Tim Cynova Tim Cynova

A Year in the Life

The opening mainstage conversation of the Ethical Re-Opening Summit. In addition to sharing the Workplace Survey results, the group discusses what have we learned this past year, and how can we use this knowledge and experience to craft thriving workplaces.

Recorded: 4/27/21, 11AM ET

 

Resources mentioned during session:

Panelists

VANESSA ROANHORSE got her management chops working for 7 years at a Chicago-based nonprofit, the Delta Institute, focused throughout the Great Lakes region to build a resilient environment and economy through creative, sustainable, market-driven solutions. Vanessa oversaw many of Delta’s on-the-ground energy efficiency, green infrastructure, community engagement programs, and workforce development training. Vanessa is a 2019 Village Capital Money Matters Advisory Board Member, 2019 SXSW Pitch Advisor, sits on the local Living Cities leadership table, is a Startup Champions Network member, is an Advisor for emerging Navajo incubator, Change Labs, Advisor for Native Entrepreneurship in Residence Program, and is a board member for Native Community Capital, a native-led CDFI. She is a co-founder of Native Women Lead, an organization dedicated to growing native women into positions of leadership and business. Her academic education is in film from the University of Arizona but her professional education is from hands-on experience leading local, regional and national initiatives. Vanessa is Navajo living in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

SYRUS MARCUS WARE uses painting, installation and performance to explore social justice frameworks and black activist culture. His work has been shown widely, including in a solo show at Grunt Gallery, Vancouver (2068:Touch Change) and new work commissioned for the 2019 Toronto Biennial of Art and the Ryerson Image Centre (Antarctica and Ancestors, Do You Read Us? (Dispatches from the Future)) and in group shows at the Art Gallery of Ontario, the University of Lethbridge Art Gallery, Art Gallery of York University, the Art Gallery of Windsor and as part of the curated content at Nuit Blanche 2017 (The Stolen People; Wont Back Down). His performance works have been part of festivals across Canada, including at Cripping The Stage (Harbourfront Centre, 2016, 2019), Complex Social Change (University of Lethbridge Art Gallery, 2015) and Decolonizing and Decriminalizing Trans Genres (University of Winnipeg, 2015). // He is part of the PDA (Performance Disability Art) Collective and co-programmed Crip Your World: An Intergalactic Queer/POC Sick and Disabled Extravaganza as part of Mayworks 2014. Syrus' recent curatorial projects include That’s So Gay (Gladstone Hotel, 2016-2019), Re:Purpose (Robert McLaughlin Gallery, 2014) and The Church Street Mural Project (Church-Wellesley Village, 2013). Syrus is also co-curator of The Cycle, a two-year disability arts performance initiative of the National Arts Centre. // Syrus is a core-team member of Black Lives Matter-Toronto. Syrus is a co-curator of Blackness Yes!/Blockorama. Syrus has won several awards, including the TD Diversity Award in 2017. Syrus was voted “Best Queer Activist” by NOW Magazine (2005) and was awarded the Steinert and Ferreiro Award (2012). Syrus is a facilitator/designer at the Banff Centre. Syrus is a PhD candidate at York University in the Faculty of Environmental Studies.

LAUREN RUFFIN is a thinker, designer, & leader interested in building strong, sustainable, anti-racist systems & organizations. She's into exploring how we can leverage new technologies to combat racial and economic injustice. Lauren is a co-founder of Crux, an Albuquerque-based immersive storytelling cooperative that collaborates with Black artists as they create content in virtual reality and augmented reality (XR). She also serves as co-CEO of Fractured Atlas, the largest association of independent artists in the United States. In 2017, she started Artist Campaign School, a new educational program that has trained 74 artists to run for political office to date. She has served on the governing board of Black Girls Code and Main Street Phoenix Cooperative, and on the advisory boards of ArtUp and Black Girl Ventures. She graduated from Mount Holyoke College with a degree in Political Science and obtained a J.D. from the Howard University School of Law.

Transcript

Tim Cynova:

Hey, everyone. I'm Tim Cynova, and welcome to the Work Shouldn't Suck Ethical Re-Opening Summit. It's great to have everyone here today. Today we have an amazing group of human beings with us for panels and participants. Eight awesome sessions over the next five hours all dedicated to how we can approach creating workplaces where everyone can thrive. In addition to the sessions, the hop-in platform, you also have the opportunity to network in one-on-one video chats with other attendees. But first before we get into all the excitement, I'm pleased to welcome to the Ethical Re-Opening Summit, the summit's favorite cohost, Lauren Ruffin. Hey, Lauren, how's it going?

Lauren Ruffin:

I'm good. I'm good. It's a great day here in Albuquerque, but everything's nice. I should probably start off by demonstrating audio description, because I know that we are asking folks to do that as they're on our panels throughout the day. So, I'm a brown-skinned black woman with very short hair now. I'm wearing a green hat and a black shirt. I'm in a room with a white door and a white dresser behind me that has a Lego village that I've been building on it. Super excited to be here.

Tim Cynova:

Yeah. I'm a white man with short to medium, messy, brown hair, blue rectangular glasses, gray stubble. I'm wearing a black sweater with a blue dress shirt and blue tie. Sitting in front of a wood panel wall. So, Lauren with your Crux hat on, you do quite a lot of producing events in hop in. Do you mind giving us an overview of our online summit space that we'll be in today?

Lauren Ruffin:

Sure. Yeah. Lights, twists, and turns means I know this platform pretty well. One thing for folks to notice is that on your left-hand side you have a navigation panel that will take you to all the menus that we'll be using today. We've got this stage, which is where we are now. We've got sessions which will open up in about an hour. Networking, you pop in there one to one random match for the extroverts who are out there, and then an expo. And, Tim, what's in the expo hall tonight?

Tim Cynova:

I'm sorry?

Lauren Ruffin:

I said what's in the expo hall today?

Tim Cynova:

The expo hall today is Work Shouldn't Suck gear. So if you need a pair of Work Shouldn't Suck socks, why wouldn't you? Everyone should have some. All right, cool jacket. You can check out all the stuff there.

Lauren Ruffin:

And then on the right side of your panel, you'll see that we have both event and stage areas. Feel free to engage in the chat, we will be taking some questions for various aspects of our event today. If you're looking for a friend, you can go up to... Actually I don't know if we have that turned on right now, so I'll stop. That we do. If you go up to the little letter, the little piece of blank paper, the paper airplane it's up on the top, you'll be able to see direct messages from people. And if you want to hop into a one to one video chat, you can use that panel. So lots of fun stuff to explore. And if you need anything, feel free to hit me up via the direct message function here. And I see I have a little message, I'm excited to see who it's from once I'm off stage.

Tim Cynova:

That's exciting. We don't have live captions for the videos today, but all of the sessions will be recorded and will be captioning the videos as well as providing transcripts. So for anyone who's registered here, in about a day or two we'll be sending out that message. Before we launch into a conversation with Syrus and Vanessa, want to take a quick moment to share some of what we saw from our workplace survey. Lauren, I'm going to pull you out of the feed here. Actually, I'll feature my video here. I'll turn some things off. Thank you so much to everyone who provided feedback on the survey. We'll be sending this out as well, so if it's a little small on your screen, don't worry. Lauren is actually seeing this for the first time, so she's living the excitement with all of you. We had this five question survey, it was multiple choice and we asked people the slides here, how many days a week do you expect to work in the office as of the fall? And how many days do you prefer? Almost no one would prefer to be in the office five days a week, or even four days a week. Otherwise, these graphs are all over the place and I look forward to digging into what this might mean in our future conversations.

Tim Cynova:

Next we have, when is your organization planning to let more than a handful of employees back into the office? Shaving off the edges for that happened already and not before January 22. It looks like summer and fall. However, a third of respondents still don't know. And that's not an insignificant number, or sorry, not an insignificant number of companies went entirely virtual, entirely remote as a result of the past year. When do you expect to attend an in person indoor conference or performance of at least 100 people? Almost two thirds said not before January, our remaining third said the last quarter of this calendar year. So for those of us working in sectors where we convene people, for example, the cultural sector, people coming together for performances, we'll be diving in today what does that mean for us, and our organizations, and our missions?

Tim Cynova:

And lastly, when do you expect to fly again for work? Some people are already doing this. So people expect in the next month or so. Overwhelmingly, most people say not before the fall or next year. So again, we'll be sharing those. Sorry, I'm bringing Lauren back in here. We'll be sharing those in the email that goes out so you can dig into that. But we launched this summit with two amazing, amazing guests who we've had on our live stream and podcast before, Vanessa Roanhorse and Syrus Marcus Ware. To make the most of the rest of our time, without further ado, going to welcome in Vanessa, and bringing in Syrus here.

Syrus Marcus Ware:

Hello.

Tim Cynova:

Hi everyone. And with that, I'm going to pull myself out of the feed so the three of you can have the conversation, and I'll be back at the very end. So I have a good one everyone.

Lauren Ruffin:

Live Streaming is such a sport. It really fulfills all of my adrenaline junkie needs. [crosstalk 00:07:11]. How are y'all today?

Syrus Marcus Ware:

I'm good. I mean, it's Tuesday. I can't believe it's Tuesday. It feels like it's Friday. Not because it feels like it's the weekend, but because it feels like so much has happened. But I'm good. I'm well. It's nice to be with you early in the morning.

Lauren Ruffin:

Vanessa, how are you doing?

Vanessa Roanhorse:

I'm good. I started off my day talking about finances, and that's its own cup of coffee.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah, for sure.

Vanessa Roanhorse:

I'm good. I'm happy. I'm in Albuquerque, it's gray out, which never isn't really common here. So it's kind of nice to have weather happening.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah, we're supposed to get some rain. And I know we've got wildfires. We've got wildfires South here already. It seems the season is already kicked off, unfortunately. So the rain that's coming will be really helpful. Well, I'm really excited to spend time with y'all this morning. And you two don't know each other, so I feel what's going to happen is that beautiful crackle when probably kindred souls meet for the first time. It could happen, we're going to record it, it's going to be really brilliant. But I really think it's important to kick off with y'all, because what we're really talking about today is, as people are rushing to reopen, how do we do so in a way that is more sustainable, both for the earth the planet, and for us as people, where perhaps we can build new systems and structures and ways of working. And I know the two of you do a lot of thinking and are sort of engaged in a radical transformation and radical imagination about what our world and life can be. So just super again, really excited that you're framing this for us.

Lauren Ruffin:

I'll give a brief intro of y'all and then we'll let you jump in and introduce yourselves because I feel like both of your work is so expansive that reading a bio doesn't do it justice. And I also know that when you're multifaceted, the things you're thinking about day to day and what you're doing changes day to day, week to week. So I want you all to talk about what's top of mind for you. Vanessa is a really, really good friend of mine, my heart. I think Vanessa was the second person I met several years ago when I moved to Albuquerque. We've been inseparable since then. Her work with Native Women Lead has been transformational. Working now with a lot of finance is just doing radical, radical things. I don't want to, what they say, spill the can of worms or something like that, spill the beans. I don't want to vomit it all over before you get to share.

Lauren Ruffin:

Syrus is based in Canada. Does amazing work with the Black Lives Matter movement up there. I know we've not been hearing a lot in the States. I know our friends, the North have been going through it with regard to racial justice over the last couple years and just as long as we have in the States, and their work as an artist, as an educator, as an activist is also multifaceted. So with that, maybe, Vanessa, you want to give your brief intro and a individual description for our audience?

Vanessa Roanhorse:

Definitely. Yeah, it's A. Vanessa Roanhorse [inaudible 00:10:23]. I am Diné, Navajo from Navajo Nation. I live here in Albuquerque, New Mexico, on Tiwa lands. And I am a short indigenous woman who has mostly white hair, a little bit of black left, not very much anymore, wearing black glasses, black lipstick, black, I guess, my easy working in office blazer over my pajamas. And behind me in a room that's got a red wall with some images up there and some storage behind me. I'm really happy to be here. And thank you, Lauren. I honestly moved to Albuquerque almost six years ago. I had been living away from the Four Corners in my community for about 20 plus years. And upon getting back here, trying to reacquaint, build friendships. It's a lot harder in your 40s to make friends sometimes, because life is just so full. And just meeting you, it was magical, and it still continues to be. So I appreciate that. The love is there right back at you.

Vanessa Roanhorse:

I'm happy to say that I am my own agent, and so own my own company called Roanhorse Consulting. We are an indigenous women-led think tank, or at least that's what we kind of believe we do. We do a lot of work in capital access, economic development. We're using a lot of the evaluation methods lately to support people who are trying to build new, whether it's lending products or design more effective ways to understand economic data and why it matters, and what should we really be tracking. And so gratefully we use sort of our indigenous evaluation methodologies. And we think the plurality of those methodologies really are game changing, because they really focus on people and planet versus short term outcomes and job growth. So we're really trying to push on that side.

Vanessa Roanhorse:

And then on the capital access side, Lauren, you mentioned Native Women Lead, which is another piece of my heart work. And for me, Native Women Lead started because of my own journey to start a company as a brown indigenous woman, and how painful that was, and how lonely it was. And so Native Women Lead is now a fast global, globally growing organization focused on investing, lifting, scaling indigenous women into positions of CEO and leadership. All of this kind of balled up for me, because trying to start initiatives, companies, and access to resources was so non existent. I am now fully in the dreaming of new capital pathways for people and really looking at how do we innovate around underwriting, risk and evaluation. And then frankly, building the type of products that actually leapfrog and amplify what people are building. So it's been a good time. I hope that's a good introduction.

Lauren Ruffin:

It's beautiful. Syrus, tells about you and what you're thinking about lately.

Syrus Marcus Ware:

Hey, everybody. Lauren, it's great to see you and it's so wonderful to meet. I want to hear more about this innovation hub and what you're doing. My name is Syrus Marcus Ware. I use he, him pronouns. I'm based in [inaudible 00:13:57] or Toronto, the part that was underwater at the time of the Toronto Purchase, so it's the unceded territory of the Mississauga of the Credit. I'm wearing a blue shirt with black polka dots. I have a long ostrich feather or Emu Feather earring that I'm wearing that I got when I was in Australia. I have blonde dreadlocks piled in a messy bun. I have a bunch of neon bracelets that my daughter made me on my wrists, and I'm in front of a very messy background of kids drawing and kids everything just sort of on every surface. And I have brown skin and I'm a black person. I'm a black trans, disabled, and mad artists, activist, and scholar. And that's what I look like. I have a short beard, too. I am an organizer, I've been organizing for about 25 years. I've also been an artist for about 25 years, and have been in the art sector working in large institutions and also working independently as a curator, and also as an artist.

Syrus Marcus Ware:

And I've spent 25 years really working within this milieu and trying to understand how to make sense of what it means to work in the arts. I'm trying to make sense of that. But at the same time, I've also spent the same 25 years as an organizer, as an activist. So to me, I've been really drawn to the possibility that the world could be different than it currently is. So I've been organizing around disability justice, and trans justice, and black liberation for 25 years. Most recently, I helped to co found Black Lives Matter Canada, which is the presence of the Black Lives Matter movement here in Northern tribal Ireland, and [inaudible 00:15:53]. And there are chapters in Montreal, and Vancouver, and Fredericktown, and all over, and growing. And so I helped sort of steward that organization and help to make sure that we are helping the chapters to do all the great work that they need to do.

Syrus Marcus Ware:

And then I also work as an educator, so I teach at McMaster University. I teach in the arts, but I also teach systems thinking and leadership at the Banff Centre. And I'm really interested in the possibility of creating workplaces where we all can thrive. I am so fascinated by that chart that many people were like, "I'd like to be in the office zero days of the week." Because I think that we can invent new ways of being, and now is the time to do it. So that's me. And it's great to be here.

Lauren Ruffin:

Awesome.

Vanessa Roanhorse:

Wow. Wow.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah. So that's a great segue into what I kind of wanted. It's manna from the heavens. I was like, "What brilliant thing am I going to ground us in today?" And then Luckily, Basecamp totally screwed the pooch yesterday.

Vanessa Roanhorse:

So I don't know if it's manna from the heavens, or just the usual shit show that rains down on us. Just naming the difference there.

Lauren Ruffin:

You're so right. So I just dropped a link to the changes at Basecamp post that came out yesterday. It happens, our whole audience has it. I want to ground our conversation here because I really can't think of a more textbook example of what not to do as a well respected company. And so for anyone who's not familiar with Basecamp, they are a company that makes project management software. I'd say millions of people use it every day. They've been really vocal about how they grew. They didn't take investment dollars, they really tried to pride themselves on building a good healthy corporate culture that I look to often as I was building Crux, as I'm having conversations about Work Shouldn't Suck, sort of moving slowly, not taking outside investment, really building things that as much as you need to build, not being sort of overly creative or overly complicated.

Lauren Ruffin:

And so they had this post yesterday, where they're like they're changing the way they operate. And number one is no more societal and political discussions on our company Facebook account, because the social and political waters are choppy. No more paternalistic benefits, like farmers market shares, fitness, wellness allowance, etc. It goes on and on. But I'm really curious, as y'all were reading this, what were your first... Because Vanessa, I know you and I are on the same Twitter. Syrus, I don't know what your Twitter feed looks like, but mine exploded yesterday over this. So what were your initial reactions to reading this post? What really stood out to you?

Syrus Marcus Ware:

It is absolutely outrageous. As you said, how did he get it wrong in a paragraph and a half? It is absolutely outrageous. I just want to pull out, I mean the point that I have... I believe there's a bit of an echo. The point that stands out to me the most, of course, is the no societal or political discussions on our company Facebook account. Because of course, what are you going to do, remove yourself from society? If you're not engaged in the social world, and you're not staying relevant, what the hell is the point? But I want to draw your attention to, I know this is a smaller thing, perhaps, but no paternalistic benefits. For years, we've offered a fitness benefit, a wellness allowance, a farmers market share, but we've had a change of heart. It's none of our business what you do outside of work, what a strange hill to die on.

Syrus Marcus Ware:

What a strange thing to think, all of the social benefits that we do that make us part of a community, because as organizations, wouldn't it be nice if we thought of these institutions as actually part of the communities that they're situated within. All of the things that make our workers come together, and make our workers thrive as workers, as human beings who are alive, not just workers, let's just cut all of those things. And to call them paternalistic is such a strange response to something that people have been pushing for decades in the workplaces, more live-work balance, more ability to be a human. It is such a strange thing to thrust forward. But of course, my biggest issue is of course with the no political discussions. Yeah, it's hard.

Vanessa Roanhorse:

No, thank you. Because that it's funny. I saw the Twitter blowing up, I skimmed the thing, and I just kind of rolled my eyes. And I was like, "Oh." And Lauren and I were talking earlier more white type bro bullshit, right? Let's just not deal with what's happening in the world. So this is the most clear example of white supremacy. Let's lean into our privilege and say, "We can't deal with these things, so therefore we won't." "And if we ignore them, they'll go away." Let's not acknowledge that people's actual living cells are politicized every day. Let's just not acknowledge that, that's something you walk out the door with, however, whoever you are, and it's a political statement, just for B. And then the final one is, for a company that's rested on these morals, talk about the complete opposite of what they've been talking about for so long.

Vanessa Roanhorse:

And more importantly, the use of paternalistic to me is the perfect example of the continuation of the lack of social contracts that were willing to hold on to anymore, that we are all connected, that we're all part of the same community, and when you thrive, I thrive. The belief that that's paternalistic, and also someone can give you that right, is part of the problem. Is part of the whole broken safety net situation in United States. The whole broken idea that people deserve quality and dignified lives. So I think it was the world's biggest eye roll, and then I just moved on. Because where are you supposed to focus your energy honestly, at this point? And you know what, there'll be some statement in probably a week or two, where there'll be like, "You don't understand what we were trying to say, you missed what we were talking about." And gas light, gas light, gas light, like textbook, textbook, textbook, textbook.

Syrus Marcus Ware:

Thank you for saying gas light, because that's exactly the way this reads. It takes the things that we've been fighting for, that we've said are important, like the ability to review your manager as much as your manager is reviewing you, and they've turned that around and said, "No 360 reviews, because it's too much work for you." Well, no, I've asked for this. Hold on a minute, but it's gas lighting and it's a way of making it seem the bizarre choices in this memo are somehow our wishes, it's because it's what's best for us. When in fact everything that they're cutting are the things that would make it a work environment. I mean, I just want to draw your attention to this one sentence about the political, "You shouldn't have to wonder if staying out of it means you're complicit or wading into it means you're a target." I mean, I don't know what else to say. I mean, if this is the framing, and what it means to be socially engaged in the world is that you're either, quote unquote, complicit. In what? In white supremacy? Or you're a target.What are they even saying?

Syrus Marcus Ware:

So I don't know that there is a statement that could be made on Twitter or otherwise, that would make me forget this statement was put out. I don't know how they're going to come out of this. But I do think that unfortunately, there are a lot of people who probably applauded this Twitter manager, because we're reacting. My Twitter feeds are curated, perhaps in a way where a lot of people were reacting. I'm sure there are people who are thinking this is great, because now I don't have to address my white supremacy at my job. Now, I don't have to listen to my employee who's giving me feedback about how I've managed. Now I don't have to arrange to make sure that so and so has their farmers market info or whatever. And it's very bizarre.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah, I think it's so wow. And I can't keep. As I read it, I kept thinking about in your 20s when you're rocking in a really tight friend group, and then there's a couple that breaks up, and then everybody knows everybody's business all at once. And I remember sitting and talking to a friend and she said, I'm tired of doing the right thing for the right reasons about her partner and why they were breaking up. This feels like they've decided to absolutely do the wrong thing for the wrong reason on purpose. I don't know how you take a workplace culture that they were so vocal about. If they've been quiet about their workplace culture, nobody would have cared. They've written books and profited on this idea of their good place to work. And I see Courtney Hart brought up in the chat, I thought the same thing, the paternalism of what is wrong with a farmers market? Somebody hates organic food. You know what I mean? It's so specific. So anyway, what's your bet? What do you think happened? What did one of those founders get accused of that created this? Because this post is a reaction to something we don't know about, right?

Syrus Marcus Ware:

Oh, interesting.

Lauren Ruffin:

What do you think it is?

Vanessa Roanhorse:

That's a good question. I mean, who knows? The thing for me is someone got caught doing something and doesn't want to have that come to light. There's a deal on the table somewhere that is going to inform something for Basecamp forward, or three white people are just white people. They got scared. They got nervous about the current climate. They're looking at their other peers and wondering if... But also someone who comes from a place of privilege assumes that people get to pick and choose how politics plays out, and that you can opt out of these conversations. And so, I don't know. I mean, I hate to say that and mean it, but it's just I can't explain any other way. It's just a white male doing white male thinking.

Syrus Marcus Ware:

I have a feeling that likely these values that are exposed in this, I don't even know what to call this, this info sheet, I think that these values are probably held dear by people in leadership and probably have been held dear for a while. I bet there's been a bit of a push pull about the direction, and for whatever reason, this is what went out. And we know that this whole reason went out because of white supremacy being dyed in the wool of our workplaces. And so that kind of dude-bro, white-sis hat kind of narrative, that we see in the writing of this. I mean, it's written like a textbook of neoliberal white supremacy, but in the business sort of an example of. Yeah, I think that probably these feelings have been held at the company for a while, and now it's just went out. So anyways, I'm so thankful that you brought this as an example, because of course, now, I've got my blood is sufficiently boiling to be ready for [inaudible 00:27:45]. Right, back on Twitter. I've got to tell you that.

Lauren Ruffin:

It's like a warm up, but I think focusing on David and Jason, the founders of Basecamp, and them feeling like it was their decision to make, right, which represents a level of hierarchy. And that in of itself is paternalistic in a company. So, I'm curious about that. But I'm also, I got to tell you, I woke up this morning thinking about the black and brown people who are in that organization. I mean, I'm guessing they're dusting off their resume. But this had to have been a hostile organization for them prior to the company shooting itself in the foot in this way, right?

Syrus Marcus Ware:

I mean, you would imagine that this is part and parcel. I mean, if anyone was at the helm is able to write what they've written here, it's so racist, and sexist, and violent, right? Because of course, it presupposes the people that don't have family, and presupposes the people that don't have self determination, or don't have disabilities. The way it's written is written with very few employees in mind being able to fit into this mold. So you can imagine that probably was a very difficult environment anyways for these racialized employees. I think what I would be thinking about would be, "Okay, so that black square that you put on your profile last June, that was just bullshit then?" I'm sorry to swear, but, "So that really meant nothing." We knew it meant nothing when a lot of these orgs put their square, but I don't know if Basecamp put a square, but once you write a statement that says we're no longer going to comment about political issues on our social media, you've put a nail in your coffin right there.

Syrus Marcus Ware:

And what that would mean to me as a racialized employee, it's that when racism happens to me in the workplace, where am I to go? That this is not an organization that's going to be able to help me through white supremacy if I experienced that on the job, anti blackness if I experienced that on the job. This doesn't create a feeling of safety or security for me as an employee to feel like I'm going to be supported when these things happen at my job. If an organization is going to go out of its way to say, "When we comment on politics." I'm sorry, there should be no two sides on the George Floyd killing. I mean, the man was killed and murdered by the police. That's not about, how do they say, wading into the waters and being a target or a complicit. I mean, it should actually be pretty straightforward. When we see violence and injustice such as that, you should be able to make a comment on that. And if you're not able to understand how to make that comment, that says lot more about where you're at in terms of your race politics. Yeah.

Vanessa Roanhorse:

Yeah. I think you're absolutely right. And yeah, what about those employees, what are they going to do? And I think one of the things that I've been thinking about just as you were talking, is how these types of companies, institutions kind of continue with the ethos that the only purpose of business is to make money. The only purpose of business is to have this one single characteristic. But if you look at all of our communities and cultures before so much of this form of capitalism was the only option, we worked with each other, we relied on each other, whether it's for goods and services, we traded, we bartered, we understood that things were finite, and in that you paid for quality materials that were going to last. This just continues to be to me just that in stage capitalism that continues to claw its way up. But I hope that we're in a place now for those employees that the conversation has shifted, and that there are new social relationships being developed around these conversations, and we can have sessions like Work Shouldn't Suck. And it's actually a real thing.

Vanessa Roanhorse:

In that survey that Tim shared, where 0% of people want to work five days a week in an office is the perfect example. The question is, what are we going to do, though, to start to come back and create the better safety nets for our employees going forward, that isn't farmers markets, but it's healthcare. So in the United States, we have garbage health care. The ability to have health care, and so that when you get sick, you can continue working. The ability to have the flexibility if you're a single mom, or you just are a single person who needs time for mental space to not have to do a nine to five. And the agency we need as people to define how work can work for us is I think the work right now. So what are the social safety nets we have to focus on? And then how are we creating the process so that people can actually have a life outside of work?

Vanessa Roanhorse:

So I don't know. I think that's the moment that we're beginning to pause it. There's a whole lot that needs to happen on the policy side for us even get there. Because we've been thinking about it here in New Mexico. I'm a small business owner, I've got employees, and I can't offer meaningful benefits right now. So we are looking to history to say, how did people create cooperative forms of health insurance? What's the mass numbers we need to be able to get quality, particularly native American health care insurance. So those are the things I'm thinking about right now as we move forward. Because I don't know what we're going to do in terms of office either.

Syrus Marcus Ware:

It's so interesting, because at the same time as Basecamp was making this statement, you have other organizations reading books on transformative justice, reading books on abolition, thinking through how to have an abolitionist rooted organization, how to resolve conflict in your organization without relying on carceral logics and punishment. So you have these organizations making these massive conceptual leaps, they're going through a systems change, and they're trying to learn how to be better and more agile and respond in ways that tie into the abolitionist drive that we're seeing in the community. So I work at an institution, I work at a university, and my department chose to read collectively Beyond Survival, which is that incredible book by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha in a jurisdiction that looks at transformative justice stories from the field, including in workplaces, and how to implement them. And so we collectively read that book together over a period of weeks and had a reading session to think about what would it mean to take a non punitive approach in our relationship to the university, in our relationship to our students, and their relationship to our colleagues.

Syrus Marcus Ware:

So you have organizations doing the work of trying to push forward into a new direction, and then you also have organizations taking 17 steps back, as we saw with Basecamp. So I think what's very interesting right now would be to figure out what kind of organization am I in, actually. Am I in the kind of organization that's taking 17 steps forward and meeting the challenge where we're at and say, "Okay, how do we live abolitionist lives?" "How do we create a community after capitalism falls?" "How does our organization last until 2030?" And then you had these organizations who are like, "Let's go back to 1983." And that's what we thought is Basecamp email, was let's go back to 1983, and we'll just live in that area for a while. I'd rather be in an organization that's moving forward and moving into these new directions that we're seeing in the social world. So to me, I think you're right, Lauren, they're dusting off their resumes. I mean, wouldn't you? I mean, I would be very hesitant to want to stay somewhere long term that was taking these kind of steps backwards.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah. Yeah. And I wonder how much people reflect on the way they were taught to lead. An organization was really based on compliance and control instead of liberation. Because to me, to Vanessa's point about healthcare, the law says that we have to sort of offer certain things. There're a ceiling. I mean, there're a floor, and that floor is so far below the surface. But if we get to liberation, we get to the point where Vanessa started talking about what are the ways that we have historically operated to get people what they need? I know we have about 10 minutes left in this conversation, if there are any questions for Vanessa and Syrus, feel free to drop them in the chat, and I'll do my best to answer them, or have to ask them and then they can answer them. I'll make them do the work this morning.

Lauren Ruffin:

But what are some of the core tenants of a place where POC wouldn't be dusting off their resume? The political statements on Twitter is a good place to start, but what are the deeper sort of core values? Vanessa, I know that when you do events with Native Women Lead, there's always childcare there. And that, to me seems like a no brainer, but for some organizations, it seems an added expense, or an added level of coordination. How are y'all operating that sort of bringing the sense of imagination and liberation?

Vanessa Roanhorse:

We never question or negotiate people's time and what they tell us it costs. It is something we kind of try to work with, which is like, "You believe this is what you're worth, we're going to start there." So part of it is just recognizing. Because we work, almost not exclusively, because it's not an exclusive, it's just a lot of the folks we've been working with are women of color. And a lot of them within the Native Women Lead network are 35 to 45. So a lot of them are mothers, caretakers of young people and older people. And so we knew immediately, not only is childcare important, but access to quiet time for these women, and for people to be able to find space to just be alone to meditate, to think. If they needed access to spiritual materials, they were there. So this is just for all events that we tried to do. But additionally, we pay for every speaker and their time, we never not pay, we don't ask people to do us favors. And it's something that I didn't realize was such a big deal until I got in the conference circuit myself, and realized how much I had to fight for compensation for one hour. And how hard it was. And people were like, "Well, that's not what we do, we pay for the event." And it's just like, "How is that possible?" "How is it that we're not honoring?"

Vanessa Roanhorse:

So those are some of the things we've done. But in my company at Roanhorse Consulting, we basically have created the process forward where we will be an employee owned company over the next two years as we move forward that way, and that was my desire and gift to help build opportunity, and wealth, and assets for my team and my staff who've never had that before. And so in that building, they get to be a part of the decision making. We ultimately hope to move completely to team leaders similar to a law firm, where there's just lead folks who develop their portfolios. But honestly, it's just imagining a future in which people have agency, have self determination as you shared, Syrus, and also the ability to make choices on things we get to build and create. And it seems so simple, but turns out it's actually so antithetical to what most folks think of in terms of company, in terms of what matters. And I'll be honest, I've had to go to banks to get additional money and resources to help me grow this. And when I talk anything outside of traditional business practices, I become a risk to provide lending and resources to. So anyway, those are just some examples. I would love to hear yours, though, Syrus.

Syrus Marcus Ware:

Yeah. I'll talk about Black Lives Matter Canada, because we're in the process. We've a small staff team. It's a national organization that provides support around black liberation nationally, and we have this small staff team. And we were determined from day one to be the kind of workplace where people want to be engaged, they want to stay connected. So it's rooted in black liberation, it's rooted in black justice, we have made sure that there are things like benefits, and sick days, and on all of the things that you would want, yoga classes. And all the things that Basecamp has just cut, we've made sure are available. But also, we wanted to make sure that we're building out the capacity for our team to grow and diversify in the future. So we've been doing ASL classes with all of our staff, because one of the things that I find outrageous is that we're still in a situation where we're completely segregated between hearing, and deaf, and hard of hearing communities. We've created a world where we're in different schools, different workplaces, different communities, and never the two should meet.

Syrus Marcus Ware:

And we wanted something better than that for our communities. We wanted black, deaf, hard of hearing, and hearing communities to be working together for the liberation of all of our people. So we've all been learning ASL, black ASL, actually, which is a specific dialogue, dialect. We've been learning black ASL since January, with the incredible black deaf instructor, And just doing these kinds of things that are kind of building us towards an organization where we could have deaf and hard of hearing people working with us, and we can all communicate with each other. So just starting to work from day one with the plan of becoming more and more and more reflective of the diversity of the country, rather than less and less and less, which is what we're seeing in this Basecamp's email.

