The summer was an exciting one at Eastside Pathways. We kicked it off with a trip to Portland to attend the Pacific Educational Group’s Regional Summit for Courageous Conversations, a racial equity conference. In July we embarked on the journey of adaptive leadership with Leadership Eastside and in August new changes in leadership took effect.
We are pleased to announce that Cathy Habib, a long-time member of our volunteer staff, has stepped into a new role as the Lead Facilitator.
In this role, Cathy will meet regularly with the volunteer staff to ensure that they have the tools necessary to perform their assigned roles and continue to feel engaged in the work they are carrying out. This includes but is not limited to refining facilitator roles and responsibilities, recommending and developing necessary facilitator training and updates, evaluation and recognition, and identifying and recommending consistent and common collaborative meeting practices, policies, and procedures.
Cathy has been a significant and steadfast leader in the organization primarily as a co-lead for the School Readiness collaborative and will continue to be a participant in that group.
We also welcome Susan Sullivan as the new Board Chair and thank Janet Levinger for her years of continuous service to Eastside Pathways.
Susan shares her thoughts:
I have been with Eastside Pathways since the beginning. My role has evolved as the needs of the organization and partnership have changed. I am honored and excited to serve as the Eastside Pathways Board Chair. I would also like to recognize and thank Bill Henningsgaard and Janet Levinger, previous Eastside Pathways Board Chairs, for the leadership they provided to get us where we are now.
When Eastside Pathways first started, we—the backbone, the partnership, and the community—worked hard to define who Eastside Pathways should be, what we valued, and the work we needed to do. In the last few years we have strived to set up the work, the teams, and the structures to get the work done. Looking ahead, I see the opportunity to make the work better – stronger, more impactful, more data-rich, and more widely and deeply connected to the community.
Eastside Pathways, the backbone and the partnership, are working together to do things differently, to change the system. If we continued to do things the way we always did, we would get what we always got. And from the work that you are doing and the effort that you are making, I know that you want something better for our kids and our future. System change takes time and intention. Bill used to say, this is not a project, it is a movement.
Specifically, to make these changes we as individuals and organizations will need to reflect on how we are contributing to the whole – not just what am I or my organization doing for ourselves, but how are we making the entire structure better? How are we thinking about the greater system internally and what is our impact on it?
Race. How do we recognize, celebrate, and talk about race? Black and Brown students in Bellevue continue to struggle. What are we doing to understand their needs and to create student and staff supports that meet those? For the past several years, Bellevue School District has engaged the Pacific Educational Group (PEG) to provide racial equity training for its leadership and staff. Over the past year, several Eastside Pathways partners and staff have participated in PEG training. This June, 28 people from Eastside Pathways, the board, staff, and several partners attended the PEG Regional Summit in Portland, OR. It was a transformational experience. I strongly believe that bringing this training to the partnership will be catalytic in creating the racial awareness and ability to have the discussions to create the change we need to support every child in Bellevue.
Bellevue is a richly diverse community. The degree to which each Bellevue resident flourishes in that will define us economically and as a community.
I look forward to creating these solutions together.