Episode 5: Connecting Identity and Power w/ Brian Brady
“My professor and others woke me up to [injustice], but I didn’t have enough of a toolkit to really articulate what I was doing within these structures. Now the tools we have to analyze structures and to work collectively are so much stronger.” - Brian Brady
This candid conversation with Brian Brady, a veteran nonprofit leader, is about his regular reflections on shared power within nonprofit leadership positions as a white man.
In this episode Mia talks with Brian about the challenge of maintaining relationships within large organizations, why vulnerability is a key component of sharing power, and what practices Brian recommends to people with privilege in leadership roles.
Listen to the Full Episode
What You’ll Learn in This Episode:
[8:41] Why the practice of mutual trust is harder for some identities than others (and why that matters to leadership)
[14:47] How to manage relationships within a larger organizational ecosystem
[19:36] Why strong relationships between people allow for constructive disagreements
[27:06] Why conflict is inevitable & the importance of ongoing dialogue
[32:11] Brian’s advice for privileged leaders
Featured On The Show:
Brian Brady (he/him) is currently the President and CEO of Youth Exchange. He has over 30 years of experience leading national and local nonprofit organizations, including his roles as CEO and Executive Director at Mikva Challenge. His passion for youth civic engagement, positive youth development, and building equitable, just communities has been the anchor in his life ambitions. Learn more about Brian and Youth Engage right here.
Mia Henry (she/her) is the host of the Shared Power Podcast. Mia is the founder and CEO of Freedom Lifted, a training and coaching firm that supports leaders and organizations committed to justice and equity.
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Full Episode Transcript:
Mia Henry: Welcome to the shared power podcast, a limited series for organizations and leaders committed to collectively advancing justice and equity. I'm your host, Mia Henry. I'm the CEO of Freedom Lifted, and the daughter of activists, educators, entrepreneurs, and survivors. I've had the honor of teaching, facilitating, and co-leading in nonprofits and schools for over two decades.
I've learned a lot, but it hasn't always been easy. There are conversations that I had, or I wish I had, that create the conditions for more effective collective leadership. In this podcast, We will explore some of these conversations, diving deeply into topics that will help us learn to build trust, navigate conflict, and lead in partnership with one another.
If you believe that relationship building is the foundation for effective work for justice, you are in the right place. Join me as we explore the ingredients of leading with shared power. Today's conversation will feature veteran nonprofit leader, Brian Brady, president and CEO of Youth Engage. Brian has over 30 years of experience leading national and local nonprofit organizations.
Now, Brian and I met when he was the CEO and executive director of MCFA Challenge. I worked with him first as a teacher, and later as the organization's first associate director. Now, since we were both fierce champions of youth leadership, we made a great team. In this candid conversation, Brian and I will talk about the perils of having awareness and good intentions without the tools to think systemically. We'll also discuss how to build authentic, trusting relationships that enable difficult conversations that are necessary for transformative work.
MH: Brian, thank you so much for joining me today. I am so excited to have a conversation with you about connecting identity and power. I wanted to talk to you about this because we were so honest with each other about the race and gender dynamics, not just in our relationship, but just in trying to do this work ethically, and creating containers for young people to lead as well. How do we model for them the kinds of conversations and relationships we know are necessary across race and gender lines in order to lead together? So, yeah, what are you thinking?
Brian Brady: So shared power goes along with the word trust, right? You can't share power unless there's a sense of trust. And so before we had built a container of trust, and I also think just identity-wise and personality-wise, we both are educator slash social justice people. Or nonprofit people. We’re kind of in that in- between professional space. And so I think there was some shared identity and interests that you and I have. We weren't a hundred percent in the community organizer, community activist space, and we weren't a hundred percent in the teacher space. So our dialogue, I think, was easy and flowed pretty naturally. But I also just felt that there's just a deep level of trust. I always knew I had a very imbalanced skillset. I don't know if it's growing up in a big Irish family where people criticize you a lot. So I knew I was slow in some areas, and oblivious. And I also had enough of a racial awakening still happening at that time. To know that my whiteness and maleness affected me, I think, probably not as much as I should have. But I just remember you calling B. S. on me sometimes. I didn't get defensive around you when you would critique decisions or ideas, and you know me, I'd show up to work with a new idea every day or five, and most of them were not that great. And so, I needed somebody to vet the ideas and vet the action plan and the projects. And then later, I think I learned how to make more space for other people to bring their ideas in. But I think in those early days, I was a little domineering in my ideas, and the amount of ideas I was throwing out every day.
