Creating Cultures of Belonging in Education and Beyond with Alida Miranda-Wolff ~ 915

Vickie:
Hello! Before we get to the latest episode of Think Inclusive, I want to tell you about another show I think you’ll enjoy.

Amanda:
We’re Amanda and…

Vickie:
Vickie.

Amanda:
We’re the hosts of the Inclusive Education Project Podcast.

Vickie:
It’s a podcast about education, inclusivity, and civil rights.

Amanda:
You can find it wherever you listen to your podcasts—Spotify, Apple Music… basically wherever you find your podcasts.

Vickie:
Okay, let’s get ready for the podcast for inclusionists: Think Inclusive, brought to you by MCIE.

Tim Villegas:
How do you create a culture of belonging? That’s the question our guest Alida Miranda‑Wolff answers in her book, Cultures of Belonging: Building Inclusive Organizations That Last. My name is Tim Villegas and you are listening to the Think Inclusive Podcast presented by MCIE.

This podcast exists to build bridges between families, educators, and disability rights advocates to create a shared understanding of inclusive education and what inclusion looks like in the real world. To find out more about who we are and what we do, check us out at https://www.thinkinclusive.us/ or on the socials: Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter. Today on the podcast, I interview Alida Miranda‑Wolff, the CEO and founder of Ethos, a full‑service DEIB transformation firm. You may be asking, I’ve heard of DEI or diversity, equity and inclusion, but what does the B stand for? I had the same question. It’s belonging. We discuss how educators can create a sense of belonging for their students, as well as how schools can create a culture of belonging for their teachers. I’m so glad you’re here. Thanks for listening, subscribing and rating us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And now, our interview with Alida Miranda‑Wolff.

Tim Villegas:
So today on the Think Inclusive Podcast, we have Alida Miranda‑Wolff, who is the CEO and founder of Ethos, and author of the forthcoming book, Cultures of Belonging: Building Inclusive Organizations That Last. Alida, thank you for being on the Think Inclusive Podcast.

Alida Miranda‑Wolff:
Thank you for having me.

Tim Villegas:
So I’m excited about getting into our conversation today. I want to talk about your book Cultures of Belonging, but before we talk about what’s in your book, will you introduce yourself to our audience of educators?

Alida Miranda‑Wolff:
Absolutely. My name is Alida Miranda‑Wolff, as you shared already. And I’m the CEO of Ethos. I identify as a white‑passing Hispanic cisgender woman with an invisible disability. I always name my identities because they help shape the way that I do my work in diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging, and also my worldview. I came to this work from a relatively circuitous route. I think you hear that from a lot of practitioners who’ve been in this space for a little bit longer, and really where it was coming from was a combination of places.

So I started my career in higher education, working at the University of Chicago. I worked briefly in nonprofits, specifically in thinking about immigrant and refugee rights. And then I made a hard shift to venture capital where I was the first woman ever hired full‑time. I was one of 27 Latino women working in VC in the country.

Alida Miranda‑Wolff:
The number today is 29, and this has been many years. So that gives you a sense of representation. And when I became a director, I was the youngest director in the country. And so on three different counts, I was coming from a group that was non‑dominant, and my responsibilities were to manage our investors, Fortune 500 partners, our portfolio company growth, and our community. Other than our community, everything I had to do was essentially trying to exercise power in situations where the folks themselves had significantly more power than I did. And it led to a number of experiences that showed me not only how I could feel a sense of exclusion, but how we were missing out on opportunities when it came to our base of founders who were significantly more diverse than our investors in terms of their communities. So that’s where I came to diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging, and I’ve been doing it ever since.

Four years ago is when I founded Ethos, and it came from two places.

