What does it mean to lead long term change? Ginna Green is a strategist, writer, and movement-builder who is helping people do just that. As partner of the social impact firm, Uprise, she guides those who are on the frontlines of social justice in taking meaningful steps forward. Ginna joins Elana Wien to discuss what it takes to push talk into action and why it’s vital to foreground the voices of those who are most affected when undertaking social change efforts.
What does it mean to lead long term change? Ginna Green is a strategist, writer, and movement-builder who is helping people do just that. As partner of the social impact firm, Uprise, she guides those who are on the frontlines of social justice in taking meaningful steps forward. Ginna joins Elana Wien to discuss what it takes to push talk into action and why it’s vital to foreground the voices of those who are most affected when undertaking social change efforts.
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Special thanks to the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation for their support of this podcast! To visit them, go to https://hjweinbergfoundation.org/, and follow the foundation on Facebook, and Twitter.
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[00:00:00] Elana Wien: Hi, I'm Elana Wien and you're listening to Just Leading where we're thinking differently about leadership within and beyond the Jewish world. In each episode, we're talking to people who are leading through the complex challenges of today to understand how we can build a better future.
[00:00:19] Ginna Green: We actually have to move people from these places of complacency and apathy and um, myopia to actually doing things, and doing things for the long-term.
[00:00:30] Elana Wien: That's Ginna Green. Ginna is a strategist, writer, justice seeker, and movement builder. She helps organizations push forward and make progressive social change through her firm, Uprise. Ginna is also the cohost of A Bintel Brief Podcast where she dishes up advice with a Jewish twist. Something that I admire about Ginna is the tremendous passion she brings to her work and especially the long and well-traveled road of trying to make positive change in these challenging times. So I was really excited to connect with her and gain some inspiration. All right. Let's dive in.
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[00:01:10] Elana Wien: Okay, well, welcome so much Ginna Green. I'm so excited that you've joined me and that we recently got to connect during these interesting pandemic, COVID times. I consider you already a dear colleague and friend.
[00:01:26] Ginna Green: You too are someone that I consider a dear colleague at this point that might not have happened without all of the events of the last two years, right? The pandemic brought so much pain and challenge and tumult, but it also created so much opportunity and fostered so many new relationships and different ways of being so just really delighted to be able to join you today.
[00:01:56] Elana Wien: I think one of the things as I've been looking back as we're now at that two year mark with the pandemic and really important racial reckoning happening in the wider community and also in the Jewish community, I'm struck by areas where I've seen change and I've seen some incredible leadership and also spots where the ground doesn't seem quite as firm. It seems like there were some steps that were maybe taken that maybe need to be retread or revisited. And so I'm curious just as we're at this two year mark, where's that kind of sitting for you?
[00:02:31] Ginna Green: Certainly so much progress we have for sure seen. And even if you only consider the fact that we are talking about things as progress, and I don't want to stop there. We can't stop just at the conversation. We actually have to move people from these places of complacency and apathy and myopia to actually doing things and doing things for the longterm. So for example, one of the things I feel that I saw in the last couple of years is moving too quickly and without enough thought or engagement or buy in. I don't think we did enough of that across the Jewish community. And so that means that whatever we come up with as a result of incomplete thinking or a lack of thought or engagement can't be as good as it would have been if we had.
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[00:03:36] Elana Wien: I think that that just really resonates for me. And I think part of what I'm interested in is how challenging leadership is right now, but also where there's opportunities to really dig in and bring out something from within us that's better than what we imagined could have been possible. And I'm just curious, where have you seen your own leadership in this space?
[00:04:04] Ginna Green: I think particularly for me, because I underwent my own professional transition that was independent of the pandemic, that was in motion before the pandemic even began... I left my role as Chief Strategy Officer at Bend the Arc: Jewish Action at the end of June in 2020. And so immediately I went from a place where I was in a arguably race forward institution to my own person, to a free agent, if you will, and began to have more exposure and access to how other organizations within the Jewish space were operating. And what also happened at that point in time was I began to be contacted essentially by so many Jews of color in white majority institutions about how difficult it has been and was at the time and still continues to be people of color in majority white institutions. And so I had folks who were just about ready to walk out the door, like right then right before they called me, "I'm ready to hand in my resignation." And also folks who'd been in institutions and organizations for years and who had been working in these spaces, but a lot of what we're seeing in terms of how people of color, Jews of color, are experiencing our workplaces is not new. What's new is the attention to it. Many of us have suffered in organizations, on teams, with supervisors where we haven't felt whole, haven't been fully supported. Hadn't been able to bring our full selves to the workplace. But what happened is the opening in these last two years created the space for some of these conversations, but we can't just keep it at the conversation. We actually have to change the behavior and that's longer work than having the webinar. Changing the behavior takes more time than bringing people together for a conversation. So there's just a lot that I think we have to recognize our JOC and POC staff at our mostly white Jewish institutions are holding and that the recognition that they've been holding that even before the summer of 2020 is really important.
