Over the past year or so, I've had the privilege of collaborating with incredible individuals and organizations who have shown a genuine interest in understanding the values, approach, and possibilities that come with partnering with True North EDI. It has been an enriching journey, allowing me to not only share our expertise but also to learn and grow from the experiences of our dedicated consultants in the field.

Our consultants have been invaluable sources of insight, sharing both the triumphs and challenges they've encountered while working closely with our clients. Additionally, I've had the honor of learning from those who have sought our guidance after previous attempts with other consultants. These collective experiences have granted me a profound perspective on the current landscape of DEI needs and how we can best support our clients in their transformative journeys.

As the Director of Partnerships, my team and I approach every interaction with genuine curiosity and care for the experiences and aspirations of those who seek us out - whether it's for a brief conversation or a long-term partnership. In the hopes of establishing and maintaining meaningful and responsive partnerships, I would like to share some insights on how we can support these relationships from the very beginning.

Sharing the needs of your professional community

We receive outreach from individuals in a myriad of positions. Be it president, manager, board chair, or Equity/Diversity executive, it’s important in the beginning to recognize the potential blind spots that exist when sharing an experience or the emerging needs that led to a DEI consultant being contacted. While our job is to listen and ask questions for deeper understanding, we also know that we’re only getting part of the story. This isn’t about reliable or unreliable witnesses as much as it’s the nature of how we share our experience. We can only truly do it from our own body and point of view. One way to ensure a broader, more inclusive beginning process is to have individuals from multiple identities and perspectives be present to share about the history and present needs of the organization. More specifically, our own values prompt us to want to hear from those who are part of groups or identities that are historically marginalized.

Some of our most successful partnerships began with some sort of Working Group or Committee to helm this work alongside us. We found that relying on only one point of contact can lead to burnout for that individual. We've seen firsthand the risks of having all the responsibility fall on one person (especially if they leave the org). A small, diverse, and representative group to shoulder this work can go a long way. Having a cross-section of passionate individuals with different perspectives and experiences that can be present at the beginning and throughout the work can lead to more innovative and effective solutions. If the team doesn’t exist when you reach out to us, we recommend, when possible, asking a few individuals who capture the spirit of this value to join the first call. As part of our work, we can help you design and create meaningful practices for a more permanent working group or structure that helps guide your DEI work.

No one-size-fits-all solutions

When working with new partners, we strongly recommend starting with an assessment to better understand their organizational culture and identify any gaps in current DEI efforts. This allows us to tailor our approach to meet their specific needs. While the ultimate goal is to create an inclusive environment that attracts and retains a diverse workforce, we need to first identify the tensions, opportunities, and hopes from your current staff. It’s also important to consider where all team members are in their DEI journey and begin with foundational sessions to develop a common language and understanding of historical contexts. This approach will help us dive deeper into more complex topics and work towards transformative change together.

Naming boundaries shouldn’t lead to shortcuts

DEI work manifests in a lot of different ways. It can come in the form of workshops and trainings, strategic planning processes, coaching, and larger work of reimagining how an organization operates and feels. While we understand there are many factors (e.g. budget constraints, capacity issues, or timing) that can limit what’s possible in a given moment, long-term change can only come from tiered and long-term approaches. It’s important that those who reach out to us understand the boundaries of what’s possible and what that means for the impact of our joint work.

As we’ve mentioned in our previous blogs, there are no shortcuts to meaningful change. While you can hire us for a limited engagement to facilitate a series of workshops, they must be placed within the context of a larger vision for the organization for the present and future of its DEI work. So many staff we’ve worked with have reported that short-term efforts can feel superficial and can do more harm than good. Staff take note and can lose trust in the process if they feel that their organization is only making a minimal effort. Asking people to attend just one or two workshops, particularly those who deal with oppression regularly, can feel like picking at a wound and can do more harm than good.

This doesn’t mean do nothing. A big part of our job is working with you to find a balance, and to collaborate and design a plan that provides you with a meaningful starting point and foundation for the larger work. Leadership Coaching, for example, can be extremely complimentary to shorter training engagements. Coaching positions leadership as a leverage point that can amplify and enrich the work happening in workshops.

