FLOW w/ Darren Walker & Sharnita C. Johnson
In this specially commissioned web series co-produced by Grantmakers in the Arts, FLOW WITH DR. DURELL COOPER, features conversations between Cooper and influential people from the Global Majority leading in the arts philanthropic sector. The overarching question this series investigates is what narratives exist that harm us and how are we intentionally developing strategies to mitigate the harm to foster healing in communities of color?
Dr. Cooper invites his guests to take a deep dive into the themes of intersectional justice, equity, solidarity economies, and time machines. Guests in this series include Darren Walker, Sharnita C. Johnson, and Misty Copeland.
A full transcript of this episode is available below.
Dr. Durell Cooper (DC): What's up guys? Dr. Durell Cooper here with another episode of Flow. And today I'm at the Ford Foundation where we'll talk with Darren Walker, the 10th president of the Ford Foundation, and Sharnita Johnson, vice president at the Victoria Foundation. Come with me.
I'm here with two people who need no introduction but I'll do my best to try to give you both one anyway. Darren, I'll start with you. So, we are here with the 10th president of the Ford Foundation, Darren Walker. Darren, thank you so much for being on Flow today.
Darren Walker (DW): Happy to be with you.
DC: And we are also here with Sharnita Johnson, the Vice President of impact strategy and communications at the Victoria Foundation and also board chair for Grantmakers in the Arts, who is so generously sponsoring this episode of FLOW. So Sharnita, thank you so much for being here with us.
Sharnita C. Johnson (SCJ): My pleasure.
DC: So for people who may not be as familiar with your work as I am, I thought maybe I'd just open it up for an opportunity for you to tell a little bit of our viewers who you are, where you're from.
SCJ: I am a native Detroiter, proud native Detroiter, New Jersey transplant, working in Newark these days with the Victoria Foundation. And I've worked at a number of foundations over the years. The Skillman Foundation, the Kellogg Foundation, Ruth Mott Foundation in Flint. And before that I was a fundraiser for a really long time working in arts and culture and I got my nonprofit start at the Museum of African American History in Detroit. not the big museum now, we were little going into the big museum, but I've been in the social sector for the majority of my career and just had the great fortune to work in philanthropy.
DC: Philanthropy is also had a great fortune of having you in it.
SCJ: Thank you.
DC: You may be a Guinness Book of World Records for the most philanthropic organization you've worked at by by any one person.
SCJ: Yeah, it's a lot.
DC: Which you know is is no small feat. And President Walker, born in Louisiana, raised in Texas. Tell us a little bit more about your background and experience and how you got here to Ford.
DW: I was trained as a lawyer. I came to New York and worked on Wall Street both in law and at an investment banking firm. And then I met the late Reverend Calvin Butts at the Abbysinian Baptist Church and he, along with Karen Phillips the co-founder of the Abyssinian Development Corporation, gave me the opportunity of a lifetime to come in 1993 and begin a journey with them working in community development in Harlem. From there there I went to the Rockefeller Foundation in 2000, and I came to Ford in 2010.
DC: Ford is also very privileged to have you here at the helm. So, so much about this series Grantmakers in the Arts is doing is about narrative change and one of the areas I wanted to start in is what are some of the narratives that you are seeing emerging in your work that needs to be addressed or is currently being addressed?
SCJ: That is a big question and I think a lot of it is that our communities cannot be self determinant. Not sort of looking at the historic disinvestment and thinking about how organizations are underfunded, under-resourced, playing multiple, multiple roles. So we know arts organizations and our communities are doing all kinds of social services often. Working with young people, working with their families and also trying to deliver arts programs and cultural programs and just thinking about how these folks are doing these things over many many years on a shoestring, on their own credit cards. All those things, an investment as they say. that like we wanted them to win, could actually put them in a place to do that work. And so I think that that's probably one of the things that I'm hearing a lot is that these communities, it's something wrong with the communities, it's something wrong with the people, when I don't believe that, we don't believe that and we know it's not the case.
DC: Darren, you know, I think about the many different initiatives Ford has. One that comes to my mind is the Art for Justice fund, but what kind of comes to your mind when you think of the narratives that exist to harm us?
