While attending SEED New Leader’s Week in 2002, I was immediately struck by the generous, thoughtful work of the SEED facilitators and co-directors. Throughout our week together, SEED built a caring community of learners, leaders and listeners where all stories were encouraged. Most importantly, for me as a white, cisgender man I was invited and challenged to recognize and interrupt my own assumptions and biases.

I was raised and educated in predominately all-white, wealthy suburban communities and as Peggy McIntosh states I was, “taught to see racism [and sexism] only in individual acts of meanness, not in invisible systems conferring dominance on my group. SEED has played a pivotal role in helping me see that I carry my whiteness, my maleness, my heterosexuality, my able-bodied, etc. with me everywhere I go and every room I enter. At the same time SEED has provided real skills and resources to work toward a more just society.

I am married to a kind and brilliant woman and a father of two daughters. I am 30-year public high school English teacher and former administrator and have been a SEED leader at public and private schools and have led parent SEED. In all of those capacities, SEED continues to nurture my belief in the power of individual stories and the need for communities to be purposefully challenged by these stories.

I am humbled to continue this work as part of the National SEED staff.