Professional Development Conference

• 9:00 am
  • Welcome
    • • Alice Thorell
• 9:05 am
  • The Roots:
    • The Fog Over the Mountains
      • Felicia Ishino
• 11:15 am
  • 10 min. Break
• 11:25 am
  • The Ground:
    • Me Voy a Gozar La Vida (I'm going to enjoy life)
      • Mia Navarro
• 1:00 pm
  • 55 min. Break
• 1:55 pm - 3:30 pm
  • The Wings:
    • Personal LeaderSHIFT
      • Leni Marshall

Keynote Speaker: 

The Fog Beyond the Mountains 
Felicia Ishino, She/Her 

Explore Pacific Northwest narratives that tell the long history of racial difference in this region. Indigenous histories of racism are often overlooked, Black narratives hidden, Latinx stories obscured, and Asian heritage cloaked in fog. Our Pacific Northwest history matters. Stops include:  

• Mukilteo, WA - The Treaty of Point Elliott  
• Coos Bay, OR - Racial Terrorism in the PNW 
• Minidoka, ID - Japanese Exclusion 
• Seattle, WA - The Gang of Four 
• Pasco, WA - W Lewis St & 10th Ave - Farm Workers & Police Brutality 
• Portland, OR - Gentrification in Albina 

Beginning in the era of enslavement, moving through the era of racial terrorism, civil rights, and the modern era, each stop follows our unique narrative arc. Attendees will:  

• Connect history to the systems and the impact on society today. 
• Build a shared language and practice for reflection and honest conversation across different identities.  
• Leave with ways to keep the work going together. 

Sankofa Impact is a Black woman-led 501(c)3 nonprofit with deep roots in Seattle and over a decade of immersive, place-based education programs centered on the Black American freedom struggle. We have conducted dozens of trips with thousands of participants, preparing them for transformational encounters, bringing them to the places where this history happened, and facilitating the reflection and courageous conversations that unfold a 400-year narrative of Black struggle, joy, and culture. 

Sankofa Impact brings people together for place-based learning that confronts our history of racism, uplifts stories of resistance, and celebrates culture. We envision a community that holds a common memory grounded in unvarnished truth leading to our collective liberation. 

www.sankofaimpact.org  

Me Voy a Gozar La Vida  (I’m Going to Enjoy Life) 

Mia Navarro, She/Her 

This presentation represents an opportunity to share my (most recent) story of looking back in order to move forward well. I am actively recovering from a lifetime of perfectionism, hypervigilance, people pleasing, and legacy Depression Era scarcity/suffering mindset, and am currently in the midst of a major life reset. 

I hope to share my experience and tips with attendees in the hope that they can see themselves in and feel empowered by my experience, and we can learn from each other. 

My presentation has three main parts: 

1. Identify what is not working.  
2. Put it down. Stop carrying what no longer serves.  
3. What is next?  

Attendees will have the opportunity to: 

• Walk through those three steps on their own 
• Share reflections anonymously in a word cloud on the screen 
• Learn a few salsa steps 

Mia Navarro has been working in public administration and nonprofits since 2003. She joined OFM on March 1, 2023, as the Deputy Chief Cultural Officer with State Human Resources, and recently took a step back from leadership to serve as a Planning and Strategy Analyst for State HR.  

Prior to joining the State, Mia served as the Assistant Director of the City of Tacoma’s Office of Equity and Human Rights, Community Engagement Manager for the City of Tukwila, Associate Director of Community Services for the Tacoma Housing Authority, helped to implement the Systems Change Initiative to End Family Homelessness in Pierce County, and worked in several roles, including Executive Director, for the Washington State Coalition for the Homeless.  

Mia holds a Bachelors Degree from the University of Southern California, and a Masters in Business Administration from Western Governors University. Outside of work, Mia enjoys spending time with her family, salsa dancing, cold plunging and other outdoor adventures. 

Personal LeaderSHIFT  

Leni Marshall, She/Her 

An active-learning workshop for participants to engage with data-driven best practice tools and techniques that measurably improve intercultural agility - the capability to effectively understand and adapt behavior across cultural differences.  

Participants will: 

• Learn the “Think 5” technique and put it into practice.  
• Be led through a guided process to write a Personal Purpose Statement, a sentence answering the question, “what do I value and what do I want my actions and words to do?”  
• Apply their Personal Purpose statement in a professional development activity. 

Everyone benefits when State employees contribute fully, are heard clearly, and work productively with people across the varied experiences and perspectives represented in Washington’s populations.  