There are always boundaries to the work we do. But making those boundaries visible creates an opportunity to imagine what’s possible in ways that are values-aligned. Our job is to work with you to design opportunities in creative ways.

Our dynamic together is a mirror into your organization

The relationship between client and consultants is a relationship like any other, and we will bring the values of health and honesty to that relationship. Like any relationship, power dynamics will always be present. Naming that and making it visible allows us to move forward and co-create partnership values and agreements that leave both parties feeling empowered.

Cardozie Jones, our Founder & CEO, often poses questions like "What do we want this relationship to feel like? How do we want to share critical feedback? How do we want to show up when opportunities for growth are presented? What implicit expectations need to be made explicit? What values have we inherited around relationships like this one; which of those values serve this work; and which of them do we need to surrender?" 

We believe it's essential to consider these questions when deciding which clients to partner with, and we encourage you to do the same when selecting a consulting partner.Even on our first call, we are seeking to be a trusted partner who brings valuable expertise and perspectives to help guide your aspirations and achieve your goals. We encourage you to engage us (and anyone you are in a professional relationship with) in such a way that keeps that trust paramount; it is the only way we know of to cultivate a positive and collaborative partnership.

Going into any relationship can feel like a big undertaking, especially when the decision to do so has financial implications. But I hope some of what I’ve shared shows what’s possible when we look at the beginning of such relationships as a seedling that can only thrive when it is given time, attention, and care.
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Sincerely,

Your friends at True North EDI

A few weeks ago, comedian and social commentator, Jon Stewart had some strong words for the DEI industry. Speaking with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria (clip from CNN here - about 2mins in), Stewart argues that so-called “diversity and equity” efforts are, “a salve to pacify and mollify because we won’t actually do the real thing.” He goes on to talk about how essentially meaningless DEI efforts are because; “We won’t actually dismantle the vestiges of all the systemic racism and all the systemic classism and all the systemic gender issues.” It’s a special kind of heartbreak, like when the woke uncle you’ve been mostly proud of somehow goes so far left that he ends up back on the right. That’s not exactly what’s happening here, but it does provoke the same kind of visceral, “Oh, c’mon, Jon!”

While I don’t want to spend too much time talking specifically about Stewart, his comments are worth addressing. Television media is designed to be pithy and provocative, regardless of the harm that sort of information-sharing can cause. Jon Stewart has built a name for himself by leveraging a talent for finding humor and irony in those corners of society we often like to keep hidden. In fact, I’ve found that a lot of what he unearths is well-aligned with the goals of this work, to make visible to the whole what is only visible to some, in the hopes that people are better positioned to align their actions with who they claim to be.

What Stewart shared is not a particularly new stance (especially if you are on the other side of this particular mailing list). Whether you’re someone from the outside looking in—as he is—or you are someone on the inside who has seen your share of trainings, initiatives, and equity-centered action plans. That said, Mr. Stewart, I have notes. What he shared and the way that he shared it has the potential to do great harm. This has been made clear by the fact that one of the main distributors of the interview are conservative media websites that have taken it and run.

Reductive at best, harmful at worst

Stewart kept using the words diversity and equity initiatives as though that means some single thing. So-called Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion work represents three distinct concepts linked together to cover an extremely large area of work. Despite a wide working platform, he displayed no real understanding of the layeredness of DEI work. Regardless of his purpose, the impact is that an entire body of work is reduced to a single tool that either works or doesn’t. Those of us who do the work know how hard it is to counter the skepticism that accompanies it. It’s often like pushing a boulder uphill, which is only possible when groups of committed people push together. Stewart’s comment haphazardly casts doubt on not only the work those groups have done, but progress they feel they may have made. In essence, his words target the fortitude of spirit necessary to do this work from within institutions.

Targets those it claims to support

The hustle is real ya’ll. Consulting and other freelance work is an extremely difficult path to go down and especially at the beginning of one’s career. But there are smart, passionate, talented and effective practitioners out there working within the constraints they are given to transform key areas of organizations in order to create meaningful change. When a white man with the reputation of Stewart diminishes that work without any real nuance, he diminishes the people who have stepped forward to do that work. The irony here—if you haven’t already caught it—is that most consultants whose expertise in some branch of DEI are BIPOC and/or represent other identities and communities that have been marginalized. The ripple effect of such statements are undeniable and, in this case, hurts the very people he says are being oppressed.

