Amanda M. Navarro is the executive director of Convergence Partnership. She leads the funder collaborative’s efforts to amplify the power and leadership of people of color and shift power structures within philanthropy and government toward racial justice and health equity. Along with an incredibly committed team, Amanda helped guide and manage the Partnership for 13 years inside PolicyLink, where she served as chief impact officer. She holds a master’s in public health from Boston University and a doctorate in public health from the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston.

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Amanda M. Navarro:

There’s been a lot of attention over the years hearing so much about scaling up. And I believe in that notion. I think there’s importance to scaling up. I have really come to understand and appreciate that what we are doing is scaling deep.

Leon T. Andrews, Jr:

Welcome to The Measure. I’m your host, Leon Andrews, president and CEO of Equal Measure. At Equal Measure, we help foundations, nonprofits, and public entities advance social justice through evaluation, strategy and communications. On The Measure, you’ll hear conversations with leaders and practitioners about their social change and how to support more equitable communities through place-based systems change and centering racial equity. Today we are joined by Amanda Navarro. Amanda is the executive director of the Convergence Partnership, a funder collaborative that works to align the power of people and philanthropy toward racial justice for health equity, and she’s also a board member of Equal Measure. Welcome, Amanda.

Amanda M. Navarro:

Hi Leon. So great to join you today.

Leon T. Andrews, Jr:

Looking forward to our conversation. At Equal Measure, we spend a lot of time trying to understand place, history and context. We feel that matters as we seek to do the work of transforming systems. And so I’d love to hear you share with our audience your personal experience as you think about how place has influenced your life’s journey.

Amanda M. Navarro:

Yes. So I am a third-generation Mexican-American from El Paso, Texas. I come from a family of advocates and public servants. And early in my childhood, my parents really instilled in me a great sense of service to community and place. I grew up in a very large Mexican family, so I just remember my childhood with my house, my grandmother’s house being filled with family members and growing up with this incredible sense of home. And that for me, home has become a place where family is, but more importantly a place where you can feel safe and secure. Now in El Paso, it’s a city where the majority of the population are Hispanic or Latinx. And it’s very interesting as I was reflecting on this question because I had never heard the term minority until I left for college because in fact we were a majority in El Paso.

So that was something that was very stark difference for me when I left El Paso and going to upstate New York to go to college, and then in other cities about this idea of being a minority, and the feeling behind that which is so antithetical to the feeling of home and the sense of community. And then on the other hand, living along the border, there’s a beautiful and rich and unique cultural context and culture along the border that really does lift up and celebrate the Mexican and American cultures and traditions and languages and a real melding of the two. At the same time living along the border, you quickly become aware of the stark differences between communities.

At the time I didn’t quite understand what were the root causes of these disparities. And along my equity journey, I have both taken the joy and the pride of my ancestors, of my heritage, of my cultural traditions, but at the same time has also made me painfully aware that the story of this country is in large part a one about exploitation, extraction, oppression and violence towards Black and Brown people. So for me, working to fight and realize justice, equity and liberation for children and families and communities of color is my calling and life purpose, and is something that I have been aware of since a very early age.

Leon T. Andrews, Jr:

Yeah, thank you for sharing that. You started to mention Convergence Partnership, and for our audience that may be familiar or may not be familiar, it started actually where we met when you were at PolicyLink in 2007. It was initially called HEAL, the Healthy Eating and Active Living Convergence Partnership, which was addressing the rising rates of chronic disease and associated health inequities. But fast-forward now to 2019 and the partnership began to center racial equity more deeply in its work. I’d love for you to share how did the partnership and maybe how and why did the partnership make that shift to centering racial equity?

Amanda M. Navarro:

Well, I am honored and proud to say that I have been part of Convergence Partnership in leading the work of the partnership over the last 15 years. And as you mentioned, the focus was the founding members collective vision of healthy people, healthy places. And this was really at a time when we were seeing increasing rates of childhood obesity particularly, but also increasing rates overall of chronic disease in communities of color. The foundations realized that there could be so much power and greater impact if they came together than working alone. And in that first decade of the work, the partnership really focused on advancing local and national policy and practice wins that was focused on health equity. Equity has always been at the center of our work. It has always guided the decisions that the partnership has made. Now jump to 2019 where our national political environment had changed drastically.

The partners took a pause to ask themselves, one, does Convergence Partnerships still need to exist? Two, if so, what do we need to be doing now to really not only meet this moment but to really meet the needs and the priorities of Black and Brown communities? And three, what do we need to be doing differently internally and externally? So the first commitment that the funders made was really understanding that we needed to be much more explicit about racial justice and equity as a pathway towards health equity. So understanding that a primary driver of health and equities is structural racism and power imbalances. And we also pivoted from having a collaborative that determined the policy agenda to one where we really wanted to be community determined, and have the community determined what are the policy priorities they wanted to move in their places.

Leon T. Andrews, Jr:

As you were talking about that, I know that the Convergence Partnership talks a lot about catalyzing transformative practices that reimagine the relationship between funders and community. And love To to hear you share more with our audience what that looks like and more so how that’s aligned with the new North Star that you’re talking about.