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[00:06:40] Elana Wien: I'd love to just delve in a little bit to what it looks like to lead intersectional workplaces. Our listeners are both in the Jewish community and outside of the Jewish community. And curious how to help listeners kind of understand what . Jewish workplaces are really looking at when they're looking at an . Intersectional workplace.
[00:07:03] Ginna Green: That's a tremendous question because I feel like until very recently, many mainstream institutions did not think a whole heck of a lot about intersectional identities within the Jewish community. And that is inclusive of the struggles that LGBTQ Jews have been making and women in the Jewish community been making for decades and JOCs have been making for decades. So despite these revolutionary efforts by marginalized communities, we still struggle as a Jewish community with what makes us diverse, who makes us diverse and how do we hold all of that? We haven't gotten good at it. And I'll be honest, and I'll say that, you know, you mentioned that there are Jewish listeners, non-Jewish listeners. What I think is really interesting about the Jewish community and racial justice and equity is that-- I don't know if all the listeners know, but we are like the people who are on the side, oftentimes, of LGBT inclusion. We are on the side, ideologically, of racial justice and economic justice. And yet I think that because we know that about ourselves we actually think we're better at it than non-Jewish communities. We actually think that because we have a myth of engagement in the civil rights movement and social justice-- and we do have a reality that is part of our Jewish tradition, but there were also things, other things going on in the Jewish community during the civil rights movement as well. And so I think it's important for us to reckon with that knowledge of our history and how we are really living up to that idea and that mythology around our support of these issues and like, okay, we might be on the side of right. But that doesn't mean we don't have room to improve and room to get better. And in fact, it behooves us to do that just as it does the larger community as well.
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[00:09:15] Elana Wien: Yeah. I have to say that really resonates for me when I think of just leadership and leadership, coaching and growth as a leader and where some of us need to step back or rethink the ways where we're approaching things.
You know, I have to say I was fascinated by this situation that came up a few months ago on The View with, with Whoopi Goldberg, I'm actually less interested in talking about that. I'm more fascinated and would love to just try to unpack with you a bit kind of what the aftermath of that was in our community and what the impact of that has been and what it may be, you know, kind of yet to see. But it, it opened up this very interesting conversation, talking about steps that maybe were skipped or moves that were maybe made too quickly or without the right buy-in. And it raised the question for me: what does it look like for Ginna Green to be a Jew of color, a woman of color leader who's been doing DEI work and has been dedicating hours of your time, attention, expertise over the course of your career, but particularly in these last couple of years, as you indicated, raising awareness around issues of race and intersectionality in our community, to then have this moment now two years into the pandemic plus? And perhaps there's still an initial conversation or agreement to terms or framing that's needed. So I'm just curious what your perspective has been on that.
[00:10:50] Ginna Green: Mm. Whew. You know, there is so much at play with the particular example that you lifted up because we don't have to like, you know, sit on Whoopi Goldberg and The View and what happened there but I think it's important to look at what was at play. It happened at her work. Her work happens to be in front of millions of viewers. So it's not like your workplace or my workplace. It becomes cultural. It implicates the Jewish community writ large whether or not we want it to. And it's, I felt like I couldn't walk away and could not see how differently that moment was treated in time by in particular, the Jewish community, because I feel like we as a Jewish community saw it differently because Whoopi was Black and I believe there was an element of, "she's Black. She should have known because we both come from histories of oppression and discrimination and struggle." And then there's also just the general racist implications of it that we get less of a pass because we're not white because we don't have that privilege associated with us. And I think a lot of Black Jews would say our voices were absent from a lot of those conversations in the immediate aftermath that we had a lot of white Jews speaking to the issue and fewer Black Jews speaking to the issue when it would be a natural, I think... who can speak to issues of the intersection of racism and antisemitism in a way, other than Black Jews. Right? So like, I feel like there's moments in time where, because of racism within the Jewish community and outside of it, we don't get the platform and the opportunity to speak when issues are squarely in our lane and that the wider community misses out as a result of that. I think about Heather McGhee work, former president of Demos, and she talks about the price we all pay for racism. Like it's not just Black folks and Indigenous folks who suffer. We all do because we all miss out when we aren't able to see and accept and hear the viewpoints of folks who actually have some relevance and some expertise and some wisdom and some life to give it context.
