I was an active member in a regional chapter of a nationwide nonprofit organization. Having been involved with the organization for several years, I was currently serving on its governing board. The regional branches had relative autonomy, but took guidance from national headquarters. A year or so into my board membership, the national group decided to initiate an organization-wide diversity initiative and asked the regional chapters to place increased emphasis on diversity and inclusion in their programs and structures.
Throughout my professional career, I’d been involved with employee resource groups addressing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and been passionate about advancing equity in the workplace for diverse employees, particularly at leadership levels. My parents were civil rights activists, and I had been president of my high school’s Black Culture Club.
Feeling equity to be equally as important in the nonprofit sector as in industry, I encouraged the board to pursue this challenge vigorously and volunteered to participate in the new initiative. When asked to take the lead in setting up a committee to examine diversity, equity, and inclusion in our organization, I gladly accepted.
In taking on the assignment, my first action was to seek out another volunteer, whom I’ll call Felicia. She was a Hispanic female who had headed up an earlier effort to increase services provided to the Latiné community in the region.1
“Felicia, I wanted to touch base with you. A year or so ago, just as I was coming onto the board, you were heading up a committee dealing with diversity issues. A few months later you resigned, and the group was disbanded. Can you tell me what happened?”
“We were charged with identifying ways we could provide our organization’s services to a more diverse group of individuals,” she replied. “But I soon learned that the organization was unwilling to put their money where their mouth was.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, when we talked with a few people in the communities we serve, we discovered that to attract individuals from underserved populations, we’d have to change our delivery system. In some cases, this even involved providing new services. When I proposed those changes to the board, I was told, flat out, that there simply wasn’t money available for it. It was extremely frustrating to get that reaction after having spent so much time doing the research. I also felt bad about having raised hopes in the community that wouldn’t be fulfilled.”
I nodded. “Yes, I can see where that would be difficult.”
“I wasn’t the only one frustrated. The entire committee felt burnt out, pessimistic, and suspected that we’d been set up from the beginning.”
“This time, at least, we have the support of the national organization,” I pointed out. “Maybe that will help. And we’ve decided to focus, at least initially, on the internal makeup of our organization. Maybe if we had more supportive individuals on the board and there was more involvement of people of color in our day-to-day operations through the volunteer staff, there would be more enthusiasm for making changes. It’ll take longer, but perhaps over time we can raise awareness of the need for real inclusion and equity, not just window dressing.”
Knowing some of the history of organizational efforts regarding diversity, my committee decided to conduct research on the present state of the demographic makeup of the organization before making any recommendations for what might be done to increase diversity and move toward racial equity. We looked at all aspects of our organization—the characteristics of who we served, who made up our cadre of volunteers, the makeup of chapter governance (board and committee membership), representation of members of different groups in the marketing materials, the sources of our funding, and so forth.
In reviewing the results of our initial research, I was stunned to discover that while the agency served many Black men, there were no Black males on the board or on any of its committees. Nor was there a single Black male among our volunteers. That finding took me completely by surprise. Upon seeing the data, the committee agreed this was an important lack of representation that needed to be corrected. After much discussion, we came up with proactive recommendations to add a Black male to our board, increase their representation on our board-appointed committees, and set some recruiting goals—both number and timeframes—for increasing Black male involvement in several volunteer categories.
I approached Georgina (another fictitious name), Chair of Membership and Volunteers, a White woman who had held this board-appointed position for several years, with the above recommendations. Georgina and I had a good relationship. She had always sought my opinion during board meetings, and we often held similar positions on issues coming before the board. She also seemed to support the organization’s new emphasis on increasing diversity. I had no hesitation in asking her opinion when I saw that many of my committee’s recommendations would fall under her committee’s purview.
I didn’t have to do this, as her approval wasn’t required, but I thought it important to obtain her buy-in. I saw her as having a dual role, since she would be at the table when recommendations were considered by the board, and her committee was the one that would carry out any changes in policies and procedures.
I emailed her the recommendations my DEI committee planned to submit to the board. She suggested edits: moving the target date for the goals much further out and questioning whether we were focusing on the right categories of volunteer involvement. She agreed the data revealed a problem but seemed to be hesitant about endorsing the specific steps in addressing it. The ambiguity of her wording made it difficult for me to decide whether this was a “no.” If so, what was the logic behind it? Where was her reticence coming from?
I thought to myself, I’m just going to call and have a conversation. There must be something I’m not understanding here. I think it’s important we understand each other’s positions fully before taking the recommendations to the board. Even though I knew this could be an awkward conversation, I was worried that if she didn’t approve of my committee’s ideas and specific goals, she would veto it at the board level, so I wanted to dig deeper into what lay underneath her seeming resistance.