The illusive “we”

Stewart says: “We won’t actually do the real thing. We won’t actually dismantle the vestiges of all the systemic racism…” Have you ever heard anything that feels both true and nonsensical at the same time? There is an undeniable truth embedded in what Stewart is saying. Racism, sexism, classism and other forms of oppression are so deeply rooted in our systems and institutions that, for some, the idea of pulling up those roots feels almost inconceivable (especially when there is so much benefit for those privileged by those systems). This mindset, which operates at the conscious and unconscious levels, is one of the major reasons our work exists. However, Stewart’s rhetoric points our attention toward the abyss — the collective “we” for whom we can blame for our refusal to take real action. Passionate as he may be, that kind of speech creates an ‘all or nothing’ paradigm in which generations of people who have worked to chip away at systems of oppression at all levels of society have done so for naught. It makes invisible the efforts and progress we can attribute to those individuals, and darkens the outlook for those who might follow their footsteps.

DEI is intervention, not a cure

While there is no single or aligned vision that outlines the purpose of DEI, like anything else, it has inherent limitations. A more nuanced diatribe might have illuminated those boundaries in such a way that we can better understand what we can and cannot expect from DEI as an area of work. Stewart talks about oppression as though it is a disease that we refuse to cure. The problem—at least in the US—is that systemic oppression is not a disease, but rather a purposeful design. The operating system has not been hacked, it was coded this way. As I view it today, DEI practitioners are the hackers. We work to help decode the ways in which current systems create inequitable outcomes, and partner with organizations and institutions to recode those areas in order to align their values with their actions and desired outcomes. The hope is that by recoding enough areas, we can serve the larger transformation of the entire system. We serve alongside activists, policy-makers, educators, abolitionists, leaders, and a plethora of other stakeholders who may or may not fall under the DEI umbrella, but are working toward a unified goal.

True North EDI uses a community health model as our primary equity framework. It allows us to make visible what is present and design what is possible holistically. Like any health model, it recognizes that balanced health requires a variety of interventions that address the needs of the body, mind, and spirit. White supremacy thrives by making things flat and one-dimensional. It will continually be up to those who have stepped forward as champions in this work to push for nuance. We are allowed to be critical of things we care deeply about. But criticism must be accompanied by curiosity and a desire to understand the existence and the purpose of what is present. From there, change comes not from any one individual, but a collective of committed people who honor each other’s passion and contributions.

Sincerely,
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Your friends at True North EDI

At a recent social event, I had the rare and exciting experience of being invited into an impromptu conversion about Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI). Our host introduced me to a handful of people and we started traversing the classic low-stakes conversation topics like the weather, and of course, work, when a woman offered that her week was particularly dull because she had another mandatory DEI training. Then came the eye-roll. The eye-roll elicited knowing laughs from the group; the classic bonding strategy of finding connection over a chat about what’s terrible at work. It seemed to imply, “who can’t relate?”

I didn’t know these people, and in all fairness, they didn’t know me or what I do for a living. But when I asked this woman if she thought diversity in the workplace was important, she was quick to say “of course!” and then elaborated on her previous stance by claiming that the topic was essential, but the delivery was flawed. This might seem like an evasive move, but it’s actually not uncommon for folks who do in fact think people should be able to go to work and not experience exclusion, harassment or pay inequity (to name a few of the well-documented examples of workplace inequities experienced by people with marginalized identities) to be highly critical of their company’s DEI initiatives.

Usually, the folks I speak to about why they dread their DEI programs (both white people and people of color) they say it’s the how, not the what of the trainings that fails. They’ve shared that they are mandatory, rote, sometimes patronizing and impersonal. And more often than not, they lead absolutely nowhere. Research seems to support these complaints. While much research points to meaningful and lasting change in the field of DEI, there have been a series of studies in the last few years detailing the ways that DEI trainings can be unsuccessful, and the thesis is that too many produce little to no actual structural change.

