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Trump has gone after DEI programs. But DEI consultants say demand was already dropping

Fri, 14 Feb 2025 16:51:21 GMT

President Trump has vowed to end federal diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. Those who work in DEI consulting say that demand was already falling off and the field was shifting.

Transcript

MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:

President Trump has taken aim at diversity, equity and inclusion programs, signing executive orders that seek to end them in the federal government. Even before Trump was reelected, many big companies had been backing away from diversity promises they made in the wake of George Floyd's murder in 2020. KUOW's Noel Gasca reports on what it all means for DEI consultants.

NOEL GASCA, BYLINE: For the past handful of years, Seattle-based DEI consultant Alma Villegas says she's had a ton of work, so much that she was able to get an estimate of her income and work commitments a year in advance, sometimes even two.

ALMA VILLEGAS: This year, I am nowhere near that. I'm about 50%, and that's really only through, I would say - for the first six months of the year.

GASCA: Viegas says this isn't something that emerged all of a sudden under the new Trump administration. She noticed a change all the way back in the summer.

VILLEGAS: We started seeing less opportunities become available, less opportunities that really mentioned DEI.

GASCA: She says there was more competition for a shrinking number of consulting gigs, and she's not alone. While one DEI consultant NPR spoke to for the story had seen their work increase, most, like Viegas, had seen it dry up. Also...

VILLEGAS: We started seeing a change in the language.

GASCA: When organizations now post online looking for consultants like Viegas, she says, they use the words like belonging and inclusion instead of DEI. She decided to remove the acronym from her consulting firm's website.

MILYNA PHILLIPS: DEI has been made into a slur.

GASCA: That's Milyna Phillips, a DEI consultant based in Washington, D.C. Phillips says crucial inflection points in the backlash to DEI came even before this summer. She points to the publication of Project 2025, which advocated ending government participation in DEI. Another, she says, was the Supreme Court ending affirmative action in college admissions in June of 2023. She speculates that those actions had an impact on companies.

PHILLIPS: Industries were now emboldened and kind of given the green light and a road map to dismantle DEI initiatives within their institutions.

GASCA: Half a dozen consultants interviewed for this story said they don't think the backlash means the end of DEI work. Phillips is investing more resources into marketing. She's just launched a podcast to broaden her firm's audience. Other consultants say the work they do might have to look and sound a little different. In Pennsylvania, for example, DEI consultant Dan Kimbrough is carefully going back through his presentation materials. He's looking for any messaging that could raise red flags for DEI skeptics.

DAN KIMBROUGH: There's one video that I used to show about microaggressions, about mosquitoes and how annoying they were.

GASCA: Essentially, the video compared microaggressions to mosquitoes, and Kimbrough pulled it because he doesn't want people to feel he's calling them annoying.

KIMBROUGH: I'm more worried now that people who are on the fence or who are very much anti-DEI are searching presentations for specific things.

GASCA: Even though these consultants say their work is changing and getting more challenging, they also say their commitment to the work remains the same. For NPR News in Seattle, I'm Noel Gasca.

3rd Rail Podcast-- Why all the smoke? Why all the shade?": Phillips Collab on whether DEI was DOA.

Thu, 06 Feb 2025 18:08:28 GMT

We are 3rd Rail! In our debut episode, host Milyna Phillips gets real with the Phillips Collaborative team, Jini Rae Sparkman and Lawrence Alexander. We dig into the current state of DEI and model how our family has difficult conversations. Join us as "we listen and definitely judge" the education and DEI landscape, civil discourse, and admissions.

The Guise of Civil Discourse and the Limits of Tolerance

Mon, 13 Jan 2025 23:28:54 GMT

Image by Ryan Raz “Rally against the Toronto Sun and their Anti-Native rhetoric and propaganda.” 2013

Drop your civil discourse.

And that is where we begin.

Civility has simply become yet another evolution of tolerance for racism in the same way that diversity has become another practice that centers and maintains whiteness and its oppressors. It is a means to deliberately harm the few by purporting freedom for many under the appropriated guise of the neutrality of language and the assumption of all language as civil. As Toni Morrison stated in her Nobel lecture, The Work of Words, “Oppressive language does more than represent violence; it is violence; does more than represents the limits of knowledge; it limits knowledge.”
Let us start with Karl Popper’s, “The Open Society and Its Enemies.” Not typically one to utilize long quotations, this writing in particular has been taken out of context to many political ends and so I include the following unredacted original excerpt from Popper’s Notes on Chapter 7, “The Principle of Leadership.”

Woah. Take a breath. Did he say (in 1945) that we should consider that “any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law?” Does that say that “incitement to intolerance and persecution is criminal?”

Yeah. I read that, too. And it is this that has helped me better understand how we got to where we are, because, “If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them.” What if it isn’t about the binary assumption that there can be good people on both sides but rather that actions of intolerance have outcomes of oppression that dehumanize the whole humanity of the human beings impacted by intolerance? All while holding up the humanity of the intolerant.

It isn’t a far reach for me to see where the paradox of freedom has led educators and institutions of education to become battlegrounds of book bans, bathroom debates, hate speech, the harm of white supremacy, and the silencing of those voices who would speak up against such things, including genocide and the murder of children in any country. And, concurrently this has created a paradox for educators whose job it is to teach all children how to live together. Who do we want to be as a society? Who do you as a caretaker of children want to be?

If you, as a school, as educators in a school, truly believe in the beacon of learning and the possibilities of education as put forth by Dewey, hooks, Freire, Piaget, Morrison, Du Bois, Bethune and so many others, then you must return to centering the children, instead of political comfort. You must determine what the limits of tolerance are for you as a person and as a center for learning. Because tolerating intolerance teaches children and young people that violence (physical and emotional) incited against others is acceptable.

There is no civil discourse when the intent is to allow the intolerant a position to oppress and demean the basic humanity of members of a society. Discourse assumes the ability to see value in another and their existence. It assumes the ability to be not only tolerant but neutral in intent. Language and discourse are never neutral. Civil discourse in its current form is not only a bastardization but an erasure of its intent. It has become the foundation whereby there are “good people on both sides” — no matter that one side has historically been holding a gun, a noose, an accusation, or the power of another’s life in their hands. Civil discourse has become the practice of tolerating the intolerable. And the civil discourse argument, once intended to be a means of expanding one’s understanding, ran its course the minute that it became an excuse and playground for intolerance.

The children you teach and care for are extensions of a power greater than most others within our society. But those children must also understand the limits of the paradox that is freedom. Just because you can, doesn’t mean that you should. The same applies to educators and administrators. Are you willing to defend your school and the young people in it from intolerance in order to maintain the possibility of tolerance? Will that extend to your larger community? Parents? Alums? I f your system of belief demeans another, your freedom allows you to bring it to the table. But do not believe that your insistence that it is valid in an effort for the “bully to enslave the meek” will be tolerated. Are we willing to say that yet?

And know that when you do (because I truly believe you can and hope that you will), you will be called intolerant. You will be told that you are oppressing the freedoms of another. And in that moment, may you be reminded of Audre Lorde’s words from Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches, “It is learning how to stand alone, unpopular and sometimes reviled, and how to make common cause with those other identified as outside the structure, in order to define and seek a world in which we all can flourish.” You are living in the paradox of tolerance and freedom that we might create boundaries that are inclusive rather than exclusive. In the hopes that we continue to follow Lorde’s enlightened hope that, “Tomorrow belongs to those of us who conceive of it as belonging to everyone; who lend the best of ourselves to it, and with joy.” (Lorde)

As we began, I will end with words from Toni Morrison’s Nobel prize lecture wherein she draws a limit to what is and is not tolerable even in civil discourse for us in the likes of Popper:

Reject. Alter. Expose.

As always, may your peace be gentle, your fervor be righteous, and your joy be bountiful. For it is these that will be our lighthouses through the darkness that we may find one another.

And find us at Phillips Collaborative. We are here to be a guiding light, to support you, and to stand with you as we move beyond civil to liberatory.
With Love,
Jini Rae

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

Audre Lorde (2012). “Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches”, p.112, Crossing Press

Audre Lorde (2017). “A Burst of Light: And Other Essays”, p.96, Courier Dover Publications

Morrison, Toni. 1993. The Work of Words. NobelPrize.org. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1993/morrison/lecture/.

