As I reflect on the first seven months with my new Equal Measure family, and anticipate the year ahead, I stand in awe of our team. Transitions to new leadership are never easy, but I admire the grace, thoughtfulness, and passion of my new colleagues. And as I learn more about our work, I am inspired by our commitment, driven by the goals of our clients, around such critical topics as the importance of place and community in changing systems, and the desire to alter entrenched narratives around racial equity and systemic racism—with an adherence to the value of shared learning along the way.

The intent of these goals brings to mind an idea expressed many years ago by one of my idols, the social activist and boxer Muhammad Ali: “Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they’ve been given than to explore the power they have to change it.” In my time at Equal Measure, “impossible” is neither in my vocabulary, nor in the vocabularies of our team, our clients, and our partners. I have witnessed with clarity and purpose the ambition to drive change, to transform systems, to explore the real, and raw, power of possibility.

I’d like to offer some of what we have learned over the past year, thinking about how we can draw energy from that knowledge to guide our journey in 2022.

Place Matters…and Authentic Engagement in Communities Matters Even More

As the almost two-year long grip of the COVID-19 pandemic has illustrated and amplified, where one lives is a high predictor of one’s health, educational attainment, economic mobility, and financial security. COVID-19 is the virus, but systems failure is the crisis. And as we have learned from our work with clients this past year in more than 100 communities—cities, suburbs, rural towns, and indigenous land—a multifaceted approach to place that focuses on understanding root causes and historical context, and incorporating community voice, remains a vital strategy to create equitable outcomes and transform historically entrenched systems.

This approach calls to mind our work in rural Maine, where we are working with a prevention and healthy living center that is part of a local hospital. Through a data collection strategy, the center would like to better understand who they serve, and create strategies to reach out to individuals whom they would like to better target. As we think about data in this context, we consider such crucial factors as community voice, perspectives, and stories—incorporating lived experiences as authentic data sources.

In our work with communities, we are also grappling with questions such as: Who defines the challenges? Who gets to define solutions? In the coming year, I believe that the trend toward shared power in defining community challenges and solutions will continue to deepen. Meaningful community engagement, rooted in equity, is not impossible.

Shifting the Narrative around Equity and Systemic Racism

One hallmark of the past year was an urgency among philanthropies, nonprofit organizations, and many municipalities to address equity and systemic racism—as seen in a shift in program focus and shifts in funding priorities. This is a noble and essential goal, of course, but one that requires perseverance to attain. This perseverance is a journey—one defined by testing and refining practices and policies, and changing cultures and mindsets. None of these journeys are the same. None of these journeys are linear. None of these journeys are without risks. But all of these journeys come with an imperative to shift talk into action, translate resolve into impact, and evolve good intentions into sustained systems change. There is no universal solution. The solution includes a comprehensive approach that looks across practices, policies, and procedures.

One very promising illustration of this imperative is the progress of one of our long-time partners, a national investment in the success of opportunity youth. The opportunity youth collaboratives in more than three dozen communities across the U.S. have long been champions for racial equity. But the rising national focus on racial injustice created opportunities for these collaboratives to more directly center systemic racism in conversations with sector and system partners—opening a door to shift public mindsets, dispositions, and negative stereotypes of opportunity youth. In our recent evaluation of this initiative, we learned that equity was more embedded in opportunity youth strategy, as collaboratives addressed racial disparities and began to target strategies to population subgroups. The narrative about opportunity youth more strongly elevated the importance of addressing racial inequities.

In reflecting upon this movement in our sector toward a sharper focus on racial equity, which I don’t see abating in 2022, I believe it is important for our own team to continue sharing learning from our personal journeys in better centering anti-racism and equity with our clients, partners, and the broader field. Together, we can demonstrate that the trek toward dismantling systemic racism is not impossible.

Shared Learning, Collective Voices

As I have become more familiar with the work of my Equal Measure colleagues, I’ve witnessed how a passion for shared learning with clients and the communities is woven through many of our projects. For instance, over the past year, we worked with several of our clients to forge communities of practice. These communities of practice emphasized listening to—and acting upon—the perspectives and expertise of those closest to the challenges our clients were addressing. Our clients aimed to learn from the work of these education, healthcare, and workforce development practitioners, and to share that knowledge more broadly—with other communities, nonprofits, and to even inform their own program investments. Our clients have an important opportunity to change business as usual and embed racial equity into how they assess needs and allocate resources, so that those who are disproportionately burdened will be centered. These actions by our clients, and our team, demonstrate that a deep, authentic commitment to building a culture of learning is not impossible.

These great examples I share from my Equal Measure family, which I would love to amplify even more, are just a few of many I have gleaned during my short time here. What I hear every day at Equal Measure are stories rooted in the possible, grounded in what can be, not what can’t. This thinking gives me profound and real hope as we embark on the journey of 2022 (of which I will share more next month)—and it so powerfully acknowledges the simple declaration voiced by Muhammad Ali, that “Impossible is nothing.”