CONVERSATIONS EPISODE 2: PART 2

With Irving Torres, Assistant Director of Member Engagement at Vibrant Pittsburgh

In this episode, I virtually sat down with Irving Torres, the Assistant Director of Member Engagement at Vibrant Pittsburgh. Posing to him questions about community development and engagement, Irving shared his candid perspective and experiences on them, drawing from his many years of experience within the DEI space. From the importance of investing in DEI to the importance of inclusion and education within the space and how hierarchy plays a role when it comes to funding minority-led organizations or funding solutions that pertain to challenges that particularly affect minority groups, this insightful, nuanced, and riveting conversation provided powerful insights that are beneficial for both the nonprofit and philanthropic space at large. You can find more details about his work in the bio at the end of this part of the conversation. Per usual and much like the aim of this series, we hope this meaningful conversation adds to the existing catalog of what it means to do community work that truly makes a difference. We also hope that it’ll drive change within donor communities and enable them to understand the importance of funding and extending resources to those who often don’t get access to the needed resources to fulfill the mission and vision of their work.

To learn more about Vibrant Pittsburgh, visit them here: https://vibrantpittsburgh.org/.

Thanks for staying tuned.

Ophelia Akanjo (OA): I want to move away from the personal into the career aspect of things. So as of now it seems like much of your experiences have been within the diversity, equity and inclusion space. And for me, I'm really curious to know, what do you believe in this current stage, or it could be from a few years ago, has been some of the important work of this industry? Do you think that they're being worked on in an ethical way by practitioners? What are some of the important pillars of diversity, equity, and inclusion? And do you think that it's being implemented?

Irving Torres (IT): Really, really great question. With especially in the context of where we're at now, post ruling on affirmative action and other rulings, for that matter I would say for me one of the pillars of diversity, equity, and inclusion is I always look at the intersection between trauma-informed care principles, and diversity, equity and inclusion principles. And I think a lot of that is coming from the previous work that I've done in public health. A lot of those foundations with trauma informed care relates to the principles of DEI. I would also add in both that there does come a level of challenging individuals and the status quo and the norms of that individual. And so with diversity, equity, and inclusion, we are really harping on inclusive practices, and how inclusive practices lead towards diversity, and also reinforces that equity piece. Inclusive practices are oftentimes where we say organizations and people need to really start at. And so that's taking a step back and looking at oneself. That's taking a step back and looking at society at large and looking at how our various biases whether or not you want to look at it through the context of how we generate heuristics and looking at it from the standpoint of evolution and surviving and how we create shortcuts in our minds to really navigate and help us make certain decisions very quickly. But looking at all of those various contexts and seeing how we've been impacted and how others have been impacted. As a result, I would say a pillar of this practice is education. First and foremost, education can come in many different ways. Dialogue is probably the first way of having it. Dialogue is so important towards diversity, equity, and inclusion work as well as in the trauma-informed care principles that a lot of practitioners implement when meeting with people from various backgrounds. And so I really do like to oftentimes compare those principles because we are looking at how we can continue to mitigate the inequities that have persisted in our country and in the world. Especially towards if we look race but then, if we also look at other identities representing traditionally underrepresented identities as well. How they have been marginalized, haven't been able to have the same footing as others in a variety of ways, and if we take that intersectional approach of looking at the various identities, and where there might be privileges that are in existence. Educating, having conversations surrounding that is important. Generating dialogue through education and through other means, is one of the foundations. One of the pillars of this work, and that relates towards the inclusive practices that we need. We need to start looking at this also as it relates to people having to take a step back and understanding themselves. So we always also talk about emotional intelligence and looking at your emotions and your being aware of your emotions, but also that of others. And so that is also very key, very crucial for this work. 

So I started out with inclusion, because inclusion looks at action. Inclusion looks at policy, looking at programming implementation and that will drive home diversity which would also drive home equity. We'll see when folks perhaps mainly focus on diversity and they want to bring more folks from different diverse backgrounds (and when I use diversity, I'm not just saying because normally the buzzword is like, diversity means black people.), we've seen how people who just focus on say, diversity don't work as effectively because let's say you bring in those diverse candidates. But where are you bringing them to? You know, where is that foundation, that footing? And so when we want to generate a place that will lead towards belonging and belonging is the emotion, you know, feeling as though you are welcome, and the only way to do that is to have action and policy that will work toward that sense of belonging. And so the pillar here, I would say, is inclusion but one that drives home the diversity and equity work that we're doing because obviously, equity falls into the inclusive practices too. And so I would say that is very important. And I think there was another part of the question. 