Participants leave with individualized, effective methods for better navigating the complexities of diverse interpersonal and communication practices including: 

• Values prioritization identification and how values apply to their “why.” 
• Personal Purpose statement development and practice. 
• Learned and practiced using the “Think 5” technique.  

Leni Marshall, PhD, has been an inclusion and equity solutions leader for more than 20 years. Like many people, she attended a lot of “diversity trainings” that had little long-term impact which drove her to study how to improve equity and inclusion in individuals and groups. She employs active-learning and data-driven best practices that advance intercultural awareness and generate inclusive change in lasting and measurable ways. 

Leni has compassion, curiosity, a sense of humor, and embodied experience across differences of race and ethnicity, age, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, socioeconomics, dis/ability, religion, and culture. She invites you join her in living *on purpose*.  

• 8:45 am
  • Welcome
    • • Alice Thorell
• 8:50 am
  • The Ground:
    • Rooted While the Ground is Moving: Purposeful Leadership in Uncertain Times
      • Naghmana Sherazi
• 10:25 am
  • 10 min. Break
• 10:35 am
  • The Wings:
    • Rising Through Uncertainty: Building Capacity for What Comes Next
      • Kara Withers
• 11:55 am
  • 60 min. Break
• 12:55 pm
  • The Roots:
    • The Cost of Staying: What I Learned from Every Time Advocacy Made Me the Target
      • Marika Barto
• 2:00 pm
  • 10 min. Break
• 2:10 pm
  • The Wings:
    • Can't We All Get Along? How Personalities and Persona Create Friction (and Opportunity) in Building Solidarity, Well-Being, and Strong Teams.
      • Rozie Kennedy
• 3:30 pm
  • 10 min. Break
• 3:40 pm - 5:00 pm
  • The Flight Forward:
    • Sankofa in Action: Securing Your Own Mask First - Self-Awareness, Boundaries, and Bystander Intervention.
      • Susanna McKinney

Rooted While the Ground Is Moving: Purposeful Leadership in Uncertain Times

Naghmana Sherazi, She/Her

How can we lead effectively when policies, institutions, and expectations are constantly changing? Drawing on her journey as a Pakistani immigrant, Muslim woman, single mother, scientist, community organizer, political
candidate, and Washington state employee, Naghmana Sherazi will demonstrate how lived experience can become a valuable source of professional knowledge and purposeful leadership. Naghmana will share lessons from being a “first and only,” building bridges between communities and government, and serving for two years as Community Outreach Lead for the HAPPEN Business Resource Group. She will also challenge workplace narratives that celebrate women’s resilience while overlooking the institutional conditions they are expected to endure

Participants will apply the practical ROOTS framework:

• Reclaim what formed you,
• Orient to your values,
• Observe the whole system,
• Tend relationships and trust, and
• Send the learning forward.

By the end of the session, attendees will be able to identify one leadership strength developed through lived experience, use the framework to assess an uncertain workplace situation, distinguish healthy resilience from
unsustainable overextension, and select one concrete action to strengthen trust, belonging, or access in their workplace.

Naghmana Sherazi is a statewide equity strategist, community leader, scientist, educator, and  immigrant from Karachi, Pakistan. At the Washington State Office of Equity, she leads statewide coordination and community engagement for the Governor’s Immigration Subcabinet and supports agencies in translating pro-equity and anti-racism commitments into meaningful policies, practices, and outcomes.

Rising from the Inside Out: Five Pillars of Women's Resilience

Kara Withers, She/Her

Resilience isn't always about grit and getting tougher, pushing through, or carrying more. Resilience is a complex set of skills balancing external and internal pressures to meet change, challenge, and uncertainty without losing connection with yourself. In this engaging session designed to meet women's specific needs when it comes to enhancing personal resiliency, we'll explore five interconnected pillars aimed at strengthening personal
resilience: self-awareness and emotional regulation, self-compassion, energy management, adaptability, and personal values. Through research-informed insights, active reflection, practical tools, and
meaningful conversation, participants will examine how their thoughts, emotions, energy, and inner landscape shape the way they respond when life and work get difficult. They'll explore strategies for quieting the inner
critic, managing energy rather than simply managing time, increasing flexibility in the face of change, and using personal values both as an anchor during uncertainty and a compass for moving forward.

Kara (Ker - ah) Withers, Director of Organizational Development at the Department of Corrections (DOC), joined state service in 2013. She leads a purpose-driven team focused on supporting leaders, staff, and justice-involved individuals to thrive through enhancing leadership capabilities, increasing staff resilience, and creating meaningful human connection. Kara co-created the first-ever DOC comprehensive leadership development
initiative which has grown to include numerous programs designed to strengthen leadership, mentorship, and organizational effectiveness across the agency. In recognition, she received the 2024 Governor’s Outstanding
Leadership Award. Kara holds an AA in Business Administration, a BS in Organizational Leadership, a project management certificate, and is a Prosci® Certified Change Management Practitioner and Certified Leadership Coach. Kara believes the most effective leadership is both grounded in evidence and deeply human; where data informs decision and connection inspires lasting change.

