Leading with Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion with Dr. Jen Self

Join me, Susan Ireland, as I talk with the remarkable Dr. Jen Self, whose life work weaves the threads of justice, equity, diversity and inclusion into their leadership. Dr. Self's journey from the University of Washington's Q Center to the consultancy powerhouse BRIC-13 demonstrates a devotion to social change that's as inspiring as it is impactful. We talk about how leaders must push past the discomfort and get to work challenging systemic power imbalances and creating space and room for other people’s genius to show up.

Show Notes:

(6:00) We talk about creating access and space for others.

(9:05) We discuss taking risks and how to challenge a failed system and remain safe. We talk about collective leadership and how you need to surround yourself with people who think differently than you.

(16:26) We dig into what it means as a white person to engage in anti-racist work and fight white supremacy. 

(18:10) Dr. Jen shares the inspiration for their self-chosen queer JEDI title.

(23:25) We end the discussion talking about ideas on how to take action and let ourselves be transformed by the experience of others.  We talk openly about moving through discomfort, giving grace and creating more connection to others humanity to ultimately create the world we want.

About Jen: Dr. Jen Self, LICSW (they/them), is the Queer JEDI; They are the Owner/Principle of Brick 13, the Founding Director of the University of Washington (UW) Q Center, an Assistant Clinical Professor at UW School of Social Work & Gender, Women, & Sexuality Studies, a Leadership Tomorrow ‘24 participant, author, researcher, and practitioner of foundational work leading to the development of anti-racist & intersectional Higher Education LGBTQIA+ Student Services, international speaker, and through it all a strategist, coach, consultant, educator, and mental health provider. Dr. Self has worked with and developed leaders across industries, from non-profits to government to corporate. 

Resources:

Website: www.brick13.com

Join Debbie Collard and Susan Ireland, certified coaches and co-founders of Seasons Leadership, in making positive leadership the norm rather than the exception on Wednesdays on the Seasons Leadership Podcast. (Selected by Feedspot as one of the Top 15 Positive Leadership Podcasts on the web!)

And now you can join our community of values-based leaders on Seasons Leadership Patreon at Patreon.com/seasonsleadership. At our gold-level, unlock our exclusive Lessons in Leadership Column from our Resident Seasoned Leader David Spong, a lifetime member of the Board of the Malcom Baldrige Foundation and our Leadership Elements Series.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:03

Welcome to the Seasons Leadership Podcast. This is Susan Ireland, co-founder of Seasons Leadership. Today I had the privilege of talking with Dr Jen Self, the Queer Jedi University of Washington's Q Center. An assistant clinical professor at the UW School of Social Work and Gender, women and Sexuality Studies, a Leadership Tomorrow 24 participant, as well as an author, researcher, practitioner of foundational work leading to the development of anti-racist and intersectional higher education LGBTQIA plus student services, an international speaker and, through it all, a strategist, coach, consultant, educator and mental health provider. Dr J came into the world as a catalyst for change and credits their experience as a gender outlaw and the relationships they formed playing Pac-12 basketball for Cal as the impetus for their life's dedication to intersectional, racial and gender justice. The conversation was great. I learned a lot and I know you will too Well. Here we are Welcome, Dr J. Thank you, and we're both in Seattle. I learned a lot and I know you will too Well, here we are, welcome, dr J, thank you, and we're both in Seattle, I know right.

Speaker 1: 1:31

We actually could have come here. I mean, we could have been in the same room.

Speaker 2: 1:35

That's right. That's right, but we don't do that anymore. Humans, we're just like you know Zoom all the time.

Speaker 1: 1:42

I know I'm trying. I've actually had the over the summer. I did a podcast with somebody and we were sitting on my deck. It was great. That's very cool yeah it was great. It was great. Well, tell us about yourself. Maybe BRIC 13, what you're up to?

Speaker 2: 2:01

maybe BRIC-13, what you're up to, Sure? Well, I have spent most of my life doing working in higher ed and doing a lot of gender, sexuality and race studies, so I've done a lot of anti-racist work, While I say I started in higher ed, but really I have worked across industries. I've worked in almost any industry you can think of doing anti-racist work, gender, sexuality, and right before the pandemic I was, I was the director of the University of Washington Q Center, which is the. I helped found that as the gender and sexuality center there, and right before the pandemic, I had decided it's time for me to step down. I've been here, you know, 17 years, got this going time to get out of the way. So I, you know, I quit the pandemic and I was like, oh no, what is happening?