Popper, Karl R. 1945. The Open Society and Its Enemies (Vol. 1). https://antilogicalism.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/open-society-1.pdf.

Performative Inclusivity: Protecting White Comfort with Black Humanity

Tue, 07 Jan 2025 21:44:46 GMT

“Expediency asks the question, ‘Is it politic?’. Vanity asks the question, ‘Is it popular?’. But conscience asks the question, ‘Is it right?’. And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular but [they] must do it because conscience tells [them] it is right.” — Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Does anyone remember when DEI practitioners were seen as rebel rousers? Remember when we advocated for the most vulnerable in the loudest way possible? The work is a whisper of its former iteration. Questions this moment in time are forcing us to answer: Are we protecting white comfort at the cost of Black humanity and justice? Are we doing this work responsibly and with integrity anymore? Are we doing what’s right versus what is safe or popular?

You cannot foster a sense of belonging by forcing the abused to sit next to their abuser- belonging is not telling diverse communities everyone is welcome, including the people trying to oppress the most marginalized among them. DEI practitioners and Black educators walked into work on November 6th not knowing where their schools or institutions stood on their civil and human rights. The majority of practitioners that I spoke to the day after the election were regulated to keep it “business as usual”, and not mention the election while at work. Whatever happened to the virtue signaling of “bring your whole self to work”? Schools (including institutions of higher education) are gaslighting peoples’ experiences when we ask them to conduct themselves as “business as usual”, while women, Black and brown immigrants and the LGBTQIA+ community lose their rights. Educators of all capacities are doing their jobs in silence out of fearfulness as a consequence of the public shaming that is happening. Schools are requiring the silence of many educators regarding everything political including the genocide in Palestine with the threat of unemployment and blacklisting.

In the last 14 months we have witnessed an organized campaign by schools, governing bodies, regional and national associations working overtime to silence voices and advocacy, under the guise of protrecting civil discourse but in reality hoping not to affect their bottom lines. In this year of our Lord, two thousand and twenty four, we are having the “there are good people on both sides” discussion about things like xenophobia, fascism, genocide, transphobia, misogyny and racism. Intellectual honesty has become roadkill. What this obedience in advance has done is allow evasive terminology, apathy and white comfort to become priorities and fester in our institutions. These characteristics show up when schools announce that they will no longer be issuing statements on current events, here’s the gag, elite schools don’t get to close their eyes and ears to the world around them, to other people’s suffering, and then say “everyone belongs”. That is the antithesis of education.

We should not believe in nice masters. Racism can’t be solved with a kind word, good idea, or a stiff upper lip and being nice is a danger to Black lives– words are empty, we need to demand action. Are we pleading and bargaining for our full humanity within institutions and calling it progress? W.E.B. DuBois taught us that when talking about progressive change in America what matters most is what is effective, not what will appease white people or those in power. How antiracism and DEI work are showing up today is the only form of resistance to white privilege and institutional violence that has been approved by or has appeased white people. I assure you, morally persuading racist people and employing a turn the other cheek praxis is not how to combat oppression or systemic racism. DEI has become a form of passive power that ensures that those in power never structurally change.

Now, let’s get to the good part: we live in an interdependent ecosystem. I want to empower all leaders, educators and DEI practitioners to start living and working like we live in such an ecosystem. Here are some things that we should consider in the weeks and months ahead:

Know when to leave. If the senior leadership team’s actions, concessions, stances or lack thereof don’t align with what you know to be right, bounce. When an institution shows you who they are, believe them.
Respectability politics have us in a chokehold, liberate yourself from the delusional promises of the ivory tower. (See #1)
To DEI practitioners, move as a movement- organize, organize, organize. Create your own conference.
Change the nature of the DEI business as practitioners– from passive to active power. Ask yourselves, what is your bus boycott moment? (See #3)
If you think that neutrality absolves you, think again. Make the statement, it is how you hold your institution publicly accountable for all that you claim to be on your website.
Ask yourself what/where is your leverage and how can you use it, collectively?

My positionality as a Black woman in America automatically renders me a Cassandra of Troy, but hear me when I tell you, now is the time to organize and sustain community–a decolonized version of community. If you’d like to be a part of a dynamic, solution-oriented conversation where real-world problems of practice are tackled and where educational leaders are empowered with tools to thrive during these turbulent times please consider joining Phillips Collaborative’s Office Hours series. Registration is free. Hope to see you there.

Maia Niguel Hoskin, Ph.D., Adrienne Gibbs, ZORA Editors, Vanessa K. De Luca Momentum Blog Team

DEI was DOA: A Solution to a Poorly-Defined Problem

Tue, 31 Dec 2024 22:00:22 GMT

Submitted for Consideration

Lawrence Q. Alexander II

Phillips Collaborative

The “DEI Slowdown” , (to the extent that it represents a reneging on our country’s institutional and systemic commitment to advancing racial equity and justice), is a crime . If it is indeed a crime (and a shame), then no case is complete without a thorough crime scene investigation. There are several “investigators” who possess the knowledge to examine the scene, but in a courage recession, I figured I’d go first.

Peep the Scene: Institutions that once committed to:

Improve belonging for all community members, especially historically disenfranchised groups.
Address systems of exclusion in hiring.
Examine classroom content that synonymized racial trauma and sexual violence as academically meritorious.
Create leadership pathways for historically underrepresented groups.
Increase diversity at the board level.
Uncouple your admissions strategy from a racially and socioeconomically segregating model.
Institute professional learning to ensure that all employees are culturally-fluent and mission-aligned.

All of a sudden, ALL of this became a bridge too far?! In 2024, are you still “on a journey”? Perhaps it’s time to admit that this version of “DEI” was never what your culture, your school, or your business model intended.

As a critical colleague, I feel a responsibility to be both at this moment. I refuse to believe that the slowdown is a result of ill-will, dereliction, or a lack of courage solely. In practicing a bit of truth and reconciliation, I actually hope to let folks off the hook IF we can consider that DEI was DOA (dead on arrival) in several cases.

The Culprit: Me thinks we’ve been bamboozled. For years, we’ve been told that CRT was the bandit, breaking into our classrooms and wreaking havoc. We’ve also been told that DEI was the Trojan horse that indoctrination rode in under, causing division and hatred in our schools. In a world of acronyms and alphabet soup, have you ever considered net-tuition revenue (NTR) as a possible suspect? Let me explain. The casual educational consumer doesn’t consider how private K-12 and higher education institutions “keep the lights on”. Still yet, some fail to understand that private education is a business. While it’s true that you can’t run a school like a business, you can’t have a school if you don’t take care of your business. The question of the day is: How does a school sustain itself financially? Very few can sustain themselves through their endowment, and even in those cases it’s imprudent to become too dependent upon it. The vast majority of private institutions are dependent upon tuition revenue to pay their bills. Those expenses aren’t luxurious either as the usual big ticket item is employee salaries. A school must do business in order to sustain itself and tuition revenue is an arterial function; to assume anything else would be naive. So what does that mean from an enrollment perspective? Well, what seems logical to you? It would probably look something like this:

Secure your full-tuition paying slots.
Discount for applicants who can’t pay all, but pay a good amount.
Discount/scholarship special interest groups (diversity, athletes, artists, etc.) and pinch from any available endowments or earmarks.

The Achilles heel in this model is that the socioeconomic divides usually reinforce racial inequities amongst students, parents, power-brokers, and employees. This enrollment and shaping strategy isn’t “insider baseball”, but IF this is the enrollment model that helps achieve NTR and keeps private schools sustainable and viable, then how could you ever imagine anything else? How could you imagine that “diversity and dollars” could be synonyms? Why would you upset the Development “apple cart” by introducing anything that might threaten the financial foundation under your feet? If a pledge of allegiance to NTR is the case at many “tuition-dependent” institutions, then DEI was always going to be DOA . You are fighting in a phone booth, with very little wiggle room. You have stakeholders to answer to, students to serve, and employees to pay. I get it. It’s hard to shake your fists when your hands are tied.

