White privilege
Aug 10, 2020
Scott Miller of Scott Miller Strategies
White privilege
As a part of the Rotary Club of Kirkland’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion speaker series, Scott Miller will present to the club on White Privilege. As with the other portions of the DEI series, the moderator for this evening will be Darcia Tudor, a club member and attorney, family mediator, forensic therapist and executive coach.
For the last 40 years, Scott has been actively involved observing, documenting, planning and promoting social change; as a reporter, as a non-profit manager, as a funder and, now as an independent consultant. His familiarity with Native issues stems from his journalism days, where he provided in-depth coverage of stories such as treaty rights and the efforts to reclaim tribal lands. During his time as a non-profit manager, Scott led Resource Media through a period of rapid growth. He learned that growth, while often desirable to ramp up impact, is also inherently destabilizing. Balancing new opportunities with the need for a stable, transparent, and caring workplace is a necessity and Scott has the experience to help organizations plan for ramping up.
In his stint in the foundation world, Scott launched a community-based grantmaking initiative with longer time horizons than foundations usually accept. He became – and remains – convinced that changing how funders and grantees work together to evaluate progress needs to be decoupled from annual grant cycles.
Finally, during Scott’s most recent tenure as a non-profit manager, he led a growing organization through a serious (and ongoing) equity initiative. This experience was truly transformational for Scott, as he learned how undoing structural racism benefits everyone. Through owning missteps rather than fearing them, Scott also earned how white men so often block such progress whether they intend to or not. The desire to create more space for diverse leadership was one reason Scott decided to leave Resource Media late last year and set up his own consulting business.
While Scott ran a communications firm for more than 15 years, his real job was organizational development, funder relations and strategic planning. These skill sets form the core of Scott Miller Strategies today as Scott seeks to help organizations dedicated to social change evolve, plan and sustain themselves all in the name of increasing impact.