As our phone conversation began, I said to her, “I’m curious about why you’re not more enthusiastic about our proposal. You seemed so supportive at the board meeting when I was asked to take on this initiative. Is there something about our proposal you don’t understand? Is there something we’re overlooking? I need to understand more about how this looks from your perspective. Can you share more of your thinking with me?”
“It seems like the major burden of implementing your recommendations will fall on me and my committee,” she replied. “I just don’t know if we have the capability of finding the right people.”
Her response puzzled me. “But isn’t that what your committee does? Find and recruit new members for the board, board committees, and the volunteer staff? You seem to have so many contacts within the community and do such a good job of finding people who support our mission.”
“But this is different,” she said.
“How so?” I persisted.
She took a deep breath and said hesitantly, “Here’s my dilemma. I worry that if your group highlights this situation, I’ll be stuck trying to find Black males with the appropriate backgrounds and skills to serve as volunteers and board members. And, quite frankly, I don’t know how to find them.”
“I see,” I said after a moment’s pause. “Well, I do appreciate your candor. It’s hard to admit not knowing something, especially when it involves racial issues.”
“Yes,” she emphatically agreed. “I feel like I should know, but I don’t. I don’t even know where to begin such a search. It’s easy enough for your committee to make the recommendation, but I’m the one who’ll have to implement it.”
“Perhaps the members of my committee can serve as a resource for you,” I suggested. “What if I go back to the group and ask for more specific and detailed recommendations on how to go about undertaking a search . . . and add those recommendations to the goals?”
“That would be extremely helpful,” she admitted. “It would give me somewhere to start.”
“And maybe,” I continued, “I can approach my company about providing financial support for a marketing effort. There might even be individuals within my work organization who would be qualified and interested in getting involved.”
We continued our conversation, talking it through a bit more and identifying actions that would make her work easier if the board approved our recommendations. I took that information back to my committee and incorporated their suggestions into the proposal.
Not long after that, I had another conversation with Felicia, the individual who had headed up the earlier diversity initiative.
“I’m sure you won’t be surprised that there was some initial resistance to our Black male recruitment proposal. But you know me, Felicia. I don’t view pushback as a showstopper. Once we responded to Georgina’s fears about how she’d implement this and found ways to smooth her path, I ran our proposal by a few other board members. Since I’d already responded to Georgina’s concerns, I was better able to respond to theirs. Some of these individuals even had their own suggestions on how to recruit more Black male involvement. When we formally submitted our recommendations to the board, they were approved.”
“I’m impressed with your willingness to stick with it, talk with so many people, and make so many changes to your initial recommendations,” Felicia said. “It sounds like Georgina’s initial foot-dragging helped you end up with a better proposal.”
“You’re right, it did! It took much longer than I expected, but the outcomes were better,” I agreed.
We went on to discuss other things the DEI committee was doing and what it was accomplishing (or not). Felicia then said, “You know what? If you’ve got room for me on your committee, I’d like to join you. I’m inspired . . . and optimistic that more things can be done.”
“That’s great to hear. We can really use your help and expertise. Plus, we really need more representation.”
“I think I can help you bring in more folks who can add diversity to the group.”
“Just what we need. I’m so glad you’re willing to get involved again, Felicia! It makes me feel good that you want to come back. You have a lot of value to offer. We’ve gotten some things approved, but there’s a long list of things we still need to do. We’ll get them done, even though it’ll take a lot longer than either you or I would like.”
Erika Young is Sr. Director of Origination for NextEra Energy Resources (NEER), responsible for origination of renewable power generation projects in Texas. Prior to joining NextEra in 2018, Erika spent seventeen years of her career at Enbridge’s Gas Transmission group and its predecessor companies, Spectra Energy and Duke Energy. Erika also served in various roles in Planning, Strategy, and Global Sourcing and Logistics. Her early career was spent at financial services firms in audit, accounting, and mergers and acquisitions.
While at Duke Energy in 2002, Erika had the opportunity to participate in diversity and inclusion training led by Dr. Jean Kantambu Latting. The training centered around the Conscious Change principles and skills that Dr. Latting co-created with Dr. Jean Ramsey. Those skills enabled Erika to increase the effectiveness of her professional and personal relationships, and fueled her passion to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion in the workplace.
Erika earned a bachelor’s degree in accounting from Xavier University of Louisiana and an MBA from Tulane University. Originally from New Orleans, Young currently resides in Houston with her husband, Brian, and two sons, Jalen (18) and Julian (15). Erika enjoys time with family and friends, going to the movies, and golf.
