Diversity, Equity and Inclusion — Kelly Macías, Ph.D.

When I was in elementary school, I made my television debut by being featured in a commercial about prejudice. Though I cannot recall the last time I actually saw it, I remember it vividly. There were images of the Ku Klux Klan, Neo Nazis and other hate groups while an unseen narrator does a voice over about the perils of prejudice and hate. Then the video cuts away to short clips of a few individual students from my school in Baltimore offering their innocent reflections on why people should accept one another. I was the very last child featured on camera. In a clear voice, unafraid, and with a wisdom that belied my ten years, I looked directly into the camera, shrugged and said, “I’m just like you and you’re just like me—except we’re different in some ways!”

The year was 1988. For more than twenty years, the commercial sat collecting dust on my grandmother’s shelf, on a VHS cassette labeled “Kelly Louise: Do Not Erase.”

From time to time, I think about this commercial. It feels significant because I have spent much of my adult life engaging in social justice work—both professionally and personally. As that ten-year-old child, I never imagined that I would make a career of trying to make the world a better place. But, oftentimes, a career picks you. And so it has been that almost every job I’ve had as always been about the same thing: trying to make the world a fairer, more just and equitable place to live. As a philosophy, I intentionally center people who come from historically marginalized communities in my approach to equity work. As former Boston City Councilor and current Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley once said, “The people closest to the pain, should be closest to the power.”

I’ve done work in a variety of settings: universities, labor unions, non-profit organizations, government institutions, international organizations, health care and medical facilities, etc.