Creating a Legacy of Impact w/ Doug Shipman

Episode Summary: In this episode of The Diversity Gap podcast, Bethaney sits down with the Founding CEO of the National Center for Civil and Human Rights. They cover a lot of ground in this conversation, talking about everything from leading authentically to creating a museum to the executive leadership required to pursue equity in cultural organizations. Grab your pen and paper and be prepared to take all the notes.

Doug Shipman currently serves as the President and CEO of the Woodruff Arts Center, the third largest arts center in the United States which includes the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, the High Museum of Art and the Alliance Theatre.  Prior to joining the Woodruff Arts Center, Doug served as CEO and a Managing Director of BrightHouse Consulting, a BCG company. 

Episode Notes: Learn more about the National Center for Civil and Human Rights here.

The Diversity Gap is a two-year exploration into the gap between good intentions and good impact. You can learn more at www.thediversitygap.com. You can also follow along on Instagram @thediversitygap or on Facebook!

Need help processing today’s podcast? Head over to www.theDiversityGap.com to find a conversation guide with definitions and questions for reflection.

Transcript

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

people, spaces, diversity, race, question, white, various communities, identity, multiple identities, doug, thinking, inclusion, institution, conversation, community, move, racial identity, shirley franklin, includes, board

SPEAKERS

Bethaney Wilkinson, Doug Shipman

Bethaney Wilkinson  00:00

One of the trickiest things about race is that race is all about how other people perceive you. And it has very little to do with who you actually are. And one thing that I have to fight to remember about myself and about others, especially as I do this work around diversity is that each of us really carries multiple identities all at one time. And even though my racial identity or my gender identity might be the first thing that you see, it's really only one part of me and my story. I am a person who cares about growing food. I'm a person who wants to do good work. I'm creative. I'm a writer, I'm a wife, I'm a sister, I'm a daughter, I'm a friend. And if we're not careful, our ideas about race can really erase all of the beautiful complexity and diversity about who we actually are. Welcome to The Diversity Gap podcast where we are exploring the gap between good intentions and good impact as it relates to diversity, equity and inclusion. My name is Bethaney Wilkinson and I am your host. All right, friends, I'm so pumped about today's conversation. It is like every conversation I've shared one of my favorites. I have the pleasure and honor of interviewing Doug Shipman, the current president of the Woodruff Arts Center, and the founding director of the National Center for civil and human rights based here in Atlanta, Georgia. There are a million things I loved about this conversation. But what excites me most about sharing it with all of you is that Doug is one of the most intentional and effective leaders I've ever had the pleasure to learn from, as a white leader and executive director. He has a ton of racial and ethnic self awareness, which I think changes the game for his work, and the teams that he leads. While there's so much goodness in this conversation, I want you to listen closely to the parts where we talk about diversifying and nonprofits board of directors, Doug lays out some pretty specific and practical insights for leaders who are trying to make the shift from an all or majority white board to one that is more racially and ethnically diverse, super helpful, very important conversation. Also, just as a quick heads up, this is one of the earlier conversations I recorded. And I am a podcast newbie. And so I was in a conference room, there are people walking around and laughing outside the room. And so just be aware that there might be some audio things that are a little bit different than in our other conversations. So yeah, I just wanted to let you know that's coming. Thanks and enjoy. When did you first learn about your race or ethnic identity? When did you first become aware that you have one? I'd love to hear a little bit of that story.

Doug Shipman  02:57

Yeah, so my brother went to college. When I was five, he was much older. He was on a dorm, Paul, and one of his dorm mates was a cheerleader for the football team, the University of Arkansas. So he invites me down to a game and cheerleader Arthur's gonna take me on the field. And Arthur was and is a very dark skinned African American guy, who at the time was wearing this wonderfully huge 1970s afro. And I'm not sure that when I met him, I realized my racial identity. But I certainly remember that when he came to visit our small town, which is not diverse in northern Arkansas, and the reaction that my parents had to him visiting and the town had to him visiting, which was very negative. That's the moment that I knew that I was white because of the way that he was being treated. And I thought he was the greatest guy ever. And there was this dissonance in my five year old head between, he's amazing. And these other people who I love and live with don't think he's amazing, and really are saying terrible things and fires that that was the moment that I first realized it, which is sort of interesting, because then from that age, through the end of high school, I'm still living in the small town in rural Arkansas, which is not diverse at all, for 100 miles around, it's not diverse at all. And so every time that I would go to a summer camp, or that I would go someplace else, I was very aware and interested in exploring issues of racial identity. And then when I got to Emory continued to, to study them more formally, but that's when i It started when I was five.

