The Brioxy White House Summit: A Day of Energy, Excitement and Hope

By Dionne Galloway, ProInspire’s Director of Leadership Development Programs

Earlier this month, I had the opportunity to attend the inaugural White House Summit for Innovators of Color, hosted by Brioxy. Brioxy is an organization focused on bringing young people of color together to change the opportunity landscape in this country. It was created to organize and invest in Millennials of color, and to promote advancements in health, education and economic policy to improve lives for all.

The Summit, which was supported by American Express and the Annie E. Casey Foundation, brought together innovators of color from across the nation to engage in dialogue and shared learning, and to begin to answer the question: what tools, skills, and platforms must we build to ensure that Millennials of color, who will shepherd America’s economic future, are equipped to lead the nation toward continued growth and prosperity? Answers to this question will serve as the foundation of Brioxy’s action agenda for Millennials, a cohort Brioxy has coined ‘the Ready Generation.’ The action agenda seeks to expand opportunity through four policy areas that are critical to the economic well-being and leadership capacity of Millennials of color:

1. Create a true pathway to citizenship for our nation’s young immigrants who are a part of the fabric of America
2. End the student loan debt trap and restore America’s commitment to quality higher education
3. Expand access to homeownership for young people of color
4. Invest the capital needed to position young innovators to be the leaders who will help America remain competitive in an evolving, more globalized economy

Several influential leaders who are working to further important initiatives of the Obama Administration spoke at the Summit, including Alison Grigonis, Senior Director of the White House Office of Cabinet Affairs for American Indians; Michael Smith, Senior Advisor to the President and Senior Director of Cabinet Affairs for the My Brother’s Keeper program; Kalisha Dessources, Policy Advisor to the White House Council on Women and Girls; and Natalie Evans Harris, Senior Policy Advisor, White House office of Science and Technology Policy.

In addition to the great insights and energy shared during the Summit, Brioxy recently released a policy paper titled The Ready Generation: Millennials of Color and the Moment of Equity and Prosperity. This report shares background information on Millennials and the significance of the Ready Generation, highlights investments to improve opportunity for young people of color, and outlines the remaining work to be done in order to expand opportunity within the four key policy areas.

A major focus of ProInspire’s work is to help increase diversity, equity and inclusion in the social sector. In 2015, ProInspire joined four other organizations as part of the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Social Sector Talent Pipelines Strategy & Learning Lab; through this effort and through the use of results-based leadership, the group launched Equity in the Center, a sector-wide initiative to influence leaders to shift mindsets, practices, and systems to create a more diverse and equitable social sector talent pipeline. I see a lot of alignment between Brioxy’s work and the work of Equity in the Center and ProInspire in general, and I look forward to finding ways to engage them in our efforts.