The Cost of Staying: What I Learned from Every Time Advocacy Made Me the Target

Marika Barto, PhD She/Her

Every intentional choice toward advocacy in my life has made me a target: as a cadet at the US Air Force Academy building the institution's first sexual assault hotline and victim advocacy program while facing retaliation for it; as a teacher and assistant principal in post-Katrina New Orleans pushing back against inequitable educational practices under a formal gag order; and across more than 13 years of state government service, choosing to escalate for teammates and fellow public servants facing hostile and discriminatory conditions rather than stay silent and safe. This session traces that pattern, not as a personality trait, but as a repeatable practice. I introduce a three-step framework, "Notice, Price, Choose", that names how to recognize when someone else has less power than you to survive a hard moment, honestly account for what acting will cost you, and
decide deliberately rather than by reflex or identity alone. Attendees leave with a concreate decision-making tool for using their own positionality and power on behalf of others, not an inspirational takeaway, but a practice they can apply the next time they face a hard choice at work.

Marika (mah-ree-kah) is the Chief Equity Officer for the Washington State Department of Retirement Systems. She has served the State of Washington for over 13 years. An Army brat and an atypical Air Force vet (was
active duty at the US Air Force Academy and left in senior year). She recently earned a PhD in Education for Social Justice at the University of San Diego. Prior to working for the state, she was a public-school teacher and assistant principal in New Orleans, LA, teaching high school math and science. In her off time, she can be found doing all the things with her wife, enjoying time with friends, or assembling puzzles.

Can't We All Get Along? How Personalities and Persona Create Friction (and Opportunity) in Building Solidarity, Well-Being, and Strong Teams

Rozella Kennedy, She/Her

When conversations about race break down because people disagree and because they feel asked to abandon or compromise what they already value to participate, defensiveness replaces curiosity, and distance grows where there might have been connection. We offer a more generative starting point: these positions rest on values that are not opposed, only emphasized differently. The session introduces an orientation map of six personas to help you see which stance is active, in yourself and others, name the value beneath it, and stay in relationship without collapsing into performance, animosity, or avoidance. We invite participants to reflect on which persona, or mix of personas, guides their actions and mindset, and how to identify the tensions or affinities that impact collaboration and team progress. Built on Brave Sis Project's SAIN et SAUF™ (Sustainable, Authentic, Inclusive, Nurturing) methodology of building solidarity, unity and trust across difference in a post-DEI era.

Rozella Kennedy is the founder of Brave Sis Project, a Seattle-based solidarity and equity education organization, and the Nautilus Award-winning author of Our Brave Foremothers: Celebrating 100 Black, Brown, Asian, and Indigenous Women Who Changed the Course of History (Workman, 2023), and a 30-year nonprofit leadership professional. Through Brave Sis Project's Solidarity Lab she designs curriculum and facilitates workshops for public agencies, nonprofits and boards. Her session Solidarity Without Burnout is currently in the running for SXSW 2027.

www.bravesis.com
www.rozellakennedy.com

Sankofa in Action: Securing Your Own Mask First—Self-Awareness, Boundaries, and Bystander Intervention

Susanna McKinney, She/Her

In this empowering session, we examine how looking back at hard-won personal truths, such as surviving toxic dynamics and navigating spaces as the "only woman in the room, "provides the exact blueprint needed to build safer, more inclusive workplaces today. We will explore how privilege and vulnerability intersect in public service, how subtle habits of exclusion impact team retention, and how to transform passive endurance into active boundary-setting. Participants will walk away with concrete, neuroinclusive tools to establish personal boundaries, advocate for psychological safety, and intervene as active allies when colleagues experience disrespect.

