2021 GlobalMindED
The Future of Work is Diverse, Inclusive, Just and Equitable
GlobalMindED closes the equity gap by creating a capable, diverse talent pipeline through connections to role models, mentors, internships for low-income students, returning adults, First Gen to college and inclusive leaders who teach them, work with them and hire them.
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Darryl Finkton, Jr is a Community Organizer, Rhodes Scholar and Investor. He could easily be working on Wall Street, making a lot of money with this most accomplished track record. Instead, he has decided to spend this year on a learning journey visiting the 40 poorest towns in America to tell the story of those who live now as he grew up, below the poverty line. Read his story below and learn why he is on a mission to end poverty.
Below is some of the most high impact DEI content you can find. Please share it with your networks and spread the inclusive movement until we have worldwide habits of respect, acceptance and appreciation of difference.
All GlobalMindED DEI events are on our YouTube channel. International Month of Women events:
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Poverty has been the defining factor of my life. I was the youngest of four children, raised by a single mother. She worked tirelessly to feed, clothe, shelter, educate, and love us. She did this all while never earning more than $30,000 a year.
My earliest memories were in Indianapolis public housing projects. As a child, I never thought we had it all that bad. Everyone around us was poor. On a relative basis, we seemed to be doing pretty well. My mother was always there for us. She cried and struggled like everyone else’s parents, but she never left. We missed a few meals here and there, but we never went more than a day without eating. Our clothes were used but clean. My mother did her best to keep her children at a safe distance from the chaos of our world. When she wasn’t able to, we got through our trauma one way or another.
I was very lucky to have a savvy mother who could navigate the system. She never let the constant weight and disappointment of poverty defeat us. She grew up in a reality I will never truly understand, and I thank her for that. Anyone who grew up poor will understand me when I say that I grew up poor but not “dirt poor.”¹ Many of my friends, neighbors, and relatives were not so lucky. They grew up with nothing. This is especially for them.
I didn’t even realize we were poor until the third grade. I had already transferred schools eight times by then. We struggled a lot those days, but my mother kept it under wraps and eventually got her fingers onto an economic ladder. Although we moved into a poorer part of the school district, that school district was one of the best in the city. It changed my life. The teachers of Washington Township were outstanding. I received a public education that I consider second to none. I am forever grateful to the numerous teachers and coaches who lent me a hand throughout life.
In this new school district, I began to realize how much life in my neighborhood was different. My school peers were solidly middle class at a minimum. They had never eaten mustard sandwiches. They weren’t as familiar with WIC, EBT, and Section 8 as everyone in my neighborhood. They had never met a social worker. They didn’t have any incarcerated family members or friends. Cops never harassed them. They never had their electricity or water turned off. My classmates had never even been to a neighborhood like mine. Most never would. Near them, I did my best to hide my poverty. More than thirty million Americans know this shame. I say shame because in this country, we are taught that it is our fault that we were born poor.
Eventually, I went on to study Neurobiology and African-American History at Harvard thanks to an unimaginably generous financial aid program. I really felt poor there, surrounded by some of the wealthiest people on the planet, but Harvard provided plenty of help. I received a stipend early on for winter clothing. They set up a fund to give us free tickets to paid events on campus. Jobs on campus paid $15 an hour and up, and this is back in 2006. I cleaned bathrooms. I worked at a restaurant grill. I also moved refrigerators. Outside of work, social life was an incredible adjustment, but I persevered through that too.
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I dedicated much of my time at Harvard to public service. I assumed there was little chance I would end up poor again so I wanted to help those still struggling through the muck of poverty. I ran social programs for children in Boston’s poorest neighborhoods. With my college roommate, I started a non-profit focused on economic development in Western Africa and the Caribbean. We used our newfound proximity to knowledge and wealth to deliver basic goods for the world’s poorest people.
I will never forget the line of children, several with distended abdomens. Under a nearly bone-dry waterfall, they waited with their mouths open trying to catch a few drops. I will never forget the smell of rancid latrines in the summertime. My heart still aches when I think about the day I first saw a starving human chained to a tree. His mental illness was believed to be a demon possession. I still cringe when I remember a mother drinking what was visibly fecal-contaminated water. When you see poverty, you cannot unsee it.
Our non-profit drilled boreholes, built irrigation systems for dry-season farming, and revamped social enterprises whose profits funded orphanages. We didn’t solve the poverty problem, but we were trying. While implementing one of our clean water, hygiene, and sanitation projects in rural Ghana, I went around asking people what they thought their community needed. I had usually spoken with people about water-related issues, but I took a break to hear what else they wanted.
Jobs. Money. Jobs. Money.
These answers shocked me for some reason. By this time, I had already graduated from Harvard, won a Rhodes Scholarship, and was studying Public Health and Epidemiology at Oxford University. I was well indoctrinated into the global aid and development world. I had grown up poor, but I had forgotten that poor people usually just want enough money to escape poverty. They want money just like everyone else even though they will take boreholes if that is all that is up for grabs. As I went around the village, everyone had different ideas about what they would do with their money, including buying hand soap and a clean water storage tank for their homes. Unlike me, everyone knew that enough income would cure their poverty.