Vanessa Roanhorse:

No, 100% it's values. What are your values? I think everything you're saying I just think about, so much of our work, we talk about we need to understand if our values aligned, what are the values of what we're creating? How do the values hold us accountable? And I will tell you most times most folks don't want to go there. It's just too much work. It requires too much time. But it's like, if you aren't willing to build a true relationship, which is going to be bound by values, it's going to be bound by trust, it's just not worth it. It's just ultimately long term not worth it. And I think that's exactly it. Also, by the way, I had no idea there was black ASL.

Syrus Marcus Ware:

Yeah, it's amazing. Yeah, because-

Vanessa Roanhorse:

It's so amazing.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah, [inaudible 00:42:55] videos are amazing. You've got to check it out.

Syrus Marcus Ware:

Yeah.

Vanessa Roanhorse:

Oh my god, I got to find this. Yes.

Lauren Ruffin:

Tim's back, which means that we're running out of time.

Vanessa Roanhorse:

Hi Tim.

Syrus Marcus Ware:

Hi Tim.

Vanessa Roanhorse:

I'm usually super happy to see Tim, but this time I'm not.

Tim Cynova:

I'm so happy I wasn't moderating, that I could just sit there and listen to this conversation. Oh, god, that was amazing. Syrus, Vanessa, thank you so much for starting the summit off with us. The panel was terrific, and I look forward to be able to go back and rewatch it.

Syrus Marcus Ware:

Thank you so much.

Vanessa Roanhorse:

Yes, thank you. I wasn't done. I want more time, but another time.

Syrus Marcus Ware:

We could literally talk about this all day. That's the thing, is there is... I mean, I'm glad it's a whole summit, because there is so much juicy stuff to talk about.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah, well hang on to that, we'll get lots of time to talk later on.

Vanessa Roanhorse:

Awesome. Thank you.

Tim Cynova:

Yep. Cool. I'll pull you two out. And then Lauren, you and I can sketch out what's happening for the rest of the day here. So every session starts on the hour, it goes to the 45. There's about a 15 minute break if you take a break or try the networking function. This next phase for the next three hours is our choose your own adventure style. There are two amazing sessions, sadly right at the same time for the next three hours. You can choose which one you want to go to, you can pop between them, you can watch them afterwards. Each session has a chat and a Q&A, as well as did this one. So we'll be using those throughout. Take a look at the agenda and we will see you in 15 minutes. Thanks a lot, everyone.

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Tim Cynova Tim Cynova

New(ish) to Organizational Anti-Racism Work

Task forces, caucuses, book clubs, consultants? So many options. We'll discuss different approaches to doing "the work" in our organizations.

Recorded: 4/27/21, 12PM ET

 

Resources mentioned during session:

Panelists

ANSA EDIM is the Vice President and Chair of the Staff Board at Change.org and sits on Change.org's C-team. With over a decade of experience in brand, marketing, and communications, Ansa is a proud member of Change.org’s Black community resource group, Change.Noire. Before joining Change.org, Ansa spent several years working in tech, government consulting, non-profit, and education industries and most recently ran her own brand consulting firm, working specifically with elderly-, women-, and minority-owned businesses. Ansa lives in Washington, D.C. with her two boxers, Big Mac and Kiss, and spends her time enjoying the city, traveling, and lifting heavy things.

COURTNEY HARGE is a producer, director, and professional arts administrator originally from Saginaw, MI. She is the CEO of Of/By/For All, and is the Founder and Artistic Director of Colloquy Collective, a theater company based out of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. She has worked for the Elaine Kaufman Cultural Center, Theater for the New City, The Public Theater, Gibney Dance, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and, most recently, Fractured Atlas where she led the design and implementation of anti-racist practices, like race-based caucusing and an equity-informed customer service strategy. She holds a Masters of Professional Studies, with Distinction, in Arts and Cultural Management from Pratt Institute and a Bachelors of Fine Arts with Honors from the University of Michigan in Theater Performance. Her credo (#HustlingKeepsYouSexy) is not merely a hashtag; it’s a way of life.

TIFFANY WILHELM (she/they) is a Program Officer at the Opportunity Fund in Pittsburgh, a foundation that supports the arts and social & economic justice. Previously, she was Deputy Director of the Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council where she raised funds, oversaw programming, and co-led initiatives on accessibility for people with disabilities and racial equity. Tiffany has been involved with several collectives focused on educating and organizing for racial justice, both in Pittsburgh and in the national arts field. Prior to Pittsburgh, she was Executive Director of the Central Wisconsin Children’s Museum and taught in an undergraduate arts management program. Tiffany is a facilitator for artEquity and Farsight, and previously facilitated with Keryl McCord’s Equity Quotient and the Fractured Atlas white caucus.

Transcript

Tim Cynova:

Hi, and welcome to the session New-ish to organizational anti-racism work where we'll be diving into and discussing different approaches to doing the work in our organizations. I'm Tim Cynova. I'm a white man with short to medium messy brown hair. I'm wearing blue rectangular glasses. I have salt and pepper maybe stubble, I'm wearing a black sweater, a zip-up sweater with a blue dress shirt and blue tie. I'm sitting in front of a wood-paneled wall and I am really excited about this session, especially coming off the last session. I'm so excited.

I'm just excited for today and being able to spend time with all of you. A reminder about the Q&A in the chat here. If the chat starts filling up, throw your questions into the Q&A, and then as we're going along we don't lose them. I'm excited to be joined by three amazing people. Ansa Edim, vice-president staff board chair at change.org, Courtney Harge CEO of Bi For All and Tiffany Wilhelm, program officer of opportunity fund. Ansa, Courtney, Tiffany, welcome to The Summit.

Courtney Harge:

Yay. SO excited to be here.

Tiffany Wilhelm:

Thank you.

Ansa Edim:

Thank you for having us.

Tim Cynova:

I realized we didn't say what order we'd go in after I did that. So to kick things off, why don't we go around in that order, Ansa, Courtney and Tiffany. Have you typically introduce yourself and your work. And as you think about organizational anti-racism work, what does that look like and mean to you?

Ansa Edim:

All right. Hi, everyone. My name is Anda Edim. My pronouns are she her. I'm in Washington DC and I am a black woman wearing a headscarf with my hair out, a white t-shirt and green overall. I'm in my home office with a blue and white background that I painted in a pandemic project. How do I think about organized organizational anti-racism work? Really I'm personally kind of new-ish to it as well as of change.org, and the way I think about it a lot is a lot about learning about what equity really means and spending a lot of time kind of parsing the difference between equality and equity and it's been a lot of education to...

I work in a white led tech company as change.org is generally a white led tech company and so it's been a lot of education and a lot of teaching and a lot of learning and a lot of energy put into kind of bringing people up to speed and getting people moving along in their anti-racism journey. I'll pass it to Courtney.

Courtney Harge:

Thanks, Ansa. My name is Courtney Harge, I am the CEO, Bi For All. I use she/her pronouns. I will preemptively offer that I have the best roommate ever who offers an occasional cello concerto which you might be hearing as I speak. I am also a black woman. I'm wearing a red shirt. I am in a favorite virtual space of mine, which is the library of the former fractured Atlas office. So you can see three chairs and a couch behind me not to mention a wall of library books and a gnome. I have a short Afro, I have some big round glasses and I'm wearing a headset.

And what brings me to institutional anti-racism work really was selfishly a matter of self preservation. Work was a place where I knew I could be successful just as a venue, and I am somebody who has had a success in "traditional spaces." I graduated from college with honors. I actually have strong relationships at institutions and I would get to jobs and not be able to thrive or succeed and it felt like there has to be something that is a problem. Something has to be hindering me in a way that isn't just about, "Can I work harder through it?" It's like, "What if the environment itself is a problem? And what are the ways in which I can engage with correcting that and allowing for people to be as much of themselves as they need to be, to be successful at work?"

And so that is where it grounds for me, and really more and more as I see how do we build environments that people can thrive in? For me, there's no way to do that without an anti-racism lens. And I'll pass it to Tiffany.

Tiffany Wilhelm:

Hi, everyone. It's great to see you. It's great to be with you Ansa and Courtney and Tim. Tiffany Wilhelm, she or they pronouns. I am currently a program officer at Opportunity Fund, which is in a land that's now known as Pittsburgh which is Seneca and Lenape and Mingo and Shawnee and hopeful, and many others land so glad to be with you from there. I am a white woman and really short hair, super short, buzzing it during the pandemic. I'm in my bedroom where my headboard of my bed is actually a fuzzy shagged carpet that I've tacked up on a green wall so you can see both of those behind me. I'm wearing a blue sweater, the sort of a V-neck and some big silver earrings. I'm glad to be with you all and I too have a lot of great poking into that somewhat darker short hair.

Yeah, I get to work in philanthropy and then I also do some work in organizations around racism work and part of the community that Courtney is part of too, our equity and others that as well. Gosh, how do I think about organizational anti racism work? One thing I was thinking about coming into this especially that framing of being newish to this, although I'm sure there are folks that are not newish to this in this space.

So welcome you all, I want you all to put your thoughts in the chat too. It's just how much more it probably is than anyone expects when they maybe are newish to it. It is full change, personal change, culture change, policy change, institutional change and that to me is just a fractal of what's happening in the whole society, right? And so that's kind of what I think of to start, but I'm really excited to talk more to you all about that.

Tim Cynova:

One of the questions that our colleague at Fractured Atlas, Nina Berman, prompted us a couple of months ago that created a podcast and a blog post, Nina is also here, so hello, so I hope I get this right, Nina. She said, "We talk about the work a lot, doing the work toward becoming an anti-racist, anti-oppressive organization," she said, "But what do we mean when we say the work." For each of you, what does that mean when people say the work? Well period or quite, I guess that's the question mark.

Ansa Edim:

I can jump in here. At change.org, it meant for us what we called the Reset like with a capital R where we had a period of time after the murder of George Floyd where black staff at Change, we have a black affinity group called Change Norm where actually a community resource group and employee resource group. And we came together and said we have been doing a lot of work around this. We're exhausted, we're tired. There aren't very many of us, but that tech organizations in general, and because there are so few of us, we were not taking vacation, we were really just exhausted because somebody had to be on call to do the work of being black at change.org in this moment.

And that was a huge wake up call to all of us to say that the company needs to do the work of building itself as an anti-racist organization inside and out. So our leadership heard that, and we agreed as an organization to enter what we call the Reset, where we examined our values and policies, recruiting practices, everything you can name of for anti-racist principles and anti-oppression principles. And it continues today, you can check it out at change.org/reset. We've put together some of the information there to keep ourselves accountable. But the work really fell on the shoulders... of surprised me, it fell on the shoulders of our white leadership is that there was work they needed to do internally within themselves.

They needed to do a lot of training, and then they also needed to do the work of showing other staff how they could be held accountable. Doing the work, isn't just talking, it's building in practices that say, "For the longterm, here's how we're going to follow through. Here's what this looks like five years from now." It's not the work. I think looks like not just that change, but to me thinking through accountability, the work looks like accountability.

Courtney Harge:

This is Courtney and I agree. And I think for me, it's both simple and complicated in the sense of the work is interrupting oppressive systems whenever and wherever I see them and resource to do so. And resourced, I mean, particularly as a black woman, both financially resourced, emotionally resourced at the moment, something I often say to my team, and I say that pretty much anyone who will listen is the idea that oppressive systems both have a few 100 year headstart and 1000 fold the resources and energy. And so sacrificing yourself to it doesn't actually stop it to what you were talking about and to around people feeling like they weren't taking their vacation days, they weren't resting and/or taking care of themselves in service of fixing the problem.

But the problem is so big that it will be here beyond your level of exhaustion. It will be here after you've burned through. And so for me, the work is doing as much as I can and being really clear about what I cannot do so that I can do something else the next day or the next moment. So I can interrupt it again because these oppressive systems don't need any more martyrs in service of them. They've taken so much of our, our time, our energy, our resources that throwing my wellbeing and any of our well-beings, this isn't just about me, throwing any of our wellbeing at it to the point we both won't fix the problem and we'll just sacrifice you. So for me, doing the work is taking care of myself so that I can interrupt more things more often with more efficacy.

Tiffany Wilhelm:

Huge support for both of those, and for those of you who know me, just know that I feel so strongly that so much of the work has to happen among white folks and with white folks in that transformation that happens. So just to support what you both said, because that's where the catch-up needs to happen and where if we're going to collectively shift all of our organizations and society more broadly, the white folks have to be ready to do that. And so I had the honor to work a few years ago with Fresh Atlas and to really be part of that journey and both kind of in the kind of full staff teams that were doing that work and in the white caucus, which was doing some work that was important.

And way back when Tim, you might have this link handy, Courtney and I wrote a post about what the caucus spaces were doing and how that had to look really different to support the work of the organization. And the thing I always loved about that is the idea of the harder the white caucus works, the more everyone else is going to be able to resource themselves and rest and heal, and then collectively we can move the work forward. So yeah, so just I really am passionate about supporting those kinds of spaces.

We had a similar series of conversations like you were saying as it happened in Pittsburgh last year among the funding community where some folks that were starting to gain some awareness last summer said, "Hey, well some of our black colleagues, will you host sessions for us?" And folks said, "No." So we formed kind of a white caucus space for just anyone in the funding sector here in this region which is just now it's going to continue and it's just going to be part, hopefully, of whatever other journeys everyone is on because there's just as so many different things to be part of and to keep growing and learning.

So the work just looks like so many things, and I also just wanted to... If you're doing it in an organization, just think about it being emergent. Try different things, know it's got to be ongoing and longterm like our session descriptions book clubs and caucuses. Yes, try it all. See what works in the moment, see what your culture needs for the change at the moment, see if you need some outside help, or if you just have the folks in the space who can support that learning, all of it is important.

Tim Cynova:

I just shared a couple of links, including the piece that Tiffany... started with Courtney. And a piece that is based off of a list that Tiffany compiled years ago that one of our colleagues NYCLA published and then another one of our colleagues, Nina, updated. It's called Resources for white people to learn and talk about race and racism. And we just looked at our blog numbers at Fractured Atlas, and it is the most read piece by tens of thousands of reads that we ever published. I think it's nearing 100,000 views and then maybe the next post is like 30,000. So those are two pieces that are there. What isn't the work?

Courtney Harge:

White feelings? Yeah, it isn't. That isn't the word at all. It really is... the work is decidedly not about making white people feel better about themselves. I have love for many people but I really do not care if you feel better about us going to the joyful revolutionary space. As much as I love wanting to change hearts and minds, I actually want people to just functionally be better. I actually don't care if you like being better, right. And I know that's not how everybody approaches it, but I don't need you to believe that I should be treated well, I would like that. I actually just need you to treat me well, right?

And then how you feel about it, you can take that home. That's your work to do. And so I think people get confused in talking about the work in quotes because they think the work is I need to believe and feel and trust that you, whoever you are, marginalized in any way deserve this treatment. And I'm like, "No, it's actually not up for you to arbitrate, you just need to do it. Just frankly, be better, and then you can figure out if you feel good about it." But yeah, managing my feelings is decidedly not the work.

Ansa Edim:

I want to plus one that 100% this is Ansa speaking. So the [inaudible 00:16:55] is that not just the feeling good about it, but managing white guilt was a huge stressor for me personally in the last year or so, is there are people who really want to be doing this work and they just feel so bad that we haven't achieved it yet and this is horrible, isn't it? And it's just a huge downer. And I as a black woman, I'm already experiencing this, having to ask someone to have empathy for you in your lived experience is hard enough, and then having to manage that person feeling guilty for not having already given it to you, it's just complicated. It over-complicates things. I 100% agree with you, Courtney and that just do it.

Let's just get there and just do it. I don't want to hold people feelings. And what I find really about the conversation about caucuses is just that we did some hours, dozens of hours of trainings at change.org and there were some questions around caucusing where we split up into caucuses and the group of us who were in the black caucus were like, "This isn't for us. We don't need to be here. We already know what we're here to do." And we had this strong feeling.

And so on one hand, we were pretty grateful for our break from really challenging conversations, and on the other hand, when we came back and talked to the group, I find myself being really grateful that there was a space where I didn't have to be the living example of why they needed to be in this training. So those people who needed that could go and talk amongst themselves. And I appreciated not having to do that work because doing diversity trainings and I'm putting some quotes diversity trainings at the huge broad spectrum of types of training and being a black person in a mixed group having people ask hard questions that aren't very easy for me to hear, or asking for me to give an example of a time someone was racist against me.

It's just very traumatic and it's difficult for me as a black person. And so I think that's where caucuses really made a huge difference, it is not putting the pressure on black and brown folks to have to hold for other people's feelings in those cases.

Tiffany Wilhelm:

Yeah. And knowing that those can have places and spaces. Tim, I'm sure [inaudible 00:19:26] is listening too much.

Tim Cynova:

Yeah, the classic. Oh, crap, I'm supposed to be asking some questions.

Tiffany Wilhelm:

But it was sort of about what is not the work, right? And I think that's sort of the tricky space if I think about actually the work that does happen in white caucuses is just trying to hold all of that, letting it be a little bit of a process based, but not letting it get stuck there either because that can be just ridiculous and hard and not moving. Giving us tools to move through all of that is a lot of, I think the work of white caucus spaces. And the other thing I think about that's not the work either or it's only part of the work. It's not, not the work, but it's so much more embodied than we often realize we [inaudible 00:20:18] way out of any of this. And so any of the work happening in whatever space it is just has to go so far beyond that intellectualizing part of it because we will never get anywhere if that's where we stop really.

Tim Cynova:

Speaking of intellectualizing, Nina Berman who we've mentioned a couple of times already in the session asked the question how do you think about how much of your intellect time, energy emotions, should go into anti-racist work at your job versus in other aspects of your life?

Courtney Harge:

Ooh, I love this question. And I have my opinion is frankly, as much or as little as you want and/or need. And I'm going to rephrase that for POC and/or other marginalized people. White people, as much as you can spare and then a little extra. And yes, there are ways in which this binary around kind of white people and other is I don't like the language, I think there are ways in which as much as I enjoy BiPOC as an acronym, it does still center whiteness.

However, the history that we are trying to engage was perpetrated and created and connected to whiteness and so this is a moment where I'm not defining people as white centered and not white, it is more like this is a group of people who named themselves this to create harm. And then this is a group of people, the people of the global majority who were harmed by that behavior. And so in this case, I'm using white and BiPOC, again, not as wholly identifiers, but as saying these are people who harmed and named themselves to harm and these are the people who are recipients of that harm.

And so for BiPOC folks, it really is about what are your choices? What do you want to give? But you are in control of how much you give to an organization. And so if you show up and you clock in and you clock out and you're just here so you don't get fined, that is fine. You can go live your life however you want to do because survival and thriving while surviving to me are the best ways or one of the best ways to interrupt a system that is built to destroy us or make us hate ourselves.

And so if you can do what you can do while spreading joy and liking yourself, then do that. For white people, it is frankly, your primary responsibility to interrupt and break these systems that were built to serve and protect you. So how much intellect, time, energy? As much as you can give and then just a little bit more because to Tiffany's point, you all are in fact, the ones who are behind. You are the ones who have to catch up. And way too often, white people turn to their nearest person of color and say, "How do you help me catch up?" And the answer is I don't, you have to catch up on your own. You have to find community.

I promise you a bunch of people of color have already done the reading, have written a book for you, have engaged in a course for you. You have to go find that, it is not my responsibility to help you catch up. And I still want to be in community. I realized I promise you, I'm happy to support you catching up, but it is not my job. It is not my responsibility. And you are still responsible for catching up even without the assistance of your nearest black friend, I promise. So those are my answers BiPOC folks, give as little as you can spare white folks, give everything and a little bit more.

Ansa Edim:

And I can jump into Tiffany, I don't want to stump you if you have something to say. Okay. I agree with that. Of course, surprise, surprise. I was introduced to the Nap Ministry on Instagram last year and I've really stuck by the principle of rest as resistance. And I will nap in the middle of the day if I'm stressing about racism. I will just walk away.

And to the point I made earlier about last year black folks that change really struggling with the responsibility, the feeling of the responsibility to make sure that the company was fighting racism, and to Courtney's point, it's not our job, but you still feel this responsibility because if it's not our job, who's job is it. And if we don't do anything, then nothing happens and there's just constant pressure.

I started, I decided to me this question that at work, because it is a part of my job, I am paid to do this work. I am a staff representative at the executive level. It's the first, a new role, a change. I'm on the C-team, I'm in the C-suite and I represent staff at that level. And I'm the first black woman at change.org to be at that level. And it's comes with a lot of responsibility and pressure to be at that level and so I've decided to put my energy and intellect into it at work because I feel a responsibility, but in my personal life, I was very quick to just say, "Oh, nope, not going to deal with that, that's racist. Walking away from that."

I'm not going to tell you it's racist. I'm not going to educate you about why it's racist. I'm just going to release myself from that. And I had this epiphany that something has to give in my anti-racism work and that it had to be dealing with anti-racism in my personal life, because at work, I am making an impact that I really value. I love the work that I do, I love my colleagues of all backgrounds, but in my personal life, the world is huge and I am one person and I don't owe it to every racist or sometimes racist or maybe racist to educate them and put my energy and intellect and time and emotion into making sure they see me as someone who's deserving of existing and thriving.

So yeah. And other aspects of my life, I put very little energy starting very recently into anti-racist work because that's not my job. And I released myself of having to educate other people.

Tiffany Wilhelm:

Full support and yeah, Courtney, just so you said, white folks, give as much as you can at your job and in other aspects of your life. And I just think about too, also have some discernment about yourself. We all deserve to have liberated cultures and all deserve to have our full humanity. So if you're at somewhere potentially like base camp that we heard about in the opening session, you might all want to leave. There might not be... Also like Carmen Morgan, who some of us know who's with [inaudible 00:27:45] just says, "Work with the willing and work with the folks that are wanting to do the change." And there might be some culture, some organizations tell it is so entrenched that no amount of how much you give is going to change it, so think about that.

And then I think too about especially now that I'm in a small foundation, but in philanthropy, how much power is there. And so how much influence, sort of anti-racist principles, moving into a space that holds so much power and so much complexity. And holding that too, holding the weight of knowing where real influence is going to make just ripple effects happen. So all of that, and then to your point, Tim and I especially think for white folks, I hope you're not in any spaces just feeling like this is professional development work, feeling like this is just happening at your job. This takes us all and especially white folks to transform completely and so do get involved in it.

I mean, it's everything else in my life that has not been outside of my jobs that has informed how I'm showing up. I've got involved in showing up for racial justice really early in my journey, all of that sort of just activism work happening in the community and that's what makes it possible to show up in all the ways so I hope I encourage everyone to do that too.

Tim Cynova:

Ansa, when you said, "Nope, I'm not going to do that," when we have this thing that Courtney held create called the negative interactions document protocol, that helps our program staff at Fractured Atlas and we published it so everyone can see if you're being racist and oppressive, someone has the full backing of the organization to just hang up the phone on you or not respond to your email. Courtney, do you want to give a bit of sketch into this? And I included the link in the chat so people can actually download and use it if you want.

Courtney Harge:

Certainly. For me it came as a response to staff, particularly POC staff, a feeling like they could not exit conversations where people were misbehaving. And it wasn't because of directive in higher ups, it was in essence just kind of generally understood that the customer is always right. And if a member or a Fractured Atlas kind of patron is calling and misbehaving, it is the program associate's or it's the staff member's job to kind of sit through it and reconcile and get them to kind of a better space which is a generic general understanding around what "customer service" is supposed to be.

And we were having more and more of those, particularly as Fractured Atlas as an org became more vocal about being an anti-racist org. People were calling and just saying just rude things unnecessarily and the staff. And I was like, "Why are you still talking to this person? Why are you taking on the responsibility?" Actually to what Ansa was saying, you are holding this responsibility for maintaining this relationship with the person who is in fact, and this working relationship with a person who is in fact, not doing anything to maintain a good working relationship with you. And you don't have to take that. That should not be the case.

And so in talking to people, the concern really was, well, what happens when we hang up on somebody? What happens if I just want to exit? Or is it my responsibility to kind of mediate and pivot them to a better space? How much of this, if it's abuse, how much do I have to take? When is the line? And so we created the document. Really, it was like these are all the ways you could respond. No one response is better because sometimes you're in for the fight, right? Sometimes you're like, "Oh, okay, you want to say this, I'm going to interrupt, we're going to do this." And sometimes you just can't, Ansa, again to your point. Around sometimes you're like, "You know what, you're doing a racism and I just will not."

So what are the processes and what are the processes that don't just transfer this negative interaction to somebody who has equal power in the organization? So one of the things that I was just really proud of was like you can hang up, you don't have to ask permission, you don't have to go to a higher... Whatever line. If it was too much for you, it's too much and you hang up, right. And all you had to do to tell everybody was say... We had a hashtag, it was bad call. You could put it on Slack and say, "Bad call," and this phone number. And so that way, when it came back, if somebody decided to call back, everybody knew not to hang up or particularly those at the lowest not to hang up, sorry, not to pick up.

Anybody the lowest level of the organization was like, "Nope, we're going to let that ring." You're not going to get to yell at somebody and then try to go to somebody else and be like, "This person was rude to me." It's like, "Nope." They've already flagged that you misbehaved, and this is what's up. And then it was up to somebody with more institutional power to respond and address that person. They would call back or they would email them and say, "First, this is how you mistreated our staff, so before we resolve whatever you need resolved, I need you to know that that's not how you treat the people who work here, and once you agree to that, then we can talk about your issue."

But it really became a series of steps that allowed people to feel empowered, to disconnect and know that they weren't going to be undermined later in the process by being like, "I know that the staff member was unreasonable, but I really care about you," and the way that I've seen other organizations do where they kind of say, "Well, that person just like... the staff member misbehaved, but we know you are right," just to maintain that relationship. It's like, "No, if you're going to work with us, you have to respect that we are people that we deserve that type of energy," and that's where the document came from.

Ansa Edim:

Really love that. I love that. I was just smiling the whole time you were speaking just thinking about all the times where I wish that I had that protocol somewhere I've worked. I've worked in teller research in college and a number of people are mean. I mean, we all know it was anonymity with phone calls or the internet, or if I could've just been like, click, "I'm just going to hang up here. Don't have time for you, nobody pick up the phone," I love that as kind of conditioning for other people as well, which is something that I had to learn in my own anti-racism journey.

My family is Nigerian. They came here in the '80s. I was born here in the US and I learned about my own blackness in a different way as a first-generation American. And Dean [inaudible 00:35:03], he talks about, or he talked about when kids are... And this is his quote so I'm going to put it in air quotes, "But when kids are playing Cowboys and Indians and that they're rooting for the cowboy, they love John Wayne, that's super great. Everyone wants to be John Wayne until you grow up to realize there's a minute when you were about six years old and you realize that you are the Indian in the called Cowboys and Indians games, you're not John Wayne. That there's a select few that are John Wayne."

And I had that realization sort of around that age and later and it was only until the last several years of my life that I had this kind of awakening that I could just talk back to people and just say, "No, that's not nice. That's not right. That's not how you talk to people," or, "Hey, that's racist." And I had this awakening, you could tell people they're being racist. And so I really love bringing that into the workplace because it's difficult and it's a huge burden on HR systems for black, brown or indigenous staff to have to go to HR and make such a report which I have had to do several times in my life, make a report, "This person was racist to me." They do an investigation. The investigation comes out this way.

It's all very clinical and I would love to take some lessons from this to my current workplace to just say, "Hey, I think this is something that we can start to implement," just empower people to shut stuff down. I love it.

Courtney Harge:

So basically like this imbalance works and I know we're short on time, but I'll be quick, is that there's an assumption that responding negatively to negative behavior is the first, in essence, the first shot fired in this conflict. This person said something terrible to me and if I respond in kind, I'm the problem. And it's like, no, violence has already occurred. The violence has happened. Somebody has said a violent thing, has an acted something that is an attempt to limit and undermine my own humanity, right? How I respond to them is a reaction, is not the inciting incident.

And so to what you're saying, one of the ways in which part of my comfort around interrupting that is one, recognizing this violence has occurred and I am responding. Two, I am not responsible for how you feel about me. I am responsible for interrupting what is happening and for not just letting you harm me, right? So I'd much rather if you think I'm angry black woman or whatever, that means okay, that's on you. But this person said something real foul to me, and I'm going to respond in a way that names this is what just happened. And that is not a violent act. It's not even about meeting violence with violence, but it is naming violence is not the same as enacting violence.

Ansa Edim:

Just unmuting. So you can hear my snaps.

Courtney Harge:

Yes, I appreciate it.

Tiffany Wilhelm:

I love that. And I'm excited to for funders to the point where they say, "Hey, we see anti-blackness happening, we see people getting harmed. We're not going to fund you anymore." It really could be kind of that simple too.

Courtney Harge:

It could. It could be so easy.

Tim Cynova:

So we have about five minutes left in our conversation today, if there's other questions that you have, please put them in either the chat or the Q&A. I've been taking a look at them. Maybe let's take a look at the question. I was scrolling up, I saw Sarah posted, "I want to learn how to encourage our workplace to turn apathy and concern into action." And maybe a related question that I often hear is like what if I work for an organization and they're not going to do anything about it?

What if they're, like we heard in the first session, maybe they put a black square on Instagram and they're like, "All right, well, so what are we going to do?" And what if you work in that organization that's not showing that actually, they're truly committed to the work. What should you do? What can you do?

Ansa Edim:

I don't remember if it was Tiffany or Courtney who said this earlier, so forgive me, but I believe we were talking about kind of the power of your own labor, really at the end of the day. And it is a privilege to be employed. It's a privilege to be able to leave a job and I totally understand that. But similarly to what Tiffany just said about funders being able to say, "I hear it but you're not committed to anti-racism, so we're not going to fund you." I am a serious believer in people doing that with their labor, their dollars, with whatever power you have to take away from an organization that isn't committing to helping us build an anti-racist world to say, "Oh, well, this isn't the place for me then."

And they'll start to see recruiting staffer and turnaround and all of that. And we as workers have an enormous power to make demands. And we saw that change, like I said earlier, with black staff stepping up and saying, "You're not doing enough. We see that you're doing something, and we see that our mission is connected to anti-oppression and we're seeing that. We just believe it could be done more better in bigger ways.

And we made demands. We straight up made demands and it worked. And so if more workers can do that and just band together as a staff who want to see your organization succeed, you believe in your mission, you believe in the organization and you really want to be there and you want to help say so. And eventually these organizations will get the pictures that they need to either step it up or large flocks of staff.

Courtney Harge:

Audience is a gift to any place you chose to give it and they are giving you dollars in exchange which is not more valuable than your brilliance and talent. And even if they are paying you what you feel you are worth or what you deserve, you are still giving them more than they are giving you. I recognize capitalism has taught us that capital and dollars are the most important than that is not true. That capital is a necessary resource to survive capitalism, but it is not a determinant on who you are. And so whatever gift you are giving to any org which your talent, your attention, your time take to a place that recognizes that they are still making out better than you are in the deal, frankly.

I always like to say pull a LeBron, take your talents to south beach. Go way where you can be appreciated and where people are willing to work with you. Because if they're expecting you to come in and do the work for them, one, it'll fall apart. Two, like I said earlier, you will fail before the systems fail. And three, the second you do go, it will not be sustained. And so you have an essence out on a treadmill that nobody's going to see, and not create a better world. It's not just about being seen doing the work, it's about can we make impact. And the people and orgs and institutions who are not willing to grow and adapt and change deserve to collapse, do not save them.

Somebody, they have boards, they have CEOs, they have staff who are paid and compensated and supported and keeping the organization going. And if people are not making choices to do that where they are losing staff, let it go, let it fail and build something new in its place. Give those resources to other people fully. And I realize I feel like I'm coming from a very kind of nihilistic place, but this is out of love. This is about building a joyful space. And if other spaces do not want to be at the joy of liberation with me, then they can go, they can be elsewhere. They can hate from outside of the club because we will be in a joyful, loving, chosen community.

Tim Cynova:

And with that, the clock has hit 45. Cut. So amazing to be with the three of you today and our great participants who have been lively in the chat. Ansa, Courtney, Tiffany, truly thank you so much for sharing your wisdom and your insight and your time with us today. Thank you for being at the summit.

Ansa Edim:

Thank you so much for having us.

Tiffany Wilhelm:

Yeah, it was so great. Thank you. Thank you all.

Ansa Edim:

Thank you everyone for attending.

Courtney Harge:

For sure. Thank you.

Tim Cynova:

And with that, we have another 15 minute break here where you can network with other people, you can take a break, do whatever. Our next two sessions are at the top of the hour, employment law and COVID and intentionality and environmental impacts. Thank you so much, everyone. Truly amazing. Take care.

