A message from Michelle Silverthorn of Inclusion Nation, RWA's DEI consultant

As the RWA enters a new era, I wanted to share with membership my approach over the next several months. The Audit Report made clear that there is a great deal of work the organization needs to do on diversity, equity, and inclusion to make it a reality for the organization and its membership. That said, marginalized authors have already done a staggering amount of work suggesting DEI initiatives, crafting DEI programming, and putting forward DEI-centered policies. My goal is to build on that foundation and help RWA create an organization centered on equity where marginalized members feel welcomed into a community to which they belong.

To that end, I wanted to share an update with membership on what I will be working with RWA staff until after the elections occur.First, since the immediate goal is to get a new Board into place, I will be holding phone calls with potential candidates for board positions to learn their perspective on inclusion and share my preliminary opinions on the diversity strategic plan the organization needs to put into place to ensure change. I will also share my initial ideas for staff and member training modules, focused on challenges such as bias, privilege, microinequities, and color-blindness when it comes to race, and solutions centered on respect, introspection, upstanding, accessibility, allyship and the very hard work of culture change. Once the Board has been elected, I will work with them to design an actionable diversity strategic plan that can continue to be implemented even after I leave.

Second, I will help build a series of workshops to potentially take place at the Annual Conference. Members will listen to TED-style talks on diversity in RWA and then work in teams to design solutions focused on equity, inclusion, and belonging. I believe design-thinking sessions are crucial. They are centered on the lived experiences of marginalized community members, many of whose painful stories of bias and exclusion I have learned over the past few weeks, and witnessed in the Audit Report. The sessions will also put the onus on those who have built and benefitted from biased systems to solve the problems and own the success of solutions. I envision these sessions taking place throughout the conference so everyone will have the chance to participate. 

I have many other ideas on work we can do together. What are the barriers in place that have prevented inclusion and success of the marginalized members of the RWA community? What do those barriers look like on the discussion forums? In policies? On committees? In chapter leadership? On staff? In membership? At conferences? In publishing houses? In how RWA advocates for its authors? I am the daughter of two engineers and I understand that building anything again requires a plan. But that plan will go nowhere if it recreates the same weaknesses that existed before. We have to fix them. That’s the commitment I would like to get from anyone who is ready to do this hard work with me.

Which is why I am relying on you to help. I am not an RWA member. This organization isn’t mine. It’s yours. This is not easy work, and to be honest, I don’t know what organization lies on the other side of this. But I will help you build it because its past, present, and future belong to each and every one of you. 

Thanks for reading this. If you would like to talk with me, you can contact me here.

Michelle Silverthorn | Founder + CEO, Inclusion Nation