Podcasts about creative reaction lab

Antionette Carroll, Founder, President, and CEO of Creative Reaction Lab, believes that if inequality is by design, then it can be re-designed by us. Over the years, she has helmed multiple initiatives dedicated to solving the fundamental problems of inequity and fair representation in the design industry and expanding our roles to examine inherent biases. In this talk, she offers a framework for prioritizing equal outcomes over equal access to change the mindset of the industry. This talk was recorded remotely on May 22, 2020 About this speaker: Antionette D. Carroll is the founder, president, and CEO of Creative Reaction Lab, a nonprofit educating and deploying youth to challenge racial and health inequities impacting Black and Latinx populations. Antionette has been named an ADL and Aspen Institute Civil Society Fellow, Roddenberry Fellow, Echoing Green Global Fellow, TED Fellow, ADCOLOR Innovator, SXSW Community Service Honoree, Camelback Ventures Fellow, 4.0 Schools Tiny Fellow, St. Louis Visionary Award Honoree for Community Impact, and Essence Magazine Woke 100. Over her almost 10 years of volunteer leadership, Antionette was named the Founding Chair of the Diversity and Inclusion Task Force of AIGA. She's a former AIGA National Board Director and Chair Emerita of the Task Force. She is also the co-founder and co-director of the Design + Diversity Conference and Fellowship. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/getu-chandler/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/getu-chandler/support

Zariah Cameron is Co-Director of Community + Research and the founder of AEI – Advocate, Educate, Innovate Black Design. She will be a speaker at October's DesignOps Summit on streamlining an inclusive design practice. Many companies and corporations have good intentions when it comes to inclusive design. But too often that's where things both start and stop. Zariah helps companies operationalize their inclusive design principles and ideals by looking at design from all angles and instilling effective processes. When exploring ideals of equity and inclusivity, many confuse inclusivity with accessibility. Accessibility is a fine place to start, but it's just the beginning. Accessibility tends to be passive while inclusivity is active. Inclusive design proactively seeks out the marginalized, the underserved, and minority groups. It doesn't make assumptions but seeks input, feedback, and follow-through. For many companies, the most effective way to pursue inclusive design is to work with grassroots organizations. Partnering with such organizations provides corporations access to a diverse pool of participants. It's a process of co-creation and involves a long-haul-relationship mentality. Zariah mentions a variety of organizations that design teams could partner with to access diverse talent: Creative Reaction Lab Pause and Effect Aroko Cooperative – seeking equity, liberation, community healing, and ecocentricy What you'll learn from this episode: About Zariah's talk at the upcoming October 2024 DesignOps Summit How inclusive design differs from accessibility How companies can proactively partner with organizations to access a wide range of underserved and marginalized participants Quick Reference Guide [0:00:37] Introduction of Zariah [0:02:04] Inclusive design [0:04:11] An example of a principle that needs to be operationalized [0:05:25] How to take a more operational approach to inclusive design [0:08:04] Inclusivity is active, not passive. It's also relational. [0:14:18] Inclusivity is relational and communal [0:15:03] More on the AEI organization [0:17:24] Other work with HBCU students [0:19:40] A reminder about the October 2-4 DesignOps Summit [0:20:48] Organizations to partner with to advance inclusivity and equity [0:24:21] Zariah's gift for listeners Resources and links from today's episode: Creative Reaction Lab - https://crxlab.org/ Pause and Effect - https://www.pauseandeffect.ca/ Aroko Cooperative - https://www.aroko.coop/ State of the Black Design Conference in March 2024 - https://www.thesobd.com/ DesignOps Assembly - https://www.designopsassembly.com/

What is equity-centered community design? This transformative concept focuses on centering the voices and decision-making power of individuals with lived experience, who Creative Reaction Lab refers to as “living experts.” It also calls on human-centered design experts and others to use their leverage, access, and influence to support and amplify community voices. In this session, CCI's Chris Conley chats with Hilary Sedovic, a systems thinker and former learning & education director at Creative Reaction Lab. Sedovic, who calls herself a “redesigner for justice,” sheds light onto the key role that design allies have in empowering living experts. Creative Reaction Lab emphasizes building quality relationships, humility, and embracing a collective investment in community well-being in order to move towards greater equity and inclusivity in design. Learn how this type of civic engagement and the redesigning for justice movement can move us to reshape the narrative -- creating a just world through authentic collaboration and community-centered approaches in the design process.Here's where you can learn more about the people, places, and ideas in this episode: Hilary Sedovic, Systems Thinker | Redesigner for Justice | Pragmatic IdealistCatalyst, CCI's design thinking training programCreative Reaction Lab, building a youth-led, community-centered movement of a new type of Civic Leader: Redesigners for Justice.

In this episode of StitchCast Studio, youth alumni of Stitchers Youth Council join Branden Lewis, to look back at experiences at Story Stitchers and discuss moving out of state. Recorded live at Stitchers Hansen House Studio, St. Louis, Missouri, in December 31, 2022.  Pick the City UP Art Interlude To The Prairie KP Dennis and Ntegrity, Saint Louis Story Stitchers, 2019 Story Stitchers is supported in part by The Lewis Prize for Music's 2021 Accelerator Award. The mission of The Lewis Prize is to partner with leaders who create positive change by investing in young people through music.  Additional support for StitchCast Studio and Story Stitchers youth programs was provided by the Spirit of St. Louis Women's Fund, City of St. Louis Youth at Risk Crime Prevention grant of 2022, Lush Corporation's The Charity Pot, Equity Impact from Creative Reaction Lab and the Bezos Family Foundation, and the Arts & Education Council. Saint Louis Story Stitchers is supported by Kranzberg Arts Foundation as a resident organization. Saint Louis Story Stitchers' StitchCast Studio LIVE! is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. On the web at arts dot gov.

In this episode of StitchCast Studio, youth leaders of Stitchers Youth Council join Branden Lewis, to discuss the best and worst music of the year 2022. Recorded live at Stitchers Hansen House Studio, St. Louis, Missouri, on December 15, 2022.  Pick the City UP Art Interlude America the Beautiful with Roland Johnson, our good friend and mentor, who passed on in 2022. Recorded with young artists for Saint Louis Story Stitchers' Peace in the Prairie at Stitchers Storefront Studio. Saint Louis Story Stitchers, 2019 Story Stitchers is supported in part by The Lewis Prize for Music's 2021 Accelerator Award. The mission of The Lewis Prize is to partner with leaders who create positive change by investing in young people through music.  Additional support for StitchCast Studio and Story Stitchers youth programs was provided by the Spirit of St. Louis Women's Fund, City of St. Louis Youth at Risk Crime Prevention grant of 2022, Lush Corporation's The Charity Pot, Equity Impact from Creative Reaction Lab and the Bezos Family Foundation, and the Arts & Education Council. Saint Louis Story Stitchers is supported by Kranzberg Arts Foundation as a resident organization.

SummaryIf you were told you were about to die, how would you respond? Steven Wakabayashi didn't wait long to use it as opportunity to turn his health, life, and career around. His three programs are his best approach to prevent others from going through the same thing he did.Do not wait until something bad happens to start taking your health seriously. Steven's story provides valuable information and support to help you make lasting changes in your life, so that you can become your best self today.You would love what he said about how there isn't only one way to work and talk about things. By providing a space where people can observe other options, we can help empower them. The world needs more stories like these.So check out this week's episode where he shares not only his accomplishments in UX, but also his vulnerabilities. Discover how he changed how his team works, processes, and still produced impactful results.Highlights“I try to come in with really fresh blank slate into different projects that I come in. And even the concept of like the vision we want to achieve, I try really hard, especially as a leader not to go in with this preconceived notion. Because at the end of the day, it's something that we have to build collectively as a group, and not just a vision that I have like myself.”“There's been a lot of amazing work by many organizations, such as the Creative Reaction Lab, Project Inkblot that focus on how we can bring the community into our work. So context is of spaces thinking about reconstituting power. And one thing that we're trying to add to the mix as an organization with Stranger Creative right now are just different heuristics that we can bring that measure safety, that measure autonomy, that measure transparency.”Timestamps(00:47) - Leading by example; showing up for himself and his community while weathering COVID (01:49) - Icebreaker: The mind-blowing pandemic hobby he developed, how it benefits him, and his plans for it in the future(04:01) - Icebreaker: The two words synonymous to Steven Wakabayashi (08:05) - Icebreaker: Why it's important to talk about institutionalizing changes needed in DEI (08:37) - Who Steven Wakabayashi is: The unabridged version(11:37) - Why he took a step back to reflect after achieving success(15:12) - Resuscitating not only his love for creativity but his heart as well(16:09) - How his identity played a role in his work on inclusion and equity and his three programs thay support it(17:47) - QTBIPOC(19:55) - Stranger Creative(30:13) - Mindful Sights(21:07) - Changing institutionalized inequity one word at a time through self-expression(24:25) - Methods to use to approach more equitable problem spaces(30:13) - The beauty of mindfulness and presentness in two perspectives: his as an individual and the society's(32:22) - How to approach a new project (36:03) - COVID recovery adviceAbout the Guest:Steven Wakabayashi (he/him) is a queer, first-generation Taiwanese-Japanese American based in New York City. He's a Creative Director, Changemaker, and Founder of mission-driven organizations empowering historically marginalized communities within the design, tech, and mindfulness industries.After leading creative teams at many notable brands and agencies, including Apple, Google, Walmart, Huge, and Razorfish, he is now creating pathways for queer BIPOC creatives into the design industry through QTBIPOC Design, creating safe spaces for BIPOC communities within mindfulness through Mindful Sights, and designing equitable products and experiences for clients with his creative agency Stranger...

In this week's episode of StitchCast Studio, youth leaders of Stitchers Youth Council join Branden Lewis, to discuss assets and liabilities. Recorded live at Stitchers Storefront Studio, St. Louis, Missouri, in November, 2022.  Pick the City UP Art Interlude Wade Reprise Saint Louis Story Stitchers, 2021 Story Stitchers is supported in part by The Lewis Prize for Music's 2021 Accelerator Award. The mission of The Lewis Prize is to partner with leaders who create positive change by investing in young people through music.  Additional support for StitchCast Studio and Story Stitchers youth programs was provided by the Spirit of St. Louis Women's Fund, City of St. Louis Youth at Risk Crime Prevention grant of 2022, Lush Corporation's The Charity Pot, Equity Impact from Creative Reaction Lab and the Bezos Family Foundation, and the Arts & Education Council. Saint Louis Story Stitchers is supported by Kranzberg Arts Foundation as a resident organization. Saint Louis Story Stitchers' StitchCast Studio LIVE! is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. On the web at arts dot gov.

Youth leaders come together with poet and activist Cheeraz Gormon to talk about healing from trauma from exposure to violence. Artists also discuss gun violence prevention, activism and the role of artists as activists, mental health, sharing resources, moving from response to recovery after the Central Visual and Performing Arts High School mass shooting tragedy, and coping with compounding loses from gun violence. Part III of a three part series.   Pick the City UP Art Interlude Sneaker Tact KP Dennis and Branden Lewis Saint Louis Story Stitchers, 2020   Story Stitchers is supported in part by The Lewis Prize for Music's 2021 Accelerator Award. The mission of The Lewis Prize is to partner with leaders who create positive change by investing in young people through music.  Additional support for StitchCast Studio and Story Stitchers youth programs was provided by the Spirit of St. Louis Women's Fund, City of St. Louis Youth at Risk Crime Prevention grant of 2022, Lush Corporation's The Charity Pot, Equity Impact from Creative Reaction Lab and the Bezos Family Foundation, and the Arts & Education Council. Saint Louis Story Stitchers is supported by Kranzberg Arts Foundation as a resident organization. Saint Louis Story Stitchers' StitchCast Studio LIVE! is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. On the web at arts dot gov.

In this week's episode of StitchCast Studio, youth leaders of Stitchers Youth Council join Branden Lewis, to discuss over investment in the lives of celebrities and social media. Recorded live at Stitchers Storefront Studio, St. Louis, Missouri, on October 26, 2022.    Pick the City UP Art Interlude Sneaker Tact KP Dennis and Branden Lewis Saint Louis Story Stitchers, 2021   Story Stitchers is supported in part by The Lewis Prize for Music's 2021 Accelerator Award. The mission of The Lewis Prize is to partner with leaders who create positive change by investing in young people through music.  Additional support for StitchCast Studio and Story Stitchers youth programs was provided by the Spirit of St. Louis Women's Fund, City of St. Louis Youth at Risk Crime Prevention grant of 2022, Lush Corporation's The Charity Pot, Equity Impact from Creative Reaction Lab and the Bezos Family Foundation, and the Arts & Education Council. Saint Louis Story Stitchers is supported by Kranzberg Arts Foundation as a resident organization. Saint Louis Story Stitchers' StitchCast Studio LIVE! is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. On the web at arts dot gov.

Youth leaders come together with poet and activist Cheeraz Gormon to talk about healing from trauma from exposure to violence. Artists also discuss gun violence prevention, activism and the role of artists as activists, mental health, sharing resources, moving from response to recovery after the Central Visual and Performing Arts High School mass shooting tragedy, and coping with compounding loses from gun violence. Part I of a three part series.   Pick the City UP Art Interlude Anti Saint Louis Story Stitchers, 2017   Story Stitchers is supported in part by The Lewis Prize for Music's 2021 Accelerator Award. The mission of The Lewis Prize is to partner with leaders who create positive change by investing in young people through music.  Additional support for StitchCast Studio and Story Stitchers youth programs was provided by the Spirit of St. Louis Women's Fund, City of St. Louis Youth at Risk Crime Prevention grant of 2022, Lush Corporation's The Charity Pot, Equity Impact from Creative Reaction Lab and the Bezos Family Foundation, and the Arts & Education Council. Saint Louis Story Stitchers is supported by Kranzberg Arts Foundation as a resident organization. Saint Louis Story Stitchers' StitchCast Studio LIVE! is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. On the web at arts dot gov.

Youth leaders come together with poet and activist Cheeraz Gormon to talk about healing from trauma from exposure to violence. Artists also discuss gun violence prevention, activism and the role of artists as activists, mental health, sharing resources, moving from response to recovery after the Central Visual and Performing Arts High School mass shooting tragedy, and coping with compounding loss from gun violence. Part I of a three part series. Pick the City UP Art Interlude Sneaker Tact KP Dennis and Branden Lewis Saint Louis Story Stitchers, 2020 Story Stitchers is supported in part by The Lewis Prize for Music's 2021 Accelerator Award. The mission of The Lewis Prize is to partner with leaders who create positive change by investing in young people through music.  Additional support for StitchCast Studio and Story Stitchers youth programs was provided by the Spirit of St. Louis Women's Fund, City of St. Louis Youth at Risk Crime Prevention grant of 2022, Lush Corporation's The Charity Pot, Equity Impact from Creative Reaction Lab and the Bezos Family Foundation, and the Arts & Education Council. Saint Louis Story Stitchers is supported by Kranzberg Arts Foundation as a resident organization. Saint Louis Story Stitchers' StitchCast Studio LIVE! is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. On the web at arts dot gov.

