 There's some assumptions that we have. We believe that we're all probably coming into this conversation from different places. Some folks have been doing this work for generations. For others, it's your first time even having this conversation and we celebrate that, right? And the way we celebrate that is if this is like a very early conversation for you honoring the folks who've been doing this work and might have a little bit more knowledge and if you are the folks who've been doing this work being generous of spirit with where everyone is in the room, right? That's how we're gonna do that. We're acknowledged that we're gonna be focusing on race, but through an inner race, but through an intersectional lens. And by intersectional, we mean we acknowledge that people's lived experience is not divided into categories that race is complicated by gender, is complicated by disability, is complicated by sexual orientation, etc. And that the mechanisms and systems of oppression also play out that way too. However, we're gonna be focused on race in part because we have 90 minutes. And there's a lot we can talk about with race, but a lot of these conversations are applicable to other areas of identity. And we think that board should always be considering those other areas of identity when we talk about diversity. We're gonna be focused on board, but we're very clear that this is also about staff, this is also about artists, this is also about who is showing up in your houses. These things are not independent, they fail when they are independent, right? So we're focused on board, but we're acknowledging that. We're also an assumption that we have is that a lot of folks in this room may work at predominantly white theaters. We define predominantly white theaters as theaters who historically and currently have had their boards, staff, the work on their stages, the people in their audiences, predominantly made up of white people. And as such have benefited from systemic racism. We also know that there are some theaters of color in this room and we're gonna hear from some on our panel. And that these folks have been holding down the work of developing trustees of color for generations. And there's some real knowledge there and we wanna honor that. We also wanna acknowledge that when predominantly white theaters often do equity, diversity and inclusion work, and TCG is a part of this. That sometimes we can take up a lot of space and that can have really negative repercussions for theaters of color. So we're gonna be tracking that in this conversation as we go through. Finally, when we're looking at strategies for change, we're gonna be looking at them from the personal level, the organizational level, the field wide level, and then beyond, right? Change has to be moving in all four of those theaters for it to be effective. And finally, I'm up here, I'm gesturing, I'm projecting, I am not an expert. Do not be deceived. There is as much knowledge about this in this room as there is here and on this panel. We're moving us through this conversation together. We have a little bit of things to share, but we are not experts. Also, the work doesn't end, right? There's no one who's like, check mark, diverse board, that doesn't happen. If that happens, you know there's trouble, okay? The work continues, we are always asking who is missing. We are always checking in with the experience of everyone on the board and asking are we being inclusive, are we being equitable? Okay, so we're gonna be moving through an agenda that is already slightly behind. Rules, assumption, agenda review. We're gonna share some research. We're gonna talk a little bit about barriers and strategies. We're gonna move into a pale conversation with some amazing folks. With some amazing folks. We're gonna do a little bit of small group work, although, look at that time. We're really gonna go back in time. Yes, time machine is gonna be very effective for having a diverse board. So we may shift that a little bit just based on some energy in the room, but we'll play that as it lays. We're gonna have some report outs and open discussion. Then we'll have some closing thoughts. So, we're gonna present some TCG board research. You'll see occasional pictures from TCG's Fall Forum. There's no hidden meaning in these pictures. It's just sometimes slides are boring without pictures of people. So, next slide. Okay, a little bit about the research. Primarily it's from this study, 116 TCG member theaters. These theaters tended to be a little bit larger and tended to be a little bit older than the full diversity of TCG's membership. We're also gonna talk about some trends from the three times that we have done this governing boards survey. So, just so when we talk about these different budget groups, this is what we mean by budget group one, two, three, four, five, six. Interesting to note is the different ages of these theaters that the two largest are the oldest, which is not surprising. And the average number of trustees goes up the larger the theater is. Also probably not surprising, but what will be interesting is to note that just because you have more trustees doesn't necessarily mean your board is more racially diverse, so we'll come back to that. Next slide. We're gonna be referencing a couple other points of TCG research, things like theater facts, things like our game changing governance survey. We're also gonna be drawing on experience from various fall forum and conference programming. In this space later, there's gonna be an awesome session on board engagement that's gonna be led by some folks in this room. So if you wanna continue the board conversation, this is where it's at. And we're gonna be drawing from some of the