Bethaney Wilkinson  04:30

So it started when you were pretty young. I talked to some people when they aren't aware until they're in their 20s. And so that's really interesting to me. What did did it create friction for you with your community as we're growing up? Or were you able to to kind of navigate and ask these questions to yourself? What was that like?

Doug Shipman  04:47

You know, occasionally, I remember conversations in in high school where people would say very nasty things about racial minorities or communities and I would often push back and that would create some dissonance. It really started to be interesting in college, because that's when I started to academically and socially immerse myself in some other communities. And that's when it became a far more interesting discussion, including dating somebody from Jamaica, and reactions of family members. And some of those types of tensions really started to surface. I think just the, you know, the notion of insecurity around these issues. There's a lot of insecurity around these, there's there's especially insecurity around these issues among white folks, which I am. And so that was the when the tension really started to be laid there. There was some in high school.

Bethaney Wilkinson  05:46

Yeah. Okay. So from what I know about you, and your like, academic history, you it seems like you're really strategic, and we're gonna get to some of your like, professional roles since then. Um, can you tell me more about what you studied why you studied it, and just kind of how you imagined academic stuff fitting into your life?

Doug Shipman  06:06

Yeah. So when I got to college, I was really excited to come to Atlanta because of Atlanta's legacy around race and ethnicity and religion, because I grown up religious. So I was interested in in a city that embodied that. And at Emory, I was really interested in studying identity issues. That's what I kind of call them at the time. So I was taking coursework on race and gender and on sexuality. And not just the general things, there was a course at Emory from a wonderful sociologist named Doris Aldridge that was about black, male female relationships. That was her work. So it was me in this graduate seminar with 11 other students, I think there was one other flight person, everybody else was of color. And we're talking about black female male relationships. There was an amazing course. And also daily, I had to figure out okay, can I speak to this issue or not speak to this issue right away? How do we sort of navigate this, and everybody was wonderful, but But I tried to not only academically study them, but also put myself in situations in which I was in a, I was in various positions of majority minority, you know, this is really my experience, this isn't my experience at all, I took a course on Asian American identity. And it was like all the Asian Americans at Emory and me, right, and again, just trying to be strategic about not only the academic side, but the experience side of what does it feel to to play a various role. And I think the other piece was, in college, I distinctly remember having the conversation both with myself and some others, that I was never going to change my self in ways to try to fit in. So I never affected an accent, I never dressed differently. I never, I never did that. So I was always, you know, when I moved in these spaces, I was always just this small town, white guy moving in these spaces, right, trying to maintain my own authenticity, but also a relationship to these issues. And so a lot, you know, it's political science and economics were the majors, but a lot of the work was around identity issues from very specific perspectives.

Bethaney Wilkinson  08:14

Wow, I love that I feel like so many people, too, they might get stuck in one or not stuck. But there's like one or the other, like, either I'm going to have a really intense working intellectual understanding of race, racism, identity, or I'm just gonna live my life and not think about it too much. But I think something really powerful happens when we do push to integrate the two. And that makes us more effective, I would say.

Doug Shipman  08:38

Yeah, I think I think it makes us more effective. I think it also makes us that, you know, there are every community has very specific issues and very specific markers and ways in which they work, right. But the ability to move in various communities that aren't your own, I think is a skill set that you can develop. And you can understand how you can move and especially as a white, male, straight Christian, you know, all of the patriarchy all the all of the all in one package. How do you you know, how do you move in various circles? And what are the ways in which you can create affiliation and create trust? In those places? I think that is a skill that can be developed that then you can move into immigrant communities, African American communities, international communities, whatever the case is, even if you don't know that community very, very deeply.

Bethaney Wilkinson  09:31

Yeah. So was there ever a time where it went really poorly? Or like, did you ever have experiences of either being really misunderstood or experiences of conflict as you tried to navigate those different worlds?