OA: Yeah. I was going to get to that. Do you find that with those who you've worked with, or maybe people that you've observed in general, that they're resistant to the different layers of diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging? 

IT: I would say a lot of it boils down to the education piece. If I can really get down to the root source of the resistance because yes, there will be individuals like outside of my work context. I think we all know there are individuals who may still be in alignment with the status quo or when you use the word privilege that can definitely elicit defensive emotion. 

OA: I don't even mean to cut you off, but yes, that word, for whatever reason, is triggering to so many people. 

IT: Yes. When I was working with the young men that I was speaking about, we spoke about male privilege a lot. Oftentimes we would speak about it in conjunction with other privileges to help them understand that we all have privilege. In a variety of ways, you know whether it's various identities that we may have, or if it's a monetary privilege. If you're middle class or high class, whatever the case may be, there's always a form of privilege that we have, and understanding how that privilege comes into play which is not necessarily a judgment on your character, but it is just a reality, this is what leads towards certain advantages in a variety of modalities. I think we all know the difficulties that a lot of people may have surrounding that, especially if they hadn't been exposed to these conversations before. But yes, I think oftentimes it is those folks not having the wherewithal or mindfulness, to sit down to have those conversations and understand and acknowledge. I think acknowledgement is a huge piece. Acknowledge the disparities that have existed, and continue to exist in our society and in this country and in this world regardless of the effort. Because oftentimes, the counteract towards that kind of rhetoric is to pick yourself up by your bootstraps, you know. We're not saying it is all entirely bad but a lot of people have done that. But when we're looking at our society at large and looking at those individuals who've done that or folks who didn't have the boots to even put on and are still picking themselves up but still aren’t met at the gate time and time again. These are the conversations that we've had to continue to have with folks surrounding why it's important to look at diversity, equity, inclusion and how It will not only help your organization because I think that's the other thing that we have to indicate to folks is the business imperative, which we do. How It's been researched that more diverse, more inclusive organizations make more money, and get more productivity and engagement from their folks, which also leads into psychological safety, which then also is very important for retaining your folks and leading to belonging. so these are the conversations that we have to have.

So I would say, if we get down to the rudimentary source of it, education needs to be had about still holding on to the status quo that is not challenging one's own beliefs and biases and the racist imperatives and practices that continue to inflict and impact so many different people. And  I can use other isms as well. Not just racism. Oftentimes there's a lot of fear.

OA: It's true. There's a lot of fear. And I think that to your point about everyone having privilege, I'm actually often quite stunned that we all don't think that we have some privilege. If I'm using myself as an example, I'm able bodied. That's a privilege, you know. Somebody else did not ask to not have an “able body”. I have college degrees. How I got my college degrees that's probably not the case right now. But I do. Somebody else did not get the opportunity to. There are so many layers. But it's true. It's not until you sit down and recognize how you play a role in the system and sort of find a way in your own way to address different types of isms. Then the conversation is never going to move forward. I think for me, that's part of the reason why I was so curious and interested in starting up something like an Accra Literacy and holding conversations like these. Because I think why not? I may not have the most resources or any resources at this point but I do have some advantages over other people, and for me, I intend to  use it to benefit other people as well as myself. I don't mean to sound sanctimonious, but that is part of the piece, right? Identifying the privilege. And then what do you do? What are you doing with that now that you have that knowledge?

IT: What are you going to do with that? Yeah. 

OA: I'm sure that you've worked with a ton of  minority groups or organizations. And so I am really curious to know from your experience what are some of the challenges in the spaces of philanthropy and nonprofit that affect organizations that are led and address issues that pertain to minority groups. What do you think are some of the challenges when it comes to the philanthropic space, in the nonprofit or social movements?  Because for me I feel like I've seen quite a bit of challenges, especially when it comes to philanthropy. But I would love to hear from your perspective. What do you think are some of those challenges?

IT: So I may not be able to speak more so to the philanthropic space, but I would say I would probably speak more towards nonprofit and I'm sure you can probably derive some similarities. I would say from my experience, there's a couple of things I'm thinking off the top of my head. One is looking at the resources that organizations are given, the opportunities that they're given, the grant process, or applying to various grants. So when we do address inequities that exist there, I've heard from other leaders about some structural inequities in that regard. But I would also look at it from the standpoint of what we're dealing with in society, and in our workplace. For some reason there is the idea or conception that the workplace is different from what society is experiencing at large. And I think this is also a tenement of DEI and why we have to speak about it is because we can't ignore it when injustice is occurring on the outside but then, when we get into the workplace, think that everything is going to be okay, and everything's gonna be alright. And so I would say, like hence, why after the murder of George Floyd, you know, a lot of organizations wanted to do something about it. I think there were a lot of other imperatives as to why they wanted to do something about it. But it was, and they did initially. And so how do we keep that up? But it was really looking at the struggles of black leaders and brown leaders and other leaders from marginalized communities. How they still may undergo inherent biases, either from other partners, or other entities and how that shows up in spaces and the struggle with being in that space and having to lead an organization and deal with tokenization and what that might mean to you and your feeling about your organization  that is looked at to resolve a lot of the issues that persists.