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Tim Cynova Tim Cynova

Mental Health & Well-Being Amid a Global Pandemic

How can we and our organizations acknowledge and support the well-being of everyone as we continue to live and work through a global pandemic?

Recorded: 4/27/21, 12PM ET

 

Resources mentioned during session:

Panelists

SHANNON LITZENBERGER is an award winning dance artist, embodiment facilitator and experienced cultural leader working at the intersection of art, ideas and transformational change. As a dancer, performance maker and director, her work explores our relationship to land, the politics of belonging, and the forgotten wisdom of the body. She has been an invited resident artist at Soulpepper Theatre, Toronto Dance Theatre, Harbourfront Centre, Atlantic Ballet Theatre, Banff Centre, and the Gros Morne Summer Music Festival. She collaborates frequently with the Dark by Five Inter-arts ensemble and the Wind in the Leaves Collective. As a skilled freelance strategist, programmer, leadership developer, policy thinker and embodiment facilitator, she works with leading organizations in the arts, academia and the corporate sector. She is currently a faculty member at Banff Centre’s Cultural Leadership Program; a Program Associate with the Cultural Pluralism in the Arts Movement Ontario (CPAMO) working on issues of equity, inclusion and pluralism; a guest facilitator of embodied practice at the Ivey Business School; a Trudeau Foundation Mentor; and a Chalmers Fellow, exploring the application of embodied practice in leadership development and transformative change processes.

SOPHIA PARK (she/her) is a writer, independent curator, and general art person currently working out of Lenapehoking (Brooklyn, NY) and Gumi, South Korea. She studied neuroscience at Oberlin College, and will be a MA candidate at the School of Visual Arts in curatorial practice starting fall 2021. She’s worked at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and currently works at Fractured Atlas. She co-founded and helps run Jip Gallery, an apartment gallery turned curatorial collective, with fellow curators and friends. You can find her writing in numerous publications including Womanly Mag, Strata Mag, Monument Lab’s Bulletin, and more. She spends her time thinking and researching ideas around collective memory, migration, digital space, and Asia-futurism. She also loves to dance salsa, learn languages, and run longer than normal distances.

DIANE RAGSDALE is a speaker, writer, researcher, lecturer, and advisor on a range of arts and culture topics. She is currently serving as Director of the Cultural Leadership Program at Banff Centre for Arts & Creativity and is adjunct faculty at Yale University where she teaches an annual workshop series on Aesthetic Values in a Changed Cultural Context for the Theater Management MFA. Among other roles, Diane previously built an MA in Arts Management and Entrepreneurship for performance-based artists at The New School in Manhattan; served as a program officer for theater and dance at The Mellon Foundation; was managing director of the contemporary performing arts center, On the Boards; and ran a music festival in the beautiful North Idaho town of Sandpoint. Diane is currently a doctoral candidate at Erasmus University, Rotterdam; she holds an MFA in Acting & Directing from University of Missouri - Kansas City and a BS in Psychology and BFA in Theater from Tulane University. She writes the blog, Jumper which is published on ArtsJournal.com and she recently penned the essay, “To What End Permanence?” for the 2019 Haymarket published book, A Moment on the Clock of the World.

JOANN LEE WAGNER is Vice President of People Operations of Common Future. She is a program generalist and a people and culture specialist. When it comes to people and project management, Joann is on point. Her most memorable work wins end with people getting promoted or aligning themselves with the work that they’re most passionate about. She’s experienced at writing, communications, and running events for an audience of 5-500. She knows how to ask the right questions to facilitate a process, a conversation, or an individual’s growth. She likes to check things off the list and loves having fun while doing it. Her experience has been eclectic and linear. In a career spanning 15 years, she’s worked in small businesses, corporations, agencies, and nonprofits. She’s worked on suicide prevention, corporate social responsibility, employee engagement, leadership development, and organizational management. She holds official degrees in Cognitive Science, Environmental Management and Sustainability and unofficial degrees in yarn collecting, matriarch-ing, and whiskey drinking. 

Transcript

Diane Ragsdale:

All right, folks. We are glad to see so many of you here today. I see we're now just on the hour, so I'm going to get started. Welcome to Mental Health and Well-being Amid a Global Pandemic. I'm Diane Ragsdale. I'm the Director of Cultural Leadership at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity among other gigs, and my pronouns are sh/her. I'm a white, middle aged woman. We're supposed to do visual descriptions. That's what I'm doing here. I'm a white, middle aged woman with kind of blondish, brownish, grayish, more and more grayish hair.

Diane Ragsdale:

I'm wearing a black top, and I'm sitting in front of sort of chartreuse colored curtains in my attic in The Netherlands, which is where I live. I am joined today by Joann Lee Wagner, Sophia Park, and Shannon Litzenberger. I'm going to introduce them as we get into our first round of questions. But before we start, we just a second ago decided it might be really nice to ask Shannon, and thank you Shannon for agreeing, to maybe do a 30 second to one minute exercise with us or movement of some kind. Shannon is an embodiment expert, dancer, and choreographer.

Diane Ragsdale:

We're going to get into what her work is about today. Shannon, something we might do quickly before we begin?

Shannon Litzenberger:

Sure, absolutely. Without any introduction, let's just find our gaze away from the computer screen for a moment and let your focus open wide into whatever space you're in. If you feel like sitting up in your chair or standing, placing your feet on the ground. I will just invite you to lift your cheekbones a little bit and gaze high up onto the horizon. If you don't have a horizon in front of you, you can imagine one. Just let the feeling of joy wash over you for a moment. One of the teachers that I have, she quotes a Jungian therapist that says, "We have a duty to joy."

Shannon Litzenberger:

It means that we're able to put ourselves in an embodied state using our imagination. Whatever you're feeling right now, we're going to call on our duty to joy and just look at the horizon and lift our cheekbones and feel joy wash over us. Take a couple of breaths here. When you feel that sense of joy, we'll just bring that back to the space together. Thanks for the offer, Diane. Your mic is on mute, Diane.

Diane Ragsdale:

Yeah, thank you. That was really wonderful. I hope that each of you into the space where we have a quick 30 minutes to get into this topic, and then we'll open it up for questions. If you have questions along the way, please feel free to just pop over to that Q&A panel and jot them down, and we'll move over and take a look at those a bit later. I just want to give a bit of context before we get started. Concerns about mental health and well-being and stress in the workplace are nothing new. They precede the pandemic. But without a doubt, things have become much, much, much harder.

Diane Ragsdale:

This has become a priority or should have become one at any company or enterprise or organization or association. The tech company Project Include recently completed a survey of about 3,000 tech companies and some of what they've found is really hard to hear, but probably not surprising if you've been living through this in your own work situation. They say remote work since COVID-19 is exacerbating harm, harassment, and hostility. Harmful work experiences and anxiety have all increased, particularly among black, indigenous, Latinx and Asian folks, women and non-binary and transgender people, and those over 50.

Diane Ragsdale:

They're saying that employees are being hurt by increased work expectations, poor communication practices, lack of separation between work and home, and a focus on activity over impact. Seemingly interminable uncertainty which leads to the inability to plan results in depression, anxiety, problems concentrating, and brain fog. Just a couple of weeks ago, The New York Times gave us the word languishing to describe this overwhelm and fatigue that so many of us are feeling and suffering from.

Diane Ragsdale:

If leaders have not already made it a business imperative, have not made mental health and well-being a top consideration in all decisions, many are saying we need to do so now. This is what we're going to dive into. I am going to start with a round of questions that will give you a chance to get to know each of our panelists and the kind of work that they're already doing that intersects with mental health and well-being. Joann, if it's okay, I'd like to start with you. You're the Vice President of People Operations at Common Future, and you describe yourself as a people and culture specialist.

Diane Ragsdale:

You have degrees in cognitive science and environmental management and sustainability. Can you start with a visual description of yourself and then tell us a bit about Common Future and its mission and how you think about people and supporting their needs?

Joann Lee Wager:

Yeah, thanks so much, Diane, and thank you, Shannon, for that embodiment exercise. My nickname from my coworkers is Joy-Ann. That was definitely right up my ally and a nice place to ground us as we get into as we just heard the disturbing stats that Diane just shared with us. Hi, everyone. I'm glad to be here today. My name, again, is Joann. Pronouns are she/her. As a visual description, I have on a yellow shirt with flowers on it. I have fair skin, brown hair, brown eyes, and identify as Korean-American. I'm sitting in a black office chair and my background is kind of...

Joann Lee Wager:

You'll see my kitchen, work desk area, play kitchen over here for the kiddo, who may end up making an appearance, but we'll see. Just to get into the work of Common Future, at Common Future, our work really exist at the intersection of economic justice and racial justice. We're a nonprofit organization that addresses the racial wealth cap and builds wealth in primarily black, brown, indigenous, women-led, and Asian rural communities. We do that through entrepreneurship and really breaking down the barriers for folks of color, women and rural folks to really access resources.

Joann Lee Wager:

Over the last 18 years, we've worked with over 200 community leaders, including Vanessa Roanhorse of Native Women Lead, who we just heard on the main stage. And alongside these leaders, we're creating economic power choice ownership for those that are most often marginalized by our economic systems. We're a 21 person organization. We're black-led, majority people of color and women. Of course, because we're here in the context of speaking about the pandemic, I think it's also important to recognize that 25% of us also identify as working mothers.

Joann Lee Wager:

As we all know, it wasn't just the pandemic that was taxing the mental health and well-being of our folks over the past year. It was the continued murder of black people at the hands of police. It was the racial justice protests and the awakening of mainstream America to the realities that folks of color are living through every day. It was the domestic terrorism that we saw earlier this year at the Capitol and recently the increased violence and hate towards Asian people.

Joann Lee Wager:

When it comes to the people at Common Future, I can honestly say that many of us, and I'm sure many of you all, are carrying varying degrees of trauma, of grief, of loss, and so many of us are super just bone tired, right? Not only because of everything that's happening, but also getting the continuing work of childcare and the emergency homeschooling that's still continuing to this day, with many schools not reopened to the level that they had been previously.

Joann Lee Wager:

When I and the leaders at Common Future are thinking about how we support our people, it really starts with deeply understanding who our people are and just knowing that what's happening in our world is affecting them really at a deeply personal level. I think it's recognizing that emotional labor that our folks are carrying and then building our practices and policies from there so that we're doing what unfortunately we just heard about the example of Basecamp from the main stage where that kind of behavior is retraumatizing anyone who's already affected by what's happening.

Joann Lee Wager:

I think that for us as an organization, it's really important that we're not needing to explain again and again why we're sad, mad, depressed, languishing. I know I've been speaking for a little bit, but I'm just going to finish my point, Diane.

Diane Ragsdale:

Sure.

Joann Lee Wager:

Great. I just want to explain what support looks like in our organization. I would say it happens at the institutional, the interpersonal, and the individual levels. As an institution, we focus on this concept... When the pandemic was starting, we really started to focus on this concept of essentialism, which was written about by Greg McKeown in the book titled Essentialism. It's really this concept where your... Unlike the stat where Diane just shared, folks are just kind of focused on this productivity mindset of doing tasks.

Joann Lee Wager:

The concept of essentialism is really about focusing your energy on where you're making the biggest difference and either delegating or letting go really quite honestly of the rest. For us, in terms of our practice at our organization at the institution level, it really meant that our department heads were working with teams to actually reduce the workload to the extent possible.

Joann Lee Wager:

At the interpersonal level, it was about supervisors really modeling what this essentialist behavior is, and then also continuously reinforcing this culture of care and empathy in working with their direct reports and really in all the relationships that they have at work, and just asking questions like, "How are you really, or I know that these times might be hard on you. Please take time off, or how can I support?" I think that that interpersonal relationship and just like the recognition is so important when it comes to addressing mental health in the workplace.

Joann Lee Wager:

And finally, I think at the individual level, it was making sure that our employees had access to the mental health benefits and resources and knew how to take advantage of them, but also just like straight up paid time off. Last year, we closed our offices for three additional weeks in addition to the paid time off and the holidays that we already had in place. One of the weeks being the week of the election, which as we all know in the States anyway, it was just chaotic that week. Just anticipating those things.

Joann Lee Wager:

I think given the paid time off was super important just in terms of being able to address mental health and just continue this... Be really deeply empathetic to the situations of people. I think that this shift towards the role of managers in particular from delegating and overseeing to really having that empathetic mindset and being problem solving alongside employees so that... There was a Harvard Business Review article that just came out about that, about the shifting role of manager. I think that's exactly right.

Diane Ragsdale:

Thank you so much, Joann. What a great start to this conversation. If I remember that article, it came out two weeks ago. They were making the point that much of what we have historically thought management is will be automated actually, because more and more we see technology platforms that are arising to automate things like nudging employees or keeping track of deadlines, et cetera. That is this empathy that will become one of the core skills. Thank you so much for bringing that up. That's great. Sophia, can I bring you in here?

Diane Ragsdale:

You have a degree in neuroscience and are currently working at Fractured Atlas as a project management specialist. You also have a gallery that you co-founded and run I believe out of your apartment. Is that right?

Sophia Park:

Yeah, but loosely on the internet now.

Diane Ragsdale:

Yeah, yeah, and on the internet. But anyway, I think that that's extraordinary. As I understand it, you made your way from neuroscience into the arts and that this have partly to do with the growing conviction of the role the arts can play in people's lives and perhaps even in their wellbeing. I wonder if we could start with a vision description and hearing a bit about that transition.

Sophia Park:

Yeah. Hi, everyone. I'm Sophia. Pronouns are she/her. I am a light skinned East Asian woman with black long hair that's curly. I'm wearing this baby blue sweater, and in the background is my small Brooklyn apartment, where one side is the kitchen and the other side is actually a DJ turntable, and the walls are a blush pink color. I jumped from science to the arts, even though my fondness science will never fade, partially because of my own well-being and my concern for my well-being.

Sophia Park:

When I studied neuroscience, the path that we were given, the two options really were to I remember talking about this was to become a doctor or a doctor, to get an MD or a PhD. And not many other jobs were offered as a place where I could grow post school. I was pursuing that path and slowly came to realize that it just really wasn't for me. At the same time, I was spending a lot of time at the Metropolitan Museum of Art while I was having those realizations about my science career and finding a lot of solace and a lot of just comfort being around artwork.

Sophia Park:

I decided to jump straight in and I applied for a job at the MET and was very fortunate to get a job and started my career there. I think while recently I've been really thinking about grieving within the context of the workplace as well and I actually wrote an article for Monument Lab's Bulletin about how we can think about memorials and public spaces and our relationship to grieving in terms of that as well. I've been thinking about things on multiple layers. It's interesting how the job that I have right now I'm very fortunate in a lot of ways.

Sophia Park:

I know, Diane, you mentioned the grieving article that I wrote and I was on a podcast with our co-CEO Tim about. That really came about because I was grieving before the pandemic. I think grief doesn't end there. I'm not a grief counselor or anything like that, but I had a coworker at the time who told me grief comes in waves and you just slowly start to build ways in which you could greet that wave better over time. I think work is one part of how we do that. That's the framework for what I am thinking about in terms of well-being and care.

Sophia Park:

I think, Joann, what you were thinking about, this empathy and this space of care is so important nowadays. Not that it ever wasn't before, but especially as we enter digital spaces, I think thinking about care within digital space is also very important and something that we forget because sometimes we think of the digital as a tool versus this communal space that we create. I'll stop there. I'm not quire sure, Diane, if I answered your question.

Diane Ragsdale:

I'm so glad you brought up that article which was really beautiful and I also remember listening to the podcast that you and a few other folks had done with Tim on the topic of grieving. Grief is actually a word that we're hearing a lot these days. People on many levels were grieving. I wonder what do you think workplaces can do actually in a practical way to be more empathic and responsive to employees who are going through grief now and as they come back into the workplace. What did you experience?

Sophia Park:

I think what Joann actually was talking about in terms of moving with empathy is super important. I remember I entered the conversation around grieving in the workplace as a younger professional and earlier on in my career. I remember feeling this incredible sense of oh no, I can't ask for a time off. I can't ask for help, because I think as young people we've been taught everything will fall apart if you're not there, it's not going to work out, or you're going to lose your job, or something grand is going to happen, partially due to obviously the job market and what economic histories that we've lived through, right?

Sophia Park:

But something that was super important was my manager at that time just said, "Take as much as you need. Take the time off." I know that sounds really simple, but just my manager being able to identify and know me well enough also to be like, "Hey, take a couple of days off, or don't worry about needing to ask me for time off to go do something to commemorate your friend or your family member." I think that first step of offering that space is super important. It's something I think people forget about often as something that they can do to be able to help someone who is grieving.

Diane Ragsdale:

It may sound simple, but it also sounds extraordinarily exceptional, at least in the US context. I know Fractured Atlas has in the past, I don't know currently, but explored unlimited vacation and things like that that seem like huge gifts at a time like this to give people... Maybe it was Joann, you personally mentioned this carving out time for emotional labor as a concept. Thank you, Sophia. Shannon, I'd love to get you into this conversation. You are a professional dancer and choreographer and also an embodiment expert, which we mentioned earlier.

Diane Ragsdale:

We got a little peek of just an exercise there. I know you've spent a lot of this COVID year exploring the intersections between embodiment, resilience, imagination, power dynamics, and how neuroscience actually can increase our understanding of the way these work together. You and I also work at the Banff Centre in the Cultural Leadership Program, where you teach embodied leadership or facilitate workshops really and lead sessions in that. I wonder if you could give a visual introduction and say just a bit about what embodied leadership is and how it helps leaders, why you think it's important.

Shannon Litzenberger:

Thanks, Diane. Hi, everyone. I'm Shannon. My pronouns are she/her. I am a light skinned woman of Eastern European descent. I have longish brown/blonde hair with bangs, and I'm wearing a V-neck t-shirt, short sleeved t-shirt with orange and blue and beige stripes. I'm sitting in a space that is a kind of loft space with the slanted ceiling and some bookcases and some silver tins behind me. I also have, that you can't see, a DJ booth to one side of me that belongs to my partner.

Shannon Litzenberger:

Embodiment, maybe I'll just say, because embodiment maybe an unfamiliar idea for some, although I recognize it's really gaining in mainstream visibility in this moment, but embodiment is just very simply how we are. And the how of us is a deeply relational way of being that's contextual, that's connected to environmental factors, that's connected to genetic and historical factors, personal experiences. The way we come to be ourselves is deeply shaped by our environment. I think this is a really important thing to remember that what is the world that has shaped our way of being.

Shannon Litzenberger:

I think as the pandemic has amplified this mainstream understanding of how systems have created conditions of harm, there's a simultaneous recognition that the forces that have shaped us inside that system have created a number of behaviors and tendencies and unconscious ways of being that are also quite harmful. I find that really salient to this conversation around well-being because we need to acknowledge that we are not a kind of independent entity inside a world. We are a connected, embedded self in the world, right?

Shannon Litzenberger:

Was is that self in the world dynamic and how is the world creating and how are we creating and replicating it inside of it? Of course, when I think about mental health and well-being, I immediately go to this idea that Western culture has disembodied us. It has given us the idea, the false idea, that our minds and bodies are separate entities. And they're not. In my way of thinking about embodiment, there is no such thing as mental health as different physical health, as different from an embodied self in the world health that we experience.

Shannon Litzenberger:

It's perhaps one of the problems of the system around us that we have also disconnected the way we think about and treat these issues, right? When you think about your mental health, when you can imagine describing symptoms or the state of your mental health, what you're probably describing is a physical symptom actually. You might be describing a challenge of being able to focus, or a lack of energy, or difficultly of connecting with joy. Those are deeply physical experiences.

Shannon Litzenberger:

Why I think this is so important for leaders is that just like the system is at this point of reckoning and recognition of the harm that it's created, I think leaders need to also recognize that some of these behaviors are embedded in us and we need access to a sense of embodied self-awareness in order to understand what these behaviors are, when they are useful to us, and when they might not be useful to us. Because if our aim is to create these cultures that are rooted in care, then we might need to acknowledge that our behaviors are not consciously contributing to creating a culture of care.

Shannon Litzenberger:

They might be connected to some other. Maybe it was a survival mechanism or coping mechanism or another way that we figured out how to be in this world, because this world taught us how to be, the world taught us how to feel, how to feel connected, how to feel a sense of self-worth. We learn that from our environment, and then we replicate it through our behavior. Maybe I'll just pause there.

Diane Ragsdale:

That's fascinating. I know that you've done some workshops on resilience with business school students as one of the areas. You've also explored power dynamics with business school students. Maybe just a quick follow-up, what's your sense of... Do these students get the work that you're doing? What do you think that they're gaining from this experience?

Shannon Litzenberger:

It's two. I have a relationship with a couple of different professors at business schools who are like, "Our students are stressed out right now and we want to support them," which is in and of itself an amazing offer. In doing some of these workshops recently, I think students... Some of the responses were... Probably the nicest response was, "Wow! No one ever paid attention to the fact that we're so stressed out and [inaudible 00:29:25] about it."

Shannon Litzenberger:

There was just a recognition that an offer of care was in and of itself a novel thing in an academic institution. That's our starting point, right? That's our starting point.

Diane Ragsdale:

Which really just reinforces your initial point, which is this environment, the system that you're in or the culture you're in has a lot to do with it. Thank you for that. Sophia, I'd love to bring you in here for a second because I remember reading... You sent me an article that you wrote on the Korean concept of Han that feels to me that it's really resonant with what Shannon's talking about in that you were talking about it in terms of being a communal experience and the way that epigenetics could explain why it was proliferating in a way across borders and across generations.

Diane Ragsdale:

Would you mind just talking a bit about that concept and the point that you were making in your article?

Sophia Park:

Yeah. Some context for that is I studied and conducted research in neurotoxicology, specifically studying the effects of environmental toxins on Huntington's disease. From that, I was thinking a lot about my own trauma and the trauma of so many Korean diaspora and greater immigrant folks. For Koreans, it's interesting we have this actual term, right? Like what you were talking about, Shannon, there's an embodied term for our collective trauma.

Sophia Park:

I was speculating that perhaps epigenetics, which was the idea that the environment affects you and your core and that is passed along through generations, may offer an answer for why Han is able to proliferate on a scientific level. But above that, I think it's also how we share our stories and how we share our culture and our language that also has to do with this idea of Han. It's a very difficult concept to describe. I wouldn't say it's just trauma, but it's also this idea of resiliency that we have. It's manifested in so many different ways.

Sophia Park:

It's manifested in how we grief and how we are super stubborn sometimes and how we care for each other. If you see another Korean, you always say hi. That's also all part of it, which I think is interesting because that means that it's not just the trauma. It's also our joy that's also part of it. The fact that it's passed along to generations, which was also deeply tied to the history of Korea and the wars and the colonization and imperialism that the country has gone through, that expanded to all of the global Koreans.

Sophia Park:

I'm not sure how it makes me feel, but it's definitely something that I think we should talk about. I think it's something that I also talk to another one of my friends whose of Jewish descent. He read this article and was like, "This is exactly what we've gone through as well." I think this idea of translating across multiple populations and communities I think demonstrates the importance of community care as well. That's something that I've pulled out from that conversation for sure.

Diane Ragsdale:

Wow. That's incredibly powerful. I think I've got the name of it right. I read a book I think called Culture Mapping. I'm sorry, I can't think of the title, but I'll try and find it and put it in the chat later. It was essentially going into crossing cultures, understanding people across cultures. It was written I think primarily for businesses who have to work in multiple cultures more and more with globalization. It just strikes me listening to you how there's really no one size fits all well-being either, right?

Diane Ragsdale:

We really need to be sensitive to these community, these cultural factors as well. Thank you for that. That was beautiful. Joann, I'm curious, and I see we're getting close to where we probably want to open up and look at questions. And I'm glad so many of you are putting things in the chat. Somebody just mentioned Body Keeps the Score, which is a book that Shannon talks about all the time and I've been listening to this past week on Audible. It's great.

Diane Ragsdale:

But Joann, I wonder if you have any perspective on this shift that we're making to trying to address these issues at that systemic level or environmental level. What does that bring to mind for you?

Joann Lee Wager:

Thank you, Diane. When Sophia was just talking about trauma and how it's held with resiliency, it made me think of a trans writer who wrote on this topic about how oftentimes, especially for folks of color or folks from marginalized community, the response to trauma is heart and parcel with our resiliency, right? How we survive. I think in traditional mental health settings it's almost like, oh well, if you have trauma, it's something where you need to take away the trauma.

Joann Lee Wager:

It's actually not the right frame even to look at it because it's like, well, these traumatic responses have been in response to things in our environment, things that are happening in the world and that continue to happen in the world. You're not trying to necessarily take away these responses, but rather find joy in the moments where you're still living in traumatic times because that is certainly essentially the place that we're still at. Thank you, Sophia, for bringing that up.

Joann Lee Wager:

I guess just when I think about the systemic shifts that are necessary or systems level, because that is the place where Common Future works, right? The economic systems that we live with are just so broken and are not beneficial to most of us and just benefit the few. We saw that as a part of the pandemic just in terms of who is benefiting. There's this stat that we have where an estimated 90% of all women and people of color owned businesses couldn't access the first round of PPP dollars, Paycheck Protection Program dollars.

Joann Lee Wager:

When I think about how we're responding to system change, it's like we're not trying to go back to the state where it's business as usual. We really want to build back what's better.

Joann Lee Wager:

I think the way that Common Future does it in our work at large is about grounding in trust and working with leaders like Vanessa Roanhorse of Native Women Lead and Laura Zabel of Springboard for the Arts, who we're going to be hearing from later on in this summit, who are really connected and have those deep relationships with communities and who can then partner with us to ensure that their communities have a seat at the table in decision making are really leading the strategy for how entrepreneurs are being connected to funding and advice and support and really are the ones who are developing the solutions for their communities.

Joann Lee Wager:

As a nonprofit living in the system, nonprofits are just historically so... Don't have the best reputation of caring for their people, of really prioritizing the programmatic approach to funding and support. I think that I would offer in the way that we approach supporting our people that it is that supporting the employees who are working on the programs that you can't disconnect that necessarily from how you're supporting folks at the community level.

Joann Lee Wager:

I think that when you're switching from that extractive mindset or that extractive system or like a zero-sum system of saying like, "Okay. Well, we can't support our employees because we need to support our programs." It's not the right mindset. I think that when you're building back the type of system we want to build back is one where we're seeking the long-term sustainability of people alongside the communities that we support.

Joann Lee Wager:

I think it's particularly important because the issues that we face are very much deeply entrenched long-term issues where it's never going to be a sprint to fix them, right? It's always going to be a marathon, and we need folks for the long haul who can really be in this work without burning out, without having mental breaks and breakdown. That's what we're doing at Common Future.

Diane Ragsdale:

Excellent. Thank you so much, Joann. I'm mindful of the time, and I'm going to just open up. I'm going to turn it to you, Shannon, first. Any final reflections on really anything that's come up today, any of the topics, or just any recommendations or thoughts that you have for folks as a point of closure?

Shannon Litzenberger:

Sure. Another great resource I could just point is Gabor Maté, a Canadian psychologist doctor, who wrote a book When the Body Says No. It's a great resource to understand the integrated view of health and social environment, if that's of interest. We can put it in the chat in a minute. So much has been said. It's been so delightful to be in conversation all of you, Joann, Sophia, and Diane. I think in some ways we're all saying the same thing. And perhaps for me, one of the parting ideas that I am holding is just this idea of slowing down.

Shannon Litzenberger:

We can't just work at the level of strategy. We have to work at the level of culture change. If we're trying to change culture, then we need to learn. We need to be in a state of learning. Anything new that we're learning, we can't do quickly or even necessarily efficiently at first. We do need to slow down. We need to create cultures of well-being in our organizations, and we have to understand that this is an active resistance in a world that wants us to be bigger, faster, better, and more.

Shannon Litzenberger:

We have to understand that this is the revolutionary work is to be a counterculture to the dominant culture of productivity that we're surrounded by and that's difficult work.

Diane Ragsdale:

Thank you, Shannon, for that. Sophia, any final thoughts or recommendations from you?

Sophia Park:

Yeah. Kind of jumping off of what Shannon just said, I shared a quote in our initial call by Toni Cade Bambara, the great, about how not all speed is movement. Like you said, Shannon, I think trying to hold onto this idea of not moving quickly, not treating ourselves as machines perhaps that can just do everything quickly, do everything well, do everything perfectly will perhaps help us in this long-term journey to ensure that we're switching our understanding of work around not just work, but care, right?

Sophia Park:

We're really shifting our mindset completely from what we've been taught so far and that will take a really long time. It's also I think very similarly to the reckonings that we have gone through the past year is related to how internally we do the work, what positions of power are we in, what power are we holding onto that maybe we don't need to hold onto, how are we moving forward with care at the forefront, and what is safety and how does safety relate to justice.

Sophia Park:

Because as we do the work every day and our every days are filled with emails and, I don't know, Google Docs and what have you, but the longer game and the larger work is something greater than that. I think for me personally, having that question in my head, what is justice and how do we get there, and thinking through difficult conversations around accountability and all the questions that we've been seeing pop up lately, which all directly relate to care, will help us move forward and maybe move the needle a little bit towards where we want to go.

Sophia Park:

That's something, kind of a larger vision thing, that I've been thinking about. Just one thing, I know we talked about something we could walk away with this is, if you don't have a tea time or some kind of social time with your co-workers, just build it in. 15 minutes can do a lot and there are also lots of cool platforms. I recommend using Ohyay as a way to build community. If we don't build community, there's no way that we can even take the step towards well-being, right? That's something to add.

Diane Ragsdale:

Thank you, Sophia. I did pop over and I didn't see any questions, except a question about the report I mentioned, which I can pop into the chat. Joann, I'll turn it over to you to just say any final recommendations or thoughts that you'd like to leave folks with today, and then we'll share some resources in the chat.

Joann Lee Wager:

Yeah. I mean, I think that for me, it goes back to this framing around the individual level, the interpersonal level, and the institutional level. I think that our figures here have just done a great job of sharing examples of how folks can engage with mental health and supporting employees and supporting their people at each of their levels. Quite frankly, some of these things are so easy, right? It just takes that time to just show up with care. At Common Future, we are working on an experiment around the four day workweek.

Joann Lee Wager:

But to get to this point where we're able to do this four day workweek experiment, it really didn't just start with us getting on the same page and saying like, "Hey, this is a really messed up moment we're finding ourselves in, and we need to do something for employees. We need to focus on what's essential, and then just reinforce that messaging in our one-on-ones." That's the place where we started. It's snowballed now into where we can put much more structure and infrastructure around it.

Joann Lee Wager:

That would be my advice or my final thoughts to those who are here with us today is like wherever you're finding yourself, there's always something that you can do and e need to do it.

Diane Ragsdale:

Thank you, Joann. That's a lovely place to start. I can't thank you enough. You've been such a terrific panel. I'm going to take a minute here and just type some resources into the chat and also just to mention, somebody asked about the report. It's put out by Project Include and it's called Remote work since COVID-19 is exacerbating harm. I'll try and look that up and throw it in the chat as well. Thank you all so much. I'm going to turn my attention to getting some of these resources, but thank you very much.

Joann Lee Wager:

Thank you.

Sophia Park:

Thanks, everyone.

Shannon Litzenberger:

Thanks for moderating, Diane.

Diane Ragsdale:

My pleasure.

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Tim Cynova Tim Cynova

Intentionality & Environmental Impacts

This past year saw most travel for work completely erased. How can we reopen in intentional ways that center our impact on planet and people?

Recorded: 4/27/21, 1PM ET

 

Panelists

KRISTA BRADLEY is Director of Programs and Resources at the Association of Performing Arts Professionals (APAP), the national service organization for the performing arts presenting industry. At APAP she’s responsible for the professional development programming for the annual conference as well as year-round programs, leadership development initiatives, regranting programs and resources that advance the skills, knowledge and capabilities of APAP's membership. Prior to APAP, she was Executive and Artistic Director of BlackRock Center for the Arts, a nonprofit multidisciplinary arts center in Maryland, and Program Officer of Performing Arts for Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation. She brings more than twenty years of experience working in the nonprofit, performing arts, and philanthropy sectors as a curator, funder, arts administrator and consultant for organizations such as the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, the Walker Arts Center, Houston Grand Opera and Opera America. Krista is also a practicing musician, a current member of the Thomas Circle Singers, a DC-based choral ensemble, and a former board member of APAP. She holds a B.A. degree in Literature and Society from Brown University.

ALEXIS FRASZ is a researcher, writer, strategic thinker, program designer, and advisor to partners in culture, philanthropy, and the environmental sector working for transformative change and a just transition. She is a co-director of Helicon Collaborative and leads their work at the intersection of culture and the environment. Her perspective on systems change draws on her artistic practices and diverse background in anthropology, Chinese Medicine, permaculture, and Buddhism. She believes in the need to build solidarity between artists and culture and broader movements working for racial, ecological, and economic justice. Alexis also teaches on creative civic leadership for artists and non-artists, and is faculty for the cultural leadership program at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity and Julie’s Bicycle’s Creative Climate Leadership program. Her research on socially engaged artistic practice has informed artist training curriculums and philanthropic programs worldwide. She is actively engaged in Helicon’s ongoing work to address inequities in cultural philanthropy. Alexis graduated Summa cum Laude from Princeton University with a degree in Cultural Anthropology and has pursued Master’s level study in Chinese Medicine.  She is an advisor of the Public Bank East Bay, the Headlands Center for the Arts, and The Artist’s Literacy’s Institute. She lives in Oakland, where she spends as much time as possible in her garden.