Doug Shipman  09:44

Not as many as you would think. Okay. I mean, that's actually that's actually the theme from there actually, across even my professional life, not nearly as many as people think, Wow. It is a handful of times that anybody has ever come to me and said, You know, I just don't understand what you're doing? I really don't think you should be. I mean, it's it isn't that I have had very few of those experiences. I have had some, some I have, I have certainly made mistakes. And I have certainly, you know, ask questions that have been misinterpreted or moved in ways, of course. But for the most part, I have always found that folks are extremely welcoming. If you are taking the your steps on their terms, if and that can be very simple. If you're willing to eat, the food that's been presented in the way that it's been presented and not try to, you know, make it less spicy, or more spicy, just take it the way that it's offer, or more culturally speaking, if you're willing to move in that space in the way that that community is trying to move in that space, I actually have found folks to be incredibly welcoming. Now, that doesn't mean that people don't question I mean, you know, people will often say to what is your interest? Or, you know, what, why, what do you what do you expect? Yeah, but that's almost always a neutral to positive question. If you just answer it. It's actually not as much of a defensive question as people think.

Bethaney Wilkinson  11:11

Oh, that's so helpful. Yeah, it was I think about oftentimes as pilot as an organization, because we're moving to this new neighborhood, that people are like, what, what are your intentions? What do you hope happens here? And I think reframing it as Oh, people aren't being they just want to know, like, they want to know who you are

Doug Shipman  11:28

Taken at face value. And I have found that 98 or 99% of the time, it is what it is followed by is Oh, that's cool. That's interesting. I'm cool. I'm good, as opposed to a provocative or that too defensive question. And, you know, it's really, you assume something else.

Bethaney Wilkinson  11:45

It's, I love that because it you the way you framed it earlier, in talking about your hometown, you were saying like, there's a lot of insecurity around the identity and the topic. And so I find it helpful. And you saying, Yeah, but it's not as bad as people think they kind of remove some of that insecurity and some of that fear. It's like, actually, this is we make this way more complicated than it has to be. Maybe.

Doug Shipman  12:06

Yeah, I think so. I think the other thing is that, over time, my experience is that any individual is multiple identities that they're holding simultaneously, right? And some of them you can see some of them you have no idea. And you also can't assume that when somebody asked that question that, you know, from which identity, they may be asking them right now, they may be asking, they could be asking from religious identity, racial identity, gender, identity, sexuality, geographic, uh, you have no idea. And so I think it also is very presumptive. If you assumed where the questions coming from, as opposed to just answering the question and seeing then, you know, because a lot of times people say, Oh, well, what you may not know about me, you know, the reason I asked is because, and you would have had no idea that, you know, they're in an interracial marriage. And they're, you know, that adopted kids from six different places. And that was the nature of their question, or they moved here last week, and they're in the same position you are, I mean, you just don't know. And I think that, that reminding ourselves that we are multiple things simultaneously. And sometimes some of those things are first in order. And sometimes those things are actually not that important, to me at this moment, is important in this round,

Bethaney Wilkinson  13:18

Absolutely. Multiple identities. Okay, I just wanted to take a second to capture that one thing Doug just said, he talks about how learning how to move in cross cultural spaces, is a skill that you can develop. For some of us, I'm especially thinking about other Black and African American people, other racial minorities, we're used to having to navigate majority culture, majority white spaces all the time, you can do research on this, a lot of it is called code switching. It's a phenomenon. But there's always an opportunity for us to practice what it looks like to be uncomfortable in a culture that's not our own, and to cultivate the skill of showing up authentically and generously in those spaces. So I just wanted to take a second because I love that Doug said that. Also, really quickly. For the sake of time, I had to cut some of Doug's story here. And so I just want to say after Doug left Emory, he moved up to Virginia, where he got into banking, and then he went to Divinity School, and then he also studied public policy. And then he came back to Atlanta, where he spent six years working in a management consulting firm. So he has done it all kind of moving between this identity, culture, history, space, religious space, and then this hyper practical financial strategy, money making things space. And so when the conversation picks up, it's right when we begin talking about how he got connected to the National Center for civil and human rights project, so check this out. Wow. Okay, so you are at Emory, you're studying identity, you're experiencing new kinds of communities. What Where did you go from there?

