 Welcome you to this morning's panel on the discussion. Thank you so much for joining us from Shirley and Layton for talking with us today. As far as this is a broader moderator, I would like to ask if you have any introductions. All of the introductions are right behind you. You can take a right out of the board, and maybe you don't come in on the left. Please help me with some food and coffee in the back. I just be where I am. Hello to those who are streaming at home. Just to be, hello. Just be where those guys are. I want to give a big thank you to our sponsor, and to America and both my travel team, The Bucky Broom, without who knows if it's going to be possible. This conversation is one that is near and dear to my heart, and it's something my colleagues that are exhausted and are suggesting that we're working on for months. I'm really excited. As we kick off this workshop, I wanted to tell you I am retaining a diverse workforce. Diversity is one of those buzzwords we're hearing together right now, and I just want to acknowledge that in this space today, diversity isn't sectional. It is not sort of ethnic or color. While today's conversation will likely slander towards speaking about racial or cultural diversity, as people of color, perhaps the most widely underrepresented community in our leadership and in the novel of our course, art is awesome, as well as the majority of the arts organizations in our sector, so it's a long way to go in terms of disrupting our homogeneity. We believe firmly that art and culture benefit from the true diversity of perspectives and experiences, and we encourage our college member organizations to expand their organizational structure, showing people of all races, colors, strengths, genders, sexual orientation, abilities, and many ships of origin. So let's look at this back. According to the race to lead report from the building movement project released earlier this year, people of color are as educated, as experienced, and more interested in advancing to non-profit leadership positions than their white colleagues. However, in the last 15 years, as the population becomes more diverse, less than 20% of executive leadership at American non-profits are going to buy it as an equal amount. If no one currently collects this data for Boston's cultural organization, I think we can all agree that 20% would probably be generous. It's one of the reasons why my colleague, Ricky George, started a network for arts administrators of color. This problem is both local and national, and no one is exempt, and if you don't work to make the change, we have to fix it. I'm going to get on my soapbox now, and give a conversation to our incredible moderator, Adam the Rice Harris, who serves as the human resources manager in working human resources for the for-profit and not-for-profit world for the 15 years from healthcare, from the healthcare sector to the technology sector to shipping industries to the industry. She has mostly women managing recruitment and office culture at the ICA for almost two years, and will speak to HR best practices both inside and outside of Boston's arts and culture community. These reasons I believe she's the perfect person to create this conversation today. Without further ado, Natalie, we'll be introducing your panelists. First, I would like to introduce the moderator of the Theatre of Hempstead. You're looking to Boston and joining the Theatre of Hempstead. Carlos Stewart serves as the manager of the South Down Color Center, the vision of the Dallas Office of Color of the Theatre, which provides instruction in which they, in the arts, give an emphasis on the content in the world culture. What we have. Natalie Crass is a theater artist, educator, administrator that joined the Theatre of Hempstead as the leading artist of true colors of youth theater in 2001. She was promoted in 2010 to oversee all elements of the Theatre of Hempstead in her neighborhood strategy, and now serves as an intro artist, artistic director. She's the founder, court chair, she's the founder, court chair of the Pride Youth Theater Alliance and in 2016, accepted the National Arts Humanities Youth Program Award for First Lady Michelle Obama on behalf of 200 years. Welcome back. From Southern Grove, Boston's Office as Vice President in 2016, bringing a long and accomplished career in a museum and cultural sector, including more than 21 years of experience in art, innovation, and multi-disciplinary museums. Thank you for joining ACG. Ms. Lynch McWide served as an executive director of the Fulton's Museum. She grew museum membership while increasing attendance, contributing support, and earned revenue. Ms. Lynch McWide also held leadership roles at the Fuller Craft Museum, the English-only museum for often not great crowds. Focused on the objects, ideas, and art, both patrons and artists to explore life through the art of contemporary craft. While there, she held the role of deputy director and later executive director. In addition to her work with National Regional and Local Museum Organizations, Ms. Lynch McWide has served as the chair of the Rolo City Arts Commission and as the National Grant Reviewer for the National Endowment for the Arts and Institute of Museums and Library Services. Welcome Ms. White. Ms. Lynch McWide is the executive director of the Washington and the Executive Director of the UNEDU OLEC, which provides an equitable, very precise welcome. Ms. Lynch McWide is the executive director of the UNEDU OLEC, which provides an equitable, very precise welcome. Perhaps Ms. beyond to have a diversity of value in a practice because this is a place that is uncomfortable even talking about the idea of homogeneity, its impact on not only our field but also the community that we all work in and serve. And so I think that you have to talk about it. Diversity is a buzzword to people who it doesn't mean anything to you, but to people who have spent their whole lives unpacking that word and defining what it means to be independent. And so in our organization we're going to have people in our organizations who feel that way about it. And they're the ones who can actually see when we're not doing this work very well. And so it's really important that those of us in leadership have a certain agency and skill set around the conversation because really everything kind of starts with us and if we're not champions of it then it doesn't have to happen. It really impacts the people that do work in certain communities. Oh, we need to talk about violence. I'm going to go and throw that out there right now. Well, I'm going to say whiteness and things like that. So I'm going to, I'm going to be real clumsy and messy about those sorts of things because I can't do my space wherever you can be. And so I'm going to, hopefully we're going to mystify the idea of whiteness and white in this space. So hopefully we can be comfortable saying that word and using it because it seems like in Boston it's ignored as a word. We're talking about black, black, magic. We don't have to talk about whiteness. So let's just go ahead and put it out there. I just want to go ahead and do it all too. Anybody else want to comment? I'll just throw out the word white supremacy. If you start just kind of hearing the words reacting to it, when they come up again you probably have your initial reactions. It's like white supremacy. Maybe like straight folks. You know how to sell apart general sexuality, you know, so whatever. Are you trigger-warning on this panel? No. You've been warned. So I should be very honest. Almost every single arts organization is able to use lip service to really caring about diversity and really wanting to have that as a value in the work that they do. In fact, I think it's FordSource that recently did a survey that had like 80% of the nonprofits across all sectors of arts and culture expressed the desire to embrace diversity and have that as a guiding course in the work that they did. However, less than 5% of any sort of policy or plan on how they were going to execute on that diversity. And so when we're looking to work with someone, we ought to be very honest. The finance office looks at one thing, right? But in terms of the cultural fit that we look for, the organization that I work with, Arts Consulting Group, does help organizations with executive search and leadership transition. But we're management consultants more broadly. And what we're looking for is not just the intent, right? But we're actually looking for that plan, right? And it doesn't have to fully be in place, but we want to see the metrics that mean that if we bring diverse candidates to you or talk about those issues around diversity, that those conversations are heard. We may not necessarily be able to move the needle fully in the search process, but what we're looking for, hopefully, is that attention to that whole thing. We would not be comfortable working with a client that said to us, oh, we just don't really care about diversity. Now, I'll be fair, some people lie to us and say, oh, we really don't think we're diverse candidates. But in the back of their head, they're like, no, not really. And that's difficult, right? Because you can't necessarily change that right away. What we certainly try to do is through the process, we bring up issues about being inclusive, casting a wide net, bias, and those sorts of things. Helping them in the process. We're also moving change agents, right? So those are some of the things that are feeling important. And I've got to be honest, it's not always easy to just, you can't say no, right? All of us have a product we're delivering to the world, to certain people, and so you have to kind of work with them where they are. And that's just one of the realities that we can talk about as we go through that. So one thing, can I just reflect back on readiness? Okay, for just a second. I think the start of this panel is a good reflection. If you can't say in your organization the words white supremacy, and you work in the arts, you work in non-profit, you work in systems of white supremacy, then you're not ready. You need to be able to talk openly about how these systems have been put in place, and how western culture and western art rules our field. So going back to the question that you asked about, how do you make diversity a priority in the theater? We're an LGBTQ specific organization. We're more by about LGBTQ folks. For many years the organization has battled LGBTQ issues, code for white, and so understanding that funders think that LGBTQ people are only white people because how folks show up in media, how they show up in print, even how the press here in Boston has covered our work, that majority white folks are interviewed or spoken to about LGBTQ issues. And so I'd say that's a battle we have in our own community, the LGBTQ community specifically. And for us, I think it was important for the organization itself to reflect the community that we were serving. And that has gotten better. We still do not have a lot of female body people in the head leadership of the organization. We do not have a lot of trans representation in our organization either. And so we are trying to resolve that. We do have a majority of people of color on our staff but still there's a homogene of even the people of color on our staff. So really trying to figure out how do we have true diversity is a constant struggle and a constant battle that we're waging because the LGBTQ community is so diverse. And the stories that can be told through art are so diverse. And so that's something that we're constantly working on and it's truly important for our community and for the growth and development of our organization. So I'll highlight two things about organizational readiness and then go to the questions. As a lab, this is what happened when we came here. Organizational readiness, as Evelyn said, if you're not ready, you're not ready to admit that you're not ready. We'll talk hopefully a little bit about trauma. And so again, you take on this idea that you want to do as less harm as possible. So when you hide your organization and there's two wonderful tools at the door, maybe you got a white supremacist culture article and then the continuum of anti-racist multicultural organizations that are just conversation stars that you can read and say, you know, and tell the truth about your organization even if you're doing that your own desk about where you are and says where you are. And then you can also communicate those truths to, you know, key stakeholders and guess what, you know, even