By the end of this session, Washington State employees will be able to:

• Connect Self-Awareness to Intervention Capacity
• Interrupt Exclusion with the 5Ds: Distract, Delegate, Document, Delay, Direct
• Practice Intersectional Allyship

Susanna is the Director of Partnerships at Right To Be, where she leads strategic initiatives and cross-sector collaborations to build environments rooted in safety, equity, and belonging. With a background that spans community leadership, organizational management, and public safety education, Susanna bridges deeply personal lived experiences with practical, human centered behavior change. Having navigated male-dominated, combat sports environments, and overcome toxic relationship dynamics, she brings authentic empathy and clarity to topics of power, boundary-setting, and psychological safety.

www.RightToBe.org
https://www.linkedin.com/in/susanna-mckinney-9bb5086b

• 8:30 am
  • Welcome
    • • Alice Thorell
• 8:35 am
  • The Wings:
    • Reclaim, Reconnect, Contribute: Transforming Lived Experience into Belonging
      • Felicia Mullins
• 9:55 am
  • 10 min. Break
• 10:05 am
  • The Ground:
    • Community Engagement is a Practice of Humility
      • Office of Equity Shared Power Design Team
• 11:25 am
  • 60 min. Break
• 12:25 pm
  • The Wings:
    • As as We Were Asked: Lessons from a Refugee Community
      • Julie Pham
• 1:30 pm
  • 10 min. Break
• 1:40 pm
  • The Roots:
    • What's Up with White Women? Confronting Our Past, Exploring Our Present, and Cultivating Our Future
      • Isla Govan & Tilman Smith
• 3:14 pm
  • 10 min. Break
• 3:25 pm - 5:00 pm
  • The Flight Forward:
    • Leadership Inheritance: What we Carry Forward From the Women Who Shaped Us
      • Raedene Copeland

Reclaim, Reconnect, Contribute: Transforming Lived Experience into Belonging 

Felicia Mullins, She/Her 

An interactive presentation inviting participants to look back with care so they move forward with greater clarity, or more fully recognize the ways they are already moving forward. The session helps participants recognize strengths, values, relationships, and purpose that may already be supporting healing, growth, and belonging. 

Using the Reclaim → Reconnect → Contribute framework, participants will reflect on what they have reclaimed, are reclaiming, or want to deepen; identify the people, communities, and opportunities that are already supporting or could further support that growth; and consider how their lived experience is shaping the ways they contribute to others. 

By the end of the session, participants will identify one strength, value, or sense of purpose they have reclaimed or want to reclaim; one relationship, community, or opportunity that supports its growth; and one contribution they want to continue, deepen, or begin. 

Felicia G. Mullins, MBA, is a public-sector strategist, U.S. military veteran, and organizational change leader. She is an Inclusion, Belonging and Well-Being Strategy Manager, connecting organizational strategy with culture, workforce experience, and human-centered change at the WA Department of Health. Felicia is a doctoral candidate studying repair and restorative practices in organizational cultures, particularly how organizations respond to harm, rebuild trust and belonging, and support meaningful change. 

Felicia contributes to statewide policy and employee communities through the ICSEW and the Washington State Women’s Commission Economic Well-Being Committee. She supports survivors of sexual assault, people returning to their communities from recovery and correctional programs, and teens and young adults navigating significant life challenges. 

When not working, teaching, or studying, Felicia can be found beachcombing, gardening and spending time with her golden retriever, Loki, an indispensable hiking partner and garden assistant. 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/feliciagmullins

Community Engagement is a Practice of Humility 

Shared Power Design Team, Office of Equity 

An introduction to Washington State’s Shared Power Program, this interactive workshop supports a broader shift toward government that is more relational, transparent, accountable, and responsive to the people it serves. 

Participants will  

• Examine four indicators of Shared Power: Community Compensation, Community Engagement, Collective Decision-Making, and Targeted Universalism.  
• Explore how power operates through roles, relationships, expertise, systems, and decision-making—and identify opportunities to shift from simply inviting participation to creating meaningful influence. 
• Using a Learn–Reflect–Practice–Apply approach, connect concepts to participants’ real work.  
• Leave with practical tools and strategies to reduce participation barriers, compensate community expertise, strengthen collaborative decision-making, and use community knowledge and data to develop more responsive approaches. 
• Identify one concrete opportunity to apply Shared Power in their own work and begin developing practices to strengthen trust, collaboration, and community influence. 

The Shared Power Design Team at the Washington State Office of Equity includes Sabrina Njoroge, Jean Paul, Amber Ortiz-Diaz, and Rauneisha Larkins. The team works to transform how government partners with and serves communities via four key practices: building strong relationships, sharing decision-making, practicing accountability, and continuously learning and improving. Through this work, they help public servants build trust, collaborate more effectively, and meaningfully include the voices and experiences of people most affected by government decisions. Their goal is to support a more responsive, transparent, equitable, and community-centered government for all Washingtonians.  https://equity.wa.gov/shared-power-design

Ask as We Were Asked: Lessons from a Refugee Community 

Julie Pham, PhD She/Her 

We're taught to give help generously but ask for it reluctantly — especially women in public service, where self-sufficiency can feel like the safer path, and asking can feel like a risk to credibility. Dr. Julie Pham grew up inside a different model: she and her family arrived in Seattle as Vietnamese refugees in 1979, and six years later her parents left stable jobs to found a community newspaper, a leap only possible because refugees lent, borrowed, and asked freely from one another — a form of collective resilience Julie watched people in her community practice daily. 

