Strategic Board Recruitment Through a DEIJ Lens
Thursday, September 26, 2024
9:00 am - 12:00 pm
Cal Lutheran - Oxnard Center
2201 Outlet Center Drive, Oxnard, CA 93036
Individual Members: No Additional Charge
Organizational Members: No Additional Fee
Non-Members: $55
About this event
In this workshop, we'll share a tool that helps organizations start with a different set of questions: What does our board need to accomplish in the next 1-3 years? And, do we have the people we need in order to accomplish these goals? The tool will then help participants think through how to answer these questions in ways that lead to not only greater diversity, but also greater board effectiveness and impact. Issues of tokenization and marginalization that so often occur in Board Diversity efforts will also be explored. In breakout groups, participants will practice using the tool and receive coaching from their peers and workshop facilitators.
Participants in this workshop will:
- Understand why a diverse and inclusive Board of Directors is important to a strong and effective Board and organization
- Learn how to think about recruiting a diverse Board of Directors in ways that are strategic as opposed to performative and/or tokenizing
- Practice using a tool for strategic board recruitment
- Identify next steps for their board recruitment efforts
Faculty
Lena Moran-Acereto
Lena Morán- Acereto is a native of Mexico City, Mexico and currently a resident of Ventura County, CA where she lives with her husband and her son.
Lena holds a Master's Degree in Education with an emphasis in Social Justice and Leadership from Antioch University Santa Barbara, where she did research on the topic of children who are used as interpreters and with her thesis focusing on the creation of an evaluation system of interpretation and translation services in school districts. As an educator, activist and advocate, Lena's expertise has led her to design and facilitate workshops and trainings nationally and internationally on interpretation, translation as well as diversity, equity, inclusion and justice and provide linguistically inclusive design and language justice consulting.
Lena works with a wide range of clients in the private and public sectors to design and implement linguistically inclusive practices, trainings and processes. Lena has also worked with clients to assess and improve internal and external language access and language justice practices. Lena is also a frequent speaker and presenter at conferences and workshops, sharing her expertise and best practices for creating linguistically inclusive environments.
Lena is a licensed trainer for The Community Interpreter, a program of Cross-Cultural Communications, an interpreter and translator and expert in the field of language justice.
Lena is the founder and CEO of Bridging Voices- Uniendo Voces, a Senior Consultant at JONES Inclusive, Adjunct Faculty at Santa Barbara City College, as well as a member of the Equity Advisory Roundtable for the California Transportation Commission.
In 2018, Lena received Congressional recognition for her work in coordinating and providing language access services during and after the Thomas Fire and Montecito Mudslide disasters.
Jarrod Schwartz
Jarrod Schwartz is the Founder and Principal Consultant of Equity Praxis Group, LLC. Jarrod is an educator and consultant with more than 30 years of experience working with schools, universities & colleges, nonprofit organizations, businesses, government, and communities.
Jarrod’s unique approach draws upon the fields of social justice and organization development to foster inclusive, multi-stakeholder processes that result in organizational, community, and social change.
Before starting EPG, Jarrod served for almost 20 years as the founding Executive Director of Just Communities - a nonprofit organization dedicated to making the Central Coast of California a more inclusive and just region.
From the early to late 1990’s, as the Program Director for The National Conference for Community and Justice (NCCJ), Jarrod developed and led a comprehensive, multi-issue social justice leadership institute for youth that became a national model. He also led an initiative to dismantle racism in the St. Louis Region. In 2001, Jarrod was invited to California to launch a new NCCJ office to serve the communities of the Central Coast. In 2007, this organization became Just Communities.