We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Dawn L. Brown. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Dawn below.
Dawn, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Can you talk to us about serving the underserved.
EmpowHer Institute is really a love letter to our community. Our organization was founded by a Black woman, Betty LaMarr, and her successor (myself) is also a Black woman, both from economically insecure communities. In fact, Betty graduated from the first high school we partnered with in the early 2000s. 100% of our staff and 80% of our Board of Directors are not only degreed but also have lived experience, reflecting our communities. 98% of the girls and gender-expansive youth we serve are Black and Latina. 96% live at or below the poverty level. We have 13 Title I school partners, from communities such as Watts, Compton, Inglewood, Koreatown, Gardena, Venice, and Hawthorne. We have parents and youth employed by our organization. EmpowHer Institute truly IS the community. We have been around for 22 years and our curriculum and programming is specifically designed to take a whole-child approach to supporting Black and Brown girls. This is why we make the kind of impact that we do. 100% of our middle schoolers matriculate into high school and 100% of our high school seniors graduate and are accepted into college. We have girls majoring in law, social work, urban planning, biology, and aeronautical engineering, just to name a few of their goals. And our girls are socially conscious and developing the social-emotional intelligence to heal from trauma and succeed in the workplace. At EmpowHer Institute, we nurture the next generation of leaders, change makers and disruptors.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
My journey as a non-profit professional began 25 years ago in New York City and I have been driving forth initiatives that directly impact my communities since then. I graduated from New York University with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Theater and a Masters Degree in Drama Therapy. I thought I was going to be a Broadway star, but I decided to find a flexible full-time job. Somehow I acted my way into working as a Program Manager for an Afterschool program and fell in love with the work. I realized that my purpose was not Broadway, but supporting young people who look like me and live in similar communities as the one I grew up in. That passion for supporting youth and families from marginalized communities is what has driven me to continue this work many years later.
In 2020, I was proud to join EmpowHer Institute to continue the phenomenal mission that our founder, set out when she founded the organization in 2003. For the first 17 years of EmpowHer, we focused on teen dropout and pregnancy prevention. When I came on as the CEO, I set out to evolve the programming and vision to encompass a wider purpose of breaking generational cycles from a holistic and whole-child approach.
So, today, the EmpowHer Institute operates as a fully functioning social justice-based organization that partners with Title 1 schools in Los Angeles to teach over 1000 girls and gender-expansive youth, ages 11-21, how to navigate the world and become their most successful selves through a plethora of hands-on programs. I am passionate about serving our girls and I appreciate the unique experiences we can create for our EmpowHer participants.
We offer weekly social-emotional learning classes that include monthly mentoring from adult women professionals, financial literacy, skills-based learning, cultural exposure to the arts, and social justice advocacy. We have a Philanthropy project that engages our teens in philanthropic careers and even provides $5000 grants to youth-serving nonprofit organizations. We have a Social Justice STEAM Initiative focused on developing highly skilled, socially conscious, STEAM skills for girls. The girls learn everything from coding to marine science to robotics. Our annual Girls to Greatness Teen Summit brings together over 600 EmpowHer girls for a day of education, empowerment, and celebration. It’s full of Black and Brown Girl Joy and they learn a tremendous amount of new skills. During the Summer we have a 5-week Social Justice STEAM Camp for middle and high school girls. They are trained as marine scientists, living on a college campus and exploring the ocean, which includes obtaining their PADI Scuba diving and Keelboat sailing certifications. The girls even go to French Polynesia as a capstone project in August, as a part of this Camp. We offer intensive case management for our highest-need families, quarterly parent education opportunities and an emergency family fund, and an entire academy focused on supporting adult women professionals in navigating the workplace and healing from trauma.
This is all a part of our goal of developing a new Social Justice STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, and Math) workforce led by girls and gender-expansive youth who reflect the communities most impacted by inequities are utilizing STEAM to solve the social justice issues plaguing the world today. Our girls will not only be highly skilled and exceptionally competent leaders in the field, but also be socially conscious in their decision-making, socially emotionally intelligent, and financially literate. Careers in the STEAM fields often begin in the six-figure range, so our girls will be able to break cycles of poverty in their households.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
I am a Black girl who grew up in a financially insecure Washington, DC community during the crack epidemic of the 80s and was raised by a single mother who sacrificed a lot so that I could become the woman I am today. My life is a testimony of resilience. But what is so much more important to me and impactful to the world is the resilience of the EmpowHer girls and women I am blessed to serve each day. Their stories and experiences are the reason I do what I do. We work with communities that are hit the hardest and impacted the most by political decisions, inequity, racism, and sexism in the world. And yet, 1030 girls get up and come to EmpowHer every week, in some cases every day, and they do the work necessary to become the best versions of themselves.
I am challenged to put my resiliency skills into action each day as a nonprofit CEO in today’s world. Our sustainability as an organization is being threatened under this new administration because of who we are— Black, Latina, Indigenous, women of color.
As a 22-year-old organization and as a person who has been working in the nonprofit sector for well over 20 years, we are battle-tested. Right now, I am working with my team to develop new fundraising strategies, engage and motivate new donors and existing donors, strengthen community partnerships, and make extremely tough decisions about our future. You don’t get into nonprofit work for the money or the ego. There is no room for those things, but the organization does need money to continue doing the incredible, life-changing work that we do. So while today’s political climate is both exhausting and overwhelming, we are up for the fight. And we HAVE to win because our girls are depending on us.
Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?
When in the nonprofit space, it’s important to work with people who share the same values and passions as the organization. Be clear on the vision of the organization, your long-term and short-term goals (strategic plan), and how we define success. Ensure that everyone understands the role they play in achieving success. It makes managing a team and maintaining its high morale easier. You have to be transparent with your team and at the same time protect them. Here are my top 5 tips:
– Prioritize wellness. In addition to providing quality health insurance and benefits, we offer monthly team wellness activities that take place during the workday and engage us in healing. Activities have included axe throwing, salt cave and sound meditations, dance, boxing, aromatherapy, painting, and candle making, just to name a few. Twice a year we offer each team member a $50 reimbursable stipend to do something involving self-care as an individual and we don’t judge or limit what that looks like for them.
– Pay a living wage. As a nonprofit, we are limited to what we can pay in salaries, but we do our best to ensure that everyone (including our youth interns) receives a fair wage that is in alignment with the size of our operational budget and our job descriptions.
– Have a set of values and codes of conduct that everyone has collectively agreed upon and hold each other accountable.
– As a leader, embrace that you are not always right and you will not always be perfect.
– Toxicity and dysfunction in the workplace IS NOT NORMAL OR HEALTHY! Know that even with your best intentions, sometimes saying goodbye to a teammate is the best decision or situation for the team as a whole. It may not appear to be at the time, but trust me, in the long run, it always works out for the best.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://empowher.org/?fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAaY1ESfuSYDbuwBUCVXcRftFUpXF14O8xZt1F7eJN_TiR09gJLwNq1wwEmY_aem_ONyILkalM9LNovXl0KDkGQ
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/empowherorgla/ ; https://www.instagram.com/dawn_l_brown/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dawn-l-brown-376669201/
Image Credits
EmpowHer Institute