EPISODE 26: EQUITY IN STATE GOVERNMENT
MM: Hi, everyone, and welcome to another episode of “Gathering Ground.” On today’s podcast we have three special guests – I would call them superstars – as we talk about equity in state government.
As you know, I’m the president of Morten Group LLC, a national consulting firm that operates in Chicago, and for more on our work, particularly our work around racial equity, access, diversity, and inclusion, or READI, you can go to www.mortengroup.com.
Morten Group had the pleasure and really the honor of working with Governor Pritzker’s office on a comprehensive racial equity training program. We followed that program by working with 40 state agencies on developing diversity, equity, and inclusion action plans. Through this process Morten Group was able to take a deep dive into the inner workings of our state’s government and bring an equity lens to the very top. We even had the pleasure of welcoming Governor Pritzker himself to one of our all-day sessions. However, it’s important to note that our work with these agencies was hardly the beginning of the current administration’s journey into diversity, equity, and inclusion, and it certainly won’t be the end. Since completing our work, the state has brought on a chief equity officer and has continued to expand the work around action planning and bringing this work to the entire state of Illinois.
Today on “Gathering Ground,” we are thrilled to welcome Dr. Christina Smith [CS], Illinois Department of Human Rights Training Institute director; Dr. Carmen Ayala [CA], superintendent of the Illinois State Board of Education; and Dr. Sekile Nzinga [SN], the chief equity officer for the governor’s office in the state of Illinois.
Welcome to all of you. I’m so happy we could gather for what I think is going to be a fascinating conversation. So hello to all of you.
I am going to ask you this very first question. We always like to start with a little bit of background on our guests and would love to know, how did you get to your current position? Just a little bit about your trajectory into state government? We generally talk to nonprofits and foundations and this is the first time, actually, we’ll have three superstars from the state of Illinois.
So who would like to start?
CA: Well, I’m Carmen Ayala. I’m the Illinois state superintendent of education. I have been in this position since late February 2019. Before coming to state government, I was a school teacher. I was a school teacher for 11 years, and I have been an administrator for the last 27 years. And yes, I started when I was 10. (Laughter.) So I am celebrating my 38th year in education and I have worked in small districts, large unit districts with a focus on curriculum and instruction, assessments, working with English learners. And in every district that I have been in I have been an equity champion, so that has been really a cornerstone of my administrative and teaching career.
MM: Wonderful. Thank you so much.
And would love to hear from you, Dr. Smith.
CS: Thank you, Mary. So glad to be here.
My experience: So I have been with IDHR for a little over a year now and my trajectory has been one that’s been through a number of kind of opportunities, and so – in consulting, in DEI work, community organizing, specifically evaluation, culturally responsive evaluation work. But my career largely has been with people – people obviously, but families, children, and systems. And in all of the work that I’ve done, it’s always been like this theme around equity – right? – so whether it was excess equity to services, to resources, whether that be human or financial resources. And I was asked to come and join specifically, and I came in the fall – or the spring, I’m sorry, of 2020, right after George Floyd’s death, and so that had really the kind of – it set the stage for what would be the work that I’d be doing in this coming year.
MM: Great. Thank you so much.
And Dr. Nzinga, tell us about your trajectory to state government.
SN: Thank you, Mary, and I feel like I’m sitting and standing amongst giants, so I’m so excited to be here.
So my name is Sekile Nzinga and my pronouns are she and her, and I started my career as a school social worker in middle schools in Baltimore city, so Chris and I have that in common; we’re both social workers.
CS: Yes.
SN: And Carmen also started – you know, my career started in the – you know, in educational settings, and so that educational piece and the social work skills stayed with me. I remember my first experience as a social worker, being a clinical social work, providing intervention for the kids, and it felt like I was putting on Band-Aids in their lives and I felt – and I immediately realized that I wanted to move from the microlevel social work that I was doing to more macro and systems change work. And so, you know, so I went back and got my Ph.D. and began to focus mostly on policy, research, and systems change. Have been the director of the Women’s Center, where I’m able to kind of do that intervention from a different location, again, thinking about institutional change and with a gender focus, and then became the chief – interim chief diversity officer at Northwestern right at the same time Chris also was accepting this position, and so George Floyd’s murder had an impact on how my interim role at Northwestern was shaped, as well as COVID, so the COVID moment and universities going remote, as well as the impact of, you know, the racial unrest definitely had an influence on how I came into my role as chief diversity officer before moving into my role here at the state. So it’s been a wonderful, weaving journey, and I am glad to be here now.
MM: Wonderful. Thank you so much. And now that we’ve done those initial introductions I’m going to be a little less formal now, just be calling you by your first name since I’m working with all of you literally right now on something.
