"Congratulations graduates. Today is the culmination of all your energy, the energy you put into classes, studying, projects; juggling the importance of making connections with the need for time to understand the concepts of the field. I congratulate you!

I also want to take a moment to congratulate your friends and family for the energy they have also given to your work. We all understand how difficult the process of finishing school can be on your family and friendships. In our current world what we see on the news of politics they may have great concerns about the field you’ve chosen, and as they watch you complete your studies, they may worry about your choice. You may worry about your choice. In honor of the support that has been given, even when there are concerns, I want us to take a moment to thank the friends and family.

A huge thank you for the honor to speak to you on this day. I have what is probably a narcissistic thought that your choice to get a Masters in Public Policy makes you just like me. That you wrestled with the idea of going to grad school and settled on an MPP because you wanted a career of moving forward systems. I imagine that you reached this point in your life because for a very long time, since childhood, you’ve been thinking and sharing, just like I have, how closely connected the small things in life are to large systems and institutions and the major change that is needed in our world. This year on my birthday, my mother gave me the gift of sending me my birthday wish list that I wrote for my 12th birthday. In this letter to my parents, I shared that all teenage girls should be able to wear make-up and have their own room, with a door, and no reason for sisters to walk by. I closed the letter by saying that what I want will do more to

improve world peace. I also said, I’ll explain more about this later—I didn’t put it in the letter, I was intent on making my parents listen to me talk about the connection to world peace. None of us remembers what my connections was, I can guess why a room separate from my sisters would contribute to world peace, but I have no idea why wearing make-up was connected to ending violence, and I also have no idea why I cared so much about wearing make-up. But, the letter is only one example of how, since childhood, I could see the relationship between my life, my individual choices, my access, and my privileges and how it all connected to larger systems, and connected me to other world citizens. I did not say, for my birthday I want a make-up kit. I said, all teenage girls should be allowed to wear make-up, and so I want this, and world peace. This in my view is the greatest example of why to become involved in public policy and politics.

Since I think you’re just like me, I’m going to use this time to give you some thoughts and advice that I wish someone had shared with me when I started my career, and to be quite frank, some things that I need regular reminders of in my daily work now.

While I have always connected systems and institutions to individual experience, and saw the need for change, I spent the early part of my career picking the wrong moments, the wrong people, and the wrong energy to try and bring about that change. I jumped into my career after grad school with nothing but change in my head. When I say jumped, imagine cliff divers at the very top of Havasu Falls. That kind of jump. When I look back, I had what I think is the right mindset and the right goals, but I had the wrong place and the wrong audience. When I graduated with my Masters in Social Work, I looked through the job opportunities searching for the jobs looking for an MSW. I knew I wanted to do social change work, and that I joined the profession because it had a professional value of social justice, so I assumed that anyone who was looking to hire an MSW would be offering work specific to that. So, my very first job, I

became a therapist to young men, 13-18, living in a treatment center, confined because of charges of sexual abuse. In the 7 months that I lasted in that job, I spent every therapy session with those young men responding to their experiences with treatment plans that included fight the schools on changing their rules on privacy, and train judges on how history of trauma results in criminal behaviors, and make sure that juvenile probation officers engage the entire family in the rules setting process. Their individual experiences were the perfect example of the changes that need to be made in our systems. And, they were the wrong audience for this work. It was the wrong job for this work. I had confused the jobs request for my degree as the right place to do the work. I have learned along the way, that when seeking a job, do not confine yourself to the jobs that request an MPP. Do not focus your job search on where they say they do policy and politics work. Seek out the job that will have regular tasks that are connected to your vision of what your career focus will be; seek out the job that will use the concepts you enjoyed learning in classes. Choose jobs that are fully the work you want to do, not the ones that have an impact on what you want to see, or where if you squint at it and tilt your head you can see the connection. I am sure that my work with the young men planted seeds for change, but individual direct service was never going to be the right audience and the right job for my career vision. You can connect what you want to do and what you want to see to your daily work.

Thinking thoughtfully about the right audience is not only for the big decisions like which job you’ll take. But, it is also about how you communicate daily. I think in decision making we all need an angel on one shoulder, the devil on the other, and then a public relations person in the mix, crafting the message for the audience the decision is shared with. Change, any kind of change, and especially systems and institutional change, is dependent on great communication. I cannot advise you enough to build up your competency in crafting messages and marketing your

ideas. Words matters. Words start wars. Miscommunication ends movements. The right message to the right audience is a necessity.

The degree you have because of its interdisciplinary nature will have you readily evaluating systems and ways that they can be more efficient, more welcoming, and many other improvements. It is setting you up to quickly move into leadership roles. I advise you to start prepping for leadership now. I am not talking about taking leadership courses that teach you how to set SMART goals, and motivate supervisees. I’m talking about preparing yourself for how you will choose to be a leader. How will you manage when you are responsible for your system of people, each with their own needs and values and approaches? How will you make room for multiple voices and not let your own voice be drowned out? And, how will you approach the work to avoid inequities and unintended consequences. Just like public policy and politics, good intentions in leadership can result in great damages. I encourage you to commit yourself to a cultural humility framework. One that spends parts of your workday recognizing and unlearning your biases. Don’t pretend you don’t have them, we all do. Seek out ways to open your eyes. This is where I’m going to make a plug for what I’ve been hearing called “Identity Politics”. When I hear the word used, it is often used as a bad word, something that is unwanted and causes problems. But I view it as a necessity. We must center the viewpoints of those who are most impacted and impacted because policy is implemented differently on people because of their race, gender, and sexuality. When we don’t center these viewpoints, they are unintentionally left out.