funders because white people get funded to become ready in ways that people of color cannot get funded just to be. Right? So again, if you're honest about where you are, I'm sure there are some dollars that will like follow it and then you can hire some of these specialized people who are getting that diversity and inclusion to help you give ready but really get stars from an honest place. Some questions are, you know, what's the end game for us? So when we look at continuum, where do we want to be in the next year, next three years as an organization? And then how do we have a plan to kind of get there? Because, you know, being honest with you, if you can't be honest with yourself in your organization and then part of the work you're doing, you know, I'm a night media guy training. I've been trained to say, you know, you do this work and I believe it with no guilt, no shame, no blame, no BS. But you have to approach it from a real honest place and an art in a city like Boston or in a, you know, you do as much work attracted and sustained in a white workplace as you can do as a diverse workplace. So you're thinking you're not doing anything but it's just like to maintain the white organization, or probably have some labor in a city as diverse as Boston. So, to the question. And maybe they're like, what was the question? So what's the like, so we have an organization that is truly, and I would say Kobe, an organization that's truly representative of the community and serves and hasn't always been a case for me, I largely identify as a cultural organizer. And so that means I use our culture like to build community and address oppressive policies and practices. So that's, you know, when I look for where I want to work and how I want to work, it's through the lens of a cultural organizer, not necessarily a arts administrator, but that's the way in which I can do like community building work. So it's been a large part of my life. Even coming from Dallas and working at the South Island Cultural Center was based in a historically black community. And it really was, you know, community value, you know, we know that as a community value, we need a place to engage with our culture. So you're just a part of the community as much as the community church or the grocery store. So we were doing our part to kind of build a thriving community. So it is extremely gratifying because you can, you know, I was there for, I'm a child of the community, but working for almost 10 years, you can really gauge the impact of your work or feel like you're contributing to something larger than yourself. You may not be able to share it with all communities, but for me, the deep community work, I've been able to say, oh, this is what it's like to really invest a wide show of effort, especially when working with you and children and families. So it has been that way for a long time and probably will be that way for a while. Not historic. Right, so before I answer that, I'd like to go back to my child. I don't care. I just want to make this clear about the question and about the organization itself. The reason I think it can be referred to as historically about organizations because the leadership has been predominantly by the board, the faculty, from what I understand as the historically case, even though it's an organization that has been serving community children, students and young people of color throughout history, throughout 108 years. So it was an outlier for the community in which it was in the south end 100 years ago for the south end that we all know today. So I just want to clarify that and I would say that further clarification, if I went to a church, it was 80% black, I call it a black church. And so I'm dependable to music in it. I would say that historically that has been the case at the music center. And actually one of the challenges I think in the very beginning was creating an environment and culture in which just as much as we talked about programmatic design and accountability and we talked about block finance and we talked about organizational efficiency, we also talked about diversity and equity and inclusion. And it was equitably discussed which to some inside the organization it was more than ever been discussed before so it was like it was a bit much. And then there was also I think in the organization that I had a board that I had to wait at my back with my board or with Tommy Whiteboard. They were also, they were down because when they selected me they had another option. And I said in my interview that you don't feel like you've done anything even if you hire a black TV you've done nothing. The board begins after I get here, how much support you provide for me after I get here. That's the board. And so I was really fortunate that the board chose me anyway, right? Because I was real blind in my interview. And that was the reason I was that way. The reason I wanted to be my authentic self because I wanted to hire me. I didn't want them to hire my representatives or some whitewash version of me. They were going to hire me. And again, but I found out when I got to the music center that there were already staff on board who had been working really behind the scenes getting some things going. So when I walked in the door there was a racial equity assessment that was done right when I walked in the door. And the interesting thing about that was it's really weird walking in as a new black TV giving a racial equity assessment. There were, and that's something that Marie, who's here off COO, she was a person in green tie. She was one of the people who were really, I think, really got that going. That was something that was deep inside her thinking. But it was interesting that I ended up as a white TV owning a lot of the backlash from her. Even though I came in at the end, everyone was like, wow, he got started. That was an actual, a direct quote. I was like, I'm blind in black all year. I guess if you mean at birth, yeah, I started. So there are some challenges in there. I think that you have to have people in positions of authority. You have to have a people who has their job and their responsibility to fight the status quo. You have to have, you do have a white leadership. You have to have a white leadership that says, I support everything that this person is saying. Not that you are assimilating or taking on colonizing other's ideas, but you're saying, no, I actually am supporting and lifting up the people of color inside my organization. When they're in these conversations and getting over some of the fragility of it, it's very important. Many of you are familiar with the term white fragility. And again, you do have to deal with this space of whiteness in order to be able to have these conversations in a genuine way. You cannot because I think as a person of color, there are things that we say we're not around y'all. It's a predominantly white group, so I'll say it that way. What I think we say we're not around y'all, we don't say we're which y'all. But if we can create spaces where those truths can come out, well then we can start to address some of the inequities that exist and the power structure that is clearly oppressive. We can start to deal with those things. Our conversations oftentimes in spaces in which there is not this white supremacist space and culture, they are very robust. When we go into those spaces, it's actually interesting how elementary some of the conversations, because we're trying to protect the white supremacist space. And so we don't, to the truth, not spoken there. But I feel fortunate as I'm the executive director. So my organization, I call it out. And I call it out daily. And even my board that supported me calling it out. We stumbled, but the support that comes from the leadership is very important because the truth is, I'm fighting everybody. I'm fighting everybody a big chunk of time when ways people don't see organizations. Because, again, in conversations sometimes like this one, not really here in the nation as well and you get the blank stares from people where they're like, I don't know exactly what it is he means. But I'm going to take three nuggets back to my organization and implement them potentially for me. Because I didn't give enough of the work in as a leader to know the real truth and to find out the way it was implemented. So I think institutions was trying to find a way to hide it. Just hot for the code? Yeah, you know, hire me. I'm not getting credits for this at all. Before I launch into what I would tell for W. White organizations, I want to be really clear we all have a bias as it relates to this kind of thing. And that means I have a two and all of you are the one and two, right? So I have a certain bias. If you haven't taken that great bias test, it's just black and white bias unfortunately. It doesn't have other layers to it. But you know, much to the one surprise I was slightly biased towards African American culture here. But it would have been nice to be neutral. I would have been so proud of myself. But it isn't as we all have bias. I just wanted to introduce that because we're talking about profoundly white organizations. But a lot of our wonderful up and coming starting organizations are started by culturally diverse people that can't figure out how to diversify their own organization, right? And so I want to just be really clear on that. We all have kind of our little circles of organizations in our culture and we have trouble understanding how others can fit into it. So one of the things that people do, I think they're kind of mistakes when they say you really want to make sure you find diverse candidates in terms of hiring a diverse person. The first one that's always there is they set unrealistic barriers around educational or other requirements. And I've written about this in the museum field. I'm still not sure why the person in the gift shop pays minimal wage, right? Means a bachelor's degree. I'm just not sure I get that. So there's often unreasonable expectations around degree requirements for years of time in the field. The arts and culture sector broadly is more diverse than it was 20 years ago, right? But it still has a long way to go. So if I tell you that you have to have 10 years of management experience, right? Just by putting that out there as a number, I'm not going to get as broad of a net if I'm more realistic. And to be true there, the studies show that that also creates gender inequity because men will apply for a job if they have six out of ten qualifications and a woman will feel like she needs all ten or maybe nine, but she would never be applying if she had six. That's just what general service has been done. So those barriers, some people read the things and they go, no. There's also a tool that they talk about in terms of the language and job postings being kind of skewed basketball or feminine, which is an interesting thing to think about. But so one of the barriers is right away the qualifications, saying that they are all incorrect. And then also not using a process that tries to remove some of those issues of bias. And certainly one of the reasons I was drawn to work for ACG is we have a process that at our best treats everyone uniformly and fairly and removes some of the bias from the process. It's a similar to the performing arts model of the blind audition behind the screen. And that is a very helpful tool. So that's important. One of the everything that people do goes back to what we started out with and the mistake they make is they don't really have a discussion around what they're really ready for culturally. And then they try to disqualify people and say things like, you know, I just don't think they fit. I don't think they really fit in here. What the heck does that mean? And so often it's really just that they haven't thought about the age. So sometimes they think young bright folks they're just not old enough. The staff upon meeting these folks I couldn't work for someone that young. That's sometimes true. There's lots of things. So what we try to do is as much as we can going into this, let's just talk about those stumbling blocks along the way and how to remove them. Because if we want to cast the lights, that's important. The other thing is how people go about casting the net. If you use the search firm, we have tools that we use that we think are pretty cool in. But on their own as organizations we often rely on our networks, right? And most of us have networks that look a lot like us. Right? And so that's not necessarily helpful if your organization culturally