Drawing on that history and using live polling, this interactive session invites attendees to look back at their own relationship with asking, then send those insights forward: recognizing personal reluctance to ask for help, learning a clear framework for asking well, and benchmarking shared challenges with peers in the room. Attendees will leave with practical language for asking without losing standing, and a renewed sense that individual asks build collective strength — for themselves, their teams, and the women coming up behind them. 

Dr. Julie Pham is the founder and the CEO of CuriosityBased, an organizational development firm based in Seattle. She is the author of the #1 Amazon New Release and Bestseller 7 Forms of Respect: A Guide to Transforming Your Communication and Relationships at Work and a TEDx Speaker ("Curiosity as a Practice"). 

Born in Saigon, Vietnam, and raised in Seattle, Dr. Pham earned a PhD at Cambridge University and graduated magna cum laude from University of California, Berkeley. She has worked as a journalist, historian, university lecturer, marketer, nonprofit executive, and management consultant.  

Dr. Pham has been recognized with numerous awards for her community leadership including Female Founders Alliance Champions Award (2019) in Advocate category, Harvard Business School's Young American Leaders Program (2018), a Puget Sound Business Journal ’40 under 40’ honoree (2011), and a Women's Center-University of Washington Woman of Courage honoree (2012). 

www.curiositybased.com 

What’s Up with White Women? Confronting our Past, Exploring our Present, and Cultivating our Future 

Ilsa Govan, She/Her 

When tackling topics of systemic racism, it’s all too easy to build narratives centered around white men and toxic masculinity. But white women have long held seats at the table— from their pre-Civil War ability to buy and sell enslaved people to the million-plus women members of the KKK, and beyond— as systems of white supremacy were built and maintained. We cannot skirt around the gendered roles of white women in systemic racism if we, as a society, hope to dismantle systems of oppression.  

In this session participants will explore how the history of white feminism and our socialization as white women has shaped the ways we show up in the workplace and beyond. They will leave with strategies for showing up in allyship and building stronger relationships, teams, and multiracial coalitions. 

Ilsa has more than 20 years of experience as a facilitator, consultant, writer and social justice activist. She has led conversations about racial equity at workshops and conferences across the country and is co-author of What's Up with White Women: Unpacking Sexism and White Privilege in Pursuit of Racial Justice. Prior to Cultures Connecting, Ilsa worked as an Equity and Race Specialist for Seattle Public Schools where she was tasked with addressing institutional racism in a large public organization.  

• www.culturesconnecting.com  
• https://www.linkedin.com/in/ilsagovan/ 
• https://www.linkedin.com/company/culturesconnecting/ 
• https://www.facebook.com/CulturesConnecting 
• Insta: @cultures.connecting

Leadership Inheritance: What We Carry Forward from the Women Who Shaped Us 

Raedene Copeland, She/Her 

When tackling topics of systemic racism, it’s all too easy to build narratives centered around white men and toxic masculinity. But white women have long held seats at the table— from their pre-Civil War ability to buy and sell enslaved people to the million-plus women members of the KKK, and beyond— as systems of white supremacy were built and maintained. We cannot skirt around the gendered roles of white women in systemic racism if we, as a society, hope to dismantle systems of oppression.  

In this session participants will explore how the history of white feminism and our socialization as white women has shaped the ways we show up in the workplace and beyond. They will leave with strategies for showing up in allyship and building stronger relationships, teams, and multiracial coalitions. 

Dr. Raedene Copeland is a leadership strategist, keynote speaker, creator of the CIC Leadership Compass™, and author of forthcoming book Sole Impact: How Authentic Leaders Earn Fierce Loyalty. Known as The Sole Coach™, she helps leaders become the reason their best people stay. Her proprietary framework connects Credibility, Influence, and Culture to help leaders earn trust, inspire commitment, and build organizations that hold under pressure.  

Born in Trinidad and Tobago, her journey as an immigrant leader navigating U.S. institutional systems shaped her understanding of how credibility is earned, influence is built, and belonging is created.  

A former tenured professor, assistant provost of faculty research and development, and organizational transformation leader, Dr. Copeland has advised and developed leaders across Fortune 500 companies, government agencies, higher education institutions, and nonprofit organizations worldwide. She holds a PhD in Consumer, Apparel, and Retail Studies and an MBA.  

www.drraedenecopeland.com 

www.achievebrandconsulting.com