 Yes, absolutely. Hi everybody. Hi, so good to be here. Yes, I want to thank Megha for inviting me and I'm so sorry that I haven't been able to be here for the fullness of the, oops, just be here with one, be here for the fullness of the conversations today as I've been multitasking today but one of the things I wanted to say I want to talk about a couple of things I want to talk about information equity and you know to connect the dots between information equity and other information issues especially today where you know we have normalized disinformation right and and we've moved along the pathway from you know misinformation to disinformation which is intentional misinformation moved on to information segregation right which is where some people have access to really good information and other people don't and we normalize and standardize that and then of course information poverty which is just a state of not having information access and then finally I would say the most egregious information issue of of of any time and really the prelude to totalitarianism is information withdrawal where information that does exist within the public sphere is withdrawn because of censorship or and especially you know today when we think about state-sanctioned censorship because we are in a time an evolution of our country where all but four states have introduced legislation to censor books or to severely restrict them so that's something to think about but I want to put this in in a larger frame if you will because I have attended a few summits in the last couple of weeks one of the first summit was a Democratic summit that was hosted and curated by the Obama Presidential Center and how many of you were there yeah yeah and so when President Obama addressed the the crowd you know he said something I think is really important just to acknowledge you know is that even as we have these conversations we are also facing war in multiple places right and we are really having I think a very racialized conversation about belonging and even as we have that conversation about who has the right to belong who has the right to home as well as a homeland as we have that conversation we are also in an unprecedented moment in this country where we have the largest number of people ever who live outside of their homes or traditional territories or nations or states and that migration is is being forced in many cases as we find more and more people who are economic refugees and asylees as well as political and then also you know a great number who are also seeking safety right and so one thing that I wanted to kind of frame this quick conversation is also about how do you lead in though in these times especially when we are in a place where we consume leaders we talk about nobody wants power but they want to talk about everybody in power it's very people don't want to support leaders it's almost like the universal let's talk about the weather and and I think what's unfortunate that I'm seeing is that even as our paradigm shift to make traditional notions of how power is wielded untenable and as the institutions themselves segue into trying to being forced into a certain type of accountability in raising or seeking new leaders the systems won't sustain the leadership because we ourselves even in this room are complicit in consuming leaders we call out rather than call in as soon as somebody is placed in power even it is even if it is a person of color we find ways to denigrate to talk about and so I also want to call us out for that so I want to talk about going to seed at the same time that I'm talking about information equity and the reason why I'm thinking about going to seed is because as I get older tomorrow I'll be 55 years old I never thought I would be 55 I still can't believe it the only consolation is that hip-hop is 50 and all of the cool cats you know who helped to create hip-hop are my age or older and it is the people and we have given an extraordinary inheritance but let's make no mistake hip-hop is my generation and so I that is my consolation but I also look at the people especially people like true going to dove I'm thinking about Dave when he passed from De La Seoul when he passed I saw something you know that I had seen in people like DMX and I'm just trying to connect the dots between going to seed and this made this notion of leading in a critical time where our information equity has moved us to a place where we have state-sanctioned censorship in this country and we are also seeing heinous disinformation in terms of even entire platforms being taken down in times of war so what I what I want to say and if you can just rock with me I want to talk about two different things I want to think about leadership in terms of me becoming getting to the place of 55 and understanding that you know like with the phases of the tree you know you're a seed then a sapling then you reach a certain type of maturity then you have that kind of snag where you start to have like the kind of rot and the tree is you know beginning to decay and then you know if it is lucky it at its most generative it goes to seed again as I begin to understand my energy that has always been like super high but as I begin to think having led across multiple platforms in different industries and having enjoyed the wind behind my sales as well as my sales being caught as well at different times I'm starting to ask myself especially as someone who I think is at this point an information abolitionist you know that I believe that information wants to be free that's my training as an information theorist and librarian but also that that freedom is something that is being decried by leaders I'm asking myself what my positionality is and I want us to ask that that question of ourselves as well those of us who will work in nonprofits as part of the nonprofit industrial complex why do I call it that not just to make a fancy kind of thing but one thing that I know is that oftentimes the people who run nonprofit organizations are also married to or give birth to the kind of people that are also creating the problems that make the nonprofits run and I understand the ecosystem and it's concerning me because we have moved into a place where even our problem-solving is performative and then again then it pushes then leadership if you are brought in to disrupt because that is part of the life cycle also to of the tree it is not going to be sustainable and do we want to be smoke screens or apologies for these types of systems that actually sort of create almost like the kinks in the line in order to propagate themselves and what I also want is the conversation that I'm having with you to be uncomfortable if you can understand what I'm saying at all my goal is that we will see ourselves in it because no none of us are absolved no matter what kind of eyeglasses we wear or funky socks we are all a part of it and I just want to also position my own leadership as a problem that I have been asking myself at the height of censorship I have decided to de institutionalize to be a free radical in society to see what happens if I put my own name on the line and as I close I want to just speak to going to seat are we willing to do that because we are staying in jobs and positions of leadership too long too long because change is happening very quick and we are staying too long we are not nurturing we are not providing cover we are finding troubling notions of competition when it comes to reputation we are using terms like building a brand as opposed to doing the work there are things that I think we need to say what I want to commit to is to go to seat I've had my time I'm 55 I may have 55 more years I may have 10 I might have five I might have two my mother passed when she was two years older than me what is I just don't know but what I know is that I am no longer the sapling I am no longer reaching and trying to stretch into maturity I am who I am my goal now is to create some snag is to have some of my leaves fall into fertile ground is to support other leaders is to problematize those who will talk about those leaders behind their backs those who will set them up for failure I have to do that because our first amendment right is being questioned and I believe that if we don't interrupt what's happening we are going to see not only the dissolution we are we are problematizing voting rights in this country let's get it straight we're not I mean the premise on which this country is built and what we have fought and died for at various levels in this country and I mean all of us because all of us have lost some blood all of us has lost some blood in this country but what I want to see is I want to I want to see us talk honestly about not only censorship and where it stems from this totalitarian bent that is also I think in some ways being propelled forward by the kind of silence and performativity that's also happening in the nonprofit and human services and especially the educational space and I also want to challenge all leaders to be organic to be real that means have your time grow you don't know everything get to a point of maturity nurture and then at your most generative point go to seed plant seeds step back plant seeds research speak without fear of repercussion and I think that's the beauty of the institutionalization let me stop here and I thank you