amazing work they've been doing too, that's just a little context. So yes, more pictures of people, including one of our panelists. Keep going, looking very handsome. So here's some good news. In terms of gender parity, our boards are pretty equitable. And they're more equitable, in fact, than our staff leadership. The theater field is actually ahead of the not-for-profit field more generally, and way ahead of the for-profit field, which is super dude dominated. But we do wanna note that we are not just operating in a gender binary, and that there's still a lot of work in terms of trans and non-conforming folks on boards. There were none, no folks who identified as transgender queer when we blasted this survey. So we are not penning ourselves on the back too hard in terms of gender parity in that regard. Okay, ooh. Sorry. You, we really are not the best line. Okay, hold on. So here's where we're doing a little less well. Just wanna acknowledge that when this survey was done, this is some of the language we were doing. Our language around race and ethnicity has changed a little bit since then, but we're not gonna dwell on it. So as you can see, our theater boards are predominantly white, and they get a little bit more white as the size of the theater grows. It's really just budget group one where we're seeing any sort of significant headway. And we see that there are some areas of racial and ethnic identity that are really significantly underrepresented in our boards. Okay, and there's some reasons for that. We're seeing longer terms and older trustees at our theaters. In 2004, 26% of trustees were 60 years of older. That's 42% now in 2013. Wow. Yeah, in 2013, 76% of trustees were 50 years or older. Only 6% were younger than 40, right? Wow. 41% of theaters imposed limits on consecutive years, but the average trustee serves seven consecutive years, and almost every single theater allows them to come back. And there's reasons for that, right? Yeah. There's reasons for that, right? And the reasons have to do with actually a success story. We're not gonna spend a lot of time on this, but the recession hit theaters really hard, and one of the most significant things that led to recovery and any sort of sustainability was trustees, trustee giving really jumped over the recession. So it is not surprising that theaters would have held on to board members that have the capacity and the commitment to support the theaters during those times, right? So this is a success story, but it's also problematic, okay? And it speaks to priorities. So let's move to the next slide. This is from the Game Changing Governance Survey, wanting to acknowledge that in terms of priorities for both staff and trustees, fundraising and giving gets number one priority. Not surprising, right? Here's where we begin to see equity, diversity and inclusion. It is further down, further down here. Let's go to the next slide. So let's just talk a little bit about giving gets. Most theaters have either a give and get or a give and get. Those tend to be pretty large, but boards tend to give at least a minimum or more. It's very rare that folks give no gift at all. Let's take a little closer look at how that plays out. So we're looking at the smallest theater to the largest theater. What's really interesting is that this huge jump from five to six is pretty consistent over a couple of years. But you can see that if there's any sort of perception that there's a tension between a commitment to racial diversity and a need to have donors giving and getting at a high level, that perception could be contributing to that difference between budget group one all the way down in terms of having achieved it. Average individual trustee gift per budget group. So let's move to the next. And again, so perhaps not surprising when we ask what priorities are, access to wealth being the primary one. And here's that statistic again. Over the past five years, trustee giving rose 33%, right? So again, we're talking about a success story that also has significant consequences. So let's move to the next slide. Okay, barriers and strategies. So now we're going to talk about when we've done this work and we've had these conversations, we've noticed some things that get mentioned again and again as barriers to achieving a racially diverse and inclusive board. So we're going to talk about those a little bit, but it's sort of just to set the table for the panel conversation. So I'm going to move through this kind of quickly. I'm doing all right. You do it really well with the time. That's great. All right. So bear in mind, things are going to pop for you. Write them down, note them. We're going to have a chance to process them. But this is just to sort of lay some of the assumptions, maybe even myths that we've heard about perceived barriers and then maybe some strategies to address them. So can we go to the first? This is the biggest one, right? That the given get that the need for us to have boards who can give at a certain level is the biggest barrier. It's sort of the elephant in the room when it gets discussed. It's discussed in very fraught ways, right? And I have no doubt that that plays out at all of your boards as well. But there's some problems with this assumption and there's some strategies to address it. We're going to look at personal strategies, organizational strategies field wide and beyond. Personal, we all need to sharpen our analysis of racism and capitalism. Yes, we're going there. We're talking about capitalism. The first is the idea that there are not potential trustees of color who can give at these levels is just flat out wrong, right? That is not true. And the assumption that when there's a trustee of color who maybe