MH: I do remember at one point thinking and probably saying out loud that my job was to manage Brian's ideas. I was like, “Oh, that's why he hired me. Maybe he didn't think that's why he hired me, but that's what I feel like my work is.” And that's not a terrible thing, right? Like, I think it was important for you to be able to throw everything out, all the possibility. And then you trusted me to help you refine. I remember you saying that part of your work is to manage up. And I took that very seriously because I was like, “Oh, I think that's what I need to do to Brian. Brian is doing it with the board, and I need to do it to Brian.” And part of it was the idea, you know, managing the ideas, but also to manage the staff. So part of it was like, “How many people can I manage well, and what does smart growth look like?” Because it always felt like we had more programs and people to run them. Always, always, we're always trying to staff up. And, you know, that's not a sustainable space to be in. I'm thinking about it now too, because I am a woman. I'm a cisgendered woman, right? I'm a black person. I have very much of a nurturing personality. I wanted to not just manage staff, but really support staff, provide coaching for people, and really support their leadership by having them be able to really grow in the work. And I knew that that wasn't going to be possible if we were staffing faster than we could support people.
BB: I think, you know, shared power gets at a lot. That mentoring piece is so critical because I remember, and you probably remember the staff person came on as a public ally. I don't think you were there yet. And she stayed with the organization for a number of years, and rose up. It was fabulous, but her second, your third day on the job as a public ally, she came to work with 10 pages of ideas for new programming. And you know, a lot of them are good ideas, but we were already like working overtime on all these programs, but we were small enough that I could mentor her, and sort of say, “Hey, this is the process of how do you introduce an idea?” But that mentorship around power, I don't think we are intentional enough in most nonprofits. By the way, karma-wise, I'm now a consultant and I'm working for a guy, doing what you did for me, because he's an idea guy, and he has a million ideas, and I have to try and ground and systematize it all. It's like, karma does catch up to you a bit.
MH: “Oh, this is how Mia felt, or this is how people felt working with me!” Is that how you're feeling?
BB: Oh, it's exhausting. It's exhausting. But luckily, I have a lot of trust with him, and so I can reign him in when necessary. But you also have to let idea people, if they get their energy from ideas, be themselves too, right? But I think in some ways, you had to leave working with me because you had your own ideas and you needed space for those to grow. And so I remember that. That was sad when you left, but it was also understandable.
MH: I think it's so important to remember when we are offering advice or guidance, that what body that is coming out of for people, you know. And whether or not they feel like it's just advice or guidance. Or, you know, if we suggest something and they don't do it, then it'll be their job or it'll cost them. So that trust piece, I think may be harder for some of us to get over if we have significant identity differences. And I see that a lot in my work now, people just going to situate new situations, new jobs, new opportunities, new boards, it can be closed off to people who are of different racial identities, right? Particularly racial identities, I would say. And then, of course, race and gender. And these are not the only identities that people clearly can have, right? But I do see gender identity, race, to a certain extent ethnicity and nationality coming into play when people are put together to lead together. The board is a great example of that. Maybe we can talk about that because I know you learned a lot working with so many different boards. But just even how much the board members trust each other, and how much leadership within an organization, how trust is impacted by people's first impressions or beliefs, or concerns about working across race and gender lines.
BB: Yeah, one of my colleges – I went to college for like 10 years at six different places. So that's why part of my identity was not liking school. And that's why I ended up in education. But one of my early professors was a brilliant Pakistani guy who taught rich and poor nations, and early on made you examine, where do you fit in the global sociology system? And he was brilliant, he was great. Tragically, he was killed in a Pan Am hijacking a year later.
MH: Oh my gosh.
BB: Yeah, by a group that he probably politically supported, right? That's the tragedy of life. But I think just early on having some awareness of that. But I think looking back at the tools, like where I fell short too was a lot of the scholarship and language we have now around structural racism, around racial equity, around microaggressions, around white supremacy – I don't think we had some of those tools back 25 years ago, some of those mental tools. And so looking back at my actions, I see like, oh yeah, Nassar Ahmad, my professor, and others woke me up to my part of this, but I didn't have enough of the toolkit to really articulate what I was doing within these structures. So I think I did the best I could, but I also look back. Oh, I do a lot of things differently probably now, having more of those tools.
MH: I think, you know, being at an organization for as long as you were, and seeing these changes happen in the world, and learning the language, the impacts and the tools. You know, how did you adapt?
