beauty in us having worked virtually for quite some time also in that folks all over the country can have access to all of these things such as racial equity tools and all of the trainings and resources that we provide.

Herna Cruz-Louie (59:24):

And so, we can continue to do that for folks even when it feels like the media is really dividing us, I feel that the reality can still be that we actually can get together and build community together.

Kerrien Suarez (59:38):

Awesome. Thank you both for those insights. I guess I’ll close by saying I feel like for the past couple of years in our sessions, one of the most common questions related to the current landscape is “How do I navigate this? What do I say to people who are among those suing the Fearless Fund and trying to shut down equity or ‘DEI initiatives’?”

Kerrien Suarez (01:00:03):

And they have been made illegal in three states. So, for folks in those three states, stakeholders that I’ve supported have talked about how they have shifted their language to frame their work as beneficial to all people and doing work within organizations to help all individuals thrive.

Kerrien Suarez (01:00:24):

So, doing many of the same initiatives using very different language, framing it explicitly around all. And to Niki’s point, that’s what the data says, race explicit and identity explicit initiatives yield benefits for people who identify in every way.

Kerrien Suarez (01:00:43):

Because when you center the most vulnerable or so-called marginalized individuals, as part of doing work, you create a system that actually works for everyone as opposed to the system we have now, which was designed for the advancement and the consolidation of wealth and power for very few.

Kerrien Suarez (01:01:02):

The other encouraging words I try to offer in terms of just keep doing what you’re doing and frame it differently in terms of all, and FYI, the data says this work does benefit all people, is to remind the folks who are filing lawsuits and raising their hands in meetings to say, you need to shut down your initiative, or are we going to get sued about this?

Kerrien Suarez (01:01:26):

Is to remind them that the individuals who are taking cases to the Supreme Court to roll back affirmative action in higher education and suing the Fearless Fund, and making so-called diversity work illegal in three states that these are the same people who avail themselves of every possible social program to which they are entitled by the law.

Kerrien Suarez (01:01:47):

They are down at the school, they are down at the hospital, they are down at the VA, they are down at city hall signing themselves, their children and their parents and their loved ones up for every social safety net program that they believe they deserve, and to which they are entitled as Americans.

Kerrien Suarez (01:02:03):

Social Security, IEPs in schools, VA benefits, the list goes on, the Affordable Care Act. All of those programs were designed within equity frame. So, giving historically vulnerable or marginalized folks, people over 65, veterans, what they need to thrive.

Kerrien Suarez (01:02:28):

People who oppose DEI initiatives are signed up for pretty much all of the programs for which they qualify. And in the same breath that they say that people shouldn’t be given certain opportunities on the basis of race or gender, they believe that they’re entitled to everything the federal government offers and their municipality offers by virtue of there being a taxpayer or an American.

Kerrien Suarez (01:02:54):

And so, I think it’s important to highlight that tension in conversation as abundantly as possible. Any closing words, Herna and Niki?

Niki Jagpal (01:03:03):

I do have one closing thought, which is I wanted to share with you all that when I first started to get to know Kay and build with her and we were talking about what working together might look like, she asked me something I’d never been asked before, which is, what was I looking for and what I wanted to do next?

Niki Jagpal (01:03:26):

And I still remember saying to you, “I want to work somewhere where I can both talk about and lead with compassion.” And your response to that, which was “Bring it on,” it means so much to me because it’s a conversation I’ve never had explicitly with somebody who I was thinking about working with before. And I feel like that has sort of informed the way that my trajectory at EIC has been, and it’s just something I’m really grateful for. So, thank you for that.

Kerrien Suarez (01:04:04):

Aw, thanks Niki. And thanks Herna, to both of you for giving me the opportunity to work together in the way that we do, which I think is different than any experience that we’ve had before because we are trying to build a race, equity culture and center equity in the way that we haven’t been able to in other organizational contexts.

Kerrien Suarez (01:04:26):

And I think that requires a degree of vulnerability and risk taking among our leadership team that is just a learning experience for us all every day. And I appreciate how both of you always have my back and support our trio and the organization as we continue to make mistakes and as we figure out how to build a race equity culture.

Kerrien Suarez (01:04:55):

And one thing we say in our trainings and in our cohort programs is that if you’re not making mistakes, then you’re not taking risk sufficient to the vision that you’re trying to attain. We don’t know how to have an equitable society and culture because our society and culture was designed to be inequitable.

Kerrien Suarez (01:05:13):

So, we have to take risks together and then sort of support one another as we learn through that. And it’s a particularly challenging time with the landscape, and with the capacity constraints we have as mission-focused organizations. So, I’m deeply grateful for both of you. Thank you.