Outset and Origin Story

The challenge Camber Collective faces, as a consultancy for an equitable and regenerative world, is how to build a project delivery model that reflects its equity-forward values. The firm’s journey began nearly a decade ago, when one of the founding Partners, Hope Neighbor, collaborated with the Hewlett Foundation to understand how women and families in Niger make decisions about, and access, family planning services and products.

Working with local partners, the Camber team interviewed local stakeholders: women, providers, and other community members to assemble a broad prism into 1) what was needed by the community and 2) how to design for holistic, sustainable, and community-relevant outcomes. This first-of-its-kind project led to a segmentation analysis and design of new programs enabling local community health workers and the Ministry of Health to better meet the needs of people and communities.

From this initial foray into equitable design, Camber’s approaches and methods have deepened. A central tenet of Camber’s evolving theory of impact is to build upon the opportunity — and indeed, necessity — to instill localization and co-creation while elevating the constituents and communities most impacted.

Key Principles and Considerations

Positioning constituents and communities as key thought partners and participants would allow Camber to engender deeper, more authentic, and sustainable practices, and further its progress towards key equity-forward principles first adopted by the firm in 2021.

Among these considerations were:

• What is Camber’s role, as change-agents, or at least indirect purveyors of social impact, in integrating equity into project delivery?
• What nuances or contexts regarding cultural, community, geographical, racial, or other differences and distinctions risk being overlooked or unconsidered?
• How could the firm, from its advisory role, continue to lift up the voices and ideas of those whom our clients and we intend to serve?
• In what ways could models for research, analysis, and project conceptualization and design be more inclusive of differences (culture, community, class, race, income, education, etc.)?

These were just a few of the top-line considerations that fueled a series of team-wide conversations that began in earnest in September, 2022.  Camber sought to consider how, as a consultancy, the firm could live up to its aspirations and effectively assess, catalogue, normalize, incorporate, and amplify equity in project design, delivery, and dissemination. In so doing, the firm also identified opportunities to continue its deeply collaborative, trust-based, and non-extractive partnership approach.

Applying the Model to the Consultancy Sector

As a B-Corp consultancy committed to continued internal growth and learning in anti-racist and equitable practices, Camber also sought to integrate equity into its business model. The team embraced the mission-alignment around addressing injustice and systemic oppression that is deeply ingrained across societies, while recognizing the importance of developing strong client delivery.

Successfully partnering with community stakeholders while delivering upon client requirements, Camber Collective was able to successfully insert these new organizing frameworks and methods and tools under the moniker of Equitable Project Design.

Basics of EPD

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, Camber embraced the opportunity to refine the lens to more closely adhere with its purview and impact theses as a strategic advisory firm.

Equitable Project Design has five concentric spheres of activation:

Camber’s role as a consultancy requires approaching client work with curiosity, and using the talented staff’s capabilities to influence how clients consider and integrate equity into their research, analysis, strategy formulation, decision-making, and partnerships. Camber’s Director of Impact and Equity, Rozella Kennedy wrote about this aspiration in late 2022, as EPD was taking shape as an organizing principle:

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.

The ”MVP” of EPD

Camber Collective’s full Equitable Project Design framework includes over 130 questions and considerations across a typical project lifecycle. Distilling them down to ten top tenets, or an “MVP,” (minimally viable project) reaped these considerations.

Understanding the equity context and project parameters

1. Do we understand the context and equity issues at play within their field or those faced by their constituents? What do we want to change? Who can help us? Who/what stands in the way?
2. How much can we really influence, where/when do we agree to ease up? How does this flow fit into our overarching or long-term theory of influence and impact?
3. What do we know about where the client is in their equity journey? How will we push them or how might they push us? What’s the “give and take” we need to map between immediate impact and long-term influence?

Preempting potential equity “blindspots”

1. How are we aware of and ensuring we do not perpetuate white saviordom and the white, colonial, or male gaze in this project? How can we proactively discuss, codify, and navigate scope boundaries so we avoid becoming “white saviors”—even if we are asked (directly or indirectly) to play that role?
2. How will we avoid forcing or assuming a Global North (Western/US/EU) mentality into the project? What local power systems, brokers, influencers, and situations must we learn?

Navigating power dynamics

1. What balance can we strike between “capacity building” (which implies we know everything already) and “collaborative convening and co-design” (which is less assumptive)?
2. Who holds power and should/can cede some? Who holds power and is not in the room, and how can we bring them in?