DW: Well, I think one of the narratives that is harmful to the sector and certainly to the arts sector is that artists are supposed to be poor, because they're artists. The narrative that you're just supposed to not expect a living wage or to have a livelihood with dignity, if you are an artist, a creative, or you work for an arts organization. And that is a very harmful narrative that has huge repercussions for not only the field but for individual participants in the field. It creates a kind of a pernicious spiral from which we can't get out of because if the narrative is, well, why are you complaining? You know you're an artist, you're supposed to be poor, then it's really hard to make the case that actually I shouldn't have to be poor to be a creative. As you just said, doing work far beyond,
SCJ: Yes.
DW: Beyond the creative.
SCJ: Yes.
DW: Work of an artist or an arts organization.
DC: This is so interesting. It's making me think of two different things. The first thing that comes to my mind and Sharnita, I'll come to you with this one, but it's the solidarity economy.
SCJ: Yes.
DC: And the work GIA is doing around, you know, solidarity not charity. And then the second thing is going to be Creatives Rebuild New York. Tell us a little bit more about the solidarity economy and and this push that GIA has.
SCJ: Sure, well I was nodding my head vigorously because I totally agree.
DW: Sharnita and I are totally [gestures similar thoughts]
SCJ: Absolutely and it really is around sort of the culture workers are a very vulnerable class and we saw that so crisply during the pandemic, that not only were folks losing their day job as a teaching artist, but they were losing their jobs in hospitality and they were most vulnerable. And because their job is different than sort of what folks think about as a career path, that they didn't get the same attention. I also co-chair the arts and culture renewal fund in New Jersey and that was a big conversation that we had around the the vulnerability of culture workers and arts organizations. Many times because they are underfunded, over a long period of time so they can't rebound, they don't necessarily have the reserves and particularly organizations led by people of color and serving communities of color. So this notion that we have to shore up all of those things for culture workers that also support other vulnerable sectors and thinking about this is a job, it is a career and you shouldn't have to struggle, you should have healthcare, you should have paid vacation, you should have all of those things that many of us enjoy in our day jobs as well. And I think that that's an important piece of work, a body of work that grant makers in the arts is getting behind and supporting and learning about and trying to educate the field and others about.
DC: Thank you so much for doing that work. And for Creatives Rebuild New York, I mean tell us a little bit about the, the idea for the program and then how the implementation has been.
DW: So, the idea of Creatives Rebuild New York is an artist-led idea and whenever you turn the development, the rebirth, and renewal over to artists, big things will happen. What artists need are the luxury of the resources that everyone else has to do their work and like everyone else who is sufficiently resourced, artists will deliver. And arts organizations who are sufficiently resourced, will be the platforms to help them in that delivery. And that is what we have seen in New York as we have returned in this what we hope will be a post-Covid New York, but the jury is still out. But the work is going on in communities, in various projects, initiatives, it's going on in the schools, it's going on in the prisons and in the systems, as you mentioned, Art for Justice is one of those spinoffs that through the arts, helping this city to rebuild by giving people who were most vulnerable, as Sharnita said, the people who were working two and three jobs, teaching arts, education, working in hospitality, waiting tables, cleaning hotel rooms. But also needing the opportunity to produce their work. To actually make their work and exhibit their work. Make their work possible. Creatives can rebuild anything. Creatives just need to be resourced like the rest of us and they'll, they will deliver.
DC: From New York to Detroit, the four foundation's portfolio is vast, it's global. But I want look specifically at Detroit because we have one of their most favorite daughters here in the room with us. So Sharnita, tell us a little bit about how being from Detroit has shaped the way in which you go about your work. And then Darren, I'm going to come to you about the decision to have Ford reinvest in Detroit once you came on board.
SCJ: I think about that a lot, being sort of a transplant now, like what am I bringing from home? And I think part of that really is coming from Detroit, sort of, I saw people that look like me, leading and running things and innovating. My family is a family of entrepreneurs and you know we are known for entrepreneurship. The auto industry, Motown, you name it. And so I think that that sort of has carried me through my life and my career really that I have an expectation that I'm going to see people that look like me in a room. And that hasn't always been the case. I mean as much as I've spent my career in philanthropy for a very long time, it never occurred to me that I could be in philanthropy, that I could be a funder. I was a fundraiser for many years because I never saw anyone that looked like me in those roles, until I did. And I have had great mentors, and Darren is my mentor in my head. [Darren laughing] But that's a big part of what I bring. It's just this expectation that we will be everywhere.
