What I am Doing to Increase Equality

Over the past two years, I have educated myself on racism and sexism in the United States. I had felt for many years that things were not right in our world, but as I focused on ensuring financial security in our hunger-games capitalistic world, I pushed the nagging thoughts aside. Once I started positioning myself to leave my CEO role, the anger of my youth returned — anger that came from observations of a rigged world. I decided that I needed to do what I could to make change. Although I am only one person and my actions alone cannot fix the world, I wanted to take action, that if replicated, could. Here’s what I’ve done:

Educate myself. My education started with sexism, but I quickly realized that sexism was a small part of the problem and expanded my education. I started with this list of resources, and I’ve read extensively. I’ve also participated in several anti-racism workshops by SURJ, Dr. Lori Watson, and Deborah McKnight. Some of the books that have really influenced me include:

• The Color of Law
• How to be An Anti-Racist
• Between The World and Me.
• Down Girl: The Logic of Misogny (although about the experience of gender, I find the language of policing action regardless of beliefs very applicable to race as well).
• Schoolhouse Burning — about public education, but I learned a lot about the relationship of public education and race.
• Ghosts in the Schoolyard

Educate Others.

• YPO Education Day on Implicit Bias and Creating More Equitable Organizations
• Organized Deborah McKnight Anti-Racist Workshop for Redwood High School
• Written Op-Eds
• Talk about these issues with families and friends
• Don’t let racist-sexist comments slide
• Watch my language and try to improve. Growing up in the 80s, I’ve used some language that is not good (mostly towards ableist).

Work to Build More Equitable Organizations.

• YPO Education Day on Implicit Bias and Creating More Equitable Organizations
• Racial Equity Playbook (racialequityplaybook.org). Worked with business school classmates to create guidance for organizations looking to improve racial equity in their organizations.
• Working to promote the Racial Equity Playbook

Fight for Equitable Housing. As a country, we made deliberate decisions to build middle class wealth through housing, and left Black people out of it. Now, across the country, neighborhoods work to increase their wealth by prohibiting new housing. As a result, we now have a nationwide undersupply of housing, and a generation of homeowners fighting against fixing it. The gap in homeownership is a significant factor in the black-white wealth gap. Housing patterns are direct results of racist housing policy, and must be addressed.

• Donate and volunteer for Yimby
• Letter to the editor supporting housing
• Attend public hearings to support the building of housing in housing exclusive areas (I do not publicly support building housing in Black and Brown dominant neighborhoods).
• Support pro-housing legislators
• Talk to friends and family about the importance of supporting housing and the connection between zoning, housing policy and racism

Fight for Funding Public Education.

• Created website fundpublicschool.org to collect information on the importance of funding public school for all students. Includes information on racism in public education.
• Write op-eds on the importance of public school funding and creating more equitable funding sources.
• Trying to find more folks to write op-eds.

Voter Suppression

• Donate to groups fighting voter suppression (Stacey Abrams)
• Participate in “get out the vote” drives, especially ones targeted towards Brown and Black people.
• Encourage/guilt friends and family to do likewise

Push for Representation in Education.

• Working on initiative with business school classmates to promote Black and Brown teachers. This is under development
• I have written our schools and school boards requesting greater representation.
• I include this as a point in my op-eds.