Several years ago I heard someone quote a famous leader. She didn’t attribute the quote, and I’ve never found the person who originally said it, so I’m always out here saying this quote with no idea who originated it. But I believe it to be true, and worthy of repeating for as many as

possible to hear it. Rules that are not applied to all are not rules, they are weapons. This is the largest problem with most of our systems and institutions. They were built on a foundation to serve straight, White, upper-class, males. The regulations, the processes, the qualifying of the institutions all assume privilege is the norm. Unfortunately, many of us have been educated within these systems and acculturated into these systems and then promoted into the privilege of leadership of these institutions, which distances us from seeing it for ourselves. The main point in defining privilege is that it remains invisible to the person who has the privilege. We can say the words, and grasp the theoretical concepts, and advocate for cultural competence, but it still remains invisible to us in daily moments. It can be shocking when there is finally an experience that opens the eyes, and too often, eyes are open after the privilege to act has been lost. Over the last two years, I have been on this journey with my father. My father, a social justice advocate for all his life. The man who spent lots of his parenting energy on making sure that I was a proud Black woman. The man who answered people when they asked, “don’t you feel ignored when your daughters don’t say they’re half-White”, with a quick “No. I’m a White, highly educated, man in the US, everything is about me, I never feel ignored”. This man at 83 had a stroke and is beginning to see his privilege fade away. He is telling doctors and nurses his wishes and they look at his daughter to give them directions. He is thinking about a new career and must entertain people belittling his capacity. He is going through the health care institutions having to follow ridiculous processes to get the help he needs, and spending most of his time qualifying for a program that he doesn’t have any time left to benefit from the program. And one day, he looks and me and says, “Can you imagine being in a room where no one is listening to you and someone else says the exact same thing you said and everyone listens to that person instead of you?” I giggle and look at my sister and sarcastically say, “No, Dad. As a Black

woman, I cannot imagine that ever happening.” He raised me to know that this would be my life and gave me skills to combat it. He taught me to find my voice and nurtured my confidence. And yet, he only connected to the experience of marginalization once it happened to him. I wonder about the many times in his life that he missed out on seeing where inequities existed in the systems that he led. And, my hope for you, and for me, is that we strive for the cultural humility approach of centering marginalized voices and give them permission to challenge us. To ask for the gift of hearing about what we don’t see.

I also want to talk to you about the right energy. There are multiple paths to change, and each of us has a heart and a personality for which path we should take. Each path requires its own energy when doing the work. I have decided there are three different paths that I can point out. The first, is the path I have chosen, changing systems from within the system. I have the opportunity to question the way things are done, and move forward policy, rules changes, or improving the system with the work that I do. On the other hand, my criticism of the system is tempered with working to understand the pace and the resources that exist for change to occur. My demands most often are for small, regular steps for change. Some will call this incremental change. The second path is changing systems from outside the system. The criticisms are bold, they want large leaps to better the systems and because they are outside the system they can say things and push people in ways that those inside the system cannot do. Often working outside the system requires an energy that is forcefully critical and holds feet to fire. While you must play the game on each of the paths, outside the system seems to get to break the rules a bit more often. The third path is what I call observe and report path. I think many would call this the academic path, but so many options have opened up in the past decade for policy think tanks, evaluative consulting, and change management work environments that I hesitate to call it

academic. I have seen many of my peers move back and forth across these paths in their careers. The ones that are happy in their work, are the ones that have matched their personalities and the energy they want to give to the path they are on. And, the ones who are unsatisfied with their work, often would be more satisfied doing the same work from a different path that is more accepting of the energy they bring to the work at that time. Do not be convinced that one path is the better path to change; each is important to the work we do.

My last piece of advice is actually an ask. I ask that while you engage in this change of systems and institutions that are racist, sexist, and homophobic, that you remember the intentions of the systems. I have concerns that as a society, we are swinging the pendulum to fight for change and forgetting the radical notions that these institutions were formed on. In the mid-1800s, the public education system brought the radical idea that school should be FREE, supported by taxes, teachers should be trained, and that ALL children are mandated to attend. In the early 1900s, the correction system made the radical change that prison time should be focused on work and training for rehabilitation and that the federal prison system had a responsibility for “progressive and humane care” of prisoners. Under Theodore Roosevelt, the child welfare system was developed with the radical new mindset that children should be protected, and that children should not be removed from their mothers just because of poverty. So many other radical ideas. Things that built foundations of our systems and our policy. Government has the authority to regulate to protect the environment; shifts from the government caring for the health of the military to focuses of disease prevention for the entire population; the mandate to preserve and curate artifacts, art, and history for the joy of the community and for the future. The way the systems were built had some really devastating impacts for people of color, women, and LGBTQ people. And yes, the systems are broken. The times that created the systems didn’t allow for

cultural competence, and trauma informed approaches. And, we’ve heaped on inefficiencies for decades because of biased thinking. The systems should be criticized and critiqued, we should be vocal about the change that is needed. But, please do not forget that the idea, the notion underlying the system was radical at the time. They should also be celebrated. How will your ideas stand up to 200+ years?

I am so excited to have you join the field of public policy and politics. I look forward to work with you in multiple ways for change and improvement. Congratulations and Welcome"