In this second year of Kingston Common Future’s existence, I have the honor of stepping into the co-director role alongside my great colleague, Clay Moodey.
Bearing the knowledge that the leadership of people of color, from the global south and the global north, has gone unnoticed for centuries, I feel called to name some narratives that define so many people like me, many more even more capable and hardworking, who remain visibly invisible in mainstream society. Likewise, I am aware that within a system of competition for resources, like the one we live in, one person’s achievement is not always well received by another. The lack of mutual rejoicing is a ball that takes bouncing turns; it keeps us divided yet achieving. That is why KCF’s vision of proposing alternatives gives me hope.
But first, a bit about who we are?
I am one of the few Latina women, migrant, daughter of a single mother, first-generation university graduate, with multicultural narratives rooted in the explicit of modernity and the implicit of the ancestral, who gets to co-lead a nonprofit organization in this city. The view toward the rest of the country shows anything different. We may be fewer in this stretch of time marked by uncertainty. We may be more in other fields of hope.
The truth is that we are still “creating new spaces,” not simply “taking a place” at the decision-making table. I have asked myself, what is leadership really for someone like me?
When I broached this topic with Micah from the Good Work Institute last year, he reminded me of Marshall Ganz’s definition: “Leadership is accepting the responsibility to create conditions that enable others to achieve shared purpose in the face of uncertainty.”
I would like to replace the word purpose with the word “good” or “benefit” in this definition because we still have to dialogue and learn from one another to choose what the collective good is. The idea of what is beneficial brightens my senses when I imagine how future applicants from our community fund will define that good in their projects. I feel deeply inspired to create (and learn to create) conditions, not to take them from others, or to manipulate outcomes. In other words, a leadership embedded in the redistribution of power and of itself, as KCF’s mission states. I invite us all to continue building this definition of leadership together with our hands and hearts.
Since KCF is a repository of the dreams of the people of Kingston, I end by sharing my dream: Imagine if together we could build a Kingston where dreams that generate new ways of understanding power and happiness easily become true.