In this week's episode of StitchCast Studio, youth leaders and alumni podcasters from StitchCast Studio, including leading architect of the Youth Council Branden Lewis, continue to develop The Center Cabinet and have a conversation about how The Center, a dedicated safe space for under-represented youth envisioned by Story Stitchers youth leaders, might be used to impact the community. In this episode, youth leaders discuss the importance of mentors. The Center, a project to create a youth arts and technology center designed and driven by youth leaders, is supported in part by a 2021 $500,000 5-year Accelerator Award from The Lewis Prize For Music. Recorded live at Stitchers Storefront Studio, St. Louis, Missouri, on July 22, 2022.    Pick the City UP Art Interlude Sneaker Tact KP Dennis and Branden Lewis Saint Louis Story Stitchers, 2020   Go back and listen to the youth dream unfolding in past episodes:   Season I, Episode 27, The Center Part I   Story Stitchers discuss becoming one of 8 organizations nation-wide to reach the finalist stage of the Lewis Prize for Music's $500,000 Accelerator grant competition. Youth and staff reflect on their application's focus, a new youth arts and technology facility for St. Louis' at-risk youth called “The Center.” Recorded in Zoom on December 2, 2020. Season II, Episode 34,  The Center Part II In this week's episode, 16-24 year old Stitchers Youth Council leaders brainstorm with host Emeara Burns about The Center, a project to create a youth arts and technology center supported in part by a 2021 Accelerator Award from The Lewis Prize For Music and discuss the future of Story Stitchers. Recorded live in Zoom January 28, 2021. Season IV, Episode 107, The Center Part III In this week's episode of StitchCast Studio, youth leaders from Stitchers Youth Council, including leading architects of the Youth Council Branden Lewis and Emeara Burns, form The Center Cabinet and sit down with Story Stitchers founding president and executive director Susan Colangelo to have a conversation about how The Center, a dedicated safe space for under-represented youth envisioned by Story Stitchers youth leaders, might be used to impact the community.  The Center, a project to create a youth arts and technology center designed and driven by youth leaders, is supported in part by a 2021 $500,000 5-year Accelerator Award from The Lewis Prize For Music. Recorded live at Stitchers Storefront Studio, St. Louis, Missouri, on July 22, 2022.    Story Stitchers is supported in part by The Lewis Prize for Music's 2021 Accelerator Award. The mission of The Lewis Prize is to partner with leaders who create positive change by investing in young people through music.  Additional support for StitchCast Studio and Story Stitchers youth programs was provided by the Spirit of St. Louis Women's Fund, City of St. Louis Youth at Risk Crime Prevention grant of 2022, Lush Corporation's The Charity Pot, Equity Impact from Creative Reaction Lab and the Bezos Family Foundation, and the Arts & Education Council. Saint Louis Story Stitchers is supported by Kranzberg Arts Foundation as a resident organization. Saint Louis Story Stitchers' StitchCast Studio LIVE! is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. On the web at arts dot gov.

The Center Part VI In this week's episode of StitchCast Studio, youth leaders from The Center Cabinet, experiencing their first trip to the prairie, talk with one of the leading architects of the Youth Council, Emeara Burns, and dive deep into the new Center, their prairie experiences, and their expectations for the future. The Center, a dedicated safe space for under-represented youth envisioned by Story Stitchers youth leaders, might be used to impact the community. The Center, a project to create a creative youth development center designed and driven by youth leaders, is supported in part by a 2021 $500,000 5-year Accelerator Award from The Lewis Prize For Music. The Center Cabinet are interns at Story Stitchers currently supported by My Brother's Keeper Freedom Summer 2022. Recorded live at Missouri Botanical Garden's Shaw Nature Reserve in Gray Summit, Missouri, on October 9, 2022.    Pick the City UP Art Interlude To The Prairie Saint Louis Story Stitchers, 2018   Story Stitchers is supported in part by The Lewis Prize for Music's 2021 Accelerator Award. The mission of The Lewis Prize is to partner with leaders who create positive change by investing in young people through music.  Additional support for StitchCast Studio and Story Stitchers youth programs was provided by the Spirit of St. Louis Women's Fund, City of St. Louis Youth at Risk Crime Prevention grant of 2022, Lush Corporation's The Charity Pot, Equity Impact from Creative Reaction Lab and the Bezos Family Foundation, and the Arts & Education Council. Saint Louis Story Stitchers is supported by Kranzberg Arts Foundation as a resident organization. Saint Louis Story Stitchers' StitchCast Studio LIVE! is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. On the web at arts dot gov.

In this week's episode of StitchCast Studio, youth leaders from The Center Cabinet, experiencing their first trip to the prairie, talk with one of the leading architects of the Youth Council, Branden Lewis, and dive deep into the new Center, the impact of their prairie experiences, and their expectations for the future.  The Center, a dedicated safe space for under-represented youth envisioned by Story Stitchers youth leaders, might be used to impact the community. The Center, a project to create a creative youth development center designed and driven by youth leaders, is supported in part by a 2021 $500,000 5-year Accelerator Award from The Lewis Prize For Music. The Center Cabinet are interns at Story Stitchers currently supported by My Brother's Keeper Freedom Summer 2022. Recorded live at Missouri Botanical Garden's Shaw Nature Reserve in Gray Summit, Missouri, on October 9, 2022.    Pick the City UP Art Interlude Prairie Therapy Saint Louis Story Stitchers, 2019   Story Stitchers is supported in part by The Lewis Prize for Music's 2021 Accelerator Award. The mission of The Lewis Prize is to partner with leaders who create positive change by investing in young people through music.  Additional support for StitchCast Studio and Story Stitchers youth programs was provided by the Spirit of St. Louis Women's Fund, City of St. Louis Youth at Risk Crime Prevention grant of 2022, Lush Corporation's The Charity Pot, Equity Impact from Creative Reaction Lab and the Bezos Family Foundation, and the Arts & Education Council. Saint Louis Story Stitchers is supported by Kranzberg Arts Foundation as a resident organization. Saint Louis Story Stitchers' StitchCast Studio LIVE! is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. On the web at arts dot gov.

In Part II of this episode of StitchCast Studio, three new members of Stitchers Youth Council join Branden Lewis, to discuss parent and child relationships. Recorded live at Stitchers Storefront Studio, St. Louis, Missouri, on August 26, 2022.    Pick the City UP Art Interlude Good For Your Health Saint Louis Story Stitchers, 2019   Story Stitchers is supported in part by The Lewis Prize for Music's 2021 Accelerator Award. The mission of The Lewis Prize is to partner with leaders who create positive change by investing in young people through music.  Additional support for StitchCast Studio and Story Stitchers youth programs was provided by the Spirit of St. Louis Women's Fund, City of St. Louis Youth at Risk Crime Prevention grant of 2022, Lush Corporation's The Charity Pot, Equity Impact from Creative Reaction Lab and the Bezos Family Foundation, and the Arts & Education Council. Saint Louis Story Stitchers is supported by Kranzberg Arts Foundation as a resident organization. Saint Louis Story Stitchers' StitchCast Studio LIVE! is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. On the web at arts dot gov.

In this unique episode of StitchCast Studio, members of Stitchers Youth Council interview Wil Pickney, Jr, Director of the Office of Violence Prevention for the City of St. Louis, to discuss police and the communities they serve including community violence intervention. NOT ANOTHER ONE! is a multi-year signature project addressing gun violence through music, documentary videos, books, and scripts collected and edited from 2015 to 2021 by over 100 artists. Music, curriculum, and coordinating items are available at http://www.storystitchers.org.    Recorded live at Central Library, St. Louis Public Libraries in downtown St. Louis, Missouri, on Saturday, August 13, 2022. Part of the presentation is a live performances from Not Another One! Included is a reading from the book by Bobby Norfolk and Lauron Thompson.  Story Stitchers is supported in part by The Lewis Prize for Music's 2021 Accelerator Award. The mission of The Lewis Prize is to partner with leaders who create positive change by investing in young people through music.  Additional support for StitchCast Studio and Story Stitchers youth programs was provided by the Spirit of St. Louis Women's Fund, City of St. Louis Youth at Risk Crime Prevention grant of 2022, Lush Corporation's The Charity Pot, Equity Impact from Creative Reaction Lab and the Bezos Family Foundation, and the Arts & Education Council. Saint Louis Story Stitchers is supported by Kranzberg Arts Foundation as a resident organization. Saint Louis Story Stitchers' StitchCast Studio LIVE! is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. On the web at arts dot gov.

In this week's episode of StitchCast Studio, three new members of Stitchers Youth Council join Branden Lewis, to discuss parent and child relationships. Recorded live at Stitchers Storefront Studio, St. Louis, Missouri, on August 26, 2022.    Pick the City UP Art Interlude Dear Shooters KP Dennis and Branden Lewis, 2020   Story Stitchers is supported in part by The Lewis Prize for Music's 2021 Accelerator Award. The mission of The Lewis Prize is to partner with leaders who create positive change by investing in young people through music.  Additional support for StitchCast Studio and Story Stitchers youth programs was provided by the Spirit of St. Louis Women's Fund, City of St. Louis Youth at Risk Crime Prevention grant of 2022, Lush Corporation's The Charity Pot, Equity Impact from Creative Reaction Lab and the Bezos Family Foundation, and the Arts & Education Council. Saint Louis Story Stitchers is supported by Kranzberg Arts Foundation as a resident organization. Saint Louis Story Stitchers' StitchCast Studio LIVE! is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. On the web at arts dot gov.

The Center Part IV   In this week's episode of StitchCast Studio, youth leaders from Stitchers Youth Council, including leading architect of the Youth Council Branden Lewis, continue to develop The Center Cabinet and  have a conversation about how The Center, a dedicated safe space for under-represented youth envisioned by Story Stitchers youth leaders, might be used to impact the community. In this episode, youth leaders discuss the loss of friends, family, peers and causes for some of that loss. The Center, a project to create a youth arts and technology center designed and driven by youth leaders, is supported in part by a 2021 $500,000 5-year Accelerator Award from The Lewis Prize For Music. Recorded live at Stitchers Storefront Studio, St. Louis, Missouri, on July 22, 2022.    Pick the City UP Art Interlude Guitar Solo, Alexis Saint Louis Story Stitchers, 2022   Go back and listen to the youth dream unfolding in past episodes:   Season I, Episode 27, The Center Part I Story Stitchers discuss becoming one of 8 organizations nation-wide to reach the finalist stage of the Lewis Prize for Music's $500,000 Accelerator grant competition. Youth and staff reflect on their application's focus, a new youth arts and technology facility for St. Louis' at-risk youth called “The Center.” Recorded in Zoom on December 2, 2020.   Season II, Episode 34,  The Center Part II In this week's episode, 16-24 year old Stitchers Youth Council leaders brainstorm with host Emeara Burns about The Center, a project to create a youth arts and technology center supported in part by a 2021 Accelerator Award from The Lewis Prize For Music and discuss the future of Story Stitchers. Recorded live in Zoom January 28, 2021.   Season IV, Episode 107, The Center Part III In this week's episode of StitchCast Studio, youth leaders from Stitchers Youth Council, including leading architects of the Youth Council Branden Lewis and Emeara Burns, form The Center Cabinet and sit down with Story Stitchers founding president and executive director Susan Colangelo to have a conversation about how The Center, a dedicated safe space for under-represented youth envisioned by Story Stitchers youth leaders, might be used to impact the community.    The Center, a project to create a youth arts and technology center designed and driven by youth leaders, is supported in part by a 2021 $500,000 5-year Accelerator Award from The Lewis Prize For Music. Recorded live at Stitchers Storefront Studio, St. Louis, Missouri, on July 22, 2022.    Story Stitchers is supported in part by The Lewis Prize for Music's 2021 Accelerator Award. The mission of The Lewis Prize is to partner with leaders who create positive change by investing in young people through music.  Additional support for StitchCast Studio and Story Stitchers youth programs was provided by the Spirit of St. Louis Women's Fund, City of St. Louis Youth at Risk Crime Prevention grant of 2022, Lush Corporation's The Charity Pot, Equity Impact from Creative Reaction Lab and the Bezos Family Foundation, and the Arts & Education Council. Saint Louis Story Stitchers is supported by Kranzberg Arts Foundation as a resident organization. Saint Louis Story Stitchers' StitchCast Studio LIVE! is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. On the web at arts dot gov.

In this week's episode of StitchCast Studio, youth leaders from Stitchers Youth Council, including leading architects of the Youth Council Branden Lewis and Emeara Burns, form The Center Cabinet and sit down with Story Stitchers founding president and executive director Susan Colangelo to have a conversation about how The Center, a dedicated safe space for under-represented youth envisioned by Story Stitchers youth leaders, might be used to impact the community.  The Center, a project to create a youth arts and technology center designed and driven by youth leaders, is supported in part by a 2021 $500,000 5-year Accelerator Award from The Lewis Prize For Music. Recorded live at Stitchers Storefront Studio, St. Louis, Missouri, on July 22, 2022.    Pick the City UP Art Interlude Who's Ready? All rights reserved, Saint Louis Story Stitchers, 2018    Go back and listen to the youth dream unfolding in past episodes:   Season I, Episode 27, The Center Part I Story Stitchers discuss becoming one of 8 organizations nation-wide to reach the finalist stage of the Lewis Prize for Music's $500,000 Accelerator grant competition. Youth and staff reflect on their application's focus, a new youth arts and technology facility for St. Louis' at-risk youth called “The Center.” Recorded in Zoom on December 2, 2020.   Season II, Episode 34,  The Center Part II In this week's episode, 16-24 year old Stitchers Youth Council leaders brainstorm with host Emeara Burns about The Center, a project to create a youth arts and technology center supported in part by a 2021 Accelerator Award from The Lewis Prize For Music and discuss the future of Story Stitchers. Recorded live in Zoom January 28, 2021.   Story Stitchers is supported in part by The Lewis Prize for Music's 2021 Accelerator Award. The mission of The Lewis Prize is to partner with leaders who create positive change by investing in young people through music.  Additional support for StitchCast Studio and Story Stitchers youth programs was provided by the Spirit of St. Louis Women's Fund, City of St. Louis Youth at Risk Crime Prevention grant of 2022, Lush Corporation's The Charity Pot, Equity Impact from Creative Reaction Lab and the Bezos Family Foundation, and the Arts & Education Council. Saint Louis Story Stitchers is supported by Kranzberg Arts Foundation as a resident organization. Saint Louis Story Stitchers' StitchCast Studio LIVE! is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. On the web at arts dot gov.

In this week's episode of StitchCast Studio, youth sit down with DJ Mr. Wes to discuss the art of the DJ. DJ Wes starting DJ-ing in the neighborhood on records and is known today throughout St. Louis as a senior master of the art form. Recorded live at Central Stage, St. Louis, Missouri, on July 16, 2022.   Pick the City UP Art Interlude To The Prairie!  KP Dennis, Ntegrity and Troy Anthony All rights reserved, Saint Louis Story Stitchers, 2018    Story Stitchers is supported in part by The Lewis Prize for Music's 2021 Accelerator Award. The mission of The Lewis Prize is to partner with leaders who create positive change by investing in young people through music.  Additional support for StitchCast Studio and Story Stitchers youth programs was provided by the Spirit of St. Louis Women's Fund, City of St. Louis Youth at Risk Crime Prevention grant of 2022, Lush Corporation's The Charity Pot, Equity Impact from Creative Reaction Lab and the Bezos Family Foundation, and the Arts & Education Council. Saint Louis Story Stitchers is supported by Kranzberg Arts Foundation as a resident organization. Saint Louis Story Stitchers' StitchCast Studio LIVE! is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. On the web at arts dot gov.  

In this week's episode of StitchCast Studio, youth leaders sit down to have a conversation about men and mental health with BlueBeatz, a teaching artist and mentor at Saint Louis Story Stitchers.​​  Recorded live at Stitchers Storefront Studio, St. Louis, Missouri, on July 21, 2022.   Pick the City UP Art Interlude Prairie Therapy All rights reserved, Saint Louis Story Stitchers, 2019    Story Stitchers is supported in part by The Lewis Prize for Music's 2021 Accelerator Award. The mission of The Lewis Prize is to partner with leaders who create positive change by investing in young people through music.  Additional support for StitchCast Studio and Story Stitchers youth programs was provided by the Spirit of St. Louis Women's Fund, City of St. Louis Youth at Risk Crime Prevention grant of 2022, Lush Corporation's The Charity Pot, Equity Impact from Creative Reaction Lab and the Bezos Family Foundation, and the Arts & Education Council. Saint Louis Story Stitchers is supported by Kranzberg Arts Foundation as a resident organization. Saint Louis Story Stitchers' StitchCast Studio LIVE! is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. On the web at arts dot gov.

