ETB Blogs
Designing Diversity: The Revolutionary Road to Racial Equity via Expanding the Bench
Recently, Dr. Tanisha Tate Woodson, Expanding the Bench® (ETB) Interim LEEAD Director and Advancing Culturally-responsive and Equitable (ACE) Evaluation Network member, sat down with Dr. Kantahyanee Murray to discuss the origins and her pivotal role in designing the Expanding the Bench Initiative as a Senior Associate Researcher at the Annie E. Casey Foundation. This interview serves as a living history document, capturing the journey and impact of the initiative over the past decade. As we reflect on ten years of increasing access to opportunities for Evaluators from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups in philanthropy, we invite readers to offer corrections and insights to ensure the accuracy and richness of this account.
Tanisha Tate Woodson:
Alright. So, I want to first get started by taking you back to 2014 and reading your bio.
I noticed that you were very instrumental in designing the Expanding the Bench Initiative. And so, I’m curious to know how did this come about?
What were some of those conversations that were happening during that time that really inspired you all to start this Expanding the Bench initiative?
Kantahyanee Murray:
I first heard about Expanding the Bench when I interviewed for a Senior Associate Researcher position at the Annie E. Casey Foundation in May of 2014. I recall my interview with Dr. Debra Joy Perez, who was Vice President of the Research, Evaluation, and Learning (REAL) unit, when she shared her vision for Expanding the Bench.
Debra Joy described inspiring work being planned to increase access to opportunities for researchers and evaluators from underrepresented racial and ethnic groups in philanthropy. She asked during my interview, “Would you be interested if you had this position in working in a role to help advance this work?” I answered something like, “Yes. Yes and yes.” I was beyond deeply interested in a role to advance work that centered equity and inclusion in the field. Having participated in a couple of New Connections convenings, an initiative Debra Joy led at previously, I immediately knew that this work would have tremendous impact.
Once I started my position at the Foundation, I immediately hit the ground running with Debra Joy meeting with social sector leaders, scholars, and funders–people who had some influence in evaluation and research and could be potential partners and allies to build Expanding the Bench. It was obvious from the start that that Expanding the Bench would be highly collaborative, engaging voices and perspectives from a wide range of people and building on great work already happening in the field.
Internally, our collaboration was centered on the Expanding the Bench Workgroup which included two other staff members Marian Amoa who led an Expanding the Bench in Performance Measurement effort and Martena Reed, a Research Associate, who coordinated the LEEAD practicum component.
In addition, we engaged Josie Serrata, PhD, a consultant, who conducted a landscape analysis for us around existing virtual curriculum and training programs in evaluation. This analysis was useful for the team to understand what online evaluation curricula already existed and would be open to adding components around CREE. Aasha Abdill, PhD who was our lead consultant. She supported us with developing LEEAD and ACE Network in terms of the program design and leading the logistics of the application process and how we would score applications, etc. And so, she helped the workgroup to get—if you can imagine, we were talking and brainstorming and having landscape conversations with thought leaders in the field—to translate those ideas into a blueprint for LEEAD and ACE Network and helped the team to create the program structure. Aasha was also critical to the ongoing development and growth of LEEAD and ACE Network as we used feedback and evaluation data to improve our plans and approaches.
Also, the unit’s National Urban Fellow in 2015, Ilana Yamin, supported project coordination and helped to develop a case making brief for Expanding the Bench as part of her Master’s Thesis.
We also benefited from the participation of Professor Ruth Zambrana whose research on supporting underrepresented minority faculty at research-1 universities helped us to conceptualize our work that engaged academic-based researchers. Ruth wrote Toxic Ivory Towers: The Consequences of Work Stress on Underrepresented Minority Faculty. She conducted research with 500 underrepresented minority research faculty and researchers at Research-1 universities, on their experiences as faculty trying to build and advance their scholarship.
Of course, there were lots of barriers faced by these URM faculty. Her work identified those barriers in rich detail. In her book and other scholarly work, Dr. Zambrana developed and promoted key recommendations around how to support URM faculty, for example formal mentorship strategies, tailored research retreats for URM faculty, and cohort hiring. She, along with a scan on existing literature in the field-on mentoring, was instrumental in our thinking around the mentorship component for LEEAD and we supported her work to bring a brief to universities with a menu of recommendations on how to recruit and support the advancement of URM faculty.