BB: In some ways, I did. You know, my regrets are I didn't do enough to stay current. One mistake I think some activists make today, who are a little younger, is that they might think that we weren't aware of inequity 30 years ago. I'm speaking like an old man now, but people on the left were very aware of racial inequity. I definitely was awakened into how unjust the world was as a younger man, and how inequitable it was. And I think that's where the sense of urgency came from on Mikva, why I always wanted to create more programs and do more. But then, you know, now you look at urgency. There's a school of thought that sense of urgency is a white supremacist tool as well. And I don't totally agree with that, but I think it's a conversation that should be had, right? Sort of the white savior type of mentality. We've got to fix this, you know, instead of creating healing communities that then move out into the world. So I think I came to the work with this like, “Oh, my God, more than half the kids in Chicago schools drop out.” And I was working with those kids before Mikva, and they were immensely brilliant and talented. They just didn't have supports and opportunity. So I was just like, this isn't that hard. Let's just, let's just build relationships and opportunity as much as we can for as many kids as possible as fast as we can, right? That was kind of my mode. Like people just weren't doing enough. You know, in some ways I admire the courage of that guy 20 years ago. I'm not like that now because I was just like a maniac about that. But now, I think the tools that we have to analyze structures and to work collectively are so much stronger, and to name structural racism, to work systemically and not just to save individual kids and give them opportunities to thrive, right? We can think systemically also, but that sort of sense of urgency leads to exhaustion too. And once you start to get exhausted, you stop learning as well. So one of my great regrets is like when the new Jim Crow book came out, my ex wife was reading it saying, “Brian, you really need to read this book.” I was like, “Oh no, I'm living it. I'm living this book. I see it every day in my work life.” But I didn't read the book until five years later. And it was a hugely important book that I think in some ways changed the conversation in America, and I could have learned tremendously from.
MH: I think that the urgency piece sometimes gets taken out of context. What it means, why it advances white supremacy, why it enables white supremacy and white supremacist systems is, I think it's because it's when urgency towards productivity, right? We are always trying to do the next thing at the expense of relationships, right? That's when urgency is a problem.
BB: How do you manage relationships and share power within a larger ecosystem? It's a little easier when it was just the eight of us, right? Even if I was moving at a sense of urgency, you could sit me down, and that relationship would slow me down. But if the boss is up here, and you're never seeing the boss; how does that happen is an interesting question.
MH: Just a quick break to note that the Shared Power podcast is sponsored by Freedom Lifted and our flagship training program, Justice at Work. Justice at Work offers blended learning and professional development for organizations and individuals who are strengthening their commitment to justice and equity in their workplaces and in their communities. This training combines discussions with online modules that teach frameworks and critical history to help you examine the relationship between identity and power. You'll even have opportunities to join live group discussions facilitated by me, Mia Henry. Go beyond diversity and inclusion to find your role in building a more just and equitable world. Learn more and sign up at freedomlifted.com.
MH: Well, I think that that's key. How do you create a relationship where you don't need to see the boss in order to feel connected, respected, trusted, and effective in our work? I struggle with that a lot even now and I have a growing team myself, and I really appreciate and love and respect everyone, and I can't meet with everybody every week anymore. So what is my responsibility in making sure that they have relationships, trusting relationships where they're able to get advice and support, without meeting with me? How do they create those relationships amongst each other? And I think that's one of the challenges of large organizations. I don't have experience working in really large organizations. And I think part of that has been by my own life's design. I've always liked start-up, small, scrappy spaces. And I have consulted with organizations that are quite large and struggle with this.
But you lived it, Brian. So where did you see it work? Where did you see it not work as you got larger relationships?
BB: I have time to reflect now that I didn't have when you're running an organization. You're like, how do I pay the staff? How do I keep my board happy? How do I keep my donors happy? How do I keep programs high quality, right? Just really, the reflection piece is hard. So I have more time to reflect now, and working with some other types of leaders, I'm like, “Oh, I wish I had done that.” So one leader I'm working with is a community organizer, and he's an older white guy, and what he does really well is he does take time for one-on-one meetings, and he just believes like the essence of his organization and all of his work is the one-on-one meeting. And it's checking in with the whole person, and not just the job and the time. So, you know, everyone's imperfect. And this leader I'm sure is imperfect too. But he values having a real deep whole relationship with everybody on his team. And I think that's what's kept him. I think it's questionable how much there should be white leadership in BIPOC spaces right now. But I think if you are going to have white positional power, you do have to recognize the privilege and how you're talking culturally, you know, all the different factors. But I also would just recommend you have to build relationships with the whole staff, with the whole person, not just the job and the person, and that's not easy. It doesn't mean you need to be people's therapist or their mentor, but they need to know that you see them. And conversely, they need to be able to see you beyond your own race and gender at some point too, if there's going to be trust developed.