VIJAY MATHEW is the Cultural Strategist and a co-founder of HowlRound Theatre Commons, based at Emerson College, Boston, USA and is privileged to assist a talented team by leading HowlRound's development of commons-based online knowledge sharing platforms and the organization's notions of cultural innovation. Prior to his current position, he was the Coordinator for the National Endowment for the Arts (USA) New Play Development Program, as well as a Theater Communication Group (USA) New Generations Future Leader grant recipient in new work at Arena Stage in Washington, DC. Vijay has a MFA from New School University, New York, a BA from University of Chicago, and an artistic background as an ensemble-based filmmaker and theatremaker. He is a board member of Double Edge Theatre located in rural Ashfield, Massachusetts, USA.

ERIN WOODS offers the enterprise equivalent of creative production, bridging strategy and execution for projects and organizations. Her work is focused on transformational, purposeful learning, sustainable travel and tourism, and arts, culture and community. She has an undergraduate degree in theatre from Colorado College, a Master’s in Communication from the University of Denver, and has participated in such systems-shifting programs as Getting to Maybe and Creative Climate Leadership. Whether on stage or backstage (though now mostly from the balcony), live theatre will always have her heart.

Transcript

Erin Woods:

I'm going to kick this off. My name is Erin Woods and I am ... Thanks, Kate. See, I've got some supporters in the crowd. I love it. I am, for a matter of visual description, a White woman with dark blonde hair, I'm wearing a pink blouse, and I'm in front of some mixed media art in my background, and I will ask the speakers when they introduce themselves to introduce themselves that way as well. But I'm calling in from my office in my home in Banff, Alberta, which is in Treaty 7 territory, the traditional home of the Stony Dakota, Tsuut'ina, Blackfoot, and Métis Region 3 peoples who have historically and continue to call this place home.

Erin Woods:

Banff has always been a place for migrants and immigrants, and so there are many of us who are very fortunate to live here. I think as we talk about intentionality in the environment, it's great just to remember that what we're talking about is place. We're talking about where we are. So, and Diane [inaudible 00:01:10] from The Netherlands even. So, it would be great as we do this, and people already are, just to put in the chat where you're calling from just so that we get a sense of where our community is joining us from, and I will hand it over to Krista maybe to introduce yourself and then we'll just do brief, brief introductions around, and then we'll dive into the meat of the matter.

Krista Bradley:

Sounds great. Hi, everybody. I'm Krista Bradley. I'm Director of Programs and Resources at the Association of Performing Arts Professionals. I'm calling you from my home in Silver Spring, Maryland outside of DC, and it's the traditional land of the Piscataway and the Pamunkey peoples. My pronouns are she/her/hers and I'm a Black woman with a dark purple shirt on and a gray sweater, a bright blue headband, blue glasses, sitting in front of my Peloton and a window with lots of plants. It's good to be with you.

Erin Woods:

Great. Thank you. Alexis?

Alexis Frasz:

Sure. I am Alexis Frasz. I am calling in from unseated Ohlone territory in Oakland, California. I am a light skinned woman with short, bleached blonde hair, it's kind of a Mohawk, and I'm wearing a black sweater and sitting in front of a couple of posters by Shepard Fairey. I work at Helicon Collaborative, which is an organization that focuses on the intersection of culture and the environment. We do a lot of things in that space, which I will talk about later.

Erin Woods:

Thanks, Alexis. Vijay?

Vijay Mathew:

Hi, everyone. My name is Vijay Mathew and my pronouns are he/him. A visual description of myself is I have brown skin, short black hair, and a little gray stubble. I'm wearing a black short sleeve shirt with a collar and my background is a white wall, and I'm calling from the Boston Metro Area, which is the land of the Massachusett and Pawtucket people. I'm a co-founder of HowlRound Theatre Commons, which is based at Emerson College in Boston, and it's a media publisher of essays and live streams that are produced by and for the professional performing arts community.

Erin Woods:

Great. Thank you. I'm imagining that most of this, my hope is that most of this will really be more of just a conversation, a dialogue because Vijay and Krista and Alexis all know each other. Certainly, in the chat, feel free to, any comments, and then there is also a Q&A. As you can see, there's a Q&A tab. So, we will do a Q&A section at the end. So, as questions come up, if you would plop them in there, that would be great. I'll try to keep an eye on those. But I would love to, by way of introductions, have each of the panelists talk about who they are, their work, where their work and this idea of intentionality in the environment, where that starts to intersect.

Erin Woods:

So, just sort of a workplace overview, as well as maybe a couple little tidbits about you that aren't reflected in your job description or in your title, a little something that we might want to know about you, and I'd love to see that in the chat from individuals as well. Where do you work, or if you're comfortable, what organization do you work for, and some other little nuggets about do you love French fries or are you double jointed or whatever that might be. So, maybe Alexis, will you kick us off with just a little bit more about Helicon and your work and a couple tidbits about you that we might not know?

Alexis Frasz:

Sure. Okay. So, I'll start with the tidbits so I don't forget them. I probably would. Let's see. I have a garden that I'm pretty obsessed with and have learned a little bit of permaculture. So, I try to apply that as best I can. I am a rock climber and I am learning how to build things, and I built a shed in my backyard, which I'm very proud of. But as far as Helicon, a few, maybe five or six years ago, we started really venturing into the environmental space and climate change. We came out of the arts.

Alexis Frasz:

So, really, the work that we do is at the intersection of culture and the environment, and that means that we really think of the environmental issues that we face, including climate change, as cultural issues, not primarily technological or scientific issues. That is a growing kind of perspective, I think, in the environmental sector broadly that we actually know many of the technical things we need to do, but how to change human behavior, how to move in a completely new way as a society is more of a social issue and a cultural issue than a technical one. Granted, science plays a big part in it. I'm not denigrating that.

Alexis Frasz:

So, the other piece of it is that because we came out of the cultural sector, we're really interested in the role of the culture and artist creative practices can play in helping to make that transition to re-talk about a just transition. That's the language that we like because we've always had equity as a focus of our work. Really, that means that whatever we do, the solutions protect and prioritize the people who are most impacted and focuses on making a better world for everybody. So, I guess I'll stop there for now.

Erin Woods:

Great. Thank you. Vijay, do you want to jump in on that to talk about your work and where intentionality in the environment and your work intersect, and some tidbits?

Vijay Mathew:

All right. Okay. So, tidbits. Let's see. I'm a parent to a 12 year old, I'm addicted to spicy food and must have it every day, and I'm almost completely free of all social media platforms. Liberated. So, okay. Then intersection with the work, so HowlRound Theatre Commons, its editorial agenda is to amplify progressive ideas and conversation and perspectives from performing artists themselves who are producing the essays and live streams. Unfortunately still, the climate emergency is actually a progressive and disruptive topic.

Vijay Mathew:

We have been publishing for several years incredible essays written by artist from around the world about their work at that intersection of performing arts and climate change, both about actual pieces that address that, as well as production methods and different systems of how the work comes into being that is aligned with different paradigms, and yeah. So, I'm coming at it from that perspective, and similar to what Alexis said, really seeing it as a cultural issue. It's a culture that created the crisis and it's culture that will mitigate or transition us into a different form. Yeah. So, and I'll just throw a link in there to our tag on climate change where you'll find essays and videos that artists have made themselves.

Erin Woods:

Great. Thank you. Krista, of course, the work that you do and climate change, or the emissions in any rate, can't be separated. So, certainly, you've been thinking about this a lot. So, I'd love to hear about work that you're doing where that intentionality and the environment intersect and some juicy tidbits about you also. They don't have to be juicy.

Krista Bradley:

I don't know. Juicy tidbits. I have become a plant mom during this COVID time and I started with one plant and now I have 15. So, I'm really enjoying that. I love to cook and I have been a choral ensemble singer for probably 25, 30 years. So, that is my thing, making music with people that you can't create on your own. So, how am I connected to this work? APAP is the service organization for the presenting, touring, and booking industry in the performing arts, and by that, I mean we support the people, the artists, the agents and managers, and the venues that provide the infrastructure for artists to connect with communities around the country and around the globe.

Krista Bradley:

By nature of the work of the live performing arts touring industry, we spend most of our time moving people and our work and our arts across boundaries, across states, across oceans, across continents. That in its nature is all about connecting artists with audiences, but the way that we do it right now is fairly extractive. The model that we've built are work on means that artists have to tour enormously to make a living and venues have to position themselves as interesting spaces where only certain artists go to.

Krista Bradley:

So, there's lack of an incentive to sometimes be as thinking in partnership and ways that you can connect with other like-minded colleagues to bring artist to your communities and to do it in a way that's longterm and not for one night. The other piece of what APAP does is we're one of the largest conveners of the performing arts industry every year. We have our APAP conference in New York typically. It usually attracts three to 4,000 people coming into the city and it's an important piece in the industry, in terms of gathering the field.

Krista Bradley:

However, it's also gathering a lot of people, making people travel a great deal to come to one place, and it puts out a lot of waste. So, both as a service organization trying to be a couple of steps ahead of the field and provide information, resources, support on how to do our work better, how to be sustainable as a field, and how to be just and equitable and accessible, the whole idea of being or interested in environmentally sound practices is really critical, and how do we think about our work differently now that we've had 13 months to have to reimagine how we work? So, I'll stop there.

Erin Woods:

Great. Thank you. I think all of you touched on this idea that a lot of what we're talking about is how do we stay connected with our communities? How do we share, whether it's art, or a lot of the people in joining us may be from arts organizations or maybe nonprofits more generally. But often, those organizations, their fundamental reason for being is connecting with community and connecting now in different, maybe more creative ways. So, I'd love to just have maybe an informal chat, Vijay, Alexis, and Krista, just about that, about what are we learning about connecting with community now that the old ways, for 13 months, we couldn't do, and we're coming to a real understanding of how damaging those ways might be? So, unmute yourselves. Discuss.

Alexis Frasz:

I can jump in just to kick it off. I think to some of the things Krista was mentioning, many of us have discovered not that there ... I don't want to minimize the real pain and suffering that's happened with COVID and the things that have been really difficult. I think that there have been things that we've discovered that are really valuable about not traveling as much, having more time with our families, getting into plants and gardening, connecting to our bodies in different ways, and I think also recognizing what really matters and how we're connected to our communities, that if our community is not well, we're not well.

Alexis Frasz:

I think that the arts, especially that so many businesses are like this, have become very disembodied, actually, that there's this idea that it's very mental, it's very global, and I think the pandemic forced us to be more local. My hope would be that we ... I think we will be forced to be more local in the future, whether we like it or not. But I think that there's also great potential to see that as an opportunity and something really beautiful, especially because we have these platforms where we can actually connect more broadly, but then really go deep in our local place.

Erin Woods:

Yep. Vijay, your thoughts about that sort of the global and local, because I know a lot of the work that you're doing is really about this streaming. How do we connect virtually?

Vijay Mathew:

Yeah, right. So, I think the pandemic, in a sense, created an uncontrolled collapse of a lot of our arts field, especially the touring and international presenting parts of it. It was a cold turkey kind of quitting of the major tool we use for international touring and presenting, which is air travel, fast travel, which there's no "green alternative" to. The industry itself has said that they can't develop carbon-free technology in any kind of timeline that's going to avert total catastrophe. So, there's that one thing.

Vijay Mathew:

So, hopefully, there's going to go from uncontrolled collapse to now continuing a controlled collapse and putting creative limitations like, for example, an organization stepping out in a very difficult way to say, "We're not going to travel anymore using airplanes," and using that as a creative prompt to really rethink basically everything about their purpose. Who are they serving? So, that's one aspect. Another aspect is during this pandemic, speaking from the perspective of HowlRound and publishing and performing arts artists wanting to connect and share ideas with each other, this has been an incredible moment for artists from the global South and global North to be in the same virtual space together like never before.

Vijay Mathew:

So, there's been some really incredible, just this kind of cultural mobility that happens in this virtual space that had never happened before, as well as breaking down of the ongoing decades long silos of the deaf performing arts community, deaf theater makers with the hearing community. It's still very, like what we heard in the first session, very siloed communities, and again, this virtual platform, platforms being able to break that down. So, those are very promising little beginnings of new paths and creative ways that we can rethink what we're doing.

Krista Bradley:

Yeah. Yeah. Building on both Vijay and Alexis' points, we've seen presenting organizations connect to audiences that they didn't know that they had and to reach a much more, a browner audience than they thought they had because there's less of a barrier and it's also been inspirational for artists to create work to reach a specific audience that may look like them in a different way without intermediary, which I think has been really interesting and bodes well for how we will be connecting directly with our audiences as artists. I think that's been a really great innovation.

Krista Bradley:

I think that artists, we've heard, at least, that they think that they can have a better balance in terms of making a living, that they don't have to travel so much and they can spend more time with their family and they can find new ways to connect with each other and make work in a virtual kind of way, and that's super exciting. I think for people that work in the performing arts as administrators, it is not necessarily very people friendly. We seem to prize long hours, extreme work, being in the theater for 18, 20 hours, not taking time off, etc. So, for workers in this industry, I think we've all realized that that's not only unsustainable, but it's not something that we really want to do again.

Krista Bradley:

So, how do we reimagine and advocate for a different way of working for us working in the cultural sector? Maybe not making work, but certainly supporting the work that does get made and recalibrate what we think is a just way to work for us in the arts and cultural sector, which I think is long overdue. Then to your point, Vijay, about accessibility and equity, we at APAP discovered that even with the conference, that our conference is an expensive conference. People cannot access it to the extent that they would like to, and yet, we attracted so many more people on the SwapCard platform this year that would never have been able to come.

Krista Bradley:

In fact, the leaders of organizations who are usually the ones that come to our conference invited and were able to give all of their staff access to thinkers and doers and mavericks that were talking about innovation, which was amazing. So, we in our practice realize that we can be much more accessible and inclusive and equitable and should be by pursuing a more hybrid model. So, those are some things that I'm seeing.

Alexis Frasz:

Can I just jump in with one thing to build on that, which is I think that we often, and I think this has been a miscalculation, actually, from the environmental movement initially where there was a lot of talk about sacrifice and what we need to give up, and I don't think that's untrue. I think there are things that we need to give up. But I'm one of those people that got a pandemic puppy. Okay? I want to say that I did give up a lot when I got my puppy and I gained a lot, and I think that that's the piece that's missing. So, it's like what if doing less is not actually a sacrifice? What if it actually gives us more, more time?

Alexis Frasz:

One of the things, for example, that we've been told would really help the climate is actually working a four day work week. That also connects to worker wellbeing and having time to care for your family, and that means you spend less money on caring for your family. So, there's all sorts of proliferating effects that can happen from doing less. It's just not how our culture typically thinks about progress.

Krista Bradley:

Exactly. Good point.

Vijay Mathew:

I want to add to the workplace and work organization and how that's structured and how that's related to actually climate crisis, where the idea of extraction or costs or hidden costs or the costs of doing business that we put aside and we just let them happen, that's related to the workplace in that in organizations that have less of a hierarchy in terms of a rentier class of people, people on top who, no matter what they're doing, no matter what value they're creating for their organization, are always somehow extracting more wealth, more resources, more longevity, more opportunities, more resources than people lower in the hierarchy who may, for example, be artists, who are freelance, contractor, paid very little, who are struggling to just make basic ends meet, basic needs met.

Vijay Mathew:

So, that mindset that there can actually be, and that we all collectively accept this as a norm or it's normal that there is a rentier class in our nonprofit arts organizations, that's the same mindset that is also capable of allowing a climate emergency to run away out of our control, even to the point where it's truly on the table whether or not we're going to survive as a species or that our complex civilization is going to actually be something we can keep onto that's truly on the table. So, there's that mind shift, that change of perspective and change of culture that has to also infiltrate, and talking just from the arts, nonprofit organizations, they truly need to look into maybe the worker cooperative model or some other kind of system that is not just based on cheap, free labor.

Erin Woods:

It would be great, I would love, actually, to have you all three maybe talk just a little bit more about that, that it's kind of a bunch of times, that this is really about a cultural shift. It's not a technological problem. It's not about the science. It's actually about who we are and how we want to be in the world, and that what we value and what we think about as sustainable, not only in terms of the environment, but in terms of our own lives and our own selves and our neighborhoods, all of those cultural things, especially in response to some of the conversations I know that happened this morning about base camp and reverting to 1983.

Erin Woods:

So, if there is this movement, there's a pull to 1983 and there's a pull towards these possible futures. I would just love your thoughts about how we might weight the scales one way. Then also, since I've got the floor, if anybody's got questions, please do start to populate the Q&A section and we will start to field questions from all of you as well. So, thanks. The brilliant, the pull towards the future. Or what have we seen that's worked? Maybe it's not a massive shift to the future. Maybe it's just small little changes that, as Alexis says, aren't necessarily sacrifices. They're just shifts.

Alexis Frasz:

Yeah, and I don't want to minimize the scale of change. I think the reality is we are in, and entering more so, a time of accelerating change, and I think that we just need to come to terms with that as a society. Really, this question of whether we want to change or we don't want to change. It's just not an option. It's not our choice. We do get to chose how we want to meet that moment and I think for our own survival, as Vijay said, but also especially for justice because there are people ... Climate change has been presented as if it's this far away thing and I think more and more of us are dealing with, we have flooding, we have fires where I am in California that are extreme impacts on our quality of life and our ability to work, as if that's not the primary concern that most of us have when those thing are going on is whether or not we can work.

Alexis Frasz:

But they do affect our ability to work and to participate in our industry, whatever that may be. But we know that those things are going to continue to accelerate, at this point, regardless of what we do for a while. It isn't to say that our actions don't matter. They actually do quite a lot. So, I think there's one of the things in our culture, that it's characteristic of a consumer culture is that there's an immaturity and an innocence. Right? This is being talked about a lot in the racial justice work that is also becoming to the fore in our culture. But it's like there's no excuse for not knowing what we should know at this point. So, the question is really how are we going to participate in that?

Alexis Frasz:

I think, I remember, actually, this happened at Banff, Erin, when we first met. There was an environmental guy. I was part of an environmental meeting. This was probably seven or eight years ago. I remember this guy who worked in the environmental sector and he was recounting this experience he had talking to one of his friends about what he did and thinking, yeah, we're really having this great dialogue about climate change, and after they finished the conversation, he said, "Well, good luck with that. I really hope you make some progress on that," and it's like it was his issue. I think that we need to recognize it's a context for all of our issues, no matter what you care about. It's a context in which we live.

Alexis Frasz:

I think that creates a lot of opportunity for empowerment, actually, around what we can do. We are both potentially leaders of organizations or staff members, we are consumers, we are voters, we are role models, we're parents. So, thinking much more broadly, [inaudible 00:28:42] just about ourselves as consumers, but as citizens really, not using the negative connotation for that term, but really participants in and responsible for the future of our society and our world. So, yeah.

Krista Bradley:

I'm really interested in leadership because it just keeps popping up, because this march that we're on is inevitable, as Vijay knows, and adaptation to the climate emergency and to a very different reality that's quickly approaching, I think, is going to be so critical. So, how are we leading from the middle? How are we leading cooperatively? Vijay, the comment you made about different work structures and flattened hierarchical work structures and thinking about cooperatives. I'm just wondering how those could play, or that model could play a role in leading change and moving away from that individual person that's, whatever, trying to drive change.

Krista Bradley:

Change, I think, comes from more mass movements of like-minded people who are making small or medium sized calls for change or just coming up with different guidelines or ways to work that even in their own small sector or small organization, and Kate, I have worked for a number of small organizations, so I totally see and appreciate that challenge about trying to maintain change, and I think what's helped me is being able to network and create a collaborative of people who are all working towards that as ways to learn from and to cheer on and continue to move things forward, because I do believe in the power of that kind of collective movement and cohort groups making change. So, I just wanted to raise that up in terms of the whole leadership piece.

Erin Woods:

No, I think that that's great. Vijay, you also, though, in addition to the individual, the smaller collective grassroots movements, you also have talked about radical operational changes. So, where do those play together perhaps?

Vijay Mathew:

Oh, yeah. Well, I think it, when we ... Let me get my thoughts together. There's something about how when we live in a specific system, whether it's our workplace or just in our greater economy, and we've been called as consumers, these systems really impact the way that we relate to each other. Despite our own personal intentions or values, these systems seem to always trump ... The ideology and the values embedded in these systems always seem to trump our individual of will. So, if we're able to live and create new structures in our workplaces and in the world outside of our workplaces, it will bring out better things in us as people, I think. So, that's an important aspect and that's incredibly related to the system, the capitalist consumer system, colonial system that has created the climate crisis. So, those are all very related.

Vijay Mathew:

The other thing is that, getting back to a point I think Krista made about disruptions, also Alexis, these disruptions that are going to be ongoing, continued crises that are localized or global, pandemic or whatever, that our impulses to collaborate and to take care, to really start to do the work of caring for each other is incredibly important, and the cultures and systems we inhabit will bring that out in us so that we can do that better. I think that's really on way the arts can go is to really see how they can actually be a caring entity in their community, both local and virtual. Then practically, what that means is if you're not, for example, doing accessibility practices for your online events, that's a good and quick place to start.

Alexis Frasz:

Yeah. I think that's a really ... So many points are so important that you're making, and there's a really great book that just came out recently called Less is More by this anthropologist called Jason Hickel, and one of things that they've found and that he writes about in that book is that democratic governance is always associated with better care for people and the environment when any group, it's not just democratic political systems, which we don't actually have and we know that, but when people are collectively able to make decisions together for the good of the whole, then make the right decision.

Alexis Frasz:

So, I think that really speaks to the point about changing structures, and it seems like it's not necessarily related to Kate's question. There may be things that don't seem like they're ... You may not be able to afford putting solar panels on the roof of your building. But you can practice more democratic decision making, and many small organizations already do. So, I think that also, if you do look through and do an audit of your activities and look for ways that you can minimize your harm, also look for ways that you might be able to maximize your benefit and places where maybe you already are. Like many artists, there are artists who fly all the time and go around the world and use a ton of carbon. But most artists that I know in my local community live pretty modest lives.

Alexis Frasz:

So, to ask them to really cut back more is probably not the best bang for the buck in terms of what we're looking at here, which is not to say everybody should do their part, and whatever you can do, great. But if you already take the subway, if you already live in a house with multiple people, you're ahead of the game in a lot of ways. So, I think that we also need to think about really looking at the places where there's the most bang for the buck, and in both those senses, in terms of reducing harm, but also human beings have this capacity to have an impact beyond our species size. We have an impact on everything else. So, a concept that I mentioned, permaculture, in the beginning, a concept that permaculture is maximize your impact, actually, not minimize it. But do it for good, not for evil, and with intentionality.

Krista Bradley:

Mm-hmm (affirmative). Maximize your impact. I guess it could be misconstrued. But I really get in the context that you're using.

Erin Woods:

Do you have anything else along those lines, Krista, that you just ... Because I think there was a question in the Q&A about that that actually might relate to this maximizing your impact idea is that in organizations, do we have some thoughts, yes, on what we can do individually? How do we get more democratic decision making? Some of these big ... Do we just try to blow it up? Do we make incremental change? Do we have time for incremental change? What is a transformative process, a practical way to think about organizational shifts, if you've maybe seen some examples or have some ideas or some case studies?

Vijay Mathew:

Well, I think the quickest way for any shift to happen in the nonprofit arts is if funders actually make policies that actually mandate certain things. You literally can change the field overnight if that happens. That's the lever to pull.

Krista Bradley:

Agree more, Vijay. That's how our infrastructure is designed, that people need incentives to change, and I don't think it's incremental, frankly. I'm tired of incremental change. I'm tired of incremental change around racial justice, gender justice, disability justice, trans justice. It's like, we have all waited way too long and now you just need to blow it up, and the way to blow it up is to have the accomplices of our funding partners who are already taking major steps to take the corpus of their money and put it in a different place, and you see how that's shifting tons of ways that people are making decisions about who they're hiring or what organizations are thriving, or at least not failing because they've been under-resourced for so long and we now are beginning to get some just investments. So, yeah. Funders are really critical to this, and not incrementally. That's no how you make change, at least not right now, I don't think. We don't have time.

Alexis Frasz:

I have so many mixed feelings about this. I agree. I think that funders have outsized influence and can put pressure. In fact, many of you may know already of a group called Julie's Bicycle in the UK and they have been very successful at encouraging and working with organizations in the UK to develop sustainability plans because they had to as a condition of funding from The Arts Council of England, which funds everybody, whereas our funding system doesn't really work quite as ... I don't know enough about Canadian ... I know there's some Canadians on the call. I don't know enough about the system there to know whether that would work. But I think that pressure can be put.

Alexis Frasz:

I think one of the things that was really interesting to me about their work is that just developing the plan for sustainability, that was the requirement. You didn't have to deliver on it. You actually just had to develop the plan and submit it. Just doing that, people actually did start to do things, even though they didn't have to, and the wellbeing and sense of employee satisfaction in the organizations increased. There's a lot of ways that we could interpret why. To me, I think there's something about being in integrity with the truth of what we know. Some scientists have talked about there being this way that we're all operating in a sense of denial.

Alexis Frasz:

Those of us who believe in climate change are still operating in a sense of denial because we acknowledge it on the one hand and then we say, "Well, yeah, but I do need to fly to that really important conference because I've been invited to do the keynote," or whatever it is. Go visit my friend in Mexico or something like that. So, we make those kinds of compromises all the time and so it means that we don't take it as seriously as it actually is. So, I think there is something that feels really aligning and good on an inner level to be operating in alignment with the reality that we know is true.

Vijay Mathew:

One thing that I think would be a good partnership between organizations and funders is trying to solve this issue that Alexis, you bring up, of one's career advancement or progress in one's field is right now aligned with mobility and your ability to travel, an ability to be in places, the ability to take airplanes. There is a way. I don't know what it is, but we would be in the correct structure or a structure that is less harmful if we can figure out how to decouple career advancement from fast travel.

Krista Bradley:

That's really so insightful. I'd never even made those connections. But you're absolutely right. Right? How is that equitable, first of all, and access to movement and career advancement, it is limited to of the few that have the ability to do that. So, thanks for raising that. That's really insightful.

Erin Woods:

Yeah, and what's striking me too that's come out of this conversation is the lever to pull, the funder lever, the big lever, but there are also these smaller cracks in systems that maybe we can start to think about, well, okay, maybe we can just change our hiring practices or we don't make people go to conferences as often or are there smaller little shifts institutionally while we're also keeping an eye on the big things? But then just writing a sustainability plan actually leads to employee wellness is not a thing you would know, but it's the right thing to do.

Erin Woods:

So, I think that that also comes back to doing the right thing often leads to more right things, which is maybe a little bit fluffy, but also really quite practical. So, any other last questions in the group or thoughts about other practical approaches or maybe a few words of wisdom or resources that that panelists would like to leave? We've had a couple of URLs and the Less is More book mentioned already. Closing thoughts?

Alexis Frasz:

Yeah. I guess I would just say I think I would ... This is a really good question. I didn't see it from more about the practical approach and do we shut our organizations? As much as I do think some change can happen from above, it's both top down, but it's also bottom up, and I really think that we're seeing this with the racial justice work right now where it's become unacceptable to have certain people on your board, to say certain things. It's slower than any of us would like, but I do see this tide turning. So, I also think that artists, grassroots groups can put pressure on the above with setting the culture. So, I think that's possible.

Alexis Frasz:

But I also think that one really important thing, and I hate to leave on a down note, so someone else will have to fill in, is to plan for adaptation as well because just like with COVID, with the wildfires, there are going to be these things happening and for small groups and artists, really understanding what the issues are in your place and connecting with other people who can help to build resilience around those things.

Erin Woods:

Thanks, Alexis. I don't know if a famous person said this, but I did hear that art is adaptation plus imagination. I wrote that down somewhere. So, kind of an interesting idea. But Vijay, Krista, last thoughts?

Vijay Mathew:

Yeah. Just a quick little tiny project I've been working on that I'm very excited about. It's just, this is basically a carbon emissions calculator for streaming media. Just launched it, and it's basically an awareness tool, awareness tool about the costs of our activity and it masquerading as math and sciences. [inaudible 00:44:58]. But yeah. It's just a site that may be helpful. The intention there is for people in organizations who are thinking of tapering their travel, tapering their carbon emitting travel to use this kind of tool or some kind of tool to create a tapering budget of carbon emissions, alongside their actual financial budgets.

Erin Woods:

That's great. Thank you. Yeah. Another level, for sure, budgets. Definitely. Krista, your last word from [crosstalk 00:45:35].

Krista Bradley:

Oh, I think the glass is always half full because we work in a field with a lot of creative people who are passionate about caring for one another and for this Earth. So, I have no doubt that there will be change where it's need and I'm inspired by this conversation and my colleagues and really hope it's been useful for everybody else. I'm hoping that we can create more tools, like the tool that Vijay's talking about, the tools and structure that Julie's Bicycle created. I think we need language, we need tools in our field to help build that awareness and to give us steps for how we can make incremental and seismic change. So, I'm hopeful that will happen and look forward to partnering ways to make that happen.

Erin Woods:

Thank you all so much. Vijay, Krista, Alexis, thank you for joining me. Thank you for everyone else on the call, on the session.

Alexis Frasz:

Thank you, Erin.

Erin Woods:

Oh, you're welcome. I'm looking forward to-

Krista Bradley:

Yeah. Thanks, Erin.

Erin Woods:

... Work Shouldn't Suck and what they come up with next. This is going to be, this talk about a movement. Talk about some commitments. Yeah. Work Shouldn't Suck. It shouldn't be bad for the environment. It shouldn't be bad for its employees. So, I think this kind of movement is, we're part of it and it's exciting to be here. So, thank you all. Thanks for joining us.

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Tim Cynova Tim Cynova

Employment Law & COVID

When it comes to providing a workplace free from COVID hazard, what's required and what's not? What's legal and what's not?

Recorded: 4/27/21, 1PM ET

 

Panelists

ANDREA MILANO focuses her practice on all aspects of employment litigation, counseling and traditional labor matters. She manages a diverse caseload of class, collective and representative actions, single plaintiff litigation, and traditional labor matters. She has significant experience drafting and arguing substantive motions, conducting discovery, and preparing for trial. Andrea regularly provides direct advice and counsel on a broad spectrum of labor and employment law matters, including conducting positive employee relations and sexual harassment avoidance trainings; investigating payroll and wage and hour audits; developing, drafting and revising handbooks and employment policies; and managing performance issues, terminations and reductions in force. While she has handled litigation and employment matters across many industries, her focus has been on technology, hospitality and health care.

TIM CYNOVA wears a multitude of hats, all in service of creating anti-racist workplaces where people can thrive. He currently is Co-CEO of the U.S.-based non-profit Fractured Atlas, a 20-year-old organization that in 2013 committed to becoming anti-racist in its work and operations. Relatedly, he is a Principal of the consulting group Work. Shouldn't. Suck. that assists organizations of all sizes and sectors with the “how” of creating anti-racist workplaces. Tim serves on the faculty of Canada’s Banff Centre for Arts & Creativity and New York's The New School teaching courses in People-Centric Organizational Design; he's a trained mediator, and a certified Senior Professional in Human Resources (SPHR). He also co-hosts a popular podcast under the Work. Shouldn’t. Suck. moniker. Earlier in his career, Tim was the Executive Director of The Parsons Dance Company and of High 5 Tickets to the Arts in New York City, had a memorable stint with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, was a one-time classical trombonist, musicologist, and for five years in his youth he delivered newspapers for the Evansville, Indiana Courier-Press. Also, during a particularly slow summer, he bicycled 3,902 miles across the United States.

Transcript

Tim Cynova:

Hi, everyone. And welcome to our session, employment law and COVID. I have been anxiously awaiting this session ever since our guest said yes to it. I'm Tim Cynova, I'm a white man with short to medium messy brown hair. I'm wearing blue rectangular glasses. I have like a salt and pepper stubble. I'm wearing a black zip-up sweater with a blue dress shirt and blue tie. And I'm sitting in front of a wood paneled wall.

Tim Cynova:

A reminder here, about the chat and the Q&A section, I'll be paying attention to that. And let's just dive in. I'm so excited for this session. I'm so excited to be joined by the awesome Andrea Milano, who is a special counsel of employment law at Pillsbury Law. Andrea, welcome to the summit.

Andrea Milano:

Thanks so much, Tim. I'm really excited to be here.

