Letter from Anahi Naranjo

Dear SHIFT Board of Directors,

My name is Anahi Naranjo, and I was part of this year’s Emerging Leaders Program (ELP) from SHIFT at Jackson Hole. I am writing with the purpose of sharing my experiences of my relived trauma at SHIFT to urge the SHIFT board to remove Christian Beckwith as Executive Director and bring on a person of color with extensive experience in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) training to truly embody the mission and values of the organization.

I am immigrant, woman of color. I attended Middlebury College in Vermont, where I became part of the leadership of our Mountain Club. It is an understatement for me to say that I was not welcomed there. I was constantly belittled, questioned, and microaggresed. It was to the point where my mental health deeply deteriorated, impacted until I was almost not able to return to my studies. I stayed because I knew my communities needed someone like me to reclaim and create inclusive outdoor spaces. The strength of my community is what kept me resilient and has given me the strength to move on stronger into the world ready to take on these racist, enableist, toxic outdoor spaces.

SHIFT felt like reliving those four years of violence in my life in the span of two weeks. The spaces at SHIFT were created for the comfort and learning of white individuals, not for oppressed communities. Time and again I found myself having to justify my presence in the spaces we occupied, and people of color were expected to educate our peers to the point where it was adversely impacting our mental health.

Every time myself and others spoke up calling out someone or something, we found ourselves alienated and unsupported not only from our peers but especially from Christian, a person who is technically supposed to be our biggest support in this space. During the beginning of the program I found myself censoring myself, knowing that my outspokenness might lead SHIFT leadership to think lesser of me as I began to see how unsupportive they were of our feedback when we did give it. I went to bed crying, exhausted, because I realized that this space that supposedly was a space that welcomed by radicalness was a space where I had to appeal to white supremacy.

It suddenly hit me that feeling this way is precisely the problem: with a white male in charge, the centuries of colonialism and all the guilt and need for me to go against what I believed to please this organization that flew me out here emerged. This became an extremely toxic space for people of color. The next day and for the rest of the program I did not hold back and I spoke my truth. It got to the point where Christian slowly alienated himself from a group for us, not even saying hello as an individual in his position should be. Conversations became extremely hostile and triggering for myself and other people of color, and we felt severely alone and unsupported.

While more tensions arose, there was a point where Christian asked us that if we had a problem we should speak to him and not his staff since one of them had been driven to the point of tears because of our complaints that our time was not being respected as a talk beforehand delayed our panels by 20 minutes. At this point whenever we spoke to Christian we were asked for an immense amount of labor that as were running from panel to panel we did not have the emotional energy to do more. I ended up hearing of those of us on this panel being portrayed as villains about this situation from other ELP attendees that spoke to me, telling me Christian was sharing this story and portraying us this way without even speaking to us about what happened. Myself and others slowly began separating ourselves from these situations because of these instances. We were being portrayed as the angry brown people, and were slowly silenced as opportunities were taken from us and given to others who were less vocal. Even these past few days, we notice how Christian is reaching out to only select ELP participants, some of us not included for reasons we don’t know. This is not appropriate behavior from an Executive Director.

Emerging Leader Programs that provide financial support for growing leaders in the industry are indispensable, and I am grateful that SHIFT along with other organizations for creating these spaces. However, these spaces existing is not enough: if they are inviting participants to the table but not creating environments where they are respected and heard, these programs will do more harm than good, as SHIFT 2018 demonstrated. I was extremely hurt this past month, more than I could share on this letter. I want this program to be successful, because I want to make sure little brown girls like me can follow my footsteps and know they can be heard and not shunned when speaking their truth in spaces like SHIFT. This is why I applied to ELP. And I am writing this letter to be a good ancestor for those before me and after me.

Leadership must change to create a space where marginalized communities are centered and heard. It is time for Christian Beckwith to step down from his position and walk the walk to let a person of color lead this organization forward.

Best regards,

Anahi Naranjo