From the Director: Sue Bennett, LT'94 |
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Dear LT Community:
As this difficult year comes to a close, I find myself reflecting on some of the lessons that have stood out to me about leadership:
- Leadership is about showing up, and continuing to show up, especially in the midst of uncertainty.
- Transformation happens when people feel heard, understood, believed, and when there is a willingness to change.
- Every day we each have the power and the opportunity to make this a better world.
Leadership Tomorrow continues to bring new voices of leadership to the fore, empowering, engaging, and informing leaders who can adapt, navigate, and transform our region into a more just, equitable, and resilient place. In this newsletter, you'll hear directly from two inspiring class members, as well as an important call to action from a recent alum.
I look forward to continuing to show up, listen, and actively work for change, with all of you, both individually and collectively. I wish each of you a happy, healthy, and restful holiday season.
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LT'21 Class Member Reflections |
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Jason Eastman, LT'21, Hearing Speech & Deaf Center |
What are you learning?
I’m learning what leadership means during a pandemic and an exhausting political climate. Instead of telling us to fit a particular mold, LT is giving us the tools and space to figure out what kind of leader we each want to be, and what kind of leader our communities need.
What has surprised you? Have you had any “aha” moments?
When LT started, I wasn’t excited about adding more virtual meetings to my schedule. While I’d still rather be meeting in person, I’m surprised at how much I look forward to Challenge Days and team gatherings. They feel focused on creating a better future, and connecting with my LT peers always gives me much-needed energy and motivation.
What has challenged you?
Balancing LT work on top of the general stress of the past year has been pretty challenging. As much as I want to stay fully engaged, there are times when I find myself slipping. The facilitators have been great about adapting to our virtual limitations and accommodating everybody’s needs.
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Peyina Lin-Roberts, LT'21, Reap-n-Leap Coaching & Consulting |
What are you learning?
One experience that stands out is the topnotch facilitation by Dr. Anu Taranath. I learned how she not just asks open-ended questions, but goes one step further in asking us, participants, to reflect on the reason behind her questions or what our answer tells us about how we are showing up.
I am also learning how much I appreciate and need healing and connecting spaces with people who hold high the values of integrity, authenticity, vulnerability, and empathy. A lot of thought has gone into the LT events, caucuses, and small group work. I may have met with some folks only one or two times, yet those interactions are so rich that they are truly nourishing and unforgettable.
What has surprised you? Have you had any “aha” moments?
I knew that LT has a competitive selection process. Even then, I’m blown away by the breadth and depth of thoughts from my cohort. So often, I hear cohort members share insights that I can’t stop nodding to or that spark others to add value to the dialogue. All that is possible because of how much thought and care are put into planning each LT event (Orientation, Fall Retreat, Challenge Days, and lab night).
To talk about an aha moment, I need to first explain a perspective on allyship. Those who are more advanced in their antiracist journey have a perspective that antiracist allyship is performative unless antiracist work is done in partnership/solidarity with Black and Brown folks. This year, one of the projects LT Lab teams get to do is to partner with a nonprofit that is working toward racial equity. My lab team has a pretty flat team structure—sharing power and responsibilities. So, thinking in terms of equity within our team, I intended to strike a balance between “meeting team members where we were” and selecting a nonprofit through a “working in partnership/solidarity” lens. Yet, “meeting my team where we were” as a collective meant respecting our selection criteria which coincided with not prioritizing partnering directly with organizations that were serving Black and Brown folks, and thus perhaps “performative” under the allyship perspective above. From a different standpoint, pushing my team to choose an organization because of my perspective around allyship vs. partnership/solidarity would be in itself inauthentic for the team and thus performative. So, this aha moment was less about having one clear perspective and more about the multiple realities that can co-exist.
What has challenged you?
2020 has been a year of taking new initiatives and accepting new ways of working and being. I have appreciated that through the pandemic, I have forged distributed collaborations that may have otherwise not occurred. Yet, being on Zoom all the time is tiring, and the quality of the interactions is not the same as in person. Not being able to meet folks in person to observe body language and having Zoom abruptly interrupt breakout room conversations have been a little challenging.
If you'd like to read more about what the class is learning, please see the Challenge Day Write-Ups here.
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Alumni Reflections: Markham McIntyre, LT'17,
Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce
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I heard a phrase recently that has stuck in my brain because it rings true – “a community moves forward at the speed of trust.”
Right now, our region has a trust deficit across racial, geographic, political, and many other lines. We are fragmented, which allows toxic discourse, extreme views, and theatrical posturing within our own bubbles to bloom.
We see this in our habit of undermining leaders of color, like Carmen Best and Denise Juneau. Losing Best and Juneau, two strong leaders, two incredible women of color, hurts our region deeply. The Superintendent and Police Chief are incredibly important positions, especially as we try to rebuild our region so that it is more economically competitive, equitable, and resilient.
While it’s clear that our community needs to heal, there is no vaccine for this fragmentation – there is no unicorn political candidate, there is no policy panacea, there is no philanthropic fund that can solve this complex community challenge.
Michael Brown, LT’98, from Civic Commons says, “we must invest in the relational before we move to the transactional in order to experience the transformational.”
That is truth and gives each of us a clear call to action to lead by doubling down on investing the time, energy, and resources into getting to know people outside of our bubbles and circles, not for any particular gain, but simply to listen and better understand who someone is, where they come from, and what they want and need.