So you brought up COVID, Sekile, and I’d love for you all to tell me, what is one thing you’ve learned about yourself during the COVID-19 pandemic? Because we can’t really have a conversation about equity at this time and not at least reference what’s happening around us, and I think many of us thought we’d be in a slightly different place right now and we are not. So, who would like to go first?
Sekile?
SN: Yeah, I’ll actually go first. I hope this is an appropriate answer to your question – (laughs) – and I use humor to soothe myself, so I hope this is OK. But I would say what I learned about myself was living in a bungalow with five other people and two cats was a lot on my spirit. (Laughs.) What I would say is that what I also learned, because I want to move from my personal experience to what kind of, like, structurally that meant for me was that all people deserve access to mental health care and a garden, because those were the things that kept me whole during COVID. It also gave me a time to reflect on the fact that while I grew up working class and poor and, you know, used a lot of state and public services to be able to survive, I’m not economically in a different place, and I thought about what my life would have been had I actually been navigating COVID under the conditions that I was raised. And so I would not have been safe if I had to actually go home for school or go home for work. And so I was in an unsafe and under-resourced home environment, and so I spent a lot of time thinking about what it meant to be safe and – you know, relationally safe and economically safe. And so it emboldened me to keep doing my work because it shouldn’t be just that I have economic privilege that I now am safe, and so – and social privilege that I’m now safe. And so I am committed to continuing this work, whether it’s fighting for housing and food justice or fighting for mental health care or fighting for basic safety around domestic and interpersonal violence. So those are the things I learned. I learned about where I am now and what it would have been like and then how that grounds me in understanding what other folks are also navigating, because I would have had a different COVID experience had I been 10 living the life that I lived at age 10 navigating COVID. So yes, so that’s what I learned.
MM: Thank you so much.
Carmen, what did you learn about yourself?
CA: Wow, so many opportunities. I call them opportunities. You know, when you’re state superintendent of education and you’re making decisions with – about, you know, 852 school districts and going remote and what does that mean and what resources are needed and, you know, some totally on board with remote and others not with remote, and, you know, masking – some totally on board with masking, others not on masking. It was very draining, long, long hours, lots of conversations, lots of difficult conversations, and difficult decisions to make. But something that I learned about myself is that I can always rely on a few things that I have always done and they became even more important for me during the pandemic, and so that grounding, number one, in faith, so a lot of prayers – (laughs) – and continuing, and doing yoga and finding ways to meditate. I think those have been so important to me during this time because it gave me those little moments, those little opportunities where I could just breathe and just really try to put everything in perspective, and that’s what carried me through. So I learned that if I just take a few minutes and I just ground myself, that helps build my resiliency to deal with all of the things that we’ve all been addressing during this pandemic. So self-care –
MM: Self-care?
CA: – and I very much encourage the staff at the agency and people that I work with and I’m always saying take care of yourself, take care of yourself. It’s not a selfish act, because when we take time to manage our own health and happiness, everyone around us benefits. So for me, I’m in an introvert. I need to go internally and find that strength.
MM: Great. Thank you so much.
And Chris, what have you learned about yourself during the pandemic?
CS: Yes, thank you. So I really appreciate both of the reflections because I think that they really resonate, are resonant with me. So the internal life is one of them. Right? So what does it to be – so I have two cats but it’s just one person in the house with two cats, but still all the routine around managing – you know, because I was home all day as opposed to coming back. But what it meant – I had to redefine safety and wellness — right? — so I had to constantly redefine safety and wellness and how I would negotiate my own safety. As a parallel process, though – right? – when I came on, one of the things that happened right away was let’s figure out how we can coordinate racial healing conversations around all this kind of racial unrest and the racial reckoning that was going on, and what occurred to me right away at one of the early meetings was there were helicopters floating overhead right in my own community. I live in a black community, primarily black community on the South Side of the city, and I had to stop and say wait a minute, I can’t plan for others right now; I have to hang up and I need to go out and see what’s going on around me in my own community. Right? So there was stuff happening at stores; the main corridor was being impacted. And so, like, it reminded me again about the precarity of what it means to be safe, and the precarity of what it means to be privileged. Right? So like I have all these bubbles of privilege but also not really far away – right? – from folks that don’t have that. And so I had to constantly reflect and manage that as I was moving through – learned a new job in a pandemic, responding to racial reckoning, figuring out what, you know, the other offices might need from us in terms of how to talk about this in a greater way, so redefining my own wellness and safety and being “boundried” in a way that I haven’t been historically – right? – so, like, this is all that I can take and this is too much or this is within my capacity to be able to manage, and so always redefining that all year long.
MM: Great. Thank you so much.