Come back to these commitments and see how simple, important, and yet neglected they are (again):

Improve belonging for all community members, especially historically disenfranchised groups.
Address systems of exclusion in hiring.
Examine classroom content that synonymized racial trauma and sexual violence as academically meritorious.
Create leadership pathways for historically underrepresented groups.
Increase diversity at the board level.
Uncouple your admissions strategy from a racially and socioeconomically segregating model.
Institute professional learning to ensure that all employees are culturally-fluent and mission-aligned.

My only request is that you not label DEI as failed work. DEI work in schools has as much room as it is allowed to have . In many cases, it is allowed to exist to assuage, not to innovate. Personally, I believe there is a way forward for our country, our schools, and many other organizational settings. I think that it may be time to talk about the crime scene , the culprit , and the victims before we proceed.

The victims are always students and families, disillusioned employees who once believed, and school leaders who are “fighting in a phone booth”. Let’s have the conversation in full, in the light of day, in the fullness of transparency. Let’s not call it a “DEI-Revival”; let’s call it a meeting for a “Better Business Model”. I actually believe that if we’re willing, we can re-imagine the “country club”. No one has to lose membership, but we can certainly expand it.

*Are you ready to reimagine what true equity and inclusion look like in your institution? At Phillips Collaborative , we specialize in helping schools and organizations tackle these challenges head-on through actionable strategies and transformative practices.

Visit our website to schedule a free consultation, access articles, and start your journey toward a better business model.

Let’s continue the conversation follow us on IG @phillipscollab and share your thoughts using #BetterBusinessModel.*

Affrimative Action Series Pt. 4

Mon, 08 Jul 2024 20:07:22 GMT

As a continuation of our last episode, here is the conclusion to our Affirmative Action series. Since last June, the Supreme Court’s decision to gut affirmative action has been an immensely influential one. It changed the lives of many across the nation which has implications for generations to come. However, in the words of Maya Angelou, "But still, like dust, I'll rise." Many students have overcome what some might see as an obstacle and push everyday to reach for their goals. Listen to what these amazing leaders have to say and we hope you enjoyed the insight this series provides for us all!

Affrimative Action Series Pt. 3

Mon, 08 Jul 2024 20:03:59 GMT

In this video, Jude interviews several BB&N admission and college counseling administrators as they bestow their wisdom on us about affirmative action and what it's like to support students throughout the college admissions process. These educational leaders are essential in helping Jude's peers pursue their dreams beyond high school. Stay tuned for part IV, dropping very soon!

Affrimative Action Series Pt 2

Mon, 10 Jun 2024 17:58:10 GMT

As he continues his 3-part series, Jude takes in the student experience of the first class to not have affirmative action in the college admissions process in over 50 years. This piece is crucial in the outcome of the SCOTUS decision last June. Take time to listen to these perspectives from this year’s college applicants! Enjoy! #affirmativeaction#DEIG #studentexperience #scotus

Affrimative Action Series Pt. 1

Mon, 10 Jun 2024 17:54:14 GMT

Almost a year later after the SCOTUS decision to remove affirmative action from the college admissions process, Jude dives into the controversy over the decision in a 3 part series focusing on its history, the student experience, and the college counseling/faculty experience. You will hear from many people with differing views of how this decision has affected so many and possible future implications. We hope you enjoy what Jude has to offer you all!

An Election Cycle

Tue, 09 Apr 2024 03:13:55 GMT

After the 2016 election, Richard Blanco wrote and published his poem, “Election Year.”

As an educator in a school, I was reeling. My students were spilt between feeling victorious and justified or feeling terrified. The only middle ground seemed to be apathy.

My peers who were not mourning with me cajoled, “Just wait. You don’t know anything bad will happen yet.” The ever wise Maya Angelou once said, “When people show you who they are, believe them the first time.” I wondered at how quickly conflict avoidance and/or internalized belief in systems of oppression let them forget her words. Others seemed frozen and unbelieving.

And now here we are. For the sake of brevity, I won’t explore depth of depravity we have allowed that has led us to an impossible situation in the voting booths, the denial of bodily autonomy, violence against human bodies, and acceptance of it. All as talk of justice and equality become, yet again, ghosts of innocence lives lost, hope denied, and dreams deferred.

So. How can we help? Because we all need help. At the center of change and resistance is joy and community—even in the face of seemingly impossible moments. This is where Phillips Collaborative thrives.

We see this moment as innately human. And, in order to not only survive but become active creators of our future, we must see and support all the levels that will allow us to feel empowered and connected rather than disenfranchised victims or apathetic observers. Here is how we do that:

1. Systemic and Personal: National policy and choices have deeply personal implications. Our work allows you to create systems of support for what many are holding inside that is deeply personal. There are and will be those on your campuses who are hurting and afraid. And there will be those for whom victory is more important than humanity. For the former, they need you to create a place where their fear and pain is acknowledge and perhaps even where they are safe. For the latter, it is an imperative that the humanity and implications be personalized in order for them to develop the empathy that is necessary to connect with everyone’s humanity.

2. In all honesty, the national rhetoric can be overwhelming. Its echo can seem too large—too beyond my personal scope. Where can I find power? Where can I feel like I have an impact? This is precisely what Phillips Collaborative brings to the table. We strive to support young people and their adult leaders to understand the ways that the local is also personal. And, very often, more accessible and in need of more powerful because it is where our impact can be immediately felt. We help your school or organization find ways to plug in locally. It is this first step that not only allows participants to feel the power of voice and vote but to also inspire long-term civic engagement. We have the opportunity in this moment of grandiose media coverage and bombastic politicians to create a generation of humanistic voters willing to start close to home—to be the first ripple for greater change.

I wonder if this is what Richard Blanco thought of when he wrote,

“Maybe it’s not just the garden

you worry about, but something we call hope

pitted against despair, something we can only

speak of by speaking to ourselves about flowers,

weeds, and hummingbirds; spiders, vines, and

a garden tended under a constitution of stars

we must believe in, splayed across our sky.”

Let us tend our garden together, talking of the closeness of possibility, even in the face of the improbable and seemingly impossible. Pitting our hope against despair.

A review of The National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC) exhibit, Afrofuturism: A History of Black Futures

Tue, 30 Jan 2024 16:48:28 GMT

The “Music and Afrofuturism” portion of the exhibition at the NMAAHC. SMITHSONIAN NATIONAL MUSEUM OF AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY AND CULTURE

Did you know that the costume that Chadwick Boseman wore as Black Panther was 3-D printed? Yeah, me either. The NMAAHC’s Afrofuturism exhibit introduces visitors to the founders of Afrofuturism as a genre: think George Clinton, Octavia Butler, interlocutor and social scientist Alodra Nelson. It showcases New Black Futures and how music and Afrofuturism were married by artists like Sun Ra, Jimi Hendrix, Outkast and Janelle Monáe. The most astonishingly brilliant and emotional portion of the exhibit is named the zone of “Infinite Possibilities”: bursting with pivotal moments of Black liberation, uprisings and protests from Ferguson to BLM protests of 2020. It is at this point where I begin to grasp that what all liberatory protests have in common is hope for a better future, a more complete existence. And that is when I gazed upon Trayvon Martin’s flight suit and began to cry.

If you are in the Washington, D.C. area visit this fantastic exhibit through August 18, 2024. If not, the NMAAHC has created an online guide to access it if you aren’t able to visit in-person.

It’s Demo Day!: Dismantling a Broken System and Rebuilding in the Wake of the Affirmative Action Decision

Tue, 15 Aug 2023 15:34:50 GMT

My Beloved BIPOC Leaders,

First of all, we have nothing to prove. Second of all, let’s normalize not caring about how people think we landed the gig, brought a folding chair to the table or gained admission to the elite institution. We know, our families and ancestors know what it took to get here. Let’s divorce wanting acceptance to the “thing” from needing to prove that we are worthy or that we belong.

Let’s address the elephant in the room: for clickbait by way of sensational headlines the media and conservative right weaponized affirmative action to place Asians as a wedge against Black and brown communities by playing up the model minority myth. This tired tactic contributes to anti-Asian racism because of how it portrays Asians as a monolith.