Speaker 2: 2:58

And like many people, I was looking for work during the pandemic and um, and it really just kind of forced me to finally do what I wanted to do, which was to be a coach, consultant, strategist and really specifically focus on working with organizations and leaders who want to embed equity and anti-racism within their work. And so that's what BRICS 13 does, and I partner with a lot of different consultants and educators around the Puget Sound area. In fact, we're part of a coalition that came together during the pandemic called the Equity Institute, and so there are a lot of us who have been meeting ever since I think it was July 2020, 2020 and we do a lot of work together.

Speaker 1: 3:46

Wow, I just want to kind of rewind. So did the Q Institute. Am I saying that right?

Speaker 2: 3:53

Q Center, q Center, yeah you were there for 17 years.

Speaker 2: 3:58

Yeah, I was there for 17 years and and a lot of that time was, you know, we were just starting the center, so a lot of that time was I was a grad student who was also running the center or building the center with the students, because that was one of the great things about the University of Washington is that the students voice really matters there. They have a lot of power and so working with them and coalitions to build that was pretty, was moving for my own life and also just an incredible experience to see a group of very different people come together and create something that has. Now you know we were. We were ranked the number one university in the world in terms of how we are affirming of LGBTQIA plus students and how we focus on intersectionality and network.

Speaker 1: 4:55

Well, I'm an alum of the UW as well. Yeah, I had no idea this was happening. Yeah, I'm very proud of that. I mean, 17 years is a long time ago.

Speaker 2: 5:13

Yeah, yeah, yeah, it is. That's wonderful. It's going strong. There's a new director there and they are doing such a great job and it's really transitioned well. The students really have made it theirs and, yeah, it's just, it's an incredible place yeah, it's just, it's an incredible place.

Speaker 1: 5:27

That is fantastic. Well, it it kind of ties in. All of that work is the result of, I would say, excellent leadership. Well, thank you, thank you. Well, and and this is what Seasons Leadership is all about is leadership, excellence, and, and it shows up differently for different people. But, um, so I'd like you to talk about what does that excellent leadership mean to you?

Speaker 2: 5:51

Okay, so, um, I know for me because of, because of who I am in the world, because of, like my experiences as, um, a person who didn't fit into any genders, genderqueer and I knew I was queer from a really young age and I was always seeking justice and I was always looking for people in the world who who, I think, experienced the world similar to me, not exactly like me, but like I was always drawn to figuring out what, what, what is this racism about? But I didn't get a lot of good teaching about that. Right, I I got a lot of good teaching about white supremacy, but not a lot of good teaching about how to undo that until I was in college, and so I was a college basketball player, I played at Cal, and really that experience working with my teammates who we are a team that was like most, like mostly black women, but but also multiracial, and so in that experience I started really having conversations with people for the kind of the first time around, their experiences with race and racism, my experiences with homophobia, transphobia, and really hearing from each other. And and then it was also the time, when you know, when we had that first, really first recording of police brutality with Rodney King and all of that kind of coalesced to make me realize that in this country, really excellent leadership means how do we actually look at the systems that we've built and deconstruct the ways that they have built in inequity and built in bias and built in things that actually harm a lot of people and don't provide access?

Speaker 2: 7:34

And so, as a very young person who didn't really know how to lead very well, I knew that what I could do is start undoing that stuff in me and and that eventually, as I started to undo that, I would be able to have more external action.

Speaker 2: 7:51

And so that really led me to a lot, of, a lot of different kinds of feminisms to read about, like black feminism and critical race theory and critical queer theory. Now, you don't have to be you don't have to do all that to be an excellent leader, but that was my path to really understanding power, and so I started to, and I was also trained as a therapist, so I was getting all of these tools about, like how to listen to people, how to be with people, and also like how to actually confront and understand my prejudices and then behave in a different way that allows and creates more space for folks. So my leadership really is about creating access and space and um and room for people's genius to show up, and it's honestly about like setting a stage and getting out of the way.

