Equity & Leadership Development
Under the leadership of Nadia Brigham, Brigham Consulting, LLC is a team with over 75 years of collective experience in moving leaders, teams, organizations and companies from concept-awareness and knowledge-building to agency and action related to a range of equity issues.
Our Values
01. Conocimiento: The path of knowledge is a walkway to change.
Drawing from the works of Gloría Anzaldúa, we believe the key to change is a posture which seeks knowledge for the sake of constant transformation. Conocimiento, loosely translated as “to get to know," is not limited to the kind of knowledge we receive from formal institutions, reports, surveys, or data. Rather, knowledge is perhaps most useful when it comes from the experiences of those situated differently than ourselves. Oppressed peoples have a wealth of knowledge about the systems and structures we inhabit, as they are forced to navigate and survive within these daily.
The path towards transformation requires us to wrestle with the knowledge, to interrogate and confront the shadowy parts of ourselves, how we’ve been socialized and programmed to believe and think, and the myths we often cling to as truths. This path of knowledge-seeking affords us regular opportunities to question the normative understanding of our world, and in so doing, engage the world in different ways.
02. Ubuntu: I am because you are.
Ubuntu is a practice of affirming our own humanity through the recognition of the ‘other,’ in their uniqueness and difference. It is a demand to use the ‘other’ as a mirror for who we are and how we are positioned in society. Ubuntu recognizes that humanity is a quality we owe to each other, and reminds us that the personal journey of reclaiming our humanity is a collective project that requires the 'other' as much as it requires ourselves. Combined with conocimiento, Brigham Consulting creates space to help us get to know ourselves and each other in service of seeing each other as an extension of oneself (Ubuntu). We help clients see and practice ways of being that seek to reclaim our individual humanity through the humanization of the ‘other.’
03. To center the voices of the unheard/least heard.
When we are trying to solve for racial inequity, from where you start is critical. Whose standpoint and perspective do we need to consider? And from whose standpoint do you proceed? Or from where does our work unfold? As we engage our work, discovering the varied standpoints and perspectives, and accounting from where we are moving is a must. Understanding the perspectives from which we are moving gives insight to a set of choices about our ability and willingness to advance racial equity.
04. This is inside-out work.
The work of racial equity, justice, healing, leadership development, and engagement is inside-out work on two levels, and it's work that leaders and organizations must opt into doing at both levels for maximum uptake and impact. Trainings, workshops and diagnostics are all useful, but insufficient in creating the kind of change that is necessary in our leaders and organizations. Individuals and leaders must commit to do their own heart and head work, separate and apart from the organization they represent. Additionally, organizations that have an equity value must center that value inside of them first, with actionable steps to live it out as a prerequisite to any work (as equity work is industry-agnostic) they do outside.
Our Approach
Lattice of Understanding
“Tu camino de conocimiento requires that you encounter your shadow side, to confront what you’ve programmed yourself to avoid.” -Gloría Anzaldúa
The Lattice of Understanding serves as a guide to Brigham Consulting’s structured inquiry to build our knowledge of the issues a client is wrestling with.
From there, Brigham Consulting is able to build a customized lattice of understanding that provides scaffolded support for a deep interrogation of the challenges facing groups and organizations, enabling us to build our knowledge/understanding in order to grow and transform.
Structures of Healing
“For the Master’s tools will never dismantle the Master’s house” -Audre Lorde
Structures of Healing is a way for us to uncover or imagine new ways of being that reject the harmful logics of the systems we inhabit, and instead seek to build structures that promote healing, understanding and growth.
Part of this process requires us to practice wielding different tools, in different ways, in order for us to imagine and build new structures. In addition, through the building process, we will uncover a foundation of values that supports the healing we want to see.
Services
Brigham Consulting offers a human-centered and constructive approach to consulting, designed to help leaders, teams and organizations navigate the complexity of pursuing justice and equity.