Join us for an exciting night with Gabriela Alcalde, as she discusses her new book,
What Your Comfort Costs Us,
This in-person event will be held at Solid State Books
on H St. NE. Don't miss out!
Tickets with, AND without a book are available here!
Leading for survival, leading for liberation—how to uplift women of color, transform cultures of complicity, and upend white supremacy culture at work
Workplace leaders: white comfort comes at the safety of women of color—and it costs lives and livelihoods. Microaggressions, structural barriers, unpaid emotional labor: WOC in leadership disproportionately bear the burdens of white supremacist work cultures, even as they’re expected to take charge of reforms. But building better workplaces—less toxic, racist, and misogynistic workplaces—is everyone’s responsibility and for everyone’s benefit. And letting it fall solely to women of color is causing real harm. The stakes are high, and it’s past time for change.
What Your Comfort Costs Us offers essential reading and transparent advice for leaders who are ready to address structural inequity at work. With chapters like “Talking About Racism is Hard,” “Checking the Boxes,” and “Uncovering the Added Burden and Toll of Unpaid and Unseen Emotional Labor,” anti-supremacist philanthropic and nonprofit leader and author M. Gabriela Alcalde challenges us to rethink how we engage power—and take radical action toward reorienting it toward collective liberation.
M. Gabriela Alcalde is a public health leader with nearly 3 decades of experience and commitment to equity and social justice. She has worked in the philanthropic, academic, government, nonprofit, and grassroots sectors throughout her career and served in various volunteer capacities. Since 2019, Alcalde has led the Sewall Foundation, a private, independent foundation, as executive director through radical culture change and the integration of environmental, human, and animal wellbeing as the foundation works to center equity and community voices in all their work and strategies. Alcalde regularly speaks and writes locally, nationally, and internationally about shifting the philanthropic and nonprofit sectors, racial equity and justice, and the experience of women of color in leadership. A native of Lima, Peru, she currently lives in Maine with her partner, children, and dog.