Anti-Racist Champions of Change (ARCC) Completes First Year!

In September 2023, ARCC completed its first-ever program year, which brought together teams of BIPOC managers and executives from MidPen Housing and Mercy Housing California to exploreCycle of ARCC program leadership development and organizational transformation towards an equitable affordable housing industry.

Our Work Together Through a series of sessions that included skill development, honest dialogue, personal reflection, and imaginative thinking, we worked together to create a future of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging across our field. Now, participants can bring back to their organizations tools and frameworks to help them toward their own paths of equity.

More Ahead Stay tuned for more reflections and lessons learned from ARCC’s first year, and check out the visual notes below from our closing session to see thoughts and sentiments from the cohort! (Click on each image for enlarged view)

Graphic notes from ARCC cohort
Graphic notes from ARCC cohort
Graphic notes from ARCC cohort

What ARCC Accomplishes for Our Industry

In 2021, NPH sought deep stakeholder input on the current state of our affordable housing industry in the Bay Area when it comes to diversity, equity, and inclusion. We heard from Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) leaders and their allies about what they saw as barriers that BIPOC folks face in their leadership and career growth, as well as the impact it has on our collective vision of homes for all. With this feedback, we have designed ARCC, a program that:

Supports space for personal growth for BIPOC leaders through:
  • High-level organizational and interpersonal skill-building
  • Space for personal reflection, growth, and renewal
  • Support for the development and sharing of practices that support BIPOC leadership growth for themselves and for others
  • Response to the tensions that BIPOC face, such as regular microaggressions, entrenched power among existing Board and C-Suite leadership, and the extra labor endured to navigate these realities
Centers relationships by:
  • Providing opportunities to grow participants’ networks across the industry and deepen collaboration toward our shared vision of housing for all
  • Strengthening peer relationships inside participants’ own organizations for more collaboration toward internal transformation
  • Fostering allyship with executives inside their organizations to ensure support for internal change from those who currently hold power and authority
Focuses on organizational change by:
  • Inviting non-profit developer organizations to send a group of BIPOC leaders to participate together so they can conspire and support each other on an ongoing basis
  • Creating an opportunity to reflect, analyze, and plan for organizational change that will actively dismantle the barriers faced by BIPOC leaders to ascend to AND succeed in executive leadership positions
  • Strengthening participants’ skills and knowledge to support their organizational change efforts
  • Ensuring participants’ executives participate in a parallel program so they can strengthen their ability to be allies and co-conspirators towards change that will better support career advancement, improved compensation, and recognition of the contributions and leadership of BIPOC at their organization
Accelerates industry change by:
  • Fostering a powerful network of BIPOC leaders and allies that hold a shared vision of transformation for the future of our industry
  • Sharing learnings, experiences, and inspirations so others can learn from the participants (both the individuals and the organizations)
  • Integrating the content, learnings, and approaches gained from ARCC into NPH’s other programs, providing source material to support  progress towards a more inclusive and equitable industry
  • Fostering relationships across organizations that will help influence and inform organizations throughout the industry