So let’s talk about some of the work that you’re doing, some of the extraordinary work you’re doing. So all of you are involved in helping build an equitable environment in state government in very different ways. And we’ll start with you this time, Carmen: Tell us about how you are really forging ahead with equity at the center, really. I’ve been so impressed with the work of your agency. And just to make sure that this is not lost on anyone, of course, you were the superintendent for the third largest school district in the country, and, as you listed, 852 school districts, so there’s a lot happening always and, as I said, we’ve been so impressed with your absolute commitment to equity. Tell us about some of the work you’re involved with now.
CA: Well, thank you, Mary. It’s a collective effort. It began with our state board of education adopting an equity statement, and through that we have an internal equity action working group and these are volunteer staff members who are very invested in equity work, and we’ve got over 60, 70 members of the agency who meet on a regular basis and who work on some equity initiatives that I’ll talk about in a minute.
So, first and foremost, though, I am the first woman and the first person of color to have been permanently provided with the role of superintendent in schools. And so that in and of itself is very humbling but yet very important. And I wanted to make sure that the work that was done in the agency reflected that diversity, that attention to diversity, equity, and inclusion permeated through the fabric of everything that we do in the agency. So from the very first day when I walked into my very first senior-level management team, I walked in and I was the only person of color. My senior-level decision makers did not reflect who I was or the children or the state of Illinois, and so though a series of openings that I had and some reorganization that was done, within six months half of the senior-level management of the agency were individuals of color. You know, there’s a saying in Spanish that says — (speaks in Spanish) – “if you really want it, you’re going to do it.” Right? And so we did it and I’m very, very proud of that.
During my tenure so far we’ve had to fill about 71 positions, and almost half of those are individuals of color, so I will squarely indicate and provide the data and my experience – they’re out there. Our people of color are out there and they just need to be given the opportunity. And they are all qualified so we’re not compromising quality here.
I’m also working to embed equity in the agency’s work through an equity impact analysis process and tools, so we have a series of six questions that all 470-plus staff have been trained on. This equity action working group researched, they looked at all kinds of different things that different states and different agencies were doing and then developed these six questions, so that every decision we make, every application we put out, communication that we put out, we are looking through the lens of those six questions to make sure that we are addressing equity issues, out — inside the internal agency as well as externally. And so now, with everybody being trained and all of that, now we are going to be developing the accountability systems because what gets monitored gets done. Right? And so we are looking for revisions to certain documents to embed those questions, presentations and our template and branding that are reflective of addressing those questions, so that’s the work that we are currently doing now.
One of the things that we are also working on, and this is the external work, we are working on an equity journey continuum, and, again, this equity action working group researched, we created the vision, and so there is a rubric, if you will, and a continuum that will be reported on the school report card beginning, I believe, in 2022, and it will transparently show where the district is on their equity journey, because everybody is somewhere on a journey and it’s not ending. It just keeps evolving and changing and improving. And so we have taken a look at the data that we collect. We’re not adding or asking any additional work or data to be submitted; it’s the data we are already collecting, but it’s organized on our three strategic goals – student learning, learning conditions, and elevating educators – and it gives it an equity lens. For years, the achievement gap data has been on our report cards, but how often do school districts really take a look at that, or the public? Now we are going to shed a light on that and we are going to incorporate that in that it’s an example of what we’ll be using the continuum for.
So we’ve had a handful or about a dozen districts pilot – they’re very excited, gave a lot of input, and we are going to be rolling it out in the fall as a pilot year, because we have to provide a lot of supports, a lot of webinars, a lot of handholding, answering questions because we know it’s going to be some fireworks. I mean, it’s equity work and it’s not easy work and we have to, you know, continue to move forward. So that’s – those are some of the examples of some of the things that we are working on as an agency, but I’m really excited about the equity journey continuum because it will be something that will be posted on 852 district report cards, at least that’s my goal.
MM: That’s very exciting. Really exciting work you’re doing. And I love the idea of the equity journey continuum, because, to your point, this work continues; we’re not going to arrive at a destination. It is something we must keep doing and keep working at, and I love what’s monitored gets done.
CS: Absolutely.
MM: That is – we’re going to be –
CS: Going to be repurposing that. (Laughter.)
MM: Because that’s really it. Right?
CS: It is.
MM: That is very much what we talk about when we do our work as well in Morten Group.
And so, Sekile, you have been in place, I think, for about four months now and already you’ve made some significant changes, so talk a little bit about them with regard to the office of equity.
