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Session 1: Decolonizing Artificial Intelligence: The Art of Being and Becoming Yourself as a Professional of Color and/or LGBTQ+ Leader in Philanthropy

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This space is for:

  • Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) and/or LGBTQ+ professionals working at MCF member organizations 

  • Members of MCF's new People of Color and LGBTQ+ Community of Practice

Session 1 Overview: Decolonizing Artificial Intelligence  

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POC and LGBTQ+ CoP

This takes on a new meaning as AI systems influence how the philanthropic sector gets its work done. At its heart, leadership is an experimental art of being and becoming yourself - a journey filled with possibilities for becoming aware, using self as learning territory and enabling culture change towards equity and belonging in outcomes. For professionals of color and/or LGBTQ+ leaders in philanthropy, we often walk tightropes between community spaces and institutional halls, carrying relationships to reality from many places and parts of who we are - Black and queer, rural and first-generation, immigrant and Southern, Indigenous and urban. We bring different cultures, languages, ways of being, and ways of seeing that shape how we navigate institutional cultures often not designed with and for us, making choices about how to use our influence thoughtfully while recognizing the enormous power we wield in philanthropy with the questions we ask, the issues we raise and the ways we show up each day.

Our inherited wisdom, cultural practices, and ancestral knowledge offer unique lenses for evaluating and making sense of AI systems. The ways we’ve learned to read between the lines of institutional culture, to hold multiple perspectives simultaneously, to sense when something feels misaligned with community values - these skills take on new significance as we face decisions about AI adoption that bring both promise and the risk of amplifying existing biases. Each of us brings ways of knowing that are likely aren’t captured in algorithms: oral traditions that understand context and nuance, indigenous knowledge that sees interconnections, queer wisdom that sees beyond nonbinary thinking, cultural frameworks that question whose expertise counts, community wisdom that centers relationship over efficiency, lived experiences of creating conditions for equity and belonging in outcomes when existing systems exclude us - all honoring multiple ways of knowing and being. These cultural assets offer powerful lenses and approaches for evaluating and Decolonizing AI systems - challenging whose knowledge shapes these tools, questioning what gets measured and valued, and ensuring AI serves rather than supersedes our communities’ ways of knowing as we continue the art of being and becoming ourselves as professionals of color and/or LGBTQ+ leaders in philanthropy.

Pre-session Reflection Questions 

  1. As AI systems enter our work in philanthropy, how do your cultural traditions and ways of knowing support your experiments and your developing approach to cultivating a relationship with these systems? And how are you continuously checking on that? 

  2. What wisdom from navigating institutional spaces helps you evaluate these new tools? 

  3. How do you stay grounded in community perspectives while engaging with AI systems? 

  4. How do we create conditions that move us toward what we care about most, individually and collectively?

While each of us must find our own answers to these questions, our own way of being and becoming in this work - and our own relationship with AI systems - none of us can or should walk this path alone. 

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Opening speakers - Decolonizing AI Event

Join us as two colleagues, Anita and Paul, serve as our opening speakers and scouts, sharing a brief window from their storied careers in philanthropy. Through their experiences of navigating institutional cultures and growing into themselves as professionals of color in philanthropy, they’ll open exploration of both their career in this space and their emerging relationship with AI systems.

In small groups, we’ll examine some of these questions about our journey in philanthropy and our emerging relationship with AI systems:

  • What has shaped your way of being and becoming as a professional of color and/or LGBTQ+ leader in philanthropy? 

  • How have you navigated institutional cultures?

  • What have you learned about wielding influence thoughtfully?

  • What questions arise from your lived experience about AI’s role in grantmaking?

  • What questions should we ask about embedded biases? 

Together we’ll explore assumptions, thoughts, ideas and concerns about this emerging landscape collectively.

None of us has all the answers, but through the diversity of our ways of knowing and our collective genius, we can identify patterns worth nurturing through the practices and relationships we’re developing with AI systems as we continue our experimental art of being and becoming ourselves as professionals of color and/or LGBTQ+ leaders in philanthropy.

Session 1 Summary Runsheet 

Decolonizing Artificial Intelligence: The Art of Being and Becoming Yourself as a Professional of Color and/or LGBTQ+ Leader in Philanthropy 

Our 90-minute virtual program includes:

Time

Session content

 

10m

Settle In and Program Introduction   

An invitation to reflect and share what happened for you in pairs. Debrief and introduction to program flow.

 

30m

Fish Bowl 

 

Opening exchange with Anita and Paul followed by a tour of questions.

 

20m

Small Group Discussion   

 

Choose a facilitator and exchange perspectives on the session themes.

 

20m

Collective Sense-making and Resource Exchange  

 

Together make sense of biases AI makes better or worse, discuss areas of our work it is well-suited or not - and share helpful resources with each other.  

 10m

Debrief and Close:  

 

What was your experience? What kinds of things do you see now? Take aways? What will you try? Reminders and where we're going next.

Optional Pre-Reads 

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Anita and Paul

This session is designed by and for the People of Color and LGBTQ+ Community of Practice. It is part of their 2025 Series "Different Voices, Shared Journey: Leadership Without Easy Answers".

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Logistics

  • Zoom link provided upon registration
  • In-session materials and resources shared afterward
  • Session is NOT recorded 
  • Closed captioning provided

Questions or Accessibility Needs?

Please contact Awale (Wally) Osman at aosman@mcf.org with any questions about the program or registration process.

This program is part of our two primary strategies for growing the capacity of our members to operationalize equity and belonging in outcomes: organizational learning to strengthen policies, practices and resource flows, alongside leadership development to provide a combination of challenge and support for becoming aware, using self as a learning territory, and experimenting with creating enabling forces for culture change. 

Audience
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