doesn't give at a certain level, that that's because they don't have that money might also be flawed. It might also be a different dynamic that is operating on your board. And in order to understand those dynamics, really the only way to do that is we have to take on an analysis of how racism operates in our culture and how capitalism operates in our culture. And that's an acknowledgement that, yes, there are trustees of color who are out there who can give at those levels and it is also true that communities of color have been systemically exploited and plundered through segregation, through redlining. I mean, we could have a whole session about this, right? And that is also true, okay? And we need to bring that analysis to bear when we are thinking about strategies on how to bring on more trustees of color. Organizationally, we need to equalize diversity and give and get as priorities, at least equalize them if not maybe put that diversity, that racial justice as a higher priority because we know what we're up against in terms of systemic racism, right? If there is not that organizational commitment, it's just going to be really hard to make any sort of lasting game. And we'll hear that from our panelists. Fieldwide, this is not about blaming one theater. This is not about blaming one community. This is not about blaming it all. We are all trapped in this system where after this recession happened, of course we had to reach out to trustees who had the capacity to give. So without a field-wide conversation about give-get policies, term limits, diversity, all this stuff, we're going to be operating in isolation and it's going to be harder to make real change. Work to end systemic racism. Yes, this is bigger than just the theater field. The idea that the theater field is going to have super racially diverse boards without anything changing in our broader culture is it's just not going to happen, right? Because what is happening in communities of color is state violence, right? Is school-to-prison pipeline? I mean, like, there is serious existential issues affecting communities of color and to pretend that, like, their number one priority should be joining our theater's board, right? Like, we're just not operating in a place of any honesty if that's where the conversation starts. So we have always got to be thinking about this as we're also thinking about cultivating trustees of color. Next. Oh, yeah, I think we skipped over. Great. So cultivation. This is often listed as a big thing. How do I begin this conversation? How do I continue it? And we're going to hear some of that from our panelists. A huge thing is to address your own personal unconscious bias. I got it, you got it, we all got it. It's real, there's no way around it. We can pretend it's not there, but that doesn't help anybody, right? So it's just beginning to realize the ways in which we are constantly making judgments about all of our trustees, including potential trustees of color, that they are reading and making judgments about whether or not it's going to be a safe space when they come into your board, right? So if you're not taking that time, you're going to have a lot of trouble. Organizationally, you need to signal a commitment to diversity, to racial equity, through the language you use, through your mission, through your values, through your programming. Folks are going to be looking at the plays that you're doing, the educational work that you're doing, through your staffing. It's possible if your board is mostly, or if your staff is mostly all white to create board diversity, but it's going to be really hard. It's going to be really hard. Field-wide championing theaters of color. Okay, so when we're talking about cultivating trustees of color, there's folks who've been doing that for generations. They're theaters of color. They know how to do it, right? And so we need to celebrate that wisdom and that knowledge, and we need to position theaters of color as leaders they are in that work, and not then, you know, try to in our efforts to diversify our board, undermine that knowledge and that expertise. You'll note that this is the same again. Work to end systemic racism. There's going to be a theme for that beyond. Can we move on to the next? Oh yeah, there it is again. Okay, so tokenism. When you have trustees of color on your board, there's often going to be a feeling of tokenism. Either over worried they're going to feel that way, so how do we or they're going to feel that way, right? And a big thing is developing facilitation skills, right? There are going to be people on your board who are not going to have the same analysis of racial power dynamics as you, as we all do in this room. And as we don't in this room, right? So it's really important to develop facilitation skills because if you can't manage those dynamics in the room, you're going to be exposing those folks to an unsafe space and that's just nasty. We don't want that. Right? And there are some wonderful organizations that do that. We try to do that at the Institute. The Institute is an amazing organization that develops facilitators and facilitation skills. There's folks out there doing this work, if you want to go and find those skills. Organizationally, creating a culture of inclusion where everyone takes responsibility for this work when trustees of color are in charge of it, that's super problematic, right? They should be able to show up as who they are and know that they're going to have allies on the board in diversifying the board in a culture of inclusion and moving towards racial equity. Field-wide, it's important to support cohorts of theater that are committed to board diversity. That's what we're trying to do with the