Speaker 2: 8:44

That's what I have found leadership to show up and it's honestly about like setting a stage and getting out of the way.

Speaker 1: 8:47

That's what I have found leadership to be about. Mm-hmm, and that that so resonates with you know what Season's leadership and Debbie and I like to focus on? Yeah, and that is so hard to do. It's very difficult, that is so hard to do. It's very difficult and in in a I don't know, it's in, I guess a society or structure where that's not the norm.

Speaker 2: 9:13

No, it is not the norm.

Speaker 1: 9:16

So how do you show up like that? You know consistently.

Speaker 2: 9:21

Yeah, well, it's taken a lot of different decisions on my part and and let's just be real I you know consistently like that means across time, because there were lots of mistakes in there, lots of ways that I didn't didn't do, didn't enact this the way I wanted to, and, um, but part of that part of being consistent is is being reflective and and reflexive about what you're doing and how it is impacting people, and is it, is it really reaching the results that you want? And so a lot of times in my leadership, it was about it was about being accountable and owning up to the things that I did that didn't quite work or that hurt somebody or that didn't pay attention to this thing that was happening, and so a lot of that has been about being willing to say I was wrong, what can I do to? What can I do now to repair that? What are the? What are the experiences you're having as my staff? What can we learn from this? What can I learn from this? And then shifting my behavior as a leader, and that's I don't think that's a model of leadership that we see a lot either.

Speaker 1: 10:37

No, well, it's kind of. I think you know what I've experienced and you know people. I think for the most part, people are doing the best they can with what they got. That's right and sometimes not very good.

Speaker 1: 10:52

Yeah, that's right, that's right, yeah, and so. And so you're like you're, you're in this quagmire, you know, trying to do the best you can and you've got pressure, but you know from from your upper management, from boards, from you know to to deliver results fast and, uh, you're trying to survive. And so when you're trying to survive, um, I think sometimes it's really hard to behave right and you feel bad, right, and you still keep doing it. And so we're in these systems that perpetuate this.

Speaker 2: 11:30

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I teach at the University of Washington in gender, women, sexuality studies and also in social work, and just this morning I was having a conversation with a group of undergrads and and saying you know, every we are trapped in racialized capitalism. We're just, we are trapped in it, and every single thing that we do it really doesn't matter has some sort of negative impact or negative connotation or negative association. And so what we have to be constantly asking ourselves, as change makers is how do I do the best, the very best I can, to know what, what the choices are I'm making and to try to live in alignment with my values and when?

Speaker 2: 12:19

I get off, bring myself back. But we are set up to fail. We are set up to fail by a system that makes it impossible for us to make absolutely clean decisions at any given time. Now in leadership, sometimes we have to take risks, and that's really scary, and I know that some of us are positioned with a privilege that protects us in ways that it doesn't protect other people. So how we take risks and how we choose to take them is really based upon our our knowledge of the world and our own life experience, and what we know will put us in the crossfires and what we know won't. So you know, even just saying that to somebody like get an alignment and do it, they're like you know, that's like that's not one thing you can say to somebody. You have to say like you have to know best for yourself what is going to work for you and what is going to keep you safe, but also push the limits a little bit.

Speaker 1: 13:21

The limits a little bit, you know. It's also what's coming up for me when you're talking is that it helps, I think, to surround yourself with people who will tell you the truth, yes, and give you some different perspectives. Yep, yep, I just feel that's a responsibility of a leader to not be so insular and only listen to.

Speaker 2: 13:51

Yeah, absolutely. Collective leadership is where it's. At Like, really, I mean surrounding yourself with people not who are like you, but who are actually think very differently from you, have skill sets that you don't have, um, have imag sets that you don't have, have imaginations that you don't have, and whatever you're creating is going to be so much stronger, so much better, if you are a leader who is able to really set a stage for all of those geniuses to arise and really be enacted. Yeah, that is my job.

Speaker 2: 14:25

My job is to surround myself by people who have way more interesting ideas than I do even though I think I have interesting ideas because my idea will will either go away, dissipate and be like OK, that wasn't good, that was better, or it'll become, you know, 10 times better, because we're all putting in what we're thinking about what we're thinking about.