is not very diverse and you're looking to bring in more diversity in any sort of fashion. I think a good example outside of racial diversity, if I may, is so today I was thinking about this. As I came here I took the commuter rail in, so I walked up the stairs, a little around myself, walked down the stairs and the elevator was at the top. You know I never think about what this would be like if I was disabled. I mean I am disabled without coffee, but I think I was really disabled. I don't think about that. And so too do we not think about those other differences as it relates to diversity more broadly. So if I was trying to cast a wide net and I wanted to have someone help me think about this role who perhaps had physical challenges I'd have to struggle. I don't necessarily have as many folks in my network that can inform me. And the same is true in just about any other area. So that's where I, most people make the mistakes. Those are the key blocks that I've seen. I have a little bit. So what you're saying my other maybe think a lot about, we talk about professionalizing the field and some of the things, you know, I don't have a college degree and I've been able to navigate a journey and figure myself this ended up pretty well. I won't say that it has been easy. There's a certain value of another kind of trajectory that I have now. And even now being in a position of like HR, looking to continue to diversify, sustain diversity within our organization there's a framework from management assistant group or MAG that they call this five signs of a thriving justice ecosystem. And it's interesting in the EDI work that I do with some organizations they talk about. But we don't want to be a socialist justice organization as if that's like the worst thing in the world to me. But justice has to be a part of some of the conversation and framework like everyone should strive towards a more just ecology but in the MAG framework they value most of the ways of knowing. And when I think about my own journey it's like what qualified me to be able to do this work. There's multiple ways of knowing. And they break it down into a couple of ways. They talk about foundational knowledge or foundational knowing which is experimental, indigenous ancestral or spiritual or natural way of knowing. They talk about practical knowledge meaning from previous experience that you didn't turn into some type of actions. There's artistic knowing which again if you're raised in a black household maybe before you even know your name there's some artistic and cultural ways of knowing and being that come into play especially if you're a part of a black church or any of those kind of institutes. And then generalize knowing which is one that we kind of know more as professionalizing whether that be a college education or someone who's been able to engage with a lot of logic models or data and theory which is one way of knowing. And for me it's like what it's really beautiful to have a candidate that embodies a lot of those different ways of knowing to be able to contribute to our organization. And like Ronald said me and I have potential. So again I'll add myself there and say I throw my name in the hat for a job that I know I don't qualify for but it's not what they're looking for just to kind of say it's also a part of my DNA to say that you are transgressive. So you are magic. So just go out there and just see. You can get an interview, you can get a job. Thanks friend. And I would say cisgender man. But a radical way of thinking is like if we invest in potential people of color because people of color have proven at a time again that you just give us an opportunity we can show you what we can do. And a organization that's not willing to take a chance on someone's potential to me also says that oh maybe you're not a learning organization. Maybe you don't invest in professional development or co-mentorship in such a way that you even believe within yourself that you can take a candidate and you lead them to where they maybe should be or give them the skills within the organization and someone has to come to your organization knowing everything which is like unrealistic. And again it's like what is this organizational culture really around learning and creating a career path? You can't say three things already and I think it's one of mine. You get that every day. I have the opportunity to do two experiences with parolees every day so feel very privileged about it. I just have to say one thing about credentials. So in experience I had 10 years ago I was at a conference which in and of itself has its own privilege that you get to go to a conference your organization can afford to send you to a conference and I was in dialogue let's say with a woman who was working for a very well known company Children's Theater in DC and we were having this heated debate on credentials when you hire someone and she insisted that her teaching artists have masters degrees masters degrees and I said to her screaming across the circle how much do teaching artists make in your organization and she kind of avoided that. They start at $12,000 and I I was like how can you demand a teaching artist have a masters degree when you're not paying them anything and they have hundreds of teaching artists in this organization and it's just a common practice. Mommy and daddy have to be able to support you in your first few years in the job. All of us did it. You've got to put in your time too, right? But how do you survive? How do you feed yourself? So just remember that when you're looking for the gift shop person the experience that people bring to that what does a welcoming environment look like? What does customer service look like? You're not thinking about what freaking degree someone has in order to use a cash register or in order to do tickets in order to teach people in their own community Oma said that word again. We heard it. Okay so now back to Carol. So Carol was supposed to interject this and again largely from my field my friends who have either undergrad degrees or advanced degrees they all say that like I didn't learn what I needed to learn to work at this organization so as far as their investment happens after you've accumulated so much then and you've navigated so many systems to actually get the degree then on the first day of the job or the first year of the job is like what the freak. You know I've spent it just so we can be honest, right? So most of the arts management programs because they only value one way of knowing they're trying to train you to run the Kennedy Center, right? And there's only so many jobs available at the Kennedy Center and so many people who want to work there so it's kind of applicable across organizations so even when you have, you know, this career and you account, you know, it's not like arts administration degrees are cheaper than any other degrees and that's expensive but it's not like you get a discount because you're going to make $12 an hour. But there's still some ongoing learning that has to happen after that. Yes, it was long, it was arduous and it was worth it. The thing about if you read your white supremacy culture article, this sense of urgency we have to get somebody in here immediately that is something that we just called into question every day. Now it's not to say that folks in our organization, particularly folks of color in our organization, while we were looking for Harold suffering right, they were often the ones that were given the tasks that were falling off of people's plates and it was hard, it was a hard period of time for us and then the impact on Harold when things had been put on pause when systems had gone unburnt during the time so understanding the impact on Harold to kind of pick a ball up and run with it and the burn of that was something that was really difficult for the organization and we're in this moment of change in our organization that change is also difficult. So the backlash of having people of color leadership is real. Harold feels it every day, I witness it every day and also the invisible labor that happens when you're waiting for the right candidate. So who are the people who are doing the invisible labor? I just want to say Colleen would you call out your co-worker to just say all labor that they've done for you to enter into that space that leaders don't often do that, say there were people here before me doing this work and I want to acknowledge that work and I think Harold also does a magnificent job of that really acknowledging the work and the labor of folks and so that worked hard. Alright, what role can a board take in popularizing that I agree with you? Because you saw me wearing that, she was like, keep it short. I mean I called you up, see now I got you back. So, well I would say that the first job I was doing before I moved to Boston, I loved my work. The work I was doing in Memphis before I came here, it was, I feel like it was my life's work. I was sort of looking because I was looking to transition out of my performance career and I was doing that and I was looking to transition out of academia. I was tender when I was very young, I was very fortunate, but it was my time to move on from that too. And I was kind of looking around but I had a friend who works at Opera Memphis who sent me an ad and he was like, oh you should check this thing out. Anyway, someone sent me this thing and I looked at it and I was like, oh that looks interesting and I looked at the job description and right at the top, the very first thing on it was talking about diversity and inclusion. And it was talking about it from a very disruptive perspective. So it was like, we want someone who is going to challenge the status quo, challenge our board to think beyond the way we've been thinking. Looking to develop new programs that will make us relevant in the future. Looking to create an organization in which our staff, massive demographics of the students that we serve. And I was like, bro, I don't want to leave but I would leave for that place. If it was the interest, I hadn't seen other ads and I felt like that was the point of my life which I was becoming more marketable. But I didn't want to just go to another place just to go to another place. There was something about the way that that job description was written in which it was actually written for me. I got here, I realized it was a wow, it was what the job description said. From a diversity statement perspective, my true feelings at those days are whack and the reason I feel that way is because they speak to intent and it intends the relevance. Impact is what's relevant. And so you have this wonderful statement that says you want to be blank and you want to be blank. And by the way, we're going to be blank, but next year we're going to be the same. And I feel like those things are, that's kind of an issue with me. I push back, typically, when I see the diversity statement, short story. Woman, Americans for the Arts, they were talking about their diversity statement. Here in Boston, actually, a couple of years ago, they were talking about their diversity statement when I sat in on this session. And the statement, it's a very nice statement, but it doesn't have any teeth. And there was a, they were saying, you know, but we needed to know people where they were, you know, until it was going to take us some time. And then there was a black woman who raised her hand, older black woman. She must have been her 70s. And she said, while you're taking your time, know that there are some of us, some of us that have been waiting for a long time. And so see us too when you're making your decisions. And I thought that was a really interesting, and I thought that was a very powerful way to describe that, is that when you talk about that white culture and white supremacy perspective, it's like that perspective trumped this other woman's, and it was clear institutionally that it didn't. Their, their, their, their statement of diversity actually did more harm than good. And so unless you are going to absolutely hold yourself as an organization accountable, and hold people's jobs accountable for the whether or not they're moving certain metrics inside your organization, whether or not there's certain culture that's coming to your organization, if you're not doing that, the words are cute, and they make you feel good about it, and you can pat yourself on the back. You've actually done nothing until it has an actual impact on the organization, followed by the sector, followed by the community, followed by the city. If