Institutions, corporations, schools and people must evolve from the fundamental thinking that white people are entitled to all good things as a baseline or birthright- admission to an elite school, a promotion, space, luxury. When we, BIPOC folks and more specifically Black people, are accepted, promoted or hired the assumption is that we have stolen a space or spot from someone else, someone white. This belief is profoundly indoctrinated with anti Blackness and white supremacy, additionally, the data doesn’t support this propaganda.

Let’s do some math:

Harvard’s acceptance rate is usually between 3–4%
For the class of 2027 Harvard received 9553 early action applications
Harvard accepted 726 students on early action
Harvard reserved 242 early action admissions for children of donors/employees/alumni (legacy admissions)
70% of the 242 legacy admissions are white
75% of those students would not have gained admission without their privileged status
With 484 non-legacy spots remaining, 200 spots are awarded to non-legacy white students
The remaining 284 are comprised of 169 Asian, 50 Latine/a/o, and 65 Black students

The math ain’t mathing! It’s demo day, throw it all away to make room for the dismantling of a system that never worked well. Together Phillips Collaborative and our clients will have the opportunity to reenvision and rebuild systems and policies that yield more success, access and equity for those that always face the most barriers in admissions and hiring. Won’t you join us?

In Collaboration,
Milyna

The Slice is NOT the Pie — College Admissions in the Aftermath of Affirmative Action

The Supreme Court has rendered its opinion regarding race-conscious admissions, but opportunity in front of college admissions is still on trial. How will diversity, equity, and inclusion in college admissions fair now (without AA); the real question for consideration is how did we fair before (with AA)?

The enrollment data as it relates to race and ethnicity tells the story. For decades, students from underrepresented communities, namely African-American, Latine/a/o students fall behind their white and Asian peers with regard to college admission and matriculation. While affirmative action in policy, practice, and program has gone a long way to affect access and equity for students from underrepresented communities, it is far from perfect. Moreover, admission is not synonymous with belonging. An offer of admission and a financial aid award seldom covers the cultural cost of attendance for underrepresented students and their families. From my deep work with higher education admissions teams I have worked to point our energies beyond how we admit students, to focus on the systems that impact how we market and recruit, create, develop, and assess our on-campus programs, and ultimately, how we work to un-couple recruiting students of color from the ill-gotten notion that all students and families of color need financial aid to attend college.

Institutions like Sarah Lawrence College have taken bold steps towards communicating their commitment to community and inclusion through the creation of their newest essay prompt. We are certain that many peer institutions will follow their lead. The proverbial needle of file review “slice” of the admissions pie will be moved, but the focus on the greater pie will be increasingly important. I had the pleasure of working with the University of Pennsylvania on this type of work last year and have contracted with Skidmore College for the 2023–2024 admissions cycle to focus on the structural opportunities in front of us.

My advice: focus on the pie, not the slices. Affirmative Action is impacting college admissions today but we should be wary as it will impact inclusive hiring efforts tomorrow.

Yours in the Work,

Lawrence Q. Alexander II

Hot Take: It’s Called Anti-Blackness

As a system, white supremacy maintains its power by creating division among other races and presenting proximity to whiteness as a false equivalence to equality. There exists a constructed hierarchy of human value because of the color of skin. At its core, the battle for equality through affirmative action has been continuously thwarted not by different groups’ desire for opportunity but rather by anti-Blackness — the systemic policies and practices that limit the full humanity and participation of Black people in pursuit of what is seen as being deserved by others. It is trying to distance the self from Blackness in order to be seen as worthy of what is perceived as belonging to whiteness. White folks, our inheritance is not a seat at the table. Our inheritance is one of oppression and systems that blatantly serve us by excluding and oppressing human lives. Systems that we fight to uphold and maintain. Even when they don’t work like we think they do. It is yet another example of why we don’t deserve the seats at the tables and that we need to learn that folding chairs hold more power than assumed superiority.

Consistent Take: The Power of Intentionality in Education

In my work in schools, this lack of understanding of policy, systems, and historical context is what makes the conversation so difficult. Prepare young people to understand the world that has been racially constructed for them in order that they better understand their positionality and responsibility to others, not just self. Most importantly, do not shy away from the conversation. Avoidance has not protected us but rather allowed inequality to persist and minimize the humanity of ourselves and others in both policy and practice.

In admissions, hold the mirror up to yourselves. Seek the support from professionals who better understand the implications larger than any school. What is the narrative that you have created? Who does that serve?

And, if there is no policy to hold you accountable, what will you do? Because those are not applications that you are reading. They are lives. How will you be an agent to affirm the action (not just belief) that all people should have equal opportunity for access to an education — even in the face of a system, nation, and culture that has yet to rectify or create justice for a long history of discrimination.

What is that action that you, our educational gatekeepers and constructors of destiny, will seek to affirm?

And how can we, at Phillips Collaborative, partner with you in that journey towards change and accountability?

Yours in Accountability,

Jini Rae Sparkman

For Harvard, Overcoming Implicit Bias In Admissions Is Next Challenge

Wed, 08 Mar 2023 15:30:57 GMT

A federal judge says Harvard does not discriminate against Asian-Americans in its admissions process, but also says the school should look to improve its practices through implicit bias training.

As director of equity and inclusion with the Boston-based consulting group Carney, Sandoe & Associates, Lawrence Alexander has conducted implicit bias training at universities throughout the country. He joined WBUR's Morning Edition host Bob Oakes to talk about overcoming implicit bias in college admissions.

Interview highlights

On what implicit bias training means

So we do it all the time. You make implicit associations about a good neighborhood, a bad neighborhood, a good place to turn right, a bad place to turn left..and if you follow that logic, we can pretty easily see this in the college admissions process. There are many folks who read applications, who will look at students' essays and point to syntax and grammar..I work with many students who had no laptops, who had no WiFi." They were doing their best to write their essays in their phones. Those kids are just trying to get this thing done. They don't have the time, or the resources, or the adults to proofread and spellcheck, etc. So if we're not careful in calling balls and strikes, our application process will be wrought with implicit bias."

On what it will take to have real equity in college admissions

"I think that it's going to take some courageous acknowledgments that are really obvious. It's going to take the majority of these U.S. News and top report ranked institutions are historically and predominately, still white..."

On affirmative action

"I think about affirmative action as the smallest kid on the playground that the bully picks on. The bully skips past 400 years of slavery, institutionalized racism, Jim Crow which was legalized segregation based on race, 1954 Brown v. Board of Education..and of all the kids on the playground who really want to fight, they pick on the nice kid sitting in the middle of playground who just wants to invite everybody to the table: affirmative action. Why not pick on standardized test scores? Why not pick on the history affordable housing or public education? ... For me, I would say to that bully, pick on someone your own size. And if you won't fight all the kids on the playground, leave affirmative action alone."

This article was originally written on October 07, 2019

The audio attached to this post is an extended version of the interview that aired on Morning Edition on Oct. 7.

Dear Florida: The Conversations We Are Not Having About African American Erasure

Mon, 13 Feb 2023 17:49:58 GMT

“Nobody wins when the family feuds.” —Shawn “ Jay-Z” Carter

As Governor Ron DeSantis leads the conversation against the gravitas of African American history in the classrooms of Florida, the entire country looks on. A recent rejection of the College Board’s introduction of AP African American Studies in Florida high schools speaks volumes to the visceral response to a more complete exploration of American history that includes…Americans. Our Collaborative offers the following reflections as educators are left to assemble the shrapnel left from the family feud.

Dear Beloved Community,

This essay does not aim to defend the College Board, an organization that generated $1.11B of revenue in 2019 and was established in 1900 with a foundation rooted in eugenics and racism. At its essence, the College Board functions as a monopolistic gatekeeping barrier to poor Black and brown students for higher education.
What is most alarming about DeSantis’s unprecedented claim to be the singular subject matter expert on African American Studies and the Black experience is that, by the College Board acquiescing to criticism from conservatives and allowing them to determine how we examine the Black experience in a course that will be taught across the country, not only does it validate their contemptuous lies, but it will undoubtedly encourage more of this behavior.
Educators are stewards of history and truth, we are conservators and curators of curricula. Our natural inclination is to empower our students to discover and explore meaning and application. Now more than at any other time in recent history educators are anxious and confused about how to teach African American Studies or any other subject that political entities or organizations have decided to weaponize, monetize or gaslight.