SN: Sure. So my inaugural is twofold for me, and I came in feeling kind of grounded around that, is that I have this added responsibility of establishing the office as well as building an infrastructure for diversity, equity, and inclusion in the state, and so I just – I knew that there were two levels of the work. And establishing a new office in the governor’s office meant I had to figure out how that office fits into the work of in many ways a progressive administration, so those two pieces are what I’ve been focusing on. In both cases, my work is intentional, collaborative, and sustainable, accountable, and also nimble. Right? And I mapped out for this first year kind of three areas – well, I mapped out early on kind of three areas that I would focus on strategically, and that – one is building capacity within our state agencies and systems; another is to partner with our state leaders, and the third is engage communities. And really I know that I’ve met with other (CDUs ?) and other chief diversity officers from other states and sometimes folks have a sliver one of those; either they’re community-facing or they are, you know, providing counsel to a governor or they are geared towards actually engaging, you know, agencies and systems, but rarely are they doing kind of all three of these pieces, and so I know that that’s an ambitious vision but I see them as integrative and connected and I think that we have an opportunity here in Illinois to do some meaningful work, and so – but I can stay kind of grounded in knowing that that’s not all going to happen in year one. Right? And so what happens in year one is that I’ve spent my first few months observing what already is in process. Chris and Carmen on this call are articulating what’s already happening, and so my goal is to actually harness a lot of the energy that’s happening in agencies that are really modeling best practices and what it means to be (writing ?) transformative, you know, influences on the work. And so how do I harness that energy, those ideas, that brilliance that already exists, and how do I bolster that, integrate those efforts? You know, I made a joke before – when we – before we went online saying hey, Carmen, you’re – (laughs) – you know, I’m looking forward to talking to you. And it was about just what she was articulating about this equity impact piece, about this accountability piece. These are the pieces that I want to scale beyond, you know, one agency to all of our agencies as we think about accountability. So they’re training the trainers to think, about, you know, what Chris is doing, beyond kind of training – thinking about trainers for one agency, but what does it mean to scale that up for all of our agencies so that our trainers are using the same language and deploying similar skills and so that our agencies can also talk across and talk to each other because they have a shared sense of understanding, awareness, skills and knowledge around diversity, equity, and inclusion. So that’s really important for me is that we have that shared piece.
I also want to, of course, offer my own perspective as an intersectional feminist leader and educator, and I use the social determinants of health framework to inform my work and my approach to my work. And that realist part of me says that in year one your focus is to focus on reducing harm, to mitigate barriers that might be in place, and of course to always offer life-affirming, you know, initiatives, so that’s really, you know, kind of what I’ve been focusing on. I want to give you a few examples just with how I’m approaching the work in agencies and that’s to strengthen them, and so one area is that I – as I mentioned, I was focusing on supporting capacity building within agencies. So a lot of that is listening to agencies say these are the areas where we are doing well in; these are areas that we could use your support. So what does that mean? That’s Chris’s train the trainer program; that’s also us working on training all of our human resource and personnel staff so that we can make sure that they are doing meaningful work around diversity, equity, and inclusion; that means hosting a monthly peer-to-peer exchange where we can share ideas across agencies and work on interagency collaboration and figure out where those barriers might be and where those opportunities are. That also means supporting inclusive leadership. I’ve been really grateful to have Governor Pritzker endorse not just my role but endorse, you know, my recommendation to build the office and to have that, you know, articulated in the executive order that was – that he signed into – you know, signed on I think it was July 30th. So having a champion for inclusive leadership, then model that for the rest of our executive leaders has really been helpful and so I think that that’s really been – again, I’m at the building stage and should be able to then articulate how do we ensure equitable agencies, systems, and policies?
And then, finally, I would add that I’ve been focusing on, as we’re building on our website – again, four months old – as we’re building out our website, that is a space where we are developing resources that we’ve vetted; many of them have been developed from some of our peers across our agencies but also here in Chicago and beyond, so – because people – not everybody has someone who knows what to do when we say go in an agency, but they may be motivated, and so my thing is to recognize that we all have different on-ramps, and if everybody has a different on-ramp – not that we won’t hold you accountable but we also want to provide you with resources that give you some direction and some guidance, and so we have an interactive resource that my special assistant and my intern are developing that will not only be for our agencies to use but also for external, for our community to be able to use – our communities to be able to use across the state and beyond. So I’m really excited about that resource bank and I hope – I’d love to get all of your feedback, because folks want to do better and I don’t mean to – sometimes when I’m being optimistic, it reads as if I don’t have an analysis of what’s at stake or that people are suffering and that they are in crisis, but I am an internal – if I’m going to show up in this work while I’m also being impacted by all the systems that we’re talking about that are harming us, I have to show up with a certain level of enthusiasm. Right? Doesn’t mean I don’t get fatigued or it doesn’t mean I don’t see the barriers that are in place. So that’s where I always have to feel like I have to qualify my – (laughs) – my tone, but I am encouraged by the ways in which I see people seeking and supporting my office, engaging my office, and collaborating with my office and asking for guidance and I want to be able to offer that support. So that’s where I’ll stop there.
MM: So, Chris, you are in the Illinois Department of Human Rights –
CS: Absolutely.
MM: – which administers the Illinois Department –
CS: Illinois Human Rights Act.
MM: – of Human Rights Act. Right?