Continuous learning and sustainability planning

1. To what extent can we ensure the work and our learnings are most accessible to the field, including communities who will most benefit? (publications, budgets, conferences, etc.)
2. What tactics, resources, and connections can we put in place to ensure that the relationships and levers we build do not shut down forever once our project is complete? What’s the “sustainability” plan for the project and the partnership?
3. What will we learn/measure/report out to the team at the end of the project that furthers our learning and growth in equity, and how?

Progress at the End of Year One

Over the course of 2023, Camber Collective integrated many of these constucts into client work, and continues to leverage EPD as its value and brand differential. A lookback, as the firm approaches the two-year mark of this concerted phase of its equity project delivery plan, illuminates several high-water marks of success, with tangible organizational tools and resources that anchor this continued work:

• A curated set of over 130 equity considerations and markers, sorted project phase, that can be incorporated into the full project lifecycle, from scoping to delivery to closeout
• Revised set of internal project tools with a focused embedding of equity considerations into the work
• In-progress library of resources, frameworks, and learnings for all of client serving sectors that incorporate equitable principles overall, and by sector
• Application of EPD into the firm’s own internal ways of working: learning, celebrating, building belonging, and leadership at all levels

Next Priorities for Equitable Project Design

The work continues for Camber Collective, with an attenuated focus in 2024 on developing a deeper focus on factors, both personal, interpersonal, sectoral, and societal that impact how “equity” is, and at times, is not integral to project and program design. This builds upon the Equitable Project Design mindset the firm had already been utilizing unofficially since its formation a decade ago. Some of these factors include:

• Consideration of historical/colonial contexts
• Removing barriers that marginalize or de-center “the voice” of the affected
• Valuing and centering local experts for their participation, including through compensation
• Deepening the application of cross-sectoral/intersectional framing
• Employing equitable sampling and data analysis
• Continually relying on storytelling and visual narrative, to underscore that narrative is a key component of systems change and collaboration, particularly across cultural, geographical, and other divides.

Camber Collective’s broader goal is to see ongoing and future work leverage EPD in ways that encourage innovation, equity, and co-creation—such that Equitable Project outcomes becomes the norm. In the words of CEO Brian Leslie and Director of Impact and Equity, Rozella Kennedy:

“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.”

Read more about EPD in action in Camber Collective’s 2023 Impact Report, published in February, 2024.

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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.

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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.

The post Camber’s Equity Journey: Endless Learning and Transformation appeared first on Camber Collective.

A chance encounter, a spark of interest, an awakening of purpose, and a growing experience of mutual trust and growth set Tara Ghassemikia on a pathway she never even knew could exist. Let’s hear her describe how her years at Camber influenced the way she helps drive positive impact today at the nexus of community health and emergency responsiveness. 

Our Director of Impact and Equity, Rozella Kennedy, sat down with Tara to learn about her path. (This interview has been edited for clarity and length.) 

Rozella Kennedy/Camber Collective: 

Tara, you told me that your first encounter with Camber was a revelation. You were in business school studying finance, but you didn’t seek to work for a bank or accounting firm, but to rather to enter nonprofit management. So how did you find your way to consulting, and Camber?

Tara Ghassemikia:  

I actually found out about Camber when I was 20 — there was an info session that popped up after my class, and when I think “info session,” I think “free food,” so I just stayed back. And then I learned about Camber and I got excited – maybe a little too eager looking back – and I ran up to the presenter asking, “do you have any internship opportunities?”

And they were like “talk to us in two years.” So, a couple of years passed by, and there was a job fair where I was walking around and randomly saw someone from Camber—the same person from the info session! In my gut I knew this would be a dream job for me. I loved consulting and working on teams, but I wanted to do something that was socially focused.

Camber was a big part of my growing up experience. I came in being passionate about social impact, but I didn’t quite have my head wrapped around what that could mean. I think I worked on about two dozen projects throughout my time, and it slowly opened up my world.  

RK:  

It sounds like that variety was quite formative for you, just coming into the workplace and the social impact sector. Did you travel as well? 

