Achieving equity and societal change depends on the willingness to listen deeply to the stories of others, according to Kimberlyn Leary.
“Your past need not be your only destiny,” said Leary, a Harvard professor and former adviser to former President Barack Obama’s and President Joe Biden’s administrations. “We can—all of us—innovate in our lives and in our communities in radical ways to lift not only ourselves up, but to help others achieve healthy and flourishing lives.”
In a lecture on Oct. 26, Leary spoke of her work in the Obama and Biden administrations to pass initiatives centered around achieving equity in the country. The event was co-sponsored by the Mental Health Counseling Urban Scholars Program, the Donovan Urban Teaching Scholars Program, and the Center for Psychological Humanities and Ethics.
“Sponsoring change is actually a formidable challenge in human hearts and human minds, and in organizations and in larger systems,” Leary said.
Leary said her journey in sponsoring change began with her study of social psychology. Through reading about the subject and its analytical framework, Leary learned that change is often uncomfortable and challenging.
“Discussing equity, let alone racism, can be uncomfortable for many people because it touches on our values and sense of self,” she said.
During her time working with the Obama administration for the White House Council on Women and Girls, Leary said that she set up an initiative to enhance life outcomes for women and girls. While later working on the Domestic Policy Council in the Biden White House, Leary said she helped implement the president’s first executive order on equity.
“When it came down to actually asking agencies to do the work of advancing equity, or to ensure that their workforce represented America, they first had to do what any of us do when we commit to change—examine our actions, assess whether they’re producing the outcomes we desire or what they want, and then be willing to change what we actually do and how we spend our time,” Leary said.
Leary said that to work toward equity and change imperfect systems for the better, personal reflection is needed. Society can see the beginnings of this type of change within the Biden administration, according to Leary.
“But what’s less recognized yet equally important is that through these equity executive orders, the Biden administration has also prioritized and built an equity infrastructure to address structural inequities,” Leary said. “This kind of investment in infrastructure, and in investment in infrastructure in the built environment, are both important for our nation’s revitalization.”
Leary went on to address how the current civil rights movement differs from that of the 20th century, stating that there is now access to data that better shows disparities among communities.
“But our contemporary equity movements use data analytics, big data to target persistent disparities in historically underserved communities,” Leary said. “With more advanced ways of collecting data we’re able to pinpoint which areas our society struggles with and where those struggles are most prevalent.”
At the conclusion of the lecture, Leary again emphasized that equity depends on the ability to listen deeply.
“Equity basically depends on being willing to listen deeply to stories about our collective histories, and you can help marshal our collective history and create subjects and not objects in the stories that people tell,” she said.