CS: Exactly. Exactly.
MM: And there’s adjudication that happens.
CS: Absolutely.
MM: People are filing cases.
CS: Absolutely right.
MM: And you direct the training institute. So tell us what that encompasses.
CS: Yeah. So our work – really, we see ourselves as a prevention arm, if you will, of the department – right? – so, like, all the ways in which people show up, 80 percent of the ways that people interface with DHR are around discrimination, acts of discrimination that, you know, they are lodging and claiming and that they have experienced. The work of the institute historically has been about, like, what do we do and how do we support employers and systems around thinking about more preventative ways of creating safe environments for people to do what we just talked about, to live, to earn their resources, and to be able to go about their lives? And so we do that with soft-skill development, knowledge development for managers and for line staff. The train the trainer that everybody is referencing really is about that as well. It really is an expansion of that work.
I like to think and I’ve heard somebody say that COVID was the deepest equity check in many ways that our culture globally could have experienced because it slowed people down enough to be able to think about their own privilege and power and what those intersections were. And so we took folks through it. So we did six intensive weeks and took 38 agencies, about 132 folks across all those agencies to begin to do this work within their own respective agencies. And then when we ended that right at the beginning of July, we said, well – and we knew going in this isn’t going to be enough. So these are people who may have come to this work in some way but maybe not in the ways that many of us have naturally. It’s our passion. It’s our interest. We might have done community work around it. And so we offered up additional learning collaborative support afterwards. So what do you need beyond the curriculum to think about implementation, to think about practice, think about change, and then we’ll move that through September and think about the next phase. What do we do about creating opportunity for people who, you know, have second- and third-shift folks – right? – people who don’t have access to email, people who need to figure out all the other system ways of supporting this integration and thinking about how we have people think about conditions and experiences and then how those conditions and experiences help to shape their practice – right? – within the state agencies. So a lot of power, lot of work, lot of enthusiasm. And I was just really reaffirmed around the work after we got through the process.
MM: That’s wonderful.
And to Sekile’s point, I, too, am very optimistic. I do really believe that when people know better they will do better –
CS: Absolutely.
MM: – and that, to Carmen’s point, and yours as well, Chris, this work is uncomfortable. That’s when we know change is happening.
CS: Absolutely. Absolutely.
MM: Right? If it was easy – (laughs) – we wouldn’t have to work at it like this. So –
CS: Absolutely. Absolutely.
MM: So we are constantly trying to, you know, nudge people along in a manner that – something we say is we like to call people in, not call people out. Right? How do we have conversation –
CS: Yes. Yes.
MM: – that will have those conversations continue and not have people shut down, because once someone is shut down, we can’t — you know, we can’t make any progress.
CS: Absolutely.
MM: And so I appreciate all the comments and all this extraordinary work. You know so much now that you didn’t know six months ago or a year ago, and so I’m going ask you, Carmen, what would you say to other states that want to engage in deep and meaningful work to embed equity in their administration? If there was a lesson that you’ve learned that you – or something that you would say as an advice, some advice or tip to another state that is really wanting to do this work?
CA: Wow.
MM: (Laughs.) I know. There can be many things but –
CA: Yeah. For me, and I’ve experienced this as a district administrator, superintendent and now state superintendent, it’s how systemic it is. If we are doing just isolated kinds of activities, if you will, and it’s not really ingrained in a systemic way that has intentional focus, intentional inclusiveness, constantly asking who’s not at the table and bringing people along in the conversations and the planning and the accountability and all of the work that surrounds equity, it has to be systemic and it has to start from the leadership.
You know, I know that there a lot of school districts across the state that are now engaging in hiring their diversity director or diversity administrator. And, you know, I’m talking with some of these individuals and I’m quickly beginning to realize that in some cases all of the diversity rests on the shoulders of this individual. And the accountability and the ownership of this DEI work rests with the one person and that isn’t going to sustain it. And so how we can find ways to make it sustainable and systemic are so critical for the work to continue and to really have the impact that it needs to have.
MM: Absolutely. Appreciate particularly those last comments about the diversity person – right? – who’s been given that charge. And in some cases, because we talk to folks in foundations and obviously in government and nonprofits and for-profits and then they have no budget. They have no resources to do the work, you know – right? – which really sets them up – does not set them up for success.
CA: Or they don’t have any teeth.
CS: Absolutely.
CA: They have the position and the title, but when they have to really push at implementing some things that have to get done, they don’t have the ability to do that.
MM: Exactly. All those pieces are necessary if this person is going to be successful in this work with a community of people.
CS: Exactly.
MM: To your point, they cannot do it by themselves, and that is such an important message.
Inclusion, by its very nature, takes longer and I think folks don’t often understand that either, that if you really are going to be inclusive, that means you’re going to seek out more feedback. You’re going to get more input. That means you won’t make a decision in isolation –
CA: Correct.
