Happy Filipino American History Month and National Disability Employment Awareness Month! And on October 12, Indigenous Peoples' Day, we honored the Indigenous communities whose land we live and work on, including the Lisjan Ohlone here in Oakland.
Historian Dr. Dawn Bohulano Mabalon grew up in Stockton, California as the granddaughter of farmworkers. Her dad knew Larry Itliong, the Filipino organizer who helped launch the 1965 Delano grape strike and co-founded the United Farm Workers. She didn't learn Itliong's name until college, so she spent her career making sure the next generation would, co-founding Stockton's Little Manila Foundation and co-writing a children's book about his life.
This year's Disability Employment Awareness Month theme, "Celebrating Value and Talent," asks a related question: whose talent gets seen, credited, and promoted? Look around your org this month for the people carrying the work without carrying the title or credit.
We know there are many, and a little recognition goes a long way.
Here are our October Updates:
New Workshop Alert: Inclusive Facilitation for Public Convenings! Public meetings are where community decisions happen in the open, and where trust is earned (slowly) or lost (quickly). Our new workshop for organizational leaders covers how facilitation shifts when the public is in the room, offering three techniques for bringing every perspective into the conversation. Through realistic scenarios and role-play, leaders practice steadying a tense room without shutting anyone down. (Remember our September Newsletter's take on emotions at work? This is where it gets put to use.) Everyone leaves with a simple, repeatable way to close every discussion with a clear decision, an owner, and a deadline. The result: meetings that surface great ideas, strengthen stakeholder trust, and move the work forward.
We wrapped our Boards & Commissions project with Marin County! Through a series of meetings and focus groups, we worked alongside county staff to co-create a Staff Liaison Handbook: a practical guide that helps the people supporting Marin's boards and commissions deliver stronger outcomes for their community. In July we said this work was teaching us what it takes to build alignment through bureaucracy. The answer, it turns out, involves a lot of listening and one very good handbook.
We're knee-deep in interviews. Right now we're learning how different organizations are resourced to do REDI work, so the capacity-building plans we design fit where they actually are. The lesson we keep relearning: numbers tell you what's happening, people tell you why. Qualitative data is where our very human approach to research and community engagement shines. It's also maybe our favorite part of the job.
Without an aligned vision, your team's goals don't matter.
Organizations were right to make bold equity commitments in 2020. Pledges, committees, and chief diversity officer roles sent a clear signal: equity belongs in strategy, not in the margins. Between May 2020 and October 2022, Fortune 1000 companies committed roughly $340 billion toward racial equity, according to McKinsey. Before we get into this hot take, let’s be clear - we want more of that equity ambition, not less.
But ambition without alignment leaves good work vulnerable. McKinsey found more than $112 billion of those commitments came with no breakdown of where the money would go. In Fast Company, Porter Braswell described companies hiring chief diversity officers without agreeing on what the job even was: emotional support system, legal and reputational shield, or driver of business performance. Those are three very different jobs.
So when the political pressure arrived, roles built without a shared foundation were among the first to go. More than 2,600 equity-focused jobs have been eliminated since early 2023, per an NPR analysis.
The takeaway isn't to aim lower. It's to align sooner, ideally on day one.
We see the same pattern all the time in our work. A goal is a destination. Vision alignment is agreeing on the route, the vehicle(s), and who's driving. Without shared language and a shared picture of what meaningful change will take, a lofty goal becomes a poster in the break room.
So what does alignment actually look like?
Shared language before shared goals. If "equity" means five different things to five people on your leadership team, you don't have one goal. You have five. Define your terms first.
Name the path, not just the finish line. What has to change in budgets, decision-making power, and daily practice for this goal to be real? If no one can answer, the goal isn't ready yet.
Give the work a real seat at the table. A committee without some decision-making power is a book club. (We love a book club. It's just not a strategy.)
Back in June we said a signal is not a finish line. Neither is a goal. Alignment turns goals into movement.
Read: Fast Company, "This Is What Companies Get Wrong When Hiring a Chief Diversity Officer." Then think: Would everyone on your leadership team describe the path to your equity goals the same way?
Organizations Doing the Work and Opportunities to Plug In
Every month we shine a light on community organizations moving with purpose. This October, we're centering organizations led by Filipino American and disabled communities.
Filipino Advocates for Justice
Building an empowered Filipino community in the East Bay since 1973. Their work spans youth programs, civic engagement, and advocacy for caregivers and domestic workers, the often-invisible workforce that keeps other people's workdays running.
Support their work at filipinos4justice.org →
Little Manila Rising
Based in Stockton, California, once home to the largest Filipino community outside the Philippines. Little Manila Rising grew out of the work Dr. Dawn Bohulano Mabalon started, and it keeps reclaiming a history that freeway construction and neglect tried to erase.
Learn and give at littlemanila.org →
World Institute on Disability
A disability-led nonprofit founded in 1983 on the belief that lived experience should shape policy, products, and services. Their Disability Benefits 101 tools help people understand how a job affects their benefits, which removes one of the quieter barriers to employment.
Larry Itliong didn't change lives solely by setting a bigger goal than anyone else. He won by getting communities, with different languages and histories, to agree on the path and walk it together. Decades later, Dawn Mabalon made sure that story didn't get lost. That's alignment, and it's the thread running through everything on our plate this month: a handbook that gives Marin County's staff liaisons a shared playbook, interviews that meet organizations where they are, and a workshop built to turn tense public rooms into decisions people trust.
Your organization already has the talent. The vision gets clearer when everyone can see the same map. If your team has big goals and a fuzzy path, we'd love to help you draw it together.
If you're interested in working with us, please reach out. And make sure you're following us on LinkedIn for more frequent updates on our work!