This virtual Spotlight training will take a closer look at common Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice (DEIJ) challenges and offer four fresh perspectives on addressing them through action. Each of these four sessions will invite participants into deep dives rich with frameworks, share application tips and tools designed to disrupt social norms, and create conditions for change.
Sessions Include:
- Alternative Training
- Coalition Building
- Wellness and Resiliency
- Operationalizing Accountability
Spotlights are day-long virtual trainings, offering four to five 60-minute sessions, each exploring a different aspect of a specific topic. Each session will be led by experienced nonprofit leaders and subject-matter experts. Spotlights are designed to offer practical information that can be applied immediately along with larger-picture questions and possibilities to consider for the long-term.
We know it’s difficult to carve out large chunks of time in your day to attend trainings, so we’ve spread the sessions out over a full day, with breaks in between. You will have access to the session recordings for three months!
Schedule
All sessions listed in Central Time.
9:15-10:15 a.m. // Wellness and Resiliency
This session will invite participants to consider the ways self-awareness and power intersect, creating an access point to collective well-being. In this session, the presenter will outline a rhythm of organizational trauma-informed anti-racism that maintains a relentless commitment to liberation without sacrificing the well-being of the individuals who uphold these efforts. Join this session to explore what it feels like to be well and free.
Arielle Grant, founder, Render Free
10:30-11:30 a.m. // Alternatives to JEDI Training
Are you burned out on justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion (JEDI) trainings, yet seeing no tangible change at your organization? Are you tired of JEDI initiatives that seem to fail, or worse, cause unexpected harm? Are you looking for ways to make JEDI learning an everyday way of life? In this interactive session, you will explore an approach to making JEDI the "how" of delivering on your organizational mission, beyond workshops and trainings. The presenter is experienced in leading nonprofits to assess the success of their JEDI initiatives, to bridge the gaps uncovered in the assessment, and to create accountability to a new JEDI vision--with examples and tools that you can apply right away! As a bonus, you will also have a chance to discover alternative ways in which to meaningfully and effectively teach, learn, and influence change around JEDI.
Shona Ramchandani, principal and founder, Chrysalis Consulting Collaborative, LLC
1:30-2:30 p.m. // Coalition Building
Join us for a dynamic workshop on coalition building, tailored specifically for the vibrant landscape of Minnesota's nonprofits. Discover practical strategies and collaborative tools to forge powerful alliances and amplify your organization's impact within the community. Limited resources and the need for affinity spaces creates even more urgency for coalition building now. In this session participants will be invited to concentrate their energy towards strategic relationships—how to nurture and sustain them in the service of collective solution-making.
Corenia Smith, strategic partner & health equity consultant, Wholesome Management
2:45-3:45 // Operationalizing Accountability for Change
A key question leaders often receive related to their work is “how do you measure the impact of your work?” To build on this, we also must ask the question “who have you asked?” The purpose of this session is to examine stories, models, and artifacts of accountability that can operationalize accountability and drive organizational change. The key priority of this framing is to ensure accountability can be community-led and co-constructed to achieve alignment.
Jerad Green, founder & strategic consultant, Quixotic Solutions LLC
Each session will have a takeaway tool that is designed to comprise a toolkit.
The Spotlight will be hosted by Ashley Oolman of Allied Folk, LLC.
Event Details
This virtual event will take place on the Zoom platform. Your access link will be emailed to you the day before the event after 12 p.m.
This session will be recorded. The recording will be made available to registrants after the live event.
Captioning is provided automatically through Zoom. For information on requesting CART, ASL, or another accommodation, please visit our Registration Policies page.
To learn more about events, registration, and payment, visit our Event & Registration FAQ page.
State Association Partners
Kentucky Nonprofit Network, Oklahoma Center for Nonprofits, and Common Good Vermont
Speaker Information
As the founder of Render Free, a small business that exists to disrupt racial trauma by promoting whole-body wellness, Arielle Grant is intimately familiar with the demands of a social system predicated on workaholism, burnout, over-extension and sleepwalking. Arielle is a certified Restorative Justice Circle facilitator, a student of Enneagram University, and is committed to her own healing through conscious living and modalities of growth. She has a degree in communication which equips her in the skill of language and storytelling, an integral part of naming inner-narratives. She is experienced in story-work which is rooted in trauma-focused narrative therapy. Most importantly, she too is learning everyday what it means to live fully human in pursuit of freedom and offers her experience as a liberation coach, mindfulness mentor and contemplative activist.
Jerad Green, founder & strategic consultant of Quixotic Solutions LLC, is an experienced practitioner making strides in the field of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). As an equity strategist and leader, Jerad specializes in leading organizational transformation through capacity building, change management, and organizational development toward equitable outcomes. Jerad has an ability to pair theory with practice to build capacity and developing systemic interventions to create sustainability and continuity with DEI work. Jerad believes that DEI is not an isolated effort but "everyone's everyday work." He earned his bachelor of science degree in social work from Winona State University and his master of arts degree in higher education administration from the University of Missouri - Kansas City. He is a qualified administrator of the Intercultural Development Inventory and facilitator of the Intercultural Conflict Style Inventory.
Ashley Oolman is the founder of Allied Folk, LLC. As a Black neurodivergent woman, leveraging differences to strengthen human connection was a means to both survival and healing. To her work with Allied Folk, she brings lived experience, multiple degrees, and an unwavering belief that we all have the power to change the future. Together with organizations and community partners, she co-creates spaces for exploration and re-learning, designed to advance equity, reconciliation, and ultimately, change.
As the principal and founder at Chrysalis Consulting Collaborative, LLC, Shona Ramchandani leverages her deep experience, a lifelong commitment to equity work, and a deep passion for authentic, action-oriented and transformative change to help curate a transformative visioning space for organizations invested in making powerful and sustainable justice, equity, diversity & inclusion change. Locally, Shona has collaborated with many Minnesota nonprofits, and is also a co-author of Racial Equity Statements for Minnesota’s Science Museum, Theatre in the Round, and Park Square Theatre. Shona received her master’s in liberal studies with a focus on social justice advocacy, and she is also a Qualified Administrator of the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI)®.
With a background in nursing and a passion for reproductive justice, Corenia Smith skillfully operates at the intersection of policy, politics, and health equity. Her professional experience is deeply rooted in organizing, and she embraces the spirit of grassroots power-building. Corenia's mission extends to helping organizations navigate the multifaceted challenges of our time, from the practical work of organizing and facilitating meaningful convenings to broad coalition-building for transformative justice. As the driving force behind Wholesome Management, she's dedicated to making the invisible, visible and fostering a healthier and more equitable world.