What We Learned: Memphis, TN Equity at Work Cohort 2019-2020
In August of 2019, Beloved Community launched our Memphis Equity at Work Cohort which concluded in February of 2020. This 6 month series included 8 Memphis non-profit organizations: All Memphis, Building Memphis, Community Foundation of Greater Memphis, Arts Memphis, The Commons, Innovate Memphis, Momentum Nonprofit Partners, The Orpheum.
Beloved Community is a non-profit consulting firm focused on implementing regional, sustainable solutions for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). Through individualized and personalized support, Beloved Community fosters open lines of communication and realistic plans to create and implement tangible, measurable systemic change at work, at home, and in schools. Our approach is universal, achieving results for organizations in the not-for-profit sector, hospitality, school administrations, affordable housing and beyond.
Our work includes: one-on-one coaching through our Equity Audit Tool and Equity Lens Map, capacity-building services that ensure historically marginalized people have real access and opportunity to live vibrant, productive lives, and building communities of practice through regional and national DEI cohorts.
Below, our Director of Education & Programming, Dr. Nicole Caridad Ralston (she/her/hers) shares some emerging themes from our Memphis Equity at Work cohort and implications for our next phase of work.
Equity at Work - Nonprofits
We like to say that Equity is a head and heart issue. It touches every part of our work life: governance, finance, operations, program, and culture. In our first Memphis cohort, we worked with nonprofit partners, whose work spanned the gamut from arts foundations to theaters to design-thinking organizations. Regardless of the organization’s primary mission, our engagements focused on deepening diversity, equity, and inclusion policies and practices throughout their organization.
Our primary work was helping them to develop components for their equity work plans as a result of their Equity Audit results. Each facilitated session builds community agency and accountability so that an organization’s DEI work becomes sustainable even if the leadership changes, the funding stream dries up, or staff turnover occurs. The cohort experience provides ample opportunities for organizations to do deep work within their organization while also creating a community of practice for organizations to share and discuss their strategies, successes, and pain points to increase diversity, equity, and inclusion in their organizations. The full list of facilitated cohort sessions included::
Racial Equity, Bias, and Intersectionality
Unpacking the Equity Audit
Building & Assessing Belongingness
Developing Equitable Talent Practices
Inclusive Community Engagement
Creating an Equity Work Plan
Additionally, we supported their leadership teams to embed diversity, equity, and inclusion expectations and practices into their ongoing work through individual coaching.
Our Facilitators
Rhonda Broussard, CEO & Founder, Beloved Community
Rhonda supports schools and education nonprofits to operationalize their commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. Rhonda is a career educator who founded and led a charter management organization in St. Louis, MO. Under her leadership the CMO achieved 92%, equivalent to accredited with distinction on the Missouri state accountability system. As a recipient of the Eisenhower Fellowship for International Leadership, Rhonda studied in Finland and New Zealand. She focused on minority language education policies, whole system education reform, and teacher education. Rhonda has conducted research in metropolitan France, Cameroun, and Martinique. Rhonda is a Pahara-Aspen Fellow. Rhonda was a National Board Certified Teacher and has worked in district and charter schools in drop-out recovery, college access, working class, immigrant, and affluent school communities. Rhonda holds a BA in French and Secondary Education from Washington University in St. Louis and an MA in French Studies from The Institute of French Studies at NYU. Rhonda lives in her native Louisiana with her bilingual family.
Lesley Brown Rawlings, Senior Director of Capacity-Building
Lesley is a proven education leader with expertise in talent management and human capital practices designed to drive culturally competent, inclusive and transformative academic success for all students. With a passion and commitment for creating pathways to new possibilities and outcomes for our most underserved communities, she delves into the training, recruitment, selection, engagement and development experiences and resources essential to setting students, families and cities up for success. Lesley was most recently the Director of People and Practice Investments for the Memphis Education Fund. She is an alumni of the Broad Residency in Urban Education, a wife and mother, as well as a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated and The Links, Inc.
Dr. Nicole Caridad Ralston, Director of Education & Programming
Dr. Nicole Caridad Ralston is the Director for Education and Programming at Beloved Community. Nicole completed her Ph.D. at the University of New Orleans where her research focused on women of color in senior leadership roles in higher education and how they navigate multiple intersections of identity and systems of oppression. Dr. Ralston also teaches the graduate course, “Diversity in Higher Education” at the University of Memphis. Nicole serves on the board of Ivy Leadership Academy, serves on the board of ACLU Louisiana, and works as a facilitator with the LeaderShape Institute. Lastly, she volunteers as the Chair for the New Orleans Hispanic Heritage Foundation’s Azucar Ball, which raises money for local Latinx youth scholarships. In her free time, she enjoys sharing her New Orleans food adventures on her Instagram food blog, @eatenpathnola.
Our Cohort
Each organization brought 5-6 members of their teams to the 6 cohort sessions. In total, about 50 people participated in the cohort. Cohort members from each organization included the CEO/ED, Operations Manager, Data Strategist, Talent/HR, Programming, and Board Members.
Below is the self-reported demographic information of the cohort members:
Race:
Black/African American: 40%
White: 60%
American Indian/Native American: 4%
Hispanic/Latinx: 4%
Gender:
Female: 72%
Male: 28%
What We Have Learned
At the completion of the cohort we administered a post-survey to assess the learning and growth of participants, and to gather feedback about the experience. Below are the results from the survey:
Quantitative Themes
90% of participants reported that:
"I am more likely to (or have considered new ways to) incorporate diversity, equity, and inclusion strategies into my work"
"I am more willing to relinquish my own power, control, and air time to contribute to a more equitable community"
80% of participants reported that:
I am more likely to regularly advocate for the inclusion of diverse voices and opinions, and for shared power and accountability.