DW: And I think Sharnita is right about the evolution of philanthropy and arts philanthropy and particularly not very diverse for a very long time. And I think we have seen in recent years a real emergence of a far more diverse and far more excellent community and it's one of the great benefits of Grantmakers in the Arts has been to really build that community and support the community in all of its richness and diversity. And it just is a reminder of why affinity matters within philanthropy because philanthropy is a very big sector. You've got people focusing on everything from medical research and climate change to racial justice and gender justice and everything in between. And so to find your home, which is what GIA does, in effect, gives people a platform to work from a place and a space to find fellow travelers and particularly people of color who were underrepresented for a very long time and continue to be underrepresented in some geographies, in some spaces. GIA serves a vital role.
DC: I want to kind of keep going down this path a little bit and talk about leadership at foundations particularly leadership of color, black leadership. Darren, you talked about the evolution especially with, within recent times. I think there is a direct correlation -- this is just, you know, this is what I posit. We can definitely debate this, but I think some of these ingenious plans that we are seeing foundations come out with now, I think a lot of it is due to having more diverse perspectives at the very top. Particularly Sharnita, particularly you, particularly Elizabeth Alexander. I don't think it's happenstance that philanthropy is getting much more intentional about their work serving communities of color but I'd be happy to know what your experiences are like living it. Do you feel that as you go about your day-to-day?
DW: I'm very privileged because I get to serve here as president of Ford and in doing so, I'm able to set policy for the foundation and use the platform that is the Ford Foundation from which to share my perspectives analysis. People know that I, because I've been in the sector for, you know, over two decades, that I love this sector but I'm not blinded by my love of this sector, to its shortcomings and the areas that are in need of further development and improvement. But I do feel that as a leader of a foundation, you are able to set policy and in setting policy you signal what is most valued. And so for me, we have, certainly during my 10 years as president, made it clear that excellence and diversity, which go hand in hand, are priority. And that addressing inequality in all of its forms is our north star. And so as we look in the arts, what that has meant is that we have migrated programs. Looking through the lens of inequality in the arts ecosystem. And what that has meant is we now are funding significantly more BIPOC organizations. We are addressing specific issues of underrepresentation in important fields like curatorial museum administration, for example. And that we are funding, very specifically, as we did in our social bond initiative grants through the lens of equity. So if the Whitney Museum gets $500,000, the Studio Museum gets $5 million. If New York City Ballet gets $500,000, Dance Theatre of Harlem gets $7 million. And that is through the lens of equity. And I think, as you've said, intentionality is critical here. It is not enough to espouse the rhetoric of DEI. That's the easy part. And we do that very well in philanthropy. What we don't do is follow through with concrete intentional strategies that are long-term, multi-year, general operating and really focused on the infrastructure for the production and development of great art and art organizations.
DC: And, Sharnita, same question.
SCJ: Again, vigorous handshake. I totally agree with what Darren is saying and I just think about all the, the time when Brian Stevenson says those folks that are proximate to the work have the answers. And so I feel very much that way about philanthropy. I've seen, 'cause I've been in philanthropy for a minute too. I'm not going to say how long but I've seen the change over time and I'm seeing more diverse people coming into the field and that is one of the things that's very important to me is bringing people in and keeping them there. It's, it can be a challenging sector sometimes but I do think that folks that have the lived and the professional experience in the communities that we're trying to change is a very important perspective. So, I think that transitioning and bringing more BIPOC people into this space is continuing the transformation.
DC: What would you say to your younger self, today, to give them encouragement to make it to tomorrow?
SCJ: It's funny, I've been thinking about this and I've heard that saying you're your ancestors' wildest dreams. I would absolutely tell her that. That you came from a family that is entrepreneurs, because we had to be. My dad started his own business because he said nobody will hire him. So he had to start his own business. My mother went back to college with six children. So I'm the youngest of six children. And again, we've had to make a way out of no way, often. And that my grandparents sacrificed and my great-grandparents sacrificed. My grandparents came up to Detroit through the great migration. And that I can be in this role where I can invest back into our communities. I can invest back into our creativity. Yeah, I would tell her that. You are absolutely your ancestors' wildest dreams.
DW: I would say lean into your dreams. I was a dreamer when I was a little boy and dreams were a way of coping and taking me out of the context which I found myself. And I believed dreaming was an important and critical part of my own mental health as a child and I would just encourage little me to lean into those dreams.
DC: So, final thoughts. Is there anything else that you would like to share on this topic that we haven't previously discussed or anything that you would like to expound upon a little bit more for the viewers? Sharnita, I guess I'll go to you first.
