Late one night in Fall 2015 an email arrived at my inbox about a program called “Get REAL.” I had just finished a long stretch of studying. The only sound in the house was the humming of my hard drive, the only light the fluorescence of my desk lamp and laptop.
This was right after I had learned my MBA program would be moving completely online, four months after a painful breakup, and right after my company had been acquired in the biggest tech company acquisition ever at $67 billion. The Get REAL message was sounding good – I wanted grounding in something I could positively impact! I clicked in.
An accepted application and a month later, I found myself sitting in Seattle with 50 other students from around the country, who also wanted to make a difference and increase diversity and inclusion on their campus. As part of the Racial Equity and Awareness Leadership program, we shared our life narratives with each other – the role that our “differences” have played in the winding arcs of our experiences. We learned together about the academic framework of systematic oppression, and I started to think more deeply about the silences in my own and other people’s lives. Perhaps some of these silences could be filled with courageous dialogue, instead of self-perpetuating assumptions about who the people around me are.
The exercise from the training program that has most stayed with me was simple and powerful. There were four piles of beads in the middle of each discussion table – each pile a different color to represent a different race. Each of us at the table was given a small plastic box, and told to put a bead in the box after each question the facilitator asked. The questions started: “What color is your best friend? Your favorite teacher growing up? Your dentist? Your pastor? Your first sports coach? Your hairdresser?” At the end of the exercise, we all looked at the beads in our boxes, and found that a lot of the beads were the same color as our own skin. Why was this so?
To inform my thinking, when I got home I started reading a book called “Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?” by developmental psychologist Beverly Daniel Tatum. Around the same time, protests started to happen on the Simmons campus, demanding a more culturally inclusive and equitable environment – demanding not just words, but action. As I started to learn from Beverly, building an inclusive community takes conscious effort from all involved – challenging assumptions, acknowledging unintentional harm done (but done nonetheless), and above all staying optimistic that the final destination will be worth the work.
I didn’t have a hard time with this optimism; I come from a long line of justice-oriented optimists. My ancestors include Amelia Bloomer, who invented of the first pants for women (called “Bloomers” – go figure!); Gerrit Smith, one of the funders of John Brown’s Raid at Harper’s Ferry during the pre-Civil War era; and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, an abolitionist and women’s rights activist who worked with Susan B. Anthony to advance women’s right to vote.
I also know the Simmons community pretty well; in addition to being an MBA candidate here, I was an undergrad at the school from 2003-7, and my mother attended Simmons in the seventies. Finally, as a Feminist, I look at Simmons’ message of empowering women and understand that this means empowering ALL women in the community – not just those who look a certain way or come from a certain background.
So, in short, there was no way I wasn’t going to do something! Net Impact Program Manager Dwight Smith helped me to think through how to gather a coalition and take steps toward Racial Equity and Awareness Leadership on campus. He used his experience and knowledge to channel my ideas in a productive direction. With his help, soon enough we had a mixed graduate and undergraduate power team going – Deborah Bell, Ferry Cadet, Stephanie DeFina, Alex Mireles, Allison Keller, Professor Stacy Blake-Beard, Professor Teresa Nelson, Sam Medeiros, Indra Guertler, Barbara Carter, and others – all committed to drawing out Simmons’ full potential for REAL community. It was amazing to work with these women!
Yet while I was excited to be doing the work, I struggled internally. Due to my job and school schedule, I couldn’t make it to half the meetings held by the student groups who were already leading the charge toward racial equity on campus. I come from an Irish/Lithuanian/English/Scottish background; would I be viewed as feeding off of a “movement that wasn’t mine?” In the end, would my effort fall into the dreaded cycle of “talk about justice, get excited, nothing really changes?” In contrast with my family history’s proud example, I started to have feelings of shame, and doubted whether anyone would care enough to listen or participate in any activity I coordinated.
With the help of the excellent team highlighted above, Simmons Net Impact planned and carried out two events this Spring: a trip from the Simmons campus to Boston’s Museum of African American History, and a discussion of inclusive innovation in the makeup industry. I found both of the events extremely rewarding – the energy brought by the attendees accentuated the feeling of rebirth and warmth that embraces Boston every Spring. (This was after that strange April snowstorm.)
And what I was afraid would happen also did happen – only a handful of people came to each event. Both events were scheduled near the end of the semester, and I know many people couldn’t come because they needed to do homework/work-work/be with their families.
Now, a lot of business-minded people would look at the attendance numbers and see the events as a failure. And in the short term, maybe they are right. But that’s not what Net Impact is about. It’s about looking at what is best in yourself and the people around you, and building on that. It may not be measurable right now. But I know that I and every person who helped plan our two events this April are more connected and more engaged with fellow justice-minded people than they were beforehand. That, to me, is a successful business outcome.
During the second event – the discussion of inclusive innovation in the makeup industry – I mentioned the box of beads and how I’d put it together at the Get REAL training. Wondering if it might still be in my work bag, I went over and dug in. My hand grasped on a little thing that made a clinking noise as its contents shook around – it was still there! I grabbed it out and showed the discussion attendees the souvenir from my experience in Seattle.
Why was I so excited to still have this little box with plastic beads? It was a symbol of the (sometimes invisible) community that I know is there for me, pushing for justice each in our own way, and with the same fears and hopes. And it’s given me a new philosophy of leadership: Alone, I am only what I know; together, we are what we know is possible. I’m willing to bet the latter has the bigger return on investment. Thanks Net Impact for helping me Get REAL!
This post was originally published on the Simmons School of Management's Net Impact page.