Hello and welcome to UDC Forum. I'm Dr. Sandra Jowers Barber, Director for the
humanities at the University of the
District of Columbia Community College
Tinisha Agramonte is a highly regarded
civil rights champion whose personal and
professional mission is to advance
equitable opportunities for all she has
25 years of experience an equal
employment opportunity diversity and
human relations currently Tanisha is
director of the Office of Civil Rights
at the US Department of Commerce she
joins me to talk about the department's
first-generation professional initiative
during the program we will meet three very
impressive first generation
professionals Tinisha welcome Thank You
Sandra it's great to be here and I
appreciate the invitation now this first
generation project what is the engine
driving it so the engine driving this
initiative is really within the federal
government all federal agencies are
driven by a diversity and inclusion
executive order that mandates that every
federal agency endeavour to have a
workforce that is drawn from our diverse
American population and so with that in
mind we want to make sure that every
segment of our diverse American society
has an equal opportunity to compete for
jobs in the federal government and once
they get in an opportunity to thrive now
first generation professional I I fit in
that category mm-hmm so what is going to
be offered and how do you identify what
are some of the characteristics that a
first-generation professional brings to
the workplace so probably it'll be
helpful to first identify how we've
defined a first generation professional
so we've defined a first generation
professional as someone who is one of
the first and their immediate family to
enter into the professional workplace
meaning that their parents either held
traditional blue-collar positions or
working-class positions that didn't
require a college degree so from that
standpoint it's a definition that I
think many can self-identify
it's not a label but it is something
that describes individuals who are the
first in their family to go into this in
unchartered territory of the professional
workplace now you say on unchartered what do you need to navigate an unchartered new
arena so one of the things that we found
this is the Office of Civil Rights that
I lead in partnership with the US Census
Bureau which is a bureau under the
Department of Commerce we actually
partner to conduct some research and
study and the outcome of this study is
that there are some common themes that
first-generation professionals said
where they've experienced some
challenges in the workplace one is
around unwritten rules in the workplace
identifying what those are and learning
how to operate within that context in an
organization the other is really dealing
with self-efficacy managing the impostor
syndrome the other has to do with social
networks social capital many times
people who were raised in a household
what professional parents are able to
leverage their parents social capital
those networks that they've developed
and then financial literacy that's
another area where if you were raised in
a household in particular low income
household where your parents may not
have had disposable income to save or
invest and prepare for retirement there
might be some opportunities to improve
your financial literacy to make sure
that you're adequately taking care of
your finances with this newfound money
now is there any stigma attached to
someone identifying as the
first-generation professional so
privately at times there aren't we are
learning a lot I'm learning a lot from
doing this initiative one of the things
that I really didn't expect was that
there might be a stigma of shame
associated with coming from either a
low-income background or coming from a
background where your parents held
blue-collar working-class positions so
that is one of the things that we're
finding but my message to all
first-generation professional
is really captured well in a Frederick
Douglass quote and that is we are not
judged by the heights we have risen but
from the depths we have climbed and I
think first generation professionals
should be proud that they are
Trailblazers you know they come from
hard-working families and they're
expanding into this area of occupations
that others and their family have not
done and so I think their family members
are looking at at them with pride that
they're expanding the occupations that
their family has traversed and are
working in now let's meet one of three
first-generation professionals my name
is Veronica Ronnie Venture I'm a first
generation professional from Guyana and
I'm currently the deputy officer for
civil rights and civil liberties and the
director of EEO and diversity at the
Department of Homeland Security I moved
to the United States when I was five to
live with my dad an employee at Eastern
Airlines and stepmom a nurse's aide as
with most parents but especially
immigrant parents education having a
better life and more opportunities and
they had was very important although my
parents wanted the best for me they were
educated in Guyana and didn't know how
to help me navigate through college
however as I grew up they did instill it
upon me the will to do better study
harder and get better grades so I was
able to attend the liberal arts college
on a scholarship I distinctly remember
how unprepared I was for college when I
showed up to my dorm room with only two
suitcases and none of the dorm
essentials like sheets college was
difficult as I battered the imposter
syndrome
had very little money and often feeling
out of place as I was embarrassed to
bring friends home on break and can
afford Spring Break vacations like most
of the other students some of whom had
Porsches but through hard work and
tenacity I navigated college and went on
to law school also in a scholarship
since then I've learned to overcome the
shame associated with my humble
beginnings you know I still live in fear