"I am more likely to (or have expanded my understanding of what it means to) engage individuals who are resistant, struggling, and passive about diversity, equity, and inclusion."
Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Advocacy Growth:
Participants reported that after completing our sessions they now advocate for the inclusion of diverse voices and opinions, and for shared power and accountability at a rate of 80% of their time which is a 25% increase from what they reported before starting the cohort.
Qualitative Themes
Biggest takeaway: actualizing DEI through Equity Audit data and written policies.
"My biggest takeaway was that little things can make a huge difference. I think somewhere in my head and heart I may have known this but our journey together, and especially the support and feedback from our coach, Nicole, helped to remind me that while we have a long way to go, we are also making progress in may ways and we need to remember and celebrate that. (while of course continuing to remain active and keep growing in our work)
"This work has to be intentional at every stage. We can never make an assumption that we are all on the same page. We have to use a DEI lens in every meeting and every conversation."
What worked well:
Facilitators building trust, challenging organizations, while also being non-judgemental and supportive
Allowing time in-session for teams to work on DEI strategies:
“Embedding team work-time into the sessions. Often, it was the only time we got to discuss some of these issues!”
What can be improved:
Increased accountability, requiring organizations to work in-between sessions on their DEI goals.
Longer time in sessions, particularly for the Community Engagement and Belongingness sessions.
Testimonials
“We now understand (and have the language to communicate to elected officials/funders) how, in a political world, equal service delivery is not necessarily equitable service delivery and that we must examine public sector service delivery by neighborhood and resident outcomes to see where inequalities need to be addressed.”
“My definition of EQUITY evolved because I now see how much belongingness has to do with it. Even if our practices are becoming more equitable, are we also creating inclusive spaces where people feel like they belong? These things are BOTH crucial and it does not matter if we are diverse, if we don't include equity and belongingness.”
“Although this work feels squishy, and intangible - just like anything else you can create a work plan and evaluate yourself.”
“The hiring tips tool to help remove bias was great. I also loved the biases tests that were distributed. Everything that we could use as a tool was very important because we know that we want to advance our DEI work, but we need help in figuring out how to implement new practices or identify areas where we're lacking - the tools were instrumental in that.”
Beloved Learnings
We challenge neutrality throughout the cohort process. We open our cohort sessions by stating that we do not believe that neutrality can be an option for organizations who are ready to commit to sustainable DEI solutions. We also model that as facilitators - we do not pretend to ever be neutral or objective. We believe that we are all navigating our lives, jobs, and organizations through our social identities which color how we view the world. We challenge individuals and organizations from the start of our series to consistently interrogate where “neutrality” is actualizing into harmful policies or practices for those existing in the margins of their communities.
Feedback is love. We value and adore feedback at Beloved Community. We collect feedback from cohort participants after every session, and at a mid-point coaching call that occurs halfway through the series. We utilize this feedback to make shifts between each session and to add specific resources based on their needs. These meetings were also opportunities for us to learn more about the leader and organization in order to curate tailored content to use in facilitations and coaching sessions.
Organizations need more time and more opportunities to engage with each other about DEI journeys and strategies. We almost always needed more time during our sessions. Organizations enjoyed the time to discuss these topics with their teams and with other organizations, and we are committed to building longer sessions to account for this need. We are currently piloting 6 hour, virtual sessions with our Equity in Schools New Orleans cohort. Thus far, we have received positive feedback about how the extended time allows participants to have more time with their teams to make-meaning of our content and dig deeper into the resources.
We help you turn your equity commitments into action. Among most of our organization leaders, we found that they were earnest, but unclear about how to move their commitment from talk to action. We build out practical pre and post work in between each of our sessions to move organizations forward in actualizing their DEI commitments. In every engagement, leaders shared with us how helpful our tools were to provide them with a clear framework for and confidence to lead their change strategy.
Readiness still matters. We firmly believe that our cohort is for organizations who already understand that this work is imperative and important. For those who are not at that “2.0” level, or who are not yet comfortable naming race, class, power, and privilege with us, we refer them to a few options of local or national trainers who could help them deepen their knowledge base.
Relationship building with organizations is crucial. We continue to find that in order to build trust with the organizations and to build a strong foundation of communication, we need to spend time with organizations before the cohort sessions begin. We had on average three meetings with each leader, one of which occurred before the cohort launched. In that meeting, we outlined what to expect from the Equity at Work series and discussed their current DEI needs, successes, and goals.
As facilitators, we are committed to growth. In line with our own Equity at Work expectations, our team is in a constant state of evolution. Below are some strategies we want to commit to as facilitators of adult learning experiences:
Incorporating art and movement in sessions helps address the needs of various learning styles and infuses energy into the arc of the day. We are currently running virtual cohort sessions due to Covid 19, and are very proud of our virtual sessions and the positive feedback they receive. That being said, we still want to grow in our usage of virtual tools to increase multimodal learning in a virtual landscape.
We want to continue to incorporate more participant voices in the sessions, and have created opportunities for our current cohort members to lead icebreaker activities and energizers throughout the day.
Creating a tangible workbook for cohort members to reflect in, store activities and facilitation prompts for them to bring back to their full-team, record their pre and post-work, and take notes during sessions. We are currently piloting this with the Equity in Schools New Orleans cohort.
Our Beloved Community
“The larger your beloved community, the more you can accomplish in the world. “ - Thich Nhat Hanh
None of our work would be possible without a growing beloved community supporting us. We are thankful to the following organizations who welcomed us into some of their most tender moments during the cohort series:
All Memphis
Building Memphis
Community Foundation of Greater Memphis
Arts Memphis
The Commons
Innovate Memphis
Momentum Nonprofit Partners
The Orpheum