Joining the Fearless Futures team
After nearly 5 years post-university and having completed a Bsc in Psychology, I felt that I was ready to make a change within my career. I had previously worked in roles within Office Management, Marketing and Business Development across varying industries and was seeking a fulfilling and challenging environment to spur the next steps along my professional development. My desire was to seek out a business with a strong mission to contribute a positive and transformative impact upon the world and whilst exploring vacancies with the social impact space, I stumbled on the work of Fearless Futures (FF).
FF’s commitment to providing education and training to schools and organisations on anti-oppression, intersectionality and to inspire powerful change, was an uplifting and stimulating mission which aligned with my core values and beliefs. I was excited by the prospect of working at a company which is making a meaningful difference to the world and which incites transformative change across a broad range of individuals.
I’m now coming up to my first six weeks as a member of the FF team and so far I have found the team to be collaborative, supportive and flexible and I have been impressed by the passion and shared vision every team member possesses.
I recently had the opportunity to complete Fearless Futures flagship programme — Design for Inclusion (DFI). DFI is a 3-day equity and inclusion capacity building programme for senior leaders from around the world, who want to transform their workplace culture, leadership, and products. The holistic programme is comprised of a unique learning method — immersive and experiential — it powerfully equips participants with the language and frameworks to champion equity and inclusion across both organisational policies and practices. In contrast to traditional ‘unconscious bias’ training, the DFI avoids superficial responses and is impactful by up-skilling participants of the programme through concepts such as “privileged fragility” (and how to resist such behaviours), as well as understanding mindsets conductive to inclusion and developing strategic actions plans to design for inclusion within your organisation.
Going into the DFI I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. I believed that I was already fairly knowledgeable about the various inequities different minoritised groups face in society, however I was open to the experience and to be challenged by learning new information.
Reflecting on the programme, I found the DFI to be insightful, dynamic and a thought-provoking experience. My highlight of the programme was a Jenga game which simulated the struggles and oppression minoritised individuals face (trust me — it worked!). The outcome of this is that I feel much more confident about challenging interpersonal oppression when I see it happening. Overall the impact of the programme was driven by the combination of theory-based learning, in addition to engaging, interactive activities exploring the concepts of privilege & power, alongside a practical toolkit for applying our learnings to organisations. We were educated on how privilege and inequities manifest in both an interpersonal level, as well as on a systemic level and how this impacts individuals from minority groups.
Prior to the programme I wasn’t particularly familiar with cissexism, particularly the legislation/policies surrounding obtaining a gender recognition certificate as a trans person, and how individuals are left alienated and dehumanised. Since this was a form of oppression I hadn’t spent a huge amount of time thinking about, I realised how the struggles of trans and non-binary people are invisibilized and I believe I’m now better equipped to see how this form of inequity manifests in day-to-day situations and how to act as an ally.
Consequently, I achieved an increased awareness of the fact that, even if you aren’t actively discriminating against a minority group, being silent and not acting as an ally makes you complicit and also perpetuates inequality in society. As a result of the programme, I am committed to continually educating myself through books, articles and research on the issues related to anti-oppression and the systemic factors impeding an equitable and just society. In case this has piqued your interest, this is an article I’ve read recently you might enjoy on the impact of microaggressions on a person’s well being in the workplace — it can be found here.