that one day someone will notice that
I'm not as smart or as capable as they
think I am the law school taught and
prepared me for a lot of unwritten rules
in my career such as judges expectations
etiquette dress and appearance and
communication skills
so when I started my career as a law
clerk and became a trial attorney I was
much better prepared than I had been for
college my mentors and social networks
were not only important in showing me
how things worked but also pushed me to
my full potential and provided necessary
encouragement I had a boss who took me
under his wing and pushed me to take a
lot of leadership roles he guided me had
faith in me recognized my capabilities
and gave me more responsibilities when
he thought I was ready and taught me to
be an effective supervisor I always
tried to live up to his expectations and
through that grit and tenacity I proved
myself worthy of promotions offered
whether because of a knowledge gap we're
feeling fear as a FTP I still find it
hard to self advocate for myself in
these situations but it's important for
FTPS to remember you are worthy you are
capable and you do have the
qualifications now draw on your
background as a strength and leverage
that grit loyalty and flexibility
instilled in you by your parents and
empower yourself to realize your full
potential
I hope this initiative will lead to
programs and workshops that give other
FTPS a similar experience that I had in
regards to my support system whether
that be a mentor colleague that will
help FTPS navigate right off the bat and
then enable them to fully leverage the
qualifications they bring as well as the
grit tenacity from overcoming obstacles
and challenges by doing so FTPS will be able to contribute knowing that organization
values and appreciates their backgrounds
and life experiences and enables them
to provide culturally competent services
and accomplishing the organization's
mission.
what are some challenges that you hope
to address through this initiative whatt
we really hope to address those things
that I talked about that a first
generation professional experience is on
the individual level so those learning
how to navigate the unwritten rules
building their network
hopefully through some mentoring for
them to help them learn the lay of the
land but while that's in critical and
important probably what's even more
important is addressing the systemic
policies practices and procedures that
have an unintentional negative impact on
our ability to hire and advance first
generation professionals for example
recruitment bias right so a lot of
people may not even think about this but
if a hiring official has a very limited
lens on how they determine who is the
best and the brightest and they think
that comes in the form of only attending
elite universities top tier universities
and completing that degree within four
years and getting competitive
internships well those might be things
that prevent them from considering a
first generation professional because
what we know is most first-generation
professionals matriculate through state
universities community colleges online
universities not because they're
incapable of getting into a top-tier
school but because their life
circumstances dictated a different path
now one of the things that we're seeing
is that Community College are gaining a
new perspective and a new prestige so
that may not be a stigma but how do you
address the hiring end of it how are you
going to change their view I think only
thing we can do at this juncture is
increase awareness of those biases that
may exist so if someone for example
feels as if you took too long to
complete school that that says something
about your work ethic or if it says
something about your intellect then we
want to challenge that and we want to
expand that thinking
that even though someone may have had a
non-traditional career path or academic
journey does not mean that they're
incapable of thriving and contributing
and unleashing their potential in the
workplace so I guess this gets back to
also having that first-generation
professional prepare narrative that
talks about all of that if it was in
extended period of time how they were
able to be persistent and and and retain
all of their enthusiasm to complete what
do you see is the obligation of a
community college or an institution to
prepare a first generation of
professional I think where academic
institutions can help first-generation
college students who will be first
generation professionals prepare to
enter the workforce is by focusing on
those traits I think you were just
speaking about tenacity grit resiliency
determination resourcefulness from this those
are all the traits acquired by
overcoming obstacles and those are
really traits that are beneficial in the
workplace not only that first-generation
professionals especially those who come
from lower income backgrounds bring
cultural competency to our workplace
they come from a background that
represents the constituents that we
serve at least a third of the public
comes from lower income so they bring
with them a keen understanding of that
population that helps us improve the
services and products that we deliver to
that community and the American
population as a whole and they're
usually bringing that support system
from families that want to see them
obtain more than what they were able to
obtain now let's take a look at another
first generational professional
my name is Sahil Lauji and I am your
first-generation low-income college
student from Atlanta Georgia my mother
worked in the real estate industry until
the market crash in 2008 but without a
college education
she had challenges finding jobs
afterwards the financial issues that
came about due to these challenges made
my years growing up hard especially as
an only child where my single mother and
I moved often my father worked at a
convenience store and was shot and
paralyzed in an armed robbery during my
sophomore year of high school after my