However, in a recent article in Forbes, Janice Gassam Asare rightfully critiques this research claiming that in actuality, neither the trainings nor the studies conducted about them are designed to center the experiences of BIPOC employees. When we speak to our BIPOC clients about this it’s clear a commonly shared experience is present. Many of them have shared that DEI workshops can feel alienating because they’re clearly designed for white people and now, on top of the harm experienced at work, they have to witness the clumsy, harmful or even violent responses of their white colleagues to these efforts. And all for naught, because at the end of the day, nothing meaningful has changed.

At True North, we established that in order to counter this reality of so many DEI programs, we would have to design a set of values-based policies that guide all of our potential partnerships. Here are a few that have made a huge difference.

We orient towards joy in the work

One of our core values at TNEDI is Joyful Orientation. Nothing in our Joyful Orientation value is meant to deny or divert our eyes from the existence of the individual and collective pain that this work requires us to navigate. It does, however, serve as a critical reminder that we all have a right to joy, in all its complexity and richness, and that fundamentally, we believe it’s ok to pursue ease, joy, and levity while doing hard work. We advocate for DEI efforts that feel fresh, bespoke, and imaginative, and at True North we believe in creating spaces that balance the seriousness of what we’re trying to accomplish with the excitement of possibility.

Tip: We do challenging things all the time. Consider an area of your life where you learn enthusiastically and experience a combination of excitement, hard work and dedication. What are the necessary conditions for you to commit yourself to something challenging in a joyful way? Is it the outcomes you imagine that sustain you? Is it the relationships that make you feel supported? List out those qualities and conditions for yourself and consider how you might create those conditions for your efforts towards DEI. We advocate for a multi-tiered approach, and when possible, avoid “one-offs”

There’s no quick fix for this work, and we learned this the hard way. As with any fledgling start-up, TNEDI needed to get its name out there. So when potential clients asked for single-session trainings, we thought, “maybe we can do it better!”. We tried. But it became clear to us early on that organizations looking for one, all-staff, 90-minute anti-bias training were likely not invested in real, lasting change, nor were they invested in the actual experience of their employees. Our “no one-off” policy was quickly put in place. We offer partnership rather than a product, and at TNEDI, we’re invested in working with organizations to find creative approaches to complex problems.

Tip: Lasting change takes time. Consider a regular, consistent scenario in which you can embed an equity-centered practice and give yourself an accountability timeline (and maybe join or create a community to help support you) to check in on your progress. We design our scopes of work for each client and their specific industry - we don’t offer anything “off the shelf”

At TNEDI, we are committed to tailoring our partnerships to the needs of the organization. Our client intake process is designed to learn as much as we can about our potential partners, the landscape of their field and the opportunities that exist within that field for exciting, equity-centered initiatives. A philanthropic foundation needs a much different approach to the work of DEI than a for-profit company. Additionally, we never suggest a learning arc without knowing what inequities are operating within the organization--our work should be informed by needs. Sometimes this means we engage in an extensive discovery process that includes focus groups, surveys and town-halls. Sometimes, if it’s clear to us that the client needs a more robust equity audit due to size or structure, we recommend one of our partners in the DEI field that specializes in large-scale auditing and evaluation. The goal is to design the scope of partnership through the lens of discovery, learning and action.

We need leaders

We love collaborating with organizations that are enthusiastic about executive leadership participation, commitment and change. This isn’t always the case, and as consultants who have been doing this for a long time, we’ve become very savvy in the ways an organization’s leaders can find detours around the more difficult aspects of participating in the work. This implies any work designed for staff that doesn’t include leadership in any meaningful way. For example, it’s not uncommon for executive leadership to avoid attending sessions by saying they want employees to feel comfortable to “share honestly” and if they’re present, that won’t be possible. While we certainly advocate for understanding how identity and positionality intersect in the workplace, this often feels like hiding a bad motive under a good one. It simply doesn’t work for leaders to place themselves outside the parameters of DEI work because it implies that they are not a part of the problem or the solution. The fact is that leadership is essential for any DEI strategy to take hold, and most employees understand that when DEI efforts are happening and leaders are absent, the implication is that the work is superficial at best. Good DEI leadership logically requires the qualities of good leadership, and vision, enthusiasm, self-reflection, openness and dedication go a long way in terms of creating lasting change.