Alida Miranda‑Wolff:
So the first was in addition to working, I was teaching. I taught classes at the University of Chicago, at Northwestern University, and then at General Assembly. I was really focused on adult learners, but I was also, through a lot of my own organizing work, looking at what K–12 looked like because I was involved in after‑school programs, specifically in thinking about arts and STEAM. At the same time, I was confronting my own disabilities, specifically mobility‑related and chronic illness‑related. I wanted to branch out beyond where I was within VC, and I had discovered how much I loved teaching. But also, our portfolio companies were saying, if you can make things happen at your VC firm—which is a much harder environment, we think, than ours—you could put DEIB strategies in place for us.

Alida Miranda‑Wolff:
And I did, and they worked, and it was kind of a surprise to everybody. It was a surprise to me because I wasn’t formally trained yet—I did get my certification from Georgetown in diversity, equity, and inclusion—and yet that was still a year away. I was doing a lot of this work understanding the specific partners I was working with. It’s funny: when we see all of these DEIB jobs coming up and it seems like every company is hiring a director of some kind, at the time you weren’t even working with anyone in that space unless you were a Fortune 500 company, and then you were really thinking about affirmative action sensitivity training. The evolution has been very fast in terms of this space and what the focus areas were.

So when our startups who were based in the Midwest were looking to emulate the Slacks and the Googles and the Pinterests who were investing in these initiatives, the consultants and the partners they had available to them were working off of a model that was essentially developed in the eighties and didn’t really work with a startup environment, and I wanted to solve those problems. That’s ultimately what led to me becoming a founder.

Tim Villegas:
So the DEIB—forgive me, but what’s the B?

Alida Miranda‑Wolff:
Belonging. And it’s really important to me to focus on the belonging piece. For many years, I didn’t use it, even though technically I’ve been researching belonging for 10 years, which is how I ended up writing a book called Cultures of Belonging, which is really focused on how to build inclusive organizations that last.

The way that I think about belonging is this: Diversity is all about who is in the room—what kind of variety exists in that room of different social identity groups. Inclusion is about how they feel when they’re in that room—do they feel welcome, supported, seen for who they are. Equity is all of the processes that allow the people in that room to actually feel included. So while diversity and inclusion are outcomes, equity is a process.

I find that inclusion isn’t enough because it’s just the start of a journey. To feel included is not the same as to feel a sense of belonging, which since the 1990s we know is a basic psychological need—specifically through the work of Roy Baumeister, we understand that to belong is to matter.

Alida Miranda‑Wolff:
And when I look at defining that, especially within an organization—any kind of organization—that means that you feel part of something greater than yourself, that values and respects you and that you value and respect back. And so what it requires that inclusion doesn’t is what I call the three Rs.

One, you have to have relationships—real, meaningful relationships. It can’t just be, we’re all nice to each other, we all say thank you, we’re all courteous. You have to feel connected to the people that you work with and feel that you can trust them.

That requires resources. You need the time to be able to have those relationships, the energy to be able to invest in them. And you need money—you need money in order to have the time and energy to make sure that you have enough people within an organization, but you also need it to make people feel valued. So if we think about educators, a huge part of teachers feeling a sense of belonging is that they’re fairly compensated, because otherwise they’ll feel undervalued.

And then the other piece of that is it has to be reciprocal. So it’s not just that you feel valued and respected—you have to value and respect the organization that you’re part of. That means you have to believe in its mission, the people who are leading it, and you have to show respect for others.

Alida Miranda‑Wolff:
I have definitely seen in my time many organizations where employees are treated very well and they don’t believe in what the organization is doing. They don’t think it’s ethical. They don’t think it’s important. They don’t think it has purpose or meaning. And especially for Millennials and Gen Z, this is a no‑go for them. This is a big reason for attrition. It’s why at one of our organizations—which would have been one of our model organizations because, based on our diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging survey, almost a hundred percent of employees who were relatively diverse in terms of their backgrounds said that they felt included in the organization—when we looked at the qualitative data, over and over and over again, employees said that they felt terrible working in a company that treated them well and was bad for the world. This was an organization that was actively supporting detention centers, which was something that had been uncovered in the last year. So many people felt they had signed on a false bill of goods, and they didn’t feel a sense of belonging because they did not want to belong to that kind of community where there was that values misalignment. So that’s how I think about belonging.