MH: I feel that, again, because we had that trust, I was able to talk to you about white supremacy and white supremacy culture, really, which are distinct. But talk to you about that, and you could be defensive about it, and we still were able to preserve our relationship. Because we didn't stop talking to each other about it, right? We didn't cut each other out of each other's lives. We didn't cut communication. I didn't leave frustrated because you weren't able to, to deal with what I was bringing to you in that moment, right? And you didn't cut me out of meetings because I offended you. There's so many things that I unfortunately see happening now when we have reactions to new ideas that are, again, costing us our relationships, or even the ability to build relationships with one another. So I remember so well about our time together, Brian, not that every conversation was perfect and pleasant. But we cared about a relationship more than we cared about a disagreement. So we were able to really do, I thought, some fantastic things together in a short period of time. Not just grow Mikva while I was there, but even prior to me being there, we we had disagreements before I started working there, and you still wanted me to work there. But it was, again, our ability to talk honestly with one another, to disagree when we needed to, to take time to think through some things. Because you did want to move fast, and you were frustrated sometimes when I didn't want to go that fast and you slowed down a bit because I asked you to, because you trusted me. Do you see what I'm saying? So I think it's so important how we are able to kind of – how really good relationships can actually regulate some of our impulses. And right now, I see a lot of impulse to just leave when things are not going well. And that is not what is going to get us to where we want to be, in having really justice oriented organizations.
BB: It gets to vulnerability, I think, as a key concept. You can't have trust without the willingness to get vulnerable with folks. And repair, and when you become vulnerable, not getting stepped on when you get vulnerable, right? Because I love to say that all my relationships with BIPOC leadership at Mikva, are as healthy and as good as yours, but I definitely can know of others that I have that one of us stormed off and never repaired the relationship, never tried, and I'm thinking that the big difference there was a willingness to be vulnerable with that person. One person I'm working with these days got really mad at me, I thought a little unfairly. And I'm just in a place in my life where it's like, I'm really hurt by what you said, but you hurt my feelings. I'm a 56 year old privileged white man, but I still got some feelings that might not be, just… But if you're not willing to sort of talk a little bit on the feeling side, you don't have to be overly emotive. And the person sees that those emotions matter. It's hard to build the trust and the shared power, I think. And so it brings up to me the question of like, yes, it's the theory of injustice and inequity is really important, but how do we also relate as humans and encourage vulnerability with each other? And I don't think we necessarily, on the progressive left, talk about vulnerability enough as a key to actually sharing power.
MH: Yeah. Another episode that we are featuring in this series is about sharing our origin stories. And really what that means to me is that the conversation about how we came to the work, right? And you mentioned this before about how both of us have these very different identities, gender and race identities, but we both identified as – I identify as an educator activist, and I feel like that would be a way you might identify as well, right? So the activism that we engage in or where I'm most comfortable in is through education. Political education. You know, I think that when you talked about helping us be able to talk across differences was really important, because we knew that origin story. And then there was also the actual, you know, what my parents were like, me growing up in the south, my tendency towards perfection, which could often slow me down. And one of the things I learned from you is imperfect action. Like sometimes you just need to do it, Mia, or it'll never get done. And you talking about being from a left white family from the North shore, and even how that gave you the opportunity to take the leadership role at the organization. And, you know, I often thought about just, I think you were an absolutely great person to be the founding director of Mikva for sure. And I never could see myself having that opportunity, like kind of being picked or plucked.
BB: That's that point, right? And that organization has evolved.
MH: I mean, I was like, you were so young when they asked you to do it and all this. And I was like, how does someone just get asked to lead an organization? Like, I feel like I have to work for everything. You know, it's so difficult to feel like there would ever be anyone who would just think I would be good at something without me having to prove it over and over and over again. And that comes from part of the way I was raised, is that I had to work really hard and prove myself for any chance or shot at being able to not just lead, but even just make money, support myself, you know? So I think we had those kinds of conversations early on too. And not being each other's therapist, but really also talking about what our backgrounds were.
BB: What's the old joke about walking into that room with the confidence of a mediocre white man, right? There's a lot of truth to that joke. I think we, especially in those early days, even though we were working at a super high speed pace, there was a level of just ongoing dialogue that was happening around some of those issues. I do think with the Mikva position though, I was actually the second one. They hired a political person first and realized that this was more of an educational job.
