Education Leaders of Color Conference

When we speak up, we heal our souls

The kids who look up to us deserve that from us. And now is the time.

Last year, over 75 Education Leaders of Color gathered to begin to unpack the experience of 2020 and 2021 as a community.

Some of the comments I heard were:

• We need more SELF-CARE. Change starts within, and when we truly know ourselves, we are better equipped to lead others. Self-care helps us build self-awareness that can enable greater change throughout our communities. 

• We need to be UNAPOLOGETIC. We never apologize for who we are or what we stand for. Transformation starts when we break free of shame.

• We need to lean into RESISTANCE. More work must be done to empower both our scholars and leaders, and to resist FEAR (forget everything and run). 

• We can’t lead from ISOLATION. Now more than ever, our community effort is vital to real transformation. When we come together, as we did at this event, we create strength in numbers and broaden the path for everyone.

What we all realized was that we needed to unpack a lifetime of racial trauma as humans first, and learned how it impacted who we are as education leaders and how it has shaped our work. 

We all have a story- we are all powerful and we all have the ability to change the landscape of education when we take the time to heal, and to understand that we are a united power, even in isolation.   

I discovered the importance of having a space for those of us who wish to have a different conversation about race and education to connect and share and be real. It is through stepping into this space that we will no longer need this space in the future.

What I have come to believe through my journey as an equity leader and attorney, is that what each of us truly desires is the freedom to speak our truth and express ourselves as a leader of color without concern for our professional future. We want our students to see their whole beautiful authentic selves reflected in every corner of the educational environment.

This is a bold statement for the daughter of a civil rights leader, whose family came to the US to fight the fight and integrate the neighborhoods, the schools and the workplaces. There was never a time when race was not a part of my daily experience.

Yet in this time of racial reckoning, I choose a different approach. Rather than focusing on fighting against the media’s narrative about us (though I watch that too), I have gone inward to explore my own race narrative, and get honest about the stories I inherited, and how they compare to what I really believe in my own heart.

And even more, I have become familiar with what I truly DESIRE.

If you were free to express authentically as a leader of color, knowing that the world had your back, who would you get to be each day?

This is what we’ll be exploring at the The Second Annual Education Leaders of Color Retreat: Rewriting The Story.

Through this 2-day immersion into our authentic desires, we will begin to surface the PERSONAL narrative that is keeping us trapped in the COLLECTIVE narrative.

We will look at WHY we keep the story alive, and what we want MORE than our story.

What’s possible through this work:

• A deeper understanding of self and the desires that make you a unique leader

• A willingness to be 100% more authentic in how you show up

• Freedom to create your path with the support of a community that has your back

• An awareness of the impact your very beingness has on those around you, even when it is subtle

• Release the Old Tired Path that holds you back

• Learn how to hold space and create a container of trust for others like you (and not like you)

• Increase your ability to be with other people’s thoughts, ideas, and experiences

• Feel the brilliance of who you are and increase your authentic power as a leader

• Model the way for our young people!

During our time together we will:

• Explore the timeline of institutionalized racism and understand our place in time on the “Chaordic Path”

• Touch into our own personal story as it relates to the collective story

• Identify the desires we’ve put on the backburner to take out once the trauma passes

• Reimagine a world in which we get to take center stage

• Discover what safety means for us personally and as a collective

• Choose our commitment for the next six months, and decide how we will act on it (for some this will be an active exploration or physical action plan, for others it will be an inward journey of healing and transformation)

• Remember how our narrative crosses that of the young people we have the honor to influence

• Experience other leaders of color who have aligned their entrepreneurial with health, wellness and economic wealth to heal their souls. I call this the path to self actualization.

• Take time and space to restore and rejuvenate, and learn practices  that you can take with you from chefs, healers, and self-care and self-expression professionals of color.

Conference Host Paula Forbes

Paula is a conversation catalyst who guides leaders committed to making meaningful change. Her work as an attorney initially led her to this point in her journey. Over the years, she has handled numerous workplace investigations and conducted conflict resolution conversations and meditations for employers and organizations of all sizes. The questions are always the same: What is wrong with our organization? Why can’t our employees and/or teams work together better? At some point Paula realized all her work in this area was only surface-level. In other words, she was just validating the problem or “fixing” a specific conflict instead of looking at the deep roots underneath and identifying the opportunities for positive change and growth. That much deeper work starts not with “fixing what’s wrong” but with radically changing the culture of an organization by allowing everyone there to show up as their authentic selves and share the gifts that they were hired to offer. If we don’t first handle our own self-awareness and understand who we are and how we impact others, it becomes challenging for the people around us to be who they are and contribute in a positive way. This gets at the heart of how we can create equitable, inclusive, productive, profitable organizations and vibrant communities. This is the core of what Paula does at her leadership workshops, institutes, and retreats Through an equity lens, Paula takes individuals and groups on a leadership journey that teaches self-discovery as the catalyst for transforming the entire team dynamic. She uses a number of different facilitation methods to help participants focus on their shared objectives and build a common language that can act as the bridge between their diverse perspectives and lived experiences.

Paula also offers one-to-one leadership coaching that equips leaders with the tools they need to become more self-aware and align their organizations with more diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. Paula’s legal work over the last 30-plus years working in the public, nonprofit and corporate environments in addition to establishing my own law firm in 2010 has focused on the legal framework and the people who drive education, labor, compliance, and employment.

Paula’s journey as an attorney, consultant, and educator, as well as her lived experience as a Black woman, mother of a Black son, and daughter of a civil rights leader has shaped her leadership lens and informed so much of what she incorporates in her professional development opportunities. In addition to providing coaching, consulting, and training, Paula is also an adjunct professor of Education and the Law at the University of Minnesota as well as teaching Public Policy at Concordia University in Saint Paul MN.