As we celebrate Camber’s 15^th birthday, it is remarkable how much our nascent vision, team, and impact has evolved. Camber has grown from a small team supporting individual institutions to a collective that works across sectors, geographies, and stakeholders to help build the ecosystems that enable lasting change. We’ve had the privilege of partnering with over 110 organizations, across more than 400 projects. We’ve celebrated over 50 alumni who have grown to be social entrepreneurs, leaders, strategists, and contributors to making the world a better place. Through our work and network of partners and collaborators, we’ve seen what’s possible when insight, intention, and action align.

But we’ve also seen what stands in the way. Siloed efforts, ineffective translation of agenda to action, and structural inequities continue to limit progress across the social sector. And in a world facing compounding crises due to shifts in policy, funding, public discourse, and governance— the cost of inaction is growing.

We’ve taken this moment to reflect on our role and the needs of the sector — and to evolve with greater clarity and intention. We’ve refined our mission and strategy to meet what this moment demands: building the knowledge, infrastructure, and capacity of social and public sector institutions and fields.

This isn’t a departure. It’s a natural evolution — grounded in our history, shaped by what we’ve heard and experienced, and guided by what we know the moment demands.

At the center of this shift is the belief that institutions and fields must grow stronger together. That data and insights must be actionable. That shared agendas must lead to collective implementation. And that equity must move from intention to practice.

Our 2024 Impact Report showcases Camber’s new strategy in action —a collection of stories of insight, collaboration, and impact. They are proof points of what we believe: that when people, organizations, and partnerships are aligned, resourced, and supported, transformative change is not only possible — it’s inevitable.

Click here to read the full report

We’re deeply grateful to our funders, clients, partners, team, and alumni who continue to shape Camber’s path and impact. We’re excited for what comes next — and we look forward to building it together.

The post Evolving for Impact: A Look at 2024 and Beyond appeared first on Camber Collective.

Introduction: Camber’s 2023 Impact Report

2023 was a year of growth, impact, and learnings at Camber. We’re excited to share this report as we look back on our work with clients and partner organizations around the world.

Our mission is to drive impact and develop talent in an economically sustainable model. In 2023, our first as a B-Corporation, we doubled the size of our organization with amazing new talent and seeded the social sector with Camber alumni taking on new roles in organizations driving equitable outcomes in health, prosperity, and climate. We worked closely with our clients and partner organizations to influence and amplify impact. This Impact Report highlights a select set of projects across our priority sectors and issues, and we welcome your feedback and input on how we can continue to improve our work and partnerships.

As we look to the future, we can all do more to drive equitable outcomes, processes, and policies. Camber is proud to launch Equitable Project Design and our Gender Equality Sector. Equitable Project Design integrates equity into every aspect of our work, from project scoping and design to methods and deliverables. Our Gender Equality Sector represents a formalization of over a decade of our work tackling the barriers to equality for women, girls, and sex and gender minorities.

Camber is a consultancy for an equitable and regenerative world. We are grateful for your partnership as we continue to grow, learn, and influence impactful programs globally and locally.

Wishing you an impactful and growth filled 2024.

Brian Leslie

CEO and Co-Founder

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Equitable Project Design Origin Story

The concept of Equitable Project Design was instigated from a puzzle: how could Camber Collective authentically elevate the voices, ideas, and power of those whom we mean to serve? A little over 10 years ago, one of our founding Partners, Hope Neighbor, worked with the Hewlett Foundation to design an effort to understand how women and families in Niger make decisions about, and access, family planning services and products. We worked with local partners, surveyed and interviewed women, providers, and local stakeholders. This first of its kind project led to a segmentation analysis and design of new programs to enable local community health workers and the Ministry of Health to better meet the needs of people and communities.

Our approaches and methods have evolved as we progressed on our equity journey. We saw an opportunity, and indeed, a necessity to instil localization and co-creation, elevating the constituents and communities most impacted as key thought partners and participants in strategy formation.

As professionals driven to advance the greater public good globally and locally across health, shared prosperity, gender equality, and climate, we wanted to push ourselves to a deeper, more authentic, and sustainable practice centering the equity promise that we had adopted as an organizing principle in 2021.

What was our role, as change-agents, or at least indirect purveyors of social impact, in integrating equity into our project delivery? What cultural relativisms were we overlooking? How could we, as the advisers and “helpers”, continue to lift up the voices and ideas of those we mean to serve in how we researched and analyzed, conceptualized and designed, and supported execution of  social impact programs?

Pondering answers to these existential considerations evolved into a series of team-wide conversations about our evolving approach to client engagements and delivery. What were our aspirations and values around racial, gender, and social equity, really? And how could we effectively assess, catalogue, normalize, incorporate, and amplify these in our project design, delivery, and dissemination? And if we succeeded at all that, how might it support both processes and outcomes that are more collaborative, trust-based, and non-extractive?

Whatever conveyances lay ahead for Camber, we determined, would be underlain by a commitment to continuing our growth and learning in anti-racist and equitable practices, and our collective agreement to address the injustice and systemic oppression deeply ingrained across societies. Our stance would need to incorporate ongoing, focused learning, and pinpoint a few key guideposts and deliverables. And as our efforts cannot succeed in isolation, we would have to identify ways to both guide and learn from our clients, project delivery partners, and community stakeholders along this journey toward elevated equity. We also knew that as consultants, we needed an organizing framework with supporting methods and tools, and we gave our framework a name: Equitable Project Design.

Refining and Defining Our Concept

Equitable Project Design (EPD) has its basis in the concept of Liberatory Project Design, a concept of the National Equity Project which seeks to apply an equity-focused lens to traditional Design Thinking principles. In contrast to the mission of product designers, social movement organizations, or community-based organizations working towards direct service goals, we embraced the opportunity to refine the lens to more closely adhere with our purview and impact theses as a strategic advisory firm.

Emanating outward, from the existentially essential level of personal bias, mindset, and growth, all the way to systemic change, our theory of impact around Equitable Project Design has five concentric spheres of activation:

As visionary as this concept is, we enshrined a realistic mindset into EPD from the start. As we said in our November, 2022 article:

As in all facets of the world and life, a 100% purity attainment goal is unrealistic. Not

all clients and contexts will align with Equitable Design principles in uniform ways,

and the journey is also iterative. To keep us anchored in our own values and vision

of social impact and systemic change, we are establishing a team playbook of

considerations across the entire project cycle that will help us execute the work with

honesty, confidence, and equitable influence.

With determination, we envision that employing this lens and approach will allow the firm to grow and evolve to a place where all team members will have the tools and competency to guide our teams and clients through issues of equity that affect their organizations, industries, and stakeholders. Ultimately, we aspire that our equity lens becomes a key aspect of our brand promise as well as a touchstone for client confidence and trust, centered on values alignment.

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EPD MVP: Key Tenets of Equitable Project Design

A year and a half after our initial conversations, we can celebrate some of the many important marks we’ve made along this journey, with tangible organizational tools and resources that anchor this continued work:

• We have built curated set of equity considerations by project phase, over 130 questions and markers we can incorporate into the full project lifecycle, from scoping to delivery to closeout
• We have built and revised our internal project tools with a focused embedding of equity considerations into our work
• We have begun building a library of resources, frameworks, and learnings for all of our client serving sectors that incorporate equitable principles overall, and by sector
• Having socialized the framework and elements with the team, we are now applying EPD into our own internal ways of working: learning, celebrating, building belonging, and leadership at all levels

Having a definitional framework has provided an anchor and organizing principle to scale the implementation and impact. This trajectory was already evident in a 2022 blog post in which we said:

As we build out this values alignment in our practice and demonstrate a deeper focus on equity and sustainability, we are even finding that new partners who were skeptical of the consulting sector writ large are eager to engage with our services. We are gratified to see this development, for we do believe that, by integrating equity into our theories of influence and client work, Camber Collective can help disrupt and dismantle the collective history of racist, exclusive, extractive, and colonial practices in the humanitarian and philanthropic sectors.

This report highlights some of the project work and sector impact that we are pleased to have driven in 2023. In addition to the client work, of which just a few illustrative examples are included, we also have leveraged this framework for how we define and position our internal progress and brand promise. Some of our major considerations include:

Please peruse some of the highlights from 2023 that incorporate Equitable Project Design principles. (Full report pdf is here.) Equitable Project Design-inspired elements are bolded in the below case studies.

• Gender Equality: The Women’s Health Innovation Opportunity Map
• US Health: Including Fathers in Family Care: WA Fatherhood Council         
• US Health: Broadening Access to Crucial Health Care
• Global Health: Task Force for Global Health Campaign Effectiveness Coalition       
• Climate: Building Bridges Across Intersections         
• Shared Prosperity: Finding Prosperity for More: What Contributes to Lifetime Income?    

Priorities for Further Expansion

Building upon not only these project outcomes, but our EPD approaches that were “hiding in plain sight,” we recognize a few key deliverables that will help us scale and broaden this approach. Above, we share our in-progress “EPD MVP” (minimally viable product) universal guidelines for our projects, determining, when possible, how to incorporate key equitable practices (many of which we had been employing for quite some time) such as:

• Application of historical/colonial context
• Centering the voice of the affected, and compensating our local experts for their participation
• Applying cross-sectoral/intersectional framing
• Employing equitable sampling and data analysis
• Continually relying on storytelling and visual narrative (as you will read in this report)

This report serves both as a sample lookback to some of our progress in EPD work, but it also helps pave the way that we wish to continue evolving the practice. It is our hope that our ongoing and future work will leverage EPD to encourage innovation, equity, co-creation, and norm-shifting. We want Equitable Project outcomes to become the norm.

As our firm becomes more deeply adept at authentically and systematically embedding and delivering equitable strategies and solutions for our clients, we can collectively galvanize equitable, transformative outcomes in constituent communities our clients serve. In so doing, Camber can meaningfully contribute to redressing the systemic injustices and oppressions that are so deeply ingrained in our society. This is our Grand Vision, and we are grateful to our clients, partners, associates, friends, and even strangers with critical voice, who help us continue to advance in this direction.

The post 2023 Report: Forging Impact appeared first on Camber Collective.

Part Two: The Basics, and the Basic Problem

This is Part Two of a conversation between our Director of Impact and Equity Rozella Kennedy and our Director of US Health Kim Langenhahn on US healthcare in our “post-pandemic” moment: the legacy challenges, the current tragic clashes around untreated mental health episodes in public spaces, as well as the current wave of innovation and opportunity that might, if leveraged and supported, help us move towards equitable, quality healthcare more broadly for more people living in the United States.

Part One of this conversation serves as a wide-ranging exploration of the overarching impact that the mixed nature of the US health insurance system, which is comprised of a combination of private, public, nonprofit, and for-profit entities, has on our society and overall well-being. This rather fragmented approach to health insurance, and subsequently to the provision of care, combined with the fact that the profit motive is woven into most aspects of the US system, means that people—especially the most vulnerable—are often left behind. For example, the recent expiration of protections put in place during the pandemic public health emergency means that millions of people may lose Medicaid coverage, either due to administrative reasons or because they no longer qualify for the program—and this anticipated loss of coverage will disproportionately impact Black and Hispanic beneficiaries. Click here to read Part One.

Unfairness At a Breaking Point

Rozella Kennedy: We took a break in the conversation at a point where I was feeling very heated about what almost feels like a “gotcha” for some folks to access healthcare entitlements like Medicaid. I hate to realize it really comes down to the ability to correctly execute paperwork!