Speaker 1: 14:45

So and so you've been in this business for a long time now.

Speaker 2: 14:56

Yeah, is it. Are you seeing more leaders that are able to do this? Yes, yes, yes, and and the truth, the truth of the matter is there've been a lot of leaders. There are a lot of leaders, like, in particular, in black and brown communities and indigenous communities and queer communities, who are doing that kind of leadership within our communities and have been for years but haven't had the same access to some of the places that we've wanted to be. And now, slowly but surely, we are seeing more of these kinds of leaders be in positions of true authority where they can run a business or an organization or a unit or whatever in the way that they want to. And so, yeah, we're seeing all sorts of different kinds of leadership that we've absolutely needed. That's hopeful, yeah it is a little hopeful.

Speaker 2: 15:41

It's a little hopeful, but let's not get too, excited because those systems of power and privilege are still really in place. The thing that has been so cool, though, to see like I'm thinking about the entertainment industry, where black and brown artists just were like you know, I'm not waiting for this I'm going to become a quadruple threat.

Speaker 2: 16:01

I'm going to be a producer, a writer, an actor, a singer, you know, and all of these things, and I'm going to hire everybody. And you know, and, and they have just transformed. They have transformed sorry. Entertainment in the last just decade has just been amazing to see that happen.

Speaker 1: 16:20

That's fantastic. So where are you focusing on now going forward? Where are you?

Speaker 2: 16:26

focusing on now, going forward, I focus on well, in my partnerships. I will work with organizations. So, like I don't do, one of the things that's really important to me is that I don't do anti-racism work by myself, because I think that it's one. I don't have the experience of living under racism. I don't have the experience of living under racism and so, even if I can intellectualize it, I'm not going to be able to know those feelings or existence. So I always partner with black and brown people to do organizational work.

Speaker 2: 17:02

It's really about coaching people how to actually put anti-oppression work into action. There's so many folks who want to understand this, want to do things differently, want to enact this, but get frozen in fear or feeling like they don't know how, feeling like they don't know how, and so really having a coach to help you walk through it and start to engage and start to do the things and see the results and also know what to do If there's a mistake, you've made a mistake and you need to like figure that out too. So I really like to work with leaders to strategize and embed and activate these kinds of values. That's great, that's good.

Speaker 1: 17:50

Well, I hope you're busy.

Speaker 2: 17:52

Well, I'm fairly busy. Yes, I could be busier, but I am pretty busy, yeah.

Speaker 1: 17:57

That's good, that's also hopeful, right? Yes, yes, yeah, yeah. So I love the term JEDI. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: 18:10

So can you talk to us a little bit about that? Yeah, I mean it. It's an acronym for justice, equity, diversity and inclusion.

Speaker 2: 18:15

You know, I think a lot of people realize oh, it's jedi, jedi, and that's cool, that's like something that people really recognize and and resonate with um.

Speaker 2: 18:23

And so then, you know, I, I just, and I, of course, whatever our complaints are and criticisms are of star wars and there are many I still loved it and so I do, I do too. So I, uh, I I really just resonated with jedi and then so I started calling myself the queer, queer, jedi, and it's very catchy. So, you know, I figured and and it also it also speaks to like that often in work around justice, um and equity, when we're talking about race, when we're talking about race and anti-racism, it is that is directly connected to um, to sexism and transphobia, and, in fact, the most kind of, the most, uh, vulnerable people in world are trans, black and brown indigenous people, and so if we, if we're not thinking about gender and queerness as we're doing this anti-racist work, then I think we're missing a really big, a really big piece of it, and it's an important piece to notice piece to notice.

Speaker 1: 19:31

So, um, I'm wondering you because we talked about the leaders I'm talking. I'm thinking about, um, people who are working in systems yes, that aren't yet, maybe as jedi friendly. Yeah, for sure to be yes, how you know what advice or how do we help those people survive?