Tim Villegas:
I have so many questions about what you just said. The work that we do at MCIE is a lot about creating cultures so that students feel like they belong. But what I’m hearing you say is that it is just as important—when we’re thinking about schools—for the teachers and educators to also feel like they belong and that their values match up with what the organization or system is trying to do. How I’m connecting my own personal experience: I was a special education teacher for 16 years. Part of the reason I left is because of a misalignment of values. I think a lot of our listeners have that misalignment.

They’re listening to this podcast because they know MCIE—Think Inclusive—promotes authentic inclusive education, meaning that no students are educated separately. Our vision is that they are not educated in a school that is 10 or 15 miles away; that they’re educated in their neighborhood school. They’re educated in classrooms where they would naturally be instead of artificially being separated and grouped by disability. I’m wondering if you have any insights into schools that you’ve worked with and how to help educators navigate that misalignment of values.

Alida Miranda‑Wolff:
I’ll start with an example of a school system that I consulted with probably three years ago that was seeing very high attrition rates of social workers and of folks who were specifically addressing the needs of students from non‑dominant groups. These schools in some ways were innovative in that they were really focused on bridging socioeconomic divides. You had students from a variety of different neighborhoods and communities, which we often don’t see, especially in Chicago, where our school systems are very segregated and hyper‑focused on serving those who are more affluent—and that’s true across the country. It’s just that we’re the third largest school district in the country, and so it’s especially noticeable.

I want to share where the attrition of social workers in particular was coming from. In addition to being overworked and being asked to do both their jobs and administrative duties and handle parents, they also weren’t listened to when they were escalating real issues about students.

Alida Miranda‑Wolff:
For example, one of the employees I talked to in a research interview said her greatest challenge was that, because this was a school system, she was being moved around from school to school to school throughout the week. She could never give the time and attention to the students that she was really charged with supporting, and it was creating inconsistency. She had students who would say, “I don’t trust you anymore because you weren’t here when I needed you.” She advocated for being in two schools, as opposed to five, because that’s how she’d be able to better support students.

The misalignment matched other social workers: the system overall was focused on showing in reporting and communications to parents that they were supporting the highest number of students who had needs. The social workers were saying, “We want to have the greatest impact, which means our caseload needs to be significantly smaller.”

In that situation, a few things were happening. During the interviewing process, this philosophy that the school system had was never shared. As I dug into it, in part it was because there wasn’t a philosophy. When we look at these school systems, especially K–12 schools constantly having to be reactive to different factors, there isn’t the time put into not just building a strategy, but sharing it with the teachers and staff who are in the actual school.

Alida Miranda‑Wolff:
So when these folks interview, they read a website mission statement; they hear really good things from the folks who are interviewing them. Then they get into the environment and it’s totally different. There was values misalignment from the beginning, but the values themselves really weren’t articulated. A big part of that is the practices that align to those values aren’t articulated.

One of the things we do with schools is we go in and say, okay, these are your values—what does that mean on a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual basis you strive to do and you refrain from doing? We try to get as concrete as possible. For example, “We strive to keep classroom sizes at 20 or less,” which—of course—not every school will be able to do, but that’s the point: that’s how we’re designing.

Then the other piece is it’s really hard to believe in an institution where you feel like you need guidance and don’t get it. When you are a teacher or staff in a school, you feel responsible for the lives of so many children. Many people get into the space—especially when we’re talking about disability—out of a real place of care. It’s called care work and love work for a reason. Then you get there; there are huge challenges you’ve never experienced before, and you’re basically on an island. You don’t get a whole lot of administrative support. You have other teachers you can lean on who also haven’t been invested in this way.

Alida Miranda‑Wolff:
The last thing I’ll say is you are being asked to take care of students, and there is no outlet for you to be taken care of. There are often not healing circles or spaces to talk through difficult, triggering, or traumatic events that happen in your classroom. I pay attention to this a lot with teachers coming from underrepresented groups who can very strongly identify with their students. When a student is experiencing medical issues or housing insecurity or food insecurity, it’s not just that they’re managing that student’s needs in their classroom; they might also be reliving their own experiences, especially if they got into education because of their student experience. There isn’t a way for them to grapple with it.

