2021 Inclusive Leadership Speakers
(click Image Below to learn More about these subject Matter experts!)
The IDEA Institute's Inclusive Leadership Cohort for Social Change (ILC) is a powerful year-long, peer-led program hosted at BRIDGE for leaders committed to equity and inclusion. Our 2021 inaugural group is guided by best practices in justice and equity as well as cultural competence. Over the year, we are building networks with national subject matter experts speaking to accountability. I have an opportunity to design, curate, and co-lead this program, and our speakers have been broad-ranging. It's been a pleasure to curate the experience towards positive social impact, deepening commitment in each session.
We’re benchmarking equity in each of the 30 participating organizations probing into representation in equity and inclusion in vendor selection, leadership, mentor programs, pay, mission alignment and community impact. Cohort members have now completed a battery of 100 questions to inquire into our individual leadership and organizational patterns, and ultimately, hold each other to goals and commitments. Together, we are embodying collective leadership. This summer, we will create new plans to reflect our larger community’s collective vision and needs. New projects, partnerships and insights will emerge. Curious? Read more about it in The Berkshire Eagle. ~Gwendolyn VanSant, CEO and Founding Director of BRIDGE
Read more about 2021 Progress
theberkshireedge.com/bridge-unveils-a-new-vision-of-equity-inclusion-and-justice-for-the-berkshires/
We’re benchmarking equity in each of the 30 participating organizations probing into representation in equity and inclusion in vendor selection, leadership, mentor programs, pay, mission alignment and community impact. Cohort members have now completed a battery of 100 questions to inquire into our individual leadership and organizational patterns, and ultimately, hold each other to goals and commitments. Together, we are embodying collective leadership. This summer, we will create new plans to reflect our larger community’s collective vision and needs. New projects, partnerships and insights will emerge. Curious? Read more about it in The Berkshire Eagle. ~Gwendolyn VanSant, CEO and Founding Director of BRIDGE
Read more about 2021 Progress
theberkshireedge.com/bridge-unveils-a-new-vision-of-equity-inclusion-and-justice-for-the-berkshires/
When: all year Monthly at 2-4 PM on 2nd and 4th Tuesdays- mark your calendars! With additional supplemental IDEA Institute and New Pathways Installments and Subject Matter Experts and Cohort Project Sessions throughout the months mostly on Tuesdays!
How to prepare once accepted?
1) Be sure you are engaged in self-education and that your teams have equity and inclusion conversations as a part of normal practice and culture in your day to day workflow.
Pick up a book or audio book and dig in (Look at Ted Talks): Listen to 1619 (NY Times), Seeing White (Unseen). Read Emergent Strategy (brown), Just Us (Rankine) and Appreciative Inquiry as a Daily Leadership Practice (Verheijen, Tjepkema, and Kabalt), Caste (Wilkerson), My Grandmother's Hands (Menakem), White Fragility (d'Angelo) and the Practice of Adaptive Leadership (Heifetz, Grashow and Linsky) The Righteous Mind (Haidt), The Book of Joy and The Color of Wealth (2006.).
2) Be involved with organizations that amplify equity, justice and inclusion efforts in the County.
3) Connect with the Trello Board System
4) Be sure your organization is aware of the commitment to movement-building!
5) Get ready for rewarding changemaking work!
6) Set aside 10 hrs. of time a month!
Who we are:
A partnership of BRIDGE with sponsoring organizations Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation, Greylock Federal Credit Union, Crane Foundation and Berkshire Bank Foundation
Launched in January 2021, Inclusive Leadership as a Force for Change will support 48-60 leaders across sectors in being catalysts for embedding diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) within their organizations and companies. This peer-learning program aims to support leaders who see a strategic imperative and a human calling to adopt & refine DEI principles and practices as a path to increased effectiveness, competitive advantage, and mission fulfillment.
An Urgent Call for Leadership
Recent events serve as painful reminders of the inequities and disparities that remain so prevalent in society. As Americans reckon with racial injustice amid an urgent drive for change, leaders across sectors must heed a moral imperative to critically examine the role they can play in addressing equity and inclusion in their organizations and companies, and the communities they serve.
