Category: By Dr Kirk Adams

Here, Dr. Kirk Adams reflects on launching the Community Coalition for Sustainable Diversity and Inclusion on September 1, in a span of days that also brought the deaths of Dolly Parton, Wendell Berry, and Gloria Steinem. He writes candidly about his discomfort at honoring three white figures in a piece about a coalition devoted to diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility, and belonging, and he insists that the long struggle for freedom has been led, sustained, and repeatedly rescued by Black people, Indigenous people, people of color, women, LGBTQ+ people, people with disabilities, immigrants, workers, and countless others whose names never reach a history book. What he draws from each of the three is a lesson in using one’s gifts in service to others: Parton’s Imagination Library, whose Braille Tales partnership with the American Printing House for the Blind fills his own bookshelf with print-and-braille titles his two-year-old granddaughter brings him with the words “Grandpa, read book with your hands!”; Berry’s insistence that community is a daily practice rather than an abstract idea, the conviction behind Adams’s own philosophy of brightening the corner where you are; and Steinem’s advice to young women to listen to themselves rather than to her, together with her understanding that movements require infrastructure and not merely admired personalities.

Here, Dr. Kirk Adams shares the full recording of the September 1, 2026 public launch of the Community Coalition for Sustainable Diversity and Inclusion, the national membership community created by the Institute for Sustainable Diversity and Inclusion to help people working in diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility and belonging move from reactive, isolated survival mode to strategic, sustainable, collective power.

Here, Dr. Kirk Adams announces that the Community Coalition for Sustainable Diversity and Inclusion went live on September 1, 2026, opened not with a webinar or a panel but with an “Ask Us Anything” hour of questions, frustrations, ideas and lived experience. He explains what the Coalition actually is: a way for members to move from reactive, isolated survival mode to strategic, sustainable, collective power, built on four words, Connect, Learn, Act, Together. He is direct about who it is for, which is everybody, and equally direct that disability inclusion and accessibility are not a side room in it but a dedicated space by design. Inside, he describes three things above all others: BELONG, the peer circles where saying “I am overwhelmed” is met with practical help rather than judgment; CLARITY, a trusted translation layer of plain-language briefings and expert-guided sessions; and POWER, the shared tools, cross-sector strategy and coalition-backed influence that turn isolated effort into coordinated action. In practice that means Ask the Experts office hours, a Member Lounge and Directory, a growing Resource Library, a Rapid Response Hub for the moments that will not wait, legislative and legal updates, podcasts featuring DEIAB voices, and a shared calendar of events worth your time.

Here, Dr. Kirk Adams invites readers to the free virtual launch of the Community Coalition for Sustainable Diversity and Inclusion on Tuesday, September 1st, 11:00 a.m. to noon Pacific / 2:00 to 3:00 p.m. Eastern. Writing as Executive Director of The Institute for Sustainable Diversity and Inclusion, he opens on the turning of the season and uses it to name a harder truth: across workplaces, schools, nonprofits, government agencies and communities, champions of diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility, belonging and human dignity are watching programs dismantled, funding disappear and language censored, and are doing that work feeling like the only one in the room. That isolation, he argues, is not merely painful but strategically costly, because the forces working against inclusion win when advocates are exhausted, fragmented and afraid. The Coalition is his answer: a place to move from reactive, isolated survival to strategic, sustainable, collective power, offering practical resources, peer-learning and mentoring circles, subject-matter experts and organized collective action, grounded in the conviction that expertise comes from lived experience as much as from titles, degrees or institutions.

Here, Dr. Kirk Adams invites readers to the free livestreamed launch of the Community Coalition for Sustainable Diversity and Inclusion on Tuesday, September 1, 2026, from 11:00 a.m. to noon Pacific (2:00 to 3:00 p.m. Eastern), and argues that the Coalition is inheriting a legacy rather than inventing one. Writing from a visit to Oakland in the Black Panther Party’s sixtieth anniversary year, he looks past the iconography to the Party’s Community Survival Programs, the free breakfasts, health clinics, sickle-cell testing, legal services and support for seniors and disabled people, and draws out the line that anchors the piece: resistance isn’t only about what we stand against, it is about what we build together.

Here, Dr. Kirk Adams, Executive Director of the Institute for Sustainable Diversity and Inclusion, argues that many people working for diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility, belonging and human rights have stopped asking whether their organizations are moving fast enough and started asking whether it is safe to speak up at all. Pointing to a federal terrorism case arising from a July 2025 protest in Texas and to criminal charges now facing the Southern Poverty Law Center, he is careful to add that whatever our individual political perspectives on those particular cases, what they illuminate is larger: the perceived cost of advocacy is rising, and different people carry different levels of risk.

Here, Dr. Kirk Adams and the Institute for Sustainable Diversity & Inclusion (ISDI) invite you to the public launch of the Community Coalition for Sustainable Diversity and Inclusion, a free LinkedIn Live event on Tuesday, September 1, 2026, from 11:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. Pacific Time (2:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. Eastern). Writing against a backdrop of dismantled programs, disappearing funding, and practitioners left working in isolation, Adams argues that the answer to this moment is not retreat but community, and organizes the Coalition around a single-word theme: RESIST. Resist fear. Resist division. Resist isolation. And resist the idea that the work of inclusion belongs to any one organization or any one movement.

Here, Dr. Kirk Adams, Executive Director of the Institute for Sustainable Diversity and Inclusion (ISDI), issues an open invitation to help launch the Community Coalition for Sustainable Diversity and Inclusion. The Coalition grew out of a strategic planning process last summer that brought together more than 60 leaders working across diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility, belonging, human rights, and social justice. Their organizations and backgrounds differed, but their message did not: people feel isolated, many feel under pressure, and too many are fighting the same battles alone. The Coalition is the answer Adams offers to that, a single place to connect, exchange ideas, learn, organize, and celebrate progress, rather than one more organization asking people to choose sides.