IDEA Institute @ BRIDGE 2021: Inclusive Leadership Cohort for Social Change
New Start Date- Launching Soon!
Tuesday February 9, 2020 2-4 PM
When: all year Monthly at 2-4 PM on 2nd and 4th Tuesdays- mark your calendars! With supplemental IDEA Institute and New Pathways Installments and Subject Matter Experts and Cohort Project Sessions throughout the months mostly on Tuesdays!
February Agenda (*required attendance)
Facilitators Gwendolyn VanSant with Aseante Renee
February Guest Presenters: Kevin Thomas and Newell Eaton
February 9, Building New Relationships: Introductions, Intentions & Icebreaker
February 16 Embodying Vulnerability with guest Newell Eaton
DURING February Benchmarking Equity & Inclusion
February 23, Building Trust & Relationships through Race Dialogue
FAQs
When will we know when we are accepted?January 18th Confirmation letters go out. In the meantime, please save the Tuesday dates now because you should assume acceptance or at most some tweaking of enrollment but we hardly ever turn any one away. Evidence of prior work and participation of decision-makers are the baseline criteria! We have diverse engagement so we are no longer worried about cross-sector makeup or diverse representation.
How did we choose the dates? From the applications in by the first Nov. deadline and their reported availability.
Can I miss a session? Attendance is required. After two absences, your organization will be asked to join next year in 2022. The first four sessions are essential for the entire Cohort to attend. Sending a proxy 1-2 times is also acceptable throughout the year.
Can I represent two or more organizations? No, it will interfere with cohort-based projects in the program. Each org needs two reps and a few have gotten an exception of a third (at an additional fee) due to leadership structure of the DEI team, board or organizational leadership. BRIDGE Is a fan of co-leadership and collective leadership and are happy to make those concessions as needed.
How to prepare?
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 fun changemaking work!
6) Set aside 10 hrs. of time a month!
Who we are:
A partnership of BRIDGE, Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation, Greylock Federal Credit Union, Crane Foundation and Berkshire Bank Foundation
Launching in January 2021, Inclusive Leadership as a Force for Change will support 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 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 January 2021 (now February 2021.) Stay tuned for excerpts from the conference that will amplify your cohort learning experience.
Confirmed applicants (only 1 slot left!):
Participants include (2 leadership members are attending to advance equity and inclusion in their organizations and across the County in a peer leadership model):
WAM Theatre, Norman Rockwell, CATA, The Mount, Shake & Co,, Berkshire Museum, 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, Hancock Shaker Village and Mahaiwe Theatre alongside a few more pending invitations and/or interests....
If your beloved organization is not here, give them a call and let us know if you think they would benefit from this action-oriented, peer-supported leadership cohort to steward and innovate in order to advance justice, equity and inclusion in our County in 2022!
For more information, contact: Cohort2021@multiculturalbridge.org
Gwendolyn VanSant
Chief Executive Officer & Founding Director, BRIDGE
Gwendolyn.hvs@multiculturalbridge.org with Aseante Renee at aseante@multiculturalbridge.org
For schedule (Bridgett) contact adminsupport@multiculturalbridge.org and and billing questions (Elie) at elie@multiculturalbridge.org.
New Start Date- Launching Soon!
Tuesday February 9, 2020 2-4 PM
When: all year Monthly at 2-4 PM on 2nd and 4th Tuesdays- mark your calendars! With supplemental IDEA Institute and New Pathways Installments and Subject Matter Experts and Cohort Project Sessions throughout the months mostly on Tuesdays!
February Agenda (*required attendance)
Facilitators Gwendolyn VanSant with Aseante Renee
February Guest Presenters: Kevin Thomas and Newell Eaton
February 9, Building New Relationships: Introductions, Intentions & Icebreaker
February 16 Embodying Vulnerability with guest Newell Eaton
DURING February Benchmarking Equity & Inclusion
February 23, Building Trust & Relationships through Race Dialogue
FAQs
When will we know when we are accepted?January 18th Confirmation letters go out. In the meantime, please save the Tuesday dates now because you should assume acceptance or at most some tweaking of enrollment but we hardly ever turn any one away. Evidence of prior work and participation of decision-makers are the baseline criteria! We have diverse engagement so we are no longer worried about cross-sector makeup or diverse representation.
How did we choose the dates? From the applications in by the first Nov. deadline and their reported availability.
Can I miss a session? Attendance is required. After two absences, your organization will be asked to join next year in 2022. The first four sessions are essential for the entire Cohort to attend. Sending a proxy 1-2 times is also acceptable throughout the year.
Can I represent two or more organizations? No, it will interfere with cohort-based projects in the program. Each org needs two reps and a few have gotten an exception of a third (at an additional fee) due to leadership structure of the DEI team, board or organizational leadership. BRIDGE Is a fan of co-leadership and collective leadership and are happy to make those concessions as needed.
How to prepare?
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 fun changemaking work!
6) Set aside 10 hrs. of time a month!
Who we are:
A partnership of BRIDGE, Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation, Greylock Federal Credit Union, Crane Foundation and Berkshire Bank Foundation
Launching in January 2021, Inclusive Leadership as a Force for Change will support 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 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 January 2021 (now February 2021.) Stay tuned for excerpts from the conference that will amplify your cohort learning experience.
Confirmed applicants (only 1 slot left!):
Participants include (2 leadership members are attending to advance equity and inclusion in their organizations and across the County in a peer leadership model):
WAM Theatre, Norman Rockwell, CATA, The Mount, Shake & Co,, Berkshire Museum, 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, Hancock Shaker Village and Mahaiwe Theatre alongside a few more pending invitations and/or interests....
If your beloved organization is not here, give them a call and let us know if you think they would benefit from this action-oriented, peer-supported leadership cohort to steward and innovate in order to advance justice, equity and inclusion in our County in 2022!
For more information, contact: Cohort2021@multiculturalbridge.org
Gwendolyn VanSant
Chief Executive Officer & Founding Director, BRIDGE
Gwendolyn.hvs@multiculturalbridge.org with Aseante Renee at aseante@multiculturalbridge.org
For schedule (Bridgett) contact adminsupport@multiculturalbridge.org and and billing questions (Elie) at elie@multiculturalbridge.org.
(Applications soon accepted for Cohort 2022)