Institute. You can't do it alone. It's really hard. It's exhausting. And to acknowledge that there may want to be affinity space for trustees of color, right? That affinity space is a great tool for those of you who are at How We Show Up yesterday that Carmen talked about for folks to work through the power dynamics of sharing on your boards with people who are going through the same thing and to celebrate that conversation, to honor it as essential for the work moving forward. We already talked about that one. Okay, so next slide. Whoo, I get to stop talking. Thank you, Gus, for that. It's important as it is to kind of get an overview with slides. We also want to acknowledge, I just want to lift up something that Gus said, we are not content experts. I'm standing here also as a person of color and I will flat out say that I am not a content expert on these issues. The whole point, especially in gathering these kinds of situations, is to really share knowledge. It's all about resource sharing. We want to hear directly from folks who have had examples of strategies and models that worked for them. So today we have an awesome foursome here. Awesome foursome. Awesome foursome. We have Adrius, who do managing director of theater offensive. Thank you, you want to raise your hand, just give a little hey. Marshall Jones, producing artistic director of theater company. Lawson Platt, executive artistic director of Dallas Children's Theater. Eddie Frybeck, producing artistic director of theater. We have a lot of audience to kind of hear directly from some of these folks. They can share some similarities, differences on approaching some of these issues. So why don't we start with Abe? Okay, hi. Can you hear me back there? Yes, okay. Tell me if I go soft on you. Okay? Guys do that all the time. I'm sorry. So anyway, I can't believe I just did that. So we're a queer theater company. The theater offensive, D-O-N-N, we're in Boston at the very beginning, we're collaborators that we were working with locally, and we chose from our collaborators to make sure that we had good representation of the folks in the community that we were intending to work with and serve well. And so from the beginning of the theater offensive, we actually had a majority of people of color on our board. That came and went over the years. And also as we grew, we started to have to look more at, well, are we getting the skills that we need? Not just the viewpoints that we needed, but do we have the skills that we need on the board? We have a lawyer, a finance person, a butcher, a baker, a candlestick maker. And that added a level of complication that made it, we had to be more intentional about making sure that we were staying racially diverse as we were seeking out our lawyers and accountants. I want to fast forward to our 20th anniversary in, it was approaching in 2009, great timing, right? We're looking at the world and we're saying queer theater, you know, we were doing queer theater in the south end of Boston at the Boston Center for the Arts. And, you know, when we started out, that was really unusual in that building. It was really rare. But 20 years later, you could say, we had done a great job of it. It was actually quite common. There were even sister companies of ours who I love, we're right here in the room, doing it regularly along with us. And we really thought like, and yet in other places in Boston and the neighborhoods where we're trying to draw people into the Boston Center for the Arts, you not only can't see a queer show there, you can't see any show at all in many parts of these neighborhoods. In fact, a kid in one of our youth troop improv sessions said, why do I have to take two trains and a bus just to be who I really am? I want to be out in my own neighborhood. Out in your neighborhood became the theme of our work. We stopped being a resident theater company at the Boston Center for the Arts and refocused all of our work into four specific neighborhoods of Boston, Roxbury, Dorchester, the south end, and Jamaica Plain. Along with that, we also started to re-look at our core documents. And this is what I want to bring up with you. It was really important that we sifted through our mission and our vision and our strategic plan to make sure that these core documents really made explicit our anti-racist work, which we had been doing all along to some extent. But it was really important that we say, for instance, we believe, which we do in these neighborhoods, that to overcome homophobia, the intersectionality that they were talking about before, we can't succeed at overcoming homophobia in Roxbury unless we're also tackling racism. It's essential to our stated goal. That really helped in terms of recruiting and sustaining board enthusiasm from the diverse communities that we were serving, because they could say, like, yeah, not only am I pouring myself into this, but these white people on this board, too, are making a commitment to this. They're showing allegiance to this, and I can expect them to be held accountable to doing the work. When an issue of racism comes up at the theater offensive, it's not the black people on the board's job to talk about it, right? That's going to be really important in having a diverse board. How many do we have on time? You're good. I have a minute for you. Oh, wow. So... I want to make a couple other points here. As we switched from... It was around that same time of when we switched kind of our strategy that we also switched the way the board was organized to be more of a governing board. It wasn't just representation and just skills. It was now... They were really taking on governance of the organization in a more serious way. So we as the staff were