Our StitchCast sits down to recap the best moments from Season III in this special edition, Season III finale. Recorded live at Central Stage, St. Louis, Missouri, on June 24, 2022.   Pick the City UP Art Interlude Not Another One!  Taron Booker, Toryon Booker, Juwuan Dennis, KP Dennis  All rights reserved, Saint Louis Story Stitchers, 2016    Not Another One! is a signature piece from a larger project by the same name.  Learn more: https://storystitchers.org/   Story Stitchers is supported in part by The Lewis Prize for Music's 2021 Accelerator Award. The mission of The Lewis Prize is to partner with leaders who create positive change by investing in young people through music.  Additional support for StitchCast Studio and Story Stitchers youth programs was provided by the Spirit of St. Louis Women's Fund, City of St. Louis Youth at Risk Crime Prevention grant of 2022, Lush Corporation's The Charity Pot, Equity Impact from Creative Reaction Lab and the Bezos Family Foundation, and the Arts & Education Council. Saint Louis Story Stitchers is supported by Kranzberg Arts Foundation as a resident organization. Saint Louis Story Stitchers' StitchCast Studio LIVE! Season IV is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. On the web at arts dot gov.

In this week's StitchCast episode our panel sits down and  discusses a fixed mindset vs a growth mindset. Recorded live at Stitchers Storefront Studio in the Delmar Loop District, St. Louis, Missouri on July 8, 2022.   Pick the City UP Art Interlude Guitar Interlude, Alexis Burke, stitchers Youth Council Saint Louis Story Stitchers, 2022   Story Stitchers is supported in part by The Lewis Prize for Music's 2021 Accelerator Award. The mission of The Lewis Prize is to partner with leaders who create positive change by investing in young people through music.  Additional support for StitchCast Studio and Story Stitchers youth programs was provided by the Spirit of St. Louis Women's Fund, City of St. Louis Youth at Risk Crime Prevention grant of 2022, Lush Corporation's The Charity Pot, Equity Impact from Creative Reaction Lab and the Bezos Family Foundation, and the Arts & Education Council. Saint Louis Story Stitchers is supported by Kranzberg Arts Foundation as a resident organization. Saint Louis Story Stitchers' StitchCast Studio LIVE! is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. On the web at arts dot gov.

In part two of this two part episode, the StitchCast, which includes poets, dancers, and rappers, sits down and talks about art and why we practice it. Recorded live at Central Stage on April 29, 2022.   Pick the City UP Art Interlude Politician Chris Fields Published by Saint Louis Story Stitchers, 2019   Saint Louis Story Stitchers' StitchCast Studio LIVE! is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. On the web at arts dot gov. Story Stitchers is supported in part by The Lewis Prize for Music's 2021 Accelerator Award. The mission of The Lewis Prize is to partner with leaders who create positive change by investing in young people through music.  Additional support for StitchCast Studio and Story Stitchers youth programs was provided by the Spirit of St. Louis Women's Fund, City of St. Louis Youth at Risk Crime Prevention grant of 2022, Lush Corporation's The Charity Pot, Equity Impact from Creative Reaction Lab and the Bezos Family Foundation, and the Arts & Education Council. Saint Louis Story Stitchers is supported by Kranzberg Arts Foundation as a resident organization.

In part one of this two part episode, the StitchCast, which includes poets, dancers, and rappers, sits down and talks about art and why we practice it. Recorded live at Central Stage on April 29, 2022. Saint Louis Story Stitchers' StitchCast Studio LIVE! is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts. On the web at arts dot gov. Story Stitchers is supported in part by The Lewis Prize for Music's 2021 Accelerator Award. The mission of The Lewis Prize is to partner with leaders who create positive change by investing in young people through music.  Pick the City UP Art Interlude Sneaker Tact KP Dennis and Branden Lewis Published by Saint Louis Story Stitchers, 2020 Additional support for StitchCast Studio and Story Stitchers youth programs was provided by the Spirit of St. Louis Women's Fund, City of St. Louis Youth at Risk Crime Prevention grant of 2022, Lush Corporation's The Charity Pot, Equity Impact from Creative Reaction Lab and the Bezos Family Foundation, and the Arts & Education Council. Saint Louis Story Stitchers is supported by Kranzberg Arts Foundation as a resident organization.

We welcome one of our own to Mission Forward this week: inclusivity advocate and graphic designer, Eleni Stamoulis. She joined the Mission Partners team in 2017 and since that time, she has been involved in an extraordinary array of client and partner projects. In brand refreshes and rebrands, website redesigns, and all kinds of mission-critical campaign elements, her voice has become welcome counsel for ensuring that the projects that we take on at Mission Partners are as inclusive and accessible as possible. We talk about Eleni's journey as a designer and the traumatic brain injury that sent her on her path of growth and life-long learning. We talk about the power of design to transform ideas and beliefs. As she says, design isn't just about what's on the page. It's about everything around us that is designed to affect change. We're grateful that Eleni is using design to affect change for good. She is deep into the final stages of her own MFA, where her thesis is focused on the experiences of Black, Brown, and Latinx students in design education. As such, she's currently performing a research project that aims to understand the role race plays in the educational experience of graphic design students in the United States. Are you a design student or educator? Visit EleniStamoulis.com today and submit your response. She promises it won't take more than 10-15 minutes of your time. Click the link to learn more! Along the way, Eleni recommended some fantastic resources we'd like to amplify: The Black Experience in Graphic Design: A Diasporic Anthology of Design Practices & Experiences by Anne H. Berry on Kickstarter — The project has just reached its goal, but the resource will be incredible and we encourage support of the work! extra bold: a feminist, inclusive, non-racist, non-binary field guide for graphic designers — You can get it from the usual places, but buy from your local bookstore if you can!) Design Explorr — “DesignExplorr's goal is to create opportunities that allow underrepresented youth to participate in design activities.” Creative Reaction Lab — “Our mission is to educate, train, and challenge Black and Latinx youth to become leaders in designing healthy and racially equitable communities.”

We welcome one of our own to Mission Forward this week: inclusivity advocate and graphic designer, Eleni Stamoulis. She joined the Mission Partners team in 2017 and since that time, she has been involved in an extraordinary array of client and partner projects. In brand refreshes and rebrands, website redesigns, and all kinds of mission-critical campaign elements, her voice has become welcome counsel for ensuring that the projects that we take on at Mission Partners are as inclusive and accessible as possible.We talk about Eleni's journey as a designer and the traumatic brain injury that sent her on her path of growth and life-long learning. We talk about the power of design to transform ideas and beliefs. As she says, design isn't just about what's on the page. It's about everything around us that is designed to affect change. We're grateful that Eleni is using design to affect change for good. She is deep into the final stages of her own MFA, where her thesis is focused on the experiences of Black, Brown, and Latinx students in design education. As such, she's currently performing a research project that aims to understand the role race plays in the educational experience of graphic design students in the United States. Are you a design student or educator? Visit EleniStamoulis.com today and submit your response. She promises it won't take more than 10-15 minutes of your time. Click the link to learn more!Along the way, Eleni recommended some fantastic resources we'd like to amplify:The Black Experience in Graphic Design: A Diasporic Anthology of Design Practices & Experiences by Anne H. Berry on Kickstarter — The project has just reached its goal, but the resource will be incredible and we encourage support of the work!extra bold: a feminist, inclusive, non-racist, non-binary field guide for graphic designers — You can get it from the usual places, but buy from your local bookstore if you can!)Design Explorr — “DesignExplorr's goal is to create opportunities that allow underrepresented youth to participate in design activities.”Creative Reaction Lab — “Our mission is to educate, train, and challenge Black and Latinx youth to become leaders in designing healthy and racially equitable communities.”

Designer Antionette Carroll, born, raised, and based in St. Louis, Missouri, is a natural born leader who has been on a mission since day one. She's the founder of Creative Reaction Lab, a nonprofit educating and deploying youth to challenge racial and health inequities impacting Black and Latinx populations. Antionette co-pioneered an award-winning form of creative problem solving called Equity-Centered Community Design and in doing so has received several recognitions and awards including being named an ADL and Aspen Institute Civil Society Fellow, TED Fellow, SXSW Community Service Honoree, and Essence Magazine Woke 100, among many others. She's also a classic Taurus, the mother of twins, a fan of Mexican food, and a proud granddaughter! Images and more from our guest!Please say Hi on social! Twitter, Instagram and Facebook - @CleverPodcast, @amydevers, @designmilkIf you enjoy Clever we could use your support! Please consider leaving a review, making a donation, becoming a sponsor, or introducing us to your friends! We love and appreciate you!Clever is hosted by Amy Devers and produced by 2VDE Media, with editing by Rich Stroffolino, production assistance from Laura Jaramillo and Anouchka Stephan, and music by El Ten Eleven.Clever is proudly distributed by Design Milk. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/clever. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

