UMBC Mic'd Up

Leveling the Playing Field through Community Leadership

August 23, 2022 UMBC Mic'd Up with Dennise Cardona and Keenan Hickman Season 2 Episode 35
UMBC Mic'd Up
Leveling the Playing Field through Community Leadership
Show Notes Transcript

Community leadership is about transparency and compassion. According to Keenan Hickman ’22, M.P.S: Community Leadership, it's about being somebody in the community who advocates for something that's bigger than themselves. He doesn't believe you have to be a mayor to be the community leader. You could be an urban farmer, a director of a nonprofit, or even the elderly grandma on the stoop, who's making sure everyone's loved and cared for.

In this podcast episode, Keenan shares his experience with UMBC's Community Leadership graduate program and his new role with The Aequo Fund, an organization that is about leveling the playing field for black, brown women immigrant developers, by providing them with capital and support that they need to succeed.

Curious about UMBC’s M.P.S. Community Leadership Program? Check it out here: https://leader.umbc.edu


Dennise Cardona  0:00  
Thanks for tuning in to this episode of UMBC Mic'd Up Podcast. Today we are going to be speaking with Keenan Hickman, a recent graduate of UMBC's Community Leadership graduate program. Hey, Keenan, it's so wonderful to have you here on the UMBC Mic'd Up podcast. Welcome.

Keenan  0:20  
Thank you, Dennise, it's a pleasure to have a conversation again with you. 

Dennise Cardona  0:24  
We did speak last year, during COVID, maybe the year before, all the years sort of mesh together, but we spoke about the community partnership that you were involved in through UMBC's Community Leadership graduate program, and it sounded like such a cool partnership. I know that your community partner was thrilled with you. And when we talked, it sounded like you were thrilled with the community partner as well. And that, together, you were able to make some great strides in the project that you worked on. And it just sounds like a really great opportunity for a young professional, who may or may not have experience in the field that you're studying, to be able to go out there into the world, and roll up your sleeves and do the work and see what it's like to work within that realm. What was that like for you?

Keenan  1:14  
I really enjoyed that experience, that applied learning. That's very practical. For my education, it was very useful for me, and that, you know, when we were going through that it was the pandemic, and I had to adjust to the virtual scene. And I was a little concerned at first as to how that would play out with the community partner, but it ended up working out. And it actually played out with my project in that we were able to think about new ways to be digitally inclusive, and with the community partner that I was with, which was Thread, which is a organization that works with youth, providing them with mentors, and usually that's in person, but during the pandemic, we were thinking of how can we connect them to people that they may not be able to meet with individually in person? And also, how can we think about what they might be working towards in the future career wise. So the project basically revolved around opening up the virtual space and taking advantage of it to connect them with leaders in the field, different industries, in different countries or states in a way that they weren't necessarily able to do if you had to meet that person in person.

Dennise Cardona  2:50  
Absolutely. And for anybody who is listening to this or watching this on YouTube, I will be linking to that community partnership Thread story and a video that I produced. I'll be linking to that in the show notes. So if you're curious about the actual project itself and what transpired, watch that. It's a really cool, it's like like two minutes long, maybe three minutes max, and it's just well worth the time to be able to listen to this great story. Now, Keenan, what do you love most about community leadership as a career choice?

Keenan  3:25  
I love that it's rooted at its cire in understanding other people, and including those people in the process of reaching the common goal. And I think that can play out in whatever workforce that you're in. And it doesn't necessarily have to be work, either. You could just be in your day to day life. How couldyou be a leader in your community, and what's holding those principles with you every way that you operate?

Dennise Cardona  3:54  
What I love about what you just said is that it applies to not just work life, it actually applies to your personal life as well. And to me, isn't that the greatest benefit when you can combine work and personal life and be able to enjoy the attributes of both of those, and to be able to bring the attributes or qualities that you need in both of those spheres of your life together? I think that's a really great learning opportunity, growth opportunity. And just a way to be able to serve and give back to the community at large.

Keenan  4:26  
Yeah, I'd agree. I typically don't like to be cornered or not cornered, but narrowed. And I think, you know, this is broad enough that it could play out in many different scenarios.

