New Tulsa flag. For more on its meaning, including tribal connections, see this link. A couple of weeks ago, I had the privilege of attending and presenting at the 25th annual White Privilege Conference in Tulsa, Oklahoma with my dear colleague Karen Spiller. We were invited to share about the past 10 years of co-producing the 21 Day Racial Equity Habit Building Challenge for Food Solutions New England, and also be in conversation with Dr. Eddie Moore, Jr., Debby Irving and Dr. Marguerite Penick-Parks, who were the originators of the 21 Day Equity Challenge through The Privilege Institute. To ..read more

If you’re like me, I never would have thought I would be leading an organization during epic extremes and upheaval in our nation. I was not prepared for this! On many days, I feel like I’m leading through total chaos without any kind of a manual for it. That’s why IISC is bringing leaders of all kinds together on May 7th in a virtual interactive learning experience. I’ll be there, along with my colleague Simone John. We will acknowledge and cultivate the orientation and skills that are needed to lead through, well, wild times. I could use expletives in place of wild, but I know you get the po ..read more

“Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify, simplify! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand; instead of a million count half a dozen … and keep your accounts on your thumb-nail.” – Henry David Thoreau Image by Bill Smith, shared under provisions of Creative Commons Attribution License 2.0. Earlier this week I posted on our blog a piece drawing from lessons learned in over a dozen years of supporting Food Solutions New England to launch and evolve as a network. These lessons were also drawn from other collaborative networks we have supporte ..read more

Recently a colleague and I were invited to present to partners in Mississippi about what we have learned over a dozen years of creating a network in New England dedicated to advancing a just, sustainable, democratic and collaborative regional food system. It has been quite a journey to date, filled with twists and turns, joy, and some hard-earned wisdom. Over this time I have done my best to capture insights and developments as they have happened in blog posts. In reflecting on those, along with content that has been cuated on the network’s website, I pulled together the list of developmental ..read more

Photo by: https://unsplash.com/@AdamWinger I was that kid. I grew up in Carver, Massachusetts, next door to Plymouth. In middle and high school, I challenged (and most likely annoyed) my teachers when I wondered out loud why Native Americans would want to celebrate Columbus Day or Thanksgiving. “Shouldn’t it be a day of mourning for them?” I’d ask. I don’t recall any teacher having a good answer to my question or even being willing to engage in meaningful dialogue. In the years since, I have earned a reputation among family and friends as being “no fun” or “too serious” for pointing out the op ..read more

“In the end, everything works together.” – Chief Jake Swamp (quoted by Dan Longboat) Earlier this year I had the honor and privilege of being invited to support the second Voice, Choice and Action gathering of the Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities Network. A project of The Nature Conservancy, the IPLC is devoted to centering Indigenous and local knowledge and leadership in land conservation work.  Back in 2019, I worked with lead organizer Mariana Velez Laris to support the design of the first convening, held in Bend, Oregon, but was unable to attend. Four years later, again work ..read more

This work is licensed to the public under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License: CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 Traditional management has run its course. At IISC and in our network of clients and equity practitioners, we’re trying to create something new in its place. We don’t have all the answers, but we know it’s time to discover another way.  As a Generation X’er who worked “under” bosses trained in traditional command and control leadership, I saw the poor results of “do what I say” or “do as I do” leadership. In the 80s and 90s, management strategies were based on military and man ..read more

Earlier this summer, I walked into the Boston Convention Center with thousands milling about and locked eyes with a Black woman who had the kindest smile. As I learned later, she, like me, had been to hundreds of conferences in our lifetimes but we felt shy. The exhibits weren’t open yet so we started chatting about our work and lives. I learned she is the president of a local chapter of the NAACP in the south, and a Black woman president at that. Her power has been challenged daily by white power structures resisting change and by male leadership within her ranks who assume they know better ..read more

Photo by David Clode on Unsplash Folks who know me as a facilitator know that one of my first and favorite questions in planning a meeting is “who’s deciding?” It’s a question that can be counter-cultural for groups that are unaccustomed to clearly defining the decision-making process. And yet, leaving the question unanswered or unclear is one of the fastest ways I have seen to erode trust and to drive people away from working together. Tips for doing better Answering a few simple questions can help to avoid a great deal of frustration and prevent the fracturing of collaborative work: WHAT dec ..read more

I am recently back from the Transformations Community gathering in Prague in the Czech Republic and still savoring and making sense of the time. That trip capped a flurry of work travel that began in May and took me from Jackson, Mississippi (Food Policy Council Network COLP) to the Seacoast of New Hampshire (Food Solutions New England Network Leadership Institute) to Haudenosaunee Territory in Buffalo, NY (Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities Network Voice Choice and Action Gathering) to the District of Columbia (DC Legal Aid Transformations Network) to water ravaged northern Vermont (No ..read more