you're not holding yourself accountable for that, then you're again, it's, it's feeling good for the people in the room, but it has no impact. How are you guys doing today? Yeah, this was a hard question for me to look at, because I think it's something that we still struggle with, not having an HR person. Now, the really crass part of me says an HR person is there to protect the organization, and not always there to protect the staff. And so in some ways it provides more flexibility for people to do whatever they want. Now, whether that's equitable or not, in the long run it's the big challenge we have, right? So, yeah, I think shifting culture in the organization, I think to do the right, the right order is being in communication with community first. You know, what community are you serving? Not the funders. That's not a community. That's not who that is. The people who are participating in your work. Audiences that frequent your work. Who is the community to find that? And then try to understand how your staff reflects that community, which I mentioned before. And then make sure that the culture of your office reflects the community that's in your staff. There are ways in which I think we are very successful queer culture. It's alive and well in the theater and stuff. There are a lot of things that in other offices, we have to say that interns don't do this anywhere else. It's a very culturally specific environment. We have high school interns right now. Take that conversation somewhere else. It's important for people to feel like I belong here. There are people who are likely here. And it's important for those interns that they have a home, a creative home, and otherwise in our offices as well. So this question of shifting culture, I feel like it's constantly shifting. It should feel like sand under your feet, really. Every new staff person, every new intern brings in something and offers something to the culture. And if you don't pay attention that will continue to be a revolving door. I think nonprofits and organizations in general just accept like, oh, people don't stay. That's just kind of how it is. And don't accept, well maybe we are paying people equitably. Maybe the culture isn't reflective of the folks that we serve in the community. And we're not willing to change that truck. I think if you're paying attention to what each human life brings into the space and how there is a ripple effect and you make that part of the culture, it can deeply impact you as a human, which I felt quite a bit. I felt plenty of discomfort, which I now love, the discomfort because it means that something's possibly going right. It's going in the right direction, away from my whiteness and towards another culture, another idea, another way of being. So, yeah that's me grappling with the answer in my mind. I mean, Elna and I have developed this beautifully problematic codependency to make sure in leadership we're going to be independent. So again, we're one and the same. But what I'll add to that is again, I think we have to interrogate what it means to have a what does human resource mean? We're probably not all human resources. We've made human resources about legality and policies and enforcing, you know, some things most of the time. I come from the city of Dallas, but there's a large human resource department and it's like, well are they really resources to humans? That looks like the word, man. This is where I'm supposed to come as a human being. So again, so it's the type of human resources that you need. And often we're looking at job strippers at the theater offensive and largely at our core we're a community development organization or community engagement. So why is that not reflected in everybody's job? The same thing with human resources when we're talking about creating a culture where people feel included, that their worldview is there and feel well and make a long you know, house human resources is not a part of every job in the organization and not just this person who can interpret you know, who's done the good work of memorizing our policies and state of law. Can I just jump in on some of the things that Evelyn said when you're thinking about being inclusive as a state senate and it hurt my heart a little bit just to hear you say that there are conversations that we can have here but you can't have in other places. It could be conversations that are inappropriate to other places but it could be some that are also not welcome in other places. One of the things I share a lot when I have these conversations when you talk about diversity, you have to kind of deconstruct your organization if you're trying to diversify your organization, you have to deconstruct and say why is it homogenous? One of the things we're fighting against if you're thinking about it from an equity perspective, well deconstruct your organization, where are the inequities within our organization? Where are the systems that created the inequity that are within our organization? And we talk about being inclusive. What are the areas that deconstruct and say, where are the areas that we're actually exclusive? We are unintentionally or not, which again, intent is irrelevant, but the impact of our work is being exclusive. Where are those spaces? Because that's where the work is supposed to be targeted. The work really isn't targeted there. It's like, okay, we don't have enough brown people. Let's see if we can't have some brown people. And that's it. But it's like, hey, brown people don't want to go there. You can find someone and they'll come in and they'll leave and they'll be tried. But the reason it left is because you didn't fix the actual problem by the problem of the organization. And I think that again, you have to have, and this is, I'm new to Boston, so I don't know what the thing is here to be honest, but I felt like almost by my board's mandate to come in here and say certain things in relation to my own organization, but I tell my team that we're building a model for things. We're not just trying to get our work done. We're trying to build a model. And I think that if every organization were doing that, then these conversations would actually make some progress, rather than us reading a Boston Globe series that says nothing is happening. Because that was agreed to as a new person. That hurt as a new person who moved his family here. Because I mean my family and my two brown sons live here in that article, in that series of articles. And that's what I saw. And so we do have to get on the other side of some of these conversations by being what Marie would call courageous. Rather than calling them difficult conversations, we should have courageous schools. What we do, we have Marie, she doesn't want to let you trust us. I would say that as an organizational leadership, a lot of the work starts there. And so if you're an organizational leadership, you're in senior management, if you're in those spaces, then you are duty bound. I feel like we have a certain agency around these conversations. I don't know if you've seen this New York Times video from different races talking about race. Have you seen it? If you haven't, I recommend checking them out. You can find them on the interwebs. YouTube has got them. But they have natives, they have I think Asians, Black, Latin, and they have white ones as well. It's really interesting to hear the non-white ones talk about race. Because it's very young. And when there are, on this video, again, it's a small sample size, so it's not speaking about all white people. But it was, there was this comfort. It's like, I don't want to say the wrong thing. I don't know what to do. It's very uncomfortable. I don't want to be called racist, so I just don't say anything. I don't want to sound stupid, so I don't engage. You know, those are some of the things that happen there. And so really trying to create a culture in which that's not a thing. In which it's like, it's okay for you to make a mistake. It's okay for you to say the wrong thing. And it's okay for me to be as Black as I want to be all day. Right? I'm going to bring my blacklist to work every day. I'm smart as hell, but I'm bringing my blacklist to work because I'm smarter when I'm Black. My Black version of me is much smarter. And I learned that when I stopped close with you. When I stopped close with you, I was like, oh, I didn't even know I could think like that. Because I'm not wasting any of my energy trying to make myself acceptable to you. You know, and so, you know, but again, most cultures, their expectation is that I would make myself acceptable. So I couldn't wear my hair natural. I couldn't wear a dress of bottom line, too. I couldn't wear my refuse to coat, which I'm just too tired to t-shirt. You know, as a chief executive, I can, but those of you who are in leadership, you have to create a space in which that is okay. When somebody walks in with your hair naturally, you tell them, your hair is looking dope today. You know, or somebody's walking in and bracing their authentic self in any month besides February. You tell them that you appreciate the fact that they're bringing themselves today. And I say in my, I say every staff meeting I talk about, I'm bringing my authentic self. And everyone has heard me say it. I was like, if I say that that was wack, and you know, and I say that that was super dope, and if I say don't play yourself in the staff meeting, because I'm bringing my authentic self. And I'm hoping everyone else will do the same. And there are several staff members have said, particularly ones of color, and ones who are LGBTQ actually, they've also said, wow, it's so great. I brought my boyfriend to work for the first time. I've never brought my boyfriend anywhere. And because of this culture here, I actually can bring him. And I feel really good about it. It wasn't because of my policy, it was because of the culture that was created there. And so really it's on leadership to actually own that, own the success and or failure of it. I don't know. Does the current process work differently at organizations than happening? What shifts have you seen in the hiring and retention? So let me ask that by kind of digging into a little bit of what Emily was saying. You know, before I say this, I should say how incredibly unfair it is to invite somebody from the fine arts world to sit next to the theater people. Because I would say that theater people are 10 years ahead of every other section of arts and culture in the dialogue. They will say things that people will not say. I'm channeling my inner external person. I'm an introvert by nature, if you guys are doing that, push me here. Let me dig into what some of the little Colleen was saying. So I'll be the face of those others out there that are trying to make a more diverse workforce, but have some issues. So what does an HR department mean and are not having one of some of those other things? So the unapologetically black, the unapologetically gay, the unapologetically whatever you want to be, excuse that, heck, out of other people potentially as it relates to lawsuit, right? Whether you like it or not, the number one reason businesses are suit our HR issues, okay? And whether we think about that when we're engaging in the interview and the hiring process or not, please know that there's someone around the table who's thinking that. That's a natural fear and you may say, oh, don't worry about it, I'll give you a pass. But there's always so far you can pass, right? And I feel like that's important to mention, and I don't mention it from the perspective of someone who now helps with his deputy search. I also mention that's a perspective of someone who worked with him in 23 years as a museum director, where I often was the only person of color on my staff. So me being the ED didn't magically dust the organization with other white people. And in fact, again, in this story, we hire a black consultant and one of my board members walked in, walked right past them and called it by my name because they just assumed black person, that's why I went, hey, that was not me. Okay, so what does an HR thing have or help you with in terms of that piece? I would just say there are some structural things around this. In our desire to embrace diversity, we will make some mistakes. You know, you can be clumsy with it, but you're actually going to offend if you can break laws and so forth. And so there's an issue here in terms of trying to do it the right way. There are some helpful areas about having HR folks. I love HR people. They were ahead of