Doug Shipman  14:59

So realized that I probably wanted to end up in not for profit or maybe the public sector space. Former Mayor Shirley Franklin, and AJ Robinson, who runs central liner progress had been approached by Evelyn Lowry and Andy Young, a few others about potentially building the Civil Rights Museum. And so she approached the firm where I worked, she'd not approached me directly Schubert's firm said to, you know, I need some pro bono help feasibility studies. Anybody over there know anything about civil rights history or about museums, the person got the call said, We don't know anything about museums. And we got one guy, there's a ton about some rights history. But he's a 32 year old white guy, do you care. And Shirley Franklin said, I just want to pay for whoever this is, I don't care what it looks like cinema over. I we had I had shook, shaking her hand during the campaign we'd never met. And that 10 weeks turned into 10 years. And in part, because I think that she and I really are very different people. She's much older than me, she's from Philly, she's a political figure, South American, she's a woman. But we really aligned almost immediately on what we thought this thing should be. And that it shouldn't just be a Civil Rights Museum, but that it had this ability to reach forward in time and also to encompass human rights in great Broadway. And that that was really the big idea. We almost immediately fixated on that within the first few weeks. And that was the driving force. And that's how I got on the project and 10 weeks turned into some more time as a pro bono than it turned into me doing full time for one year and two years. 10 years, okay. So just kept going.

Bethaney Wilkinson  16:36

Okay, in my mind, in my imagination, it was like, there was this grand life moment where you just decided to jump in, but

Doug Shipman  16:43

but there was one grand life, just sort of interesting. So she basically had come to me and said, Please leave your job and do this full time. And ostensibly it was going to be for a year, but there was always a possibility that maybe it would take longer. You know, in all honesty, my father in law didn't want me to do it, because he couldn't understand why I would leave my nice secure job and go and try to build a museum about civil rights. A couple of my favorite people kind of mentor type said that I shouldn't do it, because they thought the racial politics would never happen. And the racial politics would eat me alive, and that I would end up with a reputation in tatters. And so I really did have a moment where I had to decide, yeah, I'm going to, I'm going to do this. And it is, you know, we don't know if it's going to happen, and it could turn out badly. And it's going to be really complicated. And yes, I'm going to be white guy doing it. And I said, you know, let's go, being able to do that project, with Shirley Franklin, not just somebody like Shirley, but her. She's a very unique person, that she's a very, she's incredibly thoughtful around a lot of things, but especially around these issues. And we used to have, you know, we would we would get together and say, Okay, who's going to that meeting you or be, you know, who who needs to make the first phone call? Who are they going to react to better I mean, we were super explicit about race and gender and politics and generations and and all of those issues and trying to move that project forward. Because if you even go back to when it started, and you know, we started in oh, five sex, marriage equality, wasn't there. I mean, whether or not LGBTQ issues were even included in the civil rights movement was still an open question. Sure. And so you know, and she and I, there's this great meeting where she and I had city council to sort of unveil our findings. And she stood up and said, includes human rights and includes gay rights. That's never a question on this project. And I stood up and said, let me just reiterate with the mayor just said, and the first 10 or 12, people who'd signed up to speak, were all there to basically fight for the inclusion of LGBTQ issues in the center. And they all stood up and said, I was here, I was really ready to go to war. And I'm so excited. And I'm sitting down and like 10 people in a row, because it was so an open question. I think the ability to talk about identity issues explicitly, and it seems obvious in a project that civil and human rights, but the ability to strategize and to be honest about, look, how are we going to move this agenda through the various communities who at the end, you really want to say this is mine? We were able to thankfully, and not just the two of us, we had a lot of input. But what was really interesting about that project, and the whole notion of it was that we talked about race all the time. Yes, customer Yeah. And openly and strategize, to be able to move that, you know, to move it forward.

Bethaney Wilkinson  19:32

What do you think keeps people from doing that? Because I find whenever I'm working with a community where we're making any measure of progress towards more diversity, more inclusion, I mean, we have to talk about it, not just again, not theoretically, but oh, here's how I'm showing up to this. And here's how it affects me. Here's my race and my how I put, you know, here's how I'm moving in this situation. What do you think keeps people from doing that?