And so, we had lots of meetings with people, really trying to collaborate and think through what our approach could be to not only focus on increasing the supply of more evaluators and researchers of color at that point in Expanding the Bench, but also increasing demand. We grappled with how can we work with firms, especially some of the larger firms that have a lot of influence and strong relationships with philanthropy? How can we work with them to change their behavior in their hiring, promotion, and partnership practices? We had probably 10 different projects of different scales, and the ACE Network and LEEAD were the largest of those and the ones we felt most poised transform evaluation in philanthropy.
When we messaged this work, we discussed two imperatives or the “whys” for the ETB work.
1) Social justice imperative–increasing access to opportunities for those who have been most impacted by structural racism, and historically excluded from networks and opportunities.
2) Excellence imperative–recognizing that we bring more benefit to the communities served by expanding the inclusion of those with lived experience on evaluation teams, having diverse teams, and utilizing evaluation approaches that will best meet the needs of those communities—culturally responsive and equitable evaluation.
The Workgroup spent some time in the early months of ETB to explore who would have interest in serving on the Advisory Committee or supporting ETB in other ways, for example, potential LEEAD mentors, guest speakers, collaborators, etc. In May of the next year, 2015, we had our first LEEAD Advisory Committee meeting. The meeting was held at the OMG office in Philadelphia—OMG has been renamed Equal Measure since that time. There were three Expanding the Bench sub-committee groups of the Advisory that met first at this in-person convening and thereafter by conference calls in 2015: curriculum, mentorship, and the practicum. We had a funder subcommittee as well that met separate from the more programmatically focused sub-committees.
Conversations at this convening focused on fleshing out ideas around the LEEAD program components. Discussions centered around how the program could work and gave space for the Advisors to lift-up key considerations, best practices, and their own experiences working in similar programs. Art Hernandez, Stafford Hood, and Keisha Harrismith were a few of the advisors on this committee. I hope that you can provide a list of all the initial advisors as a companion to this piece because they were so instrumental in driving the development of LEEAD.
Tanisha Tate Woodson:
That’s important because it’s good to see the legacy and see how individuals like Art are still connected and still very involved, still a Mentor, and how this is all continuing to live out some of those earlier plans as you guys had developed.
So, what were those earlier conversations like?
You mentioned that there were about 10 Practicum Sites, I think you had said. What was that, having those conversations with those organizations that may have not already been geared toward doing this work? What was that like?
Kantahyanee Murray:
Yes Tanisha, there was a lot of interest and enthusiasm for some of the initial LEEAD practicum sites that we talked to. The first cohort practicum sites included Mathematica, Urban, Engage R+D, and ORS Impact. RAND and RTI were other sites. These host sites were, for the most part, large research and evaluation organizations that had existing strong ties with philanthropy and at the same time wanted to explore how engagement with LEEAD could support their diversity and inclusion efforts. We also discussed the benefits of bringing CREE approaches to their work, thus the projects would benefit from the scholars existing and new skills in applying CREE to the work. It probably helped that LEEAD was an initiative of a very influential philanthropic organization. Also, during this time, there was increasing attention to DEI, given the broader context of social justice movement at this time when high profile police killings (for example, the killings of Freddie Gray, Micheal Brown and Eric Garland) were prompting reflections on what could be done organizationally to move the country forward.
With this growing interest in diversity, equity, and inclusion in the social sector, ETB was also engaging with some research and evaluation organizations more deeply to understand their journey and how this connected to ways LEEAD and ACE Network could support them. For example, we held focus groups organized with Urban Institute.
This is all to say it was not very difficult to get the interest of these organizations. What was more complex I would say, was creating the structure of the Practicum component and the logistics of the host sites’ participation.
One critical message we had to share with the early host sites was around understanding the skill level and content expertise of the LEEAD scholars. We messaged that the Scholars were highly talented and skilled mid-career, research professionals. It was important that our Practicum site contacts did not see this as something akin to a training fellowship. Importantly, the scholars were bringing a CREE lens to the work and would be, in many cases, addressing ways to strengthen the evaluation and thus bring more benefit to the communities being served. We also wanted to make sure that the scholars would be competitively and equitably compensated.
Again, this was an opportune moment in time to engage evaluation firms. Increasingly, folks were starting to pay attention to the ways we do our work that replicate the oppression and racism our work seeks to disrupt and dismantle. There was an increasing interest in giving more attention to equity and evaluation in service to equity. I think that was also a pull for the Practicum sites in the first cohort.
Tanisha Tate Woodson:
Some of those initial goals or inspirations in the beginning or aspirations were to really expand the number or expand the visibility, I would say, of those individuals who were evaluators of color who were practicing in this vein. And to really build that connection with organizations that needed that type of expertise in-house. What were some other larger goals or visions that you guys had for this movement overall?
