Category: Executive Director ISDI

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.

Here, Dr. Kirk Adams argues that the movements for diversity, equity, inclusion, accessibility, belonging, and human rights share the same values but too often work in isolation, one group focused on disability, another on racial justice, another on LGBTQ+ equality, veterans, aging, or economic opportunity, and that this fragmentation makes their collective voice quieter than it should be. His remedy is to stop standing apart and start standing together through the Institute for Sustainable Diversity and Inclusion’s new Community Coalition for Sustainable Diversity and Inclusion: a national gathering place on the Circle platform where champions of human dignity across every identity, sector, and generation can connect, share resources, mentor emerging leaders, and organize around common challenges. As he puts it, this coalition is “for everybody.”

Here, Dr. Kirk Adams makes an urgent, personal case that the future of inclusion won’t be built by waiting for someone else to build it. Writing as Executive Director of the Institute for Sustainable Diversity & Inclusion, he names the moment plainly — DEIAB programs being dismantled, leaders isolated, decades of hard-won progress suddenly in doubt — and answers it not with despair but with a call to organize. His thesis is that no single organization, employer, or advocate can withstand this alone, which is why ISDI is building the Community Coalition for Sustainable Diversity & Inclusion: a national online community where practitioners, educators, advocates, allies, and directly impacted people can find practical tools, strategic support, professional relationships, and a place to turn hope into action.

Here, Dr. Kirk Adams confronts the quiet question he keeps hearing from diversity, equity, inclusion, and human-rights leaders worn down by months of attacks, setbacks, and exhaustion: is this even working, and is it even worth it? His answer names hopelessness, not apathy, as the movement’s gravest threat, the fatigue that sets in when constant resistance goes without renewal. Drawing on the writer and philosopher David Whyte, he argues that the goal isn’t to eliminate uncertainty but to build a healthier relationship with it, and that the surest way to do so is through community, the thing that lets us borrow hope when our own runs low, remember the victories we’ve forgotten, and make room for joy as a genuine form of resistance rather than a distraction from it.