TG:  

I traveled a lot; my family even had a tough time keeping up with where I was in the world. I was really lucky that one of my managers, Sakina Zaidi, put so much trust and confidence in me to travel for our projects. I went to Bangladesh, I was in India, Ethiopia, getting to do a lot of maternal health work and work closely with grantees. I got to work with the Gates Foundation, Pathfinder International, the World Bank, UNFPA. I was in the family planning portfolio, and when I got on my first family planning project, it was like, “OK, this is this is where Tara is needed.” I learned all about segmentation —I was very deep in that world. We were creating profiles of different women’s experiences and doing the storytelling and actually getting to be on the ground. It was a really immersive experience, one I felt pretty lucky to get to do at a young age.

RK:  

Which office were you working out of? 

TG:  

Actually, I got to go through all the offices. I started in the Seattle office. Then with the family planning work, I eventually moved down to San Francisco, where a lot of that work was happening. I was the second person in that office next to Hope Neighbor (co-founder of Hope Consulting, which merged with Camber in 2015).

Eventually, Jessica Vandermark (a Camber Partner, based in the Paris office) got me over to France. I can’t even explain how amazing that chapter was. All in all, I was with Camber for almost four years.

RK:  

That’s a pretty good run for a first job out of college! You did mention that the challenges of the power dynamics in traditional philanthropy and aid enticed you to think differently about your next career phase.

Growing Into Deeper Awareness of Purpose 

TG:  

Over time, I realized that I wanted to be working with people face to face, locally. I struggled with the power dynamics and structures in global philanthropy… seeing how it was hard for people to have their voices heard and for the projects to go in the direction that they needed.

RK:  

Yes, we’ve seen a lot of shifting in the norms and conventions around philanthropy and equity. There is still a lot of change that is needed, to ensure that we are bringing people to the table and letting them have true agency at that table. And it’s challenging to balance what “we” in the Global North are aiming for in terms of social impact outcomes and what communities might actually want or need based on their lived experience. It’s a very dynamic and important conversation and evolution.

I hope if you’re watching the sector now anecdotally, you’re seeing more shifting to localized power, with regional offices led by in-country experts and not entirely Westerners, as had long been the case.

TG:  

Like you said, there’s been a lot of resistance to make that change to localized power. I really respect the individuals at Camber who pushed conversations around localized power, even when there was a lot of resistance. I look at mentors like Ben Jenson, who led my first project, and Clint Novahec, one of the co-founders. They were introducing these difficult conversations, and I got to see what a good facilitator looked like. That’s the best experience you can have as your first job: to have people model what it’s like to facilitate difficult, uncomfortable, but necessary conversations. And that’s what I do in my job now. I facilitate difficult conversations and try and bring people on the same page for a vision.

We all want to get to a solution, and we all want things to change, but I’ve realized more and more that you have to take that pause to ask, “are we even going the same direction? Are we even going towards the same next milepost before we go on this hike up Rainier?” Because if not, your team is going to get lost on the mountain, scattered in different directions.

Inserting Camber Values into New Areas of Impact 

RK:  

Systemic change is messy, and it takes a long time, but we all keep working towards it. And now you are doing something entirely new; what’s similar and what’s different?

TG:  

After I left Camber, I joined the Harvard Kennedy School Government Performance Lab as a Fellow starting up a new project. We were trying to figure out how to have fewer families enter the child welfare system.

My project was based in Olympia. I grew up in Washington, so getting to work in my own community was really energizing for me. I suddenly went from flying to the other side of the world to going places that I used to play high school soccer games. It was a whole new way to feel connected to my own community.

It was similar to Camber’s work: people coming in with ambiguous challenges and sitting in a room of folx who weren’t on the same page about the path forward. My role was to be a weaver; to bridge all these different systems and people… to say, “OK, let’s try and find a game plan together.” I would listen to everyone, summarize what I heard, looked at what was working in other places… and then show them a first draft and say, “I know this is probably more wrong than right, but what do you think?” It can be uncomfortable making a bad first draft, but I feel like that’s how the magic starts. You just do your best to put that funny ego in your brain aside and build from there, you know?

People with the most empathy and personal connection to the work were my favorite coaches for creating better drafts. At one point, an agency leader connected me to Parents 4 Parents – a local organization that gives peer support to families in the dependency court system. These were the people that really knew what a person’s journey would be like in this pilot and we probably would’ve made something so unrelatable and less supportive without them.

RK:  

That’s equity in action. I love it.  

The Essentialism of Listening and Building Trust 

TG:  

One of managers gave me my new favorite saying: “Projects and business move at the speed of trust.” I look back on times where I would try and rush a new relationship, for example with a tribe that I or my team had never worked with. It always ended up being performative and transactional when it was pushed through too fast.

