Thursday, March 10, 2022
9:00 am - 1:00 pm EST

Changing the Lens - New Lens Seminar (virtual):
Institutional Racism and the Urgency of Solidarity

In this 3-hour interactive virtual seminar, we examine systemic disparities, their forms, and impact across institutions. We will explore the devastating outcomes that affect everyone. As a result, participants will develop a more enlightened perspective or LENS which will inform their understanding of institutional racism, attitudes, beliefs, and actions. New Lens will provide a close up exploration of concepts of privilege, meritocracy and, the urgency of solidarity. Participants will examine different models of activism happening in library systems across the country as well as categories of activism they could immediately engage.

Your Facilitators

Suzanne Haley: Consultant, Facilitator, Storyteller

Suzanne Haley is the President and CEO of S. Haley & Associates and Co-founder of ​ Changing the Lens​, a community building movement. She has been building community and creating systems for human development her entire professional career. ​An experienced communicator, facilitator and master storyteller, Suzanne brings multi-disciplinary research and empirical data to the complex realities of a broad range of clientele, guiding individuals and teams toward strategic culture shifts which yield quantifiable results.

Suzanne has spent half of her professional life working in traditional ministry contexts with local, regional, national and international faith based organizations. In those years she learned to value and build community, develop leaders, and organize for collective impact in many diverse cultural settings. She developed and implemented strategy which guided hundreds of people seamlessly from a “me and mine” survival mindset to transformative, empowering communities that incubated leadership, nurtured human potential and produced exponential outcomes.
 

Working now, for over a decade, from a broader context, her passion remains to inspire, equip and enlighten people from all walks of life to their best selves. ​Her professional sensitivity and compassionate approach awakens new perspectives and boldness that leads to individual and organizational change and keeps her constituents on the cutting edge of progress.   

 

A graduate of Morgan State University with a Bachelor of Science in Psychology, Suzanne guides others to bring authenticity to the challenge of inside-out institutional change which begins with personal growth and transformation. Her own life experience, historic cultural enlightenment, and deep sense of calling continues to energize her to do this work of compassionate truth sharing, racial healing, and culture transformation through community building. 

Jacquelin McCoy: Educator, Advocate, Facilitator

 Jacquelin (Jacky) McCoy is the co-founder of Changing the Lens.  She is an educator, community advocate, workshop facilitator who informs community members, nonprofit, government and corporate leaders about the history and impact of structural racism in the United States. Through grassroots organizing, community think tanks, and innovative partnerships, Jacky seeks to heighten awareness, shift perspectives, and inspire lasting change in participants' thought patterns, attitudes, and behaviors.

After working in education for many years, she could not ignore the achievement and opportunity gaps prevalent among students.  Her quest to understand the factors that contribute to these gaps led her to work at the intersection of race, equity, and justice issues. Jacky is Chair of the Equity and Race Peer Learning Network, Executive Board Member of Youth in Conversation, and a member of the Local Children’s Board Equity Committee in Howard County. She is also an Advisory Board member and Workshop Trainer for Talk with Me Howard County.

Jacky earned her bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Maryland College Park and her master’s degree in Secondary Mathematics Education from Johns Hopkins University. Raised in Richmond, Virginia, she is a long time resident of Columbia, Maryland.