Dennise Cardona  4:43  
That's right. It's not a career field that is so niche that if you didn't like it, just say when you get out into the real world, it's not one of those fields where you're pigeon holed and well gosh, now I have to do this. It's something that has so many, like you said, universal type of appeals and qualities that you can bring this, you can bring community leadership to most any field, because we all need those leaders. Have your career goals changed from when you first entered the program? That first class you took to now that you've graduated?

Keenan  5:19  
I think so. I know when I came into the program, I wasn't exactly sure what career that I wanted to dive into. But I did know that I was curious about challenging myself by entering the new industry, and going back to school to be mentally stimulated in that way. And, you know, I believe the community leadership program did that for me, by introducing me to, you know, the whole field of social entrepreneurship, for example, which ended up being my focus during my time in the program.

Dennise Cardona  5:57  
That's great. Now, for somebody who doesn't know what community leadership is, how would you describe it to somebody like that?

Keenan  6:05  
Yeah, I believe it involves having a heightened awareness of yourself. And you know, the people in the communities that you coexist with that includes, you know, having the awareness to think about someone else's perspective and their leadership style, and how that might best work out as far as reaching a goal that you're trying to reach with your organization. And it plays out in a variety of ways.

Dennise Cardona  6:38  
Where would a community be without community leadership, in your opinion?

Keenan  6:43  
I think a community will be either stuck or backwards, no matter what, there's always somebody in the community who is advocating for something that's bigger than themselves. It's broad enough that it's not always political either. No, you don't have to be the mayor to be the community leader. You could be, you know, an urban farmer, or a director of a nonprofit, or even the elderly grandma on the stoop, who's making sure everyone's loved and cared for and just being transparent in that way.

Dennise Cardona  7:17  
Absolutely. Now, how did the program Community Leadership program prepare you for what you're doing professionally now? And can you tell us what you're doing professionally now? What that entails? What is a day in the life of Keenan?

Keenan  7:32  
Oh, boy, the Community Leadership Program prepared me by adding to my flexibility, but also adding to my curiosity about work and community, and you know, the different people that you're going to be working with on a daily basis, and how their backgrounds may affect their decisions. But the role that I have today, I work for an organization called The Aequo Fund. And it's an organization that is about leveling the playing field for black, brown women immigrant developers, by providing them with capital and support that they need to succeed. And the day in the life of me is in that role, I love that it's never the same. So one day, I could be out on a site visit talking to neighborhood stakeholders, and other days, I could be working with the developers managing their onboarding process as a cohort, and just increasing the cohesion amongst them. Other days, I could be in the office, you know, managing the database, updating that. So I love that it's very diverse in nature and not traditional.

Dennise Cardona  8:43  
Oh, that's great. And is it fair to say that without this advanced degree, you would have had a hard time maybe slipping into a role like that? Did this degree help you to be able to slip into a role like that?

Keenan  8:58  
The program helped me to network, and, you know, get my feet on the ground. As far as this could be a potential career and this aligns with what I've been learning in the community leadership program. One of the great things about the program is that we meet guest speakers as part of our courses pretty routinely, and Baltimore is so small, that whatever your passion or focus is, you're more likely to run into that same circle. And that person is going to tell you know, someone that they know and it is very much a culture of looking out for someone who is you know, trying to do something for themselves and it just makes me think of, you know, Smalltimore. You're likely to run into somebody who you know, and can easily jump into a conversation with around a shared interest.

Dennise Cardona  9:54  
I love that Smalltimore. That's a nice new coined term there. That's fantastic. And what was your biggest takeaway from the program, Keenan?

Keenan  10:04  
My biggest takeaway from the program was to have confidence in my own abilities, and seeing how my skills and abilities can play out in community and how I might need to alter them in different situations to reach a shared goal for the community and for, you know, the organization that I'm working for.

Dennise Cardona  10:31  
Well, Keenan, this has been a really wonderful conversation. I've learned a lot more about community leadership. And I hope that the listeners and the viewers if you're watching this on YouTube, have also learned a little bit more about community leadership and how important it is to society and to the world at large. Thank you so much for being here with us today, Keenan.

Keenan  10:51  
Thank you for having me.

Dennise Cardona  10:57  
Thanks for listening to this episode of UMBC's Mic'd Up podcast. If you'd like to learn more about UMBC's Community Leadership graduate program, visit leader.umbc.edu