Work with Us
What are StrivEquity's Services?
Executive Coaching
Our Equity-Responsive Leadership (ERL) model supports leaders seeking to cultivate more equitable lives, teams, and institutions. David DeVaughn, as the lead coach, has completed the Teleos Leadership Institute’s Teleos Coach Development Program and is credentialed as an Associate Certified Coach by the International Coaching Federation:
- ERL equips leaders, based on their positioning, power, and social identities, to enact individual learning agendas and identify capacity-building opportunities for leading with a focus on individual and social impact.
- ERL’s seven-step progression ensures the incorporation of awareness, emotional intelligence, and vision setting.
- While there is a sequence and intention to our work, StrivEquity is committed to supporting you through the day-to-day and week-to-week challenges and opportunities that emerge.
Investment-Level – 2024
The investment for our services is negotiated based on the specific initiative, partnership, or collaboration. Understanding that each institution has unique needs and objectives, we collaborate closely with our clients to develop a pricing structure that aligns with their goals and available resources.
Institutional Development & Leadership Development
Collaborating with leaders as they align and prioritize initiatives to advance equity, inclusion, accessibility, accountability, and justice.
- How are you enacting the equity-responsive commitments you’ve made to your staff, peers, and partners?
- Through a series of leadership inquiries and considerations, StrivEquity prepares leaders to identify challenges and/or opportunities their institutions face as they work towards institution-wide change.
- This work helps organize leaders’ visions, approaches, and resources to support initiatives and achieve desired outcomes.
- This approach incorporates elements of Equity-Responsive Leadership (ERL) coaching, with a focus on implementing a leader’s vision within their institution.
Investment-Level – 2024
The investment for our services is negotiated based on the specific initiative, partnership, or collaboration. Understanding that each institution has unique needs and objectives, we collaborate closely with our clients to develop a pricing structure that aligns with their goals and available resources.
Strategic Advisory
We engage leaders to foster equitable partnerships, policy campaigns, and collaborations with marginalized communities, stakeholders, and partners. Our technical assistance supports institutions in achieving intersectional equity goals while aiming for systemic change.
- How are you centering equity in your work while striving for systems change? We assist institutions in navigating this complex landscape, developing strategies that align with their values and principles in all their initiatives.
- StrivEquity leverages its cross-sector experience to help institutions align and prioritize initiatives that advance racial equity and economic justice, especially for systematically marginalized populations.
- Our expertise spans a wide range of areas, including Food Justice, Economic Justice, the Criminal Legal System, Local/State/Federal Food Policy, Economic Development, and Health Equity. We bring deep knowledge and understanding of these domains to provide tailored solutions that address the unique challenges institutions face.
Investment-Level – 2024
The investment for our services is negotiated based on the specific initiative, partnership, or collaboration. Understanding that each institution has unique needs and objectives, we collaborate closely with our clients to develop a pricing structure that aligns with their goals and available resources.
Speaking Services
StrivEquity’s transformative talk series unlocks your professional growth. Demystify the benefits and challenges of taking a professional sabbatical. Decode manager-subordinate dynamics to enhance workplace relationships. Gain insights on navigating white-majority charity work as a Black man. Learn to set boundaries, recognize warning signs, and thrive in your career by understanding the complexities of these key topics.
Investment-Level – 2024
The investment for our services is negotiated based on the specific initiative, partnership, or collaboration. Understanding that each institution has unique needs and objectives, we collaborate closely with our clients to develop a pricing structure that aligns with their goals and available resources.
Equity-Responsive Leadership
Why Equity-Responsive Leadership (ERL)?
- ERL was developed in response to the need for more impactful professional development experiences tailored to Black and Brown leaders.
- For these leaders, responding to calls for equity in their institutions, especially since 2020, involves a constant calculation. This includes balancing individual comfort, institutional expectations, career opportunities, hopes for institutional change, and the potential for exposure in various forms.