Amanda M. Navarro:

Well, overall, we are now have centered our work across three strategies, and our ultimate goal is to grow civic economic and narrative power. The partnership has strategically focused its efforts on investing in people power in advancing narrative shifts and in continuing to ignite transformation and philanthropy. As part of a 10 strategy in our North Star vision of racial justice and health equity. And so those three strategies we also see as very interconnected. So we really want to work at the intersection, and particularly in place when we really get to see how stories galvanize the political will in place and can change hearts and minds of people, of elected officials. And what we’re starting to understand is that growing people power is multifaceted, is complex, and it really requires deep, long-term investments and requires deep relationship building, and requires understanding the ways that community power comes into play and manifests.

So what I mean by that is, for example, the work that we’re doing in the six places that we’re investing in, which include Chicago, Illinois, Buffalo, New York, those are our two large metro regions that we are investing in. We’re also in four states, Missouri, Kansas, Louisiana and California, and specifically in California and the San Joaquin Valley, to shift towards a more progressive governance and agenda in places that really support all children and communities. Then places are going to be at different phases of that journey in building that organizing infrastructure. So a California is very different than a Kansas, or a Louisiana or Buffalo, New York. Missouri, for example, in Kansas City, we are supporting an award-winning series of films and curriculum that features Black and Latinx community change makers from Kansas City to be able to really rewrite the narratives of that community and that context and that place.

And so those films are weaving stories together with data and illuminating the complexities of structural inequalities. At the same time in Hutchinson Kansas, we’re supporting an organization that is really reshaping the narrative and the acknowledgement of what leadership looks like, and cultivating leadership in a really care-centered way. So I could go on with all the other places that we’re in and including two tribal communities in Louisiana who are not just focused on providing mutual aid and direct service, but also looking at long-term environmental and climate change issues.

The last thing I will say is this. There’s been a lot of attention and over the years hearing so much about the focus on scaling up and I believe in that notion, I think there’s importance to scaling up. I have really in the work that we’re doing through Convergence Partnership really come to understand and appreciate that what we are doing is scaling deep. So we hope that Convergence Partnership is catalyzing those efforts and being the impetus for building those organization and strengthening the organizational infrastructure in these places. And that by going deep with local and regional funders, we will have that type of organizing infrastructure no matter who is in office.

Leon T. Andrews, Jr:

Well, Amanda, really appreciate all of those reflections. Listening to the three strategies that you talk about, the people power, the narrative power, the economic power, transformation of philanthropy, using that to guide the deep investments that you’re doing in these six places, cities and states, regions to the examples of what does it look like to advance these strategies? What do you feel like still needs to be learned or unlearned as we’re still doing this work as we think about the scaling deep and even what it looks like to scale deep and scale up to really do this work?

Amanda M. Navarro:

Yeah, I think where we are seeing the journey continue and the transformation of philanthropy is one in disrupting and breaking out of those conventional grant making norms. So even Convergence Partnership really transformed its practices in that we removed any formal application process. We had asked our local funder partners to submit a letter of intent on behalf of the grassroots organization so that they did not have to worry about submitting any paperwork. We’ve also done away with any reporting requirements. And instead we offer to support the production of a podcast in lieu of any narrative or written reports. And that was very intentional. And at least with the podcast, we really felt like this was something that was mutually beneficial. We would get to hear straight from the mouths of our grassroots partners. And we also could give them something that they could use as collateral material so that they can share in their own voice the success and the challenges of the work they’re doing in places.

And that’s been very successful. We’ve already completed one season of our podcast and we’re actually in production for season two with our grantees. So constantly asking ourselves, where do we need to disrupt? I’ve been so honored to have partnered with Decolonizing Wealth Project and we have the partnership has brought on Decolonizing Wealth Project, which is a national organization that supports investments in social movements and racial healing. So much of this work, what does power building look like in place? What does narrative change and narrative power building look like in place nationally? What does reparative philanthropy look like? So if we can begin to highlight those tangible ways of operating, for me, that would be success.

Leon T. Andrews, Jr:

Thank you. And I imagine there might be days when you’re doing this work and over the journey of Convergence Partnership where you might have been in that space where you feel like it seems overwhelming, but I wanted to end with our audience hearing how you reflect on what continues to give you hope as you’re doing this work.

Amanda M. Navarro:

Yeah, really good question. It’s really hard some days, and I guess I would respond by saying two things. One is, to me, hope is a practice, it’s a discipline. And finding hope and joy in whether it’s in personal spaces or professional spaces is so important, whether it’s with your family members or friends, finding ways to celebrate hope and joy and taking the time to do that. But again, it’s an act of practice. Where I find great hope is with our grant partners to, I just gave you such high level examples of the work that we’re doing, but to have the opportunity and the privilege to sit down and have conversations with the people that are at the frontlines of these fights. They are our justice warriors, they are our healers, there are our torchbearers. And if there is any little bit that I can do that Convergence can do to continue to support them and their well-being, I hope that’s what we’re doing. And when there are moments where I think this is impossible, I get to hear a story of what is possible. And that’s amazing.

Leon T. Andrews, Jr:

I love that. Thank you for being our guest, Amanda. I wish we had more time. I really appreciated the conversation we had today.

Amanda M. Navarro:

Thank you.

Leon T. Andrews, Jr:

And thanks to our listening audience for tuning in. Be sure to rate, comment, and subscribe to The Measure. You can also learn more about Equal Measure by visiting our website equalmeaasure.org.

I’d like to leave you with a quote inspired by my conversation with Amanda. It comes from the late Claudette Colvin. Before there was a Rosa Parks, there was a Claudette Colvin, and she says, “I knew then and I know now, when it comes to justice there is no easy way to get it.”