So I see the way that school systems are built today as being very one‑sided. We ask our staff and teachers to do everything possible for our students, but on their own—without saying, “And we will do everything possible for you.” That’s certainly not going to lead to respect and value on the part of teachers who can very quickly become jaded, especially if things go wrong—especially if they needed help with a student or several students, didn’t receive it, and then those students ended up in worse situations.

Alida Miranda‑Wolff:
When I worked in education, one of the things I did was work in physical education in a new program focused on blending students who did not have physical disabilities with students who had physical and mental disabilities. The idea was a co‑teaching approach. It ended up becoming, as with a lot of charitable organizations, a lot of sloppy sentimentalism and patronizing. The folks leading the program weren’t equipped when one of the students unexpectedly had a seizure. An ambulance was called; the parents were called; but that teacher had to check out. I noticed a difference in that teacher leading that class in the weeks that followed—they seemed much more inattentive, distracted. It was because they felt that they failed in a very real way.

My question to this teacher—and my recommendation to the school—was: why would you have a teacher alone with this group of folks who have very specific needs, and this teacher has no training in how to address a situation like a seizure? I don’t think the teacher failed in that situation. I think the school did. That’s also going to contribute to a sense of belonging.

Tim Villegas:
That story seems very familiar—substitute any sort of situation, whether it’s medical or behavioral or anything. We do, a lot of times, expect teachers to just make it work without equipping them, without training. In the time we have left, I want to make sure we give teachers some strategies. If they’re in a spot where there’s some misalignment, I want teachers to stay teachers. Even if you’re in a tough spot, I think there’s value in you still teaching, pouring into your students. How can teachers create cultures of belonging for themselves, even if they don’t feel like they belong in a system where their values are misaligned?

Alida Miranda‑Wolff:
A piece of advice I got from one of my mentors when I was working in VC and feeling very drained energetically: “Listen, Alida, you’re not going to change the culture of the entire firm. You’re not in position to do that. But you do have a team, and you can change that culture.” So the two people working with me and the community members I was working with every day—we could lay that foundation, set those values and ways of doing things. She was right. I could, and it kept me there longer. I would have left much sooner in that space, but I could build out my peer community and the folks who were working with me in such a way that it was aligned to the value that we shared around what we could do. In this case, it was people‑first investing—creating opportunities for entrepreneurs who hadn’t had entrepreneurs mentor or guide them.

Alida Miranda‑Wolff:
So, providing resources to them as business leaders and helping demystify the investment process. Those were things that we all believed we could build a culture around, that we could do something about. When all of the teams started to push for it, it built a coalition within the firm that did change the firm. The pace of change on our immediate team was much faster, but we were able to show results. We underestimate the power of a collective or a coalition. We see it happening in teacher strikes and unions, which are really valuable tools—I don’t ever want to discredit that—but there are situations you can’t strike over, so you need other options.

The other thing I would say is this is not a way to create more work for teachers, but you need a pressure valve.

Alida Miranda‑Wolff:
When we were working with Teach for America, one of the things we built were affinity groups for underrepresented teachers, especially those who were teaching in schools mostly made of people not like them. For example, teachers based in urban settings who were moved to a fully rural community where maybe their students had never seen someone who looked like them or sounded like them. There’s so much pressure in those situations that is psychologically challenging. There might be points of connection, and you might develop great relationships with your students, but it is absolutely a culture shock.

Being able to create spaces where the rule was: these are not learning spaces—we have learning spaces for you too. These are sharing spaces. These are spaces where you can express what you are experiencing and be validated by others, and where you can develop relationships with others who might be experiencing similar situations and know what you’re going through.