Doug Shipman  19:54

There's a sociologist that a few years ago wrote an article that said that the great mistake that white folks made After desegregation was that they taught their kids to be colorblindness of color conscious. And that and then that white folks made this move to say, Okay, now we shouldn't at all be around this topic instead of it should have been the exact opposite in the moment that that everybody said, but especially white folks, oh, okay, let's actually, let's, let's understand exactly and be a part of it and be, you know, be helpful and be reflective and understand it. And that didn't happen in the 70s and 80s. And not even the 90s. Really. So it was this huge loss kind of generation. So, so one is, I think you still have the outgrowth of that, which is a whole generation that really didn't want to grapple with it and missed putting themselves in experiences in which they were going to talk about it. They were in experience, they were increasingly in experiences in which it was an integrated society, but they weren't actually talking about identity and race specifically. So I think that's one, too. You know, I certainly think that there's a general lack of sophistication around the topic, just overall, right? Just just just, you know, how how the topic works, and what the frameworks are, what the structures are, what the theory is, and some of that I just think that there's not a whole lot people know more about sports than they do about about racial issues. Right. So I think that there's also that the third, I think that there's a fear, there's a fear that I'm going to be misinterpreted, there's a fear that I'm going to be misunderstood that I'm going to do something I don't intend to do. And that fear means that a lot of people say, Well, I'm just going to pull back at all from the topic. And so we all just sort of pull back and Oh, open it up. And I think that that leads to a lot of situations where it's obvious that that's a topic that's never been brought up.

Bethaney Wilkinson  21:48

Okay, so I want to switch gears a little bit here. And because you have this history of theology, and so or its history, all these things, but you're also like an incredibly strategic organizational leader. And so I want to talk to you a little bit about diversity and inclusion, and those strategies. And then I also want to hear your thoughts on racism in organizations. And so there's kind of two different things in my mind. So firstly, what does diversity and inclusion look like in your current role, and maybe you can share a little bit about what you do now.

Doug Shipman  22:24

So I'm the presidency of the Woodruff Arts Center workforce centers, the third largest art center in the country behind Lincoln Center and Kennedy Center. On one arts campus is the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, the Alliance theatre, The High Museum of Art, and then other spaces that hosts all kinds of artistic presentations, from, you know, traveling groups and or from Atlanta based groups. So it's, it's this, you know, million people a year plus come to somehow experience the arts. So I think, you know, in that world, diversity, inclusion is kind of a multifaceted issue. It includes who is on the campus and performing and includes the content, what are on the stages, what are on the walls, it includes the programs, so you may have a European art exhibition, but you can put a program that talks about that European art exhibition from a racial standpoint, right, so So how you program the content has an element to it, there's obviously a staff and leadership component to it. And then there's also an inclusion of who feels as if this is their space, who feels as if they're welcome? Who feels as if they see it as a home? Or is it for some other group? Or is it for, not for me? And so I think in in that world comes a lot different ways, obviously, music, art and theater are, you know, they as their content are often talking about racial issues, social issues, gender, identity, issue by nature, that can be an easy thing, right for them to to grapple with, and artists are often grappling with it. So there's there is it is, you know, if I said, Oh, it doesn't make any difference, right, if that makes no sense to synthetical to the very nature of the institution itself. But I think there are various elements to it. And I think the big thing that that I come back to is, if to incent, you know, this institution, just for context is 50 years old. It is, you know, it is big, it is relatively wealthy. And so it has been in the past seen as a very elite, quite close kind of place. From an audience perspective, if you look at the numbers, actually, that's not at all who comes today. It's extremely diverse looks a lot like the city. The institution in the prior to my tenure has worked very, very hard from a content perspective, to to open it up and to be very, very deeply attuned to artists who are speaking to these issues. I think the thing for our cultural big cultural institutions or big organizations, if you Want to really think about diversity inclusion, it has to be a strategic priority, not an add on to your strategy. Right? So if I come to you and say, Look, we need to diversify our board, and you say, Okay, well tell me about what you're doing. And nothing that follows in the next three paragraphs has anything to do with diversity and inclusion, then the board diversification really is just trying to do because you think you should write it's not a strategic imperative. If I come to you and say, Look, 50% of the audience today are people of color. I need my board to reflect my audience. That's a that's a pretty easy one to understand. It's a pretty easy thing to understand why you're doing it. And any particular person that I approach says, Okay, you you're actually trying to so tell me about your Incas, topical, right? It is about race, but it's not about race. It's not about tokenism. It's about I have, I have an audience. And I need thinking that understands the audience. God, I'm a good fit. I'm not a good fit, but I get it. Right. And so the notions of diversity and inclusion change dramatically. And it's a core part of strategy, as opposed to saying, well, it's something the field is doing something that we're, you know, funders want us to do. That does not work? Well.

