Analiza: Welcome to the Women of Color Rise podcast. I'm Analiza Quiroz Wolf, proud Filipino-American executive leadership coach and former CEO of a nonprofit and Captain in the U.S. Air Force. I'm also the author of The Myth of Success: A Woman of Color's Guide to Leadership. It's based on the lessons learned by many women of color leaders, including those on this podcast. We talk with successful CEOs and C-suite women leaders of color and learn about their leadership journeys. I'm on a mission to support having more diverse leaders at the table. If you're a woman or a woman of color who wants to sit at that table, you're in the right place. Now let's get into today's show.

Everyone. I'm very excited because this week is a special podcast. It's actually a bit different. I am joined by both male and female leaders from the Culture of the Health Leadership Institute for Racial Healing. It's a program I'm grateful to be a part of. These leaders are incredible, incredible people. I'm going to have them introduce themselves to you. And as you know, I'm Analiza Quiroz Wolf. I'm an executive coach, facilitator based in New York City. I'm going to go to Derek please, if you can introduce yourself.

Derek: Hi everyone. My name is Derek Burtch. I am a high school English teacher right outside Columbus, Ohio, and I am the executive director of a nonprofit called Erase the Space. We facilitate learning exchanges between classrooms across segregated districts here in central Ohio.

Analiza: Beautiful. Zainab, if you can go next, please.

Zainab: Hello, everyone. My name is Zainab Abbas. I am the founder and CEO of SciTech2u, which is a nonprofit organization that seeks to mitigate the preschool to prison pipeline right outside of Washington, DC. Thank you,

Analiza: Wonderful Christian. Please.

Christian: Absolutely. Greetings everyone. Christian Green, I'm a community college professor at West LA Community College. I teach African American studies as well as a policy and advocacy director for Sanctuary of Hope, where we focus on transitional age youth, and eradicating youth and young adult homelessness, housing insecurity, and really building up new leaders for America and for LA County.

Analiza: Last and certainly not least, Ian, please.

Ian: Hello. My name is Ian Esquibel. I'm from New Mexico. I'm a father and a husband, and like Analiza, I'm a coach, facilitator and consultant.

Analiza: So friends, you can see that we're from all different parts of the country. We also represent very different backgrounds, and this is why COHLI is such a special place, because you can have people from many different backgrounds coming together for an important mission. And so for this podcast, we actually want to share with you a mission that we're all working on together, and it's Equity Week. And I'm grateful. We're all grateful Christian is leading us in the charge. So I'm going to turn it over to Christian if you can tell us, what is Equity Week? Why are we having it? When is it? Give us a lowdown. Thank you so much.

Christian: Shout out to our team, cohort number three. We are doing some great things in the country, and so when we think about equity, we always think about equality, but we want to focus on the word equity and what that looks like for equitable resources, equitable outcomes, sustainability, X, Y and Z. But for us, for this week, it is a collaborative effort from the west to the south to the Midwest to the East Coast, about us coming together and teaching other folks, young folks, I like to say wise folks, so I say older folks, but the the wise folks, veterans, LGBTQ, all of us coming together in DC, where legislation takes place, where policy takes place. And guess what? We get to do it. We get to meet together.

It's a four day process. We come in on June 11. It's June 11 through June 14. Uh, we'll be meeting in DC. We'll do it on June 11. It's like a pre greet, greet and meet on the 12th. We'll be doing Lobby Day. We'll be going out on the hill. So we'll be going and visiting different congressional representatives. We're teaching advocates, teaching advocacy, teaching how to organize, teaching how to be a community organizer. So we have some novice advocates coming, we have some expert advocates coming, and it's going to be a great time. We have about 30 UCLA students, some students from Howard University, some of our cohort is going to be coming from all over the country to be with us on that day. That's my favorite part. Is because we get to go into the halls of Congress. We get to go talk to people. You go to meet with our representatives, both Republican and Democrats, and talk about repair. Justice talking about equity. And you know, we all have our own different work and lenses that we're coming from, whether it's health, education, reparative, restorative, and we get to bring up our own organizations while we're talking to these different representatives.

