The WIYB Origin Story
Does anyone use briefcases anymore? It’s a fair question. From what I’ve experienced, most people commuting to work prefer a stylish backpack (although there are a few holdout briefcases sprinkled on the bus). Granted, I’ve only held a 9-5 office job for 2 years as of writing. Previously, I was a professor-in-training (a.k.a. graduate student). Nevertheless, I’ve taken lots of buses, so I feel pretty okay citing this anecdotal evidence.
What’s In Your Briefcase (WIYB for short) has an uneventful origin story. In July 2021 I transitioned out of the higher education race for a tenure track position and started working for a nonprofit in Chicago. After my first month, I thought about documenting my first year lessons learned in a weekly blog, similar to a habit I developed during undergrad while training to be a teacher. Still burnt out from grad school and admittedly afraid of posting, I wrote exactly zero things outside of work. I was also navigating what felt like crisis after crisis in my personal life. While I was fortunate enough to not only have an incredible support network, but also an A+ therapist, the tumult of my life outside of work was unavoidably impacting me at work. After I initiated a conversation with my supervisor about their perception of where I was struggling, I began to see more clearly how my life outside the office was also showing up with me right at 9 AM.
To borrow a phrase from my WIYB collaborator, Amy: this got me noodlin’.
Not long after that conversation, my therapist had me reread Peggy McIntosh’s article, “The Invisible Knapsack.” I had never read it as a working adult, only as a student tasked with considering its place within the lineage of feminist thought. DEI practitioners know better than any of us how important deep reflection is to truthfully and authentically enabling a framework of equity in all we do. But so many of our coaching strategies, leadership development materials, and in general, workplaces, grant us permission to avoid looking closely at the emotional baggage we bring with us every day, whether we work from home, the office, or a coffee shop. As Tony Nabors of Racial Equity Insights notes in a recent Instagram reel, it is imperative that white folks first heal their individual traumas in order to avoid projecting those hurts onto their Black, Indigenous, and Latinx colleagues with whom they’re collaborating. This got me thinking even more: how could I leverage the various privileges I hold (white, college-educated, financially stable) in a way that was rooted in the self-work I’d been doing to overcome the damaging behaviors I’d learned to cope with my past?
WIYB is my attempt to help us all be the leaders we want to be not despite our pasts, but because of them. When we lean into the hard self-work to heal the hurts we carry with us, we can also learn important skills and insights for serving our communities. For those of us committed to carrying out a vision of a just and equitable future, those skills and insights are essential.
We also take this call to individual accountability at WIYB seriously–especially as white individuals. Regardless of how other underestimated identities we hold intersect with our whiteness, it is our whiteness that will always be perceived and privileged by others, first. What that means is we do in fact practice what we advise, and focus on what we can learn from moments when we mess up. Moreover, WIYB’s mission and commitment is to provide everyone, regardless of background and income, access to resources and opportunities for undertaking the difficult, individual work of examining what we stuff in our briefcases every morning.
To be clear, we aren’t therapists. I wanted to be an English professor, and Amy started out in patient services. But we are both passionate about helping those willing to do the internal work to reach the next stage of their career. I hope you’ll consider joining us on our journey to reshape leadership for the future.