Tip: If you’re a leader in an organization about to embark on, or continue your DEI journey, consider engaging in an informal discovery process with representatives from all tiers of the organization. What initiatives have worked best for us in the past? When do we feel most engaged in our professional development? When do we feel most connected to initiatives and why? 

​I don’t consider my experience at the cocktail party to be a “gotcha” moment. I genuinely enjoy engaging people around what makes learning exciting for them, and how we can leverage what they care about most to create meaningful DEI engagements. We often say at True North that we’re here to help the inside match the outside, meaning the values we hold can and should align with our actions. And this is as true at a cocktail party as it is in a conference room. As always, we are here and ready to partner with you as you work to reimagine what is possible for you and your organization.

Always upward.

At a recent family event, I found myself in a typical (and harmless) back and forth with my father. We each offer our take on a hot topic societal issue and proceed to 10% listen and 90% dig our heels in trying to convince the other that our perspective is the right one. It’s a swell time. Sure, it gets heated now and then—especially since the last three years has been an endless barrage of firestorms—but we usually walk away closer than when we started. This last time, however, something different clicked for me. It was a moment that forced me to undig my heels and listen more deeply than I had in the past.

It’s difficult for me to imagine a time in the history of humankind where chasmic rifts didn’t exist between the multiple generations that occupy our planet at any given time. From all I’ve experienced, this dynamic seems to be both an expected and accepted part of what it means to be human. Even the most shallow of engagement in social media will expose this age-old tug of war in a bombardment of content poking fun at the absurdity of groups and individuals at every point along the generational spectrum—the youngest, the oldest, and all those in between. It’s often the source of pride as each of us wax poetic about the uniqueness and fortitude of the generation during which we came of age.

But during this last conversation with my father, I realized that despite how different my perspectives may be, my story doesn’t exist without his. I was working so hard to make him think differently, not realizing that the experiences that have led to my own “profoundness” only exist because of his life, experiences, choices, and values (even if, at times, in spite of those things). Regardless, it was a feeling of closeness that felt fresh and new, and it made me wonder if there were other areas of my life where this same understanding could be helpful.

As EDI practitioners, our vantage point offers us the unique opportunity to glean important lessons about how this dynamic can show up in professional communities engaged in equity-centered conversations and processes. As with any community, the ways in which we engage one another can lead to the building of bridges or ensure the creation of walls.

Over the past few years, we’ve found ourselves working directly with presidents, CEOs, directors, or other organizational leaders who, while authentically committed to creating more equitable outcomes for their professional communities, often identify those younger members of the community as the source of an existing tension. The word “entitlement“ certainly comes up a lot as these leaders share their feelings about a generation that doesn’t understand what it means to “work.” At best, these leaders attribute this to those individuals being new to the workforce. At worst, a true prejudice is slipping through the cracks and pointing to a generational flaw. The irony here is that the generational gaps aren’t always that wide. This can easily show up in an individual in their late 30s talking about someone in their late 20s. While age disparities aren’t meaningless, there is no single meaning that justifies sweeping generalizations that render individuals as one-dimensional.

Sliding toward the other end of the spectrum, we’ve engaged with individuals who might be newer to the workforce and/or are closer to having completed a secondary education and identify those who have been part of an organization longer as being complacent, conflict-avoidant, risk-averse, and committed—be it consciously or unconsciously—to professional norms that are dehumanizing. Depending on the nature of the organization, these younger individuals often deem the “gatekeepers” as eager to please donors, politicians, or consumers rather than prioritize the human needs of those who work within the organization.

There are many ways to look and interpret this dynamic. But our job as consultants is to take what we’ve seen and learned and help our clients avoid the pitfalls we’ve seen happen in this work. This isn’t because pitfalls can’t teach us, but because they can cause harm to the overall goals of an organization’s equity work, and to the people who are committing themselves to that work.