So these are things that I've seen or heard about in my conversations with other leaders in the community. Also, looking at perhaps biases that leaders are facing whether or not within their own organization or outside of their organization, because this work requires a lot of networking, and a lot of  connecting. And who you know oftentimes leads towards the success of your organization. So, looking at it from that particular component, we can't think that the outside issues don't show up within work as well. We have to address both and how they show up because there are nuances to it.. But these are things that I've felt or have seen and heard from other colleagues and peers. 

OA: Yeah. Thank you for that. And along that line of having to deal with tokenism and a lack of resources, for me I think one of the biggest challenges, and you were alluding to that is the lack of funding, for minority led organizations or organizations that are tackling issues that relate to minority groups. And so for me, I guess the question would be, do you feel like a lack of funding has impacted the scope of work that you do or has impacted the scope of work that other minority organizations that you've worked with do?

IT: So back to my time doing the Americorps program I think I learned a lot through that program. And one of the things that I learned was a little about the nonprofit industrial complex and competing for certain grants and federal dollars, and and how the competition for those particular dollars may cause your mission and objectives of the overall organizations to alter

as a result, in order to continue to get that funding. And so I know that there is an imperative to do more grassroots kind of fundraising as a result. But that's also very difficult, understanding where a lot of the dollars in the nonprofit sector is coming from. I've heard a lot about that. And I think that relates to the conversation that we're having. It's something that during my time with the Americorps program, because there were so many different limitations as to what our members could do because it was a federal program, I mean, I was like, wow. Because there were perhaps more effective strategies, you know, not all of them, but they were probably more effective strategies that Americorps members could have employed to lead various health outcomes of the populations that they were serving. But they couldn't do it, because the grant said that they couldn't do it. And so I know how important that is, and how that may play a role in the overall mission, outreach and alignment with perhaps other community partners. Seeing how difficult that may be, I can assume how difficult that can be for leaders. 

OA: Listen! If I was going to go into the limitations on this topic, it wouldn’t end . But I wanna move on. But I want to add that this conversation needs to be had ASAP. But moving on, I guess this could harken back to the point about the importance of having resources. But do you believe that measuring impact when it comes to nonprofit work or philanthropy work plays a role in how organizations or nonprofits are able to do their work especially as it relates to, again, minority led organizations or organizations that focus on minority communities?

IT: In order to address issues, collecting metrics surrounding the impact especially in our data driven world right now, yes, we have to collect metrics. We have to collect data, so that we can showcase to other community partners, investors, stakeholders, potential funders that the program initiatives that we are doing are making an impact within this world. However, you can start small. Sometimes there is trepidation surrounding collecting data or a metric because they think you might need a full fledged data analyst or other individuals, to come on board. You can use very simple models from other community partners who help organizations build logic models so that they can understand what the inputs and outputs are and what they're doing leading towards those various outcomes and so on in our society today. Absolutely, it's imperative that all organizations collect that information. Not only for them but for other folks to understand the impact, but also for the organization in general to see if what you're doing is working, or if you need to pivot. That's very important to see because oftentimes people will have like maybe a two to three, or perhaps five year plan. With those outcomes aligned with it, if you're not tracking your progress over time, you're not going to know what is working, what isn't working, and flexibility is one of the most important aspects of running any kind of program.

I was going to say to go back, I just remembered one other thing to go with the other question that you asked. I would say another issue is that when folks are (not just minority led organizations, but organizations in general) looking to have impact within an organization and within a society or within a specific city, or state or or town if they aren't first looking at the various assets that exist within the location that they're looking to make an impact and not reaching out to those organizations, I think that may also cause challenges  for perhaps those minority led organizations to have more of an impact and more of a reach. Because you'll have so many different organizations, whether national or state, or other local organizations try to implement change. And I think it's more commonplace now nowadays. But I recall when I was doing a lot of my interventions that it was important for these entities coming into the neighborhood to do their research and connect with the community and connect with those minority led organizations, those other businesses. Especially if the focus is on those minorities and communities that those businesses are focused on. You have to bring them to the table. But nowadays, I think we're not waiting for that anymore. We're creating our own tables because if you wait for too long, then there's missed opportunity after missed opportunity. So it is the combination of educating those large organizations and other entities that hey, conduct an asset map to understand all of the various assets that exist that does include businesses, different community champions and whatnot and see what's already here in the neighborhood that's working and have them be a part of the conversation, you know. Don't just try to change everything on your own accord, and not bring people to the table. But then also these businesses have the imperative to be like, hey, let's combine the power that we have to form something ourselves, as well. Let's not wait. And so I think that's another key element to it. 

