Transform your commitment to racial equity into anti-racist leadership

Explore leadership principles through a racial equity lens, and discover ways you as a public manager can develop and encourage equitable, anti-racist practices in your agency or organization. Through this highly interactive class, you will explore how race and resilience affects your government sector’s ability to serve (or not) all constituents. This class prepares governmental employees and elected officials to respond to concerns about “reverse racism” and “critical race theory” and evolve their sector to address the barriers their sector has established to the wellbeing of all constituents. This class affords time for governmental employees and elected officials to plan to lead for racial justice.

By the end of this class you should be able to:

• Establish a shared understanding of concepts related to diversity, equity and inclusion
• Deconstruct inequitable systems and navigating change through a lens of racial equity and inclusion
• Build a shared understanding of the historic roots and present-day manifestations of inequity
• Begin to explore the conditions needed, for self and for bodies of government, to undergo and sustain change toward racial equity and inclusion

Note: Designed by and for people working in government at the local, county or state level, this class focuses on the unique context of racial justice within public administration. Both facilitators are local elected officials and understand the possibilities and challenges of leading for racial equity within a highly political context. This course is an intermediate course – designed for people who are committed to racial equity, who want to transform their systems to address racial inequality, and who are ready to practice leading for equity.

Instructors: ananda mirilli (MS, UW–Madison) is the executive director of nINA Collective, an enterprise dedicated to supporting organizations, institutions and individuals as they advance their change process and racial equity initiatives. A native of Brazil, ananda has a long history of working with communities in the U.S. and abroad, and is the grant director to address racial disproportionality in special education for the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction.

Courtney Reed Jenkins (JD, University of Iowa) is co-leader of the Disproportionality Technical Assistance Network and has spent two decades working in nonprofits and government eliminating institutional barriers to success for underserved students. She has conducted federal and state civil rights investigations for the State of Wisconsin; managed equity-focused systems-change initiatives in Colorado, Idaho, Iowa and Wisconsin; and serves on the management team for the Wisconsin Department of Instruction.

Testimonials:

“I liked having two facilitators with different styles and backgrounds. I thought the progression of the activities mostly made sense. I thought the handouts were useful.”

“Important timely topic that was a safe space to discuss equity work with others who are interested/committed to making change possible.”

“Great mix of presenting ideas, small group discussion, individual research, etc. Also VERY much appreciated the concrete strategies pointed out related to equity principles.”