Black Leadership:
Navigating Executive Transitions in Historically White Led Institutions
This session is for boards and executive-level leaders seeking to understand how anti-Blackness impacts Black leadership regardless of positional authority.
Description
This webinar for multi-racial participants aims to disrupt the ways anti-Blackness shows up in organizations and communities.
As many organizations grapple with executive transitions where a person of color, especially an incoming Black leader, is succeeding a white leader, there is growing discussion on “glass cliffs”: the phenomenon where leaders of color inherit organizational challenges where the risk of failure is high. These situations typically require equitable, enlightened, and often untested governance practices from Boards; resilient, inclusive, and accountable leadership from the new executive; and an organizational culture that is actively working to dismantle anti-Black racism.
Desired outcomes:
A follow up to the Building Black Power workshop, this 3-hour workshop aims to:
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Enhance understanding of how anti-Blackness impacts Black leadership regardless of positional authority, in the form of Board micromanagement, staff microaggressions, under-compensated (extra or hidden) labor, uneven standards vis-a-vis previous leadership, as well as a lack of readiness to lean into constructive performance feedback for the new leader
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Reflect on organizational and leadership practices that make for more successful executive transitions, meaningfully support Black leadership, reckon with past harm, and center accountability to communities at the heart of the organizational mission, regardless of role and identity
Date, Time and Cost
Equity in the Center is updating service pricing to a tiered pricing model beginning April 2022 to better align with best practices among equity-focused organizations. We ask that organizations purchasing tickets on behalf of their staff purchase tickets in the tier that aligns with your organizational budget and sector. For individuals purchasing tickets for yourself, we ask that people with greater privilege purchase tickets at the higher end, which will allow individuals with historically less access to wealth, disproportionately BIPOC folks, to pay the lower fees.
Partial scholarships are available via this “application“. Please allow us 72 hours to get back to you!
Email us at workshops@equityinthecenter.org if you have any questions!
Workshop Cost
| Subsidized Rate | Actual Cost Rate | Supporter Rate | Investment Rate |
| Non-profits with budgets <$1M | Non-profits with budgets between $1M and $3,999,999; government | Foundations with assets less than $10M; non-profits with budgets between $4M and $9,999,999 | All for-profit companies; foundations with assets over $10M; and non-profits with budgets $10M and above |
| $150 | $175 | $200 | $225 |
*Budget categories based on Rockwood Leadership Institute’s tiered pricing model
September Session
Tuesday, Sept 20, 2022, 2:30-5:30 pm ET
Facilitators
Fiona Kanagasingam, Co-Founder, BIPOC Project
Fiona is an organizational development and equity strategist with 20 years of experience. She has managed change and scaled impact across multiple sectors as both a consultant and executive leader, most recently at Planned Parenthood of Greater New York, where she designed and led the organization’s strategy to center equity across all operations and programs. The approach she led is regarded as a model for Planned Parenthood nationally and has been publicly recognized: How Planned Parenthood of Greater NY Defanged Conservatives and Strengthened Its Mission | The Racial Reckoning Inside Planned Parenthood. Previously, Fiona was a senior leader at Community Resource Exchange (CRE) where she led engagements focused on strategic planning, equity, leadership development, team effectiveness, and change management for funders, nonprofits, higher education, and public sector organizations. She built and scaled CRE’s Equity and Inclusion practice to one of the firm’s largest, and launched CRE’s own internal racial equity transformation process.
Her approach to advancing change and justice has been shaped by foundational experiences globally, as a senior leader in higher education where she launched a nationally groundbreaking methodology for dialogue on race, politics, and identity in her country of origin, Singapore; as an advisor to large global corporations on organizational assessment and change; and as a counselor working directly with families impacted by violence.
Fiona received her BA from Columbia University in Comparative Politics with a concentration in Gender Studies, magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, her Master in Counseling from Monash University in Australia, and her Certificate in Nonprofit Management from Georgetown University. She is also a certified executive coach. Learn more about her experience on LinkedIn.
Merle McGee, Co-Founder, BIPOC Project
Merle McGee is an equity leader with responsibility for developing engagement strategies with an equity lens. Merle has extensive experience in nonprofit management, youth development, education, racial justice, and gender equity. She previously served as Chief Program Officer at the YWCA of the City of New York, where she oversaw multiple program portfolios. Merle recently published a chapter in Changemakers! Practitioners Advance Equity and Access in Out-of-School Time Programs on youth development, race, and critical practice. Merle received her Bachelor’s degree from New York University and holds a Master’s of Science in Non-Profit Management from the Milano School of International Affairs, Management and Urban Policy at New School University. She is the co-founder of the BIPOC Project (a Black, Indigenous, and People of Color solidarity movement). Merle has been an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Public Administration at the Wagner School of Public Service at New York University, where she taught nonprofit consulting and Race and Identity in Organizations.