“I raise my voice not so that I can shout, but so that those without a voice can be heard.”

― Malala Yousafzai


Dear partners and friends,

Spark Policy Institute was founded with a core belief that diverse perspectives are key to achieving meaningful change. Each of our conference rooms are named after leaders who made a difference because they spoke up and spoke out: Malala Yousafzai, Rodolpho “Corky” Gonzales, Hattie McDaniel, Maya Angelou, Dolores Huerta, and Sojourner Truth.

Our role as a bridge between nonprofits, communities, and funders brings with it a great responsibility to ensure all voices are heard in strategy design, implementation, research, evaluation, and interpretation. With the mark of the new year, we are committed to assessing how we are doing and where we need to improve. One of the ways we are doing that, is by renewing our focus on the issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI).

Our team is taking on the hard work to make this vision reality – we have assembled not just a committee, but a working group, whose key charges are to develop goals for improving our work and our internal culture to more truly and demonstrably respect diversity, value equity, and foster inclusion.

We are committed to sharing our journey with specifics about the steps we are taking to reach our goals. You can read an introduction to our reinforced effort in our latest blog post Journey to Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, which includes a link to our DEI Commitment, and our 2018 DEI Plan. We will continue to update our website and newsletter with all of our efforts.

I am sincerely humbled by the skill and perseverance of my colleagues who continually seek to improve our work and challenge our assumptions. Together in this process we are capable of remarkable change.

As always, we at Spark welcome your questions, suggestions, or reactions. Please do not hesitate to reach out to me, or any of our staff as we move forward with this critical work.

Sincerely,
Kyle Brost
CEO
Spark Policy Institute

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