At the beginning of January, The Forbes Funds launched its inaugural International Institutional Anti-Racism Wireframe Cohort (ARC) Launches information session with a brain trust of 158 leaders, and a follow-up information session took place on February 5, 2021. The transformational model of the Anti-Racism Cohort builds on core practices of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, leveraging a Human-Centered Design approach to shift organizational culture and effectuate systems change.
The Anti-Racism Cohort consists of The Forbes Funds with The Department of the Future, The Heinz Endowment, and the University of Pittsburgh as partners.
In its initial meeting, friends, leaders, and visionaries committed to achieving an anti-racist society by engaging in a year-long experience of learning together and co-designing with local, regional, and national partners across several stages of development.
Meet the Anti-Racism Cohort Instructors: With a combined century of experience, ARC instructors are world-leading diversity & equity practitioners, professionals, and educators who will be supporting future-minded leaders during the year-long cohort.
Fred Brown
President and CEO of The Forbes Funds
Fred Brown is a thought-leader in innovation, capacity-building, and sustainable social development. He has received global awards and appointments for his innovative work including recognition by the Club Of Rome, and the Environmental Justice Leader award by the Ford Foundation.
Valerie Kinloch
Dean, School of Education at University of Pittsburgh
Dr. Kinloch is of the world’s leading minds in culturally sustaining methodologies and their application in the public and the private sector. Her work in educational equity and justice draws from the lived experience of lessons she learned from her mother and father while growing up in the segregated south of Charleston, South Carolina.
Soraya Hosni
Tunisian Ambassador | NEXUS Global;
Senior Anthropologist | Racial Equity City
Soraya Hosni is an anthropologist and serial entrepreneur with a Master’s degree from the prestigious Sorbenne Université in Paris. A polyglot with 8 active languages, her lived experiences spanned remote pacific islands, early startups, and volcanoes, leading to the unique societal understanding that she brings to innovative problem-solving.
Mark Gonzales
Chair | Department of The Future; Chief Learning Officer | Racial Equity City
Mark Gonzales is an architect of futures, building systems for innovation, sustainable development, and shared prosperity. He is the inaugural chair of the Department of the Future, an innovation firm developing tools that welcome the coming wave of automation, paradigm shifts, and global interconnection.
The Mission
Participation in the ARC encompasses Signature Projects, Cultural Diversity Training, strategic collaboration, and case consultations, to name a few. This immersive experience will bolster participants through training certification and strengthening individual, organizational, and societal bottom lines of connecting people, planet, and profit through their collective genius. While dismantling systemic racism will not be achieved with a time-limited cohort, it is a tangible step, spurring regional and national action.
The Methodology
Our Theory Of Change → Whole Person | Systems | Society
The WS3™ is an Alliance & Framework for interconnected change at scale. It is a partnership to place Human-Centered Design, Racial/Identity Equity, and Ecological Thinking as the primary drivers of an earth-balanced equitable society.
Across the world, cities and industries are experiencing change at an unprecedented rate. From rapid economic shifts (the decline of industrial revolution era jobs due to automation and AI) to the global Senior Booms, to an international Crisis Of Trust in institutions, to the human impact on the environment.
The WS3™ Alliance & Framework believes to meet the scale of challenges of our time our approaches need to be bolder than the crisis we face, and they need to be interconnected. Engaging individuals without the systems that shape them, reform industries in singular or siloed approaches, and addressing racial and gender disparities without the long road of systemic inequalities that led to this moment will perpetuate harm at best, increase at worst.
In a similar manner, transforming industry and individuals without embedding ecological balance within it will lead to planetary blowback, disproportionately impacting global indigenous communities, women, and food vulnerable cities.
WS3: Framework and Justification
Whole Self: Currently, our primary approach to transforming life expectancy inequalities have been
through medical systems that treat individuals in isolated cases, outside of the systems they live in. A Whole Self approach acknowledges every human is a complex being shaped by a variety of factors including environment, epigenetics, structures, and individual choice.
Whole Systems: As cities and industries increasingly tackle systems challenges facing them, their approach has been primarily sector-specific (agricultural reforming food chain, teachers rethinking curriculum, elected
officials making small shifts in policing and public safety).
A Whole Systems Approach understands Public Safety, Childhood Development, and Food Security are all interlocking. As such, we engage the microsystems and small circle influences as building blocks that make up the macro, understanding to change one part is to impact the whole.
Whole Society: a lens that sees society as individuals scaled and converged with governments, public/private partnerships, and civil society. Whole society designs interlocking systems that are mutually beneficial and interdependent versus scarcity or a zero-sum game. Society is the place where individuals and systems meet, inform, and recalibrate each other.
Preparing for the Inaugural Cohort
The Anti-Racism Cohort is now gearing up for its official kickoff on February 22nd. As part of the launch, Kellie-Ware Seabron will be kicking off the programming with an orientation session for all new enrollees. You can enroll here.
Phase I of this iterative process will include Deepening Understanding and Personal Growth by establishing a Brain Trust to deconstruct linear and economy-only systems thinking into a circular economy, human-centered and ecologically balanced (in reference to U.N. Sustainable Development Goals). Participants will engage in deep thinking and emotional exposures to history, as well as creative ideation of protopia futures.
In Phase II, the cohort will work to scale their understanding and apply their professional growth, informed by an ecosystems approach. The approach will also employ the following.
● 5-month training in anti-racist audit of institutions
● Developing a digital dashboard for sharing audit data.
● Building a cross-sectoral platform for collaborations and “just” practices.
● Social Determinants of Health as the compass for our wireframe
While the cohort is in its infancy and inaugural year, it is sure that the organizations, leaders, and dedicated community members at the table are bound to have an impact. Stay tuned for more on the transformative skill-building The Anti-Racism Cohort accomplishes toward our collective mission and united front against inequity and injustice!
Additional FAQ available on the new The Forbes Funds Anti-Racism Cohort page!
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