Bethaney Wilkinson  26:11

Yeah, in my opinion. So how does that play out practically? Or logistically, like, it's not hard to do, like, so say, you have the business case, or the like, our audience is 50%, we are bored to look like this? How did how do you do it? You start making phone calls? Or? 

Doug Shipman  26:27

No, I think you do, I think you do it a couple of ways. And I think one is you actually have to make it a goal with numbers, okay? You have to say, look, we're going to quote unquote, diversify staff, board leadership, whatever the case is, this is where we are today. And this is where we want to get to, it's just like anything else in organization. This is the status quo. And this is my goal. And this is what it will mean, we will have this many people, we will have this, you know, these kinds of backgrounds, we have this kind of representation. That's what we will have, that can be challenged or not challenging depends on how strategic it is. And it also depends in a nonprofit, what your how your funding base reacts to that. But then the really hard part of this work is you have to go to good people and say you can't be on this board. Or you have to you have to, you know, system that when you get a pool of candidates, you basically have to say, Okay, I'm going to pick x and not pick y, I'm going to pick her and not pick him. And that is very, you know, that can not because somebody is racist and says I want the white guy over her because he's a white guy. But it can be very, oh, I really prefer him, or I really love him, he's done great work. Well, you know what, I understand that, but if we're going to reach these goals, we can only have so many people who are the same. The practicality of the personal, especially during transitions, if you've got a board that 75% You know, white guys, and you're trying to get to something that's much more diverse, that means that some of those white guys have to leave. Right? Or you just had to expand your board, which it has other applications. Those are just practical,

Bethaney Wilkinson  28:04

just how the numbers, right.

Doug Shipman  28:06

That's just practicality. I mean, it just, it just is what it is. And I think that's the hard part. Because at the end of the day, you have to sit down and have that conversation. You have to you have to do that. And sometimes that can lead to

Bethaney Wilkinson  28:25

Yeah, I feel like sometimes what people say in response to that, too, if they aren't as practiced and having these conversations, and if they don't have a working definition of racism, even they would perceive that as some sort of reverse racism or reverse oppression. What how does that hit you? I have like a whole world world of thought behind that. But um, yeah

