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OUR MISSION:
OTVLeads is a subset of OTV Amplifies that focuses on bringing strategic and crucial conversations focused in Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) work to external organizations through contracted events. By curating company meetings, panels, and discussions, OTVLeads provides a forum in which necessary and often difficult conversations are facilitated with pointed introspection. These events, which are rooted in alliance-building and social justice work, offer guidance through strategic inquiry and conversation-building around practices of anti-bias. The facilitations are formatted to directly address the oppressive systems that continue to function within the Santa Barbara community, beginning by examining the implementation and preservation of these systems within the organizations themselves
In alignment with On the Verge’s mission to cultivate essential conversations and galvanize cultural expansion, the OTVLeads initiative seeks to encourage organizations to prioritize engaging further with marginalized communities in Santa Barbara and to consistently provide them with accessible and equitable space. Through this specific and active engagement, organizations imply a commitment to being part of a greater cultural ecology that values and upholds intersectional perspectives and identities in Santa Barbara.
-Joré Aaron, Director of OTVLeads
OTVLEADS X ON THE VERGE FESTIVAL
On The Verge’s constituents come from a wide background of arts and leadership training. We have also engaged with very specific anti-racist trainings and workshops with such extraordinary leaders as artEquity, Carmen Morgan, Dr. Akilah Cadet, Donna Walker-Kuhne, Nicole Brewer, Adrienne Wong, TCG, ASTEP and more. We are trained as facilitators and public speakers with anti-racist ideology by professional coaches like Barbara Tannenbaum.
We create our curriculums and work in this, the EDI training field, with extensive internal conversation and collaboration among the company members. Our unique intersectional identities and experiences differ vastly, and we believe this brings depth and complexity to our facilitation. Our goal is to hold space for conversation and prime folks with questions while offering research and expert takes, citing said experts, and paying them for said citations in Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion efforts. We are doing this EDI facilitation work in conjunction with public-facing free offerings as part of the AMPLIFIES conversation series.