Tim Cynova:

Let's begin with, how are you doing and how do you typically introduce yourself?

Andrea Milano:

Sure. To start my name is Andrea Milano. I am a white female in her 30s. I have long dark Brown hair and dark rimmed glasses. I'm wearing a brown suede jacket and I'm sitting in my basement, my home office space. You can see behind me, I have a wall of gold maps, which is all the states I've lived in my whole life. That's where I am. Professionally, I introduce myself, so I'm special counsel at Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman. I am so happy to be part of their employment law team.

Andrea Milano:

I've been practicing employment law since 2011, so this is my 10 year anniversary of being in this field. I've really tried to maintain a diverse practice of employment law, counseling, litigation. I also do labor law, which includes union work. And this past year has been very focused on counseling because in the world of COVID, that took over. And so just always learning new things and growing and meeting our clients' needs however we can.

Tim Cynova:

Andrea, I haven't read your bio and in a while. And so I went to the website as I was prepping for our session, and your areas of practice include travel, leisure and hospitality, artificial intelligence, healthcare, technology, media and telecom, as well as employment law. And so these are all areas that don't seem to have been impacted at all during the past year, at least jokingly. What has this past year been like for you?

Andrea Milano:

I will say, one of my very favorite things about employment law that has always been the case is that everyone has employees, which means I have worked cross sector and cross industry, really my whole career. And I love that anytime I'm talking to someone, whether they're a nurse or a mechanic, or... I have had some wild clients, the cheese makers, all these different things. Everybody has employees, everybody can talk about being an employee or having employees.

Andrea Milano:

As diverse a set of issues as COVID has caused, I think the employment sector is something that we've all been able to feel and think about and have impact us. Yeah, we've been getting calls from clients throughout the firm, everybody has questions about what to do with their employees. And really one of the silver linings of this year has been, everyone is trying to do right by their employees. And so it's really, really... I've spent the past year focused so much on what do we do? How do we help? What can we do?

Andrea Milano:

It's been a year that feels really out of control. There has been some positive, tangible impacts that we've been able to have, and I'm proud of that, and grateful for that.

Tim Cynova:

I'd be curious if... my sense is that most of the organizations and people who are here are smaller, they might not have HR staffs. We saw it in the chat, Jessica said they don't have an HR person. My sense is that the group we're speaking with too, this might be a lot of DIY. You're an executive director or a deputy director, you don't have a formal background in HR, you don't have an HR person. It is felt in this past year, I've been fortunate to attend a lot of the webinars that Pillsbury's produced, also you and your colleagues in employment law group there have been publishing some great alerts.

Tim Cynova:

It feels like there was a day where employment law was changing every single day as it related to COVID. And as someone who enjoys HR, has a background in it, loves serving employment law, that was of interest to me. But first of all, how are you processing everything that's coming out where it feels like the ink on the law wasn't dry by the time people were having to figure out what was happening?

Tim Cynova:

And how do you counsel smaller organizations where they might not have anyone... the person who's doing HR is also doing marketing and also doing finance and operations. What's your typical response?

Andrea Milano:

I think that my initial responses acknowledged the hard. I think we all need to get better at doing that for ourselves, but it's been a challenge. And if you're doing this and even for HR and employment law professionals, this has been hard and challenging, and there aren't always clear answers, and it is a moving target. And it does feel like whack-a-mole a lot of times. And so, this is hard and it's something that we need to be really thoughtful about and pay attention to.

Andrea Milano:

So if you're not an HR professional and this HR was a much smaller part of your work-life before COVID happened, I think acknowledging that this is hard, and this is changing, and it is a challenge is important. And so there are a lot of really great resources out. Pillsbury, I have to plug my own firm. Pillsbury has been working really hard to stay on top of developments.

Andrea Milano:

I guess the other thing to note is that it's so state and city-specific. There's really different standards depending on where you live and where you have employees. Even within an area like I'm based out of D.C., between Virginia, D.C., and Maryland, the standards are different. So if you have an office in Virginia, you have to comply with certain very stringent guidelines that don't apply to other states. So it does feel like a moving target.

Andrea Milano:

I think it's just staying aware, asking for help when you need help, finding the resources that can help you, and being agile. I think being able to respond and say, "Okay, that's what we were doing and now we're going to pivot because we have to."

Tim Cynova:

Great. Let's pivot right into some real life questions here, and we'll let some more gather in the chat. We did a survey leading up to this, and there's been several that I've seen that have been asking people, "Come fall, how many days a week would you prefer to work in the office? How many days a week do you think you'll be expected to work in the office?" And the numbers are all over the place. But not that many people would prefer to be in the office more than three days a week or so, is roughly what's coming out of it.

Tim Cynova:

One of the questions I'm starting to hear with increased frequency and urgency, and I'm sure you are as well is, "What if my employer says, 'If I don't come back into the office five days a week, or as many days a week as they want me to be there. And for reasons I might fear for my safety, and my health, and those of my loved ones that I'll lose my job?'" There's two sides of this from the employee and employer side. I'm sure you're hearing this, what do you make of it? What's your counsel?

Andrea Milano:

It's a hard question. I think there's a lot of things that go into it and I think employees and employers are both really grappling with this decision. And being an employee and also someone who counsels employers, I feel both of this strongly. Depending on any specific job or return to work requirement, one, I think a lot of it is going to be tied to schools, because I don't think it's reasonable to expect a full workforce to be back five days a week if schools are not back five days a week.

Andrea Milano:

Because the realities of childcare are such that if your kids aren't back in school, what are you going to do? So I think for many reasons, getting schools up and running five days a week on a consistent, safe basis is a top priority. And my mom is a public school teacher, so I feel very strongly about that for many reasons. I think it will also depend a lot on what city and state mandates are an and how things progress.

Andrea Milano:

I expect that private companies will continue masking requirements, whether or not those are required by cities and states. I've seen that already as some states have rolled back those requirements. And I think employees should feel empowered to ask for details about what's being done to keep them safe, and employers should be welcoming those questions. Quite frankly, I'm counseling employers to be proactive, like, "Your employees should feel safe here."

Andrea Milano:

Returning to work should be a positive thing, nobody should be kept in the dark. And everyone should know what the protocols are, what we're doing, what to do if something goes wrong. See something, say something, and I think it needs to be a collaborative process.

Tim Cynova:

One of the very early things, it might've been in the very first session, your colleague Julia Judish started talking about the OSHA general duty clause that requires workplaces to provide a workplace-free of hazard, and that now COVID was a hazard. And it was this moment where I thought, I studied OSHA's general duty clause is like dangerous chemicals and sharp objects and stuff like that. But now this was like applying to everyone, workplaces that generally didn't have to think about it.

Tim Cynova:

So I got a question about what's OSHA general duty clause? And is this related to what I've been hearing about why Congress was or is trying to limit employer liability, if employees get sick and die from COVID. Can you break down the OSHA general duty clause and how workplaces should be approaching this?

Andrea Milano:

Sure. In general, a general duty clause is basically that you can't be negligent. You have to maintain your workplace in a way that a reasonable employer would to protect against things. And so nobody's expected to protect against everything. If there's some natural disaster and somebody gets hurt at work, OSHA isn't going to say, "Oh, you're on the hook for that." But if something happens and you don't have shatter-proof windows and you should have had shatter-proof windows because that's the standard of construction, then you would be on the hook for that.

Andrea Milano:

So the general duty clause is really tied to what's reasonable and what can be done. COVID is tricky, it's just different. And I think it is scary for employers to hear that they could be on the hook for it, and I think it comes from a lot of different ways. Are you requiring your customers and your employees to wear masks? Are you requiring social distancing? Do you have a lot of physical workplaces have tape on the floors, showing people how they stay apart.

Andrea Milano:

What do you do if someone comes in and refuses to wear a mask? How do you handle those situations? Is the boss wearing a mask. Those are the kinds of things where I think an employer could get in trouble if they're not meeting that reasonable person standard. And I think that that will be judged by what the mandates are. In D.C., the mandate is currently that if you're inside, you have to be wearing a mask, you have to be six feet apart. It doesn't matter if you've been vaccinated or not. Those are still the rules.

Andrea Milano:

And so if you are an employer and you are not requiring people to wear masks, if you're not social distancing, you're not meeting those basic thresholds, I think there could be liability there. That's the easiest way to think about it, but I think there's other concerns as well. Depending on your workforce, if you have a significant population that requires public transportation, is requiring employees to be in-person if public transportation hasn't made it to where it's a safe space.

Andrea Milano:

And then if somebody gets sick on public transportation, picks it up, brings it in, or even just gets sick themselves. I think that's more attenuated, but I do think we have to think through some of those other risk factors as well.

Tim Cynova:

How would you think through those risk factors? Because from New York, there's the subway, or buses, or you're walking. And so there's a lot of distance a lot of times between where you live and where you work. And so how as an employer, what would you be thinking about as it comes to that?

Andrea Milano:

There's so many considerations that go into it. I have a good friend who lives and works in Midtown and she's been walking into the office. And she feels in some ways an obligation to get New York city back up and running, like how many lunch places cater to in-person employees who aren't there? On the other hand, my sister lives in New York city and I don't want her to take a Metro really ever again.

Andrea Milano:

I think you do have to think through it, and you have to be willing to have the conversation and meet employees where they are. An older employee, an employee with asthma, an employee who has another condition might be much more risk averse in terms of getting back on the subway or a bus than lower risk employee in terms of their basic demographic standing. I think the other thing you need to consider is income range and socioeconomic status, because this disease is not impacting everyone the same.

Andrea Milano:

And so if you have employees, like if the people at the top who are making the decisions park in the parking garage or can afford to take Uber or have drivers, that's very different than the people who have to take two buses or a subway to get to work. And those are realities that are hard to confront, but that you have to think through.

Tim Cynova:

Great. I'm going to pivot to some of these questions that are coming in before I lose them. Emily asks, "What does an employer do if an employee who has been vaccinated doesn't see the rationale for wearing a mask?"

Andrea Milano:

Until guidance changes, CDC and OSHA are both still saying that despite vaccination status, mask mandates are to remain as they are. If that changes, we can reassess, but for the time being, those are the rules, those are the rules as set forth likely by your mayor or whoever your governing authority is. There should be strong policies in your workplace that require masking. And someone who is not willing to comply with the law and company policy should be counseled and terminated if they won't comply, because they are still potentially putting other employees at risk.

Tim Cynova:

Great. Thank you now. Let just... Thank you, not great.

Andrea Milano:

Not great, but employers should feel enabled and empowered to do that and to make people follow the rules.

Tim Cynova:

The next question is about, "Our office suite is on the 18th floor of an office tower. One of our concerns is air filtration. What level of meeting OSHA requirement do we need to consider for risk?"

Andrea Milano:

Sure. A lot of the questions about shared office space would go to building management. And so someone within the company should be working with the building management company, elevators, the shared spaces, dealing with things in that regard. I think absolutely if it's a concern, have an air filtration company come out and do an assessment. I know that there are HVAC systems that can I think... I don't know what chemical it is, but there is a chemical that you can have in your HVAC system that really is killing COVID germs and it's really decreasing risk.

Andrea Milano:

If that's something that you have the means to do, absolutely do it. I think, the more steps we put in place to prevent things, the better. Absolutely.

Tim Cynova:

We have a question about regulations with vaccine reporting and testing, and it actually relates a bit to one of the questions that I received before. Beforehand, I was talking with someone who runs a dance company and said, "I know where our dancers are. I know that they've been quarantined or vaccinated. When we go on tour, we're in tight spaces in the backstage of venues. I don't know about those spaces and about the employees and contractors who might work there. What do I do?"

Tim Cynova:

And then maybe these are related, maybe they're not, quickly reading as they're coming. The question about, [inaudible 00:19:01] to learn more about regulations regarding vaccine reporting or testing for events and gatherings for staff intending. So sort of related here, I'm sourcing you this bucket, what do you make of it? What's your advice?

Andrea Milano:

Great. An employer can ask about vaccination status of its employees, that's fair game. That said, an employer has an obligation to protect the confidentiality of that information. That does fall within HIPAA and other medical employee privacy rights. An employer can have a mandatory... vaccines are required to be on site so long as they can justify that anyone who is not vaccinated would be posing a direct threat to the other employees.

Andrea Milano:

But if someone says that they are not willing to get vaccinated or can't get vaccinated, and that's related to a disability, you have to be willing to engage in the interactive process with that person the same as you would if they had any other disability. And this is in part because the vaccine is still under emergency use authorization, and also because... It's hard because there's so much going around with the vaccine, but there are certain categories of individuals who may be higher risk for a complication from a vaccine.

Andrea Milano:

And so if someone were not able to get it because their doctor had advised that they shouldn't based on another underlying condition, to the extent that that person could continue to work remotely or other accommodations could be made, you have to engage in that same interactive process. I've also been getting questions related to this, can employees share their vaccination status? Can you have an in-person meeting and say, "Don't worry, it's okay. Everyone here is vaccinated."

Andrea Milano:

No, don't do that. Everyone, quite frankly, I think employees will talk about it. I've talked about it with folks, there were folks sharing, "Oh, Hey, I found a spot that has appointments available, you should go. I think employees will talk among themselves. That's very different than the employer speaking on behalf of the employees. And to the extent that you have employees in your workforce who have a legitimate disability and reason for not getting it, you don't want to start a witch-hunt or in any way suggest that those employees should be outed or made to feel in any particular way because they didn't get the vaccine.

Andrea Milano:

So generally, you can require it. In the context of the dance company, I think it's absolutely fair to ask the company that you're visiting, what are their policies, what are they doing? And see what that is. I would stay away from any questions to the extent of, is XYZ person vaccinated? But they may offer it, they may say, "We have a mandatory onsite vaccination policy and that effectively communicates to you that someone has shown up, they have been vaccinated.

Tim Cynova:

This is one of those areas of HR verse like, before COVID is like, "Don't talk about anyone's medical condition, anyone's medical history." Now it's like, "We could take temperatures or ask about symptoms, but can you ask about the person they might live with, about their symptoms and where they've traveled?" And it feels really complicated in the potentially really challenging area to navigate this, especially as things are changing. What's your advice on this?

Andrea Milano:

It is complicated and I think it is changing. And I think the further we get from crisis point, the more we'll see things roll back. I have a friend who is a small business owner and she said, "I'm just going to have a policy forever that nobody with a fever can ever come in." And I said, "Okay, except that people with a lot of noncommunicable diseases can have fevers, and so can cancer patients who are undergoing chemo, and plenty of other people who you wouldn't want to exclude from your store."

Andrea Milano:

But right now, it's absolutely fair game to say, "If you have a fever, you are not allowed in the store because it's a public health crisis." So the things that we're seeing are being done because we're in a crisis. And I think that we should be careful about making any snap judgements as to what we'll do on a going forward basis. Because I do think that employee privacy has a place in work, but there has to be a balance. And the public health concerns here are outweighing the balance to an extent of what we normally see.

Tim Cynova:

Great. All right. I can see, I'm trying to cue these questions. I've been trying to order these questions in my mind as I see them here because there's some other ones. Let's just go with the last one that came in and then I'll swing back up. "Are there any differences in what can be required of staff working directly with children?"

Andrea Milano:

I have not seen that yet, but I can see where that would come. I think once the vaccines are no longer under emergency use authorization, once they have been formally approved by the FDA, I think we will see more mandatory vaccine requirements with school teachers, with daycare workers, things to that effect. And so then I think that the exceptions for individuals with disabilities will be much more few and far between, and there won't be room for exceptions for people who just don't want to get the vaccine, as opposed to who have a disabling condition that precludes them from getting it. But I haven't seen anything else dealing with children yet.

Tim Cynova:

Thanks. Also, you're doing awesome. You're just saying question after question, so kudos. I hope you're staying hydrated, if you have a PowerBar or something like that.

Andrea Milano:

I got my water, I'm doing well.

Tim Cynova:

All right, cool. Let's talk about travel a bit-

Andrea Milano:

Sure.

Tim Cynova:

... because actually the other session that is going on right now it relates to intentionality around environmental impacts. And right now, for many who used to travel a lot for work aren't doing it right now, haven't done it for a year. And so there's a question coming in that says, "If the job requires travel when travel resume, how to accommodate for employees that no longer want or are able to travel for work anymore?" What do you think of that one?

Andrea Milano:

I think that's a good question. I was someone who traveled a lot for my job before COVID and it's been a pro and a con to not be traveling. The first couple Zoom depositions were a challenge, but it was also really nice to not fly across country for a two-hour hearing, and I think a lot of people are feeling the same way. So I think going forward, we will be forced to reconcile what travel is actually necessary. I think COVID in general has forced us to think about what is actually necessary, how can we do things otherwise?

Andrea Milano:

I think certainly some things will be in-person, and to the extent that... I think an employer should feel empowered to have travel obligations. I think some things do have to be done in-person. But to the extent that you're trying to accommodate someone who has a disability, who has small children, who has other obligations, I think people will think harder about it because this past year has proven that things can be done in a lot of different ways and still be very effective.

Andrea Milano:

And so to the extent, with reasonable accommodation requests, I think it will be harder to prove if you're going to deny someone a job or promotion, something like that that something really is required. And we've already started to see that even in returning people to work. If somebody can continue doing their job remotely and has been doing that for the past year, let's wait it out, let's be cautious here. If they don't want to return yet, let's let them continue to work from home.

Tim Cynova:

Great. We have a couple of questions about communal spaces or if people have like plus one on communal spaces. It says, "What are we seeing as best practices around maintaining communal staff spaces, where even when not gathering like brief staff use of a break room, amenities like fridges, sinks, microwaves?" Can you speak to what we should be thinking about there?

Andrea Milano:

Sure. There are maximum occupancy reductions that have been in place, so I would start by checking any specific ordinances that are governing in-person use of physical spaces, and then posting signs to that effect. I think signs on the floor are very effective, showing where people should stand. I've seen companies moving to having single service food available so that there's not reaching into a communal space.

Andrea Milano:

I've heard about companies doing almost like delivery to offices so that employees don't have to go to the kitchen, which feels lonely, but is mitigating the risk. My sister works for a company that I'm often jealous of. They used to do bagel Friday, and now everyone gets a DoorDash gift card on Fridays saying, "Go buy your own bagel because we don't have those anymore." So there's a lot of different ways to handle it.

Andrea Milano:

But I do think making sure that you are reducing capacity, extra cleaning, to the extent that you can provide extra cleaning, to the extent that you can add things like sanitizing wipes, hand sanitizer stations, spacing any tables out so that employees just have to sit six feet apart, staggering break time, so that the use of the break room and communal spaces is... Instead of everyone going to lunch at the same time, people are going in a staggered group. So anything you can do like that to reduce overall capacity.

Tim Cynova:

We have a question, "I heard of incentives for vaccines like gift cards, but wonder if this is problematic. Can you speak to this?"

Andrea Milano:

It's a little problematic to the extent that you would have someone who had a legitimate disability or disabling reason for not getting the vaccine? I think it could also cause someone to be in a position to disclose something before they were ready to. Particularly, I think if someone were pregnant early on and were waiting to get the vaccine, something to that effect, they may not want to tell HR that they were pregnant yet. My other issue with giving gift cards to employees is that that is taxable income so I could do a whole separate session on that.

Andrea Milano:

But I've litigated one too many cases where no good deed goes unpunished in that sense, so I would caution that. But I think you could have... if you wanted to incentivize it, you could maybe do something that if we get to 80% vaccination, we'll have a pizza party for everyone. And that way nobody is singled out and pizza is not taxable, or whatever it is, but some sort of more communal incentive.

Tim Cynova:

Great. Let's pivot to remote work arrangements. I've got a couple of questions already about this and see one in the chat. One of the questions is, "With so many workplaces shifting to remote work arrangements last spring, I've heard things like, should my employer be providing me an allowance for my home office internet if they require me to be on Zoom calls all day?" How do you advise approaching this both from an employee perspective and employers perspective?

Andrea Milano:

From an employee perspective, if you are incurring costs, like legitimately incurring costs that can not be avoided, you should be telling your employer. That is not carte blanche to go refurnish your home office space, but I think we've seen it with IT folks who are working out of a call center. They have a requirement that they have very, very high bandwidth internet so that they can remote on and help assess IT issues, and you wouldn't have that at home. So if their employer is requiring them to up their Comcast bill, that is something that should be accounted for.

Andrea Milano:

I think another concern is if you're working from home with multiple people, and so you have multiple people on your WiFi, you as a family unit or household unit may decide to increase. I don't know that that would specifically go to your employer, but I do think that employers in many cases are affirmatively providing these allowances to employees because they realize that there are more costs associated with it. You are using more bandwidth, we are on Zoom all the time.

Andrea Milano:

So I think if you're an employer, you should absolutely be considering it. And as an employee, you should feel empowered to ask questions about it and to be honest. I will say, a lot of the employers who I've been working with on this, their question is, what's reasonable? And so I think to the extent that this can be a collaborative process, that's helpful for everyone because it seems to me that employers do want to do right on this issue. And so to the extent that they know what their employees are actually incurring, what their employees need, they've been, in my experience very willing to provide it.

Andrea Milano:

I've also seen a lot of employers doing office supply pickup and drop off days. And so on the first Wednesday or every other Wednesday, you can go and get any supplies you may need, you can drop off anything that needs to be shredded, things to that effect. And I think that's helpful as well.

Tim Cynova:

Last summer I heard a question about increased electric bills. When I used to go to the office, I didn't have to run my air conditioner throughout the summer. And so is that something that the employer should be paying for?

Andrea Milano:

I think that gets a little iffier. I'm sure we'll see plaintiff's counsel bringing those cases, but I think that gets a little iffier when it gets into anything such as a personal preference. Growing up with my mom, we never put the air conditioner on, so we never would have had that expense, but I can certainly see the argument there for it. And I think we may see some claims there. Again, if an employee is in a really specific situation where there's a hardship, I think if an employee, for example, didn't have internet access at home, something like that, that they should bring up.

Andrea Milano:

But I don't think utility bills will generally fall within an employer's scope of obligation. Especially once there's an option to safely return to work, those claims will go away.

Tim Cynova:

One of the topics that we've talked about a lot, very spirited conversations, and now that I'm debating your expertise in employment law, I just like having it, is the unlimited paid vacation day policy.

Andrea Milano:

We have lots of that... I was like, "What are you going to bring up?"

Tim Cynova:

Your colleague, Julia, I think doesn't want to have that conversation anymore. I guess, meaning like cap it, you can do more than 10 days, but to have an unlimited paid vacation day policy opens yourself up to a lot of risk and that if someone doesn't get it or someone else gets it, then that can be challenging. Your advice and Julia's advice is, you can have it at like 45 days. You can cap it at 60 days, but have some limit here.

Tim Cynova:

But it seems like, I'm going to use this as a pivot to on both is, things, I got unlimited paid vacation days are starting to gain speed as people are talking about, take the time that you need. We're living in a pandemic, we're not operating 100%. That's one thing. And then also the four-day workweek seems to have picked up velocity in recent weeks or months as organizations say, "Okay, so people don't want to be in five days a week. If we are working at 80%, let's just say we're working at 80% and close on one day."

Tim Cynova:

With both element of paid vacation days, I'm not an unemployment attorney, you should not take my legal advice, but Andrea's. If you're thinking about a four-day work week or a flex work week, what should you be thinking about as you approach this as an organization?

Andrea Milano:

That's a good question and I think we're thinking about that as well in going back. My group actually was big into working from home even before COVID, so we've been talking about how do we do setting a day every week that all the employment lawyers will go in, because if I go in and Julia's not there, and Rebecca's not there, then I may as well as stayed home because what's the benefit of being in-person? So setting the in-person days so that everyone can make the most use of being in-person, and then doing things remotely on other times.

Andrea Milano:

I think hoteling of office space will also come up as we move to reduced capacity. If different groups are using the office on different days, you might not need as much space as you currently have. Hoteling can lead to some concerns. I know some people really like it, I don't love it. I like having my ergonomic setup and it's my office, I have my pictures. But I think that's something that you can think about as long as you're meeting employees needs moving to hoteling.

Andrea Milano:

On the unlimited vacation point, I'll say one of the cons of unlimited vacation is that employees often don't take it. When you're empowered to take as much as you want, you often take none. And I think that's been something people are really feeling during COVID, everyone was so worried about what was coming next, is their job security that people not taking any time off. I've seen some pushes recently really forcing employees to take their time off and take the time they need because we're hitting burnout.

Andrea Milano:

I know there's at least one law firm that is giving billable credit to people for a week of vacation, which is unheard of in the big law world. It speaks to how bad it has to be that they're there. I think one of the ways around protecting a company if you want to do the unlimited time off and you want to be more flexible, is to just write in language that says, "Any leaves have more than five days needs to be approved ahead of time." Or, "Any time off taken for any of these reasons," and then you list jury duty, family medical leave act for disability because you're sick.

Andrea Milano:

Those don't fall under this policy. I'm trying to create the carve-outs, because one of the concerns that we have is that an employee has a medical condition, thinks they can manage it on their own, starts taking time off. By the time the employer gets involved, they've already taken six weeks and then you have to give them their FMLA time. You end up giving the employee a lot more than you're entitled to. But so if you manage your policy so that any of the time taken for those reasons falls under those other provisions anyway, that can help protect the company.

Tim Cynova:

I want to ask you about... We have like three minutes left, so if anyone has any questions that you want to get... We probably have like two minutes to get a couple more questions. I want to ask you about pay transparency and pay equity. We've talked about and in other sessions around equity and equality being... We'll be talking about it in several other sessions about strict fixed your comp and ways that we can align our pay and compensation with our values.

Tim Cynova:

Many of us hold anti-racism, anti-oppression values, and there's a lot of questions about, can we just list everyone's salary, and then all of a sudden we're transparent? Or what might we want to be thinking about from a legal perspective as we engage in more transparency around what people make, and especially if there's a lot of people who are making different amounts for the same job?

Andrea Milano:

I think step one is probably to do some sort of equity analysis internally before you go public with anything. That is the employment lawyer and me speaking, but to protect the company, I think there are a lot of great resources available, and even some online calculators where you can plug things in and it'll show you statistically speaking, you have an issue here. This comp is problematic because there's no chance this could have happened, but for disparate impact.

Andrea Milano:

So I think it's important to be running those studies. I think it's also important to be communicating proactively with your employees that you're doing it right. There is not pay a quality or equity right now, and so acknowledging that and acknowledging that you're fixing it is the right first step. If people are doing the same job, arguably, they should be making the same money, except for very specific circumstances that you can justify. And I think employers are often looking to justify when maybe they should just be looking to even things out.

Andrea Milano:

So I think getting an analysis done generally by an outside company can be really helpful and eye-opening because your employees are thinking about it. It's such a hot button issue, everyone's thinking about it, everyone's talking about it. So even if you don't address it, that you're not hiding from it. And I think it's better to get out ahead of it.

Tim Cynova:

Can you recommend one other calculators you mentioned or let people know what search terms to look for?

Andrea Milano:

Oh boy. I could find it and send it if we have any materials we're sending afterwards, but I [crosstalk 00:43:01]-

Tim Cynova:

Sounds great. No, no, that's great. Sorry, that's like a curve ball that I threw you right at the end. Andrea, as expected, this has been an amazing 45 minutes with you. I really appreciate it. It's been wonderful and amazing to watch you as you started to fill all of these questions. Thank you to all the questions that were coming in and the chat. Really wonderful. But Andrea, sincerely, thank you so much for being a part of the summit.

Andrea Milano:

Thank you, Tim. This was a pleasure. I'm really happy I could participate. Thank you everyone who attended and asked great questions, and this was awesome.

Tim Cynova:

Cool. We have another 15 minute break and then the choose your own adventure continues. Top of the hour, alternate alternative power and decision-making models and workplace policies or practices for hybrid organizations or arrangements, which I know we'll go right on the tail of this one. So thanks everyone. Have a good break. See you at the top of the hour. Take care.

Andrea Milano:

Thank you.

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Tim Cynova Tim Cynova

Alternate Power & Decision Making Models

There are different ways of structuring organizations in whole and in parts. We'll explore ways to share power, decision making, and ownership.

Recorded: 4/27/21, 2PM ET

 

Panelists

AJA COUCHOIS DUNCAN is a leadership coach, team engagement and strategic planning graphic facilitator and organizational development consultant of Ojibwe, French and Scottish descent. A Senior Consultant with Change Elemental, Aja has worked for almost 20 years in the areas of education, leadership and equity. Working with a broad range of clients from public and private universities, nonprofit organizations, national policy advocates, statewide arts organizations, to small businesses—she provides organizational capacity building expertise through needs assessments, program and/or strategy design and delivery, group facilitation, strategic communications and ROI/impact analysis. Aja has a strong background in diversity and social justice work, having provided diversity education, disparate impact analysis, diversity program evaluation and macro-level recommendations to improve equity and thus workplace climate and organizational performance. For nearly a decade, Aja was an active member of the Native American Health Alliance, an organization composed of University of California, San Francisco students, staff and faculty of Native descent working together to promote cultural understanding and an awareness of the health disparities affecting Native American/Alaskan Native peoples. With a small group of Native University of California staff, she created a development program designed to increase skills and promotional opportunities for employees of Native descent across the university system. She has led workshops for Native adults and youth to promote cultural values and identity through artistic expression. Previous professional roles have included leading creative writing workshops for under-served youth, working in the electrical and construction trades, serving as a meeting/conference planner, and leading nature programs in a state park. Aja is a certified co-active coach (CPCC) and holds a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in creative writing from San Francisco State University and a Master of Arts (MA) in policy, organization and leadership studies from Stanford University, where she is a member of the Stanford Native American Alumni Association. A writer and sometimes visual artist, Aja is interested in connecting the often disparate realities of spirit and mater, flora and fauna. When not at Change Elemental, you can find Aja writing or drawing. She also enjoys running in the hills with her dog, yoga and a daily meditation practice which begins with an expression of gratitude to her ancestors and ends with an enthusiastic shout out to the extraordinary miracle of her toes.

HOP HOPKINS is Director of Organizational Transformation at the Sierra Club, where he works to ensure that Sierra Club campaigns and programs protect those most affected by climate change and environmental degradation and promote economic justice. Hop was also a certified Arborist, a Master Gardener and has earned a Permaculture Design Certificate. He has been a Grassroots Environmental Justice Community Organizer in Seattle, WA, Portland, OR and Los Angeles, CA. Born in Dallas, Texas, he received his BA from New College of California as a graduate in the Culture Ecology & Sustainable Communities program with a focus in natural building. He has served on the boards of the Community Coalition for Environmental Justice, Western States Center and People’s College of Law. Presently, Hop sits on the Los Angeles Food Policy Council’s Leadership Board, is earning his Master’s in Urban Sustainability and is the Climate Justice Fellow at Antioch University, Los Angeles. He also participated in the Marshall Ganz Organizing Program at the Harvard University Kennedy School. Alongside his wife of eighteen years, co-founded Panther Ridge Farm located just outside of Los Angeles. Collectively they homeschool their daughters and steward a quarter of an acre of land inhabited by their pet Australian shepherds, chickens, honey bees, fruit trees and multiple compost piles.

LAUREN RUFFIN Lauren Ruffin is a thinker, designer, & leader interested in building strong, sustainable, anti-racist systems & organizations. She's into exploring how we can leverage new technologies to combat racial and economic injustice. Lauren is a co-founder of Crux, an Albuquerque-based immersive storytelling cooperative that collaborates with Black artists as they create content in virtual reality and augmented reality (XR). She also serves as co-CEO of Fractured Atlas, the largest association of independent artists in the United States. In 2017, she started Artist Campaign School, a new educational program that has trained 74 artists to run for political office to date. She has served on the governing board of Black Girls Code and Main Street Phoenix Cooperative, and on the advisory boards of ArtUp and Black Girl Ventures.She graduated from Mount Holyoke College with a degree in Political Science and obtained a J.D. from the Howard University School of Law.

JASON WIENER enjoys the challenge of creatively designing legal and business solutions to persistent social and environmental challenges. Jason comes to this work with a wide range of experience as an entrepreneur, litigator, activist, organizer and worker-owner. With more than a dozen years of experience as an attorney – including several years in BigLaw litigation, and as a labor lawyer – Jason’s range of expertise and experience brings an innovative approach to solving client issues. Jason has walked in the shoes of his clients, as a social entrepreneur in his own right, on the board of non-profits, cooperatives and corporations. Jason has served on executive strategy, human resources, finance and other management level teams. Jason has been a thought, do and practice leader in the cooperative, employee ownership, impact finance and capital, and teal lawyering movements. Jason’s client work and public speaking have charted a new and grander course for the potential of democratized economic structures to re-calibrate the hazardous course set by “business as usual.” Jason has published more than six scholarly law review articles on international, human rights and renewable energy topics and speaks regularly about worker-owned and cooperative business model, non-extractive finance, the future of work, the contemporary and teal practice of law, distributed solar policy and sharing economy legal issues. Jason is an adjunct professor in Colorado State University’s Global Sustainability and Social Enterprise program, where he teaches an MBA course on business law and ethics. He is also a guest lecturer at the University of Colorado Law School’s Entrepreneurial Law Clinic. His hobbies include mountain biking, yoga, hiking, running, walking his two dogs, coffee, cooking and traveling, and raising his two young children with his amazing wife, Meghan.