If we think that the work of EDI is about finding the right or best way, we’re missing the point. Our society is ever evolving. What “works” today may not work tomorrow; what works for the organization in New York City might cause real harm to the company in El Paso. The only constant is the need for skills for professional communities to work together through conflict (using an equity lens), and toward what feels possible, bold, and inspiring.

EDI is interesting because it takes many of the principles we’ve inherited from civil rights movements and practitioners and puts them through an organizational context. But the generational experiences that inform theories of change remain present and can cause tension. Consider the civil rights movements over the past 70 years and what generational narratives were at play, and how those narratives shifted as the children of those who protested on the front line became the parents of children protesting on the front line, and so on, and so on. The script of each group stays eerily the same while the actors shift and evolve.

“You have no idea what it’s like to be in my shoes.” “When I was your age we did/didn’t…” “Change takes time.” “Change won’t come if we don’t take bold action.” ”You don’t listen.” “You won’t listen.”

To be clear: this tension is not a bad thing, nor does it need to be avoided. It does, however, require models for what it looks like to move through it and find a way forward together. Of course, our work in EDI asks us to examine and think critically about which bodies and identities are granted the decision-making ability that informs what the future looks like, and which are historically denied? So, what might a paradigm shift look like? Below, we share some imperfect offerings gleaned from our experiences in the field:

• Generational wisdom is a gift, and it exists across the entire spectrum. Wisdom and experience may be correlated, but we all have experiences that are worth sharing and worth being heard. Despite what values we may have inherited that tell us to respect our elders, we believe that the wisdom of lineage flows from all directions, and that respect for that wisdom can be abundant. Imagine how conversations might change if space for this value was created and made visible. Imagine who we each could be as listeners and co-conspirators in diverse and complex communities. At True North EDI, our aim is never to negate or make small of the values we inherit, but rather to offer the opportunity for individuals to examine what values continue to serve them, and which no longer serve them in the context of equity work.
• In their resource entitled, “White Supremacy Culture” Kenneth Jones and Tema Okun describe ‘either/or’ thinking as “things are either/or, good/bad, right/wrong, with us/against us,” and that there is, “no sense that things can be both/and.” Yes, within organizations there can be a wide spectrum of beliefs about what creates real change, but if we slip into an either/or paradigm, a desire for change can become secondary to the desire to win. In our experience, there is no single right way. There is always a tapestry we help our clients create that includes threads from the multitude of experience, values, and drive that exists with professional communities.
• ​Organizations can make choices for how to move forward in equity work without having to label or justify which direction is right and which is wrong. Having done this work as long and in as many contexts as we have, we know that the landscape on which we overlay maps for change is constantly shifting. When we dig our heels in believing that we know the best way, we lose our ability to step back and assess the needs of the moment. Our humanity ensures not that we will always make the right choice, but that we are equipped with the capacity to adapt, iterate, and learn. Our ability to do so is made stronger and more formidable when a diversity of perspectives and experiences are included in the process, and when those who have been most marginalized are centered and honored for their deeper understanding of the ways in which systems have caused harm and can potentially create healing.
• It’s easy to disguise power as “experience.” Every one of us, if we are lucky, will grow older and accumulate meaningful experiences that accompany the aging process. But that experience and wisdom do not negate the existence of power and the role it plays within organizations. Eliminating power dynamics isn’t an option, but being honest about when those dynamics are present and in operation is very much within our ability and one of the principles of equity work. Making those dynamics visible also allows us an entry point into creating systems and structures that mitigate or eliminate the abuse of power. Many things can be true at the same time, but we can practice the skill of parsing out and making visible what is present and how what is present is aligning with who we say we want to be.

​Finally, there is nothing wrong with being committed to a specific model for organizational change. This work relies on the energy and conviction of committed and inspired people. Individuals who find that the values through which they operate are misaligned with the direction of the equity work happening at their organization or even in their field overall deserve spaces that represent a better fit. But we are complex human beings and our commitments aren’t immune to bias and harmful behaviors that can reinforce the very systems we are trying to undo. From moment to moment, the diagnostic is for each of us to run on ourselves in an effort to assess which values are informing how we are showing up and which are driving our decisions. If there’s nothing else I’ve learned, it’s that no one can be expected to hear, learn, or grow when they are being related to as inherently wrong or one-dimensional. In the case of my father, I learned that seeing myself as part of his story and him a part of mine was vital to our ability to move forward in a healthy and meaningful way.