accountable to the board in a way that we hadn't really stepped up to before. This also meant that the board was accountable to itself and it built in really dynamite management systems, self-management systems. A really rigorous annual self-evaluation and then an annual retreat that was focused on taking the results of that evaluation and putting needed changes into practice. Everybody's on board for that. These super... These were super helpful in recruiting and retaining all board members, but especially making sure that people of color, trans people, more women were feeling welcome on our board because there were systems where they knew their voices were going to be powerful and heard and make a difference. I will go back to say a couple more seconds to just say the first thing. I said, oh, by the way, we have straight members on our board too. Diversity! And I just want to mention these things about the trans folks on the boards. So important and most even LGBT companies don't have trans folks on their boards and we do and it makes a big difference. Lastly, this thing of having challenging racism be real in your organization, represented in your staffing systems and in your core documents, is a way that people can know that if they get involved, they can say, when they're countering racism in your organization, they are empowered to say, look, this isn't me complaining, this is you saying what you want to do in the organization to live up to it. Thank you. Thank you. Who's going to speak to you a little bit on the leadership shown by individuals of color in opening doors and also building connections. Hi. Well, I started Dallas Children's Theater back in 1984 with all of $500, but what I did was a wonderful group of friends and associates in the artistic world and so actually we started our board with some really strong people from diversity in Dallas. Margie Reese, who's administrator or director, Yoichi Okia, wonderful designer, producer, connected us to a lot of wonderful Asian work. Cecilia Flores, who had already done a lot of bilingual translations for us and work I've been doing in the parks. Juan Flores, who was a superintendent, DISD, in charge of desegregation. And then Preston Tatawika, he was Comanche and helped us with a production of Indian legends. And then we had some elderly people, Eva Holly, Jeanette Early, and also an elderly person connected us with the Hunt Association. Hunt family, Caroline Rose Hunt, whose daughter became one of our board presidents. So we started, now that I'm looking back, it looks like we have a pretty powerful, kind of out of the gate, but at the time it was very difficult. I didn't have a salary, for instance, for several years. I figured out my first budget. I said, right, you need a budget. So I wrote up a budget and figured I needed $400,000. Well, that first year we earned $40,000 and had $40,000 contributed. And somebody said, well, this is a celebration. I thought it was dreadful, but I thought I'd been a huge failure. But we did gradually build on that and some of these people were totally instrumental, as well as a man named Rocky Howard, who was with Merrill Lynch and helped us a lot in the financial area. So just, he was our treasurer for about seven or eight years. So he was just a great friend and is still on our emeritus board. So we've been able to hold on to him. But I think, number one, it was, you know, somebody said to me before I really, I was thinking about starting the theater. He said, well, who do you know? And I think that is, just every day I still say to myself, who do I know? Or who do I know who knows? Or who are the people I'm working with? Who do you know? So people give to people. People like to work with people. Community, it's going back to community. And I think for us, it also goes back to the work. So much of the time that we've been able to recruit exciting, dynamic people of color, it's been because of work that we were doing. And of course we do perform to every zip code in the city of Dallas through student matinees. The combination of student matinees and our weekend public performances. So our budget has grown from that start up of $500 to around the range of $4 million. And we serve about 250,000 people a year, including about 100,000 of those for our national tour that goes out coast to coast. So we have grown a lot. Well, I'm just going to take one example of a show that we were excited about working on. I helped develop the show with Katemia. We did some workshops. And then really didn't think that we would produce it. But then we got really excited about it after we did a reading of it. And it said, oh, this must go in our season. So I'm looking toward developing Having Mariachi Girl. And we were doing a reading and I was bringing together a bunch of the artists. And I thought, aha, what we really need to do here is maybe have a little bit of a luncheon. And several of my board members jumped on the board including Mickey Bragalone who's standing right here. And we did a luncheon. And the luncheon was wonderful. We had all of the members of the cast. Because I had casted at that time and all of the artistic team. And I split them up so that each table had an artistic person and then we had guests that came. Well, one of our board members, Courtney Perez, had brought a woman named Beatrice Martinez. And she was very impressed. It was a wonderful, upbeat, joyful kind of event. It was just a celebration. So several months later we actually opened the show. And again, Mickey Bragalone had an opening night dinner. I didn't know she was going to be here by the way. Opening night dinner before the show. And this Beatrice Courtney who was on the board invited Beatrice Martinez to come. So