father was shot I moved in with him and
took up a part-time job to help pay
expenses at home I had a balance working
with the achieving high grades running
cross-country and track in leading
community service initiatives when
college applications rolled around I was
left alone with deciding what schools to
apply to and how to go about the
application luckily I came across
programs such as Quest Bridge that
exposed low-income students like myself
to top tier institutions across the
country with the support of my father and an assistant principal I applied to
top-tier universities and was accepted
to schools such as Harvard Princeton and
Duke and now I'm a junior at Harvard
studying government with a secondary in
comparative religion and helping run
Harvard's first first-generation
low-income pre-orientation program and
while my time at Harvard has been
enriching there continues to be
institutional challenges I need to
overcome as a first-generation student
aside from often being one of the only
people of color in many of my classes I
am also often one of the few students
from a working-class background in
academic settings and extracurriculars I
am involved with it can be hard to
relate to many of my peers who have the
connections and networks that I just don't have people from
my background often do not think about
applying to schools outside their state
so without outreach programs in the
support of mentors I would not be at
Harvard today coming from a
first-generation low-income background I
face challenges with navigating school
resources feeling supported and
adjusting to social life on campus on
the other hand my wealthier peers went
to prep schools and had parents that
attended college who could support them
despite this I learned to not have shame
and asking for help or support and
instead I am able to take initiative in
doing so in my classes extracurriculars
and internships I shed light on the
socio-economic challenges people face in
our society coming from humble
beginnings I knew early on that I needed
to be self-motivated and resourceful in
order to succeed and propel myself
forward in this challenging academic
environment and although I carry myself
with confidence not having the financial
backing or social networks that many of
my peers take for granted it is
challenging at times to succeed on my
will and tenacity alone
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going ahead what do you see as a
direction to sort of counter these
challenges so I think key to it is
increasing awareness I mean this is a
very new area this is a new frontier for
diversity and inclusion so I think
increasing awareness of the
opportunities and the challenges also
making sure that first-generation
professionals are celebrated for their
successes making sure that we let the
world know that they're trailblazers and
that they bring incredible talent to the
workplace and making sure that they know
they're not alone connect them with
other first-generation professionals and
then also partner with other agencies
where we can can other nonprofit
organizations and whoever's interested
in presenting workshops providing
mentorship anything that can help
first-generation professionals thrive
and unleash their potential and the
collaboration I think is going to be key
as well because many times if a
first-generation professional a
first-generation college student on
their way to being a professional
doesn't make that connection while
they're in an academic arena many times
they're not going to make it outside of
the academic arena so the partnership
between the agency and the institution
will be important do you see this
program extending to the institutions
and coming in and having maybe an
internal program absolutely because we
recognize that the first touch point
shouldn't be when they're already in the
work place although our program is aimed
at helping first-generation
professionals who are already in the
work place we think that in order to
optimally help first-generation
professionals our first touch point
should be developing them while they're
in the pipeline headed to the workforce
so those partnerships and collaboration
between the federal government and
academic institutions and private
organizations that help first-generation
college students as they are aspire to
be
professionals is key now this is a new
venture did you have any pushback or was
there always a top-down approach to
supporting this I have to say within my
organization I have had incredible
support from my supervisor all the way
up to the top senior leaders within the
Department of Commerce they recognized
that in order to build a diverse
workforce and have an inclusive work
environment we must be creative we must
be innovative and they see this as a
cutting edge new diversity and inclusion
initiative that should get top priority
now are there connections made once they
get into the initiative how is it
sustained I mean do can they move
through an agency and still maintain
membership or a connection to the
initiative so right now I think we're
really at the infancy stages of the
initiative so we're at the building
awareness sort of stage we're at the
stage exploring how do we sustain this
initiative in a way that it not only
helps current first generation
professionals but future first
generation professionals so I think at
every stage of one's career there's an
opportunity to provide assistance
information and resources for their
professional career development because
at every stage there are going to be new
obstacles new rules new ways of
operating that will require them to
exercise a different set of tools to
advance and thrive in whatever capacity
that they aspire to function in it would
be interesting as this new group or a
new initial group moves through to see
how they reach back and give back and
mentor I would be ideal if someone going
through can come back to an institution
and talk about the benefits and also the