Kantahyanee Murray:
Expanding the Bench had a three-pronged approach: strengthening ties, building capacity, and increasing field demand. The strengthening ties prong focused on relationship building and just how significant that is because, for better or worse, opportunity is about relationships and who is in your network. So, we were trying to be less transactional, like, here’s a Database of evaluators. But to create, through ACE as an example, opportunities for funders to engage and to be able to have space and time with ACE Network members to build relationships. There were other smaller investments. For instance, we supported the launch of an LGBTQ Scholars of Color Network. When that initiative had its first convening, we invited funders; actually, we organized a funders’ panel. We wanted to make sure that we were bringing funders into spaces even when the conversation wasn’t about specific funding opportunities to facilitate network and relationship building. We accomplished bringing funders, researchers, and evaluators together so that they have those unscripted ways to get to know one other and build relationships. Another example was the ACE Network and funder luncheons we held at AEA in the early years of ETB.
Tanisha Tate Woodson:
It sounds like it took some time to get this up and going. Building those relationships takes time; they move at the speed of trust. We all know that. Then it sounds like you guys ran the first cohort of the program, and then around 2018, you facilitated a process to transition ETB to be more of a field-supported initiative. Could you walk me through what led to that decision and what prompted Annie E. Casey to maybe not be in the role of managing this initiative anymore?
Kantahyanee Murray:
Essentially, the work came out of, and sorry I didn’t mention this earlier as background, but the Foundation was going through a racial equity and inclusion journey at the beginning of ETB. That is, some time before Debra Joy, me, and other members of the ETB Working Group came on board, units were tasked with implementing strategies to advance racial equity and inclusion. How do you operationalize these principles that the foundation has around equity and inclusion in your work? For research, evaluation, and learning, Debra Joy envisioned operationalizing it through this focus on Expanding the Bench.
To be clear, the initial intention was that ETB was work that the Foundation would seed and incubate, and that, down the road, it would be an entity fully owned by the field.
The ETB transition ended up happening at an accelerated pace. At that time, the workgroup was still meeting, Aasha was still working with us, and we had another National Urban Fellow at that time. You may have had an opportunity to meet Karla Mendez, MPA, ETB’s National Urban Fellow in 2017/2018. We still had a phenomenal team, but we needed expertise that would support the activities needed to transition ETB while ensuring sustainability. I was able to contract with communications consultant Nancy Murphy of CSR Communications who became instrumental in helping to ready ETB for its transition to the field. Nancy provided the processes and tools that really supported my ability to lead the transition. For example, Nancy worked with us to conduct a number of interviews and focus groups of LEEAD community members and funders who had provided some support in previous years.
Tanisha, you may have been invited. I don’t know if you recall this at all, but we probably sent out a note to folks broadly about participating in these focus groups to understand the impact of LEEAD and an ACE Network. And we talked to funders—what would be their understanding, their interests, what’s in it for them to support this in the field in the years to come? Long story short, we co-created an extensive plan with Nancy. She walked alongside us and created messaging for putting out an RFP for taking over LEEAD and ACE. We had decided that all the others, the LGBTQ Scholars of Color Network and everything else, that those things essentially, LEEAD and ACE, were kind of our most successful or impactful efforts. And so that’s what we focused on. We also worked with Nancy on a fundraising strategy and a comprehensive protocol for how we would do outreach and hold conversations with funders focused on the value of ETB and the community.
We were working on both sides of getting the capacity to LEEAD and take on the work and then at least an initial slate of funders that would support the first year. So, we had a budget of what it would take. Some funding commitments were multi-year which supported the emergent sustainability model.
Tanisha Tate Woodson:
Sorry about that. I’m not sure. And it was probably for the best?
Kantahyanee Murray:
We decided to release separate ACE Network and LEEAD RFPs. But we also said on both RFPs that if your organization wanted to apply for both, that was welcome. In the end, we received four applications. Change Matrix was the only applicant who applied for both opportunities. Change Matrix had been the evaluator for LEEAD for a couple of years at that point, and had an application that clearly demonstrated their values alignment, deep knowledge of LEEAD and ACE Network, and understanding of the experiences of the ETB community.
Tanisha Tate Woodson:
It’s good to already have that knowledge and understanding and probably being an advocate already for the program.
Kantahyanee Murray:
That’s right.
Tanisha Tate Woodson:
So, it sounds like you had to make sure that some funding was in place so that you could see this project through, and that was a big lift to do with just six months to sprint through that. And then also, was there any relationships that you had to foster or passed down as part of your network when transitioning this to Change Matrix?