I'm going over to the table to say hello and visit with her and thank her for coming. And this is Beatrice and I turned to her husband and he says, well, Robin, I worked with your father developing the Booker T. Washington High School for the Visual and Performing Arts. And that was a great experience. And anything you need, you just let me know and I'm going to help you. I mean, my gosh, this was 20 years later. I didn't even know this. And here he is right there sitting in my own theater. So I waited just a few minutes and he said, well, what I really need is for you to join my board. And he turns to Beatrice and says, how about you joining the board? And she did. And she is on our board. And she has been instrumental in helping us meet so many initiatives. For instance, we have a big fight with our school board and not the school administration because gradually they are spending more and more time developing the contracts and the order numbers that go to the teachers that allow them to book kids to come to our shows. So now the entire fall semester, we don't have any DISD students in our performance, our student matinees. Well, this is a travesty. And I took on this mission. I'm going to practice somehow. Well, we cracked it with Beatrice Martinez because she brought to our gala two of the top people in DISD who were going to become the top people in DISD. And now through Beatrice and those two people, we have a contract with the district, a direct contract. We've never had a direct contract with them for school students. So the entire second grade will come to our performances as of this fall, starting in the middle of September, not in January. So that is a huge, huge movement. I mean, to move that district is just almost impossible. And so she made that difference. She also helped us get increase in funding from the city of Dallas through the council, city council. We have, first, we got 2% of our budget from the city. We've now gotten a big 4%, which is huge growth. The cap, of course, is 25%. We'll never get to that. But anyway, and then the other thing that she's helped us with enormously is she takes great interest in the development of our projects, of our upcoming plays. We have a play in progress program now, and she's come where play is being in development. We bring in visitors. Anybody is open to anybody to come. And she comes and it takes a really active part in that as we're working with something like Tomas and the Library Lady, which is a non-script by Jose Cruz Gonzalez and by the legend of Blue Bonnet that we're developing with the Goheil Tecans, who were the original indigenous, indigenous people of Texas, along with Roxanne Schroder Arce, as a playwright and Lorenzo Garcia. I mean, Caramilla helping us with that. So it's just in value having people that can help with the programming, help with the cultures, help us be authentic and really move us forward in so many wonderful ways. And I'm sure I'm almost over. Thank you so much. We're going to hear from Adrienne, who are talking about having full board commitments in maintaining board culture as well, amongst other things. Great. First, thank you. I want to lift up that I am not an expert at this. We live in a diverse, multicultural environment and what's important to understand it's about human connection and it's about growth and building community and learning from each other that can make us better and make purposeful decisions around diverse boards. I will speak to you today as a managing leader, as the chief fundraiser, chief marketer and my experience as a person of color on a board and other committees. First, you know, as a managing leader, an all-white staff cannot sustain a diverse board. That's the reality of it. If you can, it's very difficult. It's important to the impact on staff. It's important to have a diverse board because the board can make decisions that benefits people of color and staff. If you have an all-white board with a diverse staff, how are those decisions being made? How are conversations around pipeline for people of color and leadership positions being talked about? How are board members holding directors and senior leaders in organizations accountable and responsible for having that pipeline? So it's very important that the board is very diverse. The staff is very diverse. They need to work in synchronicity. As a fundraiser, you know, it's not a one-size-fits-all model for fundraisers in the communities of color. And it's important that to recognize that there are cultural differences when asking for money. There are cultural differences when asking a white person for money a black person, an Asian person. So it's your responsibility to figure that out. Quite frankly. You know. Sorry, my brain is going million miles an hour. Yes. Oh yeah. And board members are investors. Donors are investors. When you get in front of investors and investors could be someone who's given $500 but they're really committed to your work. They want to advocate for you. They're there. You're expanding your family. They're asking questions. I mean, people are savvy. People are guarded with their money. They want to know if they're investing their money in organizations. There's impact. In my experience, folks are asking how diverse is your board? Is there a trans person in your board? You're saying you're working in communities of color. Queer communities of color where there's a low income population. What is the staff structure like? And you need to answer those questions because that will make or break people invested in your work and people in your program. And third, I want to talk about as a marketer, this is really good when your board's a diverse. It's just really good