Kim Langenhahn: It does become largely an issue of time, paperwork, and resource and knowledge constraints for far too many people. Just imagine if the next time they show up at a doctor’s office they risk being told, “You actually can’t see the doctor today because you didn’t fill out this form or you didn’t fill it out appropriately or in the right time frame.”

RK: Goodness! The NY Times recently ran a long feature article about the treacherous tangle of paperwork and poor public health outcomes. It depicted the healthcare access challenges of indigenous people in Colombia, South America. But we literally are not much better off, for some communities!

KL: I want to say to the healthcare conglomerates and the government: I understand you’re running a large system. But at the end of the day, someone’s access to care should not depend on filling out a form properly.

RK: Doctors take a Hippocratic Oath, for heaven’s sake! This is actually just heartbreaking to consider. And since we are in this very honest and stark phase of our conversation, let’s add one more tragic health equity factor: the dearth of provision and stigma around mental health.

Two incidents made the national news about the deadly clash of mentally instable people and so-called vigilante citizens. One was the street performer in the New York subway Jordan Neeley, and the other that has haunted me is the death of Banco Brown, trans activist who went into a San Francisco Walgreens attempting to steal food and was shot to death by a private security guard.

Now, I’m going to connect the dots here, from the point of view of equity and justice. These two Black men were hungry, they were desperate, they were distressed, they seemingly were having a psychotic breakdown moment. And they are now dead. Ours should not be a society that punishes our most desolate.

I hate to think of young Black bodies once again becoming martyrs for a cause, but maybe public awareness is starting to shift, because this is just so never-ending and sorrowful and wrong.

There has been so much outrage and compassion for these two people in society. It felt to me like finally more of the public are saying, “wait, this system isn’t serving people, and our mental health crisis should be treated as a health issue, not one of criminality.”

KL: Public health absolutely encompasses mental health, yes.

RK: And if we talk about narrative for a moment, it’s not just the “homelessness” story we have become used to: say, the returning veteran suffering with PTSD and falling into despair, or someone who escaped a violent situation and can’t get into Section 8 housing, or a person who lost everything due to illness or divorce or a death, or a SGM (sexual and gender minority) youth whose family kicked them out of the house—you know, these are the stories we’ve somewhat gotten used to hearing about homelessness and particularly episodes of people suffering mental health breakdowns in plain view. That’s horrendous enough in our society.

But in some circles, there is a growing awareness that people become marginalized and imperiled not only because of circumstances (usually beyond their control), but also because of systems. Folks are saying, “You know, we’re going to acknowledge how epigenetic trauma creates depression, anxiety, and other forms of mental illness. We’re going to see that centuries of actions have led to deep, deep despair and the need for repair…

“We’re gonna amplify the connections between limited or poor healthcare; the built environment and heat islands; historic redlining and Jim Crow-era economic immobility; the war on drugs and how AIDS, the pandemic, and fentanyl have disproportionately targeted ‘the wretched’ of our earth,” to reference Frantz Fanon, if I may!

It’s encouraging to see people taking a bolder attitude towards acknowledging that mental health and machismo are not the same thing, and that the stigma needs to be eradicated. Folks need help. People are demanding better.

A Few Ways Out of the Morass

RK: So, now that I’ve gotten that off my chest, what should be do? What can we, as people do, to help fix this broken healthcare system?

KL: I would truly say at the individual level the most powerful thing we can do is educate, advocate, and vote. We all have a voice, and we need to use ours to make sure we have people in office who support the idea that quality healthcare is a human right. I mean this not only at the federal level by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

To be honest, the right political leadership is even more significant at the municipal level and the state level because that’s where Medicaid policy is being set for the most part—these are the entities that are actually administering the state Medicaid programs. And as individuals, we need to advocate for the causes and the politicians that represent what we believe in. We have to do all we can to get them in office.

RK: Oftentimes even people who are relatively politically engaged don’t vote in all their local council elections…

KL: … and that’s where many of the most significant policies for people’s lived experience, from healthcare to schools to trash collection and local taxes are being implemented.

Another thing: the local forum is an important laboratory or testing ground for politicians, PACs (Political Action Committees) and major campaign donors, and advocacy groups. By this I mean, these stakeholders often have eyes on state-level offices, so to get a sense of how they act locally is very important in this two-way street of electoral politics; how do they intend to move “upstream” as it were?

Reminding us all to stay engaged, especially locally, is good advice because so much of electoral politics and voting at the state and certainly federal level has also devolved into a popularity contest or beauty pageant. It’s off-putting, and we are all so tired of so much of it. But we have to stay focused, right? An informed and engaged populace has a lot of power to shift many kinds of inequities.

KL: If we stay attentive and active.

RK: I am reminded of the shock many of us felt when Roe was struck down last year. Mostly to steel myself, I jumped on a Zoom with two of our colleagues and we held a video chat in which we were able to share our feelings and recall many of the positive reproductive health work Camber has helped shore up for our clients over the years, but also we cited a bunch of resources: nonprofits and other groups that people could get involved in and support as donors, volunteers, advocates. Are there some innovative organizations you’d like our readers to know about that are advocating for access to quality, equitable healthcare?

KL: Yes, let’s share a few here. (See “resources” at bottom of this post.)

Facing Facts and Keeping Faith

RK: Thank you! I think it’s wonderful that Camber can be this bridge between thought-leadership and strategy and encouragement for the people.

Because these issues of health equity are so all-encompassing, they touch upon everything, and it gets overwhelming and can almost feel debilitating. But speaking of encouragement, let me ask you from a policy or thought leadership perspective, what do you see that is encouraging in this moment, if anything at all?

KL: Yes, I do think there are things to be encouraged by. Over the last couple of years, a tiny silver lining that came out of the pandemic is that you had more and more people really start to authentically grapple with, and truly acknowledge, just how many existing systems in our country prevent people from living full lives.

RK: Can you say more?

KL: It used to feel much more like lip service. But I think there is a core group of people that are more empowered to try and upend some of these inequitable systems and there are more people who are just now coming to terms with the reality of how skewed and broken so much of this is.

I’m seeing a greater recognition of the power structures and the racist histories and how those factors conjoin to impact people, historically as well as right now.

RK: This hearkens back to what we were saying about health inequity not being entirely a Black/white issue…

KL: This is true—though we cannot deny that redlining and workforce discrimination have played enormous roles in economic inequity and health outcomes disparity, over generations.

RK: Enslaved Black people were legally not allowed to learn to read, marry whom they wanted, and in many instances, didn’t even have a “real” name. We cannot of course, discount the enormous historic harms done to Asian people through legislated discrimination and internment, or to our Indigenous brothers and sisters, whose lands and lives were literally stolen by colonialism. It’s a very bad legacy.

KL: When you look at the data around health outcomes, the throughlines are clear. The neighborhoods and zip codes with the worse health outcomes have a higher propensity to be non-white, but sadly, there are also some universal constants that transcend racial lines and just simply come back to poverty. Fewer economic resources, larger proportions of major chronic health issues.

RK: A generalized need for a social safety net.

KL: And because some elected officials are finally recognizing that their constituents’ needs are not being met, there is a glimmer of good news. In the last couple of years, more states have begun to expand or consider expanding Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act.

RK: Thank God(dess)!

KL: We now have 40 states plus DC with expanded Medicaid coverage. So yes, there are still ten states that need to do so. But there is a little more momentum.

RK: Expanding Medicaid is not a panacea, but it is a huge step in the right direction.

KL: I was looking at some of the recent reporting around maternal health and especially mortality rates for Black mothers, and it found that there are some genetic drivers for the high Black maternal mortality rates, but at the end of the day a lot of that excessive mortality results from lack of insurance and lack of access to care.

There Really is No “Us” and “Them”

RK: I often say if Serena Williams and Beyoncé could not access considerate healthcare during their pregnancies, what hope do the rest of us have?

KL: Again, this is all part of the structural problem we’ve been discussing. While maternal mortality rates have increased pretty steadily over the last two decades, those increases have been smaller in states that have expanded Medicaid, with greatest impact being on Black mothers. It largely comes down to simply having access to better care, or care at all.

RK: I don’t like to put it in these terms exactly, but one could zoom way out, with a historical lens, and surmise one of the positive outcomes of the George Floyd moment is the awakening around racism and normalizing white comfort and prosperity to the detriment of people of color, just across so many systems. The situation may not be as stark as outright “white supremacy,” but it was a sense of erasure, ignoring, making people feel like they are “less,” and expecting even less than that.

And we are shaking off this general sense of “laissez faire” among the populace, writ large. I often say that we have been lulled into consumerist complacency over the past six or seven decades: If you could eat a fun dinner and your favorite show is on TV, you’re good—and there’s nothing else in the world you need to worry about. That became sort of the prevailing way of American life in the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s early aughts, right? And now people are saying “no, I don’t want to live in a society where so many of my sisters and brothers are suffering.”

The journalist and social commentator Annie Lowrey speaks of something she calls “the time tax,” this fact that if you’re a privileged person, you can hire a PA or pay for an app to take care of all your nonsense paperwork, but for most of the people, and it gets worse the less economic agency you have, it’s a nightmare.

KL: Not to mention if you’re higher up the privilege ladder, your paperwork is sometimes less complicated, which is a bit counterintuitive.

RK: How about that? Look at something as essential as signing up for food stamps. In some states it’s an obstacle course. Hunger and food are health issues too.

KL: They really are.

RK: And people who are outside of the sphere of high privilege, who, as you said, don’t have autonomy over their day, it can be a struggle to even access these benefits, one of which almost everyone in the country agrees is important and positive—food assistance.

Food is Healthcare

RK: Kim, can you talk a little bit about food and hunger and how they correlate to the health crisis in this country at the systemic level?

KL: Isn’t it interesting how many tentacles there are to what constitutes “health”? Yes, absolutely, let’s talk about food and hunger to wrap up our conversation.

Let’s start with young children and health and social outcomes related to food and nutrition. So many young kids are hungry, either because they don’t have access to as much food as they need, or the food they have access to is calorie dense but nutrient poor. These young people face so many challenges as a result of malnutrition—they have a harder time paying attention in school and greater difficulty understanding the material, they have more behavioral issues in school, they are more likely to be pulled out of class or get a detention. They may not even have the energy to play, which is an important part of childhood development.

RK: A stunning book about this I read described how much bias there is against Black girls in this particular area. It’s striking.

KL:  Yes, it’s disgraceful. And you know, Rozie, no matter who the kid is, they end up propelled into a negative spiral. They miss learning time because they are being subjected to carceral treatment. Or even if they are in still in the classroom, they are diminished: when you’re hungry, you can’t pay attention, especially as a child.

RK: Even at very young ages, the hungry kid is already disadvantaged compared to the well-fed one.

KL: And those discrepancies and disadvantages persist throughout the rest of that child’s life. It will be nearly impossible for them to catch up academically to their well-fed peers.

They are generally always going to be behind, less likely to graduate high school, less likely to pursue college. Also, they are less likely to receive technical training if they want to go the trades route. This leads to a population that is less likely to attain solid employment, less likely to access stable housing.

RK: If this child grows to adulthood and remains in a position where it is difficult to feed themselves well, what happens when they have children? The cycle repeats itself for another generation.

KL: Glance away from children for a minute and think about adults in general in our society. We have so many food deserts and food swamps: where there is a lack of access to healthy, fresh, nutrient dense food. Or for some, there is not the time to go and purchase healthy food and prepare a meal at home.  

RK: Yes, those food-box apps are so alluring—and very few people I know, including myself, would fit that in their budget, even if they could. Not as a sustainable solution, maybe a novelty.

