From Transaction to Transformation: New Models of Leadership and Capacity Building in Community Organizations

Tuesday, May 3, 12:30-1:30 p.m. on Zoom
RSVP to ICTC@seattleu.edu to receive the link

Maureen Emerson Feit, PhD will present the initial results of a participatory study that asks the question: which pedagogical strategies are most effective in supporting a shift from transactional to more transformational approaches to leadership development for leaders of color in community organizations? The study was co-designed with RVC, an organization that cultivates leaders of color, strengthens organizations led by communities of color and fosters collaboration between diverse communities in King County.

For many years, RVC has been active in larger, national efforts to address racial disparities in the nonprofit sector, challenging more traditional and transactional approaches to capacity building and urging funders to recognize the characteristics of many community organizations—with their embeddedness in community,  attention to relationships, practices of shared decision-making, less bureaucratic and more responsive operations—as strengths rather than deficits. Beginning in 2017, as they developed plans for the leadership development for their fellows, RVC staff worked with Dr. Feit to design a leadership program centered on transformational approaches to nonprofit management, resulting in a curriculum that combined critical theory with the Ignatian tenets of context, experience, reflection, action and evaluation.

In 2021, with funding from ICTC, Dr. Feit returned to RVC and worked with alumni of three fellowship cohorts to reflect on their experiences. In this talk, she will be joined by Flo Sum, Fellowship Program Manager with RVC. They will share some of the challenges and insights fellows developed when working for racial justice and liberation within the nonprofit and philanthropic system, and Dr. Feit will discuss ways that critical race and feminist approaches in the classroom can intersect with and complement Ignatian pedagogical practices.

Flo Sum – RVC Fellowship Program Manager

Florence (also goes by Flo) was born and raised on Duwamish ancestral lands in Seattle. Their experience in nonprofit organizations led them to their graduate education and to RVC’s fellowship. Sum graduated from the University of Washington with a BA in American Ethnic Studies and Communications and an MA in Public Administration with a focus on nonprofit management and education policy. Sum enjoys frolicking in the mountains, playing video games, eating their way around town, and training in Muay Thai and Krav Maga.