I spent almost a year planning our first pilot with a local tribe and I learned to shift my mentality and say “I’m just gonna listen for a year.” And when the next fellow came on, I passed it off to her, recommending it as a priority for her to launch.

RK:  

That’s what building a legacy of impact looks like, Tara. That’s so great. 

TG:  

What helped the most was pausing: saying, “I don’t know everything. I may not even know a lot… I’m gonna just spend a lot of time listening and building real relationships and making sure that such-and-such person actually wants to be involved — because sometimes we want to pitch the solution, and it’s rushed. If you want someone’s participation in the co-design, you can’t force it.

RK:  

Yes, and in full transparency, that’s where the business model of consultancy firms gets challenged, because we can’t always avail that breadth of time sometimes. But yet, as a firm we are deeply interested in how we can find that balance, getting closer to that middle. To be honest with you, I think that honesty and transparency is part of what a firm like Camber can bring into the work and eventually, hopefully, even shift the consulting sector, somewhat.

Inserting Camber Values into Community Health and First-Response 

RK:  

So, what are you doing now? 

TG:  

I work with first responders! Basically, on changing how our 911 system works.  

I’ve been passionate about this since I was 15 when I started being a Crisis Connections volunteer, an alternative phone line. If someone’s in a crisis and you don’t want to call 911, this is what you call. From a young age I saw how a lot of people didn’t have somewhere to turn, or if there were resources available, there were usually a lot of blockers. Maybe there wasn’t an opening at the shelter. Maybe they’d have to go through all this bureaucracy. It was just a mess. So, for me, I always wanted to work in this space.

And it’s funny, a lot of my mentors at Camber always had to hear me talking about mental health and behavioral health and how I wanted to be in the space. And yeah, now I’ve spent the last year working with a fairly new team based in fire departments in South King County called CARES. It’s exciting because for the first time, we’re going to have a mobile team of nurses and mental health professionals who can actually go to the scene and meet someone and be… the professional we’ve been looking for in a lot of crises that we just haven’t had there.

RK:  

That’s incredible, Tara! Wow, you know Clint (Camber co-founder and her former mentor) is a first responder now, a firefighter… 

TG:  

I do! I remember how inspired he was to make the change, and I can see why. Something I love about fire culture is the trust that they build among themselves. Everyone looks out for each other like family – because when they’re in their rig and go to the (fire) scene, they really need to trust the person next to them. I really love how they cook for each other and share meals together. The first thing anyone did when they met me was take me to grab a coffee or have a meal. “I wanna know your story. I wanna get to know you.”

RK:  

Your life is in their hands. Communal trust, you could have seen it in one of the villages you worked for in Ethiopia: the matriarch of the village cooks the meal and everyone is in a place of shared humanity.

TG:  

And sometimes, to get to that shared humanity, we need to slow down. Despite being in a fast-paced environment, it’s about the listening and being compassionate because that’s how you authentically care. You know, when you’re rushing to get someone on your vision, that’s ego. In my last Camber project, we asked why people in philanthropy were not coordinating together. In my favorite interview, someone said “TURGO inertia.” And I was like, “what is TURGO inertia?”

He said, “Turf, Ego and Inertia. That’s why people don’t work together.” 

RK:  

That’s good. 

TG:  

Right? The total antithesis of that is the person who says: “I don’t know the answer, but I’m gonna sit down with you and see what your needs are.” At the most basic level, it’s perhaps how a good clinician or healer approaches it… with compassion and active listening. Looking to see what that person says instead of that natural human tendency that, unfortunately, a lot of us have where I’m not really listening because I’m trying to plan what I’m going to say as you’re talking, so that your square peg can go on my round hole.

RK: 
Or interpreting what I hear or even think I hear based on what I want. Even though you are no longer at Camber, I want you to know that it has continued to grow as a firm that speaks to those values.

This is not really a “yes/no” question. Do you feel a sense of pride looking at Camber today and saying “wow, I helped make it be more like that”. Because everyone who comes through contributes to the story.

TG:  

I’d start with a little bit of a twist on that. I found some of my greatest mentors at Camber and I still stay in touch with a lot of them. They really cared about me. They spent a lot of time investing in my growth. I think I also had the space to use my voice at a very young age.