Transcript

Lauren Ruffin:

Okay. Well, let's get started. Hey folks, I'm Lauren Ruffin. I use the she series of pronouns. I'm a brown skin black woman with short hair and wearing a green hat and a black shirt. And I'm in a room with a white door in a white dresser and behind me, and on top of the dresser is, oh, a laptop, which shouldn't be there. A bunch of books, the plant and my pandemic village. It's coming together slowly. I'm really excited to be here to kick off this conversation on alternate power and decision making models. As many of you know, Fractured Atlas had share non-hierarchical leadership team for about three years now. We've learned a lot about how we're seeing power throughout the organization.

We tend to get a lot of questions around how we make decisions. Initially we were a four person leadership team. Now we're a two person leadership team, and it's good to be in community with folks who I know are living and thinking about this stuff deeply all the time, similar to the way that we've been doing at Fractured Atlas. And so with that, I'll hand it over to my fellow conversationalists here. We've got Jason Wiener who is an attorney based in Boulder, Colorado, doing a lot of work in the cooperative space around governance, around setting up cooperatives nationally.

Hop Hopkins these with the Sierra Club as their director of organizational transformation, and Aja Duncan, who we just learned as in rural Orange County, California and works with Change Elemental as a coach and strategist. Welcome. And I'll turn it over to y'all for some intros. I gave brief bullet points, but of course want to know what you're thinking about. And anything you want to share in the space as we kick this conversation off. Jason, I'll pick on you because I know you best.

Jason Wiener:

Thanks Lauren. Jason Wiener, he, him, his pronouns. I'm coming to you from Boulder, Colorado on unseeded Arapaho territory. I'm in my living room. You might hear the clickety clack of my dog in the background. It's a fairly bright room behind me. Not much to set apart the white walls, tan skin, a white man short haircut, and some scruff coming in on the face with a gray colored polo shirt. It's wonderful to be with you all. I'm excited to have a conversation about how we show up to work and organizations and acknowledge power structures that don't serve us, how we live into a more humane and people-centric and anti-oppressive arrangements that are healthier and can help us to get past the trauma of prior teams and organizations and families in a way that is sustainable. Thanks. And I'll pass it to Aja.

Aja Couchois Duncan:

Okay. Hi, my name is Aja Couchois Duncan. I'm mixed race [inaudible 00:03:15]. My people come from [inaudible 00:03:17], which is a great lakes area, Upper Peninsula, Michigan, Canada, waterways and Scotland and France. And I'm cisgender, quire, woman, person human. And I live on the stolen ancestral lands of the coastal Milwaukee people in rural west Marin and work with Change Elemental and really excited for this conversation and appreciate the opportunity. And my dog may bark wildly because he's outside and there's squirrels out there. And I'll turn it over to the Hop.

Hop Hopkins:

Yo, yo, yo, what's up everybody. My name's hop Hopkins. I'm the director of Organizational Transformation, as Lauren said. My pronouns are he, him, his. I'm calling in from occupied and unseated Tonga too much territory in Southern California, just at the base of what is now known as the San Gabriel foothills. Been at the Sierra Club for six years in a number of different roles. I am a middle-aged black man wearing a brown cowboy hat and what's that? Earth tone plaid shirt. I'm in a corner of my garage with some climbing gear and my printer to my left and to my right.

And I'm thinking about how do you take 128 year old organization that has an immense amount of power within the U.S social movement infrastructure and turn it into something that it has not been before, which is a more democratic participatory place where transparency is the rule of the day. Decisions are shared across not just in hierarchical relationships, but across expertise and do this all at the time when the organization is making a shift to try to become a more justice effort organization, [inaudible 00:05:19] racist founding and move to an anti analysis in a way it does and addresses it's environmental climate check. Some one said I was muted. Is that true?

Lauren Ruffin:

No.

Hop Hopkins:

Did [inaudible 00:05:36] here me?

Lauren Ruffin:

You're fine on our end.

Hop Hopkins:

Okay.

Lauren Ruffin:

But if you're having a hard time with audio, feel free to refresh [inaudible 00:05:43]. Hop, that's a great way to kick us off because you just asked the central question, which is what we're all thinking about. Aja, I do want to give you a chance to give an audio description just for folks who might be listening on podcast or just might need some help with that.

Aja Couchois Duncan:

Yeah. Hi everyone. I'm not used to that, so I missed it right away. I am a middle aged woman with brown hair, today in [inaudible 00:06:11] ranges from yellow to pink, depending on the day, and then my role and my body's pretty brown. And I'm wearing my politician worthy the red shirt in front of some art. Some of it is mine, some of it isn't. And yeah, thank you.

Lauren Ruffin:

Amazing. So Hop, you really cut right to the meat of what we're all trying to figure out. And I'm curious, you said, how do you turn around the ship that's been around for 128 years? How do you transform the way power happens? How would you answer your own question? What are your... because everyone in this group is at sort of different stages, which is one of the things I love about this organizational transformation work. What are you thinking right now? Because Sierra Club's been really thinking about this and engaging with it for, what we say about a year ish?

Hop Hopkins:

Well, we've been about, I think, we've really been about the talk is about the last 17 years and we really started implementing instructional change over the last three to five years. And just recently within the last year, it's been about within the last year, we dissolved our previous executive team and went to a transitional interim executive steering committee, which I'm on, which is majority BiPAP, majority women. And it's not necessarily based on hierarchical position in the organization. So yeah, we've been thinking about it for a minute.

I mean, some would say we've been on this journey for about 30 years slowly. And to your question, how does it happen? Well, it happens too fast, too slow, not real enough. If anyone's familiar with the bridges model, there are different people in different places in terms of the wheel of change and accepting. Some people are in the old space, some people in the neutral zone, some people are in the new beginnings and it's really hard. I mean, it's sort of be real. We're 128 year old organization. We have one chapter in every state at least, and California, for example, was our very last state. So it has that big 10 to 12 chapters nationally.

[inaudible 00:08:24] Puerto Rico we have chapter. So when I try to explain this to folks, we have a universe at about nine to 10,000 people on a day-to-day basis that we're involved in communication with. And our base right now is just under four million people. And when you think about a base of four million people and an active body of people you're engaging with on a day-to-day or weekly basis, that for me and people represents a body of people that's larger than 22 of our states in the union. So it's a pretty significant infrastructure that you're trying to navigate with a number of different forms of organization.

We have groups in the groups have... So we have chapters in the chapters, we have groups that are geographically based within the state. If placement is a large state with disperse populations. And then we have networks that are national, that are composed of members from some of those groups, it didn't work on things. And so it's a very multilayered organizational infrastructure and they're different people at different places inside the organization. Most people would say, we definitely want to change. That's not the problem. It's the level of change and the type of change that begins to rub people raw, that starts to chaffs people's hides. And for me, in this last year, I do think more, and we've gotten much more clear on exactly what type of change we're doing.

I think the question of why [inaudible 00:09:48] a question for some people, why are we trying to become an anti-racist organization? Why is that essential to the way in which we solve climate change? And there's an article that I wrote called Racism Is Killing the Planet, which I was asked to write by our deputy executive director, who is my boss and in the hopes of articulating why it's necessary for the organization to take on an anti-racist intersectional analysis, because that was the disconnect that some of our folks were making. So if you asked me to make change across the board to get them aligned senior leadership, our senior leaders or directors, it's a very complex multi-layered structure. And depending on who you're asking that it would take being or not being.

Lauren Ruffin:

Just drop the link [inaudible 00:10:37] chat. I read that right after you first met up a couple of months back up, and it's a really great article that makes that connection to people often have [inaudible 00:10:45] which is how oppression floods through all of our work. And how [inaudible 00:10:51] really try to do inside of our organization is recognizing these people that we work with are also being impacted by oppression. And beginning to tease out the levers that we can pull as leaders to make the way that we work a little bit more humane. I'm going to go to you now Aja, because I know Change Elemental.

I won't say it was just like birth, but has a long history of working in a non-traditional way as an organization with shared leadership, and being non-hierarchical. So I would love to get a sense of where y'all feel like you are on your journey, because this is a way that you've worked for quite some time.

Aja Couchois Duncan:

Yeah. Thank you [inaudible 00:11:28]. We also rebranded. So it's a true statement to say it Changed Elemental has been working this way. But we were previously known as the Management Assistance Group, and I've been around for 45 years. And I wouldn't say that necessarily that's the way we've always been working. The we changing over time, of course not the actors change. Yeah, we started with a co-director model, which a little over five years, which now I know is like almost common place, but at the time there was a lot of push, both from our governance team. And then a bunch of people were like, "Well, how do you do that?" After we did it.

And it certainly enabled us to share power in different ways and draw on different people's strikes, but it wasn't any way of fully grappling with white supremacy and hierarchy and power and race in the organization. And it also didn't ease the endless burden of ed burnout, even if there was... it was to eds burden out basically. What was great about it is they hit a wall and that really pushed us to re-imagine what we could do in ways that enabled us to really live more deeply into [inaudible 00:12:38]. Yeah, we can a space for [inaudible 00:12:45] how our own, like the qualities of our own internal capacities manifest and how we show up and all of that kind of stuff.

So we started a journey about, give us a year and a half ago to re-imagine what it might look like. And we really wanted to draw on the strengths and powers of the... not power in that way, but the strengths and abilities and capacities of folks in the team. So we went from a co-director model to a five person what we called a chrysalis stage and just started having people hold more responsibility and influence in decision making in different aspects of mission sustainability, human sustainability, and fiscal sustainability. And then we moved into the next iteration, which we called the hub, and that became a... I'm trying to remember. I was just in a meeting. I think it's a six person team with the co-directors trying to increasingly step out and see what we could sort of grapple with.

And now we're on what will be the third iteration of thinking about what's.... it's so interesting Hop, to come after you. Because we're such a teeny organization that our constraints are much more around the governance team, which is wildly supportive. And we have an amazing governance team. But just so you know, the nonprofit, industrial complex constraints and expectations, which you do hit against, every time you push you're going to hit another one. Yeah, we're really small. So we don't have the amount of stakeholder potential constraints and feedback and influence that I'm sure you're all grappling with, of course my computer's reminding me to eat.

But now we're moving into another iteration and we're just starting to imagine what it will look like. I'll say some of our learnings we range between 10 to 13 people, is if you've got almost half of your organization in a shared leadership model, and then we created structures for actually everyone in the organization to be in what we call different paths of around functional aspects. Because we're almost too small to have certain functions actually at all. It's real big draw on the energy and attention to the organization. And so while we're learning tons of things and sharing them with our partners in the field, we also are in the dance of, what's too much so that we can't actually do the work that we're... her vision and mission are actually about.

So I think that that's probably always attention. And I know other small organizations that have been doing a lot of experimentation around shared leadership are hitting up against those things as well.

Lauren Ruffin:

Jason, you're up.

Jason Wiener:

Well, it's interesting we've gone down this progression of scale. And Aja, I will say we're probably even smaller. We're a core team of eight individuals, seven are attorneys, seven women and one man, which is an interesting dynamic in a law firm. It's highly unusual. I personally wrestle with notions of power and leadership as a white [inaudible 00:15:57] male in an organization that purports to practice in an unconventional way with unconventional types of clients. And to dismantle systems of white supremacy in as many places as they show up in our work. And so what that looks like we have, I think, a fairly robust stakeholder approach.

We have on any given year, over 150 individual clients. We've been around for seven years. And we were one of the first public benefit corporation, B Corp certified entities. We went through both the certification and the public benefit Corp thing at a time when brand stamping was really in Vogue. And I always knew that was really just the starting line for what it meant to actually practice with authenticity and a dedication to anti-racism anti-oppression. And we've cultivated a clientele that in many ways carries out those values into the world at a scale that's much larger than we ourselves can impact. And so, I think in some ways we're part of this value chain and yet we've pushed ourselves to invest more deeply in the work and the way that we do it.

And so we have a... despite this being... I'm the only quote unquote owner of the firm, but we've operated with 99% open book management. I come from an organization that had 100% transparency, down to individual salaries comp and everything else. And I decided that there was a degree of discomfort in that that caused me to ratchet that back just one degree. So we're 99% transparent. I do dashboard reports every week to our team. We produce annual public benefit reports with metrics that go far beyond what is required or even contemplated by the B Impact Assessment. We just put out our last 2020 impact assessment or B impact report.

We've done about five of them now, and it's interesting to watch the trends. But we're self-managed entirely. So I've made it very clear that I am neither comfortable nor desirous of the decision-making power within the organization. So even for fairly young attorneys, and when I introduced myself, I talked about trauma. A lot of folks come to even our small workplace with a lot of trauma, and it shows up and we tackle it transparently and hopefully in an environment of security and safety. It shows up in the way we talk about comp. It shows up in the way that we talk about budgeting. It shows up in the way that people talk about their conditions and needs for work as well their desire and need for autonomy and professional development and evaluations.

And we try to make it as multilateral and as inclusive as possible, recognizing that we all show up with work trauma. And it's been interesting and challenging because the unacknowledged trauma is one of the most pernicious and serious forms of oppression that we bring around in the world. And so it's such a relief when team members show up and either after or during a conversation acknowledge the trauma that they just brought to the interaction. And it gives me the safety to know that I haven't necessarily... that we can have a now more enlightened and hopefully liberated discussion about what we want versus what needs to occur.

And there's a lot of monikers for what we do teal lawyering or whatever, whatever. But really to me, I created the firm to be an enlivened liberated place for me to just be who I am and practice the way I want. And I discovered over the last couple of years that it's turned out to be a fairly inviting and safe place for others to show up to work too, and do work that far exceeds any possible expectation I had for excellence and dedication. And now we grapple with how do we... so I don't worry about how do we keep people motivated. I worry, how do we keep people from burning themselves out, running themselves into the ground? So we're one of those organizations. We're small, I don't like to police anything so unlimited PTO.

Now the irony is people don't use it. I have to encourage and remind people about self care, which is both ironic and I think a bit paternalistic. The white man reminding people to take care of themselves, but I make it a point to invite. When is your next vacation day scheduled? You're getting through something big now, just know not to jump into the next big thing. I have to actively ratchet back people's bandwidth reports to make sure that they're not overextending. So all this is to say that this is part of the journey that we've embraced and we take on and we try to showcase that and practice it with our clients as well.

Lauren Ruffin:

To that Jason. I can see some folks on my team who we had conversations during the interview process about work trauma. They're telling on me in the chat. But I think that work trauma comes up when we have organizations where leaders will power in a way that's really unhealthy. And it is interesting in particular when I'm managing and working with younger folks, they're entry-level employees, their first experience with our workforce is typically pretty horrific. And so we tend to get folks at Fractured Atlas and across who are maybe in their second job or second or third job, relatively young.

And helping them have transparent conversations about power and encouraging them to step into their power. I think is probably one of the most freeing aspects of about thinking about how power is distributed throughout your organization. Jason, I know that you're doing a lot of work with co-operatives. I'd love for you to really quickly dispel some myths about democratic governance and decision-making in particular. We continue at Fracture Atlas to get a lot of questions about how we make decisions. I also thought the question to chat about decision making. So maybe we could spend some time there as a group collectively. But Jason, you can get started. Because I know you have lots of thoughts on co-operatives and decision making.

Jason Wiener:

Sure. There's one followup I wanted to make, which is unfortunately when it comes to work trauma, I think particularly in the U.S. and probably throughout Western world, I think the only kind of example we have of folks who show up with a bit of an open-minded or liberated notion of work are entrepreneurs. And the entrepreneurs in some ways, we've developed this cultish iconic lionized version of what the Western entrepreneurs like. They show up, they overwork, they read, and they're these over accomplished often white men who come from privilege and means to fulfill a vision and a dream. And I think in so many ways, when we look to recruit people who are relatively self-aware and show up having thought of their work trauma, that's the only kind of example we have.

We don't have folks who are conditioned out of traditional employment based work trauma. That may be my segue to cooperatives. Cooperatives are no different. The cooperative is perhaps a more democratic and potentially more humane way to organize people, but it's not intrinsically more humane and it's certainly not intrinsically more functional. In many ways it's so well-practiced to be dysfunctional. And the examples we have are replete throughout the food grocery co-op sector, and even in the worker co-op sector. We're still... to some degree we haven't fully deprogrammed. And we haven't actually fully lived out the liberated notion of broad-based shared ownership.

I sometimes maybe jokingly or coily refer to the cooperative as the apple of business models. It should be intuitive and it should be practiced from an intuitive place versus a programmed way of organizing. So a lot of cooperatives will still organize themselves in a fairly traditional format. The board of directors views its central role to be somewhat adversarial with management and hold them accountable, or be captured by management and buffer them against the members. We don't have a really strong example or many strong examples of dynamic governance that involves proactively engaging broad-based members as owners and also as stakeholders, in a way that engages them and leans into the stickiness of the relationship that we've cultivated.

I think Crux and a few other examples are leading the breakout of what the mold ought to be. But we have to begin to pair some of the new thinking around self-management or non-hierarchical team orientation with the business model of shared ownership. So that we can fully express what ownership really is. Because ownership in America really is about power. It's about wealth and it's about liquidity. So it's about that big golden rainbow payday. It's really not about sustainability and durability and intergenerational planning. And that's what the cooperative models built about and not give one final anecdote.

We had a mini training moment on our team. We've got a client that's been a co-op for 75 years and they originally in the thirties and forties were issuing paper membership certificates. And one of the heirs to one of the members came forward the co-op and said, "This $50 share sure has got to be worth a lot of money today. I'm here ready to cash it in. What do you owe me? Five, 10, 25, $30,000?"

And the board said, "No, it's still worth $50." And they hired a lawyer. They thought this can't be right. And over the course of now, probably three or four generations, that person had lost track of what their family membership in the co-op was really all about. But it hearkens through several generations of technology. And with blockchain and smart technology, we can do so much better to tell the story about what participatory management is, what co-ownership is in a cooperative and what that means in terms of the access I have to policy setting and engagement.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah. That's really profound, Jason. Hop, you're in a relatively new shared leadership situation, have y'all had any disagreements yet. And how did you ultimately come to a decision?

Hop Hopkins:

You got jokes.

Lauren Ruffin:

[inaudible 00:26:59].

Hop Hopkins:

That's why I like kicking it with you. You got jokes. Oh, I was telling you, I just came out of a budget, just came out of the ISC meeting the...

Lauren Ruffin:

[inaudible 00:27:13].

Hop Hopkins:

The [inaudible 00:27:14] committee. So it was like the whole space is contiguous without even having to put anything on the agenda. I mean, it's like, I always think about that James Baldwin quote precisely at the point when you begin to develop a conscious, you find yourself at war with society, right? And it's that way. I mean, many of the things we're talking, about and Aja, I really want to appreciate you for naming it before I did. We're the nonprofit industrial complex, it's a system within a system within a system of oppression. That's not meant for liberation. And so there's already some bookends to what's possible given the system that we're trying to operate in. And that is the first challenge in going into an organizational transformation process.

Aja Couchois Duncan:

Yep.

Hop Hopkins:

[inaudible 00:28:07] way possible, given the context that you're in possible for this [inaudible 00:28:18]...

Lauren Ruffin:

Hop, we're losing you a little bit. [crosstalk 00:28:30].

Hop Hopkins:

... what just happened. So [inaudible 00:28:33] all right?

Aja Couchois Duncan:

Yeah.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yup.

Hop Hopkins:

I'm I back now? So that's the first thing is just really trying to get everybody on the bookends remedy. And that's really difficult, challenging when when you're in a liberal mainstream, most likely Neo liberal. I mean, most of us who work in nonprofit really are Neo liberal spaces, right? We need to understand that the role that nonprofits plays and really protecting the money and wealth of the 1% who happened to be a little bit progressive or want to put their money in a system where they could shelter. I mean, that's just the reality. And so I'm not saying that changes is... the level of change we're going to be able to do.

We should just ground ourselves [inaudible 00:29:12] the foundations of what [inaudible 00:29:14] what the ecosystem we're operating in. So that's one thing. So a 12 or 13 person executive team that was majority white, executive team that [inaudible 00:29:32] power, they would meet [inaudible 00:29:35] those people were barely knew what they did and they no voting power, right? They could say, don't agree. And then the executive director just do decision they want to do and feel like they've been transparent enough to say, "Well, I've let people know [inaudible 00:29:50] you have to be back. And then I made [inaudible 00:29:52]."

Then to a nine person body [inaudible 00:29:55] BiPAP folks, two of which are white. The two white folks are the executive director. And [inaudible 00:30:02] then you have some of us who are senior directors and our own executive team just positionally right? At that executive level. Some of us are not. So you get those and you'd have a conflict all ready, right? There's not even the word that needs to be said. And so the idea is a transformational process. The first thing you want to do is [inaudible 00:30:32] the problem you're trying to solve for, right? Because you have other people thinking that we're going to be in some hyper democratic process that's going to be horizontal and flat. Now we're going to sociocracy and so there's different visions and ideas about what you mean were in there. And you just got to lay it out for people.

And the first body like us from that, from that team to this, I have to tell people like, we're not the magic sauce. We're the cleanup crew. Let's just be real. We're going to [inaudible 00:31:08], pardon my bionics. We're going to clean up all the stuff that this previous body wasn't able to do. It's like being an organizer. When you are organized, you go knock on your first door in the neighborhood. They ain't trying to hear what you got to say. They going to tell you all the things that was promising [inaudible 00:31:27], that you didn't have nothing to do with probably, but you're going to get all the shit for. So on your fourth or fifth visit to that, you should just be prepared on your fourth or fifth visit to the houses is the time you've going to be able to talk about what you want to talk about.

Up until then, you're going to get an ear full, probably get both ears not off by all the stuff that went wrong and all the other people showed up. And so I'm telling people, "Look, let's just be real. We're the cleanup crew. We're going to try to set stuff right in this period. There's a limited amount of time, we're here because we have probably an overabundance of political capital that we're going to expand in order to move from this very highly visibly dysfunctional place to something that's the hope and promise of something different." And so if you're doing this, you should be thinking about it as an iterative process. And you need to be thinking about it as a multi-tiered, you're going to need to go into many different... you should be ready to experiment and fail, which non-profits and white supremacy culture are neither set up for to tolerate or want to do.

Which is change and experiment and fail. And then we do a pretty poor job of doing it from the experiments that we are allowed to do. So I've just tried to tell people, we're not that magic sauce with a cleanup crew. We're going to do some things, but that we're not going to be the body that's going to bring and deliver the organization transformation at the big level. We're going to level set, try to get people prepared for a larger level of transformation and then set the stage for the next group that comes through behind us.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah. And Aja, what are y'all learning and [inaudible 00:33:01] around as you're to make decisions at Change Elemental?

Aja Couchois Duncan:

Yeah. Well, and I just want to riff on what you named because one of the experiments that when Alyssa Perry and Susan Mason started were co-directors was to do the work that they thought was most important with the organizations and leaders and networks that were the most important in terms of prefiguring a different future, one of liberation and love. They were like, "If it turns out it's not financially viable, as a fee for service with foundational support organizations, then what's the point? We're just part of the system. We're just perpetuating it. So we are often in that question, in the parameters of that question shifts, depending on where we are financially, external circumstances, all of that.

What we're always in that question, like if we can't be doing the work that we think matters, then we shouldn't be here. I think that... and I also didn't name in the same way I fail to describe myself. There's a theme here that the organization was originally, not originally, but we had our co-director model, two quire women of color, one black, one Southeast Asian, and now is two thirds BiPAP, a third quire. So number of identities have been really critical and were also predominantly cisgender female. And one of the things that we focus the most on, and I think that this is embedded in and everything that's been named as relationships. So building trust, getting really clear about what our values look like in practice.

Because you can say equity is our value, but what does that actually mean? These people hold very different mental models or pictures of what that is. And then what's the per share practices that are going to support us? And all of that being named and us all nodding our heads, I just came out of a meeting that was very tense, where we were like, "I'm still in some kind of way about what you're saying. And you're telling me this is the decision-making criteria. And yeah, I thought we were in a shared leadership situation?" So we get into it. And what enabled us to get into it? Because I think a lot of us as facilitators and coaches tend to be more on the lake support side, was actually just being in deep relationship and spending a heck of a lot of time with each other, and talking about what does shared leadership mean, and what does equity mean, and what does it mean to draw on ancestral wisdom?

And what does it mean? So be really clear about all the S-H-I-T, I have about money because of my intergenerational stuff, my own childhood. So we're often trying to unpack that stuff. So at least we can know, this is mine and this is the organizations, which is an aggregate of all of ours. Just to have some space to talk about and grapple with that stuff. Now I don't even know if I answered your question. [crosstalk 00:36:02].

Lauren Ruffin:

[inaudible 00:36:02] needed to be. So don't worry about it at all. I want to hop to a question we have in the chat here from [inaudible 00:36:12]. How can a traditional nonprofit organization adopt ultimate power and decision making models? Is this possible? I know that the sustainable economies law center has done a lot around democratic governance. Are there other resources that we could point the folks who are in the chat? I think pretty much everyone in this room is here because they're thinking about this, we [inaudible 00:36:33] some nuts and bolts resources of things that have been helpful as you all are creating, these organizations are beginning to lean into this.

Hop Hopkins:

That's one, the sustainable loss center. That's a good one. That's here in Southern California. So that's a great resource. I mean, I think... I'm just going to say this. I'm going to want to do resources, but I feel like I come up against this all the time doing equity, justice and inclusion worker intersectional work, in spaces where that's not been the norm. And I'm not saying this is where the question's coming from, but it does remind me of this, is that there is no silver bullet. That people looking for that one or two or three things that we can get. And it's not that easy. And I can give you a list of resources, but if the organization does not have the intestinal fortitude, or it's not oriented to be in this space, it doesn't matter what I give you.

If you're not ready for it, you're not ready for it. And I would say most organizations aren't ready to go to a third party. I don't want to bust up any consultants, but we spent way too much money on outside work because we're not ready there. And I think the first thing I was saying is, you've got to define the problem you're trying to solve for. And first you try to define the problem you're trying to solve for, you're going to find out that you're not all trying to solve the same question to the same problem. And that's the big thing. And I want to suggest that organizations get trying to clear on, what are we trying to pivot from to what is it about our culture that we've actually examined that is not healthy for us, that's preventing us from moving to this new direction.

So there's a bunch of pre-work that actually has to happen before I think you even get to trying to get to a consultant or resources. You just need to be clear because many of the concepts and things are going to be introduced to, most folks have had... I mean, look, this society doesn't teach us how to be participatory. Even in our own families. All the institutions that we've come through by the time you get to be 2021, and you're going to get your first job, you are ill prepared to do anything that's participatory for the most of us. Some of us have been benefited from having been homeschooled or alternative different exposures to different spiritual practices.

But the majority of people are not even... I mean, if you think about an athlete, it's not even our muscles have atrophied, to atrophie, you actually have to have the muscle present first. Most of us don't even have not one calorie towards what we're trying to do right now. So I would say before you would think about going to resource, get clear on what your organization's trying to do and why you're trying to do it. Right? And it's actually got to be honest... I'm just going to tell you this, if it's not situated in actually dismantling, systemic, oppression from the start, I mean, even if we could just get there, we could still have hierarchies and still be doing better work.

I mean, God damn. I mean, that's the problem. Is this just not recognizing the world out in the world and we're trying to just band-aid and tweak around the edges of justice. And so I would say there's a bunch of pre-work that has to happen to do that. And just some of these questions that I'm identifying would be helpful. And then one is like having a conversation like this, what are the leadership and cultural practices and pivots we want to shift from to? Get the idea of what's the difference between learning to some basic stuff. What's the difference between governance and management, right? Getting a clear idea about power and how it operates within our organization, within a society and how we actually want to relate to power in our new structure, right?

And also this thing, what Jason brought up was trauma. How is this place not psychologically safety for those who don't identify with the mainstream? And how is it that our decision-making processes and models now enforce and increase that level of lack of psychological safety? So there's some already things I think that we ought to do as an organization that take a back seat to resources. First is just getting from building a vocabulary to understanding about actually how our organizations are actually structured and function now, both consciously and unconsciously to perpetuate systemic oppression within these nonprofit structures.

And then once you've done that, I'll let Jason and Aja give you some [inaudible 00:40:40], and I've spent so much time. Because you bring in a consultant and I'm like, "Holy hell, what kind of mess that I get into?" And they're just trying to level up people to square one. [inaudible 00:40:48]. [crosstalk 00:40:48].

Lauren Ruffin:

To the crown level.

Hop Hopkins:

And they're happy to get paid, but they're living in their best way to help you move forward. And so I would say there's some shit that you just got to figure out ahead of time before you call a consultant. And if a consultant doesn't ask some of these questions, they're not worth a dime.

Lauren Ruffin:

That's so true. We've got four minutes left. There's one more question in the chat that I see, right. It came in earlier. I've been having many discussions recently with others from my team who feel as though decisions made by management, especially as it relates to performance assessment and promotions are opaque. I'm interested in especially how an artwork can better approach decision-making in general, so that it feels transparent and fair to those affected. Jason, I know you talked about open book management and some transparency in your organization. How are y'all handling performance assessment promotions? Because I know you're doing more than just billable hours as a firm.

Jason Wiener:

Yeah. This just came up actually. I mean we've only had full-time associates on our team for about three years, three out of seven. And in many ways as is usually the case, whenever you plan for a major change in your organization, the things that you don't plan for are the things that come up. And so that really speaks hop to your point about don't bring in the consultant to plan for a big change. You have to be prepared for the adaptation that's involved. So one, we try to bring a sense of mindfulness to all of these conversations and a sense of humility. We know. The one thing I know for sure, the one thing I'm really confident about is that neither I nor any individual on the team will have all the answers for the questions that come up.

So I go in thinking, "Okay, I'm going to tell you that I'm giving this my best shot. And I remain open and available and adaptive to the feedback that we need to adapt this tool." So first thing is we co-developed an assessment and evaluation matrix. And one thing that's kind of in my core is to know that whatever you measure, is a reflection of what matters. It's the same thing with nonprofits, whatever you budget for, that's what matters. If it's not in your budget, if it's not in your evaluation, it can't matter that much. And it's also not fair to informally measure the thing that's not there. So our matrix has a little bit on technical skill. It has a lot more on experience and skill development, what things...

So we actually developed this matrix and we have the person go through a self evaluation, and then we do an evaluation with at least one senior person. There's no supervisors or managers. It's a senior attorney only to provide some kind of a different perspective on training and experience. But we rank each component based on how important is it to the organization? How interested is the person being evaluated in that skill or piece of development? And then what is their expected level of proficiency? And then how do they rate against that? It's silly to just rate performance without knowing what the baseline is. We say for a fairly junior attorney, maybe they're only expected to be one out of five in terms of their expected proficiency. And I can tell them, well, you're over-performing, you're at a three already.

So with actually for 25 components of evaluation. And by the way, values, alignment and adherence to our norms are in that matrix, how you live out these values, how you support leadership within the team, how you exercise leadership outwardly. And again, these are all components. And so we measure that and we just did this with one of our associates. And on top of going through that exercise, our associates selected who would review her performance. So I asked her, I said, "I'll do it, you'll do it. Who else would you like to review you?" And we brought in somebody who she selected to provide that feedback.

And it was a conversation started. And what we looked for was misalignment in the tool. So where did you... and it turns out that again, this reflected trauma, she vastly under assessed her performance in areas where I thought she was just crushing it based not only unexpected levels of proficiency, but objective loves the proficiency. So we were able to talk about that. We were able to talk about what that meant in terms of professional development, where to devote resources. And then on top of that, we have a very open dialogue around compensation. So while individual comp is not public, I try to maintain a sense of uniformity in terms of the rationale and the approach.

We've got folks all over the country and so that makes it a little bit challenging. But everyone has access to all the numbers of the firm, every week. Everyone knows what we're working with in terms of resources. And so I've been fortunate more than I think I've been, well, intentional unfortunate. I have preempted every associate for a salary adjustment before they've asked. I've said, "You've been here a year, you haven't asked yet. I want to invite you to make a recommendation and a proposal." And I just prompted this associate for a review because I was like, and it was provisional. We agreed, but I was like, "I think we got it wrong. I think we're too far under, so let's do an evaluation and then let's readjust it." And that's just conscientiousness more than I think it's really anything else. But I'll stop there.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah. Well, that's a good hopeful note to end on. As clear that this is really meaty and we could have spent another hour on this, but I want to be respectful of everyone's time. Hop, Jason, Aja. Thank you so much for showing up for us today. And I hope we can continue the conversation. We'll be back, I think on the main stage at the hour mark, wherever you are. Hopefully I'll see the three of y'all in the chat. Thank you.