SCJ: Just happy to have this opportunity to have this conversation. You know, I'm thrilled to be the chair of the Grantmakers in the Arts board. I pinch myself often, like, yes. Because they're doing so much amazing work and it's such an amazing team there and we're being thoughtful about the future. We're being thoughtful about the needs of the sector. And so just anytime that we can kind of talk about it and examine it, I think is really important.
DW: I would just endorse what Sharnita said and just as a reminder, because we live in a time when there doesn't seem to be a sufficient amount of empathy and dignity in our system, in our politics, in our culture, in our communities. And I do believe that the arts provides us a pathway out of this. We know that engagement through the arts builds the muscles of empathy. The ability to see other people, hear and put yourself in the shoes of others, comes from engagement with the arts. And so we're going to need the arts more than ever. Because we can't get to justice. The world to justice leads through art and empathy. And so, the work of Grantmakers in the Arts is going to be more essential in the days ahead than ever before in its history. And so I'm delighted that Ford Foundation can support GIA and that you've kindly asked me to be a part of this program with Sharnita, which I've really enjoyed and hope that this is useful in the very important work of GIA.
DC: Well, thank you so much, Darren. Thank you, Sharnita. So, the Ford Foundation has this initiative called America's Cultural Treasures. And dare I say, you both are two of America's greatest cultural treasures. And so thank you for coming on FLOW and just being you and for not giving up when it, I'm sure, was easy to do so and fighting the good fight. So, thank you.
DW: Thank you.
SCJ: Thank you.
About the Contributors
Darren Walker is president of the Ford Foundation, a $16 billion international social justice philanthropy with offices in the United States and ten regions around the globe. He chaired the philanthropy committee that brought a resolution to the city of Detroit’s historic bankruptcy. Under his leadership, the Ford Foundation became the first non-profit in US history to issue a $1 billion desi/gnated social bond in US capital markets for proceeds to strengthen and stabilize non-profit organizations in the wake of COVID-19.
Educated exclusively in public schools, Darren was a member of the first class of Head Start in 1965 and received his bachelor’s and law degrees from The University of Texas at Austin, which in 2009 recognized him with its Distinguished Alumnus Award—its highest alumni honor. He has been included on numerous leadership lists, including TIME’s annual 100 Most Influential People in the World, Rolling Stone’s 25 People Shaping the Future, Fast Company’s Most Creative People in Business, Ebony’s Power 100, and Out magazine’s Power 50. Most recently, Darren was named Wall Street Journal’s 2020 Philanthropy Innovator.
Sharnita C. Johnson is the Victoria Foundation’s first-ever Vice President of Strategy, Impact and Communication. In this role, Sharnita provides oversight and management of all programmatic activities, ensuring alignment with the Foundation goals and values. She leads the development and implementation of Victoria’s grantmaking, success measures, communications, and leadership activities as the Foundation transitions to community-centered work focused on equity and justice.
Sharnita has a wealth of lived and professional experience. Born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, she is a recognized leader who was shaped by more than 20 years of nonprofit experience, deep community roots, and a legacy of family entrepreneurship. She has created and partnered in innovative collaborations that have secured millions of dollars in philanthropic support for community-based initiatives.
Sharnita is active in the nonprofit sector and is the chair of the board of directors of Grantmakers in the Arts, a national association of public and private arts and culture funders that advances philanthropic and governmental resources to support the growth of the arts and culture. She is on the board of ArtYard and joining the Children’s Theatre Foundation of America in 2022. She was an ABFE Connecting Leaders Fellow, Marygrove College Distinguished Alumni, and Council on Foundations Career Pathways Fellow. Sharnita earned a Master of Public Administration from the University of Michigan-Dearborn and a bachelor’s from Marygrove College in Detroit.
Dr. Durell Cooper is one of the nation’s most prominent cultural strategists specializing in systems change and collaborative thought leadership. Prior to founding cultural innovation group, llc, he was a program officer at the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs (DCLA). He also worked at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, inc. In the marketing department conducting outreach to veteran service organizations and for Lincoln Center education recruiting and training teaching artists as well as several community engagement initiatives aimed at increasing equity and inclusion in NYC public schools. Prior to that he was a public-school teacher. Durell is also a proud veteran of the U.S. Navy. He is also the creator and host of the web series, Flow, and the podcast, Fluency with Dr. Durell Cooper.