Speaker 2: 19:52

Yeah, Well, I think, you know, I think there's a whole group of people who, for whom, um, conversation and training and all of the stuff that we kind of try to do in organizations really isn't, that's not the way that, um, that's not the way that they're going to take away information and put it into their minds and make a change. So there may be just some people that we're just going to always disagree. So there's that group, right, but there's a whole group of people who either just don't know a lot about this or didn't. You know, we live in a very racially isolated country, and so why would any of us have good information about a cross race? None of us would have good information about that.

Speaker 2: 20:47

And it's purposeful around systemic power to keep all of us sort of thinking that there are particular ways of being and those are all kind of rooted in whiteness and maleness, and so there's a lot of that. So we are all in this situation very purposefully. So part of what my approach is is really about like compassion for all of us and that that we're really just talking about information here, like let's just let's just have these conversations in ways that we can all learn from each other and we can learn to create and make the world that we want, because that is possible. I don't believe that people are sitting around.

Speaker 2: 21:32

I mean most people there are probably some people, most people are not sitting around thinking how can I make this world terrible for other people? That's not what people are sitting around thinking.

Speaker 1: 21:43

I agree with you. The thing that I guess I worry about for myself is I'm trying to think of how I put this. Is that I by? I want to engage in those conversations, but it feels like it lays a lot of burden on the person of color, you know, because they're explaining themselves. Yes, right, how unfair is that?

Speaker 2: 22:14

Yeah, that's right. Yeah, For years and years and years, we have, uh, we being white people, have just really relied upon you know, I mean it could be anybody, a stranger like we're just like we.

Speaker 2: 22:27

I have no relationship with you, but I'm just going to ask you to explain a bunch of stuff to me, Right, and? And that is really invasive and hard and it's a lot of effective labor for that person. So I, I it's one of the reasons that I feel really passionate about doing this work as a white person is that I think that we really have to be engaged in this, and there are ways that I believe that that's that it's more ethical and appropriate to do that, and that's by really listening and being in relationship with black, brown and indigenous people and and and really trying to break across this racial isolation. So I think white people have a place in this movement. We have to have a place in this movement because we are we are the ones that are upholding white supremacy over and over and over again.

Speaker 1: 23:18

Right.

Speaker 2: 23:19

So, yeah, we, we cannot just put the burden on black and brown people.

Speaker 1: 23:23

No, so can it? Can we give like some ideas you can like just tell you, susan, this is what you need to go to, because I do feel hesitant, you know. I feel like I don't want to, I don't want to do something bad. So then what I default to is not doing anything at all, which is not good either.

Speaker 2: 23:43

Right, yeah, so I mean so much of this, honestly is is starting with educating. So people get this far and then they don't go much further. So I want I want to say, starting with an education of ourselves is great, but if that never, if that never shifts into action, then that's a problem. Right, we're just isolating our own work and centering ourselves. So the idea is that we start with ourselves, not because that's where the most important work is. We center ourselves in that beginning work, because we have to know who we are, and part of being in a culture of whiteness is that white people have given up so many things about who we are and we've started believing in a culture that actually is a system of power. It's not. It's not a cultural, it is not a cultural heritage, like whiteness is not a cultural heritage, it's a power, it's a system of power. And just confronting that and being like, oh well, who am I? Then if what I've been taught is just about having power, and so we have to really start to understand ourselves and get educated about others and how this stuff works in systems, and then we can start to take action. And often we need support in taking that action because we might think, oh, I know exactly what to do, and then we do not know what exactly to do. So that's why the education is so important, and continuing to do research and reflection and checking and all of that, yeah, I mean, I think one of the things that comes up a lot for folks around around this kind of work is that we will do a thing or we'll try a thing, and then maybe it doesn't go exactly how we wanted it to, and so then we're like I'm, I give up, I can't do this, I'm, I'm scared or I I'm frustrated, and all of those things are real, like being frustrated and scared, and that's, that's all real. And I think what needs to move us through that place is is realizing that, one, we are, we are going to mess up, we absolutely are going to mess up.

Speaker 2: 26:07

And two, that what I know is that people who are experiencing various forms of oppression right now we're talking about race, but racism is that what they're wanting to see is people white people who are engaged and who are willing to risk and make mistakes, and then be able to hear from folks what happened and the impact, and that we actually take that in and let ourselves be transformed by the experiences of other people and believe the truth of other people and let that truth end into us, because, you know, so often we have been taught this is the the truth, this is the truth, this is the truth, this is the truth. And really, in this world there are hundreds and thousands of different truths, and a lot of the truth that we have been ignoring is that the way that the systems have been running have been harmful, helpful to some, harmful to many. And is that that's not what we want? Right, that's not what we want and, and I know that's not what most white people want.