You know who is not being centered here? Whose perspective is not part of the conversation? Who has the College Board neglected in their buckling and who does DeSantis sacrifice in his quest for the highest office in the land? The students. It is their educational experience that hangs in the balance and they are the collateral damage in all of this posturing.

Capitalism is dependent upon illusory options. While the College Board and DeSantis bicker, how may we, as educators, reimagine how we teach African American Studies with all of its complexity and depth without ascribing the AP prefix to it? It will take preparation: from culturally competent pedagogy, to anti-racist frameworks, scaffolding, mission alignment and community engagement but all of it is achievable, without cost to our students but instead, enrichment of the community as a whole.
My question for colleges and universities is why would you continue to accept AP credits from courses tailored to DeSantis’s autocratic endeavors?

People may be wondering why DeSantis is trying to undermine higher education for the people he represents? Ijeoma Oluo reminds us that “When white men saw that their degrees no longer put them as far ahead of Black people as their degrees once did, they began to question whether a diploma was worth the cost”. These types of attacks on higher education are not new and began during Ronald Reagan’s governorship of California when he launched a full assault on the University of California system– this tirade continued throughout his presidency. Then and now, DeSantis and other Republicans know that people with college degrees are far less likely to vote Republican.

Presently this country finds itself dangerously close to political science fiction, Parable of the Sower type levels. DeSantis’s encroachment on classroom libraries, AP African American Studies and higher education usher us one step closer to despotism. Powerful white men like DeSantis have been led to believe that everything should be built for them, it is a luxury Black people in this country have never had. As an educator, DEI practitioner and Black woman, I reject DeSantis’s racist claim that an AP curriculum in African American Studies “lacks educational value”, his statements and actions degrade Black culture and its impact throughout history. This is erasure.

This type of censorship has generational implications for Black and brown students in Florida and beyond. DeSantis is taking away students’ freedom of choice about what they are able to learn in an unparalleled way. For those of us who remain committed to a democratic society we owe it to the students of Florida and across the country to hold the College Board accountable for the abdication of its review process. And we must not be intimidated by the likes of those in power who cling to white supremacy ideology. Instead let us be relentless when combating mis/disinformation, remain civically engaged, and provide our students with the full breadth of curricula that are grounded in justice and liberation.

Towards liberation,

Milyna Phillips

Dearest LGBTQ+ and white Community (with a word for the College Board),

While in college working on my first degree, I did a survey of the texts available in anthologies of British literature. In that research, I came to understand the immense power of a company that controls the access of knowledge and information available to entire nations and through which entire generations of students will come to understand their world. I look at those same anthologies now and see those who were once erased and invisible available and found worth of academic study–primarily those now included are women, Black, Indigenous, Asian, and, yes, Queer people. Dear College Board, regardless of my personal opinion of the commodification of education, you are the wielder of the power of access. And there is responsibility in that.

And so, I would like to offer you a value proposition. Make a choice not to cave to a politician or anti-intellectual sentiment that is barely disguised white supremacy, homophobia, transphobia, and misogyny. A good value proposition tells your customer why they should do business with you. The tides of politics and power ebb and flow–swing as a pendulum to extremes. There are those who will continue to fight for a more just world. You too have a role in that. But at its most base capitalistic expression right now, you have damaged your value. If you can erase and ignore entire swaths of lives and experiences in a history course, you have failed. You are no longer a consistent product for your consumers. Create a process and courses that are consistent with your mission to create “a successful transition to college through programs and services in college readiness and college success.” Rather than ensure that African American history is palatable to white, cis, straight folks, return to your mission and let those who would judge it find their own place in history.

I will not address Ron DeSantis. He peddles in the politics of fear and because of that, he has given people license to hate.

I will address the hate.

Using the Queer community as a means to reduce and police the history, lives, and contributions of Black and African American peoples in the United States is simply put, racism under the guise of homophobia. In removing/reducing this in your curriculum, you have systematically erased the experience of actual people. They exist and have existed. Your job is to provide inclusive opportunities. You have failed in that. In removing/reducing this in your curriculum, you have systematically erased the experience of actual people. They exist and have existed. Your job is to provide inclusive opportunities. You have failed in that.

As a Queer person and member of the LGBTQ+ community, and as a white person, I am calling you to task for that. I will not accept it. And I call upon my fellow community members to hold you accountable. Particularly my white queer family. Too much of LGBTQ+ history and practices have been whitewashed–despite those queer and trans people of color that have so often led the charge. So, as a white person, I cannot let that happen here. Rainbow family, rise up. Recognize that they are trying to erase our family at the intersections and margins where many are already not known or seen, to keep young people from knowing the long history of our existence and influence.

To the College Board, you have power. Power that allows you to name who and what is worthy to know. The stranglehold that you have on access to learning is not neutral. There is no one to oppose you. As a collective of people you sought out professionals, people who have dedicated their lives and embedded themselves in understanding of and translation of the history of African Americans in the United States. Trust the professionals.

bell hooks wrote, “Dominator culture has tried to keep us all afraid, to make us choose safety instead of risk, sameness instead of diversity. Moving through that fear, finding out what connects us, reveling in our differences; this is the process that brings us closer, that gives us a world of shared values, of meaningful community.” (From Teaching Community: A Pedagogy of Hope, 2003)

Perhaps, you could have simply used this edict from bell hooks to respond to those in Florida or those who would question the legitimacy of the course. Follow the lead of these African American scholars and historical figures and let their words speak on behalf of the course.

Do better. Learning need not be palatable to those who refuse to consume it. It need only exist for those who would wade into its waters and immerse themselves in the possibility of holding information at hand.

Together in Accountability,

Jini Rae Sparkman

Dear Florida(and all other places where African American history is devalued),

I hope that you get rear-ended by a hazmat truck at a stop light, only to be saved by a medic in a gas mask, then informed that the inventor of the gas mask (1912) and the traffic light (1923) is Garrett Morgan.

I hope that you have a job interview and find all of your clothes wrinkled, only to discover that the ironing board was invented by Sarah Boone back in 1892.

I hope that your Amazon packages get stolen off your front porch and you purchase a home-security system, only to discover that Mary Van Brittan Brown invented it back in 1966.

I hope that your local grocery store closes and that you have to use a food delivery service only to discover that Frederick McKinley Jones invented the refrigerated truck back in 1940.

The notion that African-American history is somehow superfluous or additive is indeed un-American. Where would our country, if not our entire world be without the innovation and creativity of African-Americans? Rear-ended, unemployed, wrinkled, robbed, and hungry.

Your children, our students, BENEFIT from learning a fuller American history than is currently being taught. We are not asking for additions to the curriculum; we’re asking for a fuller exploration of it.

Education is not indoctrination.

Do better.

Signed,

All of us who know better.

Lawrence Alexander

Phillips Collaborative invites schools, leaders and corporations who aren’t distracted by the divisive narratives, are focused on the advancement of their DEIJ work and motivated to teach students the curricula they deserve: a fuller perspective of African American history and the Black experience, to contact us . Let’s get busy getting free, because nobody wins when the family feuds.

Begin (Again) as We Wish to Continue

Tue, 01 Nov 2022 20:46:33 GMT

In this article, Eric Hudson, Chief Program Officer at Global Online Academy, provides the reader with insight into the ways schools are focused on closing "culture gaps" and solidifying their core values and identities. Hudson's experience leading professional learning workshops in 2022 signaled that schools are looking for sustainability and ways to listen more effectively to their communities' needs. Putting belonging at the center, Hudson outlines how schools are approaching this work while reevaluating the five basics of their communities: culture, learning, partnerships, teaching, and leadership. By acknowledging that school culture requires work, where are communities creating space for students and teachers to be seen and heard? Are communities examining whether they are aligned around shared, learner-centered goals? How are schools deepening their ties to their local communities in sustainable ways tethered to learning? In what ways are schools supporting teachers in their professional learning in order to prioritize joy and purpose? What does it look like for school leaders to practice human-centered leadership and model their community's values both implicitly and explicitly?

