234. Growing a Board that Cares About Inclusion - Christal Cherry, and Dr. Renee Rubin Ross

Nonprofit Board Inclusion, Christal Cherry, Dr. Renee Rubin Ross, We Are For Good Podcast

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Overview

Meet Christal and Dr. Renee. These two equity teachers are bringing the race discussion to your board to grow one that cares about inclusion and values all people equally. We're talking about meaningful DEI training at the board level, and the feedback/results are truly encouraging🙌 Join us as we chat through the steps of building a journey toward a race-equity culture for our boards.

💡Learn:

Where / how to start moving your board toward inclusion
What disrupting biases are and how to create environments conducive for them
Learn and embrace a shared language, distinguishing terms, and concepts.
What is a race autobiography & why everyone needs one

Today’s Guest

Christal Cherry, Founder, The Board Pro

Dr. Renee Rubin Ross, Principal and CEO, The Ross Collective

“There often isn’t an opportunity to do that perspective taking across race and really understand what is the experience that someone else is having? What we found is when people share their stories, there’s so much like love and empathy that that starts to pile up. Sadly, there are a lot of walls. So how do we start breaking down those walls?”

— Dr. Renee Rubin Ross, Founder, The Ross Collective

Episode Transcript

Download Full Episode Transcript Here

Episode highlights

Christal’s story and journey to where she is today (2:50)
Dr. Renee’s story and journey to where she is today (6:00)
Growing a board that cares about inclusion (7:00)
Navigating difficult conversations within your board (12:30)
Disrupting biases (15:00)
Making a case to your board for this work (26:00)
The response from these trainings (28:00)
Building long-term sustainability within your boards (33:00)
A powerful moment of philanthropy in Dr. Renee’s life (36:00)
A powerful moment of philanthropy in Christal’s life (37:00)
Dr. Renee’s One Good Thing: Listen to the wisdom in whatever room you’re in. (39:00)
Christal’s One Good Thing: Open up your spaces to include other voices. (40:00)

powerful quotes

“One of the things I always say is, we have to start with ourselves. First, we have to do the individual work that's required before you can even go to work, or go to your board meeting and try to start talking about this, you really have to take a look at yourself.” -Christal

“Write down your race autobiography. How did you grow up? How was race discussed or not discussed in your household? When did you realize you were different? Have you ever been subjected to any kind of racial disparities or racism?” -Christal

“It's always important to start by saying, what does everybody in the room know? Then the other part of that is you only want to surface that if you're going to do something about it You have to be committed to once you find that out, what are we going to do?” -Renee

“Sadly, in our society right now, we are more segregated than ever. There often isn't an opportunity to do that perspective taking across race and really understand what is the experience that someone else is having? What we found is when people share their stories, there's so much like love and empathy that that starts to pile up. Sadly, there are a lot of walls. So how do we start breaking down those walls? -Renee

“The ultimate goal of this work is a more equitable culture and organization for everyone.” -Renee

“We talk about white privilege and how how you could use your white privilege for good.” -Christal

“We talk about race stories, race autobiographies, and we usually have some kind of exploratory exercise that Renee at least is in that she's been very creative with some of the things that she's done.” -Christal

“It is about disrupting bias, because I believe we live in a society that is a racist society right now. And no one wants to be called racist. But we're all carrying around, sadly, a lot of biases, a lot of hatred.” -Renee

“We're holding this in our bodies. And and a lot of the time it's just the way we react to somebody especially around race is very much at the emotional level come you know, not not intellectual and the only way to really change that is to acknowledge it. to work through it. So I think we're all on a journey.” -Renee

“Black people carry the pain of slavery, white people carry the pain of guilt. And we carry it in the way that we move and that our bodies are objects of that.” -Christal

“Equity is the idea that the people closest to the problems should be weighing in on the solutions.” -Renee

“Only when we build safety in in these rooms, you know, will are people going to be open to change.” -Renee

“We want to bring up hard topics. Everybody's on a journey. I don't need to judge your journey, I need to make sure you're not gonna harm anyone in the room, but I don't need to judge you.” -Renee

“Over the course of the time together, they realized that, well, when we talk about race, the people who have experienced racism, are feeling more seen, and are feeling like they have a greater sense of belonging, and that their whole self can now show up at this board table. You know, there's a sense of greater wholeness to this group.” -Renee

“That's really what this board work is really about. It really is about the heart work. It really is about being in the community and learning what the people who, who you're helping what their lives are like, what are the things they're going through, and then being able to go back and share with that with the board so that we can stay excited and committed to doing this work.” -Christal

“When spaces have diverse individuals in it, there's more work being done, there's more productivity being done, there’s better ideas being contributed. I just think that we need to be open to opening up our spaces to include other voices.” -Christal

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