Speaker 2: 27:11

But I think we get caught up in this like, oh my God, I'm going to be seen as racist, and that becomes terrifying. And that just can't be terrifying because we are, we are just, we are set up to be racist, right, right, set up to be racist. So, of course, that's going to happen, but we can move through that. We can move through that discomfort. Um, we just have to know that we can and, um, that it's okay that we're not perfect and just give ourselves some grace. All of us, yeah, all of us, everybody give ourselves some grace and know that we're moving towards something that could be, and should be, so much richer and with more love and more connection, and it actually brings white people back into our humanity to do this work.

Speaker 2: 28:05

It brings us back into really who we, who we are and connect across to other people's humanity.

Speaker 1: 28:13

Yeah To the full extent, right yeah. So what would your dream for us all to set as a goal for 2024?

Speaker 2: 28:23

I mean, if I could get into in every person's head, I would say, like, think about the world you want to live in and get really close into yourself about, like what's the first step I could take to this, and I'll tell you when when I'll go back to what I said about the Rodney. When Rodney King was beaten up by police officers and I and we all got to see that all of us who were there got to see this video. What that did to me is I knew that there was police violence against Black people. I knew that was a reality and it had been so erased from our vision that, you know, one of the things that white supremacy does is out of sight, out of mind. Out of sight, out of mind, that's let's just erase that and then we don't have to even deal with it or talk about it and no one can see it, and then we don't have to feel it. So when I saw that and I started having like very, I had already been having a lot of conversations with my teammates, but they started telling me about all the times they had been stopped for driving while black, or all the ways they had been scared being a black woman in America and all the ways they had been treated, just you know, here and there and every single day.

Speaker 2: 29:43

And the decision I made in that moment was I don't know totally how to do this anti-racism stuff, I don't know, but what I do know is that when I look out in the world, what I see from white, from people like me who are white, is that we don't do anything consistently. And if I can just wake up each day and decide to do think about this anti-racism as the core of my work and do it consistently in some way every day, that eventually I'll put enough of those days together that my life will have changed, my leadership will have changed, the impact I'm having on the world has changed, and that's what this is about. It's a long game, so we've all got to get invested in the long game.

Speaker 1: 30:35

That's beautiful, dr J. Thank you, thanks, that is very inspiring.

Speaker 2: 30:44

Thank you.

Speaker 1: 30:46

Thank you, yeah, absolutely. Well, we're going to start wrapping up. How do people get?

Speaker 2: 30:54

in touch with you. What do you have to offer? I have so many things to offer. You can I mean you can find me at brick13.com, which is my website. You can find me on TikTok at Queer Jedi. You can email me directly at drjenselfatbrick13.com. I'm on LinkedIn. Please connect there. I have written a lot of articles. They're out there in academia, but I've also written a lot of articles that are on Medium and what I can offer, like I offer coaching, I offer strategy, I work with organizations to do strategic planning. I do a lot of queer leadership work. I'm cooking up something that we hope to launch in 2024 with several other partners that I think could be really life changing for queer leaders and also for people who are really thinking about how do we deconstruct leadership in the way that it's currently operating. So there are a lot of things going on. Please just contact me and we can talk.

Speaker 1: 31:58

Great, we'll put it all in the show notes, thank you. Okay, thank you very much, and we'll stay connected.

Speaker 2: 32:08

Great. Thank you so much. I really appreciated this. This is fun.

Speaker 1: 32:12

Thank you, listeners, for joining us today.

Speaker 2: 32:14

We hope that you were inspired by this conversation.

Speaker 1: 32:16

And we invite you to join our community on Patreon. See the link below. There you will find more resources to help you on your leadership journey. Make sure to join our community on Patreon. See the link below. There you will find more resources to help you on your leadership journey.

Speaker 2: 32:25

Make sure to join us next time for more conversation about leadership excellence.