MM: – or in a silo, and that takes longer. And for so many people, that is a huge – that’s a huge turn from how they’ve been doing their work, and we have to say yes, diversity’s important, but I appreciated, Sekile, your comments in a recent Sun-Times article that that’s really the basement.
CS: Exactly. (Laughs.)
MM: Right? That’s – you know, that’s the picture of difference –
CS: Absolutely. Absolutely.
MM: – right? – let’s at least have a diverse group.
CS: That’s the count. Those are the counts.
MM: Exactly. And then let’s talk about inclusion and oh, my goodness, what about equity? Because that’s really the bottom line here. Right? How do we make sure people have the access and the resources they need to be successful?
So I want to come to you, Sekile, and even in the short amount of time that you’ve been at the state, are there things that you would say, you know, something – one thing you did, I think you came in and made a suggestion that was, you know, very positively received and that was to move the name from chief diversity officer to chief equity officer. So talk a little bit about that.
SN: Yeah, I mean, I think you just did. I was like, I can’t do diversity. (Laughter.) I was like, we fix that and we fix that. (Laughs.) I just couldn’t do it, you know. So that was one of the first things in just saying also I can’t just be a person; I need an actual office, and not just – it wasn’t just me, because that’s actually selfish. It was the people who’ve been doing this work before me needed oxygen and they need someone to legitimize in this work to – their work to be legitimized across the agencies. And so that’s kind of where I wanted to start was that, you know, what would I kind of say to other states doing this work is that, you know, everyone should be committed to equity and – you know, hopefully I don’t sound redundant, but everyone should be committed, and it should not just be a reactionary. Instead, you know, states should really make intentional commitments to the people they serve, and I believe that, you know, any organization, including state governments, should value the work of the equity offices, the equity officers, their equity staff – whatever the term they’re using and that have been established to lead this work.
And so what I will say is that my most gratifying – over the last four months, my most gratifying thing has been the eagerness that I’ve observed from people within our agencies, even if some are just beginning to really understand and recognize the ways in which their agencies’ policy, procedures, and practices often maintain or reproduce inequity and injustice; many seem genuinely ready to make change and, you know, I want to say that. And I also want – you know, what’s been most gratifying for me and what I think this relates back to what state governments need to do is that I enjoy thanking people like Chris and Carmen for doing this often thankless and invisibilized work. I see how they have been trying to move this boulder well before my office was established, and I tell them I see them for their efforts. And so that’s one of the things I – that’s my recommendation to state governments and in any (organization ?) is to tell them you see them and their efforts. Right?
CS: Yes.
SN: I’m also working, of course, to ensure that those who are doing equity work are seen as highly competent leaders within their agencies and that equity workers are seen as essential parts of our workforce, because I think that is critical, like, this work can’t be invisibilized or not named as leadership and not named as labor. This is actual labor.
CS: Yes. Yes. Yes.
SN: And so, you know, I come into this role really with that kind of deep gratitude and that kind of recommendation that I would give to other states, because the people on the front lines are often – we’re facing injustices; we’re facing it. (Inaudible) – talked about this; like, she was navigating this stuff as she’s asked to respond to it, you know, and they’re often tired. And so what’s been beautiful for me is that, even though they were tired, they welcomed me; they gave me grace as I, you know, kind of got my sea legs, and they’ve been walking beside me over the last four months and I feel encouraged by that. And in turn, you know, I’m here to join and support them in their work and I encourage states and any organization, quite honestly, who hires an equity leader to see us, to support us, and value the contributions we’re striving to make.
MM: Thank you. That makes so much sense and I think people will absolutely appreciate being seen, being validated.
CS: Yes.
MM: That’s a very important part of this work. Certainly as we sit here as four women of color who do this work, I think people think there’s a separation between doing the work and living this life. (Laughter.) As I often will say to folks who are not people of color, I say, we don’t have to have a workshop to talk about this. (Laughter.)
CA: That’s right.
MM: We launch into these conversations quite easily – (laughter) – at the drop of a hat. And so let’s keep that in mind. (Laughter.)
CS: Absolutely.
MM: So Chris, what would you say is something you would offer as a tip, something that you didn’t think about or, you know, maybe it’s just been reframed as you can now look back at some of the work you’ve done over the last year?
CS: I want to just honor what she said and she kind of moved through it pretty quickly – as soon as Sekile got here she said stop; what do you need, Chris? We’re going to stop and we’re going to slow it down and we’re going to figure out how to support you in a way that is going to be – that honors you and your team so that we can deliver this in a way that’s going to really support people in the way we know they need it ultimately. So that acknowledgment is real. Responsibility, authority – a responsibility without authority, to Carmen’s point, is nothing. Right? You have to give people the bandwidth, the resources, the power, the human resources, the financial resources.