KL: So, when you don’t have the time and the resources, you know what? You’re eating fast food. And this leads to so much of the population dealing with the lifestyle diseases: higher rates of diabetes, high blood pressure, all of these comorbidities that then make it nearly impossible for them to live healthy lives.

RK: It starts to feel pre-destined.

Connecting the Dots and Finding Hope

KL: As we’ve said, more and more people are connecting the dots.

RK: Back in the mid-aughts, I served as the coordinator of the New Mexico Hunger Task Force when I was living in Santa Fe. And at the time, New Mexico was the Number Two state in the nation in terms of food insecurity. Our goal was to get to #5, and I think they did do it.

Be that as it may, during that time, I worked with several people in public health as well as agriculture and education. And the effort was intersectional before that was a common term, and it was grassroots and communal. One friend who is at UNM School of Medicine as an anthropologist, actually, is engaging foodways and culture, to excite Hispanic (in that region, many people prefer this term to Latino) women—some immigrant or recent arrivals, others going back ten generations to when New Mexico was old Mexico—around food, health, resilience, and pride. They are using sisterhood and mutual aid as interesting ways to weave it together. Cultural pride in eating the food of their ancestors.

KL: That’s absolutely a positive approach.

RK: Can I say one more thing? I see this progressive attitude playing out in the Black community too with this neo-vegan hipster moment.

I think pop culture can be such a mover; I’m thinking of people like Stephen Satterfield and his Whetstone publishing entity and streaming show “High on the Hog,” I see it a lot with Black Veganism too. It’s interesting because they are connecting food to health as well; getting away from sodium, fried food, processed “foodstuffs.”

We are seeing this cultural shift in the Latinx and Asian communities too, as well as in African and Caribbean food culture: after generations of high-sodium spices and “flavor enhancers” marketed as culturally relevant, folks are looking at the health outcomes and saying “enough.” Give us healthy food, pure food, stop selling us poison. It’s related to climate and environment as well, of course.

I know that was quite a side-road I took us on there! But it feels related. That’s one thing I love about working at Camber, we really lean into the sectoral interconnections when it comes to equity and well-being.

KL: It is something to be proud of. I’d say a good thing that came out of the pandemic was that more people began to understand how interrelated everything is. You cannot be a healthy person if you don’t have access to food and safe affordable housing and a minimum standard of living. You just can’t.  But you also can’t excel in school or life if you don’t have access to healthcare. So, it’s all related.

And you most certainly cannot be your healthiest self when living within social and healthcare systems built around bias and discrimination. For example, the telomeres that cap the ends of chromosomes and help protect the genome from degradation are shorter in marginalized populations, leading to premature biological aging and the early onset of many chronic diseases.

In fact, Rozie, if we just focus on the medical side of healthcare, we are missing the majority of the drivers that actually dictate whether you are able to lead a healthy, fulfilled life—those so-called external social determinants of health often impact one’s overall state much more than the classic medical treatments and doctor’s visits we associated with “healthcare”.

More and more people and organizations are recognizing this. Even at governmental levels.

I’ll leave you with this, which is also encouraging: CMS, or the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, has created some new coding opportunities within Medicare and Medicaid to try to help provide guidance and reimbursement for access to things like transportation to the grocery store.

RK: Kim, that’s really great! The old hunger coordinator in me is cheering this! In New Mexico, some folks had to go sixty miles just to get to the big box store, so they got most of their “food” at convenience stores and gas stations…

KL: Another exciting possibility around innovation is the fact that entrepreneurs can often work faster than government policy can be designed and implemented, so we are seeing innovative entrepreneurs and nonprofits trying to address things like food scarcity and other social determinants of health.

They’re asking questions like: “How do you innovate the care model to make it more equitable to increase access and help to address some of those disparities that are baked into the system?”

RK: Woah, they might actually be making capitalism work for the betterment of the populace, and not just the financial elite!

KL: That’s right. Capitalism is still today’s system, but if used effectively, it can be part of the solution.

RK: Basically, it’s just a question of “don’t be greedy.”

KL: Basically, yes.

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Resources

• United States of Care – Building a Better Health Care System
• Alliance for Health Policy – Join the Conversation (allhealthpolicy.org)
• CityHealth – Every person, in every city, deserves a healthy life
• Trust for America’s Health (tfah.org)
• Home – HealthTech 4 Medicaid (ht4m.org)
• Grantmakers In Health – Better health for all through better philanthropy (gih.org)
• Lutheran Services in America
• Health Care Access Maryland – Making Maryland a Better Place to Live

Kim Langenhahn draws on more than 15 years of consulting, operational, and startup experience in the domestic and international health and nonprofit sectors to help organizations navigate complex issues, operate more effectively, and deliver greater impact. During the course of her career, Kim has helped numerous healthcare organizations tackle a variety of strategic challenges such as scaling Terrapin Pharmacy’s remote medication adherence system, launching a MENA-focused healthcare incubator, devising system-wide strategy for the Saudi Arabian Ministry of Health as part of PwC’s consulting practice, and developing a market forecast for a pharmaceutical company alongside her L.E.K. Consulting colleagues.  She is also the Cofounder of a small social enterprise that she runs with her family

Kim earned a Master of Business Administration and a Master of Public Policy from the University of Chicago as well as a Master of Science in Quantitative Management and a Bachelor of Arts from Duke University.  An avid traveler, reader, bread baker, ice cream churner, and (aspiring) cheese maker, she also enjoys helping her husband tend to their rooftop garden and vermiculture operation.  She currently resides in Washington, D.C.

As Camber Collective’s Director of Impact and Equity Rozella Kennedy helps direct the firm’s internal Impact, Equity, and Belonging work as well as the external practice. Her theory of impact seeks to leverage equitable values to influence and impact the humanitarian, development, philanthropic, and social impact sectors. The long focus is to expand awareness and practice in local and global post-colonial contexts. Rozella is also the creator of Brave Sis Project, a lifestyle brand using narrative and social engagement to uplift BIPOC women in U.S. history as a tool for learning, growth, celebration, and equity allyship; her book “Our Brave Foremothers: Celebrating 100 Black, Brown, Asian, and Indigenous Women Who Changed the Course of History” was published by Workman Press in Spring, 2023.

The post Healthcare x Equity: Paperwork, Pain, Panaceas, and Progress appeared first on Camber Collective.

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Camber Collective is a strategic advisory consultancy partnering globally to address today’s most urgent challenges—systemically, sustainably, and equitably. We are happy to share some of the highlights of our work in 2022.

With our clients and partners, we helped:

• Address the urgent climate crisis
• Ensure that healthcare access is equitable
• Find new approaches for shared prosperity
• Extend quality health care access globally
• Defend democracy and good governance

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Spotlight on Global Health:

The problem:

• Large inequities in health access and quality of care exist globally, due to the legacy of colonialism, slavery and natural resource extraction
• Competing and often misaligned incentives between the development and private sector
• A lack of representation and participation in decision making by those most affected by global health initiatives

In 2022, Camber operated with local partnership in Sub-Saharan Africa & Guatemala

Sahel Women’s Empowerment and Demographic Dividend (SWEDD): 15 Sub-Saharan Countries

We provided impact modelling of the SWEDD activities focusing on adolescent girls for reproductive health, education, and economic opportunity objectives. This modelling was used by local governments to plan & monitor multi-year investments ranging between $30m and $90m. It helped health ministries upskill, keeping impact local. We co-created this model with the UNFPA & local government and implementation stakeholders.

Project Outcomes included:

• 300,000 at-risk adolescent girls kept in school
• 97% of SWEDD-supported health facilities were able to maintain their inventory stocks
• 9.238 rural midwives were trained and deployed
• 8.790 maternal deaths were prevented
• 830,000 unsafe abortions were prevented

Plan B: Ghana and Kenya

We provided a go-to-market strategy for adding a new “on demand” contraceptive option for women in need. In developing a private sector collaboration, we involved multiple partners (Masters of Public Health laureates, primary source researchers, academia, strategy, communications) to create a holistic, equitable & viable design model.

Based on our demonstration of unmet need for emergency contraception, 20 funders committed to add ~$20M for clinical trials.

Additional Impact in the Sector included:

• Three peer-review journal articles submitted and published on Niger, Burkina Faso, Pakistan, and Tanzania, and the Ivory Coast
• Presentations at major Global Health conferences and events such as the SBCC Summit in Marrakesh, Morocco, ICFP in Thailand, and the Ouagadougou Partnership Annual Meeting in Niamey, Niger

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Spotlight on U.S. Health:

The problem:

• Affordable and high quality care in the U.S. is not equitably available
• Misaligned incentives in our healthcare system result in innovation and efficiency gaps

City of Hope: Los Angeles, CA

Our project enabled the client to provide comprehensive whole-person care for patients undergoing cancer treatment (mental, spiritual, nutritional, financial planning and assistance). We innovated their Supportive Care model using technology that will allow them to equitably provide services to populations that are currently underserved

Project Impact:

The client is now seeking to expand this new model to their entire network, and with national partners.

Healthier Here: King County, WA

We built a platform allowing the client to integrate a community-based social determinants of health into their clinical referral system for Medicaid beneficiaries. This work will enable more equitable access to wrap-around services, such as transportation, housing, nutrition, and other critical social supports.

Additional Impact in the Sector included:

• The project scope was extended with an equity lens to focus on underserved populations
• We launched the Pitchspace partnership to help drive early-stage innovation in U.S. health
• We published a point of view editorial on primary care disruption
• Post SCOTUS Dobbs decision, quick response with a video and resource directory to activate proponents for women’s reproductive health rights and justice

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Spotlight on Shared Prosperity:

The problem:

• In the U.S. there is a pervasive imbalance of power, wellbeing and opportunity, a combination which results in the exclusion of specific demographic groups from long- term income and wealth-building pathways
• Additionally, false narratives around “deservingness” perpetuate inequity.
• At the same time, the sector is fragmented, siloed and underfunded

2022, Camber worked with partners to build coalitions for sectoral and policy change as well as local models.

New Door Ventures: San Francisco Bay Area

We designed a program for an organization serving Bay Area opportunity youth (those excluded from work and education). The work included designing a landscape analysis that helped the client understand the current state of regional economic opportunity and for targeting resources and forming coalitions. We engaged the focus population (currently engaged youth, alums, and program “drop outs”) in co- designing the framework.

Project Outcomes included:

• Better understanding for the client of the target population’s geography age, point of disconnection, etc.
• Provided a growth plan to increase the number of youth served, at scale
• The project yielded a reimagination of the organization’s strategic positioning within the Opportunity Youth ecosystem

Baby Bond Policy:

WA Office of the State Treasurer

We provided a platform for plugging community-based services into clinical referral system in Medicaid-serving health system networks in the state of Washington. The work included behavioral analytics to infuse holistic healthcare levers more equitably into preventative and clinical care.

Our research and focus groups uncovered nine facets that affect wealth building:

• Healthcare
• Education
• Income and employment
• Social network
• Access to financial services
• Savings
• Home ownership and valuation
• Business ownership

Additional Impact in the Sector included:

• We demonstrated how experience varies across racial/ethnic and geographic subgroups
• We provided direct input into state legislature’s policy discussion
• We hosted a panel at the Skoll World Forum “We Can’t Fix What We Don’t See“. Panel included leaders from the Families and Workers’ Fund, Prosperity Now, and Urban Institute discussing field building and systemic barriers to greater economic opportunity
• We launched the Economic Opportunity Narrative Change Coalition, a collaboration with Prosperity Now to challenge prevailing myths and misconceptions around the causes and experience of poverty in the U.S.
• (Join the coalition here)

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Spotlight on Governance and Democracy:

The problem:

• The current state of political discourse and division is gravely threatening democracy in many countries, including the U.S.
• There isn’t enough system analysis around how to build equitable democracies
• Think tanks, along with advocacy and policy players, are hindered in advancing democracy due to sparse, un-aligned, and underfunded strategic planning
• Wins are too often short-lived and unsustainable

Urban Institute: Washington, D.C.

