Next Generation Leadership

Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore from Peoria, AZ, United States of America, CC BY-SA 2.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Image Credit: Palo Alto City Library

In October 1998, Matthew Shepard was found nearly dead, hanging from a fence just outside of Laramie, Wyoming. Matthew was 21 years old. His murderers said that he made sexual advances toward them. They robbed and brutally beat him. Matthew died of his wounds six days later in a Fort Collins, Colorado hospital.

Photo Credit: Smithsonian Institution

11:19

Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden, Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith, and National Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman.

Over the past 6 weeks, we have been in conversation with thousands of Black, Indigenous and People of Color as well as managers and leaders. We have shared in trauma-filled spaces with other Black folks. We have facilitated sessions for allies–those who are trying to act to end injustice–even though that injustice that has (arguably) not had a direct negative impact on them. We’ve also coached...

“To what extent are we willing to push people into, what I like to think of as productive discomfort, in this work? Are you we going to water things down so we can, at least, get people to the table? Are we just going to call it equity and put it off to the side? Or are we going to dig in and say no, decolonization, white supremacy, oppression? Where are we going to fall on that as a group? And...

When I was 18 years old, I met a white woman who changed my life. Her name is Barb. She reached out to me as a person, and at a point in my life when I wasn’t yet my best self. She saw my potential, but never treated me like a project--like a black girl to polish up and help be successful in this big university system. She asked for my opinion. She listened when I gave it. Often that opinion was...

Dear Colleagues and Friends,