Achieving the Change We Seek Requires Changing the Faces of Leadership in Oregon
Every Oregonian needs and deserves to see leaders that look like them. That goal is far from a reality today.
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Glendora was born and raised on a plantation in Blytheville, Arkansas. She endured social injustices, school segregation, and other Jim Crow racial discrimination.
Leadership is the process of exhibiting social influence intended to maximize organizational and institutional operations toward achieving particular goals and objectives. Our institutionalized systems and mainstream private workforce corporate industries remain dominated by White leadership. This circumstance is especially true based on the percentages of White males wielding power and prestige in decision-making positions such as Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) and as Members of Board of Directors (BOD).
The public discourse and perception around the need for leadership changes are plenty. The minimal advances in non-White and female leadership among our institutional systems between 2000-2020 are not significant enough toward attaining the changes in diversity, equality, and the equity we seek. White leadership in America and Oregon has sustained its institutional powers in authoritative positions throughout its male-oriented social systems.
For example, 1,800 CEOs have led Fortune 500 firms since 2000, yet only 19 have been Black. Today, 85.8% of Fortune 500 leadership is still White males and 6.8% is White females, resulting in 92.6% CEO White leadership. Black African American representation, both male and female in this capacity, is only 1%, 2.4% are Asian, and 3.4% are Latinx. Meanwhile, White males constitute three-quarters of Fortune 500 BOD positions. As late as 2017, Oregon’s Fortune 500 firm, Nike, had a BOD lacking in gender representation and failing in racial representation. Therefore, the foundational structural leadership that guided Nike’s direction was influenced by the accepted cultural principles and values of Whites; those principles and values then determined Nike’s corporate practices and policies. Since 2017, the diversity of the Nike BOD has only marginally improved.
Given how entrenched White leadership is in corporate Oregon and America, the question becomes what changes must society incorporate to equalize and decentralize power and position to demonstrate institutional diversity in leadership opportunities?
Up to this point, this socially and economically homogeneous leadership in business has not equally or equitably satisfied its purpose in creating liberties, freedom, and justice in workforce opportunities for all Oregonians. Unless and until we change the hiring practices, qualifications, roles, and responsibilities of such status quo leadership, we will forever endure the struggle and need to achieve the changes we seek.
Ultimately, these changes must culminate in increased diversity in the upper management divisions of organizations—there must be diversity among the ranks of those charged with making final decisions. This outcome will only be materialized through changing the face of leadership based on a comprehensive approach inclusive of minority skills, knowledge, inputs, and lived experiences toward reimagining the design of Oregon’s institutional structures on all societal fronts.
I know the importance of diverse leadership. Realizing the vital need for change, and difficulty of finding work that fully aligned with and tapped into my passion, I began my political journey with a burning desire to change ongoing injustices by exercising my citizenship rights. I became a volunteer for non-profit community-based organizations. I ran political campaigns. I began serving in different capacities on areal Boards, Advisory Councils, and Committees at the local, city, county, and state levels in Oregon.
Engaging in these organizational, governmental, and community activities enabled me to develop and maintain many relationships, including personal and professional networking opportunities. I, therefore, understand the importance and the need for diverse and inclusive workforce leadership in exploring shared values, cultures, and different intellectual perspectives on social concepts. These crucial elements enlighten and empower us.
As a Black female of African-Native American heritage, I am often the only non-white individual serving these entities. I bring to the table valuable insight due to extensive lived and worked experiences and professional and academic knowledge. I have heightened interests in various areas of our societal elements such as education, politics, healthcare, nutrition, fair and affordable housing, homelessness, toxic environments, scarce community resources, and the criminal justice systems. I seize participation opportunities to lend voice and diversity to the many issues and platforms that challenge us. I sense these socio-economic problems are often poorly addressed, interpreted, and explained away by White individuals in leadership roles.
Such individuals present themselves with different cultural experiences, limited understanding of minority living situations, and little knowledge of how best to resolve them. For instance, when speaking about institutional and environmental issues, impacts, and root causes leading to poverty situations and poor health outcomes, there is usually absolute silence as though I said nothing. Where White privilege is prevalent, I regularly find that my expressed thoughts often do not invoke anticipated conversation, understanding, or acceptance that they’re due.
While observing the cultural and social impacts from standards designed and implemented by all-White leadership, the poor and unjust results sparked an uncontrollable burning fire within me to become more involved. That’s why, in 2016, I gained the courage to run—the first time—for County Commissioner in Washington County against the 35-year incumbent Commissioner Roy Rogers. At that time, I created a mantra that stated, “To achieve the change we seek requires changing the face of leadership.” Today, I still stand by this principle, and here is why:
As a recipient of significant blockades, I have endured economic, racial, and social discrimination. I have been denied workforce managerial and administrative leadership opportunities and forced to accept an all-White majority representation, and unjust hiring and firing. I have been subjected to unconsciously implicit racial bias including stereotypes, and prejudices. I also experienced racism, sexism, and classism, often resulting in disproportionately poor health outcomes.
However, reflecting, analyzing, experiencing, and acknowledging these infamous situations helped me gain in-depth insight into the historical practices, policies, and typologies of these institutional and organizational political decision-making processes. I am reminded of what needs to be acknowledged and addressed and how we propose to dismantle external challenges of minimal positions of minority leadership within the workforce.
In conclusion, we must focus on these unequal ideologies and privileged principles to free our systems and ourselves of prejudiced, antiquated behavioral thinking and exclusionary practices. A failure to heed this advice will result in us forfeiting our opportunities to close the gap between the exposed unspoken elements and the guarded history of untold truths.
These transitions of diversity, roles, duties, and inclusion will reflect the necessary changes we seek. Society can best accomplish this change by changing the face of leadership, reflecting who the voters elect and appoint to hold various positions in their community, organizational, and political leaders. The future of leadership then becomes balanced and diverse in our characters, cultures, principles, and the workforce environment. What’s more, this balanced and diverse approached to leadership will increase our capacities to lead using different visions while anticipating better social, political, financial, and racial-ethnic outcomes. These considerations and opportunities will help direct the way we govern via policies, politics, and the guidelines we use to manage our societal institutions, government agencies, and our environmental systems.
Such changes in our social, economic, and political organizational leadership to inform our best practices and policies would result in outcomes by which all Oregonians would benefit, especially Blacks and other non-whites. As such, these opportunities would enable dignity and respect toward achieving the necessary diversity changes we seek by changing the face of leadership. We can then apply these behavioral changes to address the ongoing issues and challenges better. We grapple with these challenges from generation to generation throughout our institutional and environmentally structured social systems of governance. Using this approach will demonstrate how we can and must do better because we now know what society needs to do to dismantle inequality, inequity, and racial discrimination.
Every Oregonian needs and deserves to see leaders that look like them. That goal is far from a reality today. We can and must do a better job of making the state’s leaders reflect the state’s people.
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