MH: Ok oh, I didn't remember that.
BB: Yeah, and so they hired me. I had been working on Without a School of Use. And I knew the founder's core values. And I think that it was started to really honor the founders, and that was the primary motivation. And I was a young radical person, I was like, “No, let's do their values,” which were left wing values. But because I had the white male relational connection, I could push the board and those founders to be a little uncomfortable and to take risk. Whereas I think you as a black woman outsider, if you had gotten the job, you might not have been able to be comfortable, like pushing them to be as aggressive.
MH: I don't know if they would have chosen a black leader at that time.
BB: Yeah, I think they would have if they had known them before.
MH: But would they have known them?
BB: No, because I think the liberal circles were really segregated. And so you hit on a good point. Now, I do think this is one area where philanthropy has made a difference in the last 10 years – recognizing its own structural racism, and then applying pressure to nonprofits to start to recognize its own structural racism. And so you're starting to see dollars and things moving in the right direction, I think the last 10 years.
MH: Yeah, that has come out of real intentionality, though. Going back to what we were talking about earlier, a large organization with many departments and many people working there. How can you make sure that everyone feels powerful? To me, that is what shared power looks like, right?
BB: Yeah, I'd add to that on complex problems, collective wisdom matters and lead positional leaders, the harder the problem, and the more time they have, they should bring those decisions down to as many people as possible. Because collective wisdom will improve your ideas and your decisions. So I think there's also this piece of like, yes, identity and culture and feeling empowered, but there's also just like, you'll be smarter if you involve more people in your hard problems.
MH: And you involve more people with different lived experiences, based on different identities, not just the ones. And even extend trust where you may not have trusted before. So, again, going back to a board with a lot of connections, of all white board with a lot of connections to resources, what does it look like for them to hire an executive director, which, in the best case scenario, they're working in partnership with one another. There's a reporting relationship between executive director and board. But really, the board can't run the organization. They are sharing power with this ED. So what does it mean to either extend that trust and make sure that the large decisions about the direction of an organization or of a movement are shared decisions. And so when I was first thinking about so many things on my mind around shared power, but particularly around co-directors, I was like – because I've been in this situation twice now since I've worked with you – and I was like, if you can figure out how you communicate, how you make decisions, and how you'll navigate conflict, a lot of your issues will be solved. And those are three big things to figure out. They require trust. They require relationship. They require the discussion of our origin stories. They require vulnerability in order to really be confident in being able to communicate, make decisions and, and deal with inevitable conflict, right? Inevitable. So that's why I thank you again, Brian, because I feel like on those three levels, I felt like our relationship was quite good. And in particular around navigating conflict, which we've alluded to a few times in this conversation, we had a relationship that was strong enough to navigate conflicting ideas, conflicting ways of how we might approach external issues coming to the organization, and still be able to hold on to one another in relationship. My last question is, what other advice would you give leaders who are committed to sharing power while addressing identity? And this is particularly of white leaders or leaders with other forms of privilege.
BB: Yeah, I think putting power as a central discussion point for the organization, especially in the onboarding process, where there's a discussion about power, identity. But power operates in many different forms – cultural, political, economic, racial, right? There's so many different layers to power that really I think needs to be this ongoing discussion within a social justice organization. But I think it's most critical at the hiring and onboarding, and so many people coming into the organization know they can talk about it, and they know where they can push back here and here, right? And that nobody has all the answers, right? We're all just trying to figure this out as we go. So that's my advice – is to just really open up about power from the get-go with staff.
MH: Oh, that's great. Have a conversation about power.
BB: Did I do that when I was running Mikva? No, I did not. I wish I had.
MH: Well, that's your learning. I so appreciate you being so honest and open about all your learnings during this conversation. Brian, it's been truly a pleasure as I knew it would be to talk to you, and I look forward to more conversations. And our friendship continues on.
BB: Hopefully you'll keep teaching me things until I'm a very, very old man.
MH: Yes. Alright. Thank you so much, Brian.
Thanks for tuning in to this episode of the Shared Power Podcast. This podcast is a production of Freedom Lifted, a company that provides training, facilitation, and coaching for leaders rooted in justice and equity. It is produced and edited by Cassandra Sampson at It's 97. Production support also provided by Alicia Tate, Amber Kinney, Alicia Bunger, and the AK Collective. For more information about our work, visit freedomlifted. com. Or follow us at freedom lifted on Instagram, Facebook, or LinkedIn. Join us next time as we continue to unlock the ingredients for leading with shared power.