Brotherhood Initiative Video Podcast: Creating opportunity pathways for men of color
Dr. Joe Lott founded the UW Brotherhood Initiative (BI) in 2016 to address the educational inequities undergraduate men of color face in academia and close the graduation gap between underrepresented men and their white and female peers.
In the Brotherhood Initiative 2020 Video Podcast, Lott and Sherrelle Walker, a former educator and community advocate for the BI, discuss the barriers that young men of color face -- and how the Brotherhood Initiative allows students to overcome these barriers as they navigate college academics, pursue job and research opportunities, and plan their futures. We also hear from three UW graduates and members of the BI’s first cohort, Marquis J. Wright, Lukas A. Garcia, and D’Andre Garcia-Stubbs, who share how the Brotherhood Initiative shaped their UW experiences, their career goals, and their confidence.
Since 2016, Lott has also added programmatic content to the Brotherhood Initiative around entrepreneurship. Blair Taylor, another community advocate and a partner at Pricewaterhousecoopers (PwC) where he leads the firm’s equity and inclusion efforts, talks in the podcast about why organizations like the BI are so valuable and why companies have an obligation to be part of the solution.
“This notion of pipelining talent and connecting to those young people who need access to opportunities is one of the most important things that corporations and leaders can do right now,” Taylor said. “This is an era that we’re living through now where businesses have to engage.”
Watch the video podcast to learn more about the BI, its impact on UW students, and the importance of investing in young men of color. Help the Brotherhood Initiative cohort expand in 2021 by making a gift today.
Story by Gabriela Tedeschi, marketing and communications student aide.