Kantahyanee Murray:
Oh, that’s a good question. First, I should mention, we did our best to engage the network in the transition. So, we had invited ETB community members, especially the Cohort 1 alumni to be part of the application process, that is, reviewing the applications, interviewing applicants, and sharing their thoughts and endorsements.
The Change Matrix team had already laid the foundation for relationships given their role as the evaluators for LEEAD’s first cohort. For example, some Change Matrix team members had already met ETB community members through the evaluation interviews. There was also the dynamic of members of the ETB community having different roles overtime. For example, some who ended up participating as Mentors had also served on the Advisory Committee.
Tanisha Tate Woodson:
I was curious to know what it looked like for you to transition from being a program implementer director to now a program funder. Were you able to stay engaged in the ways that you wanted to? What was that like for you?
Kantahyanee Murray:
Yes, this was a real issue for me because I directed the work for four years. I was quite attached to the work and felt a tremendous amount of responsibility to make sure all this work that so many people helped to build could live on. I was really intentional about boundaries and just making sure that Change Matrix had the autonomy that they needed to move forward, but also at the same time, wanting to be accessible to answer questions and offer guidance when asked.
So, I was trying to hit that balance of being responsive and helpful but not directive especially given I was now an external funder of the work. I think it helped that we had regular meetings in the first quarter to six months of the transition. At these meetings, I could offer support and be a sounding board. Karla was still with our team in the early months of the transition, and then when she graduated from her National Urban Fellowship experience, she transitioned to a position with ETB at Change Matrix. So, I think that helped Change Matrix to have that in-house institutional history and more importantly, an amazing talent for their ETB team.
Though directing ETB was a dream job and one that allowed me to do work I was passionate about, it took a tremendous amount of effort. In addition to this role, I had a range of other responsibilities. With the transition, myself and other ETB staff as well, began to focus on other field building work to advance inclusion, racial equity and racial justice along with other responsibilities in our portfolios.
I felt confident about the transition to Change Matrix as the manager of ETB. Initially, Rachele was the project director, Sandra and London were the ACE Network and a LEEAD leads respectively, and Elizabeth led funder engagement/sustainability efforts. This group of 4 was a powerhouse team. When we met, our meetings were productive and filled with new ideas for ETB operations and content. My confidence in them grew especially hearing positive feedback from the ETB community on their experience in the transition. Early on, they demonstrated their ability to support the ETB community and do the work—in community, and here we are 6 years later.
Tanisha Tate Woodson:
So, my last question here is around the vision and the future of ETB. And you’re still deeply connected to ETB. I know you’re on an Advisory Team and MPHI is a Practicum Site, so you guys are really connected in different ways. I’m curious to know, where do you see ETB growing and expanding in the future? What are some new hurdles or new challenges that ETB could take on as it continues to grow and continue to foster this community of CREE evaluators?
Kantahyanee Murray:
Oh, that’s great. One thing that comes up for me is how we relate to one another as a team, how we’re dismantling oppression internally. And I don’t know, Change Matrix’s journey, but I would offer that as my own lesson learned. We have to recognize if there’s a discrepancy between our externally facing efforts to advance racial equity and justice, and our internal organizational journey.
That’s my personal lesson, which I offer to any organization: making sure what you’re doing to dismantle racism and oppression outside the organization is happening within the organization. Self-reflection and collective reflection is key.
Another point to explore is around the core focus of ETB. With some of the recent Supreme Court decisions and who knows what’s going to happen after the election with DEI, how does Change Matrix and Expanding the Bench at large, together with partners, how do we hold core this belief in principles around underrepresented people of color in evaluation having increased access to opportunities? And maybe the messaging is different. I’d rather see the messaging be different and the packaging be different to navigate potential risks rather than there being a dismantling of the core principle.
My advice is to keep this on the radar and identify those organizations that can be helpful in navigating these waters. Innovation is critically important as well as being responsive, maintaining the close ties and the advisory structure that allows for the ETB community to give feedback and to shape what those innovations look like because they understand the challenges intimately. And we know that our communities, in general, have great solutions, but often don’t have the power and access to get those solutions heard, listened to, and followed. This point goes back to modeling what we’re saying should happen in evaluation; our partnerships and organizations should reflect shifts in power that allow those who have historically not had power to have agency and flourish.
Tanisha Tate Woodson:
Yeah, I love that. That’s really helpful. Thank you for painting that picture, especially in light of the political climate that we’re facing, but just understanding to continue to be flexible, responsive, and even evolving ourselves while we are continuing to evolve the field around us.
Kantahyanee Murray:
I love that.
Tanisha Tate Woodson:
I just want to say thank you.