Five Questions with Innovative Leaders

A Series by Dr. Yoon S. Choi

Featuring Lissette Rodriguez, Managing Director of Racial Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (REDI) at Blue Meridian Partners

One of the best parts of leading a national non-profit is getting to collaborate with brilliant leaders. To share their insights and experience, today I’m excited to launch a new Q&A series on LinkedIn: Five Questions With Innovative Leaders. My goal is to shine a spotlight on impactful and innovative leaders who are improving educational outcomes, breaking down barriers, and supporting students and families. Over the next few months, I’ll be introducing a range of voices who come from different backgrounds and have unique perspectives. Please reach out if you have ideas on leaders who you think would be great to include in this series.

Today I’m thrilled to welcome Lisette Rodriguez, Managing Director, Racial Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (REDI) at Blue Meridian Partners. Blue Meridian is a partnership of results-oriented philanthropists seeking to transform the life trajectories of our nation’s young people and families living in poverty.

Yoon: Can you share a bit about your work and organizational/personal mission?

Lisette: I have spent my entire career in the nonprofit sector working pretty consistently on two things – one is working so that our systems of education, housing, workforce, etc. are more responsive to people who are consistently being left behind, and second is supporting nonprofits to deliver on their core missions.   Both relate to my personal aim of working toward a more equitable and nurturing world that prioritizes people and planet.  As I get older, I am also more mindful of the need to support and mentor younger people in the field who are stepping into leadership and into the peak years of their careers.  I want to make sure I use some of my current time and energy to work alongside leaders who are younger, have fresh energy and new ideas, and are eager to step into their own leadership.  I believe a multiracial and cross-generational alliance of leaders is essential to our next phase of development in the social sector, and I am excited to contribute to that in small ways.     

Yoon: Who is someone that inspired you early on in your career?

Lisette: I have been very fortunate to have been supported and mentored by extraordinary leaders who gave their time and energy to my development.  It has been a real blessing to have access to their thinking, feedback and support as I was learning and growing in my career.  But the people who have inspired me the most in my work have been the families and young people in the communities where I have worked.  Early in my career I ran a shelter for homeless families, and I remember so many of the mothers and the challenges they faced daily and all they did to get their families ahead.  Their stories and struggles inspired me to work hard, and honestly, often fueled anger that led me to work to change the conditions that made their lives so difficult.  I also found inspiration in young adults that I worked with that labored every day to do better, get an education, to show up for family and community, even after being let down by adults who were supposed to protect them, or by schools and other institutions that did not deliver for them.  I saw and learned from their resilience, but I also saw that they experienced so much unnecessary suffering because of the choices that we as a society have made.  It only made me more committed to changing those conditions. 

Yoon: Working in philanthropy, you’ve supported a lot of social impact organizations. What sets the most impactful ones apart?

Lisette: I guess the first thing I would say is that I have enormous respect for anyone leading a social impact organization right now.  Leadership roles in our sector have always been challenging, but the current demands on social sector leaders, including the requirements of fundraising, delivering impact, running a strong organization while dealing with myriad political, technological and staffing pressures inspires awe and deep respect.  So, organizations that are able to deliver outsized impact seem to have a few things in common:  a very strong and aligned leadership team since it takes a team to ultimately deliver on mission; a clear and focused sense of purpose with a compelling strategy to match; an organizational commitment to learning and continuous improvement; and a strong platform from which to deliver all of this (meaning a well-resourced org with time, systems and structures that work together for the benefit of staff and communities).  Incredibly hard to do, very inspiring when you see it!   

Yoon: In your role at Blue Meridian Partners, you embed racial equity into your investment strategies. What does that look like in practice?

Lisette: Embedding racial equity into our sector is truly a never-ending process.  Our organizations are not exempt from racism, sexism, homophobia, bias, and all of the other ways in which we hold prejudice against one another and discriminate.  It takes constant effort to dismantle these harmful beliefs and actions from our relationships, processes, and decision-making structures.  One way to do this in an organization is to use data to assess where resources are going – what are we investing in and what is being left out and why?  Or using data to analyze and understand how services are being experienced by members of different groups.  Using data helps us see the good work as well as the gaps and opens the door to understanding where we may be falling short.  It also fuels a continuous process of learning and improvement. 

Yoon: What new innovations or ideas in the social sector are giving you hope/are you optimistic about?

Lisette: It’s great to see how some organizations are combining technology and human touch to improve outcomes as they reach many more people.  For instance, using automated processes to create greater access to public benefits, or clear criminal records, or reach more people through remote training so they can access a living wage.  There is enormous promise in using some of these tools to improve people’s lives.  As we use these strategies for greater reach, we must also not lose sight of the human element in our work. Many of us were drawn to the social sector because of our deep love for people and communities; we will still need to invest in human connection if we hope to truly transform our world. Finally, I am hopeful that we will, as a sector, find ways to more effectively leverage government as a partner in advancing decisions that increase the public good and direct public resources in ways that can yield the greatest shared benefit.