because you get to communicate the impact it has not only on staff but also in the community. Communities want to see their boards reflect them. And it's just a great piece of thing to have in your pocket when you're going out and meeting folks and building connections to honestly say we serve the community and as an organization we are morally obligated to have a board and staff reflective of the communities we serve. And finally, my experience as a board member as a person of color. It's important that people, white people at the table with people of color who are on boards know when to step up and step back and allow different perspectives. Oftentimes I'm in rooms at board meetings in cohorts where people are so committed to the cause of equity, diversity and inclusion but yet the majority of voices are white people. So step back and allow others to speak and understand that privilege. If you cannot recognize that, that's also a privilege. So I say be aware of that. As I mentioned before, I'm not an expert but what I can tell you it's a human connection that will make us better. Thanks. Thank you. Wow. As a producer I love sold out houses so this is great. I'm going to call an audible for those football fans because I want to talk about mission and the importance of mission but after seeing Gus in this great presentation just very well succinct, very well put out I think it would be helpful if you guys could see the trajectory of the board of the Crossroads Theatre Company. Crossroads Theatre Company is an African American Theatre Company in New Brunswick, New Jersey started in 1978 by Ricardo Kahn and Lee Richardson. So think about the world in the mid-70s. Roots just happened. Not the one we just saw but the first roots came on but there was no cable so there was no B&T there was no Bill Cosby there was no major source for black people to see people that look like them. 1976, Ricardo and Lee graduated they were the first graduating class of the Mason Girls School of the Arts University and they were ready to take on the world but they didn't sing and they did not want to play drug dealers. No disrespect to Antonio Vargas Sarsian Hutch those of you old enough to know that they didn't want that role they didn't want those jobs and they didn't sing. So after only being out in the world for one year they said, you know we ought to do our own we have got to start our own theater company hence in 1978 they started the Crossroads Theater Company I think the important thing to recognize why that theater company was so successful early on in those years is that there was total buy-in there was another theater called the George Street Playhouse in New Brunswick, New Jersey and they said, sure come on Eric Krebs was willing to sponsor Crossroads Johnson & Johnson Worldwide Headquarters is in New Brunswick they gave lots of support Merck Robert Wood Johnson Hospital so the white power structure joined the board and said this was a very, very good thing in 1991 a brand new building was built for Crossroads brand new building right next to the George Street Playhouse which was no longer on George Street it was on Livingston Avenue they didn't change the name to Livingston Avenue Playhouse it's still the George Street Playhouse but it was a brand new building built right there for Rick after being around for only 12 years they gave him the keys and they said, here this was a 5,000 square foot facility there was a small little one 100 seat facility this was 300 rehearsal studios, four flights if you've ever run a major theater maintaining the space is a job within itself the economy shifted, there was a recession in 1992 Bill Clinton got elected remember it's the economy's stupid so there was a shift the Cosby Show was the number one show so there were societal shifts and Crossroads was able to still maintain this high level of success but running that facility waited down in 1999 Crossroads was the first African American theater company to win the Tony Award for Outstanding Regional Theater thank you but guess what happened in 2000 the building closed how did that happen how did the board let that happen those are the hard questions we have to ask ourselves and the reason guys is because the work on stage was so spectacular but maintaining this building was an albatross and it wasn't dealt with so winning the Tony was great on one hand it got all this notoriety and on the other hand it's like oh there's a $2 million debt so the state of New Jersey was willing to give Crossroads some money but they wanted the board to resign and the board said sure anything for Crossroads because they believe they believe in our mission and that's really key to getting a diversified board to have them believe in your mission so a committee was formed and a large a new board was brought in of business leaders people who did not necessarily understand the mission, understand nonprofit organizations have an understanding of what Crossroads means to the community and they said the numbers and they said whoa this is not sustainable and what did they do they shut it down they shut it down they shut it down because the board the people that led Crossroads at that time in 2000, 2001 did not have a connection to the mission did not understand that of course a not for profit organization is not sustainable not for profit I'm going to segue for one second and give some props to David Grant who is a former executive director of the Dodd Foundation he lives in Vermont now I told him that Bernie got to the White House he really has to share this idea he says we should not be called not for profits he says we should be called social profits because we provide capital for society but those business leaders in 2000 