Locally, this movement is underway as the non-white and foreign-born populations in Berkshire County continue to increase, providing a source of energy and entrepreneurship, and helping to mitigate the effects of an aging population and bring our county in to the 21st Century. Members of these growing, diverse communities possess the skills and ambition to be meaningful participants in the economy, workplaces, and neighborhoods. Future economic and community vitality depend on intentional and lasting efforts to promote this participation, advance DEI and create cultural change.
Leaders of every business, school, municipality, and nonprofit are accountable for responding to these changes in their operating environments, the cultures they create, and the systems they use for decision-making and resource allocation. As our workplaces become more diverse, cultural competency and change management skills are essential for leaders to be effective in embedding DEI as a mission and/or business imperative, and in the context of wider community efforts.
An Invitation to Join a Network and Learn with Peers
This yearlong program will employ a cohort-based, experiential learning format to intentionally engage and support teams of leaders across sectors. The experiences, insights, and connections forged in this type of peer-learning environment, along with the mutual accountability it encourages, will help leaders to grow and gain a supportive peer network for future success.
Participating organizations will designate a team of two for the program, including one member of senior leadership, who will identify a business or mission imperative within their organization or company for which DEI is a central consideration and/or contributor to solutions. At the program’s start, participants will consider the scope of this leadership imperative and the steps needed to address it, while defining success in measurable terms.
With the help of a tailored curriculum, peer learning, and targeted coaching throughout the program, participating teams will relate what they are learning about leadership in the context of DEI and how this re-imagined leadership can be advancing the identified business or mission imperative within their organization or company.
Program Elements
Based on BRIDGE’s model of sequenced learning and capacity building, the program begins by fostering preparedness for effective leadership through increasing cultural competency. This component is followed by skill building to empower leaders to strategically embed DEI principles and practices into their organizations and companies. The model’s shared learning experience will create a network of leadership that can also contribute to our communities, helping to confront and correct persistent injustices and disparities, especially for communities of color and other underrepresented groups.
The program will be a mix of full group plenary sessions, smaller sector-specific group work, and individual coaching. Issue-based groups may be formed to explore new ways of exerting leadership in the areas of education, arts and culture, business and finance, public policy, community organizing, law enforcement, human service and public health, or the media, depending on participants and the theme and design of each session.
The program kicked off with participation in the New Pathways Social Justice Conference with activist and author Angela Davis on Sunday, November 8, with the cohort-based learning starting in February 2021. Stay tuned for excerpts from the conference that will amplify your cohort learning experience.
Partcipating Organizations:
WAM Theatre, Norman Rockwell, CATA, The Mount, Shake & Co, Chesterwood, Art Omi and IS183, MCLA, MCLA Institute for Arts and Humanity, Habitat for Humanity, BUW, Working Cities, BTCF, Berkshire Bridges, Waldorf School in Hawthorne Valley, General Dynamics, Berkshire Health Systems, BRIDGE, Williams College, BCC, Greylock Federal, Berkshire Bank, Jacobs Pillow and Mahaiwe Theatre alongside a few more pending invitations and/or interested community groups in the community....
Barr Foundation Link (Find BRIDGE ,Jacobs Pillow and CATA along with report on Arts & Culture
www.barrfoundation.org/arts-creativity/culture-and-community-in-a-time-of-transformation#video-highlights
“In the recent Culture & Community in a Time of Transformation survey of thousands of Massachusetts residents, the top priorities for change in the arts and culture sector that emerged include addressing systemic racism and other social issues, being a welcoming place for all with deep diversity of audiences, staff, programming and content, and creating meaningful community collaborations. BRIDGE provides such a valuable model for organizations grappling with how to activate these findings with a framework of ongoing internal practice to build a foundation for authentic welcome, belonging, and relationship building with community. We’re honored to have Gwendolyn VanSant reflecting on BRIDGE’s work alongside these research findings because we believe it can inform and inspire other arts organizations to take actions that reflect the desires of Massachusetts residents and communities.” ~Jen Benoit-Bryan, PhD | President | Slover Linett Audience Research
If your beloved organization is not here, let us know if you think they would benefit from this action-oriented, peer-supported leadership cohort orient and innovate towards the advancement of justice, equity and inclusion in our County in 2023! Applications available Sept 1, 2022. Launch Feb 1, 2023.
For more information, contact: [email protected].
Facilitated By Gwendolyn VanSant and Aseante Renee (2021)
Curated by Gwendolyn VanSant