On The Edge of Systems Change: A Clubhouse Chat w/ Lorena Garcia Duran
“What should we do to collaborate and work together? We need to become very responsible of our own participation in all of this. The systems, the governments, the institutions, yes, we have to nail that. But I don't think we will get close to that if we don't prepare ourselves.”
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Featured song: Alright (Instrumental), Cryptified Malik
Lorena Garcia Duran, Global Leader for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) at Ashoka, serves up a loaded plate for listeners to chew on. Topics include her obsession and passion for disrupting systems of oppression; the origins and importance of the “everyone a changemaker” vision; what “systems change” means to her; learning and leading DEI work in a global context; the importance of language AND a warning about weighting words too heavily; tangible long term systemic approaches to attack systems of oppressions; what some of her own resilience practices are; and so much more.
Lorena Garcia Duran is the Global Leader for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) at Ashoka, the world’s largest network of social entrepreneurs. She launched the DEI initiative in the summer of 2020 and remains part of the Ashoka U.S. Partnerships team. Lorena joined Ashoka in 2008 and has been orchestrating partnerships between social and business entrepreneurs since then. She launched Ashoka in Miami back in 2011 making it a Latin American hub for all Ashoka efforts.
She is Board member of Imperative Fund, an impact investment fund focused on sustainable models addressing poverty. She also sits on the Board of Directors of Freedom for Immigrants, an organization dedicated to abolishing immigration detention while ending the isolation of people currently suffering the profit-driven system.
Lorena grew up in Mexico City. At eighteen years old she moved to Paris to study French at La Sorbonne. She graduated from La Universidad Pontificia de Salamanca in Spain. She now resides in Los Angeles, California.
Learn more about Lorena here.
Illuminate’s Power, Justice and Systems Change Webinar Series is an international conversation about power and the role of equity and justice work in changing systems.
Systems change initiatives are often led from the center of the existing systems we seek to change. Yet, we know that systems change practitioners are working in diverse contexts, communities, doing systems change under different disciplines, using different languages, frameworks, methodologies and coming from various lineages of thought and practice. It is also clear that we need a strong, diverse and connected field of systems change leaders to address the complexity and scope of the problems of the 21st century.
“On the Edge of Systems Change” utilizes the Clubhouse application, to illuminate the voices of Systems Change Practitioners committed to centering equity and sharing different ways of knowing and deepening our systems change practices. These conversations center people and perspectives from individuals working “on the edges” of the systems change field. It is an opportunity for candid conversation with time and space for listeners to contribute thoughts via chat and to be “handed the mic,” to ask questions or share reflections.
Launched in 2022, this series is hosted by Illuminate Network Doula, Luis Alejandro Tapia.
