Thursday, February 4, 2021
9:00 am - 3:15 pm EST
Changing the Lens - Optics Workshop (virtual):
Exploring the Impact of Implicit Bias
Through dialogue and exploration, learn how human biases are developed and discover ways to outsmart them. Participants will gain an understanding of how implicit or unconscious biases affect individuals, influence administrative structures, and impact service to the public. This workshop will lead participants through exercises to increase personal and structural awareness and inspire cultural engagement to enhance library services. This session is led by Suzanne Haley and Jacquelin (Jacky) McCoy of Changing the Lens, which is a movement dedicated to promoting cultural humility, inspiring cross-cultural engagement, and addressing the roots of societal injustice.
Your Facilitators
Suzanne Haley: Consultant, Facilitator, Storyteller
Suzanne Haley is the President and CEO of S. Haley & Associates and Co-founder of Changing the Lens, a community building movement. She has been building community and creating systems for human development her entire professional career. An experienced communicator, facilitator and master storyteller, Suzanne brings multi-disciplinary research and empirical data to the complex realities of a broad range of clientele, guiding individuals and teams toward strategic culture shifts which yield quantifiable results.
Suzanne has spent half of her professional life working in traditional ministry contexts with local, regional, national and international faith based organizations. In those years she learned to value and build community, develop leaders, and organize for collective impact in many diverse cultural settings. She developed and implemented strategy which guided hundreds of people seamlessly from a “me and mine” survival mindset to transformative, empowering communities that incubated leadership, nurtured human potential and produced exponential outcomes.
Working now, for over a decade, from a broader context, her passion remains to inspire, equip and enlighten people from all walks of life to their best selves. Her professional sensitivity and compassionate approach awakens new perspectives and boldness that leads to individual and organizational change and keeps her constituents on the cutting edge of progress.
A graduate of Morgan State University with a Bachelor of Science in Psychology, Suzanne guides others to bring authenticity to the challenge of inside-out institutional change which begins with personal growth and transformation. Her own life experience, historic cultural enlightenment, and deep sense of calling continues to energize her to do this work of compassionate truth sharing, racial healing, and culture transformation through community building.
Jacquelin McCoy: Educator, Advocate, Facilitator
Jacquelin (Jacky) McCoy is the co-founder of Changing the Lens. She is an educator, community advocate, workshop facilitator who informs community members, nonprofit, government and corporate leaders about the history and impact of structural racism in the United States. Through grassroots organizing, community think tanks, and innovative partnerships, Jacky seeks to heighten awareness, shift perspectives, and inspire lasting change in participants' thought patterns, attitudes, and behaviors.
After working in education for many years, she could not ignore the achievement and opportunity gaps prevalent among students. Her quest to understand the factors that contribute to these gaps led her to work at the intersection of race, equity, and justice issues. Jacky is Chair of the Equity and Race Peer Learning Network, Executive Board Member of Youth in Conversation, and a member of the Local Children’s Board Equity Committee in Howard County. She is also an Advisory Board member and Workshop Trainer for Talk with Me Howard County.
Jacky earned her bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Maryland College Park and her master’s degree in Secondary Mathematics Education from Johns Hopkins University. Raised in Richmond, Virginia, she is a long time resident of Columbia, Maryland.