If we want to design complex and whole solutions that lead to more equitable and just outcomes, we must treat each other as complex and whole.

As always, we are here and ready to partner with you as you work to reimagine what is possible for your organization.

Always upward.

Pain does not live at the center of our work.
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Last year, we were asked to participate in a conference that required us to write a description of a workshop we would be facilitating. After submitting a description, the program manager asked that we revise the language by outlining some of the “pain points” we would be addressing. We spent a good amount of time trying to brainstorm additional language that centered these so-called pain points and found ourselves struggling. It wasn’t an outlandish request, but the approach was misaligned with our own.

For a long time, be it intentional or not, our field has centered the pain of BIPOC as the catalyst for white understanding. This approach would show up in our opening questions about experiences and in the videos, articles, and diatribes we would share. The umbrella of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion and all the work that falls within it is truly expansive, and while we do not want to shame anyone’s approach or strategies, we’ve learned that like anyone or anything else, we can cause harm if we aren’t careful about who and what we center.

Pain helps us learn by creating fear, but fear can cause paralysis. Paralysis, in this context, is the antithesis of growth. For those who have experienced more than enough pain as the result of oppressive systems, why would those individuals want to sit through a three-hour workshop that is placing that pain at the center of the experience? In 2022, we shared this perspective with many clients as we co-created engagements and scopes of work. Because of this sharing, we found ourselves in more meaningful and healthy conversations that prompted us to reimagine what this work might look like in truly diverse professional spaces. More than ever we relied on our values-centered and organizational health model that aims to allow each individual—regardless of their background—to step in from where they are and walk away with the same opportunities for learning and growth as everyone else.
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Nothing in our Joyful Orientation value is meant to deny or divert our eyes from the existence of the individual and collective pain that this work requires us to navigate. It does, however, serve as a critical reminder that we all have a right to joy, in all its complexity and richness.

We’ve learned that grace and perfectionism are unhappy bedfellows. Grace can mean a lot of things. It can mean forgiveness, compassion, and for many, evoke a sense of something greater than one’s self. 

For True North EDI, we think of grace as most akin to the concept of ‘space.’ Within that space, all of the above and more can be deposited, and it is up to individuals and collectives to decide what that space looks like. Regardless of what that is, we’ve learned that growth through and toward equity requires the movement and possibilities that only grace can allow for.

The space created by so-called perfectionism, on the other hand, is not human-sized; it is cramped, binding, and forces us into a paradigm of winning and losing. While our TNEDI workshops and learning programs call out the risk of allowing perfectionism to be an underlying operating value, it has proven to be easier said than done. In 2022, we saw many of our clients and their respective professional communities arrive at the crossroad where their commitment to equity and an operating value of perfectionism intersect. When grace was present during those moments, we witnessed restorative practices that allowed for the transformation of conflict and spaces created for sharing and authentic listening. We saw commitments to prioritize impact over intent whilst still acknowledging the humanity of intent. The presence of grace allowed these organizations to proceed clumsily but forward toward whatever ‘true north’ they set for themselves.

Like everything else, we put the concept of grace through an equity lens. To whom is grace historically extended and to whom is it denied? When is grace being used as a reason to wait for change that is long overdue? When do we extend grace at the cost of our personhood and dignity? These are questions we continue to grapple with.Whether you are in a position of leadership or another member of a professional community, it’s important to remember we are creating a world none of us have ever seen. There is no agreed upon standard or model, no manual for us to refer to. We have lessons learned and meaningful data, but those have never been in short supply. 

What we need more than ever is the space to imagine and iterate, to stumble and stand, and permission to find our way as a collective of whole and complex human beings.
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In the months to come, we hope to share our official values language that outlines what each truly means for us at True North EDI as well as public opportunities to engage with us. In the meantime, we wish you a year of peace and prosperity that comes with the pursuit of collective liberation. We hope for more opportunities to partner, co-conspire, and continue sharing our passion and expertise.

Sincerely,

​Your friends at True North EDI