Uncovering the Traps of Implicit Bias

Jerica Broeckling is a social sector leader with 15 years’ experience working in community development and capacity-building for nonprofits. She consults with organizations on planning using human-centered design; systems thinking and results-based strategies; and advancing equity, diversity, and inclusion.

She spent the last decade working with community-based and human-serving organizations around the country through her work with the Alliance for Strong Families and Communities. Through the Alliance, Broeckling led cross-sector initiatives on community health, workforce readiness, nonprofit leadership, and community engagement. Prior to her work at the national level, she advanced executive projects for a statewide parent engagement organization in Wisconsin and served as a health educator for the Peace Corps in Ghana.

She holds a master’s in public service with a nonprofit specialization from Marquette University, where she now is a graduate instructor on social innovation and trends in the nonprofit sector. She serves as an advisory board member for the Marquette University Trinity Fellowship.

Phyllis Richards is director of equity, diversity, and inclusion and research at Social Current. In this role, she works to meet the evaluation needs of internal and external partners as well as manages the day-to-day operations of the evaluation and research department, which includes administering the assessment tool for the Commitments of High-Impact Nonprofit Organizations and the annual compensation study. Prior to joining Social Current’s predecessor organization, the Alliance for Strong Families and Communities, Richards worked for the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee as an evaluator for the Medicaid Infrastructure Grant (MIG)Training Program. This program trained public high school staff, parents, and community partners on the services available to students with special needs after leaving high school.

Richards founded the non-profit organization Parents Advocating for Cultural Equality and Educational Excellence (PACE3) and led this grassroots organization for nine years. The focus of PACE3 is to address the systemic racism, cultural competency, and academic excellence concerns of parents and students of color at predominately white suburban Milwaukee school districts. During this time, Richards also founded the Consortium for Equity and Excellence in Education, which was a three-year collaborative project between five suburban Milwaukee school district leaders and parents to develop strategic plans to address the opportunity gap in education.

Richards holds a master’s in social policy from the University of Chicago’s School of Social Service Administration along with a master’s in educational psychology with a concentration in measurement and statistics from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She is also a qualified administrator of the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI).