S2, Ep 12: Supporting Nonprofit Leaders of Color: Insights from Sean Thomas-Breitfeld

SEASON 2, EPISODE 12

Supporting Nonprofit Leaders of Color: Insights from Sean Thomas-Breitfeld | S2, Ep 12

[INTRODUCTION]

[0:00:01] JSS: Hey, everybody. This is Joanna Shoffner Scott, and you are listening to the Race in the Workplace Podcast, a show for DEI organizational leaders that explores race, racism, and racial equity in the workplace. I am a racial equity consultant and founder of the Stamey Street Consulting Group, a consulting firm that specializes in partnering with organizations to help them meet their racial equity aspirations. My goal for you is to move your organization from being colorblind to equity centered through sustainable step-by-step changes.

[0:00:39.2] JSS: Hi, it’s Joanna Shoffner Scott here. I am so excited to be with you today. Thank you for allowing me to join you in your day, no matter when you’re listening. This week’s episode of the podcast is an interview that I did with Sean Thomas-Breitfeld, who codirects the Building Movement Project.

This season of the podcast has been about leadership and as I wrap up Season 2, this is the perfect interview to close with. As soon as I decided leadership would be my focus for this season, I knew that I wanted Sean Thomas-Breitfeld to join me in a conversation.

Okay, a little bit more about Sean. Prior to joining The Building Movement Project, he spent a decade working in various roles at community change, where he developed training programs for grassroots leaders, worked in policy and communications, working coordinated online in grassroots advocacy at first, and lobbied on a range of issues including immigration reform, transportation equity, and anti-poverty programs.

I invited Sean on the podcast to share his experience supporting leaders of color in the nonprofit sector. This sector itself is in a time of transition, and with that comes both complexity and a need for nuance as this shift is occurring in a time full of political pressure from the right, figuring out how we live in this new normal with COVID and great fatigue among nonprofit leaders and staff. To learn more about Sean’s work, visit buildingmovement.org.

All right, let’s get into it, a conversation about racial equity leadership with Sean Thomas-Breitfeld.

[INTERVIEW]

[0:02:20.5] JSS: Hi Sean, it’s so awesome having you on the podcast. Thank you for joining.

[0:02:25.9] STB: Thank you for having me.

[0:02:27.5] JSS: If you could, tell us a little bit about the work you do.

[0:02:32.9] STB: Sure. So I am the co-executive director of an organization called, The Building Movement Project, and at BMP, we’re a national organization that does research on the nonprofit sector. We also develop practical resources to support organizations and organizational change efforts and then we also really focus on relationships and transformational relationship building to help knit people and organizations together in order to strengthen progressive movements.

And I just want to add that you know, I’m a co ED and my co-ED, Francis Kunreuther, is the founder of BMP and we trace our organization's founding back at this point, almost 25 years to a meeting that Francis and other colleagues, Linda Campbell, and other people organize to try to bring together different people from different parts of the nonprofit sector because, at the time, there was a concern that the sort of investments in nonprofit infrastructure, in nonprofit capacity, were so modeled on a business model.

They had a different perspective having been activists, organizers, service providers, they wanted the center of the work to be about building infrastructure that would help organizations achieve progress and social change, not just operate in a more streamlined business-oriented way and so that really is the sort of legacy of BMP and why we do work on race and equity in the sector.

Why we do work on organizing and establishing that organizing is and needs to be a preferred model for making change and why we focus on the ecosystem of organizations that make it possible for movements to be impactful for our communities.

[0:04:40.6] JSS: Thank you for sharing that. I find that for those of us who do work where there’s an equity component, there’s always a little bit of a jagged journey, right? In terms of how we end up in these phases. So can you share with us a little bit about how you landed in that particular meeting that day or how you landed doing the work that you do in the nonprofit space?

[0:05:03.8] STB: Sure. I would say, that in a way, it actually goes back to being a pastor’s kid. Both of my parents are ministers.

[0:05:11.2] JSS: Oh, I didn’t know you were a PK.

[0:05:13.8] STB: Yeah. I’m a double PK and you know, pastor’s kid also, child of the interracial marriage. My mom is black, my dad is white, and so having grown up in a faith community where there were professed values and ideals, and then there was real-world action and exclusion, particularly, you know, that I saw in terms of my mom’s sort of opportunities in the ministry being very different.

You know, I think that that in a way, prepared me for but also put me on the path to working in this nonprofit sector because we’re pretty idealistic about what our ideals are, and then often, there are these reality conflicts between what we say about equity and then what the actual experience is of people of color and organizations or what we say about valuing the voice of constituency and clients.

But then boards, making a lot of decisions from a place that has no real connection to the stakeholders of the organization. So those sorts of contradictions I feel like I kind of grew up in because my whole childhood and young adulthood was informed by the church and I come from you know, a mainline protestant church that also had a tradition of, you know, it was definitely not the kind of church that was about prosperity gospel, right?

We were much more focused on racial and economic justice and so I got my politics from you know, those faith-based institution organizers who really have been focusing for years on getting churches to be sites of activism in our country.

[0:07:05.6] JSS: I love that and I appreciate you sharing that so much or I connect to that in a lot of different ways. I grew up in a church that was more like the prosperity gospel like that was the center and like figuring all of that out and what that meant and what’s embedded in that, so I appreciate that.

I do think that this culture we live in that is so much steeped in white supremacy is in a lot of ways, a spiritual problem. I don’t have the tools to help people through that, but I recognize it. Do you know what I mean?

[0:07:39.9] STB: You know, being someone who is queer, you know I’m married to a man, I’ve had my own struggles with that faith community and yeah, I very much feel grounded in that upbringing in a way, you know? And I think there have been times in my career where I’ve had the opportunity to work with faith-based organizers and you know, people from that organizing tradition, which is different from sort of some of the Alinsky style, you know, more hard nose economic justice organizing that I might have been more trained in but you know I’ve always loved those communities.

You know, those spaces where people are figuring out ways to really meld a deep understanding of value and mission with the activism, the organizing, the moving people to take real action to deliver material change for their communities and their neighbors.

[0:08:39.3] JSS: Yeah, I appreciate you sharing that so much. I do, thank you, that’s a real gift. I wanted to have you on the podcast because this season has been all about leadership and when I think about leadership and the experiences of leaders of color, I can’t help but think about the work that you do at BMP and Race to Lead work.

So I wanted to know if you could talk about the intersections that you see. It’s so complex and nuanced and I wanted to know if you could kind of talk about either what you’re seeing in your work in terms of race and leadership and either both opportunities and challenges that you're saying in the sector.

[0:09:24.8] STB: Yeah, I want to give a little bit of context for how and why we as an organization got into creating this whole Race to Lead initiative because, for years, BMP did a lot of research on generational dynamics in organizational leadership always with the race-based lens and analysis and at the time that I joined the organization in 2013, there was a sort of generational dynamics I think were seeming less the fault line and there was more concern and agitation around, “Well, you know if there were these transitions that might have been happening between the sort of boomer generation and Gen-X, was that really leading to the kind of increased opportunity for people of color?”

There has been sort of this assumption that because Gen-X and I’m you know, a young Xer and X-ennial but because Gen-X demographically looked very different from boomers, there had been this assumption that, “Oh, the sector’s just going to end up being more diverse in the 2000s, 2010s than it had been in the '90s,” and what we were seeing and observing was that that didn’t seem to have happened and we were curious as to why.

So as our organization that takes research seriously, we started out by interviewing a bunch of colleagues and asking why they thought things hadn’t changed as much as we expected and then we did this survey and the recently, survey in 2016, you know the number of respondents was double what we expected. So we knew that we were really, like, hitting on some of the – people wanted to discuss and explore in the sector.

I think between the data that we collected in 2016 and then 2019 and now, we’re in this meaning-making phase from the data we collected in 2022, a very strong through-line has been that leadership is challenging. I think that’s always been true and there had been this narrative, “You know, maybe people of color don’t want these crazy executive director jobs because the job isn’t sustainable.”

Well, it is true, that the job often is not sustainable but what our data showed was that it was not true that people of color didn’t want those jobs. We saw higher aspiration on the part of people of color but people of color were also reporting that their aspiration was being blocked by structural barriers, and so the new twist on that data as we start looking up the data we collected in 2022 is it seems like the aspiration is maybe not as high as we saw in 2019, right? And so that’s then concerning, right?

Like aspiration was declining for white respondents, evisceration now starts also declining for respondents of color. As a sector, what are we going to do to finally figure out ways to make the job and the jobs of leading organizations be sustainable? So that people will aspire to and want to take on leadership instead of feeling like it’s always being thrust on them or that they’re unprepared for it or that they’re not supported in it, which are the narratives that we hear too often.

[0:12:41.8] JSS: I want to unpack that because there is a lot in what you said. I want us to go back to that generational piece. So I’m a Gen-Xer. In my work with organizations, I’m definitely seeing the generational differences among how people see leadership, what people expect in terms of support, and how people see power, and so I would love to know if either in that earlier iteration of data or even in what you’re seeing as you work with different organizations, how that generational divide is playing itself out?

[0:13:18.4] STB: So the generational lenses, one that we’re really interested in exploring with the 2022 data because, you know, we’ve now gotten to a point where there are sort of more younger respondents as a part of the whole sample and so our hope is that we’ll be able to see trends from like a quantitative perspective more clearly this time but anecdotally, I’m hearing the same thing.

Both from other capacity builders who are noting or observing some real differences between older and younger staff of organizations and think how to think about power, how people think about power, how do people think about sort of authority in relation to position in power or not, you know? And I think some democratization of our organization is really important, right?

I think that there has been an over-reliance on hierarchy in a lot of organizations and sort of an attitude of like decisions get made at one level, and you, at a different level are just tasked with executing them, right? And so when we created the race equity assessment, one of the things that we were really interested in surfacing was how people felt about their opportunity to have voice in their organization and to not just feel inexperienced.

That they have an opportunity to be consulted if there were going to be decisions made that will impact their own work. So you know I think, we’re in this moment of there’s a lot of negotiation around all of these things, what does leadership mean, what should power look like inside of organizations, et cetera, and I think it’s very unsettled right now.

[0:15:08.3] JSS: That makes sense to me because I think, at least, what I tell folks I work with is to be very clear around how the open issue are around the shift and structure and I’ve had clients say this to me, “Not changing structure, structure is what it is” which I think, “Okay, you got to be honest about that and be direct so that people can decide if that’s where they want to stay, employee or not” you know what I mean?

Because there is, I feel like a shift in generation. Some of the things I was asked to do as a young professional, I would never ask other folks to do, you know what I mean? And nor do I feel like just because I did it, you have to. I don’t feel that way either, but a lot of people do, right? So I think that those are some of the things people are negotiating.

I appreciate you putting it that way because I think it is a delicate balance as people try to figure out, “How do I fit in, in a way that not fit in but how do If it in this organization, still be who I am and do work I love?”

[0:16:11.4] STB: I think that part of what can get confusing in the way that we oversimplify when we talk about the justice of function of generation is that people’s sort of life career, like where they are in their life and career, often tracks to their levels of seniority and authority in an organization, right?

And so those things often travel together, and I have gently been reminded by a former boss that I was sometimes an agitational questioner of him around organizational decisions, and I do remember being asked at one point when I was being agitational was, “Well, if you had the power to make a different decision, what would you do?” and I was stumped, right?

And so as a young staff person, the fact that I was stumped about what I would have actually done once I had all of the information that like senior leaders at the organization were juggling when they made the decision that I disagreed with, you know? So that’s where, “Are we posing questions, or are we proposing solutions?”

I think that’s the challenge. I think, and especially for those of us who, you know, went to college, got graduate degrees, all of that. We’ve been very trained in analysis and an analysis that is deconstructive, right? Like we’re deconstructing all of the problematic things but are we trained in constructive decision making?

Like that feels like it’s not always what we’ve been oriented to, and as someone who did “adjuncting” at my alma mater for a few years, like I know that I was trading my students to be critical about deconstructing things but not always pushing to make strong propositions to factor in competing information and have that be with an informed, what they would say to an organizational leader about how to actually move forward, so I think that’s also then part of what makes all of this complicated in real-world organizations.

[0:18:24.5] JSS: You all can’t see me but I’m nodding as we talk because that’s – I probably took the same approach with my students too, right? Ask, you know, critical questions.

[0:18:33.8] STB: Ask critical questions, yeah.

[0:18:34.5] JSS: But it’s all – right? But it’s also this piece that I’m sitting with more and more as like, “What does the ‘something new’ look like?” And how can we – sometimes it’s hard to imagine that there can be anything new and different, right? So I appreciate that.

[0:18:48.9] STB: And I think also what often gets in the way of imagining something new is that so many of our organizations, particularly organizations that are led by people of color are so cash-strapped because of the inequitable ways that money moves in our sector.

[0:19:02.3] JSS: Yes, yes, and so I want to pick up on the thread of something you said earlier when you talked about the waning aspirations of wanting to lead in an organization and when that was down a little bit from the last time you all did the data collection for Race to Lead. Can you talk a little bit more about what some of those barriers to leadership might be?

[0:19:24.5] STB: Yeah, and so this is speculation, I want to be clear because we haven’t, you know, reports will be coming out later in 2023, but you know, I think right now, some of what we’re speculating is that people have seen how difficult the experience has been of a lot of people who have moved into leadership and recognize that those jobs are hard and that it may be what made it hard was not about someone who didn’t look like you being in the position.

Now, people have seen other black people in this positions of power and has seen the hell that they catch. So you know, I think that that is part of it. I suspected that that is part of it. I also think that in this moment that we collected the data, right? The survey was opened in 2022 only two years after COVID, I just think the amount of fatigue was just real, deeply felt, and unaddressed oftentimes by our organizations, by our sector, just by the world.

The sort of assumption has been that we’re just moving forward again now that we’ve got vaccines, but you know, I think that there’s some lingering struggles that people have had and I think people have, maybe this is pulling more from some of the quiet quitting narrative, but the people have been wrestling with and questioning what is the role that they want work to play in their lives and what should work-life balance really look like and recognizing that often organizational leadership requires that balance being often weighted more towards work than towards life.

[0:21:07.2] JSS: I’m definitely seeing that too, definitely seeing the fatigue, and it’s fatigue both from how hard it is to do this work to your point but also just the environment that we’re doing it in, that people are working in. It’s COVID, it’s politics, depending on where you live, it’s just the national climb and what that is. So that makes leading a nonprofit really hard.

[0:21:31.7] STB: Yeah, and I think, you know, going to bring up research that the independent sector, supported and commissioned, finding the nonprofit organizations are doing less advocacy, right? I worry that that is a response and like sort of a chilling effect from the last few years of really divisive politics and when actually, what is needed from our sector is to take a stand, right?

Like that’s what staff are often calling for their leaders to do is take a stand. That was the call in 2020, and I think that’s also an important way that organizations demonstrate their commitment to race equity is by taking a stand on those issues in the world, even if it seems unrelated to the particular programmatic focus of the organization. It is just a very interesting time for organizations in our sector.

[0:22:31.9] JSS: Yes, for sure. For sure. So I’m wondering if you want to talk a little bit about the building blocks for change work. So I would love for you to share with our listeners a little bit more about what that is and how to use it.

[0:22:47.5] STB: Absolutely, yeah. So super excited about Building Blocks for Change. It is a race-equity assessment that we developed based on insights and learning from the Race to Lead initiative and. So you’ll remember [inaudible 0:23:02.5] from like maybe 2019, 2020 because you were a part of a lot of these conversations when we started moving in this direction of like what could be assessment too, what would the framework be.

So just so excited that it’s live. Anyone who is interested should be going to buildingmovement.org but also buildingblocksforchange.org to learn more about the framework itself but as I said, it does draw on lessons from the Race to Lead dataset and what we started doing with Race to Lead in 2019 was asking respondents about their experiences in their organizations and part of what we thought was important about the assessment was to really try to put at the center, the staff experience.

We looked at other tools that were out there and recognize that sometimes assessments took a little bit of a shortcut and were more like audits of organizational policy that was filled out by organizational leadership, which is important, right? Like that is critical, but if a policy is on the books or implemented but staff are not experiencing it as making a change, then there’s still this gap, and so that’s part of what we wanted to be able to help organizations inform by building out the assessment.

The way that the assessment works is that staff of an organization, everybody, staff in leadership roles, et cetera, take a survey, and we are able to automatically, through the magic of algorithms analyze the data from an organization and then produce a customized report with custom narratives, custom visualizations that help organizations make sense of the data that we’ve collected through a framework of learning as a core capacity.

Leadership as a core capacity, voice, and sort of like the sense that staff have a voice and power in the organization, has a core capacity, and then conversation as a core capacity. And that last one is right now standing out to me or really resonating because we recognize that that is one area, that capacity that a lot of organizations really need to develop more that the ability to actually relate, have meaningful dialogue about complicated things is the pathway to organizations being more equitable and inclusive.

If organizations are always shutting down these conversations, you know, it may not even just be about like race equity, right? But if that is the default modality, then oftentimes what we’re seeing is that staff are not experiencing that organization as inclusive, as equitable, as organizations that have more of a facility and capacity to have difficult conversations.

[0:25:59.1] JSS: I will drop all of the links to the resources that you’ve mentioned, including the assessment, the Race to Lead EMP, all of that, I will link to the show notes. So folks, go and check that out.

I think what that last piece is so important that you mentioned around having the capacity to have the conversations, right? So I think there is a willingness, “Do you want to have it?” right? But then I think, “Do you have the tools to have it?” Right? What I find is people try to dive into the deep end like a white supremacy culture, and you only had one swim lesson, right? One swim lesson and I find that leaders are trying to have these really complicated nuance conversations around really tough stuff and maybe they’ve never had a conversation before, maybe they’ve had three other ones that went really bad, you know what I mean?

I really appreciate that last part very much because I think the reality that I see in my work is that people are very much having different experiences, and lots of times, no way to talk about that.

[0:26:58.5] STB: With the assessment is that it would be resource for organizations themselves but also for capacity builders, right? So there’s some drudgery that I hear from my friends who do consulting and capacity building around, you know, custom survey every time for a different organization and really could be asking the same question with like they’d feel like they need to get something custom to justify it.

So our hope is that more consultants and capacity builders will also integrate the assessment as a toolbox so that they’re able to have the organizations they’re working with go through the process. The organization gets the report, but the consultant and capacity builder is there to help really hold their hand as they move from, you know, affirming if they have the motivation to then experimenting with practices and then to having those practices become really embedded processes and structures that are a part of the organization’s core infrastructure and fabric.

We recognize that that is a key and critical role for consultants and capacity builders like yourselves, and our hope is that the assessment will help support folks to do that work as well.

[0:28:07.5] JSS: Yeah. I was on the site kind of poking around a little bit and definitely see that sometimes, you need an assessment. Lots of times, people, if you are a small nonprofit and you’re working with limited resources, that’s a challenge, right? That’s a barrier but also, people need sometimes that report to say, “Here’s what’s happening.” You know what I mean? Again, it’s a nice level set of, “Okay, this is what’s happening. Here are some things we can do to address what’s happening.”

[0:28:35.9] STB: Yeah, and we’ve created resources and tools to support organizations and taking it from, you know, the level setting based on the report to then figuring out what actions people will commit to collectively and you know, so – and we’ve tried to keep the pricing accessible so that organizations that are smaller can really take advantage of the resources and then figure out ways to take action themselves.

And we also want organizations that have the ability to work with a skilled and experienced consultant and capacity builder to also integrate the assessment process into what they’re doing with the paid consultant. So we’re trying to have it work in both modalities, and we’ve had success in both ways.

[0:29:22.0] JSS: Absolutely. Yeah, I could see. I could totally see that, I could totally see that. I wanted to kind of pivot a little bit and ask you what – because you mentioned a role in that particular piece of work for capacity builders. I want to ask you as you think about support for black leaders and leaders of color, what concerns you most about DEI and ways that it's used to support or not support leaders of color? I would love to talk about that.

[0:29:58.7] STB: Well, I have very mixed feelings after these ten years of working in this field of sort of national capacity building and developing resources for organizations to make change, in part because I think there’s often a lot of concept-creep like people utilize the same words but to mean vastly different things, and so they don’t want to have to be a semantic thing about like, “Well, how are we really defining diversity, equity, and inclusion?”

But it’s more that as the terms become ubiquitous, I think they generally begin to lose their meaning and halved in a way, and so that’s why I think some people are now adding J into the mix, but you know, I think increasing the acronym doesn’t feel like it’s actually what we need to do as a sector, and so you know I think for me, I think the other part of the sort of DEI equation is that as we now have more people of color in executive leadership roles and positions, have we as practitioners updated our thinking?

So that the work of pushing for diversity, equity, and inclusion is supporting leaders of color as well, right? I think in a previous generation, DEI was about challenging white leaders, right? But now we have leaders of color in those positions, and so how can DEI as a field and as a practice support leaders of color, support staff, and also ensure that our organizations are having impact that benefits communities? I think that all of those stakeholders are not quite, don’t seem to me at least, to be in balance right now, and a lot of what I hear around sort of DEI efforts gone wrong in black or BLC-led organizations.

[0:32:06.4] JSS: No, I hear you on that, and I think that there’s disconnect, or I don’t know if disconnect might not be the right word but there are real differences in the experiences of white leaders and black leaders and leaders of color, right? I think that sometimes that’s not always acknowledged. I say that myself coming out of a nonprofit in the leadership role where some people cannot take instruction from me.

They couldn’t, and I think that I hear the nuance and your point around how do we get to that, right? How do we get Boris to be more so? Not only just be supportive, I don’t think a lot of times even acknowledging. There is this push to diversify the executive role with no support, right? And I think some of the concepts that have been used to kind of dismantle as we talked about earlier, right?

How we may be – well, some of the things we taught our students, I think are then weaponized against leaders of color or their experience in that way, whether it’s intended or not, that’s the way it’s experienced. So I think I hear what you’re saying; there is a level of nuance that I think requires a shift.

[0:33:20.7] STB: And then the added wrinkle, how do we name and address when the staff person who can’t take instruction or direction from a new black leader or other person of color is themselves a person of color, right? The assumption is that it’s only difficult for white staff when an organization has an executive transition that’s also a racial one but based on what I hear from friends, it’s not just white staff who end up sort of having difficulty once the leader is a person of color.

So I think of you know, a friend who moved into an ED role following a white founder and then said to me, “Why is it that once I’m the executive director, staff have all of these issues with policies that I’m just maintaining from my predecessor?” You know? How much of that is about expectation that a lot would change based on the change in the executive leadership versus feeling like they were more free to push back on black leadership, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

We want people to be able to engage in dialogue, and I think for a lot of leaders of color it feels like, “Why am I being undermined?” You know, I think that’s the sort of thing, that’s the complication that has been really fascinating and also really painful to hear about from so many of my friends and peers in the sector.

[0:34:53.8] JSS: Y'all can’t see me, but I’m nodding and because that I can connect deeply to that experience and when I do think that there is not the level, as you eluded to just earlier, but not the level of grace, right? Not the level of having a long runway to make mistakes, right? And not the recognition that typically within a new role, I mean, it could be two, three years before that organization becomes yours.

It is, you’re dealing with your predecessor’s organization, policies, practices, the paint and color on the wall, like that is not your organization yet, but staff often hold that new leader responsible and I do think that there is a level of, "Why are people coming for me?" Like, "I’ve been there two weeks,” you know what I mean? And "Here I am, a black woman; why are black folks coming for me?" I think that’s real, and I – having had, you know, friends and colleagues in that situation is so painful, it is so painful, and I think that nuance is what our current DEI frameworks don’t address.

[0:36:08.2] STB: I completely agree. You know, I have to admit, though that I don’t exactly know how to address it myself. I know how to name it when it’s happening to a friend or a colleague and it helped to provide context and be able to say this as a normal experience, but sadly, it is an experience that is observable in the data that we have collected. We can actually see that leaders of color who have a predecessor of color versus leaders of color who have reported that they had a white predecessor are saying different things about their experience, but they’re bored in their staff, right?

So it’s useful to normalize that, but how do we actually address it? That’s, I think, the opportunity but challenge also for our peers in the sector, and I think it really is particularly for those who have been doing this work for a longer time to be able to figure that out. I think that right now, that seems, well, maybe less right now, given the very clear backlash against DEI affirmative action, et cetera.

But for a period of a few years, it seemed like there are people hanging on a shingle every week saying they could open an organization with DEI with no actual track record of having done it, but you know, so I don’t think those thoughts are necessary going to help us figure out this complicated thing, but you know, people like you who have the experience, who have been doing the work, who have been thinking about it and doing the research, et cetera, I think that is an opportunity for us to really figure out how we’re going to help organizations.

So that this moment, when there is clearly going to be a lot of executive transition in the sector and people who we thought might have retired a decade ago are now starting to actually retire, I do think it’s going to be an opportunity for people of color to step into leadership positions, we as a sector need to be able and willing to really support their leadership and I just think sadly too often, they haven’t had the support they’ve needed.

[0:38:07.9] JSS: Yeah, I appreciate that so much because I think kind of moving into talking about the opportunity in the work, I think that’s the opportunity in the work is to – because a lot of some of what we’ve talked about in terms of challenge not only that’s preventable, but I also think there has to be a recognition that there needs to be a stronger onboarding process for people and that for new leaders and not new to leadership but new organizations and more work to be done in preparing for new leadership and I think some of that piece that we just talked about, about the intra-racial can happen there.

So I would love for you to – I want to try to end on a positive note because we’ve been lifting up lots of variables and lots of challenges. So we talked about that opportunity in around leadership transition. What’s one opportunity, or maybe there’s more than one that you see in the work that you're doing to create a better sector?

[0:39:10.4] STB: I see a lot of opportunity. I do think that the transitions that have already happened in terms of having more people of color in positions of influence and power in the sector is going to continue to make positive change within the sector, and I think it helps to normalize that we can lead, that we can lead in ways that are collaborative and supportive of each other not just building our own individual empires.

But really committing to organizational ecosystems of support, and so I’m really excited about what the lessons end up being around how organizations and leaders are in deep solidarity and alignment with each other to deliver real change for communities. That’s what I’m really excited about, and for that to be the case in the face of a resurgent right-wing, conservative supreme court, et cetera, right?

The other side of the political aisle is thrashing, certainly, and wreaking a lot of havoc for communities of color, for LGBT folks, for women, et cetera. Part of the reason that they’re thrashing is because, in a lot of ways, our movements have won a lot already, right? And they’re trying to claw us back to the 1950s. You know, it is, for better or worse, 2023 right now, and time only marches forward.

So I am hopeful about what the current generation of nonprofit leaders and the upcoming rising leaders of our sector can do for the sector and for our country.

[0:40:59.2] JSS: I love that. I have nothing to add. If you had one piece of advice that you would give a nonprofit leader, what would it be?

[0:41:10.3] STB: So it’s so funny that you asked me that question because a colleague and I have just been interviewing a bunch of black leaders for a project, and we’ve been ending our interviews with them with that same question, and you know first, often, like I hear this chuckle of like, “Don’t do it, don’t step up,” you know? But people don’t really mean it, but I do think that the sort of sentiment that I have heard and felt is find your squad. Because you might be in a leadership role that is a sort of a solo leadership role of your organization, and that can be isolating.

But the structure of your organization does not need to limit the relationships that you have outside of the organization and so find a squad of other leaders, particularly other leaders of color who might have experienced similar struggles on their pathway to leadership or once they get into that role but whatever it is, find and build that community of other leaders because it will support and sustain you in your leadership, but it will also help to bring your organizations closer together.

To have that kind of alignment that our sector needs between organizations that we’re all moving in a similar direction, we can stay in our lanes and be complimentary but we need to have strong relationships so that we’re moving together forward.

[0:42:39.3] JSS: Oh, I love that. I love that, and if people want to connect with you and your work, where can they find you?

[0:42:44.5] STB: So check out buildingmovement.org. Our website has staff emails on our About page. Also, check out racetolead.org, which is where all of the reports and research for our Race to Lead initiative is housed. Check out buildingblocksforchange.org, which is the Race Equity Assessment. Check out our Solidarity Is work.

There’s just so many parts of BMP that I hope people will check out. And I’m just really excited to have had the chance to reconnect with you and talk about all of this work. So thanks so much for having me.

[0:43:18.6] JSS: Oh, thank you so much for coming on the podcast, here just sharing your experience is such a gift, and the work that you’re doing to support our nonprofit leadership, particularly among leaders of color is so important, and I love the nuance that you bring to this conversation, so I knew I had to have you on this season. So thank you so much for agreeing to the conversation.

[0:43:43.4] STB: Absolutely.

[END OF INTERVIEW]

[0:43:45.5] JSS: That's this week's episode of Race in the Workplace. Don't forget to subscribe wherever you listen to your podcast, and share it with a friend who may be a DEI professional who can use these strategies in their work. My hope for the podcast is that it reaches every person who needs it.

Until next time, take care.

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