Aja Couchois Duncan:

Thanks so much for facilitating us. Nice to [inaudible 00:47:20] to see you Hop.

Hop Hopkins:

Appreciate you all. We will.

Jason Wiener:

[crosstalk 00:47:22]. Thank you all.

Lauren Ruffin:

Take care.

Hop Hopkins:

All right.

Jason Wiener:

Take care.

Read More
Tim Cynova Tim Cynova

Workplace Policies & Practices for Hybrid Org Arrangements

How do you create and maintain equitable policies and practices when your team works across differing onsite and remote arrangements?

Recorded: 4/27/21, 2PM ET

 

Resources mentioned during session:

Panelists

ADDAM GARRETT serves as Operations Manager for the National Performance Network. Addam joined NPN in the summer of 2016 and has over 15 years of experience in education, program planning, and communications. He manages day-to-day organizational activities, which includes assisting all departments to meet the needs of our constituents. He holds a B.A. in Public Relations and Art History from the University of Alabama. Addam is a big tennis fan and sports enthusiasts and brings that passion to work everyday. “There is nothing a smile, humor and kind words can’t accomplish!” Can I get a big Roll Tide?!

MICHELLE RAMOS Dr. Michelle Ramos brings a deep and incredibly robust diversity of experience to role as Executive Director of Alternate Roots. Her background includes most recently working in criminal justice reform as Project Director of the Vera Institute of Justice, philanthropic work as a Program Officer at Women’s Foundation of California, and service organization leadership as Board Chair of Dance/USA, Dancing Grounds and Junebug Productions. In addition to being a licensed attorney, and holding a PhD in Cultural Psychology, she has significant organizing experience and has committed her career to serving communities and individuals adversely impacted by issues of race, gender, disability, class, socio-economics, inequitable laws and systemic oppression. Ramos, a retired professional ballet dancer has worked as an executive director for multiple non-profit arts organizations in many cities across the US. She has consulted for over 20 years nationally and internationally. She is the proud mother Broadway choreographer, Ellenore Scott, and since retiring from her own dance career, Ramos has continued teach dance, has competed as an Ironman triathlete and now enjoys her southern New Orleans lifestyle.

LAURA ZABEL is the Executive Director of Springboard for the Arts, which operates Creative Exchange, a platform for sharing free toolkits, resources, and profiles to help artists and citizens collaborate on replicating successful and engaging community projects. An economic and community development agency run by and for artists, Springboard provides programs that help artists make a living and a life, and programs that help communities connect to the creative power of artists. Based in Minnesota, Springboard’s projects include: Community Supported Art (CSA), which is based on the Community Supported Agriculture model and connects artists directly with patrons; the Artists Access to Healthcare program; artist entrepreneurial development; and Irrigate artist-led creative placemaking, a national model for how cities can engage artists to help reframe and address big community challenges. An expert on the relationship between the arts and community development, Zabel has spoken at leading conferences and events including the Aspen Ideas Festival, the Urban Land Institute, and Americans for the Arts. A 2014 Bush Foundation Fellow, Zabel’s insights on industry trends have also been featured in outlets from The Guardian to The New York Times. Zabel serves on the board of directors of the Center for Performance and Civic Practice and the Metropolitan Consortium of Community Developers.

TIM CYNOVA wears a multitude of hats, all in service of creating anti-racist workplaces where people can thrive. He currently is Co-CEO of the U.S.-based non-profit Fractured Atlas, a 20-year-old organization that in 2013 committed to becoming anti-racist in its work and operations. Relatedly, he is a Principal of the consulting group Work. Shouldn't. Suck. that assists organizations of all sizes and sectors with the “how” of creating anti-racist workplaces. Tim serves on the faculty of Canada’s Banff Centre for Arts & Creativity and New York's The New School teaching courses in People-Centric Organizational Design; he's a trained mediator, and a certified Senior Professional in Human Resources (SPHR). He also co-hosts a popular podcast under the Work. Shouldn’t. Suck. moniker. Earlier in his career, Tim was the Executive Director of The Parsons Dance Company and of High 5 Tickets to the Arts in New York City, had a memorable stint with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, was a one-time classical trombonist, musicologist, and for five years in his youth he delivered newspapers for the Evansville, Indiana Courier-Press. Also, during a particularly slow summer, he bicycled 3,902 miles across the United States.

Transcript

Tim Cynova:

Welcome to the Workplace Policies and Practices for Hybrid Organizational Arrangement Session, where we'll be diving into and discussing how to create and maintain equitable policies and practices when your team works across differing onsite and remote arrangements. A reminder about the Q&A section and the chat section, if the chat gets too lively put your questions in the Q&A, but I'll keep scrolling back and forth through both to try and pick up the questions and comments for the group here.

I'm Tim Cynova, a white man with short-to-medium messy brown hair. I'm wearing blue rectangular glasses. I have salt-and-pepper unshaven look right now. I'm wearing a black zipped up sweater that has a blue dress shirt and blue tie underneath. And I'm sitting in front of a wood paneled wall.

I'm so excited for this session. Truly some of my favorite people from some of my favorite organizations. Lauren Ruffman and I were talking about this before, we were saying, it feels like everyone's our favorite, but it's no, we just happen to know some really cool people who all said yes to this. So this is really exciting, for me to be in community with Addam Garrett, who's the Operations Manager for National Performance Network, Michelle Ramos, the Executive Director of Alternate ROOTS, and Laura Zabel, executive director of Springboard For The Arts. Addam, Michelle, and Laura, welcome to the summit.

Laura Zabel:

Thanks, Tim.

Addam Garrett:

Yes.

Tim Cynova:

To kick things off, why don't we go in that order: Addam, Michelle, and Laura. How do you typically introduce yourself? And as you think about creating workplaces where people can thrive, equitable policies and practices, hybrid organization working arrangements, what does all of that mean and look like to you?

Addam Garrett:

Good afternoon everybody, I'm Addam Garrett. Black male, buzzed head, beard, salt and pepper, more salt now these days. Brass-rimmed glasses. Wearing basically a purple sweater with a blue jean jacket over it, with a little pendant on it. I'm speaking in front of basically a bedroom wall and a little lamp around to the side.

How we envision, or how I envision, I'll speak on us, in the processes that we're beginning here at the National Performance Network, is, we have an open environment, so we're transitioning, which the pandemic has pushed it forward, to more of a truly hybrid form. So how does that look is, we can work remotely from either at home or, since we have a lot of artists on staff so they can do the work too, so that can be anywhere in the country, the world eventually.

And what we do for contemporary art is, we [inaudible 00:03:05] space is transitioning that to more conducive to hybrid work, so there's more areas where they can confer. We have our little meetings, come in, get away from the assigned desk, or a specific desk. There will be work stations, but it's more of one of those hop-in, hop-out, lounge setup, which is kind of the environment that we have amongst the staff. It's carefree, and it's more us. So that's how we envision it. [inaudible 00:03:41] process, and that comes with its ups and downs, but so far we've made it work through the pandemic. And we're building on that, I'll say that.

Michelle Ramos:

I think I'm next. It's good to see everyone, or at least see you in the chat, so I can actually visually see you. My name is Michelle Ramos, I use pronouns she/her/hers. I'm calling in from ancestral lands of Bulbancha, now known as New Orleans, Louisiana. I'm wearing a black and white striped dress. I have brown skin, I am Afro-Latina, and I have a curly mop of salt and pepper hair on my head. I'm the executive director of Alternate ROOTS. Alternate ROOTS is celebrating its 45th anniversary this year.

As part of our work environment, we actually were, and have been, a remote office pre-pandemic, basically since I came onboard as Executive Director in 2018. We have always had folks that were remote, but when I came in we made a decision to go 100% remote, because for the work that we do, we need to be on the front lines. We need to be where our members are in our communities. We are across 14 states in the south. So for us there's intention around that. There is intention around wanting to have close access, and be in regular communication and in community with our members.

So for us, the pandemic wasn't necessarily a shift in how we work, but definitely, as a predominantly BIPOC run organization and staffed organization, we really had to take a little bit closer look at some of the things that we were offering in the way of support. Support working from home benefits, health and wellness, things like that, during this time, because our folks were the most impacted across our states with respect to things like the racial uprising, and other events that happened both during the pandemic and post-pandemic, and even now with the freezes across the south.

So we really pride ourselves on being a people-centered organization and not a process-centered organization, and so that is sort of our guiding principle. We're not perfect. We do make mistakes and we do learn. But by centering people and by centering the staff, we have found that that has provided an equitable and a healthy environment for everyone. I'll stop there.

Laura Zabel:

Hi, everyone. My name is Laura Zabel. I use she/her pronouns. I'm the Executive Director of Springboard for the Arts, and Springboard is based in Minnesota, which is the homeland of the Dakota and Ojibwe people. Springboard is bad both in the twin cities, in Minneapolis and in Fergus Falls, Minnesota. I am here in my home in Minneapolis on the second floor under the gable, and I am a white woman with brownish blonde hair, and wearing a gray shirt with little white flowers on it, and sitting in front of my bookcase and some of my needlecraft that I've done over the last year to keep my hands off my phone.

I come to this conversation, and I think Springboard comes to this conversation, certainly with the recognition that this is always a learning process. I think certainly the last year for everyone has brought into relief that context always matters, and that the conditions that our staff and our constituents and our community is in are changing all the time, and that means that we have to think about and change the way that we support people, and the way that we work together, all the time, based on the context we're working in, and the pressures and opportunities and needs of our communities.

I think specifically, from a practical perspective, there are several pieces of how Springboard is structured that influence how we think about workplace policies and practices, especially as it relates to remoteness and in-person-ness, and togetherness and diffuseness. The first is that Springboard is run by and for artists. We have a staff of 17 folks, and everyone on the staff has their own artistic practice, and so that has meant that the organization has always been rooted in trying to create policies that make space for people to continue that artistic practice. Because it's a huge part of who we are, and it's a huge additional value to the organization.

The other piece that's been really influential in this area is that now, for 10 years, Springboard has had these two locations in both urban and rural settings, and so that's demanded a whole different set of tools of working across those geographies, from the big-picture understanding of each other's contexts, all the way to facility with online Zoom sort of situations. So in [inaudible 00:09:15] going into last spring, we had a little bit of a head start, our staff already was pretty comfortable using Zoom, for example, to talk to each other and communicate across the locations.

We also, for about a decade, have had what some people call a results-oriented work environment which means that we don't track time off, we don't track hours. People have those jobs, and they're free to do those jobs wherever it suits them and whenever it suits them. And I would say as a counterbalance to some of those things, both of our locations, the one in St. Paul and the one in Fergus Falls, are both community spaces. So they aren't only office spaces, they're spaces that the community uses and needs.

A big part of our mission is local place-based holding of space for our communities, and so that is an in person endeavor for the most part. Although we've found ways to do that over the last year, they're still an important piece of our work that is about people coming together and being in shared space.

All of those things are kind of these counterbalancing forces and ideas that are the foundation for how we think about this work, and how we try and always be learning and trying to figure out what else we can do to better support the people who work at Springboard.

Tim Cynova:

You all have similar and different ways in which you're approaching this work, and one of the things I love about all of you and your organizations is, this didn't start last March, as we've heard. You've been experimenting, iterating, making mistakes, backing up and going a different direction, and putting a lot of intentionality and purpose into this, just to set our people, and not just policies, as Michelle said.

As we start to think about this reopening, how are you all thinking about it? What are you trying to hold with the new and different things that are present in the workplace and the world? Or maybe if they're not new, they're weighted maybe differently. So what's going through your mind, and how are you personally, and then maybe as an organization, starting to talk about and plan for this next stage?

Addam Garrett:

Am I going first again? Or does it matter? Well since I unmuted, I'll go. That's one thing that I'm spearheading currently, is how do we open, and what does that look like. Then piggybacking on what Michelle said, we center what we do, especially in-office, around the staff. We began that in our staff quarterly last week, when we discussed, how do you envision working in the future. Because we're pushing for remote working, but also one thing that's special about our group is, we enjoy working with each other. So when I think about us opening, it's [inaudible 00:12:30] putting anyone else in harm's way, and then respectful of their wish or how they feel.

So we began that conversation, and that's playing a big role, because I think we would gradually open, or in this new space that we're creating, but since, too, we will respect and take in everyone's opinion or feeling on how they want to do this reopening, also incorporating the right protocols, what's available, and all those things. And reinforcing that, when we begin again, remote is okay, and it's okay not to come in if you don't want to come in, and there's no animosity, or you're put in any position just because. That's where our conversations lead, or where we have started, and that's affected me a lot. It's just a big thing.

And further thing, when we do open, [inaudible 00:13:35] something like spring, not spring, I'm sorry, fall, but when we [inaudible 00:13:40] you want to be intentionally like, "We're going to do this month," or whatever in the conversation, you realize no, you can't just be a specific time. It's about procuring a safe space. And that's a challenge in itself, but we're always up for it here at NPN.

Laura Zabel:

Yeah, I feel like, probably I will be a broken record, I feel like all of these questions have to start with, well I mean we don't really know. Things change all the time. We are sort of planning for our best guess at what the reality is of the next six months, but I think so much of what's needed and necessary right now is to be, like Addam's saying, be in communication with your staff, with your constituents, with your stakeholders, with your community, and be clear and transparent that we don't know everything, and that we're going to have to walk through this together.

In terms of actually reopening our spaces, what we're planning on right now is that we're going to use the summer time to pilot some things, and kind of learn particularly public facing things that we can do outside. We have outdoor space, soak we're really lucky in that regard. And that also, for the staff, I think, gives us an opportunity to try out some things without needing a huge, "This is how it's going to be." We can pull back on those things, we can increase them if they feel good, if the context changes.

So that's our plan. Then, similar it sounds like to NPN, looking towards the fall, of trying to kind of anticipate and think about what might be possible in terms of us working in the office together some of the time in the fall.

I think an important factor, certainly for our staff, a factor that touches a lot of our staff in addition to all of the things around safety, which of course are the first priority, are other issues. This isn't happening in a vacuum, so with staff who have a lot of childcare challenges, for example, when school is not in session, or when summer camps are not happening. So I think thinking about, not just are we in our little bubble safe in this space, are we vaccinated, does everybody have a hand washing protocol, all of those things which are also important, but what are the other community issues that touch us and touch the staff? And that's different for everyone. People don't have the same circumstances or the same responsibilities in their lives, so being able to set policy that takes into account the other responsibilities for caretaking, for community, and for taking care of yourself also, I think, is another important piece.

Michelle Ramos:

I'd love to push back on that really quickly. I just agree with everything everyone has said. For us, there is no reopening because we don't have an office, but there is this sort of reopening of conferences. And for us, our ROOTS week, which is our annual convening, which is the thing everybody wants to be a rooter for, is to come to this annual convening, we had to have some serious conversations and discussions around, what's the right move here.

It started with the staff. What did the staff feel comfortable with, what's the first consideration, and then to your point, Laura, what are our members going through? Because sure, maybe as a staff we feel safe, and maybe we're able to pull off our ROOTS week, but what hardship is that putting on our members who have been financially just destroyed by the pandemic and loss of jobs, to say, "We're going to throw a big ROOTS week in person, and come on down! Oh right, none of you all have money. Sorry." It was about this broader context of, what are our members, our constituents, are they even healed financially, to be able to come to North Carolina to a ROOTS week? That was a real consideration for us.

That said, we also know we have rooters who are dying to meet in person, and are really frustrated because we are not doing any in person meetings till 2022, period. But what we've offered is, we are allowing them, or I shouldn't say allowing them, but actually encouraging them, and willing to financially support them, to do self-organized spaces in the places where they are. So if y'all are absolutely dying to get together in Atlanta, we won't stop it from happening. We will even financially help support to make that happen. But we're not going to demand folks come to ROOTS week.

It was a hard call this year. Last year was no-brainer, this year is hard, because this is what makes ROOTS ROOTS. So it's like taking the soul of the organization out of it when you're not able to meet in person. And although we did a great job doing virtual ROOTS week last year, it's just not the same, y'all. It's just not the same.

Tim Cynova:

I've been [inaudible 00:19:13] to know all of you in the organizations, and certainly benefit every time we talk. And we've talked multiple times over this past year like, "What are you doing? What's your policy for this? How are you approaching the leadership to the field election in the United States on November 3rd? What are you doing on November 4th? What are you doing in the period between the election and the inauguration? How are you taking care of staff?"

Can you talk about what you feel has been maybe the most meaningful policy or practice during this time, that the organization has offered and provided? Then flipside it with, maybe not even just from this time, but what if you try to be like, "This is going to be awesome," and people are like, "That is horrible"? So you can talk pros and cons here, what sort of tangible things have you been doing that relate to the topic?

It's whoever unmutes first.

Laura Zabel:

I'll take a run at it. I mean oof. I said I'm talking to you from my home in Minneapolis, about a mile from where Mr. George Floyd was murdered, amongst the other intersecting crises that came before and continue. It has been, I don't know, the only word I have for it is intense, to be in this community this year, and our staff are connected to their own communities in all kinds of different ways, and hold a lot of different identities and roles in their communities. And figuring out how to support people to take care of themselves and their families and their communities. And recognizing that for some of the staff, their work is also a part of how they do that, and Springboard's role in our community, the expectations that people have for support from us, also make it so that there's, I think for us, as I'm sure for a lot of organizations, there's always this tension between feeling like ... You can't always just shut it down. Even though that maybe feels like the moment we're in. And feeling like there are times, absolutely, when we got to just shut it down, whether it feels like we can or should or not.

I don't know if any of this is helpful tips. I'll just say maybe it's helpful to acknowledge, for folks to have some shared experience that trying to do this work of taking care of our staff, supporting them, making sure they have what they need, inside an organization that is operating, we're all still operating inside capitalism, inside white supremacy, that's a real mess with your mind, I'll just say. Walk a long way around to not say the F-word there. I think that's been the challenge, that's been the work. It was the work before, but it's definitely been the work of the last year.

Maybe I'll try and leave you with a few practical things. We have closed the office more than we ever have, and even though we're working remotely, I use "close the office" to mean clear the schedule, publicly say, "We're not doing anything right now, don't expect a reply." And we started doing that more because, it's a practice that Springboard had in the past actually. We've always taken a week in the summer and a week in the winter and closed the office, because it gives us some shared time away. So it was a thing that we looked to because we knew we were already good at that. We had that practice, so it was a good practice for us to pick up and say, "We could do that actually more often." We just did it last week after the verdict. We closed office for three days so people could focus on other things. So we've used that practice.

We've also tried to financially resource the staff, especially last summer, to be able to be in their community and contribute to things, or be part of things, or help folks out, outside of their work at Springboard, so people had some financial resources to put towards things. Just really quickly, Tim, to your question of what hasn't worked, I feel like the lesson I learn over and over again is that it doesn't work when we try and say, "Here's our hunch about how people are going to want to respond, so here's what we're offering you." Every time we can make a choice to push something towards people's individual choice, their own autonomy, their own capacity to respond, those are the things that work the best, rather than trying to come up with a single policy that works for everyone, or a single mechanism that works for everyone.

Michelle Ramos:

[inaudible 00:24:33] anything that I was going to say. [inaudible 00:24:38] health and wellness day [inaudible 00:24:44] 12 in 2020, where [inaudible 00:24:47] were just intense and folks needed time away from the office. We've always given two weeks off at the end of every year, but now we've added a total week off [inaudible 00:24:57] like you're saying, it's not a one size fits all thing, so it requires a lot of listening and hearing, and maybe being nuanced in what you're offering. This kind of speaks a little bit to Matt's question in the chat.

I've got staff members who were on maternity leave in [inaudible 00:25:18] how does that balance, when you have folks that don't have that benefit [inaudible 00:25:23] benefits to try to [inaudible 00:25:27] we can. Like we have [inaudible 00:25:31] full-time staff, but the remainder of our staff, [inaudible 00:25:35] to nine now, are all part-time staff working artists. So [inaudible 00:25:40] they all lost their gig work, because at the top of the pandemic we [inaudible 00:25:45] try to lift those hours up, thinking that [inaudible 00:25:49] would be enough.

But what they really found out later on, the hard way, was they were like, "We need mental healthcare, and I don't have benefits, so" [inaudible 00:26:00] healthcare stipend [inaudible 00:26:03] can use, either to sign up for a plan, or [inaudible 00:26:08] as they need for healthcare benefits. But [inaudible 00:26:12] was a need [inaudible 00:26:14] be transparent and vulnerable about that, to say that, I'm like, we have to do something. And that, I think, is a benefit that we will continue moving forward, permanently.

So I think the lesson is, it's not one size fits all, and if we are going to be committed to a people-centered environment, [inaudible 00:26:36] all your people may not need [inaudible 00:26:38], and need to be responsive and pivot based on what their needs are. If you're truly committed to it.

Addam Garrett:

[inaudible 00:26:53] now. But no, it's the truth. [inaudible 00:26:57] response, but that is the essence of where we are today, is where we started a few years ago. Just like you said, you give a break in the summer, in the spring, we do the same thing. Especially the summer break. And you don't realize how important those things are until you [inaudible 00:27:15] and actually live it. Because we were always, back in, like I said, a year or so ago, we were all about, work remotely, how do you want to work. And it's one thing when you tell somebody that, and then for somebody to actually be able to do it, or feel comfortable enough to do it.

That's one thing I give with the leadership here at NPN now, what we're doing is, we're being really, other than intentional, we're being like, "Yes, yes, yes, you can do this, you can work however you want." And they're promoting, which is [inaudible 00:27:49], if you need to break away, do whatever, do it, and it's okay. There's no getting in trouble or anything about that, and that's big.

And I will tag on, or add on, to that, one thing as an organization, what I mentioned earlier about setting up a specific time or month to say, "We're going to try to open this time," that's not good the best thing to do is to ask, to get that feedback, to see where people are, and be like, "This space is available to you, whatever you need," and this, X, Y, and Z. But we're not specifically saying when stage you've got to show up or something like that, because that's not what we're about. That's not what we're wanting to do. Especially for how we've been working and how we want to work, this is the natural evolution of our organization.

I don't know, just thinking about in the [inaudible 00:28:55], not everyone gets that opportunity to work like that, working in an environment where you can do meaningful work and love where you work at the same time. I don't know, that's just my thing.

Tim Cynova:

The concept of autonomy, [inaudible 00:29:12] taking a course, like a people analytics course, a couple of years ago, and I came across this research study, and I'm going to get the exact numbers wrong, but it was really eye-opening to me. They studied a group of people and gave them like 20% autonomy. So in a decision they had 20% autonomy, and people were happy with that decision if they had 20%. They were happy with it 70% of the time. Then they said all right, so the next group is, they get 10% autonomy. You get 10% agency or autonomy in this decision. People were roughly 70% happy with it. Then it's like all right, you get 2%. You just get to say yes or no, essentially, to it. And people were like 60% happy with it.

So we should talk about trying to make policies that are inclusive, and fit different people's way of wanting to work and live. Where's the 2% that we can ... Because to Laura, to your point of, here's this great thing, here's the four-day work week. "We didn't ask for the four-day work week." "You're going to love it." Then it's like, okay well, they had to kind of walk this one back. But where's the 2% here? Maybe not the 2%, but just a little bit can go a long way to helping people craft that workplace, and the policies.

Especially as we hold values like equity, which we know is not the same as equality, and from an employment law standpoint we have at least one person who has their juris doctorate on this call, Michelle. To speak to, employment law at best is striving for equality, where everyone gets exactly the same thing, which, that is certainly not equity. As Lauren Ruffin was saying in the first session, often times what employment law is, is the floor. It's not, what can we do, how can we invent new things. So I'm curious ... I've just totally lost the thread on this one. I'm curious, who wants to unmute and save me?

Michelle Ramos:

I'll jump in and save you since you named me in it. I do think it's the baseline. Let's be clear, employment law and the legal field is grounded in white supremacy, so here we go again. So the idea that one size fits all in the way of employment, for different people coming from different walks of life with different life experiences, is just ludicrous. That's not a thing, that's not real. It's real if you aren't interested in a people-centered practice, and you're all about product and performance, and getting things out and turning the thing, then yeah, maybe. But if you really are interested in wanting to put your folks first, then that's just simply a baseline. That's kind of where I land on it.

And let me just be clear. We have an employee handbook, we have all the things, but we totally decolonized our handbook, and put different language in, and took the legalese out. Luckily I was able to still make sure legally it was okay, but we definitely changed the language, we definitely changed the narratives, and how things were written. And the staff weighed in on that, and got to help draft that. They got to help draft their employee handbook. So just kind of finding these different ways of being able [inaudible 00:32:59] staff to feel like [inaudible 00:33:03] they are a part of this [inaudible 00:33:05]

Laura Zabel:

Just really quickly, what Michelle is saying, I think, is so important, and I think if there's something I can reinforce for folks who are listening, it is that process of just really asking the questions about all of the policies. So many of us who came up in our careers in all kinds of different environments have internalized all of these things that are norms, or that are the way things just have to be, or that we sort of have some hidden assumption is the law. But if you do that if you pull those things apart, I think often you will find, that's just a thing people have been doing for a really long time, and you don't have to do it that way. You could actually do it a different way.

And I would really advocate for starting with that process of decolonizing, and engaging staff, and talking through what you want, and then have a lawyer review it for you. Instead of, I feel like a lot of organizations, because of their boards or whatever, get pushed into, "You should have a lawyer write the policies for you." I think we can take that power back in our organizations and say, "We're going to start with what we want, and then my job, in my role at this organization, is to go to a lawyer, go to our insurance agent, and advocate for things the way we want them to be, and their job is to help me make the policy that support the way we want to work. Not the other way around."

Addam Garrett:

Right, because that's how we're approaching it too, is we have a handbook, we have all of these, but what matters now is how our current staff, how do you want to work, how does that look. And [inaudible 00:34:54] little bit like, try to understand that balance. And the only way to get to that, to her question, that sense of, is you have to start with [inaudible 00:35:04] ask them, and then as an organization, or the powers that be [inaudible 00:35:08] managers in each department that we have, have to listen to that, and be open to whatever challenges that arise, whatever questions that come in, because that's the only way that you can balance all that out. [inaudible 00:35:23] we are now is, we are putting ... It's really people-first organizational-wise, and what that looks like, and that's just not how you're ... I can speak for how I was [inaudible 00:35:35] working, or even when I began on it being how it was, and it has evolved us as an organization in such a short time, to levels of which, why I came in the first place.

It's just like Laura said earlier, you're not going to know all the answers. It's just a matter of, I don't want to say trial by error, but it's just a matter of, on both ends you have to be comfortable enough to say what you want, what's wrong with [inaudible 00:36:07], and then on the other end, to address it, and have open lines of communication to handle that situation and grow, both individually and as an organization.

Tim Cynova:

Cool, thanks. Thank you all. I'm keeping an eye on the chat here, and the time. We have like seven more minutes left. There's this question around about, let's see, Katherine has about unequal treatment of employees. Like how do you balance? If some people are in the office and some people are remote, just by being in the office and seeing each other, there might be unequal treatment or unequal benefits to that. How do you handle that kind of difference when you're managing hybrid work cultures?

Laura Zabel:

Yeah, that's really real. One of the things that's been sort of silver-lining of the last year, of everyone being remote, between Springboard's urban and rural locations, it's felt much more ... We all are communicating in the same way, and before that, we have more staff in the urban office than we do in the rural office, and that has been a source of tension and ongoing work that we've had to do around communication across the two offices. Because in both places, you have those kind of hallway conversations, and then all of a sudden you're three months into a project and someone's like, "Why did no one ever tell me about this?" When it felt like you had talked it out. So I think in some ways we've really benefited over the last year, of everybody knows who's been in the loop and who hasn't, because we've all had to communicate in the same way.

I think from a practical perspective, as we think about what it might look like to be in a more hybrid, where there is an option for some in person, I think we will probably have some times during the week where we ask folks to be in the office. We have a practice right now of an every-other-week all staff meeting, and then on the off weeks we hold two hours on Tuesdays that we call study hall, that is essentially time when we all hold so that it's easy for us to schedule meetings with each other, and we don't have to spend a bunch of our own time and energy scheduling internal meetings. We can just say, "We'll do that during study hall." So I think it's pretty likely that those will be times that we ask folks to be in person in the office, so that nobody kind of drifts away and never has any contact in person, while we retain the ability to be flexible with the majority of people's time.

Michelle Ramos:

I'll jump in here. I forgot to mention this at the top, but we, pre-COVID, even though we were in 100% remote office, we did meet three times a year in person. We would pick different locations so we could engage with members of our communities in the different regions that we were in, and then of course that went to all-virtual. So that'll probably remain virtual for most of 2021, but we hope to get back to those in person convenings, both for our staff and for our board, which has been part of our regular practice. So that face-to-face time matters. And then every week we have a two-hour staff meeting time that is held, so that we're having virtual face-to-face time anyway. But yeah, that in person piece, we've missed it a lot. It was really meaningful. So we're eager and anxious and hungry to get back to those in person convenings when we're able.

Addam Garrett:

[inaudible 00:39:46] that we do our staff meeting weekly. Virtual now of course. But what we do too, since most of ... I think everyone except for one person, [inaudible 00:39:57] staff, is in New Orleans, so we intentionally meet in a park once a month. We have a [inaudible 00:40:04] friendly safe park thing. Because that's important, that's also been important for us, is our interaction and our camaraderie. That's why when we think about, when we come back into the office, that's why we will have something where there's a day [inaudible 00:40:18] that is like the in person day. When it is, I don't know, but that's something that's, I think, vital for us, and what we do on staff and for the organization's overall health too.

Then convenings, that's a whole other big game. We didn't have [inaudible 00:40:36] last year, most likely not this year as well, maybe a virtual version of that. This process will help with [inaudible 00:40:43] too in the very near future here, because that will come up quicker than you think. But it's always just a balance of figuring out that it just goes back to [inaudible 00:40:54] organization is the people within the staff, is just to open lines of communication and just say what it is that you need. Even if you don't know, sometimes you don't know what you need, just have that access to say, "I need time," or whatever. And that's what I hope, and I know we will, provide for everyone there.

Tim Cynova:

As we're starting to land the plane here with two minutes left, a quick question that I think goes into thoughts from each of you about, what are your recommendations and resources that folks might want to explore? This is a broad topic, and there's a lot of different places where people can turn. Where do you turn when you're thinking about different ways of working? The specific question is, for people interested in decolonizing their employee handbook, did you go to any resources to help start that process? Or was it just, you did it all of yourself? So each of you, resources and recommendations for folks? And if you want to pick up the decolonized employee handbook question, and I know Laura, you dropped something in about results-oriented work environment, about ROW. So let's go in the Addam-Laura-Michelle order, if that works for everyone, the way we started.

Addam Garrett:

As ours kicked up, I guess what I most [inaudible 00:42:26] did like PTAP training. When we started doing those kind of outside training, that's when we really started transitioning. So that's a good resource, any of those organizations, is where we started. Aside from Googling in some stuff here or there, that's pretty much where we started. Then of course the last couple years, we've taken a break just because COVID and other things, but we made it [inaudible 00:42:59] ourselves. So a good resource is the staff itself, just asking that question sometimes of, just what do you need, honestly speaking. Sometimes, I'll just say this, especially when we do our staff retreats or anything quarterly, it's amazing the information we get from in house, and we don't even have to go out of house to get it, just because of the knowledge that's there you realize that's a great way to start. I'll just say that.

Laura Zabel:

Is it me next? Okay. Echoing Addam, I think starting with your staff, and like I was saying earlier, really giving, I think the biggest thing is giving yourself permission to ask those questions, and to sort of interrogate those practices. And I think permission and sort of a mandate and some urgency around the work, particularly work to make our organizations more equitable, more sustainable for the people who work there, can't only be the external program-facing work.

I say this all the time, the easiest way I can say it is that Springboard's mission is about helping artists make a living and a life, so if this organization doesn't take care of the 17 artists who work here, then what are we even doing? Then we might as well just pack it up. It has to star there, otherwise we don't have any foundation to build that work on. So I think a lot of it is really committing the time and energy to have those conversations about some of those policies that have been probably sitting on the shelf for decades maybe, that have never been questioned or asked.

And I think the other really good resource is other folks in the field, other people, both in nonprofits, but also people who work in movement organizations, and organizers, and I have learned quite a lot from folks on my board. I think sometimes, for folks who work in social justice or in nonprofits, we have this sort of impression that big companies are not good at this work, and that's certainly true in some cases. But I've also had board members who have brought really innovative and interesting ideas in terms of how their companies are supporting their employees through their board role.

Then I'm also going to put in the chat, there's a really great podcast that's produced here locally in Minnesota called Behave, that's all about equitable workplaces and policies, and touches on some of the things we talked about today, but also gets into how you think about holidays, and time off related to those kinds of things. So I'll just put the link here.