This is a chance for Leadership Tomorrow and our entire alumni community to step up and be a forum for uncomfortable, difficult, and necessary conversations. I also encourage you to check out America’s Path Forward as a possible platform for how we can do this.
If you have a story or perspective you would like to share with the LT community, email Megan.
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Stay Connected to the LT Alumni Community |
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Embodying Your Leadership: Committing to Your Core Values and Staying Present in Overwhelming Times |
January 21, 2021, 9:00 a.m.-12:00 p.m.
In this online workshop, you’ll engage with the fundamentals of embodied leadership to support you in a time of overwhelm and reconnect you to your sense of purpose as a leader. Learn more here. |
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LT Alumni DEI / JEDI / Antiracist Volunteer Affinity Group
We hope to build a group of LT alumni DEI volunteers to network, provide mutual support, and have in-depth discussions of challenges and successful strategies. This meeting is co-organized with Ben Phillips, LT'15. The first meeting will be in January. If you are interested, fill out this survey.
LT Alumni DEI / JEDI / Antiracist Professionals Affinity Group
We hope to build a group of LT alumni DEI professionals to network, provide mutual support, and have in-depth discussions of challenges and successful strategies. This meeting is co-organized with Nadia Gandara, LT'18. The first meeting will be in January. If you are interested, fill out this survey. |
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Do you have ideas for alumni programming? Want to know more about what alumni are doing? Are you interested in becoming more engaged? Join Rebeca, Director of Alumni Impact and Equity, at one of her weekly “office hours” on Wednesdays from 1:00-2:00 p.m. through Zoom.
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The Alumni Database helps you stay connected to our community of leaders. If you haven't already, please complete your profile in the LT Alumni Database using the instructions here. If it has been awhile since you've last logged in and you've moved, switched jobs, etc., please log in to update your information. |
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Support Leadership Tomorrow |
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As we near the end of the calendar year, we hope you will consider adding LT to your charitable giving plans. Thanks to two generous donors, until the end of the year, we have a Challenge Grant that will match gifts up to $500.
This has been a challenging year for many of us. Despite these challenges, we have hope. We have hope because of you, because of this community we have all worked so hard to build and nurture. As we look ahead at 2021 and beyond, we believe that if we work with each other, for each other, we will emerge from these crises together as a more just, equitable, and resilient region. Thank you for your support and leadership in our community. We are so grateful to be in community with you.
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Read the updates below to see how LT alumni are driving change, growing in their careers, and much more. If you have an update ( career changes, appointments, new family arrivals, etc.) you would like to share with the LT community, email Megan.
2001: Richard Humphreys was selected to arbitrate a discipline and discharge case and a collective bargaining contract interpretation dispute in the private sector of employment in Washington State.
2007: Jon Scholes, President and CEO of Downtown Seattle Association, was on KIRO Radio to discuss the findings of a poll of Seattle voters released by the Downtown Seattle Association and Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce. In this poll, voters indicated they are concerned and frustrated by the current state of homelessness in Seattle. Listen to the interview here.
2013: Jamila Taylor was elected State Representative from the 30th District. In Jamila's words: "I decided to run for public office because we need experienced leaders committed to addressing housing, public safety, health care, equity, and so much more. The tough challenges we face demand action and leadership, and I’m ready to get to work."
2014: Gabriela Frank was featured on the Seattle Arts & Lectures blog. Read the blog post here.
2014: Daniel Robbins has accepted a new position as Product Designer - Horizon at Facebook.
2015: Diane Cañate started a new position as Director, Business Operations & Strategy - Device Partner Solutions at Microsoft.
2015: Sylvia Feliciano started a new position as Life Insurance Agent at Family First Life.
2015: Priya Frank was featured in a Seattle Times article titled "How Kamala Harris changes the future of politics in Seattle and the nation." Read the article here.
2015: Aaron Robertson is leaving the Seattle Foundation to pursue new career opportunities in Los Angeles. Learn more here.
2016: Mark Iverson has accepted a new position as Documentation Manager at Amazon Web Services.
2017: Milkana Brace was recognized as one of the top 17 visionaries in the voice industry. Learn about this recognition here.
2017: Ha Na Park has started a new position as Adjunct Faculty Instructor at Communication Leadership at the University of Washington
2018: Clarice Chan was interviewed for the #ShiftHappens podcast about her time at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs serving as a White House Presidential Innovation Fellows. Listen to the podcast here. Clarice has recently accepted a new position as Product Manager - Facebook Open Research and Transparency Team at Facebook.
2018: Chris Franco has started a new position as Office of Equity & Social Justice Program Manager at King County.
2019: Monica Parker has accepted a new position at Gensler, an architecture and design firm, as its director of diversity, equity and inclusion.
2021: Yingying Huang Fernandes and four of her colleagues from WSP USA won the 2020 Enginuity international leadership competition – the third WSP USA team in four years to do so. They surged from behind to outlast more than 200 competitors and win.
We'd like to take a moment to honor Carson Swindle, LT'07, who passed away on December 1, in Austin, Texas, at the age of 51. Cason lived in Seattle from 1992 to 2007 before relocating to Texas. His career included real estate management, clean energy investments, organizational development, and much more. Cason was very active in the arts in Seattle. He led the Seattle Choral Company; founded an a cappella group called Canvas; and created and hosted an a cappella event that drew performers from across the west coasts of U.S. and Canada. Cason's magnetic charisma, his unending enthusiasm, and his entrepreneurial spirit were infectious. He championed others and cajoled them to take risks and seek new experiences. His open heart will carry on in the lives of all who knew him.
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