Partner Workshop: Building Pro-Black Institutions and Movements

This two-part webinar for multi-racial participants aims to disrupt the ways anti-Blackness shows up in organizations and communities. The facilitated workshop will involve interactive exercises and an experiential dialogue using historical and contemporary information, self-reflection, institutional analysis, visioning, and collective action planning.

A key learning objective of this training is for participants to be more equipped with resources for identifying and undoing anti-Black racism and building pro-Black spaces within teams, organizations and communities.

As a result of participation in this session, folks will develop:

• Enhanced understanding of how anti-Black racism operates as a fulcrum of white supremacy
• Deeper analysis of how anti-Black racism distinctly influences institutional culture and inter- and intra-personal dynamics within organizational, community and movement spaces
• Practices and commitments for undoing white supremacy and anti-Blackness, and advancing pro-Black organizing spaces as a necessary foundation for racial equity
• Strategies to be accountable to Black people and communities in the work to build anti-racist organizations and communities

Facilitators

Fiona Kanagasingam is an equity leader overseeing an organization’s transformation process to center equity in operations, programs and services. She has 18 years of professional experience in executive leadership and management, organizational development, and program development in the nonprofit, public, and private sectors. Most recently, Fiona was Director of Consulting at Community Resource Exchange where she led organizational development engagements focused on equity and inclusion, strategic planning, leadership development, talent management and change management for range of social justice and public sector organizations. She built and led CRE’s Equity and Inclusion practice and Innovation practices, and led the organization’s internal racial equity taskforce. She is the co-founder of the BIPOC Project (a Black, Indigenous and People of Color solidarity movement).

She also is an adjunct professor at Teachers College, Columbia University. Fiona holds a Bachelor’s degree in Comparative Politics with a concentration in Women’s and Gender Studies from Columbia University, and a Master’s degree in Counseling from Monash University in Victoria, Australia. She is also a certified executive coach.

Merle McGee is an equity leader with responsibility for developing engagement strategies with an equity lens. Merle has extensive experience in nonprofit management, youth development, education, racial justice, and gender equity. She previously served as Chief Program Officer at the YWCA of the City of New York, where she oversaw multiple program portfolios. Merle recently published a chapter in Changemakers! Practitioners Advance Equity and Access in Out-of-School Time Programs on youth development, race, and critical practice. Merle received her Bachelor’s degree from New York University and holds a Master’s of Science in Non-Profit Management from the Milano School of International Affairs, Management and Urban Policy at New School University. She is the co-founder of the BIPOC Project (a Black, Indigenous and People of Color solidarity movement). Merle has been an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Public Administration at the Wagner School of Public Service at New York University, where she taught nonprofit consulting and Race and Identity