Alida Miranda‑Wolff:
There’s definitely a culture of that informally within schools—we see it all the time—but putting something together formally, whether it is a sharing circle once a month with a group of teachers who maybe are across different schools, so that you feel like you have more anonymity, more confidentiality to express some of the things that are especially hard for you—this is really important.

I’m going to quote my friend Taylor Morrison. She focuses on self‑care and mental wellness, especially in communities of color. She says that self‑care is listening within and responding in the most loving way possible. I can tell you this: I am not prescriptive about personality tests—I think they really just show us what our preferences are at a given moment in time. That said, I am an ENFJ, also known as a protagonist, which is the most common personality type for teachers.

Alida Miranda‑Wolff:
One of the biggest weaknesses, if you look at the profile, is altruistic to the point of over‑commitment. ENFJs are so focused on being in service that they totally deplete themselves. I think we can all agree—we see that in teachers all the time. The stakes are only higher when your students have disabilities, when they are going through behavioral and emotional situations at home, when there’s violence within the school. I’ve seen teachers carrying all of the stress of their students from the shooting drills; they absorb all of it and take it home, and there’s nowhere to put it. That is huge—being able to say, what would be my most loving response possible to myself in this moment? I’m a big advocate of making social workers and counselors available not only to students but to teachers.

Alida Miranda‑Wolff:
If you’re a teacher and you really want to do this DEIB work, there are ways to get grants to do it. There are ways to get resources to do it. I would spend your time researching how you can bring other people in to help you, and then do all of the work yourself as a last resort, because you’re not being paid for it. If you can advocate for getting paid for it, power to you—please do it. I’ve just seen in schools that is a place of enormous resistance. Whatever you can do—if you want to move these initiatives along—understand and know that it’s not your responsibility and that at any point, if it’s burning you out, you can drop it. You’re not letting anyone down because you are not carrying this alone. Your schools have a responsibility to this work; whether you participate in it or not is a much more complicated situation.

Tim Villegas:
Alida, I want to plug your book. We want our listeners to hear this amazing conversation and go out and buy Cultures of Belonging. Where can they find it? Where can they buy the book?

Alida Miranda‑Wolff:
Absolutely. If you go to https://alidamirandawolff.com/, I encourage you to sign up for my newsletter and check out the bonus content section because you can pre‑order it at any bookstore. It’s on Amazon, Bookshop, Barnes & Noble, and indie booksellers. It’s everywhere—available as an audiobook, an ebook, or as a physical book. You can even go to my publisher’s website, HarperCollins Leadership. The reason I’m advocating going to my website first is because I created two freebies that you can only get if you go to my website.

The first is a sample DEIB action plan and template. That tool—we charge $18,000 for at our firm to be able to use with our clients—and if you go to my website, you can get it for free. And then if you pre‑order the book and enter your pre‑order code on my website, we’ll also give you a decision tree for how to give feedback that eliminates or minimizes bias.

Alida Miranda‑Wolff:
I think this is so important for teachers working with students because bias enters in so many different ways. If we really want to support our students, we want to make sure that we’re being inclusive and productive and generative in our feedback rather than discouraging. Don’t hesitate to reach out: alida@alidamirandawolff.com. On LinkedIn, I am the only person—according to the internet—with my name. If you put my name in, it’s 26 pages of Google search results. On Twitter, I’m https://twitter.com/AlidaMW.

Tim Villegas:
Alida Miranda‑Wolff, thank you so much for being on the Think Inclusive Podcast. This conversation is fascinating. I hope everyone has a chance to check out Cultures of Belonging. Thanks for your time.

Tim Villegas:
That will do it for this episode of the Think Inclusive Podcast. Subscribe to the Think Inclusive Podcast via Apple Podcasts, the Anchor app, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Have a question or comment? Email us your feedback at podcast@thinkinclusive.us. We love to know that you’re listening.

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We will be back with another Think Inclusive episode in a couple of weeks, and look out for more editions of https://weeklyish.substack.com/ and bonus episodes in the meantime. Thanks for your time and attention. Until next time, remember: inclusion always works.