And on the 13th we'll be having the equity ball. So those that do not know what a ball is, you know, we're used to the galas and all this other stuff. Your homework today is to go figure out, go watch pose or go watch legendary and that will give you a glimpse of what that exists of or consist of. And then on the last day, we'll be having a reflective pool, reflective Memorial walk, a ceremonial walk about restoration, about racial healing, about transformation and what that looks like. And it's going to be a great week, and we welcome everyone. All are welcome, all agents, and this is our second time doing it. And so we envision this to be a lifelong process. Because when we think about America, we should be thinking about the African proverb. It says, I am because we are. I am because all of us on this call have made me who I am today. And I thank you all for this time, and you know, thank you for believing in equity. So yeah.

Analiza: Thanks, Christian. I'm so inspired. I figure with this amazing group here, we could all share personally why this is important to us. I'll kick it off, Christian, as you're speaking. And I could envision people from different backgrounds, different ages, coming together and saying, How can we value each other? How can we value our unique experiences and actually want to support not just me, my family, but all of us? I'll talk about myself personally, speaking as someone who is the daughter of Filipina immigrants. You know, I've prioritized the individual, right? I go it alone, like I go hard and fast and let me just survive. And the older and I think wiser I get, the more I realize that actually is a way to sink. I need others. I need others to help carry the burden. And with that, it makes it lighter. It's also way more fun. And I'm actually thinking, Christian, with your share, maybe I can have my daughter come like, maybe this could be the way of sharing that this is not just talk. It's actually like walking the show, showing her that Mama means what, what she says and and sees it in action. So I'm inspired. Derek Ian Zainab, would love to hear your stories,

Zainab: Yeah, so I can share a little bit of my story. I used to teach at a for profit college many, many years ago, and I had a student that wasn't doing so well. One day, I put him aside, spoke to him, and, you know, told him how charismatic he is, how great his work is. When he does do the work, the student has a turnaround. So, you know, he went from making DS, Cs, Ds and Fs to just making A's and B's. At that point, he was even tutoring a lot of his peers in the classroom about two weeks in. Because this was an accelerated program, an associates program, that I was teaching in biotechnology. The president of the school came into my classroom with two plain clothes police officers and arrested him right in the middle of, you know, our classroom. And if you could imagine, it was devastating, it was shocking. It was heartbreaking for not just myself, but for all of his peers in the classroom.

So I wanted to make a difference, and that is to mitigate the, you know, preschool essentially the preschool to prison pipeline. And so I thought the best way to do it is to capture youth while they're young, and to give them access to STEM, if you will, because I was teaching a stem subject, and he was very good at it. So that's, you know, what prompted me to start SciTech to you and to make it a mission to do all I can to, you know, mitigate, minimize, and hopefully, one day eliminate this preschool to prison pipeline, and in my work, I found that a lot of students that are suspended in school or even expelled in school have a higher rate of incarceration. Additionally, African American students are targeted for that. When you look at the statistics, there are about 13% African American in the country, but they make up almost 50% of the prison population. So if you can imagine, that's something that needs to be addressed. So instead of the preschool to prison pipeline, we need to create a preschool and prosperity pipeline and increase representation in stem so that is our mission with SciTech to you. So I'll let someone else go from there.

Analiza: Thanks, Zainab, Ian and Derek, one of you I'd love to hear. Why is this equity week important to you?

Derek: Alright, I'll go. This is Derek speaking. I think that when Christian mentioned this, I was really on board, because this is a lot of the work that I do in Ohio, and it's been really interesting to see this work from everybody's sector that they're coming from. But for right now, equity is a bad word in education. It's being eliminated through legislation in Ohio and national executive orders. And so knowing that this work is absolutely important, because we can look at the numerous studies that show that when needs are met for students and that all students have different needs, they can achieve so much. But what we're trying to do as a country, or not, we're what this administration is, and the super majority in Ohio is trying to do is eliminate this needs based system, this fair school funding system in Ohio, any kind of DEI program coming, you know, the executive orders coming for that from the federal government.

And so it's really important to me, because I started Erase the Space because I looked around me, I was a teacher in a rural school and in a suburban school. I grew up in the area, and it was really clear that equity was not the mission. And I could say that's true for every single metro area in the country, that segregation of its resources of the time that is spent, the investment that's done by cities, is segregated. And so what we're looking at is a system that is not built on equity. Yet these attacks are still happening. So yes, I do want to criticize the system, but I am not in the business of creating more harm while we're doing it. So to partner with you all on this, and to bring Erase the Space there, and to bring my knowledge of the education system, and to bring representation from Ohio, where everything that we believe in is under attack from a super majority, gives me a lot of hope to continue the work that I'm doing.