02:51 - Jennifer's Superpower: Kindness & Empathy * Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-complex-ptsd-2797491) (C-PTSD) 07:37 - Equitable Design and Inclusive Design * Section 508 (https://www.section508.gov/) Compliance * Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (https://www.w3.org/WAI/standards-guidelines/wcag/) (WCAG) * HmntyCentrd (https://hmntycntrd.com/) * Creative Reaction Lab (https://www.creativereactionlab.com/) 15:43 - Biases and Prejudices * Self-Awareness * Daniel Kahneman's System 1 & System 2 Thinking (https://www.marketingsociety.com/think-piece/system-1-and-system-2-thinking) * Jennifer Strickland: “You're Killing Your Users!” (https://vimeo.com/506548868) 22:57 - So...What do we do? How do we get people to care? * Caring About People Who Aren't You * Listening * Using Web Standards and Prioritizing Web Accessibility * Designing with Web Standards by Jeffrey Zeldman (https://www.amazon.com/Designing-Web-Standards-Jeffrey-Zeldman/dp/0321616952) * Bulletproof Web Design by Dan Cederholm (https://www.amazon.com/Bulletproof-Web-Design-flexibility-protecting/dp/0321509021) * Progressive Enhancement * Casey's Cheat Sheet (https://moritzgiessmann.de/accessibility-cheatsheet/) * Jennifer Strickland: “Ohana for Digital Service Design” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfsZlkm59BE) * Self-Care 33:22 - How Ego Plays Into These Things * Actions Impact Others * For, With, and By * Indi Young (https://indiyoung.com/) 44:05 - Empathy and Accessibility * Testability/Writing Tests * Screen Readers * TalkBack (https://support.google.com/accessibility/android/answer/6283677?hl=en) * Microsoft Narrator (https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/complete-guide-to-narrator-e4397a0d-ef4f-b386-d8ae-c172f109bdb1) * NVDA (https://www.nvaccess.org/about-nvda/) * Jaws (https://www.freedomscientific.com/products/software/jaws/) * Heydon Pickering (https://twitter.com/heydonworks/status/969520320754438144) Reflections: Casey: Animals can have cognitive disabilities too. Damien: Equitable design initiatives and destroying the tenants of white supremacy. Jennifer: Rest is key. This episode was brought to you by @therubyrep (https://twitter.com/therubyrep) of DevReps, LLC (http://www.devreps.com/). To pledge your support and to join our awesome Slack community, visit patreon.com/greaterthancode (https://www.patreon.com/greaterthancode) To make a one-time donation so that we can continue to bring you more content and transcripts like this, please do so at paypal.me/devreps (https://www.paypal.me/devreps). You will also get an invitation to our Slack community this way as well. Transcript: MANDO: Hello, friends! Welcome to Greater Than Code, Episode number 243. My name is Mando Escamilla and I'm here with my wonderful friend, Damien Burke. DAMIEN: Thank you, Mando, and I am here with our wonderful friend, Casey Watts. CASEY: Hi, I'm Casey, and we're all here today with Jennifer Strickland. With more than 25 years of experience across the product lifecycle, Jennifer aims to ensure no one is excluded from products and services. She first heard of Ohana in Disney's Lilo & Stitch, “Ohana means family. Family means no one gets left behind, or forgotten.” People don't know what they don't know and are often unaware of the corners they cut that exclude people. Empathy, compassion, and humility are vital to communication about these issues. That's Jennifer focus in equitable design initiatives. Welcome, Jennifer! JENNIFER: Hi! DAMIEN: You're welcome. MANDO: Hi, Jennifer. So glad you're here. JENNIFER: I'm so intrigued. [laughs] And I'm like 243 and this is the first I'm hearing of it?! DAMIEN: Or you can go back and listen to them all. MANDO: Yeah. CASEY: That must be 5, almost 6 years? JENNIFER: Do you have transcripts of them all? CASEY: Yes. JENNIFER: Great! MANDO: Yeah. I think we do. I think they're all transcribed now. JENNIFER: I'm one of those people [chuckles] that prefers to read things than listen. DAMIEN: I can relate to that. CASEY: I really enjoy Coursera courses. They have this interface where you can listen, watch the video, and there's a transcript that moves and highlights sentence by sentence. I want that for everything. MANDO: Oh, yeah. That's fantastic. It's like closed captioning [laughs] for your audio as well. JENNIFER: You can also choose the speed, which I appreciate. I generally want to speed things up, which yes, now that I'm getting older, I have to realize life is worth slowing down for. But when you're in a life where survival is what you're focused on, because you have a bunch of things that are slowing your roll and survival is the first thing in your mind, you tend to take all the jobs, work all the jobs, do all of the things because it's how you get out of poverty, or whatever your thing is. So I've realized how much I've multitasked and worked and worked and worked and I'm realizing that there is a part of the equality is lost there, but we don't all have the privilege of slowing down. DAMIEN: I can relate to that, too. So I believe every one of our past 243 episodes, we asked our guests the same question. You should know this is coming. Jennifer, what is your superpower and how did you acquire it? JENNIFER: I don't know for sure. People have told me that I'm the kindest person they've ever met, people have said I'm the most empathetic person I've ever met, and I'm willing to bet that they're the same thing. To the people, they just see them differently. I acquired being empathetic and kind because of my dysfunction in my invisible disabilities. I have complex post-traumatic stress disorder from childhood trauma and then repeated life trauma, and the way it manifests itself is trying to anticipate other people's needs, emotions, moods, and all of that and not make people mad. So that's a negative with a golden edge. Life is full of shit; how you respond to it shows who you are and rather than molesting kids, or hurting people, I chose to do what I could to make sure that no one else goes through that and also, to try to minimize it coming at me anymore, too. [chuckles] But there's positive ways of doing it. You don't have to be like the people who were crappy to you and the same goes like, you're in D.C.? Man, they're terrible drivers and it's like, [laughter] everybody's taking their bad day and putting it out on the people they encounter, whether it's in the store, or on the roads. I was like, “Don't do that.” Like, how did it feel when your boss treated you like you were garbage, why would you treat anyone else like garbage? Be the change, so to speak. But we're all where we are and like I said in my bio, “You don't know what you don't know.” I realized earlier this week that it actually comes from Donald Rumsfeld who said, “Unknown unknowns.” I'm like, “Oh my God. Oh my God.” MANDO: You can find good in lots of places, right? [laughs] JENNIFER: If you choose to. MANDO: Absolutely. Yeah. JENNIFER: Look at, what's come out of the horror last year. We talk about shit that we didn't use to talk about. Yeah, it's more exhausting when lots of people, but I think in the long run, it will help move us in the right direction. I hope. MANDO: Yeah. That's absolutely the hope, isn't it? JENNIFER: We don't know what we don't know at this time. My sister was volunteering at the zoo and she worked in the Ape House, which I was super jealous of. There's an orangutan there named Lucy who I love and Lucy loves bags, pouches, and lipstick. So I brought a backpack with a pouch and some old lipstick in it and I asked a volunteer if I could draw on the glass. They gave me permission so I made big motions as I opened the backpack and I opened the pouch and you see Lucy and her eyes are like, she's starting to side-eye me like something's going on. And then she runs over and hops up full-time with her toes on the window cell and she's like right up there. So I'm drawing on the glass with the lipstick and she's loving it, reaches her hand behind, poops into her hand, takes the poop and repeats this little actions on the glass. MANDO: [laughs] Which is amazing. It's hilarious so that's amazing. JENNIFER: It's fantastic. I just think she's the bomb. My sister would always send pictures and tell me about what Lucy got into and stuff. Lucy lived with people who would dress her in people clothing and so, she's the only one of the orangutans that didn't grow up only around orangutans so the other orangutans exclude her and treat her like she's a weirdo and she's also the one who likes to wear clothes. Like my sister gave her an FBI t-shirt so she wears the FBI t-shirt and things like that. She's special in my heart. Like I love the Lucy with all of it. DAMIEN: Well, that's a pretty good display of your super empathetic superpower there. [laughter] And it sounds like it might be really also related to the equitable design initiatives? JENNIFER: Yeah. So I'm really grateful. I currently work at a place that although one would think that it would be a big, scary place because of some of the work that we do. I've found more people who know what equity is and care about what equity is. The place I worked before, I talked about inclusive design because that's everywhere else I've worked, it's common that that's what you're doing these days. But they told me, “Don't say that word, it's activism,” and I was stunned. And then I'm like, “It's all in GSA documents here,” and they were like, “Oh,” and they were the ones that were really bad about like prioritizing accessibility and meeting section 508 compliance and just moving it off to put those issues in the backlog. The client's happy, no one's complained, they think we're doing great work. It's like, you're brushing it all under the rug and you're telling them what you've done and you're dealing with people who don't know what section 508 is either because who does? Very few people really know what it means to be section 508 compliant because it's this mystery container. What is in this? What is this? What is this thing? DAMIEN: So for our listeners who don't know, can you tell us a bit what section 508 is? JENNIFER: Sure. So section 508 means that anything paid for with federal funds must be section 508 compliant, which means it must meet WCAG 2.0 success criteria and WCAG is Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. If you're ever looking for some really complicated, dense, hard to understand reading, I recommend opening up the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. I think the people that are on the working groups with me would probably agree and that's what we're all working towards trying to improve them. But I think that they make the job harder. So rather than just pointing at them and complaining like a lot of people do on Twitter, or deciding “I'm going to create a business and make money off of making this clear for people,” I decided instead to join and try to make it better. So the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines are based on Perceivable, Operable, Understandable, and Robust, POUR. Pour like this, not poor like me. [laughs] So there's just a bunch of accessibility criteria that you have to meet to make your work section 508 compliant. It's so hard to read and so hard to understand that I feel for everybody like of course, you don't know what section 508 compliance is. It's really, really hard to read. But if somebody who is an accessibility specialist tells you and writes up an issue ticket, you don't argue with them. You don't say, “This isn't a thing,” you say, “Okay, how soon do I need to fix it?” and you listen to them, but that's not what I experienced previously. Where I am now, it's amazing. In the place I worked before here, like just the contracting, they welcomed everything I said to them regarding accessibility. So I just clearly worked at a contractor that was doing a lot of lip service and not talking the talk, not walking the talk, sorry. [laughs] Super frustrating. Because accessibility is only a piece of it. I am older probably than anybody on this call and I'm a woman working in tech and I identify as non-binary. The arguments I've had about they/them all my life have been stupid, but I'm just like, “Why do I have to be female?” It's just, why do I have to be one, or the other? Anyway, everyone has always argued with me so I'm so grateful for the young ones now for pushing all that. I'm Black, Native, Mexican, and white all smushed together and my grandma wouldn't let me in the house because apparently my father was too dark so therefore, I'm too dark. Hello? Look at this! [laughter] Currently, some people are big on the one drop rule and I always say to people, “If you hate me, or want to exclude me so much because somewhere in me you know there is this and how do you feel about so-and-so? I'm done with you and you are bad people and we've got to fight this stupidity.” I have also invisible disabilities. So I'm full of all these intersectional things of exclusion. I personally experience a lot of it and then I have the empathy so I'm always feeling fuzzy people who are excluded. So what am I supposed to do with the fact that I'm smart, relatively able-bodied, and have privilege of being lighter skin so I can be a really good Trojan horse? I have to be an advocate like, what else am I supposed to do with my life? Be a privileged piece of poop that just wants to get rich and famous, like a lot of people in tech? Nope. And I don't want to be virtue signaling and savior complex either and that's where equitable design has been a wonderful thing to learn more about. HmntyCntrd.com and Creative Reaction Lab out in Missouri, those are two places where people can do a lot of learning about equity and truly inclusion, and challenging the tenants of white supremacy in our working ways. I'm still trying to find better ways of saying the tenants of white supremacy because if you say that in the workplace, that sounds real bad, especially a few months back before when someone else was in office. When you say the tenants of white supremacy in the workplace, people are going to get a little rankled because that's not stuff we talk about in the workplace. DAMIEN: Well, it's not just the workplace. JENNIFER: Ah, yes. DAMIEN: They don't like that at sports bars either. Ask me how I know. MANDO: No, they sure don't. [laughter] JENNIFER: We should go to sports bars together. [laughs] Except I'm too scared to go to them right now unless they're outdoors. But when we talk to people about the actual individual tenants about power hoarding, perfectionism, worship of the written word, and things like that, people can really relate and then you watch their faces and they go, “Yeah, I do feel put my place by these things and prevented from succeeding, progressing, all of these things.” These are things that we've all been ingrained to believe are the way we evaluate what's good and what's bad. But we don't have to. We can talk about this stuff when we can reject those things and replace them with other things. But I'm going to be spending the rest of my life trying to dismantle my biases. I'm okay with my prejudices because even since I was a kid, I recognized that we were all prejudice and it's okay. It's our knee jerk first assumption, but you always have to keep an open mind, but that prejudice is there to protect you, but you always have to question it and go, “What is that prejudice? Is that bullshit? Is it right? Is it wrong?” And always looking at yourself, it's always doing that what you call self-awareness stuff, and always be expanding it, changing it, and moving it. But prejudice? Prejudice has a place to protect, speaking as someone who's had guns in her face, knives through her throat, and various other yucky things, I know that when I told myself, “Oh, you're being prejudiced, push yourself out into that vulnerable feeling,” things didn't go very well. So instead, recognize “Okay, what are you thinking in this moment about this situation? Okay, how can you proceed and keep an open mind while being self-protective?” DAMIEN: Yeah, it sounds like you're talking about Daniel Kahneman's System 1 and System 2 Thinking. We have these instinctive reactions to things and a lot of them are learned—I think they're all learned actually. But they're instinctive and they're not things we decide consciously. They're there to protect us because they're way faster, way more efficient than most of what we are as humans as thinking and enacting beings. But then we also have our rational mind where we can use to examine those things and so, it's important to utilize both. It's also important to know where your instinctive responses are harmful and how to modify them so that they're not harmful. And that is the word. JENNIFER: I've never heard of it. Thanks for putting that in there. Power accretion principles is that it? CASEY: Oh, that's something else. JENNIFER: Oh. CASEY: Type 1 and type 2 thinking. JENNIFER: But I know with a lot of my therapy work as a trauma survivor, I have to evaluate a lot of what I think and how I react to things to change them to respond things. But there are parts of having CPTSD that I am not going to be able to do that, too. Like they're things where for example, in that old workplace where there was just this constant invalidation and dismissal of the work, which was very triggering as a rape survivor/incest survivor, that I feel really bad and it made me feel really unsafe all the time. So I felt very emotional in the moment and so, I'd have to breathe through my nose, breathe out to my mouth, feel my tummy, made sure I can feel myself breathing deeply, and try to calmly explain the dire consequences of some of these decisions. People tend to think that the design and development decisions we make when we're building for the web, it's no big deal if you screw it up. It's not like an architect making a mistake in a building and the building falls down. But when you make a mistake, that means a medical locator application doesn't load for an entire minute on a slow 3G connection—when your audience is people who are financially challenged and therefore, unlikely to have always high-speed, or new devices—you are making a design decision that is literally killing people. When you make a design decision, or development decision not to QA your work on mobile, tablet, and desktop, and somebody else has to find out that your Contact Us options don't open on mobile so people in crisis can't reach your crisis line. People are dying. I'm not exaggerating. I have a talk I give called You're Killing Your Users and it got rejected from this conference and one of the reviewers wrote, “The title is sensationalism. No one dies from our decision,” and I was just like, “Oh my God, oh my God.” MANDO: [laughs] Like, that's the point. JENNIFER: What a privileged life you live. What a wonderfully privileged life! There's a difference between actions and thoughts and it's okay for me to think, “I really hope you fall a flight of stairs and wind up with a disability and leave the things that you're now trying to put kibosh on.” But that's not me saying, “I'm going to go push you down a flight of stairs,” or that I really do wish that on someone. It's emotional venting, like how could you possibly close yourself off to even listening to this stuff? That's the thing that like, how do we get to a point in tech where so many people in tech act like the bad stereotype of surgeons who have this God complex, that there are particular entities working in government tech right now that are told, “You're going to save government from itself. You've got the answers. You are the ones that are going to help government shift and make things better for the citizen, or the people that use it.” But the people that they hire don't know what they don't know and they keep doing really horrible things. Like, they don't follow the rules, they don't take the time to learn the rules and so, they put user personal identifying information, personal health information on the public server without realizing it that's a no-no and then it has to be wiped, but it can never really fully be wiped. And then they make decisions like, “Oh, well now we're only worried about the stuff that's public facing. We're not worried about the stuff that's internally facing.” Even though, the internally facing people are all some of the vulnerable people that we're serving. I'm neutralizing a lot of what I'm talking about. [chuckles] MANDO: Of course. [laughter] DAMIEN: Well, convinced me of the problems. It was an easy sell for me. Now, what do we do? JENNIFER: The first thing we do is we all give a fuck about other people. That's the big thing, right? Like, how do I convince you that you should care about people who aren't you? MANDO: Yeah. CASEY: I always think about the spectrum of caring. I don't have a good word for it, but there are active and passive supporters—and you can be vocal, or quiet—like loud, or quiet. I want more people to be going around the circle of it so if they're vocally opposed, just be quiet, quietly opposed, maybe be quietly in support, and if you're quietly in support, maybe speak up about it. I want to nudge people along around this, the four quadrants. A lot of people only focus on getting people who passively care to be more vocal about it. That's a big one. That's a big transition. But I also like to focus on the other two transitions; getting a lot of people to be quiet about a thing that as opposed. Anyway, everywhere along that process is useful. JENNIFER: I think it's important to hear the people who were opposed because otherwise, how are we ever going to help understand and how are we going to understand if maybe where we've got a big blind spot? Like, we have to talk about this stuff in a way that's thoughtful. I come from a place in tech where in the late 90s, I was like, “I want to move from doing print to onscreen and printing environmental to that because it looks like a lot of stuff has gone to this web thing.” I picked up Jeffrey Zeldman's Designing with Web Standards and Dan Cederholm's Bulletproof Web Design and all of them talk about using web standards and web standards means that you prioritize accessibility from the beginning. So the first thing you build is just HTML tagging your content and everyone can use it. It's not going to be fancy, but it's going to be completely usable. And then you layer things on through progressive enhancement to improve the experience for people with fancy phones, or whatever. I don't know why, but that's not how everybody's coming into doing digital work. They're coming in through React out of the box, thinking that React out of the box is – and it's like nope, you have to build in the framework because nobody put the framework in React. React is just a bunch of hinges and loops, but you have to put the quality wood in and the quality glass panes and the handles that everybody can use. I'm not sure if that analogy is even going to work. But one of the things I realized talking with colleagues today is I tend to jump to three steps in when I really need to go back, start at the beginning, and say, “Here are the terms. This is what section 508 is. This is what accessibility is. This is what A11Y is. This is WCAG, this is how it's pronounced, this is what it means, and this is the history of it.” I think understanding history of section 508 and what WCAG is also vital in the first version of WCAG section 508, it adopted part of what was WCAG 1.0, but it wasn't like a one to one for 1.0, it was just some of it and then it updated in 2017, or 2018, I forget. Without my cheat sheet, I can't remember this stuff. Like I got other things to keep in my brain. CASEY: I just pulled up my favorite cheat sheet and I put it in the chat sidebar here. JENNIFER: Oh, thank you. It's in my slides for Ohana for Digital Service Design that I gave at WX Summit and I think I also gave it recently in another thing. Oh, UXPA DC. But the thing is, the changes only recently happened where it went to WCAG 2.0 was 2018, I think it got updated. So all those people that were resisting me in 2018, 2019, 2020 likely never realized that there was a refresh that they need to pay attention