Given the rollercoaster of the last two years and the burst of energy of the last two months, this article will be instrumental for independent school leaders considering the next iteration of a process, policy, professional development opportunity, unit of curriculum, or reengagement of a constituency. With urgency and intentionality, Hudson sketches a blueprint of where schools should begin again.

The “Problem” of Black Women in Independent Schools: A Cycle of Abuse

Fri, 21 Oct 2022 17:42:11 GMT

“You lie!” That’s how I was publicly greeted one morning by my department chair. She yelled at me as our entire division was ushered into the gymnasium for an assembly. As an educator who has spent more than a decade teaching in independent schools all over the country, I assumed that these types of microaggressions were isolated. How wrong I was. It wasn’t until years later and after an avalanche of hostile treatment and abuse did I realize that because of my positionality as a Black woman, my trajectory within independent schools was as predictable as it was brutal.

My onboarding process within independent schools was euphoric– I enjoyed getting to know my new colleagues, learning about the community, and best of all meeting the students. I was energized about the work I would accomplish in collaboration with a new cohort of educators. The institutions were proud of themselves for their “diverse” hire, and I was often paraded around campus like a shiny new penny by school leaders. In my experience, my honeymoon phase often waned when I began to be more vocal about the changes that needed to be made to policies and systems that created barriers for BIPOC faculty success and student learning.

Being my authentic self and an unapologetic advocate for marginalized communities made me a target within independent schools. The repeated injury and harassment has had a real impact and long standing implications on my well being and career. One year, after a semester of withstanding sexual harassment from a colleague, I reported the behavior to my head of school and human resources. I reported the behavior not only for myself but for the safety of other women, particularly Black women on campus.

Why do Black women continue to leave independent schools? According to the SHRM 2021 report on work culture , toxic cultures cost U.S. companies almost $50 billion per year, and toxic culture was the single biggest predictor of attrition during the first six months of the Great Resignation. There are systems of oppression and people who eternalize this oppression entrenched in independent schools and without accountability, systems change, and reparations it’s impossible to extract these schools from white supremacy. At times, perpetrators can be other BIPOC colleagues who are steeped in a scarcity mindset. And while they attempt to become proximate to power they reduce themselves to upholding white supremacy at all costs.

I never imagined that I would receive the type of fierce retaliation from my supervisors, most of whom were white women. After reporting the harassment I was told in my performance review that I wasn’t a “team player”, I was perceived as “difficult” for requesting FMLA to care for my child. I was gaslit by my head of school time and again when I wouldn’t agree to co-teach with the man who sexually harassed me. I was asked, “Hasn’t enough time passed?”, some of my colleagues were growing frustrated with me that I wouldn’t just “move on”. My mental and physical health suffered tremendously under the intense scrutiny.

The last straw was a year later when my division head asked me to write a job description for a position I had been advocating be created — a department coordinator role that would focus on curriculum, pedagogy and teach a full load. I, along with the person who harassed me, were the only people who interviewed for the position. I was the more qualified candidate and had past experience, professional development and education to prove it. At this point, he hadn’t attended any professional development outside of what the school mandated. The old adage, “we [Black women] have to be twice as good to get half as far” has always held true for me in predominantly white spaces, but was especially excruciating in this instance. He was awarded the role.

I wish that this was the end of the cycle but heads of school have private conversations with each other, they share stories and in the process can create biases against people in job searches — I was blackballed. The retaliation made it extremely difficult for me to find employment.

Tragically, my story is not as unique as you might think, this cycle of Black women being traumatized and pushed out of independent schools and nonprofits more broadly has been studied with astounding predictability (see illustration below). If independent schools are going to center equity, belonging, justice and retain their faculty of color, how may we begin to lead ourselves out of these cultures and evict toxic employees, without further traumatizing Black women in the process? How may leaders develop safeguards and systems that disrupt this cycle of workplace abuse for Black women? ad.

My narrative and that of so many others brings me to the intersection of the work I do today. I listen to stories like my own to hear for the people, systems and practices that failed. I ask how I may give agency to those in power to create capacity, urgency and imagine policies rooted in our mutuality? How might leaders resist the urge to make individualistic choices that illustrate how disassociated they may feel from the plight of others? The culture of “niceness” and the pressure to avoid confrontation within independent schools may cause some to choose the path of least resistance and maintain the status quo. I try to disrupt the cyclical culture of victim blaming and recreate spaces where BIPOC employees feel physically and psychologically safe to bring their authentic selves into our PWI’s. This is what we deserve, should fiercly demand or we will continue to leave.

What I've been up to for Summer 2022

Mon, 08 Aug 2022 12:52:47 GMT

I found myself again in NYC for the majority of my summer, committed to finishing my M.A. in Education Leadership at Teachers College, Columbia University. My five weeks in NYC included courses in the science of learning, finance, school marketing and communication, law, and equity leadership in schools. Outside my formal classes, I engaged in an exit interview design project, presented my Practicum project at a research symposium, had opportunities to meet and learn from 11 Klingenstein alumni through the Community Conversations series, and attended MJ: The Musical on Broadway, cheering my support for classmate Jason Curry, a member of the show's orchestra! A fantastic and engaging learning experience, facilitated by brilliant professors, and lots of cohorting was had.

#leadthechange

BB&N Alumni/ae of Color Network Makes Strides in Supporting Diversity

Mon, 03 May 2021 12:52:47 GMT

Founded in September 2019, BB&N's Alumni/ae of Color Network (AC) was formed in order to create a space where alumni/ae of color can build community through networking opportunities. The Bulletin recently caught up with the Founding Director of the AoC, Milyna Phillips '99, to learn more about this exciting program as it begins to establish itself in the school community.

HOW DID THE AOC COME TO EXIST?

My relationship with BB&N has not been linear. I had been disengaged with the community for many years. I knew that there were other alums who had similar experiences-feeling as though the institution's outreach never was aimed toward them, and could benefit from an affinity type of network that highlighted them and their experiences.

People who come from families of privilege often have the ability to leverage their networks for internship and job opportunities references, and general life hacks. First-generation college graduates, children of immigrants, and those that don't occupy the upper echelons of socioeconomic status often do not have access to built-in, well-connected social networks. I thought it would be fun to create one. Now we have a community of interconnected folks who are willing to volunteer their time and to make a positive difference with the BB&N community and support it in becoming an antiracist institution.

HOW DO YOU ENVISION THE AOC HELPING THE BB&N COMMUNITY?

A0C works to re-engage and establish relationships with alumni/ae who haven't traditionally felt welcomed within the greater alumni/ae community. One of our goals is to let folks know that regardless of their experience while attending BB&N, they have a home within AoC where they still have access to a brilliant network of alumni/ae of color. Another pillar of AC is to support current BIPOC students and faculty through a myriad of methods including: mentoring current BIPOC students, community outreach and partnering with faculty for professional development opportunities, and other community-wide events.

WHAT ARE YOU MOST EXCITED ABOUT AS SOMEONE WHO HAS BEEN SO INTEGRAL TO GETTING THE AOC UP AND
RUNNING? ARE THERE SPECIFIC PIECES OF IT THAT YOU ARE PARTICULARLY PROUD OF OR EXCITED ABOUT?

As the Founding Director of the AC, it has been an exhilarating experience to witness a passion project metamorphose into an organization that is focused on building community and advocating for sustainable antiracist change within the institution.

More specifically, I am proud of all of the work AC's steering committee has accomplished in such a short amount of time and their commitment to ensuring that current and future students and alumni/ae all feel heard and experience a more equitable, less traumatic, and antiracist version of BB&N.

We are in the process of establishing an internet work that will create a mentorshin mechanism within Ao as well as a wav to seek internships and job opportunities across the country. Every month we feature an AC Spotlight on our website, highlighting the powerful impact alums are having in their own communities-we are able to amplify these narratives
throughout our presence on social media platforms. We are working with the Advancement Office and the DEIG Office to establish a fund that supports students of color programming Finally.