these discussions, poodles, around diversity and organizational culture, right? But most of our arts and culture organizations think it's just payroll, so we let the bookkeeper do HR because they got any of the benefits, it's a payroll. No, it's benefited in that. So here I was correct. Everyone should have something to do with their resources for you. I love that. But if you are trying to diversify your staff or change your culture, or just be more broadly open to this, whoever you are, you can start kind of deputizing yourself as an HR person by doing your research and your reading, right? And you don't claim expertise that you don't have. One of the ways you can avoid offending is if you're really honest, and it's like, well, this is where we are, this is where we're thinking, and you're just very honest, but we all want to be experts, right? And so we decide we ought to have a diverse, of course we want to be diversity experts right away. And it doesn't work that way. But I think when people are much more honest, as hiring people, or people participating in the hiring process, even if you don't have the training, that's really, really helpful and important. I just feel like I have to say that. And what I hate to hear in the hiring piece, this is my last one, is when people suggest that having a more diverse candidate pool or workforce automatically assumes that you're gonna get or lose something, right? That you're gonna one way or the other, right? Everyone up here is infinitely qualified with or without our degrees, with or without our experience, right? But the point is we have the right skills to do the work, and that's ultimately what happens, right? Being black is what I am, it's not what I do, right? That's not my profession. And so part of what we're trying to also get people to understand is that removing bias is that you're looking at people for what they can bring to the table, not just what they did. And that kind of trumps, oh god, I used to be black. Sorry, but that really will make a different difference in terms of getting the right group together. And so HR people are really good at pushing you to think about hiring for the fit of the organization in terms of what someone could do, what they could bring to the table. So even if you don't have one, I've been almost everywhere in this room, if you raise your hand 80% don't have HR folks. Don't let that stop you from thinking about the blue parts because it's HR folks that got this discussion really in my opinion, really moving forward. We are more person-based. It's certainly homogeneous organization one of those proportional marginalized. One of my favorite savings from that conversation. And again, I think when that organizational assessment again around where we are, how we got here, and you know why we're comfortable here are not comfortable here and where we want to meet. Where we want to be when we reach up the rates to lead some of the findings, what they do say, if it's not about education, desire, real, passion, what is it about? And they say it's structural, like it's systematic, right? So in an organization that is not willing to identify the systems of oppression that are at work within your organization and then disrupt, and then disruption is not enough, right? You know when we talk about this is a movement and what encourages me there was a gap or opportunity in the field, right? So a couple of years ago, because of the nonprofit sector, the art sector would say it's about 50 years, 50, you know, some out of years old. And a lot of our leaders were retiring and especially leaders of color. So I'm from founded organizations, from other organizations. The fact that we were talking about pretty soon will be a majority minority country. And a lot of other things created this wonderful opportunity for people like me and my generation to say, oh now we can go to war, right? You know, now is the time to really make some changes because as a society we are thinking about this thing differently. And we can recognize all the work that has been done before us. I mean I co-founded a member of an organization called the Next Generation National Hearts Network. Because again, if the black woman who meant to me is leaving and all of her peers are leaving the field what does that mean about, you know, at one point it was diversity, it was multiculturalism, it was cultural equity, at one point cultural equity was actually working but white folks needed a new word. So we got to EDI. But cultural equity again because it was like rooted injustice was actually working what does it mean for all that long history of struggle and how do we become a part of the continuum and move it along further. So we were not being called to like Jessica's well, we have been called to dismantle, right? So again, so the organization is really looking and learning about those structures and willing to dismantle those structures then really we'll see, you know, something else kind of emerge. Man, you sound like T.P. Gilmour. I'm taking, no one's talking. Sorry, yeah, it's a reference to that. So sorry about that. One of the things I think that when this whole idea of, if you want me to, okay I'm trying to jump in on somebody. The whole idea of assimilation, I think that that is a very strong thing. One of the things that I've said several times is that you can either seek and create change or you can maintain the status quo but you cannot be both simultaneously. And if you are seeking there is an environment in which the status quo is oppressive to groups of people. This whole idea even of the majority minority is crazy to me because my experience as a black man is completely different than an Asian person. But based on the perspective of white we all get bumped together as if our experiences are similar and they are not. My experience is I learned about the experience of natives in this country. Who would be in that minority group? I'm like, wow. But again because of this whole idea of furthering white supremacy you get furthered by saying, let's put them all together and then say it's a threat. It's actually not a threat. There is no demographic that is even we're approaching this American construct of whiteness. Which is what it is. Because my wife is from Stockholm, Sweden. In Europe she's Swedish, she ain't white. That is a construct in Europe she is Swedish. When she goes to Germany she's completely different language, completely different culture, completely different history. And she is not one of them. And they know that. Here we do this thing where we kind of bump all of this thing together and call it whiteness and then make it supreme. And so that happens inside your organization too that people end up feeling they have to assimilate into whatever the power structure is. And so when you're in those positions of power, so why think a lot about that? We talk about speaking truth to power. When you're in those positions of authority, if you are a person who has the opportunity to hire someone you are in a position of power and authority. If each person in that position says okay, let me deconstruct everything. Let me think about what my organization is and what it has been. What has created the entire environment that we're in right now. And one of the things that I can do to be to fight that right now unless of course you agree that your space is super diverse. But most places aren't. And so I really think that when we're having these conversations I really feel like it takes those positions of authority have to actually take that and own it. I really do feel that and not be afraid of it. So I think this one's tricky because the very nature of the process that we have these, we are pretty integrated with the staff with the candidate and everything over the course of the process. And so I won't get into it very deeply but what I would say is we use industrial psychology tools in our process to assess the candidate and working team. And we actually talk about the soft skills that go into the work. And we talk a lot about race and culture but there's actual hard skills to the doing. That's a practical piece and there's soft skills to the culture of the organization. And so what we work to do is to help people kind of get that integrated. That's really what the onboarding thing is about. Whether you have a formal process that looks at that or doesn't but it's how your team talks to each other, how you resolve differences, how you have these conversations, that whole sort of culture. Like I want you to care that I'm excited that Black Panther is coming out and I'll be excited about what you like. So to short of frank, let's get that discussion going. Like that soft skill piece. That's really where the human resources of this whole thing comes together. And so the candidates that we have worked with have successfully onboarded because we do that in the beginning part of the whole search. We stay in touch throughout Asclephalia and I won't stop loving that. But if you don't have the benefit of working with a search firm, the key to successfully onboarding someone into your organization is that communication, is that check-in is what we promised you actually happening. And you need to have those discussions real time. You don't wait until you have performance for you and they're like, you know that's not working for me on one side or the other. I sound like the mom in the room so let's sit down. I'm sorry. But it's important to have those conversations where you're checking in. And there has to be some space where people can just honestly say when you did this or said that, that wasn't okay. And I want to be great if we could say that you could be authentically yourself and it is always okay. But that part of me is a true realism and I caution people right. Boards are a perfect example. You don't get the board you want. You get the board you have. Right? You know? That's true. And so part of that is when you're trying to talk about changing. You may have this vision for your organization, your vision for your team, where you're trying to go and you can see it clear as day. But there are steps along the way. If you don't pay attention to the steps you can accidentally miss a big pole fall right in. And so successful onboarding has a lot to do with things about some of this is a little more incremental. Right? We are organizations that are often dependent upon funders who may not be a community but are certainly in place. And you are foolish to not pay attention. So those leadership roles often have to be changed. I hate to use the cell phone but you need to be comfortable with these people that you're asking for the money. So I think one thing that white folks do is say I have no responsibility here. People of color will bring their culture. They will inform systems. There's nothing I can do. And I think that's fear of stepping in the pile of racism to say someone's going to call me a racist and that just makes you want to like, no, I can't step into that. And so understanding your role in this piece, we hire for diversity what does someone look like, what's their background, etc. But we onboard for assimilation. That's us, that's white folks that are doing that, that are maintaining these systems to ensure that if you don't fit you don't stay, right? And so we have a responsibility to accept change when it comes. To accept letting go of that system for how interns are hired, for how staff are hired, for how we celebrate each other. Whatever it might be for work in the community that there are experts in your midst and you have to accept the change in order to not perpetuate this assimilation. So at this point I'm going to open the panel for questions. Does anybody have a question? A small theater ensemble. So I have two questions. One is do you suggestions for like right now we are casting an actor and I would much rather hire a white actor. So question one, do you suggestions for how to reach out and get a non-white actor because all of our traditional ways of casting have not worked? And two, can you talk about potential landmongers that my organization might step in like, I just asked this from someone yesterday, can we say directly, seeking a non-white actor is there a different way to say that? Can we say that at all? What suggestions can you offer? I have some questions for you. First thing, do you have any of your directors, any technical staff that are non-white? None. That's alright. We recognize that as a problem. We're not happy about it and we are actively trying to change that and failing to do it. Second