to and I kept trying to like say, “No, you don't understand, section 508 means more now.” Technically, the access board that defines what section 508 is talking about moving it to 2.1, or 2.2 and those include these things. So we should get ahead of the ball, ahead of the curve, or whatever you want to call it and we should be doing 2.1 and 2.2 and even beyond thinking about compliance and that sort of stuff. The reason we want to do human beings is that 2.1 and 2.2 are for people who are cognitively fatigued and I don't think there's anyone who's been through the pandemic who is not cognitively fatigued. If you are, you are just a robot. I don't know. I don't know who could not be not cognitive fatigue. And then the other people that also helps are mobile users. So if you look at any site, look at their usage stats, everything moving up and up and up in mobile devices. There's some people who don't have computers that they only have phones. So it just seems silly not to be supporting those folks. But we need, I don't know. I need to think more about how to get there, how to be more effective in helping people care, how to be more effective in teaching people. One of the big pieces I've learned in the last six months is the first step is self-care—sleep, exercise, eat, or maybe those two need to be back and forth. I haven't decided yet because I'm still trying to get the sleep workout. Before I moved to D.C., I was a runner, hiker, I had a sit spot at the local pond where I would hang out with the fishes and the turtles and the frogs and the birds and here, I overlook the Pentagon and there's swarms of helicopters. I grow lots of green things to put between me and it, but it's hard. The running is stuck because I don't feel safe and things like that. I live in an antiseptic neighborhood intentionally because I knew every time I went into D.C. and I saw what I see, I lose hope because I can't not care. It kills me that I have to walk by people who clearly need – this is a messed up world. We talk about the developing world as the place where people are dying on the side of the road. Do you have blinders on like, it's happening here? I don't know what to do. I care too much. So what do we do? What do you think? DAMIEN: Well, I think you have a hint. You've worked at places that are really resistant to accessibility and accessibility to improvements, and you've worked at some that are very welcoming and eager to implement them. So what were the differences? What do you think was the source of that dichotomy? JENNIFER: I think at the place I worked after I left the hellhole; the product owner was an Asian woman and the other designer was from India. Whereas, before the other place was a white woman and a white man and another white man who was in charge. And then the place I work now, it's a lot of people who are very neurodiverse. I work at MITRE, which is an FFRDC, which is a Federally Funded Research and Development Center. It's full of lots of smart people who are very bookish. It's funny when I was a little kid, I was in the gifted and talented kids and so, they would put us into these class sessions where we were to brainstorm and I love brainstorming. I love imagining things. I remember thinking, “I want to work in a think tank and just all I do all the time is brainstorm and we'd figure out a way to use some of those things!” And I feel a little bit like I'm there now, which is cool and they treat one another really well at MITRE, which is nice. Not to say it's perfect there. Nowhere is perfect. But compared to a lot of places, it's better. I think it's the people are taking the time to listen, taking the time to ask questions. The people I work with don't have a lot of ego, generally. At least not the ones I'm working with. I hear that they do exist there, but I haven't run into many of them. Whereas, the other place, there was a lot of virtue signaling and a lot of savior complex. Actually, very little savior conflicts. They didn't really care about saving anyone, sorry. Snark! [laughs] DAMIEN: Can you tell us a little more about ego and how ego plays into these things? JENNIFER: How do you think ego plays into these things? DAMIEN: Well, I think it causes people to one up and turn questions around it on me, that's one way. Ego means a lot of things to a lot of different people, which is why I asked the question. I think it was introduced to English by Freud and I don't want to use a Freudian theory for anything ever. [laughter] And then when I talk to people about death of the ego and [inaudible] and all of these things, it seems really unpleasant. People like their self-identity, people like being themselves, and they don't want to stop being themselves. So I'm not sure how that's related to what you were saying. CASEY: The way I'm hearing you use ego here sounds like self-centered, thinking about your own perspective, not taking the time and effort and energy to think about other people's perspectives. And if you don't have a diverse set of experiences to lean on your own, you're missing out on a lot. JENNIFER: Yeah. I tend to think about, I guess, it's my dysfunction. Once again, it's like, how do my actions impact others? Why are other people thinking about how their actions impact others? When you're out in public and you've got to cut the cheese, are you going to do it when there are a lot of people around? Are you going to take a stinky deuce in a public bathroom that you know other people in there? If you think about the community around you, you would go find a private one if you cared at all. But most people don't care and they think, “I do what I got to do.” I just think we need to think a little bit more about the consequences of our actions and I tweeted yesterday, or this morning about how – oh, it was yesterday. I was watching TV and a new, one of those food delivery commercials came on. This one, they send you a stove, you get a little oven, and you cook all of their meals in this little throwaway dishes. So you have no dishes, nothing. How much are we going to just keep creating crap? When you think about all of this takeout and delivery, there's just so much trash we generate. We should be taxing the bleep out of companies that make these sorts of things like, Amazon should have the bleep taxed out of it because of all the cardboard and I'm just as guilty because I ordered the thing and the box of staples arrives in a box. It has a plastic bubble wrap all around it. Like it's just a box at $2.50 staples, but I couldn't be bothered to go – I don't know if they have them at Walgreens. Like for real, I don't know. We need to do better. We need to think about the consequences of these decisions and not just do it like, that's the thing that tech has been doing is let's make an MVP and see if it has wheels. Let's make a prototype, but do the thing. Okay, let's do the thing. Oh, it's got wheels. Oh, it's growing, it's growing, it's growing, it's growing. Who cares about the consequences of all of it? Who cares? Your kids, your grandkids someday maybe will when the world is gone. We talk about climate change. We talk about 120-degree temperatures in Seattle and Portland, the ocean on fire, the beaches are eroding, like the ice cap—most of the Arctic is having a 100 and some odd degree temperature day. Like we are screwing it up and our legislation isn't keeping pace with the advances in technology that are just drawing things. Where are the people who care in the cycle and how are they interrupting the VCs who just want to like be the next big tech? Everybody wants to be the next Zuckerberg, or Jack, or Bezos, or Gates, or whatever, and nobody has to deal with the consequences of their actions and their consequences of those design and development decisions. That's where I think it's ego, it's self-centeredness, it's wanting to be famous, it's wanting to be rich instead of really, truly wanting to make the world a better place. I know my definition of better. We've got four different visions of what better is going to be and that's hard work. Maybe it is easier to just focus on getting famous and getting rich than it is on doing the hard work of taking four different visions of what good is and trying to find the way forward. DAMIEN: Making the world a better place. The world will be a better place when I'm rich and famous. But that also means – and that's the truth. [laughter] But what else you said was being empathetic and having a diverse – well, marginalized people in charge where you can see that that's why the impact that things are having on other people. It's not just about me being rich and famous, but it's also about things being better for other people, too. JENNIFER: Yeah. I don't necessarily mean marginalized people have to be in charge. DAMIEN: Right. I took that jump based on your description of the places you worked for. I should have specified that. I wasn't clear enough. JENNIFER: I do have to say that in general, when I've worked for people who aren't the status quo, more often than not, they bring a compassionate, empathetic approach. Not always. There have been some that are just clearly driven and power hungry, and I can't fault them either because it's got to take a lot to come up from wherever and fight through the dog-eat-dog world. But in the project work, there's the for, with and by. The general ways that we redesign and build things for people, then the next piece is we design and build things with the people that we're serving, but the newer way of doing things is that we don't design and build the things, the people that we're serving design the things and tell us what they want to design, and then we figure out how to make sure that it's built the way they tell us to. That goes against the Steve Jobs approach where Steve Jobs said people don't know what they want sort of thing. Wasn't that was he said? DAMIEN: Yeah. Well, there was Henry Ford who said, “If you ask people what they wanted, they would've said faster horses.” JENNIFER: Right. D And Steve Jobs kind of did the same thing. JENNIFER: Right. And we, as designers, have to be able to work with that and pull that out and suss it out and make sure that we translate it into something useful and then iterate with to make sure that we get it. Like when I do research, listening sessions with folks, I have to use my experience doing this work to know what are the – like, Indi Young's inner thinking, reactions, and guiding principles. Those are the things that will help guide you on what people are really wanting and needing and what their purpose is. So you make sure that whatever your understanding is closer to what they're really saying, because they don't know what can be built. They don't know what goes on, but they do know what their purpose is and what they need. Maybe they don't even know what they need, but they do know what their purpose is, or you keep validating things. CASEY: I want to amplify, you said Indi Young. I read a lot of her work and she just says so many things that I wish someone would say, and she's been saying them for a while. I just didn't know about her. Indi Young. JENNIFER: It's I-N-D-I and Y-O-U-N-G. I am so grateful that I got to take her courses. I paid for them all myself, except for one class—I let that other place pay for one through my continuing ed, but I wanted to do it so badly that I paid for all myself. The same thing with all the Creative Reaction Lab and HmntyCntrd stuff; I paid for those out of my own money that probably could have gone to a vacation, [chuckles] or buying a car, or something. But contributing to our society in a responsible and productive way, figuring out how to get my language framework better. Like you said earlier, Damien, I'm really good at pointing out what the problems are. I worry about figuring out how we solve them, because I don't really have the ego to think that I know what the answer is, but I'm very interested in working with others to figure out how we solve them. I have some ideas, but how do you tell a React developer that you really have to learn HTML, you have to learn schematic HTML. That's like learning the alphabet. I don't understand. CASEY: Well, I have some ideas around that. Amber is my go-to framework and they have accessibility baked into the introduction tutorial series. They have like 13 condoned add-ons that do accessibility related things. At the conference, there's always a whole bunch of accessibility tracks. Amber is like happy path accessibility right front and center. React probably has things like that. We could have React's onboarding docs grow in that direction, that would be great, and have more React add-ons to do that that are condoned and supported by the community could have the same path. And it could probably even use a lot of the same core code even. The same principles apply. JENNIFER: If you want to work together and come up with some stuff to go to React conferences, or work with the React team, or whatever. 
CASEY: Sounds fun. DAMIEN: Well, one of the things you talked about the way you described it and made it sound like empathy was so much of the core of it. In order to care about accessibility, you have to empathize with people who need that functionality. You have to empathize with people who are on 3G flip phones. That's not a thing, is it? [laughs] But nonetheless, empathizing. JENNIFER: A flat screen phone, a smartphone looking thing and it's still – if anyone's on a slow 3G, it's still going to be a miserable experience. DAMIEN: Yeah, 3G with a 5-year-old Android OS. JENNIFER: But I don't think it's necessarily that people have to empathize. In an ideal world would, but maybe they could be motivated by other things like fast. Like, do you want to fast cumulative layout shift? Do you want like a great core vitals Google score? Do you want a great Google Lighthouse score? Do you want the clear Axe DevTools scan? Like when I get a 100% little person zooming in a wheelchair screen instead of issues found. Especially if I do it the first time and like, I hadn't been scanning all along and I just go to check it for the first time and it's clean, I'm like, “Yes!” [laughs] CASEY: Automation helps a lot. JENNIFER: Yeah. CASEY: When I worked at USCIS, I don't know what this meant, but they said we cannot automate these tests. I think we can and they didn't do it yet, but I've always been of baffled. I think half of it, you can automate tests around and we had none at the time. JENNIFER: Yeah, you catch 30 to 50% of the accessibility issues via the Axe rule set and JSX Alley and all that. You can catch 30 to 50. CASEY: Sounds great. JENNIFER: That's still better than catching none of them. Still not great, but it's still better than nothing. They're not here to tell us why they can't, but adding things into your end-to-end test shouldn't be that hard if you know how to write tests. I don't personally know how to write tests. I want to. I don't know. Like, I have to choose which thing am I going to work on? I'm working on an acquisition project, defining the requirements and the scope and the red tape of what a contract will be and it's such foreign territory for me. There's a lot of pieces there that I never ever thought I would be dealing with and my head hurts all the time. I feel stupid all the time, but that's okay. If you're not doing something you haven't done before, maybe you're not learning, it's growing. I'm growing. I'm definitely growing, but in different ways and I miss the code thing of I have a to-do list where I really want to get good at Docker, now I want to learn few, things like that and I want to get back to learning Python because Python, I think is super cool. CASEY: There's one thing I wanted to mention earlier that I just remembered. One thing that was eye-opening to me for accessibility concerns is when I heard that screen reader has existed, which was several years into my programming career. I didn't know they were a thing at all. I think it's more common now that people know about them today than 10, 15 years ago. But I still haven't seen someone use a screen reader and that would be really important for me as a developer. I'm not developing software lately either so I'm not really coding that. But if anyone hasn't, you should use a screen reader on your computer if you're developing software that might have to be used by one. JENNIFER: So everyone on a Mac has voiceover. Everyone on an iPhone has voiceover. It's really hard on the iPhone, I feel like I can't, oh, it's really hard. I've heard great things about Talkback on Android. And then on Windows, newer versions have Microsoft Narrator, which is a built-in screen reader. You can also download NVDA for free and install it. It depends on how much money you want to spend. There a bunch of different ways to get Jaws, do Jaws, too. Chrome has Chromebox so you can get another screen reader that way. CASEY: So many options. It's kind of overwhelming. If I had to recommend one for a Windows user and one for a Mac user, would you recommend the built-in ones just to start with, to play with something? JENNIFER: So everywhere I've tested, whether it was at the financial institution, or the insurance place, or the government place, we always had to test with Jaws, NVDA, and voiceover. I test with voiceover because it's what I have on my machine, because I'm usually working on a Mac. But the way I look at the screen reader is the number of people who are using screen readers is significantly fewer than the number of people with cognitive considerations. So I try to use good semantic markup, basic web standards so that things will work; things have always been pretty great in screen readers because of that. I try to keep my code from being too complicated, or my UI is from being complicated, which might do some visual designers seem somewhat boring to some of them. [chuckles] CASEY: Do you ever turn off CSS for the test? JENNIFER: Yes, and if it makes sense that way, then I know I'm doing it right and is it still usable without JavaScript. Better yet, Heydon Pickering's way of like, it's not usable unless you turn off the JavaScript, that was fabulous. I pissed off so many people. But to me, I try to focus on other things like how clear is, how clean is it? Can I tab through the whole UI? Can I operate it with just a keyboard? Your keyboard is your best assistive tech tester. You don't skip. If you can tap through anything without getting stuck, excellent. If you don't skip over nav items. CASEY: My biggest pet peeve is when websites don't work when you zoom in, because all of my devices I zoom in not because my vision is bad, but because for my posture. I want to be able to see my screen from a far distance and not lean in and craning my neck over laptop and my phone, both and a lot of websites break. JENNIFER: Yeah. CASEY: You zoom in the text at all, you can't read anything. JENNIFER: Yeah. At the one place I worked before, we required two steps of zoom in and two steps of zoom out, and it still had to be functional. I don't see that in most places; they don't bother to say things like that. CASEY: Yeah. JENNIFER: At the government, too – CASEY: I wonder how common it is if people do that. I do it so I think it's very common, but I don't know the right. [laughter] JENNIFER: But that's how the world is, right? I can tell you that once you hit this old age and your eyes start to turn against you and things are too small, or too light, you suddenly understand the importance of all of these things so much more. So for all of those designers doing your thin gray text on white backgrounds, or thin gray text on gray backgrounds, or your tiny little 12 and under pixels for your legaleas, karma is out to get you. [chuckles] We've all done it. Like there was a time I thought nobody cared about the legaleas. That's not true. Even your footer on your website should be big enough for people to read. Otherwise, they think I'm signing away my soul to zoom because I can't read it. If you can zoom it in, that's great. But some apps disable the zoom. DAMIEN: So we usually end on a series of reflections. How do you feel about moving to that? JENNIFER Sure! DAMIEN: We let our guests go last. Casey, do you have a reflection you want to share with us? CASEY: I'm thinking back to Mando's dog and I thought it was interesting, Jennifer, that you linked your experiences with the dog's experiences. Like, some of the symptoms you have might be similar if a dog has CPTSD, too and I think that's really insightful. I think a lot of animals have that kind of set up, but we don't treat them like we treat humans with those issues even if they're similar. DAMIEN: It was in your bio, equitable design initiatives, I really want it to dig into that because that fascinates me and I guess, if draws that bridge between things that I think are very important, or very important for me, both accessibility, that sort of work, especially in software design, because that's where I'm at. And then destroying the tenants of white supremacy and being able to connect those as things that work together and seeing how they work together. Yeah, that's what I'm going to be reflecting on. JENNIFER: Yeah. Whenever we're doing our work, looking for opportunities to surface and put it out for everyone to look at who has power, if this changes who has power, if this doesn't change who has power, what is motivating the players, are people motivated by making sure that no one's excluded, or are people motivated by making sure that their career moves forward, or they don't get in trouble rather than truly serving? I still am in the mindset of serving the people with a purpose that we're aiming to meet the needs of kind of thing. I still have that mindset. A lot of the prep work, we're still talking about the people we aim to serve and it's still about getting them into the cycle. That is a very big position of power that a designer has and acknowledging that that's power and that I wield that power in a way that I consider responsible, which is to make sure that we are including people who are historically underrepresented, especially in those discussions. I'm really proud of a remote design challenge where all of our research participants were either people of color, or people with disabilities. Man, the findings insights were so juicy. There was so much that we could do with what we got. It was really awesome. So by equitable design initiatives, it's really just thinking about acknowledging the power that we have and trying to make sure we do what we can to share it, transfer it, being really respectful of other perspectives. I've always thought of it as infinite curiosity about others and some people have accused me being nosy and they didn't realize it's not about getting up in their private business. It's just, I want to be gracious and respect others. What I will reflect on was how I really need to rest. I will continue to reflect on how I rest is key. I'm making a conscious decision for the next couple of months to not volunteer because I tend to do too much, as Casey may, or may not know. [chuckles] Yeah, I want to wake up in the morning and feel energized and ready to take full advantage of, which is not the right way to phrase it, but show up as my best self and well-prepared for the work. Especially since I now have found myself a new incredibly compassionate, smart place that genuinely aims to improve equity and social justice, and do things for the environment and how grateful I am. I totally thought this place was just about let's them all and it's so not. [laughs] So there's so many wonderful people. I highly recommend everybody come work with me if you care about things. DAMIEN: That's awesome. Well, thank you so much, Jennifer for being our guest today. It's been a pleasure. The author's affiliation with The MITRE Corporation is provided for identification purposes only, and is not intended to convey or imply MITRE's concurrence with, or support for, thepositions, opinions, or viewpoints expressed by the author. ©2021 The MITRE Corporation. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Approved for public release. Distribution unlimited 21-2206. Special Guest: Jennifer Strickland.