We provided business modeling and internal belonging strategy, strategic financial and structural modeling to sustain leadership, a competitor landscape analysis, and a scan of the Institute’s fiscal health, theory of influence, collaboration practices and staff satisfaction. This work led to a deeper understanding of Belonging within the management context.

The Center for Global Development: Washington, D.C.

Our work included measurement, evaluation, and a learning framework to help this think tank in its mission of strengthening governance and health institutions globally.

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Spotlight on Climate and Environment:

The problem:

• Beyond the science of a heating planet and rising seas, there are many intersectional climate issues touching virtually all facets of society and life
• Siloed solutions and approaches are ineffective and unsustainable
• Further, universal inequities in all sectors, communities, and systems disproportionately imperil those closest to climate disaster
• Power systems and activations typically exclude or minimize their voice and value

Southwest Georgia Project, Albany, GA

We supported this Black-led organization’s assessment of the policy, advocacy, and educational landscape of Southwest Georgia, and its influence on the food system and access for small, socially disadvantaged farms and communities. Our work included creating a visual theory of change, storytelling, partnership, and regional landscape analysis. We also delivered 3-5-year operational plan.

This work helped address underlying, systemic issues of food security, Black land loss, and dispossession in Georgia.

Packard Foundation Oceans Strategy: California

We conducted grantmaking, advocacy, communications, and research landscape analysis and strategy for 10-year, $40-$50M annual budget. We also convened an expert global advisory group with experts in conservation, policy, human rights, gender equity, as well as indigenous community leaders. This work culminated in the development of a theory of change, hypothesis and equity values, reflections and norms.

Project Impact

• Local, national, and global-level funding priority-mapping for place-based and systems-wide activations, including indigenous-led marine conservation

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More impact and insights

coming in 2023!

Please follow us on LinkedIn or check our blog

here on our website for more information.

As Camber Collective’s Director of Impact and Equity Rozella Kennedy helps direct the firm’s internal Impact, Equity, and Belonging work as well as the external practice. Her theory of impact seeks to leverage equitable values to influence and impact the humanitarian, development, philanthropic, and social impact sectors. The long focus is to expand awareness and practice in local and global post-colonial contexts. Rozella is also the creator of Brave Sis Project, a lifestyle brand using narrative and social engagement to uplift BIPOC women in U.S. history as a tool for learning, growth, celebration, and equity allyship; her book “Our Brave Foremothers: Celebrating 100 Black, Brown, Asian, and Indigenous Women Who Changed the Course of History” was published by Workman Press in Spring, 2023.

Manali Kulkarni is a Consultant at Camber Collective. She utilizes a community-centered approach to generate qualitative and quantitative analytical insights that support clients in making strategic decisions to drive social impact. Her Master’s thesis at Stanford School of Medicine examined how negative birth experiences influence postpartum mental health outcomes for women in the US. During graduate school, she also designed, developed, and piloted an electronic health record app that works off-the-grid to streamline clinical data workflows in remote healthcare settings in Ghana as part of a Social Entrepreneurship Fellowship at Stanford d.school.  Manali earned an MS in Community Health and Prevention Research from Stanford University, where she focused on design innovation for social impact. Prior to graduate school, she worked as a user experience researcher conducting formative, exploratory qualitative research to build a decision-making tool to support menopausal people. She also holds a BA in Global Health, BS in Molecular Biology, and minor in Entrepreneurship and Innovation from University of California, San Diego. In her free time, Manali enjoys kickboxing, exploring new cities, and planning themed dinner parties. 

The post Impact Highlights from 2022 appeared first on Camber Collective.

As one can intuit from the principles above, we found in our internal and external analysis that our current model for leadership and management lacked clarity in decision-making and budgets, members of our Management Team were all doing a little bit of everything, and despite best intentions for this not to be the case, we were both inefficiently managing by consensus while too many decisions were concentrated and centralized with the Managing Partners. We also found that we were under-investing in organization infrastructure and finance and operational capacity as well as in professional development for leadership and our team, which was limiting our potential impact and the pathways for leadership growth.  

We evaluated multiple structure options and permutations, and as we often advise our clients, we recognized that while structure is important, the values, culture, role definition, decision-rights model, and individual people in each role will drive success and impact.  

Restructuring Our Business Units

At the beginning of 2023 we shifted to a business unit structure for Camber, and created a number of new leadership roles and pathways. Camber will operate with 5 business units (BUs): 

• Executive Office, which is accountable for the overall vision and management of the organization, and will steward of our mission, values, and external communications 
• US Consulting, which is accountable for the impact and economic performance of our US client portfolio 
• Global Consulting, which is accountable for the impact and economic performance of our Global client portfolio
• People, which is accountable for developing Camber’s talent and our internal Belonging work 
• Finance and Operations, which is accountable for building the enabling infrastructure that allows the Camber team to do its best work 

Brian will split his time serving as CEO and US Consulting Managing Director. Brian will work closely with Rozella Kennedy, our Director of Impact and Equity, who will now sit in our Executive Office.  

Ted will split his time serving as CFO/COO and Global Consulting Managing Director. Ted will work closely with Eileen Harrity, our Director of Finance and Operations.  

Sakina Zaidi, whom we are excited to announce has been promoted to Partner/Owner at Camber, will serve as the organization’s first ever Chief People Officer (CPO). Sakina has demonstrated incredible leadership and impact over the last few years. We are thrilled to welcome her to the ownership group, and our clients and team will benefit from her focus on talent development and Belonging in the CPO role. The role was designed to be different than similarly titled roles at other organizations in that it is NOT a Human Resources role.  

Each of these BUs will work closely and collaboratively with important new functional, sectoral, and geographic roles that will shape how we serve our clients and create impact, and how we enable belonging and connection throughout our organization. 

Bethanie Thomas will serve as our Global Functions Leader, and she will be accountable for codifying our world class functional methods and tools and service innovation. Bethanie will serve in this role part-time, and will continue to work with clients to create impact in gender equality and global health. 

Camber will have Sector Leaders for each of the 5 sectors in which we focus. Jessica Vandermark and Ben Jenson will co-lead Global Health, Matt Holman will lead US Health, Dr. Chidiebere E.X. Ikejemba will lead Climate & Environment, Marc Allen, whom we are excited to announce has been promoted to Director, will lead Shared Prosperity, and Ted will serve as interim lead for Democracy & Governance while we search for a Director to lead this work in 2023. Each of our Sector Leaders will serve in their roles part-time and will continue to lead client engagements and field-building efforts and eminence.  

We are also thrilled to announce that Kate Thorson has been promoted to Director, and Kim Langenhahn has joined Camber as a Director. Kate will continue to lead a cross-cutting portfolio of work in health equity and gender equity within global and US contexts. Kim will work closely with Matt to grow our US Health portfolio and impact. 

Both Rozie and Sakina will work closely with newly created Office Lead roles, who will be responsible for local Belonging and connection in our geographic hubs. These leaders are Sarah Burgess (Washington, D.C.), Abdel Agadazi (Paris, France), Bethany Wylie (Seattle, WA), and Joseph Zhang (SF Bay Area, CA). These leaders will continue to serve clients day-to-day. 

The changes and change management of the new roles and structure are significant, and we are giving our leaders and team grace and time to adapt, and we will continue to ask for feedback and ways to improve how we work. We also recognize that our new roles will mean a shift in our working relationship – our incredible friendship and shared vision for Camber will endure, and we are excited to learn and grow and serve our team, our clients and partners in different capacities in 2023. We are also buoyed by the incredible leadership and talent we have at Camber, by the organization’s values and our commitment to Equity and Belonging, and by the incredible partners and clients with whom we work across the globe. We are grateful for a 2022 filled with countless good days and we are filled with hope, optimism, and determination for an impactful and joy filled 2023.  

Best, 

Brian and Ted 

Brian Leslie, Co-Founder, CEO, and US Managing Director. Brian is a Co-Founder and CEO of Camber Collective and manages Camber’s US Consulting practice. He works closely with Camber’s leadership to define the organization’s vision and strategic direction and is responsible for Camber’s impact, equity and belonging, and communications in partnership with the Chief People Officer and Director of Impact & Equity. Brian has over 20 years of experience in strategy consulting, advising  foundations, individual philanthropists and nonprofits on strategy, organization design, partnerships and operating models. Brian has experience working on a range of social sector issues and geographies, and brings specific expertise working with clients with clients that focus on policy, advocacy, and communications as their primary lever for impact. Prior to Camber, Brian worked at Deloitte Consulting, where he advised clients on corporate strategy and mergers and acquisitions across multiple industries, as well as at Stockamp & Associates (now Huron Consulting) where he advised large health care organizations on finance and operations. Brian earned an MBA from the Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley and received an undergraduate degree in Economics with honors from Pomona College. Brian is based in Seattle, and spends his free time running, playing soccer, skiing, and enjoying adventures with his wife Anna, who teaches Physiology and Biomedical Science as a local High School, two teenage boys, and his two dogs, Roscoe and Chicken.

Ted Schneider is Camber Collective’s COO and CFO, focusing on managing the firm’s performance and operations, and advises clients on aligning organizational strategy, organization, and business model towards optimal impact. Prior to Camber, Ted worked at Deloitte Consulting, where he advised clients on corporate strategy across many industry sectors. Ted was recognized as one of the Puget Sound Business Journal’s “Top 40 Under 40” in 2012. Ted earned an MBA from the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan with Highest Honors and received an undergraduate degree in industrial engineering from Georgia Tech. Ted loves playing tennis, skiing with friends and family and encouraging his two teenage boys to use both the left and right halves of their developing brains.

The post Camber’s New Governance Structure appeared first on Camber Collective.

Around the world, over 5,000 Certified B Corporations in over 70 countries receive this designation, demonstrating they have met the highest verified standards of social and environmental performance, transparency, and accountability to all their stakeholders. While many corporations state a commitment and actions to ESG (environmental, sustainable, governance) best-practices and positive social impact, B Corps are legally required to consider the impact of their decisions on all stakeholders: customers, workers, communities, and the environment.

While there are B Corps represented across more than 150 industries worldwide, there are but a handful of strategic advisory firms in the mix. Camber Collective is elated to have become a certified B Corporation at the end of 2022, receiving a score of 100.9 points on the B Impact Assessment, a rigorous measurement of a company’s overall impact on its workers, community, customers, and environment. (The minimum performance score required to meet the requirement is 80.)

I recently talked with our co-founders Brian Leslie and Ted Schneider about what Camber Collective hopes to both gain and model by being a Benefit Corporation. This article has been edited for length and clarity.

Q: The B Corps has been around since 2007 and many of us recognize their “circle-with-the-letter-B-inside’ as a seal of approval. Not everyone knows what’s behind the logo though—a commitment to using the power of business to solve our most pressing global challenges. B Corps certification provides an immensely powerful way for corporations to build credibility, trust, and added value in the marketplace. Is this why you sought to pursue B Corps certification for Camber Collective?

