CompassPoint Project Director Simone Thelemaque looks back on her journey into leadership and reflects on how being witnessed, listened to, and invited in by others became a catalyst for her stepping into her own power.
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CompassPoint Project Director Simone Thelemaque looks back on her journey into leadership and reflects on how being witnessed, listened to, and invited in by others became a catalyst for her stepping into her own power.
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CompassPoint Executive Director Shannon Ellis reflects on the overlapping crises of this political moment and invites everyone in progressive organizations and the social change sector to consider how we can tap into the creative side of our power.
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CompassPoint’s Black affinity group members convened for their first publicized dialogue about (pro-)Black leadership: what it means, why it matters, and how our organization is deepening our commitment to it.
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"There's been this experience of the invisibility of Black feminist thinkers, of Black women-identified intellectuals in general, especially those who are talking about power and oppression, and now I don't have to keep them hidden." CompassPoint's very own Joe Jackson reflects on incorporating Black feminist theory and unpacking power, privilege, and oppression in a new leadership development program, "Building Equitable & Just Organizations Through Individual & Relational Practices."
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What does it mean to be a social justice leadership development nonprofit organization during a time of genocide? Is staying complicit and complacent really an option?
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This past year, CompassPoint set out to take on our budgeting season in a different way: using principles from participatory budgeting to inspire new practices for distributing power.
Grappling with feedback without considering power dynamics can replicate the systems of oppression we should be dismantling. Our vision for social justice should not be limited to our mission statement and our programs; it should apply to our workplace culture and norms, too.
As we shift our systems towards a bottom line that includes people and the planet, finance professionals from non-traditional backgrounds can step into these roles without having to unlearn practices that have held back our economy and in turn our society for so long.
In service of our commitment to practice liberation inside and out, and in honor of Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, we want to share how a few of our Asian staff members at CompassPoint have benefited from convening as a racial affinity space (or as they were called back in 2016 when they were first established at our organization, racial caucuses), in hopes that more social justice organizations can devote time, space, and resources to provide such spaces for their own staff.
Working in organizations and teams means we’ll inevitably have challenging moments where we have to navigate conflict together. Many of us are well versed in naming what parts of conflict we’re “bad” at , but what’s possible when we start from a place of naming our gifts and wisdom instead?