I remember my first year at Camber, leadership put out a bunch of potential priorities and one of them was talking about diversity and inclusion, and I said DEI was something important to me. And Clint (one of the founding partners) would just go on walks with me. I was 22 years old, and he was this brilliant, very busy partner. And he said, “I have time for this,” and he would just listen and ask me questions.

Honestly, that’s a big part of the legacy I feel proud of. And I’m really grateful for the people at Camber who cared about my voice and continued bringing me into rooms with partners to help facilitate those conversations. There was a growing openness.

RK:  

That’s such an inspiring story. And even though it takes time to “change the world,” it must feel encouraging to feel like you are on the right track and your being here, doing it, matters. 

TG:

Yes exactly. It can be frustrating to, you know, not see the change come as quickly as you want, but I look back and it is wild to me to think my 22-year-old self was brought into those rooms and asked to facilitate meetings with all these people who had 20-plus more years of experience. That’s something I’m really proud of — starting that journey.

RK:

And Clint had a calling to go into a different form of service, and now he’s a firefighter —

TG:

Yeah, we both ended up in the same world!

RK:

Last question. What do you do when you’re not changing the world? 

TG:  

I’ve had a lot of fun plot twists. At heart, I’m a creative. I have a one-woman-show called In Transition that I wrote, direct, and perform in. I’m also a musician – I play the keys and I sing – so I write and compose my own music, and am in the process of laying down an album.

The more I’ve made space for my art, the more questions I’ve gotten from people about what I’m doing and where I’m going. Honestly, I don’t have a very straightforward answer and I think that’s ok. One of my close friends told me “If you could do it all, then why not?” So you’re catching me at a special moment in my life where I’m really taking things moment by moment and pushing myself to pursue my dreams. No doubt there will be many more plot twists ahead.

RK:  

Creative people are the ones who will save our world. Thank you, Tara, this was absolutely a joy and inspiration to talk with you!

The post Camber Alum Interview: Tara Ghassemikia appeared first on Camber Collective.

Each team member was allotted a portion of the year-end total to designate to an organization of their choice, or split the total among two nonprofits. Together, we surprised 40 nonprofits in the U.S., France, and even Bhutan—and others working with populations across the globe. For many, this was a sizable donation, and for all, a delightful surprise. For us, it was a moving representation of the wide array of causes that are dear to Camber team members’ hearts.

Here is the list of donations we supported this year; check them out and see if you’d like to also uplift their work!