Antionette Carroll, president and CEO of Creative Reaction Lab, founded her St. Louis-based nonprofit after the Ferguson uprisings in 2014. She describes herself as a social entrepreneur; equity designer; and diversity, equity and inclusion specialist, and her mission is more important now than ever. Carroll is building a movement dedicated to highlighting youth-centered Black and Latinx voices in an effort to create actual systemic change. Here, she shares her inspiring journey from doing living room craft hours with her grandmother as a child to losing her 13-year-old brother to gun violence, which led her to conceive Creative Reaction Lab, a creative problem-solving process that gives communities the tools they need to dismantle systemic oppression and create a future of equity for all.

Ariel Kennan is a service design and product development leader who has worked across the public, private, academic, and nonprofit sectors. She is currently a Senior Fellow at the Beeck Center for Social Impact + Innovation at Georgetown University. We are pleased to announce that she has joined the curation team of our new Civic Design conference and community, which will be launching soon with our first monthly videoconference. Sign up here to be notified: https://rosenfeldmedia.com/civic-design-2021/ In this Rosenfeld Review episode, Ariel discusses the myriad of public service projects she's had a hand in, and particularly the ways in which Civic Design can improve peoples' lives, especially those who are underprivileged (for example, the application for unemployment benefits during the covid-19 pandemic.) Ariel recommends: Creative Reaction Lab — building capacity in historically marginalized communities and training designers to work in new ways. https://www.creativereactionlab.com/

How can design be a tool for impactful change? In this episode, Sam meets with Boyuan Gao, a designer and futurist who is partnering with companies to create equitable products, services, content, and experiences. Boyuan talks about how she and Jahan Mantin founded Project Inkblot and how the core of their work centers around the “why.” Later on in the show, they are joined by Antionette Carroll, the President and CEO of the Creative Reaction Lab, a nonprofit educating and deploying youth to challenge racial and health inequities impacting Black and Latinx populations. Antionette shares what led her to her work, the value of taking a break, and the ramifications around language. Together, Boyuan and Antionette dive deeper into work that designs with diversity.     For links to resources we discuss on this episode, visit our show page:  Designing With: Moving Towards an Equitable Future for All

Antionette D. Carroll is the founder and CEO of Creative Reaction Lab, a nonprofit social enterprise designing healthy and racially equitable communities for Black and Latinx populations through education and training programs, community engagement consulting and open-sourced tools. Creative Reaction Lab is a movement challenging racial inequities in the education, media, health and healthcare, and government and public service sectors. Prior to CRXLAB, Carroll spent 10 years in the advertising and marketing industry. Antionette has held national leadership positions on diversity and inclusion at the AIGA and multiple non-profit organizations. Bon and Antionette talk about what it means to be a redesigner for justice, the relationship between health and equity, and her journey in design.

Wrap Session 14 is power-packed with personal stories, gems & hard truths spoken with unapologetic passion by the incredible Antionette Carroll, TED speaker & fellow, designer & redesigner for Justice and Equity. Antionette is the Founder & CEO of Creative Reaction Lab, a nonprofit organization based in St. Louis, Missouri but also having global impact and influence. The organization empowers Black, Latin and Indigenous youth to be creative equity leaders helping to design the communities they live in & beyond. Find out more about Creative Reaction Lab and get involved: https://www.creativereactionlab.com/ https://www.instagram.com/crxlab/ https://twitter.com/CRXLAB --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/techwrapqueen/message

Designer Antionette Carroll, born, raised, and based in St. Louis, Missouri, is a natural born leader who has been on a mission since day one. She’s the founder of Creative Reaction Lab, a nonprofit educating and deploying youth to challenge racial and health inequities impacting Black and Latinx populations. Antionette co-pioneered an award-winning form of creative problem solving called Equity-Centered Community Design and in doing so has received several recognitions and awards including being named an ADL and Aspen Institute Civil Society Fellow, TED Fellow, SXSW Community Service Honoree, and Essence Magazine Woke 100, among many others. She’s also a classic Taurus, the mother of twins, a fan of Mexican food, and a proud granddaughter! Images and more from our guest!Special thanks to our sponsors:EditorXEditorX is a platform built specifically for designers, where you can create complex sites while feeling like you’re working on visual design software, in which you get total CSS control powered by smooth drag & drop. Editor X is developer level control in a designer's world, with the bonus of integrated business solutions, allowing your sites to be works of art while serving the needs of any type of business. Discover the new standard in web design at EditorX.com.HelixTo all our designer friends out there, Helix is one of the only “mattress in a box” companies that offers a designer trade discount—and it’s a good one at that! Just go to http://helixsleep.com/clever, sign up for the trade program, and once approved you will receive 25% off all products at all three of their brands. For regular customers, Helix is offering a great promo where you can receive up to $200 off your order plus 2 free dream pillows. Just visit http://helixsleep.com/clever to take the quiz and save up to $200 on your dream mattress.Please say Hi on social! Twitter, Instagram and Facebook - @CleverPodcast, @amydevers, @designmilkIf you enjoy Clever we could use your support! Please consider leaving a review, making a donation, becoming a sponsor, or introducing us to your friends! We love and appreciate you!Clever is hosted by Amy Devers and produced by 2VDE Media, with editing by Rich Stroffolino, production assistance from Laura Jaramillo and Anouchka Stephan, and music by El Ten Eleven.Clever is proudly distributed by Design Milk. Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/clever. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The fifth of the #ShareTheMicNow episodes was created by Antionette Carroll discussing The Power of Youth in Redesigning Systems with Connie Flores, Nora Lidia, Robert Beckles and Quinton Ward. Antionette D. Carroll is the Founder and CEO of Creative Reaction Lab, a nonprofit social enterprise designing healthy and racially equitable communities for Black and Latinx populations through education and training programs, community engagement consulting, an online national platform, and open-source tools and resources. Creative Reaction Lab is creating a collaborative youth-led, community-centered movement challenging racial inequities in the education, media, health and healthcare, and government and public service sectors. Within this capacity, Antionette has pioneered a new form of creative problem solving called Equity-Centered Community Design. Throughout her career, Antionette has worked for non-profits working for social justice, human rights, and diversity and inclusion. These experiences led to her background as a social entrepreneur, non-profit leader, and design activist. Antionette's personal mission in life is to challenge standards, make CHANGE, and CHAMPION approaches resulting in foundational and community impact.Connie Flores - Connie is a Xicana visual designer raised in Houston, TX. She completed her BFA in Communications Design at Syracuse University. Currently freelancing in the Greater St. Louis area, she is eager to collaborate with other creatives to find suitable approaches at the intersection of design and social justice.https://connieflores.comNora Lidia - Nora is a redesigner for Justice: Social, Economic, and Mental Health, writerhttps://twitter.com/noralidiagRobert Beckles - Robert is an engagement Specialist, at Williams and Associates, Inc.http://minorityhealthstl.orgQuinton Ward - Quinton is a designer, co-Host of Speak Up St. Louis, Executive Director of the St. Louis MetroMarket working in the intersection of art, design, and community.https://quintonward.com

The fourth of the #ShareTheMicNow episodes was created by Antionette Carroll in conversation with David Clifford the founder of Design School X and Liberatory Design, and Timothy Bardlavens co-founder of &Design and Product Design Manager at Facebook discussing Dismantling White Supremacy in Design. Antionette D. Carroll is the Founder and CEO of Creative Reaction Lab, a nonprofit social enterprise designing healthy and racially equitable communities for Black and Latinx populations through education and training programs, community engagement consulting, an online national platform, and open-source tools and resources. Creative Reaction Lab is creating a collaborative youth-led, community-centered movement challenging racial inequities in the education, media, health and healthcare, and government and public service sectors. Within this capacity, Antionette has pioneered a new form of creative problem solving called Equity-Centered Community Design. Throughout her career, Antionette has worked for non-profits working for social justice, human rights, and diversity and inclusion. These experiences led to her background as a social entrepreneur, non-profit leader, and design activist. Antionette's personal mission in life is to challenge standards, make CHANGE, and CHAMPION approaches resulting in foundational and community impact.David H. Clifford has been an artist, designer, builder, and equity/social justice-oriented educator for almost 25 years building irresistible learning environments of belonging and creativity. David, a heterosexual, upper-middle-class, able-bodied White man, is the beneficiary of the generations of oppression of Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) and women. David identifies as a deviant of the dominant caste, using his legacy of privilege to challenge the very systems and structures of oppression that placed him in his unearned place of power. This self-awareness, coupled with his design/builder mindset and skill-set, equips David to rattle status quo cages found within the White worlds of education and the design, design thinking, and the shop class/maker communities.Timothy Bardlavens is a Product Design Leader, a Cultural Strategist, Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) specialist, a Fellowship Co-Founder, and International Speaker & Facilitator. Currently, a Product Design Manager at Facebook, Timothy supports Community Experiences within the Facebook App, leading teams focused on new Member Experiences and Ecosystem Growth. Previously, he has led teams for Zillow’s newest venture, Zillow Offers—building the team and product vision of an end-to-end experience for buying, selling, financing and managing a home, all within the Zillow ecosystem. In addition to Microsoft, where his leadership focused on core UX and Intelligent (AI/ML) experiences in Outlook across all endpoints, platform experiences that span the O365 Suite and core browsing experiences in Edge.SHOW NOTES:http://thecrazy1.com/episode111/ FOLLOW THE CRAZY ONE:Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook

This week on Feasting on Design, I'm chatting with Antionette Carroll from Creative Reaction Lab. We talk about accessibility issues—especially as they pertain to language barriers, addressing our biases and learning to overcome them, understanding that life is a journey and it’s our responsibility to learn and grow as humans, growing and sustaining Creative Reaction Lab, and so much more.If you like the podcast and want to help support us head over to patreon.com/feastingondesign. Every $1 helps us to cover hosting costs, upgrade equipment, and keep the podcast going. When you become a Feasting on Design patron you’ll get access to exciting Feasting on Design News before anyone else, plus stickers, and more swag coming soon. So, please, help support the podcast by becoming a patron over at patreon.com/feastingondesign.Thank you to Hover for sponsoring this episode of Feasting on Design. Hover knows you have incredible ideas waiting to come to life and you need HamburgersInThe.NEWS to make a name for yourself. Grab this domain name and many more at hover.com/FeastingOnDesign for a 10% discount on all new purchases. Make a name for yourself with Hover.As a designer you're limited to creating static passive visual graphics for the consumer to view. Why not transform your designs into interactive experiences for the consumer to engage with. InterApp enables you to connect rich media content, videos, animation, photo galleries, 3D and hyper-links to your visual graphics with their easy to use content creator. Learn more at InterAppUSA.com.I’m a huge fan of Design Cuts! It’s an exceptional marketplace with highly curated top quality products, and a wonderfully engaged community of creative people. They are constantly running incredible specials on bundle packs of design assets and fonts for up to 99% off the regular price. Their products are some of the best out there, and their customer service is top notch. If you head over to feastingondesign.com/designcuts you can check out their latest bundle pack at an exceptional discount and help support the podcast.If you haven't tried Webflow yet when building a website what are you waiting for? Webflow is a great No Code alternative to Wordpress. You get so much more control over the design of the site compared to traditional templated No Codes sites like Squarepace, or Wix. Give it a shot on your next site. Visit feastingondesign.com/webflow to sign up for your free trial today.You can find out more about Antionette and Creative Reaction Lab on Twitter @crxlab and be sure to check out the links in the show notes for more ways to keep up with her. I hope you liked this episode of Feasting on Design, let me know what you think and if you like it leave me a review over on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can keep up with the podcast on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram @FeastOnDesign, and I’m @jfrostholm on Dribbble, Twitter, and Instagram or over on my website ildisdesign.com.Find out more about Creative Reaction labcreativereactionlab.comFacebookLinkedInInstagram

“At the root of our work is education, civic engagement, youth leadership, and wrapping it up with a bow of creative problem-solving.” This is how Antionette D. Carroll explains her work on the Creative Reaction Lab, a nonprofit that trains Black and Latinx youth to redesign their own communities for better health and racial equity. We sit down with her to talk about Black Lives Matter, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives, and white supremacy, and how it all relates to entrepreneurship in 2020.Carroll gives us the background on what white supremacy actually is (and why you don't have to be white to perpetuate it), and why companies need to start paying for DEI work in their organizations. We also talk about code-switching, the importance of lived experience, and what makes a good ally. This episode is for all our listeners: we want to unpack the assumptions we make in business and in daily life to help create a more equitable society. As Carroll says, "I am continuing to learn and unlearn, and my discomfort is a good thing."Join the conversation on Facebook in our #imakealiving group, where you can chat about challenges, find resources for success, and stay connected with other entrepreneurs!Guest- Antionette D. Carroll- https://www.antionettecarroll.design/ 

I can't tell you how excited I am to share this conversation with Antionette Carroll with you. Longtime listeners of the show may remember her first appearance here back in 2014. In the six years since then, Antionette has risen to become one of the design community's most outspoken advocates, and one of its fiercest critics. As the founder and CEO of Creative Reaction Lab, her advocacy work has been shared around the world. This week's episode is a bit different than usual. You'll learn about the origins of Creative Reaction Lab, hear about her new venture &Design with Timothy Bardlavens (another past Revision Path guest!), and get some candid talk about the country's oldest professional organization for designers, AIGA. Antionette is proof that one person can really make an impression in the world through hard work, honesty, and determination!Links Antionette Carroll's 2014 interview Antionette Carroll's Website Antionette Carroll on Instagram Antionette Carroll on Twitter Creative Reaction Lab Creative Reaction Lab on Instagram Creative Reaction Lab on Twitter &Design &Design on TwitterLike this episode? Then subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, SoundCloud, Spotify, or wherever you find your favorite shows.Subscribe and leave us a 5-star rating and a review! Thanks so much to all of you who have already rated and reviewed us!Revision Path is brought to you by Lunch, a multidisciplinary creative studio in Atlanta, GA. Looking for some creative consulting for your next project? Then let's do lunch!You can also follow Revision Path on Instagram and Twitter. Come chat with us! And thank you for listening!

What began as a 24-hour design challenge addressing racial inequality in Ferguson, Missouri has since grown into a powerful organization fighting inequity with its own brand of collaborative design. Antionette Carroll, founder of Creative Reaction Lab, speaks about Equity-Centered Community Design—and how Black and Latinx youth are using design as their tool of choice to dismantle the very systems designed to exclude them. INTERVIEWEE Antionette D. Carroll, Founder, President and CEO of Creative Reaction Lab https://www.creativereactionlab.com/ @CRXLAB   Design With Team: Host: Panthea Lee Producer: Alyssa Kropp Music Composition & Sound Mix: Meagan Rodriguez Asst. Producer: Kisha Bwenge Graphic Design: Adam Parker

Listen in as Emily chats with Antionette Carroll and Hilary Sedovic from the Creative Reaction Lab, an organization founded in support of the uprising in Ferguson, MO that aims to educate, train, and challenge Black and Latinx youth to become leaders designing healthy and racially equitable communities. Plus, we remember Dick Cone and his extensive contributions to the field of higher education civic and community engagement. Related resources: Creative Reaction Lab (creativereactionlab.com) Music credit: Andrew Savage (andrewsavage.net)

