Kien Lee
Kien Lee provides organizations in the private, public, and nonprofit sectors with research and evaluation services in the areas of cross-cultural competency, inclusion, and equity in health disparities, immigrant integration, civic participation, and community change. She currently provides strategic direction for the evaluation of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation’s place-based work in Mississippi and New Orleans, The Colorado Trust’s Community Partnerships for Health Equity initiative, and the Racial Equity Anchor Collaborative. She worked with the Government Alliance on Race and Equity to evaluate its effort to help five city governments apply a racial equity lens, an initiative funded by Living Cities.
Presentations from Facing Race 2020
So you have a vision for equity, now what?
Organizations are being called, more than ever, to respond to the elevated tensions and increased awareness of structural racism. In this session, we will discuss the role of an organizational learning agenda to build capacity and strengthen partnerships to have greater success in implementing your organization’s equity strategy. Often the reality hits that implementing an equity strategy means real change not just for the organization and leadership, but how people interact with each other day-to-day, moment-by-moment. We will share our approach to using an organizational learning agenda to foster a strong culture around continuous improvement as a process to build bridges across differences and still be able to name the root causes of inequities. An organizational learning agenda can provide the opportunity to create a more comprehensive learning and evaluation system to measure, maintain, and strengthen organizational diversity, equity, and inclusive strategy effectiveness. We will share our approach to using an organizational learning agenda to foster a strong culture around continuous improvement as a process to authentically address the root causes of inequities while building bridges across difference and accelerating progress. In this interactive session, we invite you to apply the process to your work.
Speakers: Amber Trout, Kien Lee, Yolanda CoentroPresentations from Facing Race 2018
Alignment, Alignment Alignment! Institutional Changes, Performance Measures, and Population Outcomes
Too often, institutional policies and programs ¬— no matter private, public, or nonprofit institutions — are developed and implemented without thoughtful consideration of how they could create or perpetuate disparities in health, education, economic, and other outcomes for communities of color. When racial equity is not explicitly brought into operations and decision-making, racial disparities are likely to be perpetuated and different groups of people will continue to have unequal access to resources and opportunities. Racial equity analysis must be explicitly conducted and integrated in decisions by nonprofits, foundations, and local governments, including in their policies, practices, programs, and budgets. It is both a product and a process. During this session, presenters from the Government Alliance for Racial Equity and Community Science will give an overview about a racial equity tool designed to help people interested in dismantling the structures, policies, and practices that create or perpetuate disparities, go through a systematic process of determining how to assess and identify the institutional changes required for the desired community outcomes. Participants will also learn how to distinguish and develop performance and outcome measures that will help them track and evaluate their progress and stay on course. This session will combine mini-lecture with experiential, small-group exercise using common scenarios of situations in different institutional settings. Following the exercise, presenters and participants will engage in a discussion about the usefulness of the tool and how it can be improved for use by decision-makers in the private, public, and nonprofit sectors.
Speakers: Kien Lee, Nora Liu, Marcella Hurtado Gomez