• Black Voters Matter Capacity Building Institute increases the power of historically marginalized, predominantly Black communities seeking suffrage equity
• Black Mamas Matter focuses on reproductive and birth justice and addressing the maternal health disparities for Black women in the US
• Community Partners International carries out community health programming in South/Southeast Asia, including Myanmar community health, MNCH, and refugee health (including among the Rohingya in Bangladesh). It focuses on serving Myanmar’s ethnic minorities who have been traditionally excluded by the “national” system
• Dream Defenders based in Florida, fights for the future of Black and Brown youth, particularly to mitigate the unjust carceral system
• Front and Centered is the largest coalition of communities of color-led groups in the Pacific Northwest working at the intersection of equity, environmental and climate justice
• GotGreen works to foster and support climate resilient and healthy communities in South Seattle
• iMentor helps first-gen students not only access college but also graduate
• Innocence Project New Orleans provides essential legal counsel to individuals who have been wrongly, or dubiously, convicted and given life sentences or death sentences in Louisiana — the state with the highest incarceration rate, in the country that has the highest incarceration rate
• Justice Outside advances racial justice and equity in the outdoor and environmental movement
• Live Free is a national coalition of clergy working at the grass roots community level to end gun violence and mass incarceration.
• Lives in the Balance which provides free resources, training, outreach, and advocacy for vulnerable kids and caregivers in Seattle
• Low Income Housing Initiatives was supported by several team members towards the goal of building a tiny house in Seattle that would help alleviate some of the city’s housing crisis.
• Ma’o Organic Farms is based in Hawai’i and builds a future of māʻona, (plenty) through aloha ʻāina: connecting youth and land, empowering youth to succeed in college and secure sustaining careers, and growing organic produce that yields individual and communal vitality
• Make a Wish AK and WA Chapter provides moments of hope and joy to children in the region who are undergoing tough moments and battles with cancer
• Mamatoto Village which provide maternal healthcare to Black women in Washington, D.C.
• Miracle Messages is an award-winning national nonprofit that helps people experiencing homelessness rebuild their social support systems and financial security, through family reunification services, a phone buddy program
• Puget Sound Sage is an organization focused on addressing climate, racial, and economic justice in the greater Seattle area through policy-focused partnerships with communities
• Rainforest Foundation US works to protect the rainforests of Central and South America by partnering directly with folks on the front lines: indigenous people in Brazil, Peru, Panama, and Guyana, who are deeply motivated to protect their lands
• Rainier Valley Food Bank serves one of the US’s most diverse zip codes with some of the worst health outcomes and struggles with income inequality
• Real Rent Duwamish enabled us to make our 2021 real rent payment to the Duwamish Tribe
• RepresentUs works across parties to pass powerful state and local laws that fix our broken elections, dismantling the root causes of inequities in our democracy, and challenging political corruption, extremism, and gridlock
• Roots Young Adult Shelter helps young Seattle adults experiencing temporary homelessness
• Seattle Parks Foundation Community Land Conservancy teaching programs for children and educators
• Secours Populaire Francais supports people in difficult life situations with food, housing, employment assistance, legal support and much more
• SOS Mediteranée is a humanitarian organization engage in direct rescue of and advocacy for refugees and others crossing the Mediterranean
• Technology Access Foundation works to inject equity into the work the STEM education in the Puget Sound area, running multiple high schools using project-based learning and sponsoring a cohort-based program for teachers of color to foster ongoing learning support and drive increased retention
• The Urban Resource Institute which provides shelter and resources to domestic abuse survivors and unhouse people, with a focus on communities of color
• The Innocence Project works to exonerate wrongly convicted individuals and reform the criminal justice system, with a particular focus on injustice towards the BIPOC population
• The Bhutan Foundation is an established non-profit working on environmental conservation, sustainable development, cultural preservation and good governance. We supported their STEM work with students
• The Northwest Community Bail Fund minimizes the harm of the cash bail system by paying bail for people who would otherwise spend the pre-trial time in jail
• The Lavender Rights Project supports Queer and Trans community members across the state of Washington
• The Floating Hospital is a longstanding ship based in NYC harbor which provides exceptional, compassionate healthcare to local families in need
• The WA Therapy Fund Foundation increases access to mental health services for the Black community in Washington by fully subsidizing therapy costs for eligible individuals
• The Renton Innovation Zone Partnership works to drive systemic change at the local level for children living in the south King County (Seattle) are, focusing on inequity in education, housing, nutrition, and more
• The Coalition for Rainforest Nations championed the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) mechanism. It ensures developing countries get paid if they can show that they’ve been preventing deforestation
• The Sogorea Te Land Trust is an urban Indigenous women-led land trust based in the San Francisco Bay Area that facilitates the return of Indigenous land to Indigenous people. Camber donated to this organization to pay our Bay Area land tax
• Utopia 56 distributes food and other essential items and provides legal support to refugees and unaccompanied minors in Northern France and Paris
• Wild Montana creates public wildlands with a focus on restorative justice and partnerships with local tribes
• Wild Orca protects and saves the Southern Resident Orcas from extinction

We also made a donation to the Team Western Kentucky Tornado Relief Fund in response to the devastating tornado which hit one of our team member’s hometown on December 10, 2021.

May the spirit of this season encourage you, regardless of if or how you celebrate, and here is wishing a for a safe and happy new year, imbued with a sense of abundance, justice, purpose, and power!

As Camber Collective’s Director of Impact and Equity Rozella Kennedy develops, curates, and disseminates information, resources and events that: support team competency in intersectional equity and anti-racism; build internal team belonging, ways of working; bolster the culture of learning and celebration (in which team members feel seen, supported, connected, and galvanized); and connect these values to the firm’s external work, influence, and impact through equitable project design methodologies at the intersection of U.S. paradigms and the global contexts within which we work. 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

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When staff members approached the Partners in 2019 with a request to engage upon a Racial Equity learning and practice, we were living in a different world. This was before COVID-19 shut down the planet; before George and Breonna and Ahmaud’s murders and the Atlanta shooting rampage changed how the US, and its majority-white society, media and corporations engaged in new soul-searching and commitments.