My cup is filled when we do this, because it can get depleted. We just had a big march of teachers coming to the State House last Thursday in the rain to say, like, you know, let's not short students, $2.75 billion while giving a professional sports team, the Browns, $600 million in bonds in this new budget. So it's extremely important to this what I believe to be really foundational, just the right to learn and be around other people.

Analiza: Thanks, Derek.

Ian: This is Ian. Like Derek, I work in education, and here in New Mexico, our public education department is trying to respond to a suit brought against it and our state can do a better job serving Native American students, English learners, students from economically disadvantaged families, and then students with disabilities. Those were the at risk student populations named in the lawsuit. And so this work is very important to me. Christian. I want to thank you for your leadership. I think anytime we get people from across the country together, that's powerful. Anytime we go to DC to have our voices heard. That's powerful. And sometimes being in New Mexico, DC feels very far away. And so I like this opportunity.

Analiza, when you were talking about maybe bringing your kids to that space, I think there can be theoretical components of this work, and then there can be very personal components of this work. And so thank you again, Christian, for you and your team, kind of providing this opportunity. I like this year over year opportunity, but these are fundamental ways that we as citizens can engage with systems. Derek, to your point, to let systems know what we want, to let leaders of those systems know what we want, both at a federal level and at a state level.

Analiza: Thank you, all. Christian, I'd love to hear your perspective.

Christian: Absolutely so I lost my brother in the foster care system. And when we talk about systems, I lost my brother on New Year's Eve. This past New Year's Eve, I got news that while I was in church, you know, praising God. However, my brother was incarcerated, and another system, right? But he was formerly incarcerated for 22 years, then he got out, then I was able to find him through ancestry.com, then I ended up going back to jail because of what it is, the system wouldn't let him grow and develop and be able. To get a job and secure a livelihood for himself. So he ends up passing away in jail because of something happening outside of his realm. When we think about systems, systems have tormented, have broken and have what has devastated families from all over the country, all over the world. So for us, when we look at equity, this is why I fight so hard for what I do. It just comes natural for me, right? It's just like, Okay, I gotta do it. It's a part of the healing part of us.

I feel like every person that is a part of this cohort has healing capabilities, and we are heroes in our own rights. And for me, I think that this is where we get to heal the nation as individuals, you know, from New Mexico to Ohio to to Maryland to here, like we're all coming together from different backgrounds, right, from different systems background, and being able to say, You know what, we are not going to stand for this. This is what we envision. This is how we can reimagine what America or what equity looks like. And there is no one size fits all answer, right? We got to come together with solutions we can criticize all day. But if we have no solutions such as equity week, equity week is a solution that we can help heal individuals, find joy within this time frame, be able to communicate with one another, figure out how to partner, how to build an ecosystem with one another. And really, you know, build this, this idea of advocacy. And I think that this is where I guess this is my personal belief. Is around equity week, and I really want us to think about how we help heal the nation?

Analiza: So love that. Christian I would love for you, and, of course, others too. So look, we have an audience, and we hope that they can hear a message we're telling about this week. What is the request we have? What do we hope people can do? Can they come? Tell us? What's the invitation here Christian?

Christian: Invitation is to meet us in DC. But if you cannot meet us in DC, you can always share this podcast. You can tag the National Black Justice Coalition. You can tag this podcast. You can tag United by Equity, but also just share, share the news. Share the flyers. Share the information for you. Everyone knows somebody that's on the East Coast, you know, let them know. Come on over. Catch a bus, catch a plane, walk if you got to, but really try to meet us there and share the good news. As they would say at church, share the gospel.

Zainab: I was also going to add, if you are not happy with the geopolitical status of this country, this is a great opportunity for you to come out and voice your opinion to your representative, not only about the issues that we're addressing, but even the issues that are on a micro level that affects your community. This is equity for everyone. So where you need support from your representative, this is a day to come out and let them know what your needs are. We elected them. It's our taxpayer tax dollars that are paying them to do the work for us. So this is an opportunity for them to hear you and your concerns.

Analiza: Thank you so much for carving out time to hear today's podcast. 3 things before you go. First, if you found it helpful, please leave a five star review. Second, you can get a free chapter of my book, The Myth of Success: A Woman of Color's Guide to Leadership at analizawolf.com/freechapter. And lastly, if you're interested in executive coaching, please reach out to me at analiza@analizawolf.com. Thank you so very much.