Doug Shipman  28:48

in the practical, you know, I don't it again, if we're an organization that's trying to serve a certain audience in certain ways, than reflecting that audience seems to me just a very simple equation, right. And so the, what's underneath it in that context is that somebody is basically saying, Well, I have the right to be in this role. No, you really don't have the right to Well, I'm not running an election service, right. That's a different kind of thing, access for elections, access to social services. Those are very different things, right. This is a this is a private, big, private organization. And if you're talking about the board, or if you're talking about the senior levels of the SAP, there's no obligation that nobody has the right to demand to be in a space. And so I think that's the big difference. I think the other piece of that is, you know, big institutions, like the Art Center are an entree into different parts of society, right? They're an entree into certain relationships. It's an entree into certain if you're a student and you study those things as an entree into certain social circles. It's an entree into certain worlds. If we close those spaces, that means that the trajectory of some people's lives is much better than the trajectory of other people's lives. It's sort of like learning the language, right? If you know a lot, if you know something about art and music, I mean, it's like, it's like a, it's like a language that you can move in certain spaces and other spaces are ones that have money, that's kind of a good thing for a person to be able to move into space. So I actually see it that if we don't open up these kinds of institutions is perpetuating a racial, oppressive kind of structure that says, Well, if you're of a certain background, you've got, you know, an easier path to get into those ways. And you've got it if you're a certain racial background, that harder path just means exactly the opposite. I don't want to tear down the institution, because I think that, you know, having a big Art Center is a good thing. But I do want to open it up. So that, you know, here's, here's one of the programs that Symphony has, which I adore, was started by the Sierra Hill. So zero Hills wife of Jesse Hill, Jr. They're very active in civil rights movement, zero hills, from Cuba skirt around classical music, she said, the orchestra doesn't look like me, we have to change that. So she started a program. And basically what it does is it takes kids somewhere between fifth and ninth grade, they audition. And then it gives them everything that they need camps, tutoring, mentorship, instruments training, to get them into conservatory when they graduate high school. But it is for African American and Latino kids. And it literally is the most important program in the country from out of Atlanta, to diversifying the field of orchestral music. Wow. Because it basically produces kids that then go into conservatory that then go out and become musicians and teachers and professors and whatever the case may be, that is using the institution, we have to change the world in a positive way, and to break down some of the legacy of racism that exists. To me, that's the kind of work that we should be doing. And if somebody were to say, well, you know, by diversifying your borders reverse racism, you say, Look, that's not how this institution is played, laid in the legacy perspective. And that's, you know, that's not how we shouldn't be playing, you know, going forward. That's how I think about it. I think the other part is an institution like the Arts Center, which obviously, is one that multiple generations of families have been donors and come to, and it's, you know, kind of a societal thing. How do you think about what networks people are moving in? Right? What ends up happening a lot of times is that, you know, somebody says, Oh, I love the museum, and I'm really involved. And my friend is a wonderful person, I know him, and I want to bring him in. Well, you know, he looks just like me, the the net, you have to manage the networks, I think, in a very, very specific way. And you have to work hard to say, we're going to think about the pipeline of people who are involved. And we're going to make sure that we have very different networks and from which we're pulling from, because as humans, we trust the people we know more than we trust the people we don't know, right? I trust people with a big reputation more than we trust people who don't have a revenue share. That's just human nature, right? And so how do you break that, that human default, and part of it is you have to be really thoughtful about I spend a lot of my time now thinking about, how do I use the position, I have to open the door or to create a seat at the table for somebody who's not naturally going to find their way there. Right. And so for instance, I just this week, somebody asked me to help them, curate a dinner. And they wanted five or six kind of people from the arts community to come to the stem. And so I spent about a week and I kept going back and iterated on asking myself is, you know, who should be there? How do we create a room that's somewhat unexpected? And how do we create opportunities for people who would never get into that room to get into that room? Because I may have the ability, because of the position I sit in, to vouch for somebody who the organizer doesn't know, right? So I can use my position to say, she's going to be great, trust me, I'll put my reputation on the line. In order to get her in that space. I spend a fair amount of my time thinking about that equation and trying to create and then once she comes in, she's wonderful, because she is wonderful. She's got it now she's got her own affiliation, right. And that's starting to move in a different way. But I think, I think too often we move too fast. And we say, Okay, I gotta get that done. I gotta get, you know, I gotta get those invites out. And I'm just going to go with who I know. And that means that we perpetuate the cycles that we know and especially in you know, in the world, like the art center, that is historically a white, rich, male circle. And so how do you thought I'm, you know, a white male, I get that, but how do you break it? And how do you create those openings for people and how do you somebody says The other day play different contexts. They said, that person's really great because they will spend their accumulated political capital on this organization. And that's that's an interesting that's sort of the the interesting question is how do you how do you spend the the accumulated political capital that you have on somebody who is not necessarily going to find themselves there.

Bethaney Wilkinson  35:25

That segues pretty nicely into my second to last question for you. Because it, it speaks to just like playing the long game. It's like how is what I'm doing today going to set another person that for success in 510 15 years, and I want her to challenge a group of entrepreneurs to think 50 years out. So when you think 50 years out, I mean, you think of society, culture, big institutions as it relates to race and ethnicity, diversity and inclusion, what do you hope for, as my first question? And then my second question, which I can reiterate if I have to is what do you think would stand in the way of actualizing? That vision?