This is a meaningful observation, as it demonstrates that Camber was not jumping on what feels to some—a year on, and with some concerning societal backsliding—like a performative bandwagon of institutional hand-wringing and solidarity statements. Over the past two years, the staff at Camber Collective has been led by a thoughtful team of external experts through a deep curriculum about the history of racism in America, an exposure of white privilege, and white supremacy, white-dominant cultures and racial narratives. From this expanded lens, the team began its internal, preliminary efforts to pro-actively build an anti-racist practice. Team members diligently balanced their duties of client work and subject-matter eminence with many additional hours of learning about race, racism, and racial inequity. There remain many other factors of inequity to navigate through, including race relations beyond Black and white, the global context of colonization and the struggle for human dignity, agency, and well-being at a universal, humankind level, but it is a start, and the team’s dedication to continually learn, grow, and improve (and the creation of my role) are remarkable. 

As per usual, this labor at times weighed disproportionately on Camber’s BIPOC* staff, and yet there has been an indisputable willingness from the white** team members to recognize their colleagues’ heavy load within our racialized societal context, and to step aside/make space for BIPOC leadership and perspective while at the same time striving to avoid the misfortune of a “teach me/show me” attitude. So far, I have seen signs of radical gratitude and grace from all team members towards each other. Now we are at a juncture where breathing, rest, and celebration are appropriate: for our BIPOC team-members whose lived experience harbors so much strain from being Othered in society at large, and for our white team members who have faced down the discomforts of recognizing their inherent and often unacknowledged privilege while reckoning with their place in a society that has historically and contemporaneously sought to harm, plunder, exploit, and erase. 

This is grisly work, to put it lightly! And it doesn’t ever end. Because Camber values and emphasizes an adaptive journey, we must admit that mistakes have been and will be made. Working in a data and evidence-based sector, it can be conceptually derailing to admit the inevitability of not always getting it perfect, yet we commit to learning from our mistakes and missteps, listening as well as leading, and testing the parameters of what can be. This New Rome will not be built in a day or even a year, but this is the task before us, and the team is eager to rise to the challenge. 

Considering the paradigms of our sector, I salute my teammates’ honesty, humility, and dedication to moving forward. At the same time, climbing this mountain of racial equity (not to mention other justice and equity levers: gender, sexual expression, age, class, geographic location, ableism, and on…) is a never-ending effort; as soon as we reach a plateau where we might want to pat ourselves on the back, a steep cliff face of reality appears right before us, testing our mettle. Expecting to never falter is a tenet of Either/Or thinking as well as Perfectionism, two of 20 “White Supremacist Culture”*** principles we are examining as we build our deeper practice. Derived from Zara Zimbardo of Partners for Collaborative Change, and drawing heavily on the “Dismantling White Supremacy Culture” work of Tema Okun and Kenneth Jones, “Pivoting Away from White Supremacist Culture” is a fascinating and powerful blueprint for institutional Equity design. We cannot hit 100% of the levers, many of which are anathema to the very structure of a consulting firm’s business model, but humility and a commitment to expanding what we can where we can are important parts of how I see the collective work moving forward. 

From both a domestic and global standpoint, much of the scourge of inequity originates from an imbalance of and access to power. Power-hoarders, of course, are not going to just hand over the proverbial car keys to activists and community leaders. The longer game I believe we are working towards, as an Equity-focused, mission-aligned for-profit firm, is to leverage and expand access and influence: by working in consort and trust with community and place-based experts—both domestically and abroad—we can seek to share power in order to ultimately shift it (or at least broaden its parameters). It’s a long and challenging process, and humility, honesty, and trust must be at the core. This is a priority for our internal and external partnership design as we move forward.  

The next phase of our Equity journey is detailed in my job description. I am here to help lead the development of our internal DEI and belonging work, building towards our DEI goals related to culture, policies, and processes. Almost every member of the team has been involved in one of our many committees as we continue to try to model a firmwide community where everyone feels, as Coqual (formerly the Center for Talent Innovation) puts it: Seen, Connected, Proud, and Supported. 

As we continue to build out the policies and structures that will anchor these practices, I am also tasked with helping develop Camber’s external Impact and Equity practice, including how we disseminate our theories of change into our client work and business development and how we measure our sector impact. Once again, a reality check offers an opportunity to reject Either/Or thinking. Although a particularly egregious tenet of White Supremacist Culture is primacy of the written word, we recognize that our clients and sector will not be satisfied with pictograph reports and infographic landscape analyses—yet there are many other ways we can more deliberately assert the human face of our work and impact. This is an exciting moment to reaffirm our position within the sector. 