A: One of the primary motivators for our pursuit of certification was to show our commitment to social impact. Camber, as a strategy consulting organization, strives to address today’s most urgent challenges, systemically, sustainably, and equitably. Our values aligned strongly with the principles of B Corps, and we saw many further benefits to becoming affiliated.

We would not only have proof, as it were, that we are committed to positive social impact goals, but we would also be accountable, in a transparent and public fashion, to measure and sustain that commitment.

Q: Yes, because certification has to be renewed every three years. So, certification creates a built-in requirement, making sure that we walk the talk.

A: Another element of being a B Corp is there is a measure of transparency insofar as B Labs publishes a summary version of every B Corp’s Impact Report, so that the public can see how the company compares to other businesses in their industry or sector across a variety of social impact measures.

How to Walk the Talk

Q: This is an interesting point. There are not a lot of consultancy firms in the B Corps cohort I imagine; there must be some evident advantages in the market for us in gaining this certification.

A: There are a lot of advisory organizations and consultancy firms that say they are values-driven, and while they might measure one or two elements of social benefit and progress, the B Corps certification process is quite rigorous. A B Corp must demonstrate excellence in areas, such as management practices, that can sometimes be opaque when corporations report on themselves, and entirely control the narrative of what they wish to divulge!

The certification process helped shine a light on some of the ways we had already differentiated ourselves – for example, we introduced a transparent and equitable compensation model 7 years ago. We now possess a framework for how we manage the firm in a way that keeps us above a certain threshold. So, it’s not just words, it’s a level of assurance and demonstration that we have to execute, measure, and maintain.

Many firms use the words that B Corps includes in its mission: building an inclusive, equitable, and regenerative world, but if you are a B Corps, you are required to show it, on an ongoing basis. There is nothing in that statement that is misaligned with our own values or the way we try to operate and grow our firm.

Tax Code Does Not Equate Virtue, or Lack Thereof

Q: Let’s stay with the self-governance topic for a minute more. Camber is a social impact advisory firm that works for equitable and sustainable outcomes. At the same time we are an LLC, and not a nonprofit corporation, which is the legal entity people generally associate with altruism, positive impact, and social good. Foundations are not-for-profits, for example. How does our identity as a for-profit firm create both opportunities and misconceptions, and does being a B Corps help mitigate this dissonance?

A: We sometimes hear what almost approaches a purity test in the social impact space, wherein nonprofit equals good, and for profit equals harmful, extractive, and bad. One of the great strengths about the Benefit Corporation certification is that it models a third way out of that binary.

These are companies that not only perceive themselves as enacting positive outcomes in the business world, they are given the opportunity—and the mandate—to demonstrate that, through both hard data and ways of working.

Q: I like that framing of it as an opportunity. Sometimes there is a knee-jerk assumption that if you are a for-profit company, your goal is to make the most return on investment, full stop. If anything good for society comes out of your venture, that’s secondary. But it seems like B Corps provides industry a way to model that defining and tracking positive impact is not that hard. In this moment of climate emergency, consumers, investors, and employees alike are all asking for companies to demonstrate they are good.

Some might not have knowledge or access to the tools to know how to best accomplish this; so the examples and resources B Corps provides through its outreach and brand actually have trickle down benefit even to companies who do not or cannot at present pursue certification. There are over 75,000 businesses actively using B Lab’s B Impact Assessment and benefit corporation governance structure, and many more who are incorporating B Corp Talking Points into their theory of change and business model.

A: That’s true. It is a good entity, for both direct and indirect impact in the business world.

Q: Yes, and now that they are more global, the potential for world-changing is even bigger. OK, I see that values alignment and accountability were key drivers in the decision to pursue the certification. I imagine there are also significant upsides in terms of the brand and market differentiation.

A: Yes, and this assertion extends the notion of pushing past the nonprofit/good, for-profit/bad binary we were just discussing.

We believe that being a B Corps is wonderful for Camber in terms of, again, not just saying, but proving that as a consulting firm and an advisory firm, we bring a profound set of social impact values and activations to our practice. And in our sector, that is a market differentiator.

We didn’t join B Corps expressly to attract more clients, but we sense becoming part of this cohort will over time connect us more readily with the kinds of agencies and entities we want to work with and assist, and it will provide opportunities for learning and exposure to positive impact best practices to improve Camber’s practices.

One facet of this, with broader lens, one with which you are very engaged, is the complexity around navigating internal equity and belonging. The B Corps has a growing body of work around SDG tracking, and increasingly so when it comes to DEI, racial equity, and anti-racism. They are growing their awareness, communities of practice, and bodies of work around these concepts, and indeed, we expect to not only to learn from these cohorts, but to be able to contribute to the discussions as well.

Q: And not just regionally or nationally… B Corps is a growing transnational entity, which I imagine will open networking and community-building opportunities for us as a global firm.

A: Most definitely. We are not approaching certification from a hardcore business development lens of: “let’s go find new clients,” but more from a viewpoint of, “how can we build an even more robust network with familiarity and trust,” which can lead to collaborations,  brand visibility, influence, and certainly referrals too.

To put a finer point on it, many B Corporations are consumer brands, which we are not. But we know that people not only want to buy from companies whose demonstrated values match their own, but they want to partner with them, hire them, and work for them. All of these facts provide tremendous opportunity for Camber.

Q: Yes, indeed, this looks like a very impressive community of peers to interact with—as they say, a community of “high performing peers.” I have seen many indicators around B Corps on the aggregate that show we are entering into “good company”: To pull from their fact sheet, compared to ordinary businesses, B Corps are:

• 9% more diverse
• 33% more likely to have gender-inclusion trainings
• 48% more likely to have LGBTQ-inclusion trainings
• 45% more likely to have Diversity and Inclusion training (on people of color)
• 49% more likely to employ managers from traditionally underrepresented groups in comparison to ordinary businesses (in the U.S.)
• 41% more likely to have conducted a pay equity analysis by gender, race/ethnicity, or other demographic factors and, if necessary, implemented equal compensation improvement plans or policies to manage and improve workforce diversity and inclusivity in comparison to ordinary business (which 43% of B Corps do)

Opportunities for Impact

These are impressive DEI levers. I also found impressive data around ESG impact. Compared to ordinary businesses, on the global level, B Corps:

• Protected 200,000 hectares of land, offset 16 million tons of carbon, saved 225 million liters of water, and diverted 207 thousand metric tons of waste in 2020
• Outperform on natural-resources conservation by 15%
• Are 2.8x more likely to use 100% low-impact renewable energy 9% of B Corps in developed markets have offset 100% of their GHG emissions, and are 2.5 times more likely to be carbon neutral
• Are 1.1 times more likely to donate more than 1% of their revenue to charity
• Are 28% more likely to have hosted or organized company service days in the last year and 71% more likely to offer paid time off for community service
• Are 75% more likely to hire workers from chronically underemployed populations
• Are 150% more likely to have supplier policies that encourage purchasing from local suppliers
• Screen suppliers based on use of positive social and environmental practices 210% more often 
• 32% of B Corps have a policy to give preferences to use suppliers that are owned by underrepresented groups (400% more likely than ordinary businesses)
• Are 1.9 times more likely to provide training/resources to improve the social or environmental performance of its suppliers, either through the company itself, or through a third party in comparison (23% of B Corps achieve this standard)

A: These data indicate congruence in practice with our theses around Just Transition and equity. And even though many of these measures don’t apply to our business model (we don’t manufacture products or sell consumer goods, for example), the shared thought leadership is very exciting, as is the alignment with the goals of our clients and partners.

Influence and Be Influenced

Q: Since we have been on our own ESG journey, specifically around racial equity, I would imagine we see many opportunities to influence companies in our circle as well, through some of what we are learning and experiencing as we grow as an advisory firm. What opportunities to learn and teach excite you?

A: There are so many opportunities to learn and upskill within the B Corps ecosystem. We were attracted by the depth of technology, talent, and expertise accessible within the B Corps community. And there is something really terrific about being in cohorts that have already figured out a lot of the issues around growth, scale, etc. that we are facing as a firm.

These include nuts and bolts topics like managing distributed teams, working across time zones—and even things one doesn’t necessarily correlate to strategic consulting, but which do touch upon some of our work with health care and product distribution, such as global supply chains. Additionally, our climate and environmental work is very focused on Just Transition and influencing the private sector to be better environmental and sustainable citizens. So, we see many ways to be in circles of influence and develop our own theories and practices more deeply.

Camber is now connected within a network, which provides some opportunity for building relationships with organizations that are also on a pathway to positive impact. Both when it comes to climate, or when it comes to equity and anti-racism, and even issues like how do we manage travel: client visits and workshop delivery while also trying to grapple with our own carbon footprints?

Such discussions and solutions are so essential, and existentially important. It’s encouraging to feel we aren’t going this alone, but are part of a global group of enlightened companies and entities all navigating similar challenges and driving towards the same kinds of positive solutions.

Q: Yes, B Labs has some 15 or 20 years in this game, and have a profound track record of driving positive social change. It’s unique.

The Power of Many

A: And furthermore, the opportunity to network is tremendous. We pride ourselves in being functional experts, but we are not deep content experts in every single are, nor in every single geography. There will be lots of opportunities for Camber to continue building networks of organizations and firms doing best-in-class work around everything from sustainability, to how they manage across geographies, to the efficiency tools and methods they use, just to name a few.

Take one of the most visible examples, Patagonia. They set the standard for ESG and social impact as a B Corp, and now they have shifted their model to be employee-owned. Seeing what they do gives all of us a vision for how we can become better, and evolve, and grow with what our models and realities evolve into.

I think the influence and learning and osmosis of being in these very enlightened corporate thinking spaces is going to be enormously impactful for Camber.

Q: And while we won’t be sitting in weekly meetings with hundreds of B Corps companies, there are formal and informal spheres of interaction and influence we will engage with. What other ideas or opportunities do you see in this aligned space that can help us positively influence our new peer circles in the B Corps?

A: Well, the B Corp itself is ever-adapting, and learning, and growing. And so we are all in a way on a similar path of evolution. Racial equity for example is becoming a bigger part of what they’re trying to do. In fact, when we first started in on the assessment process, their racial equity component was just starting to emerge.

I think we, and other firms that are paying close attention to these levels, will have a lot to bring to the table. And congruently, we as Camber will find ways to elevate important aspects of this shared work to our peers in the advisory space, and nonprofit, government agencies, and foundations we work with, over time.

Q: This is all a great deal of upside. Why isn’t every corporation with a good mission statement a B Corps?!

The post Camber Collective is a B-Corporation appeared first on Camber Collective.

It truly is better to give than to receive: among the many grateful messages shared with us for the year-end donation was one ED who wrote that our gift “really helps… and even more it gives the team the feeling that they have support out there. My programs manager actually cried when I just told her… I can’t tell you how much this means for all of us.”

We’re so happy to be able to make a difference to so many important groups and causes, both in the cities and regions where we have offices, but also in places as far away as South Sudan, Myanmar, and Haiti. As a firm committed to helping address today’s most urgent challenges—systemically, sustainably, and equitably—this is a reminder of why we are galvanized in our work.

Please enjoy learning a bit about the organizations we supported in 2022—and a reminder, it’s not only year-end giving that makes a difference. If any of these missions inspire you, we’re sure your support will always be welcomed!

Groups We Supported in 2022

Anacostia Riverkeeper works to protect and restore the Anacostia River in the Washington, D.C. area, where we opened our 4^th Camber office in Fall, 2022. Their focus areas range from water quality monitoring to advocacy work to ensure a swimmable and fishable Anacostia.