OA: And I think you're right on. I mean, I'm not sure why anybody would go into a community and try to do work without sort of consulting the various stakeholders. I mean, that's like mistake number one right there. But back to the issue or the topic on measurement. I guess I have my own sort of feelings about it, but I think, fundamentally, what I'm trying to get at is, do you feel that collecting such data and these measurements  kind of restricts the scope of work an organization can do? Again, it goes back to sort of altering one's mission or values. But do you feel like it adds pressure to what you should or shouldn't document in order to appear like you're doing good work or not doing good work? My personal belief is that if you are indeed doing good work, good work takes a long time, you know. It's not always about measurement. And sometimes you can't quite measure everything. But because we live in such a data driven world where everyone is an expert, and everyone wants to show they're really doing something with their role or their organization, or whatever, we're kind of stuck in this space where we always have to prove, prove, prove. But from what you've observed, do you feel like having to always have measurements and data adds pressure to organizations and how they perform?

IT: I think you definitely hit on a really great fundamental aspect of when we do incorporate and sometimes it feels like a requirement especially in this day and age to track, you know whether or not we're effective in what we're doing. And I think fundamentally speaking, it does. Essentially, it relates to the success of your business, and or whether or not you will get more funding and things of that sort. But understanding the idea of change, especially when looking at nonprofit, the idea of how behavior changes, or any other impact that you wanna measure, how that does take a lot of time. I think that probably harkens back to being pragmatic about the business that you're running, and how much time it will take to see the changes that you want to see and having a realistic logic model and or a strategic plan that details those steps. But to get back to the question, fundamentally speaking, I think it does. I think there is an aspect that does present pressure to perform at a certain level, especially if you have other peers who are in the same space fighting for those particular dollars as well, and wanting to measure certain impact. I think coming from the research space, it was like looking at how sometimes data can ignore the story, the individual story. 

OA: Yes!

IT: Yes, and so I know a lot of organizations kind of do a conjunction of collecting qualitative and quantitative data and really looking at the qualitative data and what they're communicating out. Even if they're not in a space to collect robust quantitative data, there's that qualitative aspect that you can collect through a variety of means that will articulate or perhaps inform on the the challenges of getting quantitative data. I've seen that as well. But the qualitative data I would say, speaks a lot to the heart of the organization and the quantitative data can definitely speak to that reach. But the qualitative truly speaks to the heart of what's happening. When you can read those anecdotes and dissect it that way. But to get to your question, I do think there is pressure. I do think so. but I do think things can exist all at once? Yes. There's pressure to perform and to collect information. But then also collecting that information whether it's qualitative or quantitative can lead towards benefits for that organization in the short and long term. But I do think it's up to the business to be mindful, as you mentioned, to be mindful of that and ultimately what their reason for collecting the information is. That's probably the most important question, you know. How are they measuring that? I think that the second most important question is how are you going to measure that? 

OA: Yeah, when you can go on a website or watch a video or whatever and listen to how people have been personally affected by a resource that they gain from an organization. So for sure. Thank you for that.

Thank you for reading till the end of this part. We truly appreciate you!

Stay tuned for the last part of this convo on 10/27/2023 at 11am EST. Until then, please engage with us by sharing your perspective here in the comments section and on all our social media accounts @accralit

About Irving Torres:

Irving Torres is responsible for overseeing Vibrant Pittsburgh’s member retention strategy, data and processes related to member recruitment and retention, and managing the logistics of all member engagement events. 

For the past 7 years, Irving has been involved with spearheading a myriad of community-based programming initiatives throughout Southwestern Pennsylvania. These initiatives include coordinating gender-based violence prevention programming through the University of Pittsburgh and directing Pittsburgh’s National Health Corps, an AmeriCorps program, dedicated towards mitigating health disparities in underserved communities via the promotion of health access and health education.

A New York City native by way of Queens and Harlem, Irving considers Pittsburgh his second home. Irving is interested in creative writing, mental health advocacy, mindfulness, and finding a variety of ways to share a laugh with loved ones.