Michelle Ramos:

I’ll make it short, because I know we're close on time. I think everybody on this call is a resource, quite frankly, and I think really reaching out to colleagues in the field, folks that are doing this work. Alternate ROOTS has a deep bench of consultants who do just this kind of work, and so we definitely can make referrals make recommendations, and we are a total transparent organization, so if you're interested in what a decolonized employee handbook looks like, reach out, let us know. We're happy to share that. We're an open book, no pun intended, when it comes to sharing resources and the way we're doing things. We also decolonized our staffing structure this year, so if you go to the Alternate ROOTS website, we totally took the hierarchical practice out of it. We took the titles away, which we thought were very colonized, and created our own radical creative titles, and now we're tackling the bylaws. So yeah, we're in the process as well. But I think colleagues in the field often times are the best resources that you have.

Tim Cynova:

I have pages in my notebook, as expected, for things to follow up, thoughts. So Addam, Laura, Michelle, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom and your insight during this session. Thank you so much for being part of the summit.

Laura Zabel:

Thank you.

Michelle Ramos:

Thanks for inviting me, Tim. It's great to be here.

Addam Garrett:

Thank you. Yeah.

Tim Cynova:

And thanks to everyone who was here for this session. At the top of the hour, we close out the summit, that feels like it just started. But we will do that, with Deborah Cullinan back on the main stage. So have a great couple of minutes here, and we'll see you at the top of the hour. Thanks everyone, take care.

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Tim Cynova Tim Cynova

Into the Future!

What does it look like to co-create a future where everyone thrives? We'll talk with people who are experimenting and iterating towards this future.

Recorded: 4/27/21, 3PM ET

 

Panelists

DEBORAH CULLINAN Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA) CEO Deborah Cullinan is one of the nation’s leading thinkers on the pivotal role artists and arts organizations can play in shaping our social and political landscape, and has spent years mobilizing communities through arts and culture. Deborah is committed to revolutionizing the role art centers play in public life and during her tenure at YBCA, she has launched several bold new programs, engagement strategies, and civic coalitions. Prior to joining YBCA in 2013, she was the Executive Director of San Francisco’s Intersection for the Arts. She is a co-founder of CultureBank, co-chair of the San Francisco Arts Alliance, Vice Chair of the Yerba Buena Gardens Conservancy, and on the boards of the Community Arts Stabilization Trust and HumanMade. She is a Field Leader in Residence at Arizona State University’s National Accelerator for Cultural Innovation and a former Innovator in Residence at the Kauffman Foundation. She currently serves on Governor Gavin Newsom’s Jobs and Business Recovery Task Force.

LAUREN RUFFIN is a thinker, designer, & leader interested in building strong, sustainable, anti-racist systems & organizations. She's into exploring how we can leverage new technologies to combat racial and economic injustice. Lauren is a co-founder of Crux, an Albuquerque-based immersive storytelling cooperative that collaborates with Black artists as they create content in virtual reality and augmented reality (XR). She also serves as co-CEO of Fractured Atlas, the largest association of independent artists in the United States. In 2017, she started Artist Campaign School, a new educational program that has trained 74 artists to run for political office to date. She has served on the governing board of Black Girls Code and Main Street Phoenix Cooperative, and on the advisory boards of ArtUp and Black Girl Ventures.She graduated from Mount Holyoke College with a degree in Political Science and obtained a J.D. from the Howard University School of Law.

TIM CYNOVA wears a multitude of hats, all in service of creating anti-racist workplaces where people can thrive. He currently is Co-CEO of the U.S.-based non-profit Fractured Atlas, a 20-year-old organization that in 2013 committed to becoming anti-racist in its work and operations. Relatedly, he is a Principal of the consulting group Work. Shouldn't. Suck. that assists organizations of all sizes and sectors with the “how” of creating anti-racist workplaces. Tim serves on the faculty of Canada’s Banff Centre for Arts & Creativity and New York's The New School teaching courses in People-Centric Organizational Design; he's a trained mediator, and a certified Senior Professional in Human Resources (SPHR). He also co-hosts a popular podcast under the Work. Shouldn’t. Suck. moniker. Earlier in his career, Tim was the Executive Director of The Parsons Dance Company and of High 5 Tickets to the Arts in New York City, had a memorable stint with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, was a one-time classical trombonist, musicologist, and for five years in his youth he delivered newspapers for the Evansville, Indiana Courier-Press. Also, during a particularly slow summer, he bicycled 3,902 miles across the United States.

Transcript

Tim Cynova:

Hello everyone, I am Tim Cynova and welcome to our closing main stage. It's like we just started this summit and now we're at the closing main stage.

Lauren Ruffin:

It's wild

Tim Cynova:

It is wild.

Lauren Ruffin:

What a day.

Tim Cynova:

What a day indeed. Yeah. Wow. I don't know about you. I'm so excited about this and to go back and watch the other sessions.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah, I know. That's a good segue. So for folks who are wondering, everything's been recorded, we have the chat, we're going to have some videos captioned, right Tim? And then we'll be sharing them out.

Tim Cynova:

That's right. We'll get the transcripts made with the videos as soon as the seminar is done, we'll put those back on the video so that we circulate transcribed or caption videos.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah. So if you're up late at night, can't sleep wondering, "Oh, work, work." We're going to have some videos for you to watch pretty shortly. They will not put you to sleep but they'll at least educate you late at night.

Tim Cynova:

Exactly. Yeah. Well, and starting this session I'm Tim Cynova, I'm a White man with medium to short brown, messy hair. I have blue rectangular glasses and salt and pepper unshaven look. I'm wearing a black sweater that zips up with a blue dress shirt, blue tie, and I'm sitting in front of wood paneling. Lauren.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah. And hey I'm Lauren, I'm still an openly Black person with brown skin, wearing a black sweatshirt, wearing a green hat. I'm in a room with a white door and a white dresser behind me and a quickly growing pandemic Lego village on top of the dresser.

Tim Cynova:

Nice. Well, and speaking about the pandemic, last year when the pandemic arrived and things began to shut down, you and I decided we should host a daily live stream show and just invite all of our friends to come onto the daily live stream, who happen to be fascinating and amazing people. And for five weeks, every day, we hosted that live stream and connected with many of you who are here, and many of the guests that are on this. And this sort of led to this summit. Lauren and I were talking about what we should do this year. We said, "You know what we did last year over five weeks, let's just do it all in one day." And we felt the world was beginning to open up quicker and quicker, we were like, "And we should do it really soon." And so that's why the summit came together with just over three weeks notice. So again, a huge thanks to all of you for being with us, a huge thanks to all our speakers and panelists from those 33 amazing guests last year on our morning show, we were pleased to spend time with Deborah Cullinan who has agreed to come back on and talk with us again-

Lauren Ruffin:

Brave soul.

Tim Cynova:

Brave soul to be back. Deborah is currently the CEO of the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. She is one of the nation's leading thinkers on the pivotal role of arts organizations can play in shaping our social and political landscape and has spent years mobilizing communities through arts and cultures. Prior to joining YBCA almost 10 years ago, she was the executive director of San Francisco's Intersection for the Arts. She's a co-founder of CultureBank, co-chair of the San Francisco Arts Alliance, vice chair of the Yerba Buena Gardens Conservancy, on the boards of the Community Arts Stabilization Trust and HumanMade. I should have just posted this in the chat because it's an awesome long bio. I will post this in the chat. She's a field leader in residence at Arizona State University's National Accelerator for Cultural Innovation, a former innovator in residence at the Coffin Foundation. She currently serves on the governor's jobs and business recovery task force, and her passion for using art and creativity to shift culture has made her a sought after speaker at events and conferences around the world. And one of the reasons we are so excited that she is here today joining us. Deborah, welcome to the summit

Deborah Cullinan:

Thanks for having me and for reading that long bio.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah. Tim I didn't know we were going to be that formal. It's always weird to realize your friends are kind of big shots.

Deborah Cullinan:

Yeah. I'm glad to be here.

Lauren Ruffin:

Cool. And how are you doing today?

Deborah Cullinan:

I'm doing pretty well. So I'm in San Francisco. The sky is blue. This is the land of the Ohlone Ramaytush people, and I am a white woman. My hair is brownish red, my eyes are blue. I've got some red lipstick on and I'm in a bluish-gray room with a painting behind me and a plant trying to get in as well. And the blue sky is what's making me feel good today.

Lauren Ruffin:

Oh, that's good. I was talking with someone yesterday who left the Bay Area for Atlanta, who reminded me of the orange skies that you all had out there, which to me was this... When I think of the pandemic there are a couple of moments, one of them is obviously the live stream as a bookend on one side. And then for me, the orange sky, because I was talking about coming to the Bay Area. It was like a middle point and now I feel like perhaps this is another transitional point, even though we're not at the end of the pandemic, but everything that happened to Bay Area over the last year has been pretty pivotal, I think, and transformative. How are you reflecting on that and holding all that right now?

Deborah Cullinan:

Yeah, I mean, your mentioning of the sky and my mentioning of the sky, it's complicated to have joy when the sky is blue for days on end, because what we really need is rain. And we know some of the cities in the Bay Area region are already putting folks on lower water use. We don't anticipate a good year ahead in terms of water, weather fires, drought and there's just something about living in that constancy that I think helps us to stay somewhere at the edge, just kind of constantly asking, why were we doing it that way and what is the tomorrow going to be? I remember a few years ago in the fire season when everything shut down and I just started to think about, this is the role of an art center now, to be a place with circulated air that can be safe for people. And so how do all of these conditions and things around us really affect the way we think about our institutions as responders and as resources?

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah. And so this thing is named the Ethical Re-opening Summit. And we were in the green room talking about how grateful Tim and I are as co-CEOs of Fractured Atlas to not have to think a lot about reopening because we made the choice before the pandemic to go 100% remote. You did a weird thing, which was you declared YBCA open months ago. Can you talk a bit about that and what that means?

Deborah Cullinan:

For us, and it kind of picks up on the conversation that the three of us had at the beginning of the pandemic, it's really about not reopening, but re-imagining, and not returning, but regenerating. And so, as we, as an organization started to really think about what the future holds and what our dream state is, who do we really want to be when we get to the other side? It was not to return. And so our declaration was, we are open and we're doing open differently. So the idea was to manifest what it can feel like to turn a building inside out to serve a community that can't come inside, to work with artists to really capture this moment, all of it. The pain, the trauma, the injustice, and also the hope. And so it was very much about really putting a stake in the ground around the idea that we have to turn our spaces outwards. We have to think differently about what we're calling upon people to do when they engage with our organization. So it was the beginning of a journey and it's all one great big experiment. We're not actually urgent as I say, to reopen, we're much more urgent about what we can be and how we might be able to imagine and realize that not by taking the lead, but by following artists and community members who are really the best designers of our systems and structures anyway.

Tim Cynova:

From a practical process standpoint, what did that look like? How did you do that?

Deborah Cullinan:

Yeah. I mean, it's a lot of different things. Part of it is just in re-imagining the structure of YBCA so that we moved very far away from top-down curatorial silos to one big program and engage teams. We tried to think about all of the artists that we were working with and artists that we were working with before the pandemic and before shelter in place. And to ask them, what do you want to do? What are the stories you want to tell? What are the messages that you want to be able to provide to the public? And so taking a team that was very used to making exhibitions, producing performances and turning that team to the idea that the building, the facade, the campus around us is essentially a canvas, a place to play and also to emphasize not so much the product, but rather the process of art making.

And so you see like Caleb Duarte's piece, The Monument as Living Memory is a really good example of this because it had been dynamically evolving over the course of many, many months in deep collaboration with artists and creative collectives in the Bay Area, in order to not only interrogate what monuments mean to us, think about the role of street art, really engage a dialogue around that, but also to just be really responsive. To be able to not think so up-down, something goes up, it's static, it comes down, we go back to the same, but rather more like layers. When an artist comes and works with us and we put something on the wall, or on the building, or on the sidewalk, what is it like to not just go neutral? Put it up, take it down, go neutral.

What is that? And how do you actually instead make layers and create an environment where the process is what you're experiencing and where the inquiry is what people get to experience? So that's how it has evolved. I think as we move forward the environment that we hope to create and co-create, and work with our community to do is really a public square. A dynamic, ongoing, interactive kind of environment. So again, not so much about up-down exhibitions or a season of performances, but a dynamic environment that can be of service to the community.

Lauren Ruffin:

What's been the hardest about that re-imagining process? Is it the internal change of various staff members or your colleagues' risk tolerance? Is it just not being able to sort of see what's coming ahead because it hasn't been built yet and it doesn't exist anywhere, or is it something else that's sort of... What's been hardest?

Deborah Cullinan:

I mean, I think you're kind of getting to what I would say is hardest. I think that change is hard because of the uncertainty it provides. And so for me, I think if you don't know where you're going, it's really hard to trust the path. And if you came onto that path with a certain definition of the expertise and skills and values that you can bring to the table and you can't see how those things that you bring fit in and will help guide us there, it's really challenging. And so a big shout out to the YBCA team as you know, there've just been all kinds of just so much uncertainty, where are we going? And so really trying to create an environment where it's okay to try something, fail, iterate, correct, decide it was a terrible idea. But at the end of the day, we have to try. And so I think the hardest thing is to create conditions that make people feel valued and clear and safe in pursuit of something that is not yet known.

Tim Cynova:

What's one thing that you've tried over the past year where you were like, "Yeah, that was cool. I'm really glad that worked out." And what's one thing that did not go as planned? "Had we known that was going to end that way, we should have not done that."

Deborah Cullinan:

Oh, that's a really good question. I mean, because it's so fresh in my mind, I will say that the YBCA 100 Summit was just an incredibly grounding and inspiring experience for me to see the way that we could work with Crocs in particular to really test and play with environments and experience in the virtual space was really powerful. But maybe more for me, it was the feeling of together and of community that began to brew among the artists. This feeling that you say all these things. We want to be a place that shifts resource and power to artists. We want to put artists and community members in the lead. We believe that artists and community members are the best designers of their own future, but can we really do it? Are we really going to do it?

And to me just hearing and feeling the energy, I'm not saying we're there by any means, but I'm saying it's possible. And to know it's possible, it's so gratifying to me. So that's one side of it, right? But the other side of it is to say those things and strive to do those things means that you really are in it and you have to be willing to change, right? Transforming society, you can't do it if you haven't transformed the institutions and structures that built it the way it is. And you also can't do it if you aren't willing to change yourself and to give up, right? And so I feel like there's a lot of that over the course of the year of what it means to give up, to let go to, step aside, to move out of the way, has been really powerful.

But again, we're not nowhere near all the way there yet, it's really the work ahead. As far as things that maybe haven't gone well, what came to mind when you were asking the question is more about the role that YBCA has played specifically in San Francisco during the pandemic, as the co-chair of the San Francisco Arts Alliance. And just being in this community for such a long time, The instinct is to be of service, to really help, to raise our hands all the time. Like, "what can we do? What can we do?" And I think that maybe what we didn't understand is that sometimes even raising the hand isn't necessarily the right thing to do as a White led organization, as an organization that is relatively big and depending on how you look at it. And so for me, it's much more about how do we constantly interrogate and understand our right place in the world?

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah. And I am really curious about that piece because you all have stepped into some stuff that's not purely creative. I mean, you're getting into basic income and really so first responder type things and almost quasi government type things. How are you holding that? When you're raising your hand for that sort of thing, how does that feel stepping into those spaces that are relatively new for the infrastructure that's been built with YBCA?

Deborah Cullinan:

Yeah. I mean, there's a lot in that question, right? There's just, how do you build capacity for new lines of business and new pathways for an organization that operated in a certain way? But for us as you know, the transformation has been pretty thorough and there are three focus areas for YBCA. One is YBCA create, one is YBCA champion, one is YBCA invest. And we look at all three of these things as essential together. You can't do one, you've got to do all three because they're really for us a sort of ecosystem development set. It's about building an ecosystem of artists who are working to advance health and wellbeing in their communities, artists who are committed to cultural equity and racial justice. And how do we build the capacity?

How do we change the policy? How do we create new kinds of curatorial and program structures that are much more inclusive that are driven by artists that are not top-down? And then how do we invest differently? How do we think about economic security in our sector? How do we address just what is wrong with it? So that collection of things makes all of this makes sense. We have to do all three of these things. In terms of the guaranteed income program and some of the programs that we've been doing in collaboration with city government, it's just tough. When you use public dollars, there are all kinds of things that you have to consider that you wouldn't have to consider if you're operating with private money. And I also think that it reveals large amounts of public dollars going to YBCA, even if all of those dollars are going to go back out into the community, it's still wrong, right?

That the money goes to this one organization. And part of the reason why we're driven to do it is to test and understand better ways of approaching it. To build knowledge so that we can shift policy around how we fund artists and community-based arts organizations like those that have been doing the work for decades, and haven't been funded. So it's putting yourself out there, right? But it's also a commitment to trying to understand and interrogate and even prove that some things are actually not a good idea. And so even with the guaranteed income, I think there's just a ton to learn there about what is good about that and what is not good about that, and what can we learn as a field about the right way to think about providing a floor for artists and creative workers.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah. And is a program like that a springboard that ultimately helps... Are there particular points in a creative person's life where you can inject that sort of capital into that, that becomes a springboard to middle-class 10 or 15 years later? I mean, that's the durational sort of data that I'm really interested in with that program.

Deborah Cullinan:

Right. And you're sort of revealing one of the challenges with it, which is it's pilot, it's a limited amount of dollars. We would have preferred to provide this guaranteed income for fewer artists for a longer period of time not because we wanted only to support fewer artists obviously, but more because we wanted to gather as much information as we could. And so that kind of durational, we need to be able to understand things and we need the time to understand things. Otherwise, we keep kind of creating reactive policy that has such detrimental effect for so long, way longer than that 15 years that you're talking about, we're talking about hundreds of years, right? And so to me, it feels like we just underestimate how important it is to learn.

Tim Cynova:

There's a question here that feels related to what we've been talking about. In terms of new models and the changes you've made this year due to the pandemic, what specific changes have you made you wish to keep and what old models are you happy to get rid of?

Lauren Ruffin:

That's dangerously close to the suitcase question.

Deborah Cullinan:

Well, it's a simple question.

Tim Cynova:

I know. You need to parse it. You need to hold the things that you're going to say for the suitcase question until later.

Lauren Ruffin:

I'll go big on the suitcase question.

Deborah Cullinan:

Yeah, we could spend all the time on that. Coming into the pandemic, we had already been undertaking a real transformational effort at YBCA and all I can say about it for us, and this is for our organization, all I can say about it is it wasn't bold enough. And it wasn't fast enough. It wasn't bold enough. For us, the right thing is as much change as possible, right? And so I know that's not a really specific answer to the question, but we are just well situated just because we have a really amazing board that's open to this kind of inquiry, because the team is so dynamic and powerful that we have the opportunity to explore the very edges, to toss as much of it out as possible. And again, back to the piece about learning, so we can learn. But I'm not saying that everyone should throw the baby out with the bath water. I'm just saying for us, it feels right to try to do as much of that as we can.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah. And you've got a pretty high risk tolerance as a leader.

Deborah Cullinan:

You think?

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah, for sure.

Deborah Cullinan:

I don't know. I mean, it's just like when you go... We all have been through so much and I just don't know what else we're supposed to do, but try. And the worst that can happen is that we fail, to me what would be much worse is not trying.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah. No, I'm with you on that and I think there's a particular sense of urgency over the last year that is important to acknowledge that we really have to be bold and go big to not go back to where it was, but it really wasn't working for most people. And the data bears that out. I think our emotions and our feelings and our grief bears that out, but yeah, I really appreciate that.

Tim Cynova:

We should say for the people who have heard the suitcase question, and we just thought it as a cliffhanger, we're going to close our interview, which I guess is another cliffhanger. But the question that Deborah asked us during our live stream last year and we thought, "Well, if she's back on the show, she's back at the summit, so let's ask her it." And so when we get to that, you'll understand what the question is and why we are sort of, I guess, threading the needle not to answer the question before we ask the question.

Lauren Ruffin:

Tim, did you have a question? I can talk to Deborah all day, but I want to make sure-

Tim Cynova:

It sounded like I had a question the way I ended that sentence, but no, I was going to you to bounce back in.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah. I want to dig into some of the artists who've inspired you over the last year. I was part of the 100, that was so hopeful and so amazing. But what else are you seeing that you think points the way to a better future?

Deborah Cullinan:

I think about artists that we've been working with in West Oakland and in our Artist-Led Giving Circle, Hassan Rashid, Fay Darmawi, these are people who fundamentally understand shared future and interdependence. And it bears out in the work, in Hussein's photography, and it bears out. And so for me, it's been this kind of collective inspiration, the story of the Artist-Led Giving Circle is a powerful one, right? Because we were working with a group of artists from different parts of the country, including the Bay Area. And we were talking about investment and preparing for the SOCAP, the Social Capital Markets conference and thinking about how these artists would pitch their work in the context of a social impact investment conversation. And the question arose around well, what would happen if one of us was funded, if one of us got investment?

And the immediate answer was, "Oh, well, we'd all be funded." And that applies not only to the way the artists that we're working with might be thinking about financial resource, but also about resource in general and just how we work together and how we can together, better steward the assets that we have. I mentioned Cece Carpio whose work is on the window of YBCA on Mission Street. People like Cece and others who really are thinking about how to Chronicle the time, which is so important, but also unearth the history. And to my mind, that's where we need to be going, is we have to see where we've been and what we've done in order to stand in a present moment with the ability to imagine a better future. And these artists are really willing to do that work.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah. I'm really curious about how we're making sense of this period of time in real time and how we're centering creators of color. And we know that in the Bay Area Latinx communities have been hit the hardest around the country, Black communities have been hit really hard by the virus and having a platform for artists of color to be able to tell their stories contemporaneously, this feels like it's so important. And it's the only way to me that we're going to come out of this with any sort of headiness about how it happened, so that we don't get back to the thing that caused it. And I do think that a number of the artists you're working with are doing a really good job with that documentation, which to me is critical. And it gets lost in times when everything's happening so fast. And there's not really a question there, but it's more of a wondering, how are we holding all these things at the same time?

Deborah Cullinan:

Well, and it just makes me think of the YBCA 10, the group of 10 artists who are working with us over the next year, at least. For me, what I come to is, what does it mean that our structures and systems have actually done the opposite of creating the conditions for really unleashing creativity, for really making it possible for artists and creative people of all kinds to do the work? It's such a trip when you really think about that. That we've actually created structures that stifle that either from an economic security perspective or from the way we approach and transact with artists rather than build deep relationships with them. So again, not a question either, but just what was coming to mind when you were talking and I just feel hopeful that we better understand now how important creativity at its maximum is to us as a society, and that we can just hold on to that. Don't forget that.

Tim Cynova:

I will follow up your two profound statements that weren't questions with a question. So Deborah, unless I pulled an outdated bio, is it you're on the governor's jobs and business recovery task force? That's currently one of the things you're doing?

Deborah Cullinan:

I was indeed on his jobs and business recovery task force but the whole thing came to an end. So I need to update my bio, but I did serve on that along with Mayor Breed's economic recovery task force here in San Francisco. And I'll tell you that was a trip with Governor Newsom's task force, because I was the only arts person of, I don't know exactly what the total amount of people was, but somewhere between 100 and 150 people. And it was still a lot of focus on the superstars in the State of California, a lot of folks in the tech sector and people leading really large organizations. And so it was a really kind of fun anomalous place to be. And to the stuff that we've been talking about here, it was not difficult to capture our governor's attention around the incredibly essential role that artists and arts organizations and creative workers in California play. And the reason it was not difficult is because we all had hit a wall. It was a terrible spot, racial injustice, systemic violence, wildfires. We can't get people to wear their masks. People won't trust to take the vaccine. Hitting a wall somehow opened hearts and minds to what's possible.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah. I want to take a hard left turn because I'm thinking a lot about the advocacy work that you all have been doing or you have done historically. Oh, I love that mug, where did it come from?

Deborah Cullinan:

Looking good.

Lauren Ruffin:

Oh, I don't have one. I think it's pretty surprising-

Deborah Cullinan:

Do you want me to send this to you?

Lauren Ruffin:

I'll make Tim send me another one.

Tim Cynova:

It's just one that mug travels through our guests, we have to spread out so that the mug has time to travel.

Lauren Ruffin:

[inaudible 00:31:25] But I think... God it was advocacy. California's passed some really interesting laws in the last year that have impacted the gig workers who we know are disproportionately artists and people of color. What's happening there now? Because there was a lot of nervousness around some of these laws of how it was going to impact the nonprofit sector, how it was going to impact 1099 folks who... What's happening there and where does YBCA see its role in plugging into these policy and advocacy conversations? Has it changed since the pandemic or does it remains the same?

Deborah Cullinan:

I think we've always played a really active role of thinking, not only about legislation and public policy advocacy, but also just championing the role, the arts play in other sectors. And so I think it's very deeply rooted and very important to what we do because we're trying to raise awareness and build, grow the demand for artists and arts organizations. I think that in particular, AB-5 and legislation that has been quite controversial as it relates to contract workers and other gig related workers. This kind of goes to this whole thing of we get really reactive and we develop and pass legislation that is not entirely thoughtful. And again, it's top-down instead of bottom-up. Wouldn't it make sense to maybe communicate with the people that are going to be affected most, which would be the workers themselves? But the good news on that is that there's been a lot of advocacy and that has resulted in edits to the legislation. So it's moving in the right direction. And the other piece that's good about it is it did raise awareness in general about the state of those workers who are contracting gigging 1099-ing. And how many of them there are in addition to the fact that you could argue that artists were the first gig workers.

Lauren Ruffin:

Oh, yeah. That's where it comes from, right?

Deborah Cullinan:

Yep. Yeah, and I think there's just a lot of opportunity right now to think not only about like art related policy, but how art and artists are integrated into policy. And I think there's some really exciting opportunities there as well. Not only at the state level, but federal.

Tim Cynova:

Well speaking about innovating, what does an innovator in residence at the Kauffmann Foundation do? What did that experience look like?

Deborah Cullinan:

That was awesome. There were seven of us and we were inside of the entrepreneurship program and our job was to think up and dream up and test out big, hairy ideas and also be a bit disruptive inside of the foundation. And I was the arts person. I really like it when it's not just all of us arts people, but I was working with folks who were on some other level when it comes to social finance, really thinking differently about law, running a whole new way of training young people towards work in the tech sector. So as usual, it was about really helping everyone think about how you integrate the arts into what we all do. And I got to spend a lot of time in Kansas City, which I came to love, and I got to know the arts ecosystem there, which was really inspiring.

Lauren Ruffin:

And lots of good barbecue.

Deborah Cullinan:

That is right. Lots of good barbecue. And I tried to find barbecue that was named after a woman, but I have yet. So if anyone... Tom's barbecue, Bob's barbecue. I'm not coming up with any of the actual real names right now, but yeah, it became of interest to me to see if there was any barbecue in Kansas City or restaurant that was named after a woman. And I don't know. So if anyone knows, tell me.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah, interesting. I'm going to do some research on that. But you brought up capital and I think one of the... I spent some time thinking about how money moves into and out of various ecosystems. I don't want to talk about an NFTs or blockchain or Bitcoin, but I feel like what want to say is over the last couple of months, and San Francisco feels like it's sort of ground zero for this conversation about revenue generation and how we can maybe modernize how capital flows, because it really hasn't changed much in 400 years. It's the same basic sort of method of transfer. I'm going to have to talk about NFTs.

Deborah Cullinan:

Oh, no, I knew this was coming.

Lauren Ruffin:

Well, I think the bigger thing is when we're talking about these new technologies and new ways of transferring wealth, there becomes an opportunity to fundamentally reshift workers' relationship to their labor and how we see them, or don't see them as commodities in the marketplace. And I know that you all are right there thinking through all this stuff and are talking to companies who are thinking through this stuff like, what should we be paying attention to over the next couple months? Because cryptocurrency is not mature, blockchain is not mature yet, but what should we be looking at as leaders as workers, and as-

Deborah Cullinan:

I mean, I would want you to answer that question.

Lauren Ruffin:

Oh God. Well, if I had the answer, I would've just said it. It would have been a comment, not a question.

Deborah Cullinan:

Go easy. I mean, for me, in terms of what we should be looking for, my brain goes to what's the system? Instead of what's the flashy thing, what are we striving for? So it's like looking for the conversations that are about equity in these emerging potential marketplaces. And I think your question about our relationship to our labor is one of the biggest questions of our time. What is our relationship to our own personal labor and why we work? And then what is our relationship to our workers? Lauren, we've talked about this. It's just really stuck to me that the way we've set it up, it ends up being that our financial structures in the arts are de-stabilizing to the community that we exist to support and to celebrate and to share the artists.

And so if you really break that down and if you had a magic wand and you could just be like, Okay, so let's just look at this. We've got lots of money. We've got lots of institutions, small, medium, large, we've got a ton of beautiful artists working all across the country. How would we reshift this shift so that it goes in the right direction? Eric Tang from Cal Shakes who is also exploring what it is like to create a floor for Cal Shakes artists, he articulated it really well. He's like, "If our artists, our core community, is only stable when we hire them or cast them, hire them to design, cast them or whatever. And then they're just unstable until we come back around. What's the point?" And so I think this idea of we're only as stable as our core community.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah. Tim is time for the suitcase question?

Tim Cynova:

I think it is time for the suitcase questions. We have five minutes then we're landing the plane, and have a little wrap up there, so go with it Lauren.

Lauren Ruffin:

Yeah. So Deborah, I'm going to be a real asshole and read back how we got to the suitcase question last year. At the time you were reading Arundhati Roy's Pandemic is a Portal, and you said what she's talking about, at least the way I read it is that this is a portal we have to move through and that we have a choice. We can either move through it really heavily with our baggage. We can bring the racism, we can bring the avarice, we can bring the trauma, we can bring it all with us and we can trudge and fight and try so hard to not move through it. Or we can move through it lightly with very little. And if we do that, we can change everything. Which is beautiful. Tim and I somehow took that beautiful statement and we drilled it down in our ham-fisted way into the suitcase question. Which is, similar to what Kate had in the chat, personally, professionally, you've been traveling through your entire life with stuff. What's one thing that you had in your suitcase before the pandemic, that's never going back in, and what's a new thing that you're going to put in for the rest of your life?

Deborah Cullinan:

You even kind of prepared me for this and I find myself stumped, but let me give it a whirl. Yeah, I feel like I want to leave behind as much of this sort of top-down as we can so that we can all understand our ability to work together, to imagine something like we're in it. And I think what I would bring with me, I would still bring, as I said back then we leave behind our lack of imagination and we bring with us our collective ability to imagine something so powerful and equitable and good, why not? So leave the lack of imagination and the fear behind and bring the imagination forward. I think I'll end it there.

Tim Cynova:

It's terrific. And next year we'll ask you the same question.

Deborah Cullinan:

I'm going to be a little bit ready next year.

Tim Cynova:

Deborah, thank you so much for being with us for this closing session at the summit. It's always wonderful to spend time with you and really appreciate you sharing your time, your wisdom with us during the summit.

Deborah Cullinan:

Oh, thank you so much for having me. I would spend all the time that I could in the world with the two of you.

Lauren Ruffin:

No same.

Tim Cynova:

Cool. Yes. All right, we'll see you next hour. Anyhow, thank you.

Deborah Cullinan:

Take care.

Tim Cynova:

Well, and with that, somehow we are at the end of the Ethical Reopening Summit. It feels like really that we just got started.

Lauren Ruffin:

That was a whirlwind.

Tim Cynova:

It was a whirlwind. Thank you so much to each of you who have been here with us for it. Thanks for incredible eight sessions, eight conversations to our speakers, our panelists, for the engaging chats and questions that have been populating through the platform. As Lauren said at the top of this hour, we will be sharing in about a day or two, the links to the videos that will have transcripts and captions, so you can rewatch anything that you missed or go back and watch sessions. If you miss us, you can always find us online at workshouldntsuck.co. If you really miss us, we're excited to announce that we're launching two new online courses in the coming months. The first is a 10 module called Hire With Confidence. The second is a five module course that Laura and I are teaching called Shared Leadership and Action. You can find more about those courses on the Work Shouldn't Suck website. Lauren, it is amazing that this all came together and I sincerely thank you so much for helping make this a reality. And-

Lauren Ruffin:

Not really. You're the best person to do a group project with because you just run with it. I can't even keep up. Diane Ragsdale's still awake? What is it? 11 o'clock there? But no, this was just really dope. It was one of the most beautiful things about doing digital events is we get to be social while distance, we get to be intimate while we're far away. And it's really great to spend time talking about just a better way of living and a better way of being human together as we're all sort of, or most of us are really working to make the world a little bit more hospitable for folks. So this was dope Tim, and thanks for the idea and the opportunity.

Tim Cynova:

Yeah. And with that, I guess we're going to close and have to end the broadcast.

Lauren Ruffin:

I guess we are. See you all later.

Tim Cynova:

And more thanks. Take care, everyone.

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