For a parent, losing your child to hate is by far the worst nightmare imaginable. We were spared this pain and used the experience to spark a flame for helping people address issues of oppression in the schools, workplaces, and now communities of families. The prices that operationalized hate costs organizations, companies, and families have always been high and are steadily rising. Whether it is in lawsuits, recruiting, training, or retraining employees, mental anguish, shortened lifespans, epigenetic trauma, or broken families, the high price of hate continues to impact us all.

We began on a journey to address the very seeds of systemic racism that we know exist in corporations, organizations and institutions, all around us after almost losing our oldest son to racialized hate in a former sundown community. Thankfully he is doing amazing as a college student-athlete and homeowner, but the experience was traumatizing for our entire family. Being an educational family, we knew that racism also originates and permeates in homes across America. What started over 15 years ago as an instructional equity consulting organization has quickly risen to become a leader in facilitating interracial conversations about race, using the development of historical racial literacy as a tool to address and understand mental models around race. Working in school districts, cities, police departments, companies, small businesses, and non-profit organizations across America and beyond, we know that developing a shared understanding of the history of race relations helps remove shame and blame and allows us to move forward together.