question, any of the other actors? No, no, I'm telling you. We are totally white and totally don't like it and are you telling me... I think that answers your question. That's the problem. I think if folks don't feel they have a place there, we don't see themselves in leadership and the technical staff and the other casting, I think you're not going to find that human being. And if you do, it's going to be very difficult to figure out how to help them feel included in that space. Here I'm going to have some other advice. Alright, so I think the question is why. So it's like why do you want a non-white person? And how... you've made a couple of things that you recognize within your organization, then how is casting someone a person of color become a solution? I don't know the piece that could be a role, it could be an original piece, I don't know. But for what you're seeking is casting one person of color like the immediate solution. Are there some other steps that you may want to take in terms of language? I mean, hey, people are using a lot of different languages, getting a lot of pushback, getting a lot of celebration. Ultimately, it is your audition. On it, to see who you're going to see, I don't know the Boston Landscape or maybe other people in terms of where do you go to post the casting and things like that. But the issues, the questions for me is again, is that really the solution? Because again, what I suspect is you're not casting someone to just represent someone white, but there are other expectations that are coming when you cast this role in terms of what they need to represent, what they need to...there's a round of education. Again, we're talking about emotional labor. Is this person going to get paid the same to be with the cast of white people, but not just interpret lines and produce an interpretation of the character? What are the expectations besides just fulfilling the role? I want to share something that's important to this. I think, as a percentage, we're looking at outcomes. What's the intended outcome? Because in that term, it's all tactics that we use along the way to meet the outcome. It's important to know that when you think about diversifying the space, any outcome that's rooted in optics will fail. Because the outcome is the problem. It's not my organization to change a lot of things about its DNA. I'm not bringing in a non-white person. I'm bringing a very specific kind of person into this organization who I am then empowering to speak truth, to be truth power or whatever. But then you're able to get out of an outcome that is beyond optics. That's one of the challenges with diversity, because the conversation about diversity speaks to optics and does not change the conversation. And the reason diversified is to change the conversation, not just to change the optics. And that's why assimilation is a big problem, because it only changed the optics. But it doesn't change the conversation. It might be through a little bit, like, why do I want that? And also, what environment am I bringing this person into? Because if I'm in this predominantly white space, it's got all these challenges and then I'm bringing this person in, I'm oppressing this person. It's actually oppressing that the person, if they happen to navigate this whole white space that doesn't even know how to be around people of color. So that's just something to be mindful of as you were thinking about that. With all due respect, if I could just push back a little. From your answer, I'm a little stuck because I'm interested in changing what I recognize as the problem and your time when you can cause that problem, you can change it. I think what we're saying, before you do a political workshop, there are other things I'm sure that your organization does besides political production. So again, what are the think back a couple of steps first before you put out a casting call would be what I would say. So I'm not in theater, but one of the things you should do is go find other actors that need the characteristics that you're looking for in this new thing. Go start building a network. That's part of the thing. If your circle of network includes no actors of color that you're finding, go find actors of color wherever they are. Go talk to people, start building them. You're looking for people to apply, right? That's one of the ways you actually practically do it. Go start making connections. Looking to meet people who might be able to get this done. Because just throwing out the nets on enough sometimes you've got to be a little more selective. That question brought up from me in reality that I've seen throughout my career and in all the gigs that I do. I'm Ken Ferrari, some of you all know me. Which is that I'm amazed by how many predominant white people live in the city of Boston or actually a lot of the younger white people can't afford to live in the city who know nothing about the city. So I would say all of you in whatever role you are in your organization, get to know the city that you live in. Get to know the newspapers. And stop thinking that. Glancing on your cell phone will tell you what's going on. There's nothing like having a fizzle paper in your hand and just glancing page by page. All the pop information about who's been hired, where, that's your personal color. This can be the event. If you're not reading the Bay City event, if you're not reading the more Western news, if you're not reading the Jamaica fund, you don't know about the word, which is an events page. Just looking through all these community events and then challenge yourself to go and attend some community events or read some community newspapers. Watch City9 that comes on Sunday. These are things that don't require a lot of heavy lifting. But a lot of times people want to change something without ever knowing the city that they live in. There are two brothers who came here from more Southern environments and you have to reach out to the new city. He started introducing himself to as many people in this city as he could and just talking to them. What do you know about the Community Music Center? What do you know about Boston? Is there anything you can share? If you're already living here, if you're not doing that work, sometimes it's as simple as taking out an egg because there are a lot of hungry actors who would welcome any opportunity to act. But if you don't get the the ad or the ask in some black eyes or Asian eyes, then you're not going to be different. But if you're living in a city that you don't know, then the other thing I want to say because I don't always see it coming up is a lot of small nonprofits, particularly cultural nonprofits that have gotten this anti-hiring thing. There are too many part-time people hired and forgive whether people have been or not. They don't have enough hours. I recently did a diversity training for a very small cultural organization that has a very big reputation. But they were talking about diversifying their staff. They only have three staff members. They actually need 10 right now for the work that they're doing. So they have a lot of people who are actually getting burnt out doing too many roles because when the recession hit, they had a few more people they had to pull back in. They never expanded. And so I hear a lot of people are so proud of saving money and cutting the budget. And they don't have enough staff people to diversify anything. And so that's one of the things I would hope as a sector like creating jobs for people is something that arts and cultural sectors ought to be proud to try and do. And as a sector like that, let me just say, you're so correct that as a field, we have a problem with pay. Pay enough, right? Forget pay, I can't even just get to pay enough. And so a lot of people of color don't necessarily think that we arts feel that they can thrive in, right? When I told my mother I was getting in, I said she was distraught. Please get a business degree so that you can feed yourself to my grandchildren, right? So that's important, right? Yes. Hi, my name is Carol Latidwaugh, and by the way, I'm a candidate. I want to transition from academia to the arts. It's been my application. I've been an actress, I've been a jazz singer, I've been a band singer. The answer to the gentleman, I spoke with the colleges and universities and you need to go to where we are. Don't expect us to come to you all the time. We're not going to know where those places are, or how to find out where we'll find them all the time. I'm here because my job, academia was the career services. I held students by internships, full-time jobs. I know how to network. I'm here because you are looking for a diverse workforce and I'm a diverse person. We're going to work in the arts. Here I am with experience and hiring of the union because my mom told me to get a job without making money with it. We're the elementary education and I work in career services and didn't have the credentials of a master's and I've been a director of a career service office. Some colleges say yes, some colleges welcome to begin. So what I want to say is that folks by myself don't necessarily know the companies just like this. They don't know how to network. They don't know what they're supposed to be here. And thank you Harold for coming to me about the arts and then talking to the color. And it's my case inside out and as a vocalist I can tell that. And I'm not a shy and if you want to know more information about me, I'm going to go over Berkeley College of Music at Berkeley. She does community outreach. She would be able to help you because she's the lady of color who does acting as color to myself. But anyway, there you go. And you have to go for black production. There you go. And that's what you have to go where we are. You have to go to the place where you're going to find this. It may be uncomfortable. Let's talk about you like this and be uncomfortable. You may be uncomfortable because you know the person sitting there from above to above in Boston. By the way, I live in San Francisco area so I know the difference. When I come over to any area and come back here, it's a culture shock. I don't have a question. I don't know. I want to hear if you all are out there looking. But I want to be realistic in that conversation. I'm hiring for C-suite jobs. So if you just left school, we're going to have a great introductory discussion but I actually want to hear from you if you're looking. And I'm not going to go to your LinkedIn page because I haven't referred to that relationship. Hi, I'm Paul. I work for a theater company. It's one of the adjacent casting and there are some explicit prescriptions you're going to run into where union active posting specifically or we give it asking about race or ethnicity. I just got banned. Not banned but I got enterprise audition posting. So whatever you want about that character I think it's well intentioned but you're forbidden from saying we're looking for African American actors. You can say we're looking for somebody to play this role Asian American man. But there's a way to count it in terms of the description. And then my question is just that the company I work for has a sort of historical on diversity initiative to try and make the people in our offices and on our stages match the census of the city of Boston where we work. Do some data tracking, we have a long ways to go. But that's where people that we choose but then there's also people that choose us. And when I informally look at our board of people who come in by the tickets and sit in the seats it is very much not supposed to be the majority white. So I feel there's a disconnect there between what we want to do in terms of people we choose but then there's some kind of an expectation of the people that choose us. How can we broaden our scope so that when people are looking to come to us as opposed to who we hire, who we want to be inclusive to. So it's really important in conversations like this that there's no magic pill. The reason that these things don't happen is because it's difficult. So the idea that there's one tactic or two or ten even tactics that one could employ in order to get you to a certain place I think is quite a few present those tactics in the idea behind those tactics. But I do think it's important to note that that is the truth and we have some of the same things. I mean I'm up here but we have some of the same challenges at my own organization so we're not necessarily the model as it currently stands for answering that but I'll share it in just to help make me think