Another important element is creating and uplifting cultural relevance. We have an office in Paris, which is the portal to a great deal of our current and future work in the EMEA regions. And yet France’s history and current navigation of race, ethnicity, and culture, plays out in an entirely different universe than that of the United States, so we will include critical reflection and action on systems of oppression in Europe and other global contexts. (Certainly, though, the imbalance of power and oppression is a bottom line that connects all these systems of oppression, no matter what the country or region.) 

I will repeat: this is never-ending work, which makes it both exhilarating and at times, exhausting. Making space for rest, reflection, and celebration is an important part of our collective journey, and we will continue to build out our internal and client-facing approaches. There are some Dismantling elements we will not be able to deliver upon, given that we are a global management consultancy firm and not a nonprofit, a think tank, or a governmental entity—yet there are ways we know we can be impactful, and we want to be a leader in our sector in how we do this. (We intend to lead through influence—coercion would be mightily hypocritical!) 

Banter aside, I will close with a reflection. In interviewing for this position, I had many interesting conversations with my fellow teammates about “DEI” or “EDI” or now as some call it, appending a J for Justice, “JEDI.” (A term which, frankly, irks me, as it bends the mind towards the Star Wars franchise and somewhat sullies the seriousness of the matter).  While Equity is important in hiring, retention, and professional development, its true purpose, is, I think, in shaping how we live in our work. 

An example of this is how we even talk about the work of workplace Equity. I personally prefer the unpronounceable acronym DEIRB, which reflects how an organization can move past the first three waystations towards authentic and lasting Equity. Diversity means realizing that the majority white default narrative or landscape is not reflective of reality; de-centering the whiteness norm in every aspect of Western society is an important first step. Equity is about embarking upon a learning voyage about oppression, racism, and other unpleasant but real pieces of our history, and making both a personal (for it really does begin and end in what is in one’s individual heart, mind, and actions) and institutional effort to resist and reject these standards. Inclusion does not stop at just bringing Black/brown/younger/gender expansive, etc. faces into your company or group, but ensuring that they are set up to succeed and thrive professionally, and given the grace to grow into and grow the mission, a mainstay of business practice that is often elusive for BIPOC leaders. To navigate through and plan for these three first areas, many firms and groups benefit from outside help, including us. 

The next two steps of the journey recognize the never-endingness of the process, and to deliver upon them addresses a firm’s inner work. Representation goes further than inclusion, ensuring that the kaleidoscope of faces and personas proudly displayed on an “About Us” page begin to reflect living individuals—the magnificence of difference—and that “diversity” in the org does not remain bottom- or middle-heavy and light at the upper echelons. Fixing that is the work of our entire society together (and this is where our external partners in community, policy, and engagement are essential allies), but it is important to recognize the extent to which in-group preference and bias shut out those very people who will help make your system resilient and sustainable. The final letter, B is for Belonging, the ongoing work of creating cultures inside and out where people matter most, and Othering is not tolerated. 

What an incredible calling, and what an enormous challenge. Yet, herein lies the actual work, the power, the honor of marching ever on towards Equity. Onward! 

* As I write this, the term BIPOC is already being challenged as ineffective, particularly among Black people and other people “of color” in society. Nomenclature is ever dynamic, and while we continue to use this acronym for now, we recognize its imperfection and tendency to conflate people into the stricture of flat categorization. 

** An important first step in this work, as we have learned from Dr. Ibram X. Kendi, “Robin D’Angelo, Ijeoma Olou and so many others, is to not shirk away from using the term “white.” My favorite book so far this year on why we have to say the words and know the history is Heather McGhee’s “The Sum of Us: What Racism Costs Everyone and How We Can Prosper Together,” but more work is being released on the topic with encouraging regularity.

*** Tema Okun’s refreshed website is highly recommended. The piece of advice I consider most memorable is “don’t weaponize the framework.” Anti-racism progress, and the rejection of White Supremacy models is more effective with calling-in, as opposed to calling out. UC Berkeley’s Othering and Belonging Institute is a helpful resource for more on these concepts. 

As Camber Collective’s Director of Impact and Equity Rozella Kennedy develops, curates, and disseminates information, resources and events that: support team competency in intersectional equity and anti-racism; build internal team belonging, ways of working; bolster the culture of learning and celebration (in which team members feel seen, supported, connected, and galvanized); and connect these values to the firm’s external work, influence, and impact through equitable project design methodologies at the intersection of U.S. paradigms and the global contexts within which we work. 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

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