Antoinette Carroll (Graphic designer, entrepreneur, and founder and CEO of Creative Reaction Lab) and BGSU graphic design lecturer Amy Fiedler discuss the importance of individuals taking action to solve problems affecting their communities, specifically in regards to training and challenging Black and Latinx youth to become leaders designing healthy and racially equitable communities.  Transcript: Introduction: From Bowling Green State University and the Institute for the Study of Culture and Society, this is BG Ideas. Intro Song Lyrics: I'm going to show you this with a wonderful experiment. Jolie Sheffer: Welcome to the BG Ideas podcast, a collaboration between the Institute for the Study of Culture and Society and the School of Media and Communication at Bowling Green State University. I'm Jolie Sheffer, associate professor of English and American cultural studies and the director of ICS. Jolie Sheffer: Today, we are joined by Antoinette Carroll and Amy Fiddler. Antoinette is a graphic designer, entrepreneur and the founder and CEO of Creative Reaction Lab, a nonprofit youth led social impact collaborative. Her work focuses on designing more just and equitable communities and organizations. Amy is a lecturer in graphic design here at BGSU. Thanks for taking the time to be here with me today. Antoinette Carroll: No problem. I'm excited to be here. Jolie Sheffer: Antoinette, can you start by telling us how you came to found the Creative Reaction Lab in St. Louis? What led you to do this kind of work? Antoinette Carroll: So Creative Reaction Lab was founded in response to [inaudible 00:01:05] Ferguson, with myself being a former Ferguson resident, as well as a former head of communications at a diverse inclusion nonprofit and I was really interested in how do we convene community members to actually come up with their own interventions to address issues around race and other issues around division within our city. Antoinette Carroll: And so, Creative Reaction Lab actually originally started as a 24 hour challenge. There was no intention for it to be a business. I technically had a full time job with a paycheck, but when I actually brought people together, which were activists, designers, technologists, and they came up with their own interventions, actually five and all were activated in St. Louis within a year. I started to see that there was actually some power in what we were doing and how we were starting to shift the conversation from just a simple dialogue to how do we have dialogue and action at the same time. Antoinette Carroll: Fast forward to where we are now. We no longer do 24 hour challenges, but we still have creative problem solving, design, community voice central to the work that we do and understand that community members are the best ones to come up with the interventions to address the problems impacting them because they actually are closest to the approaches that will help them. They understand it more deeply to really create that systemic change that we truly need for a community growth. Jolie Sheffer: Great. And Amy, how did you come to be interested in design for social good? Amy Fiddler: I think design for social good is something that I've always had an opportunity to work in that space because being a part of academia, you have an opportunity to do projects on the side or bring them into the classroom can have a positive impact, but what is really important is finding the right ways to do that so that you're not swooping in as this authority figure. Amy Fiddler: And so, bringing Antoinette in and learning and researching more on those themes really helps us understand how to do that better. Jolie Sheffer: And what do you both think is so important and relatively new about using graphic design design to encourage social justice and community engagement? Antoinette Carroll: For me, it's not necessarily something that's new. It's honestly a deficiency I think we've had in our sector for awhile, is that we actually have not considered what is the power of our industry and what we've already shaped, whether as graphic designers, whether as other technically trained designers such as architects or fashion designers or interior designers, and we really shape the culture and society and how we engage with spaces and how do we interact with each other and the fact that we really haven't had that a reflective moment as an industry I think has been a large problem that our organization is somewhat tried to also help overcome. Antoinette Carroll: And also, with the power of graphic design or design itself, it really is understanding that design is all about addressing complexity. Design is all about navigating ambiguous situations and really creating something out of nothing. And when you think about the fabric of society that we're continually walking with them, and if you go back to traditional designs such as built space, imagine if we are able to engage with the buildings such as the one we're in today or the house in which we're living in, or even engage with people through logos and posters, them having built awareness around topics. What does it look like to have design really focus on social justice? What does it look like to have design actually become more intentional around addressing inequalities and inequities? Especially considering that it has been a foundation and a fabric of our country and in our world for awhile, we just maybe didn't call it design. We called it being inventors or we call it now being innovators, but design is central to all of that. Amy Fiddler: And at its worst, design is contributing to the negativity. And so, or it has the capacity to do that at a grand scale. And so many designers don't want to be a part of that and are actively working to shift things the other way or to help that pendulum move into that way. So I think this kind of work has always been there but now it's becoming more acceptable and companies are embracing it, but not always in an authentic way because it can't just be a buzzword that companies do socially good or do design for good in order to kind of check that box off. But I think there are a lot of people who want to find meaning and fulfillment in their work. Antoinette Carroll: And I think that awareness is key. Like how do they understand their design power? Because as you stated, design actually does contribute to a lot of the negative things that we have and if we don't understand the power that we actually hold, then we also don't take responsibility for it. And it really is around having the best intention or be more ego centric driven. I'm just going to be honest here. We tend to think about self opposed to thinking about how does it actually affect an entire community and how it could potentially retraumatize the community. Antoinette Carroll: If we actually reflect on it and say, well, actually I can redesign a better society and therefore I have a responsibility and therefore I can have co-ownership, then we really start to see that shift that we want, but it has to start with self first. And I personally think, and even when I look at the education system, when I look at a lot of the narratives were shaped, we don't focus enough on self. We focus on the outputs and not really focus on what do we have to do to really think about the role we play before we can even get to the outputs and outcomes to actually create this better society. Jolie Sheffer: So that leads to kind of my next question, which is what does good design mean to you in the broadest sense? Antoinette Carroll: I'm happy you added the question to you because if you talked to some graphic designers, good designers, great typography, wonderful current, great alignment, everything else. And don't get me wrong, I love a good aligned piece. However, for me, good design is really is where, again, I go back to what's the actual impact of what I'm creating and also thinking about when do I put myself in a center and create with the community and when do I take a step back? Antoinette Carroll: A good design is making sure that it's more than just form but also function and how does it actually work to in some cases, and I would argue we need to have more of this, actually make the lives of historically under invested communities better opposed to the lives of people that most of the time already have influence, have privilege, have power, make their lives better. How do we make things more just and really think about fairness in the approach of our work and understanding that the way it physically look isn't necessarily the key thing, but how is it actually changing my life. Jolie Sheffer: Can you explain for our audience what is equity centered community design? Antoinette Carroll: In 2017, Creative Reaction Lab pioneered a new form of creative problem solving called equity center community design. And for us, it was building upon the human centered design and design thinking methodology, but understanding that it wasn't enough to just think about how do we brainstorm or iterate? How do we make, how do we prototype all the things we love to talk about, but also what is the role of history and healing within a space? What is the role of power dynamics? How do we think about actually co-creating a team where people with different experience and expertise, whether it's academic, professional or living expertise, or actually at the table as a diverse co-creators and decision makers. And also, what does the role of personal identity within a space and how do you build around humility to actually become empathetic. Antoinette Carroll: So we created it to distinctly look at issues of inequity. That being said, inequities are everywhere and underneath everything. Jolie Sheffer: And so what you've created is a model that you now can use to train other people into more equitable problem solving. Is that an accurate restatement? How would you put that? Antoinette Carroll: We want people to have that mindset shift that is not necessarily in the future. They're saying, okay, right now I'm going through the humility and empathy module, but they actually are thinking about how am I showing up in this space? What are my biases? What are my blind spots? And knowing that I have to continually reflect on this and make sure I'm not perpetuating save your complexity or creating more trauma in the work that I'm doing. Antoinette Carroll: And at our organization, we are trying to mobilize a new type of leader that we're working with called equity designers and design allies. And it really is being central thinking about the role of people in equity and being embedded in a community. Of course, having good design practice of iterating, making and testing, but also how do we think about the lived experiences that we have and the proximity that we have to the inequities and also how, on another note, how to reflect on maybe the proximity we don't have and how do we actually leverage our power and access on behalf of the people that have that proximity. Antoinette Carroll: And again, thinking about, I keep going back to power in this conversation, but thinking about how are we either sharing power or accepting power to really create change. Jolie Sheffer: Your work connects you with people from different parts of a community, from business and health, media, education. So how do you help those participants learn to speak a common language? How do you find common ground even around definitions such as design, equity and access? Antoinette Carroll: We always start all of our work with language setting and we believe that language setting is central to any community centered work that you want to do. And what we usually say is that if you can't actually cocreate language together, then how are you going to cocreate interventions together? Because I personally believe people don't pay attention enough to language barriers that we have. Most of the time when they discuss language, they discuss it as if we're talking about certain dialects, but language is on how we define certain terms that has been dictated based on the experiences that we've had in our lives. Antoinette Carroll: I've seen people define diversity differently because they've had different experiences with are. They've never understood what other people were meaning when they said diversity, and that's why I'm that person that someone, when a group says or a business says we're trying to have more diversity, I always say of what kind, because I need to know what you're referring to. Antoinette Carroll: There'll be times when people ask me questions and I will ask them to define certain terms in their questions because I want to know what you actually are asking of me. And we need to have those reflective moments and I think that should be at the beginning of any work that you do, whether it's in your professional setting or on a personal setting. And many times from what I've seen, we can't even move past the point of language because we don't take time to dedicate ourselves to actually co-creating that language. And once that happens, then we're able to really shift to them the meaty pieces. Antoinette Carroll: But again, it goes back to the piece of how do we build relationships as product. If you cocreate language together, imagine the relationships that you're building in that process before you even get to the maybe systemic challenges you're trying to address. Jolie Sheffer: Amy, how do you apply some of the principles of equity centered community design in your own design practice and in your classes? Amy Fiddler: I think this is a really challenging question because I still feel very new at this process and certain things are maybe more intuitive, but there's so much learning that needs to happen. And I think if you look at the framework of designing the classroom setting for students, trying to create a space where people are comfortable to take those risks is really important and something that's important to me based on working with challenges in my own life with my child and extrapolating those same challenges to students. Amy Fiddler: Let me rephrase this. So we're rolling back just a little bit. Jolie Sheffer: Yeah, you can start over. Amy Fiddler: I just want to enter that from a slightly different point. So in the classroom, when I think about trying to create a space for students, education is supposed to be an opportunity for people to have difficult conversations and learn from different viewpoints, but I find it really difficult because I don't want to misstep or create a space that isn't safe for someone. And so a lens for me that is an easy entry point is neuro diversity because my son is a neuro diverse child and so I have experience in parenting a child living with ADHD. So that gives me a framework to speak from a topic that is safer for me to then open up more difficult conversations. Amy Fiddler: But I am still very much at the beginning of this work and so I am eagerly trying to learn so that I can help teach and demonstrate and build these opportunities for students who are hungry for this knowledge because they all want to make a huge impact and they don't have the tools yet often either or if they do, it's a great opportunity for them to share that. Amy Fiddler: A lot of the classes that I have an opportunity to teach are collaborative based, sometimes community building or community based projects or within the client based sphere. But the biggest thing is trying to figure out are we doing any more harm than good and trying to navigate that. Jolie Sheffer: One of the, I mean, this really makes me think about the issues of equity at a place like Bowling Green State University, which is a predominantly white institution and historically graphic design has been a predominantly white field. So what are some of the challenges to and this work that you do going into fortune 500 companies, also predominantly white sites. So how do you ensure participation and voice from a diverse group of stakeholders without tokenizing the few people that often do sit in those sites, whether it's the classroom or the board room or wherever that might be. Antoinette Carroll: It is very much a challenge, to be honest, because most of the time they're not even in the room, which is part of the problem. And some of the work we've started to do at Creative Reaction Lab is how do we even have people within a space reflect on why they are not in a room and what is their power and how and why do they have access versus others. Antoinette Carroll: And there was some clients that originally wanted to hire us because, I want to add in a caveat. When I stated earlier that I fired clients, it was more graphic design clients. So we do have clients at Creative Reaction Lab and some of our clients have previously asked us to come in and really engage with their on the ground staff or people was doing community based work and we actually challenged them to first look at how do we internally try to integrate ETCD with in your organizational staff, including executive leadership. Antoinette Carroll: And it required them to really reflect and we actually had two distinct clients that was open to it and we went through some of that process with them because it wasn't enough just to touch on the people that have the interest or that was already on the ground, but who's the decision makers? And most of the time it's not the people on the ground, that's the decision makers. Antoinette Carroll: But we really take the approach that everyone needs to have this reflective moment of understanding there, as I like to say, design power, of having a reflective moment of what does bias and prejudice show up? How does it show up for them and how do they navigate around that? But then we're also very transparent in saying that this journey is ongoing. It didn't start, at least hopefully, with Creative Reaction Lab's efforts and it hopefully doesn't end with Creative Reaction Lab efforts. Antoinette Carroll: But knowing that as we continue to go on in life, we may go into different positions. These moments should still be happening and still kind of reflecting upon that. I always tell people that I hope that when I reach 70 and 80 years old, if I get there, that I am still being challenged and I'm still learning. But that's the state and where we need to get people. Institutions are still, at the end of the day, made a people and we need to look at it that way and not say, Oh, we're just going to work with Walmart or Target, but we're going to work with the people that are actually running Walmart and Target and understand that their effect is actually a ripple, not only in their institution but within other communities in which they're working. Antoinette Carroll: And if we look at individuals first, then that institutional change start to happen and we've seen some of that from the cocreation that's happened within, but the journey is a uphill one, but those internal agitators are kind of helping make that happen. Jolie Sheffer: One of the most admirable things about hearing you speak this way is how willing you are to meet people where they are and work from that point. Can you talk about, at least I'm curious, but can you talk about what the outcomes are if you don't? Antoinette Carroll: I laughed because part of my own journey was reflecting on the fact that I was part of the problem. I was a first or is a first generation college student, but then I realized once I was able to gain access, I went back to my community and had expectations on them that was unfair. And it took me a while to really reflect on reality that I was a product of self and culture hate because I was taught to be a product of that. Antoinette Carroll: And when I had the moment of reflection and that continual reflection on how to unpack all of that, it made me understand that everyone else is going through the same thing and it wasn't just me, but we all are dealing with a lot of these biases and these fears that has impacted how we respond to others. Antoinette Carroll: And so in my case, I'm always very vulnerable and open of my own flaws on my own journey, how I'm continually learning and I've that it actually has helped others do the same thing. And if you don't really come in with this open mindset, you're going to have an expectation that probably would never be met. You're going to have unhealthy tension within the room. I believe in tension. I believe in descent. I will call out someone in a minute, but call out with love and also in calling out, tell them and reflect on how I have gone through some of this myself and not necessarily try to dictate that they should be where I am, but again stating that we are all moving through our lives and that we are all going to have those reflective moments that maybe happen five, 10 years down the line. It doesn't always happen immediately and that's okay. Jolie Sheffer: And part of what you're talking about is as in ECCD, this iterative process that never really ends. It's not like you get to the point where you've achieved equity or you've achieved maximum wokeness, right? But it is an endless cycle. Antoinette Carroll: I do love a good woke though. Jolie Sheffer: Well, you're earrings, I want to say, Antoinette has these fabulous earrings on that say stay woke, but I think even that phrasing is about you're not, it's not like get woke and then you're done. It's staying woke. Right? That it is a constant thing that you're always learning to be more sensitive, more inclusive, more aware of what has yet to be achieved rather than seeking, great, now I've covered my bases, now it's good enough, now I'm done. Antoinette Carroll: Yeah. And you see that a lot in diversity and inclusion trainings where people go through and they're like, okay, we've done it. We've checked the box. Or you see it in a lot of diversity efforts, which I look at is more quota efforts. Okay. We have people of color, we have people with different ability status, check the box. But that is not going to change anything. And one of the things I also found is that while we're all on this journey of trying to stay in a state of constant challenging and learning and really just addressing our own biases, even when we get in this state, we even could sometimes fall back into the majority narratives. We can fall back into the state of status quo because we were all raised in that. It's easy to be within that space and even, you know, the people that are the most "woke" or working towards equity, we also can perpetuate some of the problems and we can even go through what I like to call oppression Olympics. And there's a few people in this space, we call it oppression Olympics. Antoinette Carroll: Whereas for me, I'm one of those individuals to understand that my flaws will not go away all the time, and that I want people to challenge that. I even tried to build it into our organization. I built it into my family, which my husband hates because I'm always like, let's reflect, but it really is me trying to be as equitable as I can in understanding that we haven't had that society. And so, it is around experimentation and failing and learning, but just constantly challenging ourselves and making sure that we understand that the journey doesn't end. There is no state of perfection in this work. Jolie Sheffer: Why do you think, Oh, sorry. Let me take that back. Why is it so important for both you and Amy to work with youth and college students? Can you talk about what you think the younger generations bring that might be a little bit different or distinctive about their approach to design or community engagement? Amy Fiddler: Well, youth are optimists. I think even though younger people, whether it's K through 12 or college students, even though they may have lived through some difficult circumstances, I think that they haven't entirely been beaten down by life yet or they're open to learning. They're still in school. Education is about learning and questioning versus trying to start these processes later on in a career where you really have to change the mindset and change the entire approach. Amy Fiddler: If you can be working in this way with youth and students, it becomes a natural part of their education and process, so it's just an extension of the way you should or can do the work versus completely having to change everything. I just feel like students are really receptive. Antoinette Carroll: I also feel like young people are probably more woke than adults, if I'm going to be honest. It's when we continually put our standards and our beliefs, that I believe is a cycle, on them, that they start to lose that innate creativity, that innate ability to challenge. Every parent would tell the story of the child that continually ask why. And it's always funny when you sit and reflect on those moments because you have to ask yourself, why am I so bothered with a child asking why? Why do I view it as disrespect? And was that something that was taught to me because I asked why too much. Antoinette Carroll: Also a young people, to be very honest, they have been the ones that actually have changed society majority of the time. Like when you actually sit and reflect, whether it's been changed for good or bad, it usually was young people behind it. Antoinette Carroll: I mean, technology has pretty much changed society and social media and those were all young people. There are young people that maybe didn't have access to power to some of the people in the technology space, but they were the ones that's on the ground, movement building, as it relates to same sex marriage, black lives matter, you know, higher wages. The young people are willing to challenge the status quo and I believe our job as adults is to remember the inner young person that's there with us and continually support and amplify opposed to becoming a barrier and blocking. Antoinette Carroll: And the last thing I would add to that is that if you really want to think about how do we design equitable outcomes and futures, this work is generations, centuries long. So I personally believe the greatest ROI is working with young people because they have a longer time to challenge it than to wait until someone's a "mayor" or in a position of a director role where they have had literally decades of pounding and conformity put upon them and then all of a sudden they expect him to shift and then say, Oh, I'm going to build equity. Antoinette Carroll: With a young person, if you are able to unpack that earlier for them, imagine a ripple effect of that. Imagine the systemic change that actually could happen, not only from them being outside of the "traditional systems," but then by the time they get into those position of traditional power, because I think they have power now, but traditional power, what does that shift look like? And I'm excited to see that because I think that's where the power will be. Jolie Sheffer: Great. We're going to take a quick break. Thank you for listening to the BG Ideas podcast. Speaker 1: If you are passionate about BG Ideas, consider sponsoring this program. To have your name or organization mentioned here, please contact us at ics@bgsu.edu. Jolie Sheffer: Antoinette and Amy, we have some students in the studio who have some questions for you. Morgan Gale: My name is Morgan Gale. I'm currently a senior here in the graphic design program and I'm actually really interested in doing similar kind of work to you, specifically in the LGBTQ and disability communities, because those are where I have lived experience. And I'd like to hear more about your experience between like graduating from college and starting the Creative Reaction Lab, like how do you get from here to where you are right now? Antoinette Carroll: So honestly, I have no idea how I got, 100%, to this place. But I remember when I graduated from college, I always had this idea that I was going to work in advertising and marketing and I technically did for seven years. I worked in different institutions such as corporate and agency and ultimately I realized that my love was the nonprofit space. My love was the social impact space. Antoinette Carroll: And when I decided to work at a diversity inclusion organization as head of communications, I started to actually unpack my own biases and understand things that I didn't know and also started to on my own lived experiences and how somehow I was already preparing for that position and then subsequently preparing for Creative Reaction Lab. I just didn't know what it would look like. Antoinette Carroll: And the case in point, when I was in college, I was part of the black leadership organizing council. I was actually co founder of that and vice chair. I was president of associated black collegians. I did work around hurricane Katrina at the university level. I was a student Senator and even when I worked in agency, I participated in the, I don't remember the name of the week, but it was where you live on a $1.50 a day to bring awareness on extreme poverty around the world. And so, I always had these moments, but it wasn't until working at Diversity Awareness Partnership and then subsequently Creative Reaction Lab that I was able to see the package together. Antoinette Carroll: And so, I learned through this experience that even though when I started college, I had this plan. I mean, I knew what I was going to do. I used to write it out. It was very bizarre and weird, but I was like, I'm going to get a PhD in biotechnology. I want to study the human genome. And now I sometimes say I just went from study humanity at a micro level to the macro level. I started to realize that we just need to accept where the journey of our life take us and we also just need to make sure we develop guiding a guiding purpose and a guiding mission that will help us in that. Antoinette Carroll: And when I started to be more reflective on my purpose and my mission, that's when everything started to come together, opposed to just trying to fulfill someone else's mission. I had to really think about what was my and how does that align with all the work that I was doing, with other organizations, and then subsequently, how does that align with now with Creative Reaction Lab. Speaker 7: So would you say that we're in a point in time with design, especially where a lot of times I guess you look throughout history, the ideas of that, you know, societies look inward to themselves and they branch back outward and go back inwards. It seems like now with the design field, we're at a point where we're going back outwards and starting to focus more, like you said, on the macro level instead of looking more towards inwards. Speaker 7: Would you say that's probably a current trend right now or that's a pretty kind of good direction that we're following? And would you say that, you know, possibly, who knows how many years, we'll probably go back to more being an individualist, in the sense that there's a lot of preference towards individuality versus maybe a collective sense. Antoinette Carroll: I personally think we need both and so I don't think it's necessarily the right path if we only focus on hours and no focus on inward and some of it we can look at the role of the individual and understanding self and looking at the role of the collective and what we can mobilize and do. But then even when I look at the design industry, Creative Reaction Lab is my way of looking at things outward and looking at the macro social inequities that we are dealing with. Antoinette Carroll: But then my work with AIG, as the founding chair of the diverse inclusion task force and as the co founder and co director of Design Plus Diversity LLC, which is a conference and a fellowship and a podcast, that is us looking inward, and saying what are we doing as a sector? How do we address pipeline challenges? How do we address access from within the traditional design industry? Antoinette Carroll: And so, I believe that you need both for that change to really happen. And to me it also makes me subsequently think about when people say are we having a top down approach or a bottom up? And I always ask the question of why are we not having them meet in the middle? And I think whether we're talking about design or we're talking about business or we're talking about education, we need to have this constant flow and push and pull of both for that change and that shift and that transformation to happen because that requires descent to happen in both cases. But if we don't do that, then I personally believe we're only addressing part of the problem and not necessarily looking at how do we build a more inclusive kind of equation overall. Jolie Sheffer: We have our own controversy here on campus right now that the, one of the theaters on campus has been named or has long been named after Lillian Gish who was BGSU alumna and also the star of DW Griffith's racist KKK propaganda film, the Birth of the Nation. Jolie Sheffer: And so, and there was, and so quite recently, student and faculty and various groups have come together to protest this and to say that that naming and now there's a big sign and sort of a rededication of this theater in her honor, that it really provokes a sense of insecurity and a lack of safety for students, staff, faculty, visitors, particularly those who are black because of this history. Jolie Sheffer: And we're in a kind of a reckoning period, where the university president has convened a task force to really look into this and figure out what to do. As an equity centered community designer, how would you go about approaching this problem? Antoinette Carroll: This is one where I'm going to have to bring my bias out of this, even though it's hard for me to do, because it makes me, I equate it to kind of Confederate monuments and you have people that have debates on one, should we take them down? But then there's even an internal debate on when they take them down, should they destroy them or should they keep them in museums and have dialogue and discussions around it. Antoinette Carroll: And the National African American Museum of History and Culture, I think is a great example of where they even kept those things that may be hurtful for some of us, but for us to have a dialogue, a discussion and learn from. And I wonder with Gish, I think you said her name was, with this situation is it one where we really start to reflect on what is another way to really have a dialogue around this and discuss her relationship with the university that doesn't necessarily give her a platform that may create more trauma for communities. Antoinette Carroll: And you know, part of me is like rename it, but the other side of it is even with the renaming, how do we actually provide history and insight on this? Because there's many people that's not even aware of the Birth of a Nation video and what that actually meant on black culture and how that actually affected the stereotypes of the angry black person and how we're violent and how that has perpetuated for decades after that. Many people aren't aware of it. Antoinette Carroll: And so, some people may look and say, well, she was an actress. She, you know, did great things and that doesn't take away from her history. And some people say she was a product of her time. Right? But then the other end is saying she can be a product of our time, but how do we also acknowledged that that time, the time prior and the time that have followed, have still put people of color in harm's way and had led to decrease life expectancy and the challenge that we continually have because of that. Antoinette Carroll: So as equity designer, I of course will want to bring different groups together to have a dialogue. And also part of me wants to reference a colleague of mine project called Paper Monuments where they started to think about, okay, if we remove the Confederate monuments, what image should we put up in this place? And how do we actually make that process equitable and inclusive? And I wonder if that there's something from that that could be brought into this of, okay, if we rename it, how do we make this an educational moment? What do we put in its place and how do we make sure that generations from now when people come back and look at it, it's not just a name on a wall, but people understand what the community has done collectively to really move beyond that situation. Jolie Sheffer: Antoinette and Amy, I'd like to thank you very much on behalf of ICS. We've had a great time talking today. If you're interested in learning more about Antoinette or the Creative Reaction Lab, visit their website at www.creativereactionlab.com. Our producers for this podcasts are Chris Cavera, Marco Mendoza and Jake Sidell. Special thanks to the College of Arts and Sciences, the Ethnic Cultural Arts Program, the School of Media and Communication, the division of graphic design in the School of Art, and the BGSU AIGA student chapter.  