We are in constant outreach mode-most recently learning about the exciting work that the DEIG ad hoc committee is accomplishing at the Board of Trustees level. We also have monthly check-ins with the chairs of the Parents of Black Students affinity group. Growing our membership and building authentic relationships with other alumni/ae of color has been such a rewarding experience for all involved-we look forward to welcoming the Class of 2021 members into the community in June!

I REALIZE IT'S A NEW PROGRAM, BUT HAVE YOU SEEN ANY PROGRESS ALREADY? ARE THERE ANY EXAMPLES OF THE
NETWORK WORKING IN WAYS THAT YOU HAD HOPED?

Our growth in membership has provided us with so many insights on where to focus our attention and how to drive the network forward. We've connected people with their classmates and friends who they may have lost touch with or only have a social media connection with.

There are professionals joining the mentorship program that can help guide students of color in new and exciting ways that they may not have thought about or had the confidence to pursue We're also seeing a lot of alumni/ae foster friendships with people in other class ears who they mav never have had occasion to get to know in the past.

The AC Spotlight has given us an opportunity to highlight our members and provide them with a platform to share their work. Some of them have published books during the pandemic, and another created an app with a fellow BB&N alum that is available on the iOS app store. Some of us are mentors to current students others have volunteered for the

alumni/ae of color speaker series, held listening sessions as the country was reeling from the murders of so many Black people over the summer, and held space for each other to be in community with one another; we even include Lewis Bryant, recently retired Director of Multicultural Services, in our events as an honorary member. The pandemic forced us to be more creative in developing these spaces and hosting events.

But the challenge has had its benefits. The most exciting Is relationships we have established with faculty members; these have resulted in some exciting collaborative events, which we'll be announcing soon!

I REALIZE IT'S A NEW PROGRAM, BUT HAVE YOU SEEN ANY PROGRESS ALREADY? ARE THERE ANY EXAMPLES OF THE
NETWORK WORKING IN WAYS THAT YOU HAD HOPED?

We hope to partner with broader constituencies within the BB&N community and be more Involved in Improving the everyday lives
experience of current and future students and faculty members Being in alignment with BB&N's strategic plan, we look forward to
partnering with the Admission Office to broaden outreach to future BB&N families and with the senior leadership to help with the
recruitment and retention of faculty of color.

As far as long-term goals, the AC has endless possibilities. We want to harness the alumni/ae voice as a powerful conduit
in connecting the administration and the board to the lived experiences of students, and give alumni/ae of color a seat at
the table. We have a wealth of knowledge that can produce meaningful, sustainable changes that will benefit not only students,
faculty, and alumni/ae of color, but will enrich the experiences of the entire community.

In Practice: Creating a Safe Space for BIPOC Alumni

Mon, 15 Feb 2021 16:33:48 GMT

Most advancement offices use a donor prospecting software to gauge potential donors’ wealth and likelihood of giving. The standard prospecting process has historically left out Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC). And BIPOC alumni who have been traumatized at independent schools often intentionally opt out of any type of engagement. That’s what happened to me 22 years ago at Buckingham Browne & Nichols School (MA)—after graduating, I never heard from BB&N again, nor did I bother to update my contact information. I was one of the “lost” contacts—alumni who BB&N didn’t have contact information for—until 2018 when I met BB&N’s new head of school, Jennifer Price, during her first-year listening tour that made a stop in Washington, D.C

Price listened to my story about my experience as a student and as an alum, told me about her vision to create a more inclusive school community that fosters greater belonging, and acknowledged there was much relationship repair that needed to be done. Her authenticity, sincerity, and the actionable steps that she outlined the school would be taking toward equity and justice left me with a sense of hopefulness. During the summer of 2018, immediately after she was hired, Price hired a special assistant to the head of school for equity and inclusion, recognizing early that diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice (DEIJ) work could not be the sole responsibility of one person at the school. Shortly thereafter, she invited me to join BB&N’s Alumni/ae Council and encouraged my input. She earned my trust to give BB&N another chance and ultimately led me to take a closer look at the structures that have kept alumni of color away from the school. In 2018, I joined the council.

As schools everywhere quickly built infrastructure and developed capacity for educating students safely throughout a pandemic, I wondered “Where’s the same urgency and capacity-building for schools to begin to eradicate institutional and structural racism, which continues to champion white supremacist practices. So in September 2019, with the support of Price, I launched the Alumni/ae of Color Network (AoC) to amplify the narratives of BIPOC BB&N alumni, even if they were not interested in supporting or returning to the school. My vision was to provide the type of access and inheritance of networks that white people acquire—the ones that so often elude first-generation college graduates, immigrants, and anyone who isn’t white or wealthy. Through the AoC, this community of BIPOC alumni would hold the institution accountable for becoming anti-racist.

A Starting Point

At my first alumni/ae council leadership conference, I listened to quantitative data about overall advancement efforts and engagement with alumni. I learned that the demographic data of “lost” alum was unknown; because the demographic information for most of these alumni was never captured in the first place, there is no way to discern whether BIPOC alum are included. The lost voices matter and are needed, I told the council.

Many schools and advancement offices are in a similar situation. And many continue to accept and maintain this status quo without any critical analysis as to why. However, schools and advancements offices alike received a resounding why in the summer of 2020, with the more than 250 Black@ Instagram accounts detailing the racial trauma alumni had experienced within the halls of independent schools. Given my experience as a consultant and educator, as well as my positionality as a Black woman, I couldn’t reconcile why this ecosystem of complex power dynamics had never been disrupted. What decisions and actions reinforced the status quo, implicit bias, and current inequities in outreach strategies to BIPOC alum? And what alternative action could I take to produce different outcomes while supporting these alumni?

My goal was to create a transformative system that divests from whiteness and centers the needs of people who have been historically marginalized. I started by researching schools that were innovating in this space. At the time, Germantown Friends School (PA) was the only institution I found to be engaged in a similar framework of outreach with BIPOC alumni. It even has an alumni diversity manager and database administrator. As I imagined what the AoC would look like, I decided this work needed a grassroots foundation, operating autonomously and led by alumni of color.

The Approach

First, I enlisted the help of the chair and vice chair of the AoC, in partnership with the alumni programs office and the retiring director of multicultural services, Lewis Bryant, to spread the word about what began as an affinity group. Together, we invited BIPOC alumni to an inaugural event, hosted at a fellow alum’s restaurant in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in November 2019. Among the 20 attendees, a common thread in the narrative became apparent: BB&N’s BIPOC alumni were in search of community and did not want to hear from their alma mater only when it was time to donate money or attend a reunion. From this event, I started a basic database that included members’ contact information, location, and desired outcome(s) for joining AoC with the hope that it would grow exponentially with each event.

The AoC is a space to find community, reengage with peers and the broader BB&N community, lend a voice about experiences at BB&N, and help strategize and support the implementation of anti-racist/anti-oppression and restorative justice work at BB&N. The steering committee was created during the summer of 2020 after realizing AoC’s work would only be sustainable if we could increase bandwidth and outreach. There are currently eight steering committee members who decide and implement marketing strategy, serve as mentors, help plan events, and build relationships with different constituents in the community.

As I planned for the next event and the bigger picture, I thought about how the alumni groups at our school could work together and ensure that outreach is done through an equity lens. Professional development for the executive committee of the alumni council and alumni programs staff would be critical. In 2020–2021, I enlisted Jini Rae Sparkman, director of the office of equity and inclusion at Holderness School (NH), to lead the executive committee and alumni programs staff through several sessions of her workshop “Antiracism and the Institution.” The AoC steering committee’s professional development was centered on “Operationalizing Equity,” facilitated by Lawrence Alexander, a search consultant at Carney, Sandoe & Associates’ diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging practice. The professional development was held virtually during regularly scheduled meeting times. Now that we all had a mutual understanding and foundational knowledge of anti-racism, we were more confident and aligned about how to proceed with reimagining programs, policies, and practices.