did not understand a social profit that an organization putting on shows about a rich culture of this country has value so they shut it down fortunately after the theater was closed for two years there was a retired dean he just retired and he was pained seeing that building dark and he rolled up his sleeves and he single-handedly got that $2 million worth of debt down to a couple hundred thousand his name is Richard Nurse and we owe him a great, great deal of gratitude so I came on to Crossroads in 2007 you guys know what happened in 2008 great timing but we survived and on the one hand it's surprising but on the other hand it's not because we as a people have survived in this country for over 300 years against massive, massive odds so on the one hand I'm not surprised that we were able to get through tough, tough, tough because we did not have the types of board members who could write those checks to get us through so how do we find a board member because we need to diversify our board we have 13 people only two are white I think the best way of finding a board member is to look in your audience are they coming to your shows the white people on our board come to our shows we have several white people who are part of our membership and I love asking them why you come and they all pretty much say the same thing they learn something each and every time they come to see a show at Crossroads they learn something about themselves they learn something about their neighbors they learn something about a culture that there's a high degree of curiosity so I would encourage you all if you want to find board members you look in your audience but then if you say oh my gosh there are no black people there are no Asian people in my audience that's the problem you can't assume that they want to see your shows I've never seen friends friends that was funny I have no desire to see friends I don't see anybody that looks like me they don't talk like me that's not me so I think you have to ask yourselves well programmatically and not just February by the way I appreciate my colleagues at Two River you're doing August and October September look at that so that's where you start you start with your program and then if you then it's not just a quick fix we'll do this August Wilson and then we'll diversify our boards it's not going to happen that way Gus laid it out did a great job playing that so that's my story thank you very much so we're going to stop talking and let y'all talk to each other I'm going to hand it over to Elana to do that but I just want to thank the four of you so much for doing this, for sharing these stories for doing so in such a personal way you know because I feel like you're so right it is the personal connection that will make a transformation happen on a board and you all brought that personal energy here so just thank you seriously thank you so much yes and I just want to reflect back just a few moments because I feel like we're about to talk to each other about what happened sometimes it's helpful to remember what happened before you talk about so I just feel like Abe the courage of recognizing we are on a path and it is not sustainable unless we significantly not change who we are but own up to who we want to be in terms of taking on racial justice and the identity that is so powerful to recognize that it's not a shift around the perimeter that's not what you were doing and then Robin I'm just so struck by the way in which the programming which had integrity and which was recognized by a trustee of color based on a family relationship based in desegregation activity that you're about so they knew there was shared values they knew the programming reflected their community and then you asked their help for something that was incredibly important for them bringing equity in terms of the schools that were able to see your shows like when you ask a board member to do something that's that important to them of course they're engaged you were just asking to write a check and show up and be of color because that would be not so good but you asked for their help and something that was critically important to both of you and then Adrienne, I'm just so struck by everything that you said in terms of the way everyone in the organization needs in the board needs to own it and the staff needs to own it this is not something that a few people are holding down and then Marshall oh my goodness this is the first time I've ever heard you tell that story so I'm just still kind of like right but I guess the only thing that I feel like is hearkening back to those the only thing that I want to lift up in this little brief time I'm hogging to come back to those strategies we shared at the beginning is just the way in which when it is driven by a moment of contact with the art do you know when the relationship begins by learning something or seeing yourself reflected and feeling like I have to become a part of that something and how often the conversation about board recruitment centered in the conversation about the art how often does that happen does it happen enough it should be beginning, middle and end I have not always heard it that way so I just want to affirm and reflect that so what do we do it so basically before we report out we want to really take a moment to do a return and talk for five minutes so if we can just turn to someone next to us and break out some like two or three and just talk about immediate things that you'd like to respond to you know something that you learned something you think that you can apply to your own organization so we are going to take the next five minutes to do that in two's and three's so I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I