Doug Shipman  36:03

There are a couple things that I hoped for. I mean, I hope that I hope I hope that we are much more sophisticated around race and ethnicity and racism and identity issues. I hope that more people feel as if they know about it, talk about it champion, no matter what background they come from, that it's something they care deeply about. Because I think that I think that somewhat counter intuitively, the more that you spend time on it, actually, the less it becomes a point of conflict, right? Yeah. And so I would hope that that's one too, I would hope that various communities would find a way to communities would find ways to express themselves authentically and create spaces in which the stories of their community are told, I think it's really positive when we have lots of different religious institutions on the same block. And we have lots of different cultural organizations working. I think that's really positive. Again, back to my notion of multi multi racial coalition's doesn't mean that you lose those specific communities. There. I, you know, I think that probably the most obvious one, I would hope that people could authentically be those multiple identities on a daily, weekly, monthly basis, even when they don't necessarily make a lot of sense, right? Maybe even when, you know, because if you told me all of your identities, and I just said, well, here are your politics, and you would say, No, those aren't my politics that we go, great. We create those spaces. Right. I think the other thing that I think that I think about and part of it's because it's personal, I mean, I have, you know, Indian white children, right? You know, racial intermarriage by any measure is on the ascent in various communities still, definitely. But it's various, which means multiracial people, right, with multiple racial backgrounds are ascending, you know, I hope that we are able to, to embrace that as not the exclusive identity of the country. But a but a growing identity of the country. I mean, we and I used to joke that all of us when I was in college, talked about that we didn't want a melting pot, we all wanted a salad bowl. And then we all went intermarriage. And so what were we thinking? Right? You know, it's a little bit of both, and I hope we have a both and culture I you know, we are melting. That's what demographics are showing us that's happening more than in halves. So how do we create both a society that it's very comfortable with real multiple identities and in much more complex ways than we have today? And still have the salad bowl and the and the richness of specific communities, I would hope that we could find a place. That's, that's, that's more more aligned with that reality.

Bethaney Wilkinson  39:02

So my last question is my whole project, the diversity gap is I'm exploring these tensions from a lot of different angles and trying to make sense of all of it really. And so I'd love to hear from you. When you think about trying to decide between organizations or culture at large. I want to hear your thoughts on society, American society at large. What is what is the diversity gap? And how do we close it?

Doug Shipman  39:27

I think that I think society at large has versie gap. I think there's a couple of things. One is that we are there's far too much correlation between one's racial background and their life opportunities. Right. There's there. It cannot be the case that white folks are this much better at getting to and through college and African American talks. It cannot be the case, right? I have I have zero that there's any scientific genetic background, physical reality of that, that is all about what happens once each is born, right? Or even maybe even prenatal, but it's all back to that. Right? The diversity gap is that, depending on what you look like the opportunities that statistically in society that you have are vastly different. That's a massive gap. And it's smaller, but still exists for gender to but it's braces just incredibly pronounced. I think that's one. I think the second diversity gap is that which which contributes to this is that various communities are willing to confront the realities of race to vastly different degrees. And I think we're going through a period right now, while you're in part because of demographic changes, in part because economic changes, I think white folks more broadly, are realizing that they also have a racial identity. But they are not confronting the realism of race and how it operates in society. And that's it's rough. We're a rough period. We're very rough period. And I think we will be until until we move through some period of time in which a multiracial, non majority white society, everybody understands what that should and can, what it can mean. I mean, I think it gets back to it gets back to what CTE said, Right? CTE said, in that same conversation, that reference, he said, we were working for the liberation of everybody from segregation, including white folks that were trapped by segregation. And that's exactly right. We've we've all been trapped by the original sentence of the way that America was set up. And we're still trying to work to deal with that. And all of us still need liberation from what it means to live an America that's racialized and equal at its constitutional core. So that's, that's a lot of work.

Bethaney Wilkinson  42:19

Okay, so some key takeaways, there could be so many, but I want us to focus on is how many awkward and intentional conversations Doug has had to have over the course of his career to get things done. Everything from having really honest and strategic conversations with Mayor Shirley Franklin, to having to sit down with traditional board members and telling them that they have to roll off the board in order to make room for new candidates. These courageous conversations are essential to moving the needle on diversity in an organization. I love that Doug gave voice to that. Another thing that stuck out to me was how much we talked about being authentic. Perhaps one of the best things we can do when we seek to be more inclusive of others, is to remain absolutely true to being ourselves. That's something I'll be thinking about a lot in the months to come. Thanks for listening in. Thank you for listening to The Diversity Gap podcast. If you've been challenged or inspired by what you've heard, please rate and review the show. You can also subscribe to make sure you never miss an episode. If you have thoughts or questions I'd love to hear from you connect with me at thediversitygap.com or on Instagram at The Diversity Gap. This episode was produced by DJ opdiggy for Soul Graffiti Productions