Paths to Liberation: Internalized Racism's Impact on Leadership
This webinar will explore the ways in which our identities and their positions of dominance or subordination in a societal system of power and privilege impact the way in which we lead and our ability to lead. The webinar will pay particular interest to the ways in which racial subordinance and dominance is learned and internalized and how these phenomenon impact students and professionals' ability to lead and see themselves as leaders. The critical question that the webinar will reflect on is, how do structural (positional power of leadership), systemic (identities of power and privilege in a system of oppression, and internal (beliefs and actions) intersect and impact effective and culturally relevant leadership for student and institutional leadership? And finally, through a lens of developing a liberatory mindset and practicing liberatory behavior in leadership, we will discuss how internalization can be mitigated and lessened to create a more culturally responsive and confident leader.
I have over 20 years of diversity, inclusion, and social justice teaching, programming and facilitation experience in higher education including professional roles at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Southwestern University, University of Massachusetts Amherst, Mount Holyoke College, and most recently, Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York as the Associate Vice President for Institutional Diversity and Community Engagement. I’ve taught courses such as Social Diversity in Education, Exploring Differences and Common Ground through Intergroup Dialogue, and the Psychology of Racism and facilitated workshops and presentations at the National Conference of Race and Ethnicity (NCORE), the White Privilege Conference (WPC) as well as National Association of Student Personnel Administrators (NASPA) and American College Personnel Administrators (ACPA) conferences. I am an independent coach, consultant and social justice educator and consult through Authentic Coaching and Consulting, www.authenticseeds.org.
Additionally, I am a co-lead facilitator for the LeaderShape Institute, a national organization committed to creating leaders with integrity, and as a Senior Trainer with Class Action, a national organization committed to ending classism. I've served as a mentor for the Posse Foundation for Mt. Holyoke College Posse 1 and am currently a Retreat Facilitator for the Posse Plus Retreats (PPR) held at their partner schools. I hold a doctorate (Ed.D) in Social Justice Education from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and my dissertation, entitled A Process of Becoming: U.S. Born African American and Black Women in a Process of Liberation from Internalized Racism, focused on internalized oppression and liberation. I also hold an MS in Educational Administration and BA in Journalism and English from Texas A&M University.