- After years of misaligned support, the need for a different kind of leadership became apparent from conversations with friends, colleagues, family, leadership coaches, and my training with the Teleos Leadership Institute’s Teleos Coach Development Program.
- Through commitment to this process, ERL becomes second nature, enhancing awareness at all levels. Leaders learn to cultivate an environment conducive to feedback, make informed decisions, and consistently self-reflect on their body, mind, and spirit, aiming to understand their leadership impact on themselves and others.
- Equity-Responsive Leadership is not limited to individuals with marginalized identities.
- However, those who hold such identities can leverage their personal experiences to exercise their leadership with a greater sense of awareness and responsiveness.
- By acknowledging and embracing their unique perspectives, leaders with marginalized identities can better navigate the challenges and opportunities in their lives, teams, and institutions.
What are the Elements of Equity-Responsive Leaders?
- Equity-Responsive Leaders (ERLs) courageously pursue their personal and professional goals in the face of pervasive racism, prejudice, and exclusivity within complex systems.
- ERLs are more likely to achieve their desired outcomes when they have the necessary support to heal and thrive amidst these challenges.
- ERLs ground their work in principles of equity, inclusion, accessibility, accountability, and justice, acknowledging the critical importance of these tenets.
- To remain effective, ERLs require a sense of inspiration, value, and respect in their roles, fostering confidence in their purpose and impact.
- ERLs must understand the complex ways social identities influence interpersonal, inter-team, and institutional dynamics. This understanding is crucial to prevent the erosion of authentic self-expression, boundaries, and recognition.
In David’s Own Words
As a cisgender Black man raised in the northeastern United States, I am intimately aware and impacted by the ways that my context shaped my (mis)understanding of many things, including how anti-Blackness operates in internal, interpersonal, institutional, and structural ways. I am continually in a learning and practicing mindset through engaging in self-care, self-love, familial connections, and collaborations that champion Black people and people of color. My own work to further my racial equity practice, as well as to examine my internalized anti-Blackness, takes the form of ancestral mediation, activism, reading, writing, and other multiple therapeutic contexts.
The Professional Sabbatical
Demystifying the Benefits and Challenges
Are you seeking a longer break from work beyond the usual short vacations? Are you juggling financial responsibilities and caregiving duties that need to be considered? Do you want to ensure that your time away is successful and fulfilling? If so, a professional sabbatical might be the answer.
Join this talk to uncover how to:
- Assess your professional and personal situation before deciding on a sabbatical.
- Recognize warning signs that indicate a need for self-protection or considering leaving a manager.
- Plan your time off for a more meaningful experience.
- Leverage multiple therapeutic contexts for personal growth
- Identify the top twelve challenges and opportunities during your sabbatical.
Decoding Manager-Subordinate Dynamics
Recognizing Warning Signs
Are you looking to sharpen your awareness and understand whether your manager is the right fit for you? Do you have intuitions about their behavior, but can’t quite pinpoint the issue? Are there comments, humor, or management styles that raise concerns, even if they seem friendly? It’s time to reassess your professional relationship.
Join this talk to uncover how to:
- Use emotional intelligence to identify warning signs in your relationship with your manager.
- Set appropriate boundaries and know when and where to enforce them.
- Understand the futility of trying to change a challenging manager.
- Explore how institutional peers can either support or hinder your professional growth.
Navigating White-Majority Charity Work as a Black Man
Have you ever found yourself as one of the few Black men in a non-profit organization focused on charity work? Does your leadership position sometimes make you feel tokenized, while other times your accomplishments and potential are recognized? Are there blurred boundaries between your professional and personal life in this role? It might be time to take a moment and reflect on how you are thriving or surviving in this environment.
Join this talk to uncover how to:
- Evaluate an institution’s values and principles to ensure alignment with your own.
- Understand the limitations of being invited to the table without enjoying the same privileges.
- Conduct a holistic self-inventory to enhance self-awareness.
- Navigate the intersections of marginalized social identity and organizational social currency.