I abandoned my medical school plans and instead started a journey to diagnose how organizations could help poor people out of this poverty trap. I worked at McKinsey & Company in their healthcare practice. I got to see the inner workings of the American healthcare system and how it treats the poor differently. I spent time at Evolent Health working on solutions to bring down the cost of healthcare and make care accessible for everyone. At Genentech, I dealt with problems around patient access and healthcare policy. Sadly, as I grew older, I became more jaded. The issues with the healthcare system were no longer intellectual problems to be solved. We know how to deliver excellent care. I have worked with numerous healthcare organizations that provide outstanding medical care in this country. We just don’t offer that to the poor.
I finally decided to learn about what the poor needed the most: money. I began a career in investing and asset management. I’ve invested in everything from seed stage businesses to mega-cap public equities. With my partners, I have managed money for ultra-high-net-worth individuals, pension funds, endowments, and more. In other words, I got my PhD in capitalism.
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In doing so, I have learned that the wealthy are not all that different from the poor. Some are good, some are bad, and most are both. It is nearly impossible to understand an experience that you have never seen, let alone lived. In general, the rich are like everyone else: they think mostly about their own lives. Poverty is a problem that rarely affects them—until it is too late. They typically do not understand how stressful and soul crushing poverty is. I also doubt whether they even know how by ending poverty we could make trillions of dollars.
I have spent my life thinking about how to help the poor because I lived and felt poverty. Still, like nearly everyone else in this country, I missed the answer that was right in front of me. We can eradicate poverty today in the United States. There is actually a silver bullet when it comes to poverty. The silver bullet is a universal basic income set to the federal poverty guidelines.
I want to use what I’ve learned in my life and career to show why this is the answer to our poverty problem.
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Click below to watch the Inclusive Leader Award Ceremony featuring inspirational messages from the diverse Award Winners
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GlobalMindED and the SDG Impact Fund are delighted to announce GlobalMindED's Donor Advised Fund. 2020 is the 75th Anniversary of the United Nations and the 25th Anniversary of the Beijing Women's Declaration and Action Platform. Many from around the world are thinking of 2020 as the gateway to our most vital decade for delivering equity, the Sustainable Development Goals, and a world where all can thrive. Our key time for these outcomes is 2020-2030.
GlobalMindED DAF and the SDG Impact Fund are a powerful combined force for good as the 2019 year comes to a close and we reflect on the gratitude and the commitments we make to the causes we care most about. The DAF offers immense power and flexibility for giving prior to the year's end as you plant seeds of generous intention for 2020 and the decade ahead.
When you contribute to GlobalMindED, you support First Gen students. We have served more than 400 students by connecting them to role models, mentors, internships and jobs. Your generous support will allow us to take our work 10x and reach these talented students at scale who lack the resources and support we provide. Your support also helps teachers who can't afford the conference fees, faculty at colleges which are under resourced and students who persist at those universities despite food insecurity and/or housing insecurity.
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Links to read about Inclusive Leaders, many of whom are African American and people of color:
Curated sessions from GlobalMindED 2020 YouTube channel:
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From the Center for Positive Organizations:
From the Economist:
From Forbes:
From Harvard Business Review:
From the World Academy of Art & Science and UN; Geneva Global Leadership in the 21st Century econference:
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Listen here for an interview with Pam Newkirk, GlobalMindED speaker and author of Diversity Inc.: The Failed Promise of a Billion- Dollar Business.
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Meet GlobalMindED Founder, Carol Carter as interviewed by Tim Moore on his podcast Success Made to Last: From Success to Significance
Listen to Part 1 of Carol's interview
Listen to Part 2 of Carol's interview
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Recent GlobalMindED Newsletter Profiles:
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Since 2006 when the flagship TGR Learning Lab opened its doors in Anaheim, CA, TGR Foundation has had a lot to celebrate, including its most recent milestone of one million students impacted by TGR EDU: Explore, alone.
Developed in partnership with Discovery Education, TGR EDU: Explore is a free digital resource library that offers interactive web experiences, lesson plans, training videos and tools for educators, students and families to explore new disciplines and gain skills for a modern and expanding workforce.
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As you start the New Year, are you looking for ways to re-engineer your classroom culture? Check out Designing the Future: How Engineering Builds Creative Critical Thinking in the Classroom. The associated website has lots of activities, projects, and resources you can implement immediately. Our fall workshops using the book as a roadmap for change have been highly successful. Start designing the future today - try using the customized Study Guide for a book study in your PLC. Or contact ProjectEngin or Solution Tree to learn how you can bring professional development based on Ann's book to your school, district, or conference.
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THE FLYOVER NATION
Energy's Role in a Troubled Heartland
By J.C. Whorton
A unique and timely discussion of the challenging issues facing the country’s troubled Heartland.
Since the beginning of westward expansion into the Heartland’s vast regions, natural resource development has played a historic role in shaping its communities. Today, domestic oil and gas development offers one of the strongest prospects for the Heartland’s present and future prosperity as well as the nation’s re-emergence as a dominant player in the global energy economy.
The U.S. is now the world’s largest producer of crude oil and natural gas, two circumstances that are universally disrupting international geopolitical order. The earth has a finite supply of natural resources and a rapidly growing and over consuming population.
As America positions itself for a very uncertain and constantly evolving global marketplace, will the Heartland become America’s “great connector” or “great divide”?
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J.C. Whorton is a senior level energy and financial professional with over forty years of essential experience. Having a ranching and Native American heritage, Mr. Whorton is a strong advocate for rural education and economic development initiatives.
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