One of things I have to give a shout-out and acknowledgment to my directors is that I said I cannot do these other things and do this thing, and so I was able to put some things on hold for several months while we developed this in a way that we felt like it was going to be (reflective ?) and what the state needed to get it out the door. So my time and my capacity were honored in that way. And so honor those things. Right? But the walking creates the path, and what we found at the end of it was that people say I feel like I know how to do it now, and I feel like we can take it and do it on our own now. We’re going to modify this now. We’ve got some great ideas now. We’ll check back if we need to or more than others, but they’re moving, and we are figuring out what the phase two looks like now.
MM: That’s wonderful. So congratulations.
CS: Thank you.
MM: That’s a major big deal.
What do you celebrate? Because, believe it or not, we’re going to wrapping up in a few moments. I told you it goes very fast.
What do you celebrate about what you’re doing? And let me just say that, as you all know, and both Carmen and Chris were in those sessions, we were really honored to have this opportunity to work with the governor’s executive team in racial equity sessions, and one day the governor introduced the sessions himself, and I use him as an example. When CEOs tell me they can’t sit through the sessions, I said, really? Because the governor of Illinois sat through a six-hour session on racial –
CS: Yes. Yes.
MM: And he was participating.
CS: Yes. (Laughs.)
MM: He was not phoning it in. He was not phoning it in. He was not multitasking. And I just think that’s a very profound statement. I think, you know, this is, you know, likely going to be one of the most progressive administrations we have, and yet it is still government, so we are bound by, you know, rights and rules and regulations. However, I’ve never seen this kind of intention around equity in government, and there’s always ways to grow and to do things better and to ask the hard questions. And what I often look at it is, are you willing to ask those hard questions? Right? It doesn’t mean you have all the answers. But are you even willing to raise it? And that’s been my experience of working not only with all of you but with the governor’s office as well.
So what do you celebrate? What keeps you going each day, and what would you say to others who do this work, like myself, who need some encouragement because, to your point, Chris, and what everyone has said is, this work is difficult and it happens – it comes to be in a variety of ways. Whether we’re watching television, on social media, walking down the street, we are often reminded that we are people of color. And so what do you celebrate as you think about this work and how it’s going?
Carmen? Do you want to start?
CA: Well, at the agency, we have a strategic plan, and in that strategic plan we very intentionally embedded equity, inclusion, and diversity. And so we celebrate when we meet specific targets. We celebrate when we got full adoption of the culturally responsive teaching and leading standards that will now be used in teacher preparation programs across the state of Illinois. That is huge.
You know, we celebrate this journey continuum has never been done in the state of Illinois, yet it’s going to really help shed that transparent equity light on the work of the districts. We celebrate the fact that we are becoming much more inclusive. We are more reflective of our community. On commissions that I have to recommend as state superintendent and set up and task forces and all of those kinds of things, I intentionally say we need to make these little communities, these commissions, and these task forces more diverse. Let’s take a look at where they are right now and what do we need? And let’s celebrate putting more people reflective of our student population in these roles, and many times they make big decisions and recommendations and we want to make sure that all perspectives are brought to the table. And so we need to celebrate those things, and sometimes we don’t do a good job of communicating, because somehow to communicate out and to celebrate out the equity work that you’re working on, that you’re putting forward that is almost like, oh, we can’t put that out there. It’s when we need to put it out there even more so, so that you can be examples and give examples to other entities and organizations: Yes, this can be done, this is what we’re doing, this is how we’re doing it, and this is how we’re going to create that change that’s needed so that in my particular case with education, every single child has what he or she needs to just reach their goals, their dreams, and their potential. That’s what it’s about. And so I think all – everywhere we can find examples and shout out, look, we hired – our new general counsel for the agency is a person of color for the first time in the agency history; he starts September 1st. We’ve got to celebrate that and we have to not just announce his name; we need to say “first person of color in this position” and celebrate that, you know, diversity is something that we’re paying attention to. So celebrate, celebrate, celebrate – (laughter) – and don’t be afraid to show the progress.
MM: Chris, what do you celebrate?
CS: Yeah, so every time – so I celebrate that we got through in a successful way empowering a number of agencies and folks to be able to have these conversations. And then, all the things that really warm our heart are when I get emails from folks that say, I just want to say ABC or D; I want to tell you what this meant for me; I want to tell you that I was fearful to come to this class but this is what occurred after we were done. Or – and I celebrate people who said this – I can’t do it; I thought I could; I thought I could, but I can’t, and we’re going to talk about it in terms of what that means internally, but I can’t. And I honor the parallel work of growing both my staff and myself. So the thing is, you can’t be engaged, in my opinion, in transformative work and not be transformed, and so that every single time we had a cohort, I changed. Every single time they saw somebody do a teach-back, they changed. Every single time one of the colleagues saw a peer do it, they were like, ah, we can do this? That kind of thing. So I got inspired every time over and over again every week and continue to be every time we have these kind of conversations, so thank you again.