Ben’s Fund partners with the Seattle Foundation to provide financial support to children and young adults with autism along with guidance and support as they continue their journey.

Black Women for Wellness is committed to the health and well-being of Black women and girls through health education, empowerment and advocacy. Black Women for Wellness started as a group of women concerned with the health and well-being of black babies. Teaming up with the Birthing Project, they implemented the Shangazi Program, a grassroots initiative matching pregnant women to mentors who coached parents from pregnancy until at least the child’s first birthday.

Over 11,000 homeless individuals are cared for by Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program each year. Each individual gains access to comprehensive health care, from preventative dental care to cancer treatment, across more than 35 locations reaching some of the community’s most vulnerable.

Chief Seattle Club is dedicated to physically and spiritually supporting American Indian and Alaska Native people in downtown Seattle. Its Day Center in the Pioneer Square district provides food, primary health care, housing assistance, legal services, a Native art job training program, and opportunities for members to engage in cultural community-building.

Childhaven is a nonprofit organization that serves children and their families experiencing adversity and trauma in King County, Washington. The agency runs Early Learning, Counseling Services, Developmental Therapies, and Wraparound Support programs.

The Children’s Alliance is Washington’s statewide, nonpartisan child advocacy organization, changing kids’ lives through effecting positive changes in public policies, priorities, and programs.

Karen Department of Health and Welfare is a field medics and ethnic health organization operating in Southeast Myanmar. It provides trauma care and medical first response to more than 75,0000 people in over 200 villages affected by conflict and displacement.

The Mae Tao Clinic, also known as Dr. Cynthia’s clinic after its founder Dr. Cynthia Maung, is a community based organization that has provided primary healthcare service and protection to community from Burma/Myanmar in Western Thailand since 1989.

FareStart transforms lives, disrupts poverty and nourishes communities through food, life skills and job training. This agency has been helping people transform their lives through food for 30 years—one person, one job and one community at a time.

The Green String Network is a regional organization based in Kenya supporting healing-centered peacebuilding local organizations to develop and design trauma-informed programing across the region, including neighboring countries of Somalia, Ethiopia, and South Sudan. Through storytelling, watercolor illustrations, and embodied practices they help people attain healing-centered peacebuilding.

iMentor matches every student in our high schools with a committed college-educated mentor, equipped to guide that young person on their journey to college graduation.

La Maison des Femmes de Saint-Denis Est serves women in domestic violence situations through a multidisciplinary suite of services. Their geographical focus is the Parisian suburbs of Seine-Saint-Denis, dans le Val d’Oise, les Hauts-de-Seine et à Paris.

Mamatoto Village is devoted to serving Black women through the creation of career pathways in maternal health; and providing accessible perinatal support services designed to equip women with the necessary tools to make the most informed decisions in their maternity care, parenting, and lives.

Miracle Messages rebuilds social support systems for unhoused neighbors, primarily through family reunifications, a phone-based buddy system, and $500/month direct cash transfers. They seek to end relational poverty on the streets, and in the process, inspire people to embrace their unhoused neighbors not as problems to be solved, but as people to be loved.

The Northwest Community Bail Fund advocates for bail reform and works to minimize the harm of the cash bail system by paying bail for people who would otherwise spend the pretrial time in jail while awaiting routine court appearances. They operate King, Snohomish, and Pierce Counties in Washington State.

Oasis for Girls partners with young women of color, aged 14-18, from under-resourced communities in San Francisco to cultivate the skills, knowledge, and confidence to discover their dreams and build strong futures, using culturally relevant and gender-specific programs to empower girls and build sisterhood through shared experiences.

Olivewood Gardens and Learning Center’s historic 7.85-acre property in National City, California serves as an interactive, indoor-outdoor classroom for children and adults from around San Diego County, helping build healthy families and a healthy environment.

Omar’s Dream Foundation enables hospitalized and medically-supervised children to remotely attend school allowing them to stay connected to their teachers and classmates. The program is provided free of cost to qualified students and their educators.

Pathways Development Initiative Uganda (PDI) is a non-governmental organization that exists to mobilize and empower individuals and communities to improve their livelihoods and to understand the role of education as a means to fighting poverty and transforming their lives.

Rainier Scholars cultivates the academic potential and leadership skills of hard-working, underrepresented students of color. By creating access to transformative educational and career opportunities and providing comprehensive support to scholars and families, they help increase college graduation rates and empower new generations of leaders.

Reading Partners is a children’s literacy organization based in the San Francisco Bay Area with programs in over 40 school districts throughout California, New York, Washington DC, and eight other states. In the 2016-17 school year, Reading Partners delivered individualized reading tutoring to more than 11,200 students in 225 elementary schools.

REES Africa (Renewable Energy & Environmental Sustainability for Africa Initiative) is a youth-led NGO working to redefine the lifestyle of vulnerable and marginalized African communities, providing renewable energy access and promote environmental sustainability through advocacy & actionable projects in Africa.

RepresentUs brings together conservatives, progressives, and everyone in between to pass powerful laws that fix the U.S.’s broken elections and stop political bribery.

ROOTS Young Adult Shelter builds community and fosters dignity through access to essential services and a safe sleeping places for young adults (aged 18-15) experiencing homelessness.

The Secours Populaire Français, or French Popular Relief, is a French non-profit organization founded in 1945, dedicated to fighting poverty and discrimination in public life.

Share and Care Foundation believes it is our social responsibility to work towards creating a more equal world, where everyone has access to gender equality, healthcare, and education. They provide middle school dropouts with the support to reenroll and complete their education, among other supports.

She Should Run provides women who are curious about public office with a starting place to explore their options. They help ensure everyone can find a role in transforming the face of government, local to national.

SisterWeb Doulas avails Black, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander, and Latinx birthing families in San Francisco with community doulas and high-quality, culturally congruent doula care at no cost.

Solidarité Femmes provides women and their children who are victims of domestic violence with emergency aid and ongoing assistance including connection to wraparound services.

As a non-governmental search and rescue organization, SOS Humanity stands for humanity at sea and on land, committed to ensuring no person drowns while fleeing at sea and that everyone is treated with dignity. They operate a life-saving mission in the central Mediterranean, and seek to rescue people from distress, protect and assist them, document their stories, and highlight the consequences of the EU´s inhumane migration policy.

Technology Access Foundation (TAF) is a Seattle-based nonprofit redefining K-12 public education throughout Washington State for all students and teachers, particularly those who identify as a person of color and are from traditionally underserved communities. They utilize an equity lens and STEM teaching to provide opportunity, undo systemic oppression, and make education a place where everyone wins.

The Tubman Center for Health & Freedom is committed to the principles of healing and people’s liberation from systems that make us unwell. Their focus areas include health justice, culturally appropriate care and integrative medicine.

With a vision of equity for all, the Urban League of Metropolitan Seattle (ULMS) provides programming and services designed to support and encourage self-sufficiency in all aspects of life, particularly across five focus areas: advocacy & civic engagement, education, housing, public health and workforce development.

Water for South Sudan was founded by “Lost Boy” Selva Dut and supporters to “deliver sustainable quality-of-life services to the people of South Sudan by efficiently providing access to clean, safe water, and improving hygiene and sanitation practices in areas of great need.” They seek to water the seeds of change in South Sudan by drilling wells, delivering hygiene education, and providing sanitation services.

The What If Foundation invests in the future of Haitian children living in poverty. They work in close partnership with the grassroots local organization​ Na Rive to deliver food, education, and community support programs that are transforming lives in the Ti Plas Kazo community of Port-au-Prince, and beyond. This is an in memoriam gift honoring Lavarice Ti Plas’ amazing leader, Lavarice Gaudin.

Wild Montana works from the ground up bringing people and communities together around policies, proposals, and legislation that protect wild public lands and waters in the Big Sky Country state from degradation and irresponsible development. Its work safeguards wildlands, secures wildlife habitat and migration corridors, and keeps headwaters and streams running cold, clear, and connected.

YouthCare works to end youth homelessness and to ensure that young people are valued for who they are and empowered to achieve their potential.

As Camber Collective’s Director of Impact and Equity Rozella Kennedy helps direct the firm’s internal Impact, Equity, and Belonging work as well as the external practice. Her theory of impact seeks to leverage equitable values to influence and impact the humanitarian, development, philanthropic, and social impact sectors. The long focus is to expand awareness and practice in local and global post-colonial contexts. Rozella is also the creator of Brave Sis Project, a lifestyle brand using narrative and social engagement to uplift BIPOC women in U.S. history as a tool for learning, growth, celebration, and equity allyship; her book “Our Brave Foremothers: Celebrating 100 Black, Brown, Asian, and Indigenous Women Who Changed the Course of History” was published by Workman Press in Spring, 2023.

The post The Joy of Giving, 2022 appeared first on Camber Collective.

It’s human nature to wish for linear and rapid progress, but as we know, most meaningful advances—and certainly the journey towards authentic racial equity—are, at best, spirals. This work is complicated and filled with challenges, false starts, hurdles, missteps (and hopefully, minimal) crashes. Neither a sailor nor a rower, I’m still attracted to a few boating metaphors to help chart our present course.

In coming in as Camber’s first Director of Impact and Equity in late 2021, I was able to supplement my personal career and workplace experience with insights from our team, input from clients and partners, and continual study of the DEI and culture-building sectors beyond our company. Again, I am grateful to Tema Okun and Kenneth Jones for their “Dismantling White Supremacy” framework, as well as many other practitioners in the equity, belonging, and social justice space who keep us focused on our own potential blind spots as well as enduring systemic gaps to confront and shift.

As consultants, we want to measure and map everything. And yet, neither Camber nor I are “DEI practitioners” in the strict sense. Further, one of the key takeaways from the field of practice around diversity, equity, and inclusion is that there are no fixed and firm ways to define DEI success. Certainly, “checkbox outcomes,” such as the number of hires or retentions, diversity of candidate pools, etc., can spur helpful initiatives and practices, but over-relying on these indicators can be shallow and performative—and worse. This is why we prefer belonging: do team members feel Seen, Connected, Supported, Galvanized?

Steering The Ship Towards the North Star** of Equitable Impact

Steering towards considerations of authentic equity may involve navigating around shoals of uncomfortable truth. One reality check is that practices of overt anti-racism often run counter to many traditional mores of the business world. Honestly facing this fact creates a tension that many corporate and cultural entities would prefer to hush or ignore, but Camber is seeking to lean in and name it. Facing such hard truths assists us in refining the role that we, as a consulting firm, can viably bring to the equity space.

We also recognize that each of our clients—and even our own people—is on an individual journey of equity and belonging. Our job is to keep the ship sailing and point the direction for others, and to do so requires dexterity and determination. We neither want to get too far ahead in the lane and potentially lose or alienate some collaborators or partners, nor do we wish to drop a complacent anchor in our current societal spot—so doing would not only disappoint our more activist-inspired collaborators, sticking with the status quo actually risks inadvertently perpetuating the very harmful systems and urgent challenges that we week to help solve: systemically, sustainably, and equitably.  

Camber Collective is first and foremost an advisor, and increasingly we see our role as that of a convenor, influencer and activator: embracing, stretching, and encouraging our clients and partners to expand their mindsets towards deeper empathy, humility, and courage.

But now, let’s be clear: many proponents in the DEI and justice spaces are responding to urgent, compelling, and sometimes life-or-death issues around discrimination and even danger. We learn from and are galvanized by their fire. And with this, for us as a consulting firm, it has proven appropriate to utilize what john. a. powell and others call a “bridging” approach. We try to utilize facts (data), humanized storytelling, and collegial “calling in” in order to steer the prow.