Antionette D. Carroll is the Founder, President & CEO of Creative Reaction Lab and the @ADCOLOR Innovator

For our final episode of this season, we talked with past AIGA St. Louis President and current AIGA National Board Member Antionette Carroll about her non-profit, Creative Reaction Lab. Creative Reaction Lab was founded in response to the unrest in Ferguson, MO (August 2014) in the form of a 24-hour design challenge. Since then, it's developed into a robust program that has received national and international acclaim for the way it approaches equity in design and how to make an impact. Thank you to Anna Katherine Roehm for contributing to the artwork, as well as Dustin Schaefer for his ongoing technical advice and expertise. And thank YOU, our listeners, for tuning in!

Fruitvale Station. Miles Ahead. Creed. Moonlight. If you've seen any of these films over the past few years, then you're familiar with the work of Hannah Beachler. You may also know her for her Afrofuturist design direction on Black Panther, becoming not just the first Black person to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Production Design, but also being the first one to win it as well. She's even worked with Beyoncé on Lemonade, as well as the On The Run II tour with Beyoncé and Jay Z! In short, Hannah Beachler is definitely #goals when it comes to Black design. While we did discuss Hannah's career highlights, we also talked about her life growing up in Ohio, her early work in production design, and how she first met Ryan Coogler. Hannah also shared how she prepares for working on films, what life is like after winning an Oscar, and how she stays inspired. Hannah is definitely proof that if you do your best, it is definitely good enough! Hannah Beachler's Website Hannah Beachler on Twitter DDA Talent This episode is sponsored by Sappi North America’s Ideas that Matter program. Sappi, a maker of high quality printing, packaging and release papers as well as dissolving wood pulp, is celebrating 20 years of this unique grant competition for designers working on social impact projects. Applications are considered by an annually selected panel of top designers and social impact leaders and this year includes Sam Aquillano from the Design Museum Foundation, Ashleigh Axios from the Obama White House, George Aye of Greater Good Studio, Antionette Carroll of Creative Reaction Lab and Christine Taylor from Hallmark Cards. The 2019 deadline to apply for a grant is July 19. To learn more about the program, visit sappi.com/ideas-that-matter. This episode is brought to you by Abstract: design workflow management for modern design teams. Spend less time searching for design files and tracking down feedback, and spend more time focusing on innovation and collaboration. Like Glitch, but for designers, Abstract is your team's version-controlled source of truth for design work. With Abstract, you can version design files, present work, request reviews, collect feedback, and give developers direct access to all specs — all from one place. Sign your team up for a free, 30-day trial today by heading over to www.abstract.com. Like this episode? Then subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, SoundCloud, Spotify, or wherever you find your favorite podcasts. Subscribe and leave us a 5-star rating and a review! Thanks so much to all of you who have already rated and reviewed us! Revision Path is a Glitch Media Network podcast, and is produced by Deanna Testa and edited by Brittani Brown. Looking for more? Follow Revision Path on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Come chat with us! And thanks for listening! Powered by Simplecast. Sign up today for a 14-day free trial!

In what way can businesses use design and cognitive diversity to seamlessly insert themselves into the zeitgeist? Three and a Half Degrees is an original podcast from Facebook. Follow along on Instagram and visit facebook.com/ThreeAndAHalfDegrees to learn more. To stay up to date with our podcast guests, visit facebook.com/mildenhall1 and facebook.com/antionette.carroll.

Joining us today is Antionette D. Carroll, Founder and CEO of Creative Reaction Lab. Creative Reaction Lab is a nonprofit social enterprise designing healthy and racially equitable communities for Black and Latinx populations through education and training programs, community engagement consulting, an online national platform, and open-source resources. Creative Reaction Lab is creating a community-centered, collaborative movement led by youth to challenge racial inequities in education, media, health and healthcare, government and public service. One of Essence’s 100 Woke Women and was recently named an Echoing Green Fellows. Throughout her career, Antionette has worked for non-profits working for social justice, human rights, and diversity and inclusion. Learn more: Website Company Facebook Company Twitter Company LinkedIn Page Personal Facebook Personal Twitter Personal LinkedIn

Joining us today is Antionette D. Carroll, Founder and CEO of Creative Reaction Lab. Creative Reaction Lab is a nonprofit social enterprise designing healthy and racially equitable communities for Black and Latinx populations through education and training programs, community engagement consulting, an online national platform, and open-source resources. Creative Reaction Lab is creating a community-centered, collaborative movement led by youth to challenge racial inequities in education, media, health and healthcare, government and public service. One of Essence’s 100 Woke Women and was recently named an Echoing Green Fellows. Throughout her career, Antionette has worked for non-profits working for social justice, human rights, and diversity and inclusion. Learn more: Websitehttp://www.creativereactionlab.com Company Facebookhttps://www.facebook.com/CreativeReactionLab/ Company Twitterhttps://twitter.com/CreativeRxlab Company LinkedIn Pagehttps://www.linkedin.com/company/creative-reaction-lab/ Personal Facebookhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/antionettecarroll/ Personal Twitterhttps://twitter.com/acarrolldesign Personal LinkedInhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/antionettecarroll/

Joining us today is Antionette D. Carroll, Founder and CEO of Creative Reaction Lab. Creative Reaction Lab is a nonprofit social enterprise designing healthy and racially equitable communities for Black and Latinx populations through education and training programs, community engagement consulting, an online national platform, and open-source resources. Creative Reaction Lab is creating a community-centered, collaborative movement led by youth to challenge racial inequities in education, media, health and healthcare, government and public service. One of Essence's 100 Woke Women and was recently named an Echoing Green Fellows. Throughout her career, Antionette has worked for non-profits working for social justice, human rights, and diversity and inclusion. Learn more: Websitehttp://www.creativereactionlab.com Company Facebookhttps://www.facebook.com/CreativeReactionLab/ Company Twitterhttps://twitter.com/CreativeRxlab Company LinkedIn Pagehttps://www.linkedin.com/company/creative-reaction-lab/ Personal Facebookhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/antionettecarroll/ Personal Twitterhttps://twitter.com/acarrolldesign Personal LinkedInhttps://www.linkedin.com/in/antionettecarroll/

Host Don Marsh discussed how technological and art design can reveal and address societal issues.

“...the stripping of our human dignity in any context, in any environment, is perhaps the greatest violation of our rights as human beings.” - Judithe Registre In this episode of the Get InPowered Podcast, Judithe responds and considers Antionette Carroll and her work with the Creative Reaction Lab. Judithe challenges us to look for ways to pursue equality in our own communities as we are inspired by examples like Antoinette.

"You're really just the total of other people's biases." Antionette Carroll is the Founder, President and CEO of Creative Reaction Lab, a nonprofit social enterprise that educates, trains and challenges cities to co-create solutions with Black and Latina populations to design healthy and racially equitable communities. "When we work together, we build together." The pioneer of a new form of creative problem solving called Equity-Centered Community Design, Antoinette joins Judithe in this episode to talk about her career and her work for social justice, human rights, diversity and inclusion. A social entrepreneur, non-profit leader, and design activist, Antionette's personal mission in life is to CHALLENGE standards, make CHANGE and CHAMPION approaches resulting in foundational and community impact. To learn more about Antoinette and the Creative Reaction Lab, visit http://www.creativereactionlab.com

Antionette and I talk about Creative Reaction Lab, scheduling services, deeper response, Fast Company Mag, Kinloch doesn't exist anymore, a lot of conversation and not enough action, cards against brutality, fear dictating actions, cat cafe, she needs translators!, black and latinx, I'm caramel, the lens of failure, design as a process and mindset, cultural history and healing, design is working when you don't know it's there, reverse mentoring.

We honor Michael Brown today with this episode of Greater Than. We're talking to Antionette Carroll, creator and founder of Creative Reaction Lab in St. Louis. Listen as we tackle black on black crime, what it means to be a black woman in America, and creating sustainable ways to fight racism.     creativereactionlab.com