News & Views posts.
We are beyond fortunate to work for Lumina Foundation, a private philanthropy committed to making people’s lives better by expanding learning beyond high school. Ours is a critical mission—one that we believe inspires hope and seeks to make real the promise of the American dream.
The economic challenges we face can be seen in nearly every community across the nation, and in seeking to tell the story of those challenges—and what we can do about them—Indianapolis seemed the perfect place for a digital magazine examining the struggle to preserve one city's middle class amid a changing workplace.
The past year underscored America’s urgent need to integrate work and learning. As we emerge from the pandemic, employers need a highly trained workforce and educators need to connect learning to good jobs.
What is Indigenous, really? Since a young age I have had an affinity for artifacts the provide a peek into an unknown culture. Examples abound in my life. While researching an undergraduate paper, I learned that the steps that Navajo weavers took to create the Two Grey Hills tapestry in my parents’ home were more important to the artisans than the product itself. I was thrilled by the radical departure of Disney’s artwork in the 1995 film Pocahontas—and profoundly moved by the American Indian College Fund’s “If I say on the rez” campaign. Don Miguel Ruiz’s Four Agreements of Toltec wisdom have long served as my personal value set.
Personal narratives from employees are often the most powerful ways to share your organization’s message and purpose. Yet while audiences often just see the end result—a compelling first-person narrative—it requires inward reflection and leadership support before these stories can take root in a genuine way. Members of Lumina Foundation staff have shared their “equity narratives”—personal journeys around race in America. This is part of a collective effort to explore the country’s long history of structural racism and how these barriers affect the people they serve.
When it comes to building a better learning system, such a perspective presents a false choice that will intensify rather than diminish economic and social inequity, writes Debra Humphreys.
In the trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, guilty on all counts in the death of George Floyd, the verdict stands as a historic moment in the nation’s quest for racial justice. It is a decision we should treat with solemnity and gratitude.
INDIANAPOLIS – El Paso Community College President William Serrata has joined Lumina Foundation’s Board of Directors, which today concluded its spring meeting. Earlier this year, the American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education honored Serrata for early career achievements.
The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed any number of inequities in American life, but probably none more glaring than the widening gap between the haves and the have-nots. A key determination between the two is education beyond high school.
As brands explore how their values align with what it means to build a more equitable society, one place to start is to look inward. Earlier this month, we shared on Altered the lessons we learned from reviewing our editorial process and asking ourselves if we were being inclusive in the stories we tell. I recently sat down with Tracy Chen, Director of Media Strategy at Lumina Foundation, to pull back the curtain on their process for creating a powerful equity narrative video series.