We choose this equitable and inclusive path fully aware that incorporating localized agency and value, and shifting norms around power require attenuated resources of time, resources, and patience. We are not expert practitioners yet, for as our best teachers in equity and justice spaces inform us, perfection itself is a false dichotomy. (Whose perfection is a question that can often be mishandled and muddled by power dynamics.) Yet unlearning bias and unliving privilege is everybody’s work, and to foster change, we must stay connected and activated. 

Everyone Must Grab an Oar

I’d like to “be real” about some of the dynamics that sometimes undermine equity and impact work. Let’s start with acknowledging that some degree of engagement attrition may be inevitable. As we move further away from the social and racial justice awakenings and uprisings of 2020, we must not take our foot off the collective gas pedal; for we who are BIPOC* people, know that there is no magical “over,” and indeed far too little lasting racial justice has ever arrived. Therefore, a big part of our collective work is reminding us all that change is not an overnight occurrence. Centuries of habit must be unraveled, unlearned, and disrupted.

This is a laborious calling, particularly for some BIPOC and other systemically excluded or discriminated staff who grow weary from carrying a disproportionate part of the effort. And again, “keeping it real,” across both U.S. society and in some global circles, we have already seen the swing back, with some people in dominant (white, western, male) culture growing tired or disengaged—or equally unhelpful, overwhelmed by paralyzing guilt and sorrow over the sobering entrenchment of racism and systemic discrimination. (The SCOTUS affirmative action ruling of 2023 only further soured the landscape.)

We have, at Camber, found that our belonging framework—especially the Seen and Connected levers—keeps us in honest, courageous dialogue about race, equity and inclusion, and other essential topics, and I recommend that anyone in the position of real or aspirational “ally” continue to stay focused on these necessary shifts. Equity cannot be a flash in the pan or a symbolic, short-lived reaction to a news cycle. May I point out that stepping away from ‘isms’ is a privilege that people of color, women, LGBTQIA+, differently abled, and other groups who are typically harmed or excluded do not generally get to select. This fact alone should keep all our arms flexing and paddling.

To anyone who has been feeling overcome or discouraged by the endurance of inequity, the strokes must continue, focused and on course. The call of a trusted coxswain can keep us rowing as one. Humanitarian, development, social impact, government, and philanthropy work are exhausting. But listing about in a conceit of pain and apology diverts essential energy and motivation that could better be used to activate change. These negative/scarcity drivers also keep us collectively stuck in a cycle of anger, regret, fear, distrust, and other deleterious factors that make social impact and change all but impossible.

One more point: centering misery over hope inadvertently and disproportionately centers dominant culture/whiteness/patriarchy as the prime activator of social change, leaving those who would most benefit sidelined as token accessories or passive recipients of change, rather than co-architects. This is one reason why we continue to explore constructs of “White Saviordom” as a team and ways to avoid and dismantle these mindsets and practices. This is ongoing, endless, but as I’ve said before galvanizing work, and it’s one of the reasons that people choose to work at and with Camber Collective.

Making Space for Joy

All of what I’ve described above is complicated, delicate, sensitive, sometimes even holy, but always difficult work. As a result, we introduce joy and celebration whenever possible to support each other on our collective equity journey. Tools, resources, and events that insert celebration and appreciation allow us to fortify the team’s sense of mutuality, admiration, and trust.

Our 2022 team convening, which brought the nearly 40 team members from around the globe together after nearly three years of separation, involved activities that helped us bond and renew our resolve. They were all themed around the four tenets of belonging (being Seen, Connected, Supported, and Galvanized). Fun, gratitude, celebration, friendly competition, breaking bread, and vision-mapping ignited us all.

To support internal culture building and collaborating, we also are also co-designing new ways to gather in groupings of team member choice around equity learning, advisory, or task groups. This flexibility not only provides multiple layers of opportunities for team members to engage deeply in the work that most interests them, it provides safe spaces for in-group sharing and solidarity, and cross-group gatherings for learning, sharing, and mutual coaching.

We continue to explore groups that advise on equity and client influence; efforts to humanize data in storytelling; and impromptu, informal staff gatherings based on geographic region, faith practice, and other elements of our shared human experience. As we dive deeper into our efforts, we look forward to sharing more information about our experiences.  

Humanizing, Honesty, and Hope

Shifting our mindsets and developing comfort with emotional vulnerability and individual discovery are indispensable ways of activating social impact. They are also stances that are seldom seen in management consulting. In our initial stages of this work, unclear communication around our organizational norms and practices contributed to discord and frustration among some staff members. In checking our own awareness and blind spots, we have been able to start making structural and policy changes to improve communications between staff and clients—policies that will continue to evolve as we move further along this equity journey.  

Connection, along with being seen and supported (three of the tenets of belonging) allows us to stay galvanized (the fourth). Our belonging framework helps involve all members of the Camber team—from management down to the newest hire—keep equitable impact afloat.

Focusing on “connection,” through humanized storytelling and relationship-building, has allowed us to interrogate legacy “professional” postures in our consulting sector, such as seriousness, rigidity, and over-reliance on jargon. Focusing on people: our collaborators, the people they ultimately serve, and ourselves as a team also gives us the resolve to soldier on through the complex yet generally behind-the-scenes work of coalition building, systems design, and community strengthening.

Putting our Values into our Business

To put a fine point on it, equity and belonging are not the primary work of Camber Collective—consulting is. As I pointed out in the second post in this series, we strive to integrate these attributes into our client work, even if equity and belonging are not the primary focus of a project. Further, our firm’s expectation that each team member invests individual time and focus in equity learning is one of our differentiating factors compared to some other consultancies in our industry. Referring again to my first post in this series, we strive to be exemplars in the consulting industry in our rejection of agnosticism in “social good consulting.” Clients and projects whose goals run afoul of our social good values won’t pass our engagement test.

As we build out this values alignment in our practice and demonstrate a deeper focus on equity and sustainability, we are even finding that new partners who were skeptical of the consulting sector writ large are eager to engage with our services. We are gratified to see this development, for we do believe that, by integrating equity into our theories of influence and client work, Camber Collective can help disrupt and dismantle the collective history of racist, exclusive, extractive, and colonial practices in the humanitarian and philanthropic sectors.  

It is good work. We enjoy celebrating each other and commemorating key cultural and personal events. While acknowledging the inevitable mistakes we will make along the way, we hope to move forward with grace and resolve. The ship sails forth!

As Camber Collective’s Director of Impact and Equity Rozella Kennedy helps direct the firm’s internal Impact, Equity, and Belonging work as well as the external practice. Her theory of impact seeks to leverage equitable values to influence and impact the humanitarian, development, philanthropic, and social impact sectors. The long focus is to expand awareness and practice in local and global post-colonial contexts. Rozella is also the creator of Brave Sis Project, a lifestyle brand using narrative and social engagement to uplift BIPOC women in U.S. history as a tool for learning, growth, celebration, and equity allyship; her book “Our Brave Foremothers: Celebrating 100 Black, Brown, Asian, and Indigenous Women Who Changed the Course of History” was published by Workman Press in Spring, 2023.

Notes

* BIPOC refers to Black, Indigenous, and People of Color. Camber Collective recognizes that this term, like many others in this dynamic and rapidly changing nomenclature context, does not fully serve all communities or contexts, but we will use it here for the sake of brevity and uniformity.

** Similarly, many practitioners in equity spaces suggest not using the term “North Star” and instead using “guiding star,” to dissuade us from default Global-North location bias. While I agree with this sentiment, at this point, in the nautical field, “guiding star” has not yet caught on as a navigational term. I advise the reader to approach language with the fluidity that human interaction and progressing ideas invite.

The post Piloting Equity Towards Impact appeared first on Camber Collective.

This blog post is the second in a three-part series that explores Camber Collective’s journey of equity and belonging. In the first blog, we explained the early phases of the organization’s journey and decision to hire a Director of Impact and Equity. In the blog below, I describe how our approach spans the many identities of our team.   

In order to do work for social good—humanitarianism, development, or philanthropy—we need to reconcile the fact that there exist many forms of power. Money is power, yes, but so is experience—and so is trust. Trust is built through the practice of nurturing relationship, and it simply cannot be sustainably coerced by other means. For all the many riveting conversations around the future of philanthropy and aid, and racial justice and equity’s role in shifting power, if great ideas are not adoptable, adaptable, and trusted, such efforts risk becoming little more than window dressing.

At Camber Collective, our mission (“to create a sustainable organization where people can build purpose driven careers solving problems that matter”) involves creating systemic change. Equity and belonging are fundamental tenets of such a shift. To anchor our evolving body of work, we draw some inspiration from the “Liberatory Design” model. Rooted in Design Thinking from the Stanford d.school, and enhanced with the crucial equity lens overlay developed by the National Equity Project, this framework seeks to liberate change-agents and communities from habits that perpetuate inequities.

In our exploration of the model, we understand the key to Liberatory Design is to interrogate entrenched norms around power-hoarding, white saviorism, and the status quo.  

We are at the beginning of integrating this framework into our equity approach, but I will say it is galvanizing. Our interrogation process enables us to begin shifting relationships between the people who design systems—everyone from philanthropists to policymakers to corporate leaders—and those who are impacted by their efforts. We are already mapping how this framework intersects with our theory of impact, and our own ways of working, and will share more about this process as it unfolds.

To differentiate Camber’s practice from the product and design sector, we refer to our work as “Equitable Project Design.” You’ll see more of this framing from us as we move along.

Leading by Listening

As I touched upon above, there are many legitimate versions of power, and we will continually explore and unpack the gamut in our external communications and project work. Examining power calls us to ask thought-provoking (and sometimes uncomfortable) questions such as: Who holds the power? Who needs to be brought into the circle of power? What are the risks to and comfort thresholds of those holding power to cede some of it?  

We are starting to consider these queries at every phase of our client work—from the initial proposal submission to the final deliverables. We see many ways this lens will intersect with both the visible/external and operational/cultural/internal ways we create impact in the world.

In recognizing that power sharing is complex and difficult to achieve, we strive to remain firm in our conviction that power hoarding undermines adoption, sustainability, and trust. Further, it perpetuates paradigms of colonialism and racism. To elaborate on my above remarks, the trust that emanates from being a member of, an advocate for, and a friend of local communities is its own mighty form of power—it may not have monetary value, and it is often ignored within some policy making and legislative halls, but without it, efforts to engender social good skirt against futility. 

But let’s level set our expectations here. As in all facets of the world and life, a 100% purity attainment goal is unrealistic. Not all clients and contexts will align with Equitable Design principles in uniform ways, and the journey is also iterative. To keep us anchored in our own values and vision of social impact and systemic change, we are establishing a team playbook of considerations across the entire project cycle that will help us execute the work with honesty, confidence, and equitable influence. This is a very exciting output of our project design efforts. 

Being Global Means Thinking Beyond the Local

Camber is a global firm, and importantly, our equity lens must incorporate global and local communities and frameworks. In a global context, an Equitable Design model means expanding our understanding of race and racism beyond the American reality and into the histories and current societies beyond the U.S.

Our Paris office is a microcosm of diversity, including team members from the U.S., Canada, and several Sub-Saharan African countries. The lived and professional experience they bring to the company, as well as their work with our clients and partners positions them to navigate othering, dominance, cooperation, and transformation in ways that will ultimately influence stakeholders and change-agents in the U.S. and—importantly—beyond.  