through it. My former mentor he told the story about a focus group and he said that he gets a focus group it was an arts organization they were trying to diversify people of color to come in and they didn't know why so they're supposed to focus through people from black and brown communities in Memphis so that's pretty much what it would be. After the focus group ended there was a black woman who went up to my friend and she said listen I don't know why you're doing this and he was like well what's the deal? Why wouldn't you go to these places? She said well there's some main reasons number one I don't know what they do there which speaks to a certain kind of relevance right? The other thing is it's too expensive which speaks to cost one thing the other one was it's too far it speaks to access and then her last comment was the most powerful one she said and they don't want to be there anymore and what that spoke to was the legacy of segregation and that's what you're combatting that's what you were having a conversation about the legacy that no tactic in and of itself will fix but I would say as a person of color white people say if you want people to go to your stuff and I think you just alluded to it then you go to their stuff so where are the places that you feel like are those places where you want to be like or places that come in equity perspective help you balance out the whiteness of a particular space go to those places and tell those people about your community white people from there become relevant in that space not just go there and look at what's relevant in the space and then say hey guys I really enjoy being here won't you join the board of a black light organization right and then say oh now I'm here hey guys I'm having a meeting in my place why don't you come I've been coming to our things here for a year I have one in my space because that's the real work it's hard it's difficult there's a lot of work that goes into it so again the idea is there's no like if you have a brown person on the poster then brown people will go but that's not a thing I see brown people almost all the time but to be honest when I walk into the spaces and see no brown people in the space I now distrust brown posters let me just recommend the Wallace Foundation report if you're looking to diversify your audience learn from the work above as Wallace invested years of research and it's a really wonderful thing about just broadly diversifying your audience I was going to say the road to results but that might be the other point this is a free publication you can download it from the Wallace Foundation's website and it talks about strategies that your organization can look at to try to address your audience diversity issue some actual practical tactics and there's case studies of other organizations okay so there are others trying to solve these problems and so I just want to throw back a solution because you were really good to challenge us giving an answer there's an answer do some of this stuff but also read that report it will give you tactical things to look at to start to change the deal I would also add strategic partnerships, ethical partnerships because again there are organizations who have been able to achieve that outcome in a variety of different ways so again when you sit with them and talk about what's an ethical partnership that's across promotion and things like that I'm going to invoke in the space of front porch collective there's representatives here from the front porch collective who I would imagine would love to just have a conversation because it's an under-resourced so for many people it's an under-resourced field so how we can begin to share resources because if we all recognize that art is a public good and if it's you know a public good how do we engage the public in it so maybe the goal can be the same but you don't have to do it along and you can I mean that's one of the beautiful things about the network we just go see people and you begin to strategize again how to impact the community Hi my name is Janet Bailey we get a reputation here in Boston of being a very racist city some would say the most racist city I noticed that most, not sure about you but most of you are from somewhere else and you've had experience in other parts of the country do you think that our reputation is deserved and if so what are other cities doing that we should learn from here in order to do better I'm not from Boston I grew up in Cincinnati and I've fled here from Kentucky and mine was about finding LGBTQ community specifically that I couldn't find it in Kentucky shock and this became my home away from home in exile when I told family and friends and I was moving to Boston they said two things they said you know it's cold I'm from Dallas, Texas and they were recording like 114 degrees I don't know if I can survive or something it's hot here and the second thing they said they're racist and I'm like this is Dallas, Texas it's actually situated in the United States of America and the global south and there's racism everywhere so maybe I want to experience a different type of racism Texas brand of racism all it limits me is something that I want to engage in as long as I can so you know yeah well I would say as a person who moved here actually coming from Memphis it's relatively isolated where it is in the country and it's a predominantly black city it's like 60% black and that other 30% is where the power and money is so it's like a part time type environment there because of the demographic and the population and the power structure it was very interesting to me I used to do these workshops there too this city is 60% black and this room is all white now it should be mathematically impossible for me to be in an all white room in a city that's 60% black so what happened to this one there must have been some outside force that created this because probability would say there'd be at least one that's neat those are conversations that were happening there not necessarily just like what do we do there's one here facing history in ourselves what have we done that created some of these things and what are we going to do from there moving to Boston it was actually interesting to me for those of you who are from here the conversation is the same here as it is in the Deep South it's absolutely no different there is the sense that this is some kind of a bastion of liberalism and inclusivity but the conversation from my perspective which I only have that from my perspective it's exactly the same conversation that I was having in Memphis Tennessee which is actually a very racist city by the way of the design because this city is built on equities in the cotton industry so the entire power structure is based on that you feel like I lost my answer before but I can say that the conversation here is no farther along than it is in the Deep South the problem and the challenge here is that this is the place that thinks the conversation is going to be right and they know that they are liberated because they know that they are racist like in the South people will tell you you are a credit to your race but the most racist thing that I've ever said to me have been said here in New England where board members told me to watch my tone and stay in my place so it is real and as our country becomes more and more uncivil it gets more and more real that's why those of you who have been privileged by the nature of your position of race have to step into the void when you see stuff happening because that's what you can do that maybe the person who is experiencing that reaction, that behavior can't do anything and that's where you use your privilege to go that's not how it works here I believe in your right to have it over there the whole idea of the secretion of the city is that there should be I have to say for me as a father particularly as a father it has been very interesting watching my sons navigate this city as well because they are racial students and they are in the school system and we are big public school advocates and big public school people here so we put our kids in public school and if you ever wondered what the inequity is in the city put your kid in public school and in some spaces they acknowledge that that is a real thing people don't just pull their kids out of the public school and say it's not my problem, it's the city's problem what I feel like is a lot of the conversation here I pull my kid out but I'm fighting it also which I get that because it's hard to be an activist with your children so don't get it twisted, I absolutely get that but you should be an activist though, not for someone else, it's for sure for those kids who don't have that option Good morning, my name is Matt I have conversations on a daily basis with the staff and those conversations get more progressive what do we have to do with the board in order to make sure that that safety that you've got every day with the staff I'm going to step out a limb and assume that there may be some by progressions and practices on board that are antiquated and not become aware that they're antiquated so how do you manage to maintain that safety and progressivism with your staff before somebody's president of the conversation? Well, I've been advised by any of my representation between friends I've been advised I would say yes, there are these migration, there are those things that exist, I think that that is a for my own space, from a self-care perspective I was in classical bassoonist for 20 years, I was in classical in board rooms and in receptions and had all manner of microaggressions that happened to me in those spaces, so it's not necessarily a new thing, but I would say this particular board, where I feel fortunate is that when there are enough people on the board inside that power structure who do get it, and who actually push back when people say it's not particularly the board chair, she was someone who when certain things would happen, she would come in and say, now wait a minute, I'm not sure if that is exactly what the Colleen is trying to say, or I'm not sure if that's exactly the direction that we're looking at going in so again when I said this before, I was fortunate that I had a certain power structure that was very helpful and there were people on the board who were uncomfortable with those conversations and they were like, why are you talking about this, when we're not talking about our finances, because that's more important than this conversation, I told them that it's going to impact our finances if we do this thing the right way, and fortunately it worked out in my first year that it sort of did, we're going into year two and we'll see what happens, but because at the end of the day I am responsible for meeting those budget numbers in addition to managing the culture as well, and I have a board that has essentially kind of given me a little bit of carte blanche and created a board level in the university academic inclusion committee because it's going to become a staff one, and so these things are all, it's part of the long term process, but I have no conclusions around the idea that it's going to happen in a year or two it's a cultural shift, that it's a generational move, and so I imagine it's going to take a number of years, I'm trying to pace myself pretty well while also being disrupted, every moment that I see an opportunity to be disrupted, if there's an opportunity to disrupt any kind of a sense of the status quo I take it, and I'm just really lucky that I have a board who's like that stung a little bit, but I can't argue with those numbers though, I can't argue with the metrics that are 80% white, like there's nothing I can do I can say I don't like it, I can say I disagree with it, I can say that maybe our students are not that, but we tell the faculty staff or 8% or more white, we go by department, it's 75 to 80, so there's no department that is actually making that number, it's like it's literally systemic, it's hard to argue with that. I just wanted to add a little bit about the voices we've introduced before until the conversation, and again this is a largely staffed conversation, but again your board is not diverse as well, and sometimes this is a new point, if you're not thinking about high-army within your organization, and for an organization like ours, what I encountered was that the first board of board aid that was challenging like the role of the board, and even seeking ways to eliminate like high-army and power, but a board that was reflective of