MM: That’s really I think such an important piece about being transformed as you’re doing the work.
CS: Yes.
MM: It’s not, again, as though you’re outside of the work.
CS: Exactly.
MM: And I think people forget that. Right?
CS: Exactly.
MM: This is how we live, in many cases.
So I want to hear just one more comment from you, Sekile. What would you say in terms of your celebration? What are you celebrating?
SN: So I celebrate the small wins and small victories, because I know this is a – you know, I use that term long game and tossed and turned the night after reading that Sun-Times article because I used the term long game. (Laughter.) I think – you know, I was like, why did I use that term? But I think what I’m trying to say is I do – I celebrate the small victories because it keeps you feeling encouraged because it is a long haul. You know, and what I think about is my ancestors they fought for freedom even though they never saw it. Right? And so – but they still fought for freedom, and so that is the – because you know it’s the right and just thing to do. And so I think I do have that orientation in that I know it’s important to celebrate those small pieces because it’s a long (game piece ?). It doesn’t mean I don’t have urgency or intentionality. But some things that I think about in particular is that – so a short win for my office was my colleagues in the governor’s office tapped my office to review the gender-inclusive or trans-inclusive employee policy in the employee handbook and we were able to kind of read that and refine that and build it out, not just for the governor’s office employee handbook but then also for the handbook for the – all state employees, the larger handbook. And so that kind of – for me that was a small win. It doesn’t – because we were able to kind of modify that policy. Of course, the impact still has to be measured. Has that actually impacted and transformed trans and nonbinary staff lives – right? – as employees? But the opportunity to have that, to have our eyes laid on that handbook felt like a small win for me.
And then also I celebrate, you know, kind of continuing in that same piece, I celebrate when folks don’t shut down when I’m challenging them. You know, we convened the folks who were leading the diversity, equity, inclusion plans in the agencies, and during Pride Month, you know, my team, you know, asked in the review there – asked them to review their plans to see how they centered LGBTQI lives in their plans, and some folks did it flawlessly and some folks realized they could actually do more. And so to recognize these plans as live and nimble but also that their learning curve was also, you know, live and nimble. And so I celebrate when folks don’t shut down and when they’re challenged and they go back and say how can I strengthen this? How can I be– how can my agency be better for this – to support this particular group? So that’s exciting to me to celebrate, you know, those moments.
And then, finally, I would say that I celebrate whenever I can listen to the people who actually have the experience and expertise to effect change, and so myself and the governor and Deputy Governor Sol Flores, you know, had this opportunity not too long ago to sit at a roundtable with trans and nonbinary folks of color who were able to say, you know, through their experience and through their expertise, what needs to happen in their lives to be life-affirming here in Illinois. And so I celebrate being able to sit at the table and listen and listen to folks and then take action. And so that’s exciting and I think it’s back to what you were saying, Chris. For me, it helps me every time I’m sitting at that table and listening; it helps me grow into my humanity.
I was at the education – I was with Jesse’s, you know, portfolio, the education portfolio, and your folks were talking about the work you were doing, and I was like, OK, I need to make a beeline to Carmen. (Laughs.)
CS: Yes. Yes.
CA: It’s an incredible team.
CS: Yes.
SN: And like I said, I’m – my goal is to harness the brilliance and scale but also give credit; say hey, I actually adopted this brilliance from Chris.
CS: (Laughs.) Yes.
SN: And they’re doing best practices, and so my goal is to expand that because it actually can be replicated in other agencies.
CS: Absolutely. Absolutely. Absolutely.
CA: Yeah.
MM: Well, I think that’s going to be where we have to leave it for today. Thank you so very much for joining us. As I said, this time goes so fast. We never have enough time to talk about these incredibly important topics, and we are so thrilled that you were able to join us today.
Thank you, Chris, with the Illinois Department of Human Rights Training Institute.
Thank you, Carmen, this incredible superintendent, really, for the Illinois State Board of Ed., and the work that you’ve been doing for many, many years.
And thank you, Sekile, in the newly created Office of Equity, as the chief equity officer. We are thrilled to have you in place and thrilled to know that this work is happening at a deep and meaningful level in the state of Illinois.
And for all of you listening, thank you again. Please don’t forget to rate, review, and subscribe to “Gathering Ground” on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen, and don’t forget to send us any questions you have about nonprofit and philanthropic sectors, racial equity, access, diversity, and inclusion. Any or all of those topics are welcome. You can send your questions to mary@gatheringgroundpodcast.com. Again, that’s mary@gatheringgroundpodcast.com.
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I’m Mary Morten; until next time.