challenges right absolutely so I think
that's one of the things we've been
speaking to all our first-generation
professionals who are participating this
initiative is that we have to
pull others up as we climb the ladder
right that's important to pay it forward
and all of them have made a commitment
to doing that here is our final
first-generation professional
my name is David Zion and I am currently
the chief administrative officer of the
US Census Bureau I'm a first generation
professional from a small rural based
community in Michigan of roughly 1,400
people my town was so small that we
didn't get our second stoplight in the
county until I was in high school my
father worked at the local A &  P grocery
store 50 miles away as a stocker checker
in the evening shift my mother worked as
a medical transcriptionist at the local
hospital to help supplement income once
my brother and I were old enough to be
home alone going to college was always
part of the plan for me as my parents
wanted me to do better and more with my
life I earned some scholarships as a
salutatorian of my class and the
scholarships covered about half of my
room and board and tuition so I
supplemented my financial aid with a
work-study program I started as a
general cafeteria worker and rose to a
level 3 kitchen supervisor in charge of
students and operations supporting
full-time kitchen employees and meal
preparation having the balance work in
school helped me develop a strong work
ethic and a determination to succeed I
learned time management skills and how
to develop my social networks I was
provided job training and leadership
experience that I've used throughout my
career in the federal government my
first job in the federal government was
in the Chicago office of public housing
as a housing management assistant gs-7
with the promotion potential to the
gs-12
I was hired under the outstanding
Scholars Program after numerous
unsuccessful interviews for the HUD
intern program I thought that not being
an intern would disadvantage me in terms
of getting to know people and the
organization and stifled my career
progression
I felt inadequate and inferior to the
HUD interns since I didn't graduate from
an Ivy League school I had previous
federal government or private sector
experience like most others in the
program however I made it my job to get
to know the interns and learn from them
I met and worked with the people they
were meeting and made it a point to have
them get to know me I was approached
more than once by leadership to rotate
in their office and was even offered a
lateral opportunity in the office of
housing which was blocked by my office
director my tenacity work ethic and a
determination to succeed despite the
feeling of vulnerability ultimately led
to an offer as program analyst in
headquarters there are many ways in
which I was inadequately prepared for my
career but this example of financial
illiteracy is one I will never forget I
found a great high-rise apartment
allowed me to walk to work and get to
know the city although I had never paid
rent before I did the math based on my
annual salary and thought it was fine
but I wasn't informed about things like
retirement life insurance Thrift Savings
Plan and other deductions that
mysteriously appeared on my pay stub in
the end my first paycheck barely covered
half of my rent and I quickly realized
this was an unsustainable situation
I wish there would have been programs or
classes to help think about this and
felt foolish for not thinking about it
when deciding where to live my mentors
and supervisors helped me learn skills
that allowed me to be confident and my
newfound abilities I learned how to be a
part of a workplace culture and how to
successfully navigate within that
culture through observation commitment
and being genuine to my colleagues and
the mission at hand I think that my
parents example of hard work to provide
for their family and sacrifices were
massive influencing factors on who I am
today
though they didn't have the college
experience to fall upon or relate to me
they did have the experience of valuing
and serving people from all walks of life
[Music]
Tinisha this has been so informative
and exciting that there is this federal
push and lead to do this how excited are
you about this I am super excited about
it but I will tell you there have been
times that even I've second-guess myself
because as I said earlier I'm learning
so much and how to frame the initiative
what it really is who are we targeting
what is it that we hope to achieve and
then all of the sort of misconceptions
that arise sometimes when you embark on
a new initiative and so there are a
couple that I want to dispel in terms of
misconceptions one that first-generation
professionals do not have deficits this
is not about the deficit every
professional has opportunities to
improve in their career or to have
professional development so this is not
about deficits they definitely bring
talent and traits that are helpful for
the workforce the other one is that this
is targeting minorities no this is
targeting a particular group of people
who are the first in the workplace and
this transcends race gender national
origin socio-economic strata doesn't is
not limited to one diversity dimension
it covers many of them well it's
wonderful to hear that also that that
there's that acceptance because that is
such a challenge many times for people
who believe that if they identify as a
first generation anything that is going
to be a negative impact thank you so
much for being here with us if you are
interested in learning more about the
academic programs and events offered by
the University of the District of
Columbia visit the university's website
at www.udc.edu and to learn more about the
many degree certificate and training
programs offered by the University of
the District of Columbia Community
College please visit the website at www.cc.udc.edu
thank you for watching I'm Dr. Sandra Jowers Barber
you