Napier, LeBron, JPM, Dorchester, Roxbury, and the South End, the color section of South End and so we wanted board members to reflect that, and there's a lot that we celebrate at the theater, but we have a conversation within ourselves that if we're the model, then we're in more trouble than we thought, the feelings are more trouble than we thought because we're honest with ourselves, and so now we're thinking about all the work that we've done to get where we are, how do we go deeper? So Ian and I mentioned the management assistant group, and they have this concept of framework around deep equity, so you diversify your style, congratulations go deeper, lean into the complexities now of sustainability, of board sustainability and training and things like that, talk about it in the organization and it's life long work, so again, as many of us are in the process, a board should also understand that we will always be in this process, so you're going to rotate in and maybe you'll rotate out, but don't think that we'll be complete just because, you know, some of our numbers are looking different and other things, now there are new opportunities to go in. The Show Place Theater, one of the well-intentioned is up, there it goes, thank you, I'm Roxbury from Public Show Place Theater, I'm one of the well-intentioned white people at the hardware 3 that Candelaria mentioned. That's true, that's true. Maybe I'm not, that's an assumption, I apologize. I'm curious about them, we talked a lot about metrics, but I'm interested if there's other metrics that you use to measure where you are specifically about the demographics and identity of your staff that have felt successful for you, also of your audience, and then maybe evaluation tools that you use to evaluate staff on achieving diversity goals, especially if they might get into an area that is very personal, very soft skills oriented, etc. Thank you. Super helpful, but I'll share some things. One of the things for us, one of the things I think is important is that you should have a number attached to it, and you should have a target. Someone mentioned that they're looking to match the demographics of Boston, which I think is a useful goal. For us, it's a larger perspective, we're like okay, let's first match the demographics of Boston and then let's match the demographics of the students that we serve. That's what's in my job description, that's how since they are mandate. And so annually, by department, one of the things that I'm going to be putting in place is just a little bit of movement. Everyone trying to move and increase the representation of people of color inside your department. We're fortunate that we have, because we have a lot of teaching artists that have come and go, we have faculty that sort of come and go, that there is some room there, space. And what I've told those who do the hiring and out-processing, I think, what I've told them is that if you are, if you've been utilizing your networks and the networks of our faculty and staff, stop. Stop using that network, because that network is where we are right now. And so if we're going to change, then we have to find a new network. And so I was like, hey, if you are at a club one night and you hear an amazing trumpet playing, you're like, man, that guy seems cool taking the coffee. If you are at a space and there's one brown person in the room and there's an art space, go up and talk to them and say, hey, we hiring, right? Just keeping it very simple, but read your shifting and changing the lenses through weeping, creeping, unison roundings. But with a metric attached to it. So it's not one of those things where it's like, it'd be cute and all. It's actually, the number has to move when people's accountability actually speaks to that. And fortunate for me, I don't know who put that in there, but it was super dope. It's in my job, it's a trick. In my time, what I took, what I did when I rewrote people's job descriptions was I took the language from my job description and put it in there. And so the idea around having to ensure that the faculty and staff master demographics of our students, that was, if it's in my job description, it's an organizational mandate from what I understand as executive director. So then I just say, okay, it's in everyone's job description, that language which is something in a job description, something someone can be held accountable for as part of the accountability framework. Assuming it's part of mine, and it sure is helping to be part of the people who are doing the hiring and firing itself in the organization. But he has to teach people to reframe it, but I do agree with the target. For us, in evaluating multiple ways of knowing, I was kind of trying to end up in my, to my counterpart, because Ellen is like the queen of data evaluation within the organization, but she respectfully declined. So I told her, you know, and I think what works in the organization is we believe in the quantitative just as much as we believe in the qualitative. By square organization, we value story. We value community. So for years now, we've done story circles and community speakouts. And so we have this rich qualitative data that said, you know, there are times you can gear up for the community speakout, and you've got an idea of where the exits are. And you know what I'm saying, it's like what's going to happen. But I think the organization feels now that we can stand, you know, before community and ask critical questions about ourselves and feel proud of, you know, where we've come and really hold true the criticism that we hear. Because again, we're building into the organization a certain type of agility. Again, we're place based largely. And, you know, people are being displaced. So we have to be kind of flexible to the needs of the people that we are in, in community, which is really valuing the qualitative data as well. And of course, I thrive off of it, right? As a Black gay man from the South, I'm kind of turned off by research because I feel like I've been researched like my whole life in terms of like public health. And I've engaged in that type of data. I was like, this is wrong. They reflect who I am. And all, I mean, you know, people are, right? In qualitative data. And, you know, and, you know, the Southern like same sex positives is here, me, you know, invokes the spirit of God that says, who do men say that I am? Right? And again, that's really, really, when you've got street cred, you know, it's like the numbers can say one thing, but if they're not validating the street cred, then the numbers, you know, may be inconsistent. And it's why it was hesitant to respond immediately is because I think there's a way in which we rely on data when we have people around us telling us like, this is the truth. This is the truth. And the reason that can say, well, the numbers don't say that, you know, right? So this idea that your staff could somehow report how they're doing, I think you have to find people who are willing to take the risk and say, be brave enough to say, well, here's the reality of it. Here's how you're doing. And I do think that we have community speak out spaces where people can tell us how we're doing and we hear it, and it's not always easy to hear. But if we don't do anything with it, which a lot of us have done, right, where you hear feedback and you say, yes, you put your feedback and then you don't hear, I'll say it, shit with it, you don't do that thing with it. That's an insult. That's a waste of their time and don't waste their time. And because we have people covering our stuff, there's a black caucus, right? And in the caucus, we have a black caucus, I mean, we have a white allies caucus and now, I don't believe, we're starting the caucus the board as well. Let me be careful. So that's another space where you can give others feedback because there's no hierarchy there. I'm not the interim EV in black caucus and many times they have to say it. Because you're an executive staff, the things that we're going to talk about in black caucus, we don't want you there. It's kind of hurt because I'm like, I'm in a real black. But it's like, if me being in that space will compromise the conversation, because we report out when we talk about it, then I don't need to be there because although I am black, you know, I'm also an executive leadership and sometimes people need a space and we value a space where staff can say whatever they need to say and it informs, you know, it gives us a true reflection of where we are and it informs some decisions. Let me just jump in and say, if you're trying to get some practical pieces, I feel like I'm once again allowing you a little bit. There are people who have been in place hiring practices that they will not look at a semi-finals group that doesn't have a diverse members, can it, within it. That's just putting a stake in the ground. You need to tell me you couldn't find anybody. You cannot, people don't have to disclose their ethnicity or their sexual orientation or any of that, but you certainly can ask. And so there are some things you can do to tell people I'm just not going to look at a group if you need to tell me you couldn't find anyone. And then you can ask the questions about where you advertise, which goes to the network piece. But there are some intentional data that you can put together to try to figure out if you're looking for a position and you have 50 applicants. And from what you can tell in self-identification, you have 50 non-diverse applicants, then you're immediately going, okay, so part of the problem is people are putting these announcements. Let's go there. I just want to put a little tooth to it because right? I have an idea. And on that, we actually have that as a policy. And the other thing on that line is you have to, those who are bringing in the candidates, you tell them it has to be a personal code that we can hire. Because it will happen. I brought in, I got somebody, and that doesn't work for me. It's because of the loop, right? And so that's the person that you're doing this is for optics. I got one in, and so we should be strict. But what I put in place was, hey, it needs to be someone that you would hire. Because now you put the leadership responsible for finding someone higher than the role. So then, when it comes to me, then if I'm the one who needs to make a call, then I can actually make a call. And if it doesn't come to me, I can say, why don't you think that other person who you could also hire in this particularly, this role that's in, you know, Brown School? Why didn't we not hire that person? And so there's someone that didn't value the credibility of the other person. So again, you're shifting the power structure. Because now you've got to tell me why this person was a better candidate than this person who's actually the representative of the group. I just want to say one quick thing about that. Years ago, I was asked to make a recommendation for conference planning. And there was a woman named Barbara Eagle Meadier who had a conference planning organization. The conference was a predominantly white or a childhood conference. And one of the things that I found was that if you ask somebody like me or somebody in the network for a diverse candidate, then don't vote coming back in second destiny that we're not bringing because of Ray Ray. And I feel at this point in my life, Candle already spilled this recommendation. All I mean at least is of course if it's an e-mail or a call. They asked all around town. They ended up hiring her and she worked for them until her retirement. But what happened was that the affluent women at this conference could not believe that if they hadn't heard about someone they had a legitimate background. And that's when it took months of talking for them to finally admit that they had legalism on top of their racism. And it really put a very bad taste in my mouth. But she and I wrapped up. She said don't even worry about it. I go through this more than you would realize. And she thanked me. But it took them a lot to confront the fact that they didn't want to believe that if they hadn't heard of something, then it could be legitimate. And I still see that that happens a lot more than I would think is when you get a question, you know, because you recognize somebody hasn't heard about it. Your word is very good by the way. Yeah. She knows. We can be here all day but I just want to thank everyone all so much for their time. It was a close panel survey. It's getting a little special for me. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.