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[00:13:32] Elana Wien: So what happens for you as a leader when these kinds of moments happen, when you see the way that it plays out, when you see, you know, how it's being addressed by other leaders, how it's not being addressed. I know that you're someone that folks really, you know, trust and go to both in terms of being out in front and behind the scenes and offering support. How does that affect you and how do you move with it as a leader?
[00:14:00] Ginna Green: Yeah. When I see these types of incidents play out, I think about whose voice can I encourage and whose voice can I lift up and how can I fertilize the ground for X person, Y person whose viewpoint is necessary in this moment to share it. I'm sending texts to people.
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[00:14:23] Ginna Green: "So, person don't you have an op ed you want to write" Or, "so organization, I think you guys should be out in front of this." Because I don't have to say at all, I don't have to do it all. And in fact, my superpower is I can help other people do their stuff better. And so when I see these moments, I'm thinking about who do we need to enter this conversation to balance it? What needs to be said? How can I help those messages get out into the world? And so that's really how I view my work as a leader is building the capacity and the ability for the people I know need to say the right things to be able to say them.
[00:15:10] Elana Wien: I love that.
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[00:15:16] Elana Wien: I think that there's a sense of, that I think a lot of leaders are coming up against, that the world is changing, we're changing. We need to continue to evolve. And I think as a leader, it's an ongoing challenge to figure out how to really move the ball forward in your particular area, but really do so in a way that's actually lifting up other complimentary efforts. I'm curious, what are some maybe opportunities you see out there for doing more of this for leaders and also what some of the challenges are just given the moment that we're living?
[00:15:50] Ginna Green: We've dropped the word intersectional and intersectionality a couple of times. And I think we can't have this conversation without taking stock of the sociopolitical landscape that we're in. Kimberle Crenshaw, you know, a foremother of that term and proponent of critical race theory from decades ago, talks about how critical race theory had to get out of town to get famous. Right? It used to be an ivory tower concept, and I just want to name it explicitly because for Black women, gender justice is racial justice. And so to the extent that going from what Professor Crenshaw says for critical race theory and intersectionality to become famous and to become known, it means that it's got to, it's got to get down to our organizations and we have to recognize the intersectionality is not just a concept connected to a legal theory that it actually is people's lives. And it actually is what shapes and colors how we live and how we show up. And I think if institutions and organizations were able to actually step out of that ivory tower, had to get out of town and can sort of see how it works then they're better equipped to address all of these adjacent issues of justice and access and equity and inclusion, that really understanding people's lived experience goes very, very far.
And so I think about organizations being able to actually recognize that and not see it as a boogeyman. Which is what has become, and obviously we're seeing a backlash against it. And I don't think that the Jewish community is immune to it. I think that if we continue to see a backlash and a refusal to recognize the truth in these concepts and theories that we're going to be disadvantaged as a community, both just in terms of who we are and who we're going to be and how we're changing over the next decades, but also disadvantaged in our ability as a Jewish community to bring about the world that we want for everybody, not just us.
[00:18:19] Elana Wien: Absolutely. I think as you pointed out, the stakes are really high for us to really be engaged and committed to these issues and to really doing the work. I would love to just close out our conversation, knowing that, to just hear a little bit about what's giving you hope right now in your leadership,
[00:18:38] Ginna Green: What's giving me hope, and I was just thinking about this today, is that I have a multi-generational cadre of people, women in my life who support me and that I can reach at every moment. I think I'm a little lacking in the 20 year old range, so if there's anybody, if any 20 year olds who want to adopt me as a "frentor" that, I'm a little light. But the fact that I call on people in their thirties, in their forties, in their fifties, in their sixties, in their seventies all the time. And they are people who bring me wisdom and joy and laughs and love and critique that is worth so much to me and is such a support and gift that I've given to myself actually, maintaining these relationships and these friendships with people who are from all walks of life and from all generations.
[00:19:45] Elana Wien: Hm. I love that so much. I think of that as is everyone having their personal kind of cabinet in a way of folks to really give them, you know, advice and counsel and support. And I really value your, your perspective and your insight, and also being, you know, in the trenches with you on this really important work. So thanks so much for joining us.
[00:20:04] Ginna Green: Absolutely. Thank you.
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[00:20:15] Elana Wien: Our goal on Just Leading is to think differently about leadership. Next week, I'll be passing the mic to Gali Cooks. She'll be speaking with Vu Le.
[00:20:25] Vu Le: We have to have a sense of humor because otherwise this work would just take a toll on you. You lose yourself if you can't find the, like the joy and the humor in it.
[00:20:35] Elana Wien: Just Leading is supported by the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation. It's produced by Wonder Media Network and Anna McClain. For more information about the organizations we've work, for check out the Jews of Color Initiative at jewsofcolorinitiative.org, The SRE Network at srenetwork.org,q and Leading Edge at leadingedge.org.