Time is an inscrutable construct these days. There are moments for me when the days seem to blend together endlessly and others that feel interminable. And there are other times when I look up, and the months have inexplicably flown by. I’m reminded of a piece of parental wisdom that many of us have given and received: the days are long, but the years are short. The novelist and poet Gertrude Stein had an even longer view, remarking that “25 years roll around very quickly, but it is the human habit to think in centuries.”

What are we doing with our time? How has, or rather is, time shaping us now? How are we making sense of it?

Seven months ago, in the adolescent days of the COVID-19 pandemic, I had a terrific conversation with a friend and philanthropic leader, Hanh Le of the Weissberg Foundation. (Congratulations, by the way, on your next steps!) We talked primarily about the rise at that time of anti-Asian/Pacific Islander bias and the ways that it was fueled by the global health crisis and incendiary framing by some national leaders. Hanh ended the conversation by pairing the notion of closely held values with a call for fundamental change.

Much has happened since then. On the heels of the shooting death of Ahmaud Arbery, there were the horrible, racialized murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, and a resurgent and increasingly widespread call for racial equity and racial justice. Public health measures in our country have been irresponsibly politicized, infection rates are accelerating as we move into the winter months, and BIPOC communities are continuing to shoulder an indefensible burden of these health and accompanying economic impacts. And of course, we are emerging from a bruising national presidential election, with a new president-elect and historically significant vice president-elect poised to take office on January 20th of this coming year.

In the spirit of dialogue, and taking to heart Hanh’s call for us all to do our part, I’m pleased to (re)claim some of this time—anchor it for professional sanity, really—and launch a conversational series with professional friends, former colleagues, and leaders from philanthropy and public education. Why education, specifically? As Linda Darling-Hammond recently reiterated, teaching is the profession on which all other professions depend—and as a former public school educator and current consultant to foundations and public systems leaders focused on improving public education, it’s in my blood. At the risk of irony, I’m going to call it: Insert Title Here.

Why? It’s a place that I hope will hold a generative and useful space for framing and sensemaking, and to distill ideas I’ve been trying to ground for a while. I hope it’s a place where we get a chance, as the essayist Meghan O’Rourke wrote in her poignant reflection about collective grief and loss of life from COVID, “to try and wrestle fact into perspective.” It will be a place to sit still with the recognition, framed by a New York Times review of David Brion Davis’ The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Emancipation, that “moral progress may be historical, cultural and institutional, but it isn’t inevitable.”

We must all do our part, even in—or perhaps particularly in—places of rarefied privilege such as philanthropy.

There are three primary questions that I aim to explore in this conversation series—which will extend through 2021, and perhaps beyond:

• What is the role and responsibility of foundations to promote positive social change—and racial equity, specifically? What are philanthropic leaders thinking about and doing in this moment?
• How are public education systems, policies, and practices changing in this moment in time? How are inequities further manifesting themselves, and what are avenues to address them, as well as the underlying issues that perpetuate them?
• What are the ways that social sector issues—and promising progress within them—are emerging in cross-disciplinary ways? What are the implications or lessons for individual sectors or sector actors in the ways they think about and do their work?

Full disclosure: In true developmental fashion, I’d like to reserve the right to shift these questions as I go and as the dialogue unfolds. My intent is for each to build upon the other. I’m very much looking forward to the conversation.

First up? Program officer Eric Medina from the Los Angeles-based Weingart Foundation. See you soon!