In Action

Connection is at the core of the AoC, so I infused an affinity group with an entrepreneurial spirit and it has evolved into a social impact/justice organization that brings together more than 70 members spanning five decades and engages hundreds more. Volunteers have planned communitywide events, including ones in collaboration with BB&N’s diversity, equity, inclusion, and global education office (DEIG), such as “Centering BIPOC Voices: A Conversation with Angela Davis and Nikki Giovanni” and a Black History Month celebration, and we feature AoC members’ work in the community through our “AoC Spotlights.” The AoC has also partnered with BB&N’s DEIG office in launching a mentorship program with BIPOC alumni for current students of color. The AoC lives out its mission through these events by continuing to ampilify BIPOC narratives and fostering community.

Our most pressing challenges include preventing volunteer burnout—the hours required to manage an organization that has grown so quickly during a pandemic are plentiful. This school year, we are being mindful and creative about planning events and combatting Zoom fatigue. The AoC will focus on developing and formalizing internal processes and better defining committee members’ roles and responsibilities. This year’s plan includes safely hosting outdoor regional events outside of the metro Boston area, professional development, and continued relationship-building with BB&N’s parent, student, and faculty affinity groups.

The Takeaways

As we’ve worked to create a group in which BIPOC alumni feel safe to reconnect, participate, and contribute to our school, we’ve learned some lessons along the way.

Ask and answer the hard questions. How does your advancement office need to be restructured—not in preparation for another campaign but because the data reflects that outreach and relationship-building and repair is inadequate among alumni of color? Has your school diversified its advancement office staff? Do they receive anti-racist professional development on a consistent basis?

Data collection is an imperative and requires consistency. AoC is in constant outreach mode, but if racial and ethnic demographic data hasn’t been captured or is optional, then it is infinitely more difficult to reach out to alumni of color, especially after the five-year reunion demarcation when many alumni graduate college, start new jobs, relocate, and change email addresses. The flow of data should not be siloed but collected and shared among admission, DEIJ, and alumni programs. To do this, independent schools would benefit from having an institutional researcher and database manager who collaborate in reconciling the data and creating a system to capture it on a consistent basis.

Relationship repair and restorative justice are at the core . Advancement and senior administration teams have to develop the capacity to dismantle and reimagine their outreach strategies and conceive a healthier dynamic between private schools and alumni partnerships. All of the data they need is in their Black@ accounts—this work isn’t a glossy strategic plan or campaign but acknowledging the humanity in others that is disassociated from a dollar amount. It is essential that tough conversations with traumatized alumni continue, and the question must be asked: What does justice and repair look like for them ?

Black Women in the Workplace: We Cannot Be Your Shield and Your Target

Wed, 09 Dec 2020 16:20:19 GMT

According to research, Black women make up the majority of those who occupy the role of diversity director/practitioner in the United States. However, within many organizations, Black women are often pigeonholed in this visible-yet-invisible role in which they're expected to be the shield, singularly leading diversity efforts for the institution with little to no substantive support. We're also often made to be targets, where we experience vitriol within the workplace in the form of microaggressions, anti-Blackness, misogynoir, racism, pay inequity, and more. The experience of being made both the shield and the target significantly impacts the physical and mental health of Black women, negatively positioning us in the workplace and causing high turnover rates.

Historically, Black women have been expected to do both roles within the workplace and beyond. In the predominately white spaces that we navigate, everyone turns to us to support and uplift them and lead efforts in activism and justice, yet at the very same time we're on the receiving end of criticism, tone policing, and disrespect.

From my perspective as a Black woman, there is never a time in the workplace when we're not oscillating between being both the shield and the target.

Black women as the shield can be attributed back to the "mammy" stereotype, where Black women were seen as maternal figures and loyal servants. Born on the plantation, the "mammy" trope was perpetuated to justify enslavement, but also to posit the Black woman as the protector of the white family above any and everything, content with being in servitude.

When Black women work within systems and push for accountability or call out racism, the dismissiveness, refusal to listen, or the predictable "why is everything about race with you" happens.

This thinking continues today, but has evolved into Black women becoming the face of an organization, where they are on the front lines to address systemic racism — the very issue they experience on a daily basis. This leads to the tokenization of Black women in an attempt to give an external illusion that an organization values diversity and inclusion, whereas their actions tend to suggest they are value upholding the status quo along with the centering of whiteness. Accordingly, Black women are symbolically used as props, but over time, their mere presence makes them a target.

Milyna Phillips, a diversity practitioner based in Washington DC, painfully shared her experiences within the workplace with POPSUGAR, saying, "It didn't start off adversarial, but eventually became a contentious relationship between me and my employer. It started off as a 'honeymoon phase,' and quickly dissipated to where I regularly experienced misogynoir (anti-Black misogyny specifically directed towards Black women), affecting my mental health and wellness ." In many cases, Black women begin their journey into the workplace with a lot of energy and ideas, ready to do the work to ascend up the company ladder. When those ideas start to challenge the status quo, that's when we begin to feel and sense some pushback . Phillips continued, "When my behavior changed to no longer feeling grateful to have the job and I wasn't intimidated by others who were senior in the organization, this is when the retaliation and sexual assault began."

This phenomenon that Black women experience is known as "pet to the threat," where Black women move quickly from being the most liked to the most despised in the workplace. The more ambitious we are in our own professional growth, the more others become threatened by our confidence. "When I started to question and call out policies that were rooted in unfairness , the more pushback I received," Phillips said. "I remember that's when the gaslighting began." Racial gaslighting refers to psychological manipulation centered on race in which the manipulator tries to get a person to question their own reality and experiences of racism. When Black women work within systems and push for accountability or call out racism, the dismissiveness, refusal to listen, or the predictable "why is everything about race with you" happens — a common practice in racial gaslighting. Phillips recalled this happening to her, saying, "They denied, ignored, and blamed me. The onus was put back on me as a Black woman to fix it. The very issues I brought to the surface, I was now responsible to change." This pattern of behavior accounts for the low retention rates of Black women within the workplace and for the disproportionate level of "burnout," a result of the toll of the emotional labor required of a diversity director within a predominately white institution (PWI). Organizations continue to perpetuate this vicious cycle, creating an unsafe working environment for Black women, akin to the one that Phillips described. If companies are to change their practices, it will first have to begin with listening to Black women. Don't question our experiences. Believe us. Entrust us to lead. Entrust us to make the workplace more equitable for everyone. Trust us to do our jobs .

Next, pay us for our talents and expertise. Black women currently make 62 cents to the dollar as compared to their white male counterparts , and pay inequity is a form of racism in which Black women are paid considerably less for their work despite advanced degrees and depth of experience. As a result of this glaring disparity, companies need to work diligently to create a work environment in which Black women are respected and protected. Those in positions of power have to be willing to risk their social capital, using their privilege as shields to protect Black women. Black women have been and continue to be the backbone of the workforce, despite the challenges we inherently face due to the confluence of our racial and gender identity. Our intersectional journey as Black women needs to be discussed so that other Black women know that they are not alone, and that we all, not one of us, will no longer permit being both the shield and the target. There is no blame in sharing our experiences, as our Blackness shouldn't be framed as the problem. Our Black womanhood is a source of strength, beauty, and excellence, where our voices are deserving of affirmation, amplification, and protection. Every organization should be asking themselves, "What are we doing to protect Black women? How do we not rob Black women of their humanity?"

Image Source: Photo Courtesy of Ralinda Watts and Reynaldo Macias EEC 2020

More than an Athlete? The Re- emergence of the Athlete-Activist Hybrid

Wed, 15 May 2019 12:57:40 GMT

I've always been passionate about social justice, activism, and their relationship to agency over one's body. I wanted to share something that would intertwine these interests with a topic that was relatable, directly impacted their lives, and, most importantly, left them feeling empowered. I knew the students would immediately be able to recognize the most famous athlete activists and provide some context into how they are trying to affect change.

While I was doing the research for my presentation, I realized that without an in-depth knowledge of sports history, it was unlikely that the students would be able to identify athletes who sacrificed their entire careers, education, safety, and livelihood in the name of equality
and activism only a few decades ago.

When they learned that Kareem Abdul- Jabbar was only 19 years old when he attended the Cleveland Summit of 1969 to demonstrate his solidarity with Muhammad Ali and that in 1967, 14 members of the University of Wyoming's football team were freshmen in college when they protested racist league policies, it humanized these heroes and made them relatable. Students voiced that they, too, can affect change in their communities and in school but having a plan and speaking out.