As a mission-aligned consultancy firm, Camber takes this collaborative approach seriously. We celebrate the increased interest in and candor around the many ways that equity can drive progress. We place particular focus on racial equity, as racism is the bedrock of systemic inequities, from colonialism to the shameful U.S. history of slavery, Jim Crow, and so many other social tragedies that we live with to this day.

At the same time, we wholly recognize that the fundamental fib of history—wherein oppressors created a narrative of superiority and ‘othering’ to justify their exploitation, and stealing, of land, labor, and resources—is the root of every form of discrimination and inequity we can fathom. All of this being true, we also recognized our shortcomings as we initially lacked geographically contextual curriculum to support our global team, and expanding our team knowledge and understanding of both European and Sub-Saharan/post-colonial realities must be part of our ongoing competency.

Never Mind “La Constitution,” Race Exists in France

Hiring “diverse” staff members with unique and distinct life experiences and points of view is generally considered the “business model” justification for DEI. We find that the culture of belonging where everyone can feel Seen, Supported, Connected, and Galvanized creates portals for actually leveraging this diversity as both a mission and business tool, but also it builds our collective culture, sensitivity, and celebration.

Staff in our Paris office operate in a different context than those in our US-based locations; furthermore, French conceptions of race, society, and post-colonialism were not part of our original equity training. We failed to adequately explore the relevance of US racism in a French context in our earliest explorations of history and antiracism, but we quickly expanded the prism.

Our conversations with colleagues in Paris led us to develop learning experiences where staff could highlight the contextual differences that they face. In practice, this looked like the Paris-based team discussing similarities and differences between the U.S. and France as it pertains to racism and racialized discrimination. We worked to supplement our understanding by inviting guest speakers to provide perspectives that would help us become a more aware and empathic group of individuals. They taught us the importance of recognizing individual context and deepened our DEI approach.   

It’s worth calling out that France’s own approach to race and racial equity is deeply complicated and shaped by a long history of colonialism and imperialism. Indeed, the French government prohibits the inclusion of race or ethnicity on its census to reinforce that the French Republic is indivisible. But despite the exclusion of such words, France is a highly racialized society.

I speak from experience as I lived there throughout my 20s as a Black American woman. Understanding what role Camber and other consulting agencies can play in elevating and addressing inequities in diverse global contexts is fodder for our collective actions moving forward. 

The Long Road to Better Racial and Cultural Competency

Camber values the unique perspectives that each of our staff and clients contribute to our work. In recruiting new team members, we ask candidates not just about their professional resume, but also which aspects of their lived experience they believe add value to our work. We’ve eliminated cover letters, instead probing to hear attributes and information that is not traditionally, and possibly not adequately, conveyed in a formal resume. Such proactive steps give us confidence that we are diversifying our team in a sustainable way: from entry level analysts up to management.

Our rigorous hiring practice screens for team members’ commitment to equity and belonging work, and our team continues to explore ways to build individual and shared accountability for our intersectional equity and anti-racism learning.

We know that bias is a force that must be unlearned. Additionally, privilege and relationships of power need to continually be examined and modified in relation to a rapidly evolving world. 

As mentioned, it is important to us to ensure that the full global team is seen and heard. In part one of the series, I discussed the Camber Culture Intranet. This resource serves as an evolving hub for tools to help expand our worldviews in an asynchronous delivery that enhances our live meetings, trainings, and internal learning groups. This tool supports Camber’s growth as a firm and geographically dispersed staff. The Intranet is a dynamic tool we can access to grow our collective understanding around racial and equity topics. This culture of growth is critical—it allows us to celebrate each other, continue learning, and grow our practice of interdependent consulting and problem-solving, so that every project and client benefits.  

Our staff have very different lived experiences and identities. We are each in different stages of life—spanning from the parents of toddlers to empty nesters, recent college graduates to sexagenarians. Our company joyfully represents diverse cultures, religions, orientations, abilities, and national or community origins. Learning to live and thrive together requires constant listening, openness, and respect. A journey to be embraced.

As Camber Collective’s Director of Impact and Equity Rozella Kennedy helps direct the firm’s internal Impact, Equity, and Belonging work as well as the external practice. Her theory of impact seeks to leverage equitable values to influence and impact the humanitarian, development, philanthropic, and social impact sectors. The long focus is to expand awareness and practice in local and global post-colonial contexts. Rozella is also the creator of Brave Sis Project, a lifestyle brand using narrative and social engagement to uplift BIPOC women in U.S. history as a tool for learning, growth, celebration, and equity allyship; her book “Our Brave Foremothers: Celebrating 100 Black, Brown, Asian, and Indigenous Women Who Changed the Course of History” was published by Workman Press in Spring, 2023.

Read the third post in this series.

The post Lived Experience and Equitable Project Design appeared first on Camber Collective.

From our initial equity commitment in 2019, Camber Collective’s process of fostering an organizational culture of equity and belonging has been a memorable journey. The past three years have included inspiring moments of energy and action, and honest passages of humility and resetting. This blog post is the first of a three-part series that shares the phases of this voyage thus far. We start by laying out the organizational values and beliefs that drive our approach to this work.

There were many aspects of Camber Collective’s work that attract people to the firm. One of these is our focus on social impact and our drive to disrupt the status quo of many professional consulting firms, some of which sully the advisory sector by being “social good agnostic,” advising clients to maximize profits above all else—including the well-being of vulnerable and susceptible communities around the world, or acting in ways that are dissonant with the values of a purpose-driven organization.

Camber aims to be a different kind of strategic advising agency—not abetting C-suite egos, but advancing social impact and servicing clients aligned with our objective of addressing today’s most urgent challenges in ways that are systemic, sustainable, and equitable.

When I joined the organization in October 2021 as Camber’s first Director of Impact and Equity, I was familiar with the work that had been started two years prior. Yet, sitting inside the organization has allowed me to comprehend the complexity of Camber’s equity and belonging journey. Like most journeys, this one has been imperfect and non-linear, and defined by deliberate and intentional action and learning.  

We took our first steps in 2019 with a firm-wide commitment to better understand and correct systemic and racialized imbalances of power.

Spurred from a direct ask of our BIPOC staff members (1), the organization invested significant financial (over $70,000) and human resources to support the team on this journey:  

• Unlearn deeply ingrained personal, organizational, societal, and sector norms around race, history, and equity
• Explore, challenge, and shift systemic, sector and global conventions around equity and justice
• Understand why racism is the foundational factor of inequity and harm

Moving from Ideas to Action

The early days of our journey required that we understand the unseen privilege that is inherent in a white-led organization. After all, Camber Collective has four white founders and access to partners and clients who yield considerable regional and global influence, prestige, and power. To do this work in earnest, Camber committed to embracing and continually recognizing its positional power.

Seeing and understanding systems and potential for hidden bias would allow us to continue serving towards the greater public good, while using our influence to help advance broader systemic equity.

The events of 2020 brought greater urgency and intention to this work. The pandemic shutdown, coupled with the violent racial tumults of that year—including the killings of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and many other Black people—allowed Camber staff to further reflect on our position on the gamut of privilege and racial conflict. The team pushed for swifter, bolder action to show our solidarity with the moment: a team day dedicated to participating in Black Lives Matter protests in Seattle and San Francisco, and matching donations to allied organizations and coalitions fighting for racial justice. The year’s events underscored how much we needed to advocate and activate if we want to see structural change, cultural evolution, and systemic transformation.

With the help of external experts, Camber leadership determined three ways forward: recruiting and hiring diverse staff (both from within existing talent and external talent pool), establishing a culture of belonging so that all our staff feel supported and valued, evolving internal policies and further integrating equity into our external client work. The latter includes donating one percent of the company’s revenue to equity-focused organizations.

Mapping Practices Beyond DEI

I arrived at Camber in October 2021 with energy and expertise, and also fresh eyes—management consulting was a new business for me. For more than 25 years, I led nonprofits and organizations in the social good sector as a trusted counselor. Through my affiliation with several national and global coalitions as well as thought leaders working in the DEI, belonging, and racial justice space, I seek to merge ideas that reshape our internal and client-facing operations.

In my personal and professional life, I challenge DEI practitioners to strive for true transformation—moving beyond superficial and performative practices. This work can take many forms, and at Camber Collective, we begin by centering a culture of belonging, celebration, and mutual respect. I rely upon the expertise and insights of several motivated team members, working through our Equity Action Group, to ensure that Camber’s equity work reflects the viewpoints, interests, and motivations of the entire team, at all levels of seniority, work experience, geographical location, and socio-cultural identity.

Upon my arrival, I set off by mapping and exploring pertinent frameworks to help orient our pathway. These included Tema Okun and Kenneth Jones’ “Disrupting White Supremacy Culture” framework, the Othering and Belonging Institute’s body of work, and many resources from the traditional DEI space as well as new thinking around program design and localization (which I will discuss in further detail in subsequent blog posts.)

Understanding these systems better would help the team explore our alignment with players across the spectrum of social impact, while continuing to grow in our own learning. I wrote about this journey soon upon my arrival in October, 2021.

We are already seeing meaningful progress. We’ve expanded our early financial commitments; to refine the targeted donation of one percent of the company’s revenue, I allotted each team member a $1,000 stipend to give to the philanthropic cause of their choice. Celebrating our collective support of over 40 nonprofits in the U.S. and abroad was a profound experience for the team—and a chance to share power.

As the pandemic bore on and hybrid, distributed teams became the norm, team members developed intrapersonal practices and clear guidelines to help us stay well connected. These included the practice of grounding-in and checking-in at meetings, and recurring coffee chats to learn about important cultural, racial, and social issues—or sometimes just to get together to have fun, share, and celebrate.

On the policy side, the firm established an eight-hour minimum monthly commitment to equity and belonging work. The implementation of the Camber Culture Intranet has allowed staff to share equity, culture and belonging resources and our Teams channels keep us engaged on an ongoing basis across topics, from our bodies of work; to current events impacting our theories of change; to updates about hobbies, favorite TV shows, and other interests that allow us bring more of our authentic selves to each other, as we so choose. For a distributed team—working across nine time zones, four offices, and a hybrid virtual/in-person office model—this continues to be a valuable way of building team cohesion.

It’s rewarding to see a workplace culture in which team members feel seen, supported, connected, and galvanized. It’s even more fulfilling to see how that culture continues to develop and intersect with Camber Collective’s external work, influence, and impact with clients. It is my hope that the organization can serve as a model for other management consulting firms beginning their equity and belonging journeys—and clients and partners wishing to go more deeply into an equitable, and regenerative practice.

As Camber Collective’s Director of Impact and Equity Rozella Kennedy helps direct the firm’s internal Impact, Equity, and Belonging work as well as the external practice. Her theory of impact seeks to leverage equitable values to influence and impact the humanitarian, development, philanthropic, and social impact sectors. The long focus is to expand awareness and practice in local and global post-colonial contexts. Rozella is also the creator of Brave Sis Project, a lifestyle brand using narrative and social engagement to uplift BIPOC women in U.S. history as a tool for learning, growth, celebration, and equity allyship; her book “Our Brave Foremothers: Celebrating 100 Black, Brown, Asian, and Indigenous Women Who Changed the Course of History” was published by Workman Press in Spring, 2023.

Note

1 – BIPOC refers to Black, Indigenous, and People of Color. Camber Collective recognizes that this term, like many others in this dynamic and rapidly changing nomenclature context, does not fully serve all communities or contexts, but we will use it here for the sake of brevity and uniformity.

Read the second post in the series.

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