YW Boston sat down with Derek Lumpkins (LeadBoston Class of 2010), founder of ReFresh Strategies and creator and cohost of the Blacklining Forum podcast, for our latest “15 Minutes With” interview. Derek spoke about his LeadBoston experience and his career in community engagement. 

YW Boston: Can you tell us about your experience in LeadBoston and how it has impacted your thoughts and actions on equity and inclusion? 

Derek: I was just beginning my work in equity and inclusion at the time I participated in LeadBoston. Being in rooms with so many people who were also actively working on issues of equity and inclusion, but whom I probably wouldn’t have met otherwise, supercharged my interest in engaging and investing in Boston differently.  

This city tends to operate on a hub-and-spoke model of leadership. While there’s nothing inherently wrong with that, it can create new inequities of access and representation. Following LeadBoston, I found myself gravitating toward a networked model of communal leadership, which doesn’t rely upon one person or organization to always take the lead. Instead, everyone is given the opportunity to lead or support as their time and abilities allow. It’s a structure in which participants are both empowered to act and able to empower others with knowledge, time, and other resources. Over the years, I structured my professional life around that model, and it continues to be at the core of my thoughts and actions around equity and inclusion. 

YW Boston: What inspired you to begin a podcast, and what’s been most surprising so far? 

Derek: There were two sources of inspiration. First, in April, my cohost Melony Swasey and I participated in a session called Building Power Through Real Estate (as panelist and moderator, respectively) at the How to Boston While Black Summit. The session attendees submitted and asked so many questions – from the practical to the philosophic – that it was clear that there was a hunger for more discussion. Second, around the same time as the summit, I was nearing the end of my time at an organization with a stated commitment to wealth building in the Black community. Clearly, it’s a goal I support, but I thought the conceptualization and implementation were limited in imagination and community input. It felt like a top-down approach focused heavily on the financial and technical factors, while lacking some of the meaningful, lived social and cultural context to inform the implementation efforts. 

With those two experiences as my points of reference, it was clear that there was a need and an opportunity to discuss building Black wealth differently and over a longer duration. We named our podcast the Blacklining Forum to reflect our awareness of redlining, the systemic and notorious practice in the home lending industry that excluded generations of Black people from the housing market, and which devalued Black and Brown communities across the United States. In response, we’re flipping the script by centering Black and Brown perspectives, highlighting how and why owning real estate is important, and giving airtime to real estate’s intersection with structural racism, hip hop, reparations, wealth building, and more. 

So far, it’s been great! I haven’t been surprised by anything, but I admit that I hadn’t fully considered the range and interconnectedness of the topics. Our conversations have spanned from American slavery to the metaverse and from the Benin bronzes to the edge of Afrofuturism. It’s exciting to have these discussions and I appreciate the generosity all the guests have provided with their time and knowledge. I hope listeners will find each episode and the whole series rewarding and thought-provoking. The latest episode of the Blacklining Forum features LeadBoston Class of 2019 alum Dr. Jae Williams.

YW Boston: Earlier in your career you were an advocate for greater equity for Roxbury through community engagement. Where have you seen the city make progress in terms of equity and inclusion? Where do the biggest gaps remain? 

Derek: During the handful of years leading up to the pandemic, I think Boston was beginning to move past its collective scarcity mindset. It seemed like the city was more genuinely embracing its cultural diversity, more eager to support the diversity of backgrounds and experiences in the arts and civic leadership, and opening up to new voices and perspectives in decision-making bodies. Unfortunately, the pandemic shut down that expansion, and I don’t think the city has fully recovered. In contrast, I think we’ve stumbled back into a scarcity mindset in which the default position is twofold: first, that there isn’t enough room or resource to accommodate the actual scale and scope of the diversity in Boston, and second, that those who don’t fit into Boston’s image of itself are okay with returning to a less visible status.  

The glaring exception, however, is when Boston finds itself being compared to other cities. Then the stance changes to, “We have that, too.” That’s when we see all the stops being pulled out to attract talent and treasure in the form of conventions and expos, although it remains unclear to me how sustainability is being infused to support and develop systems that prevent us from having to repeat the cycle. As a result, I think Boston continues to miss out on the richness of community knowledge and vision. For example, I loved seeing how ordinary residents responded to the Boston 2024 Olympic bid and how some community leaders leveraged that energy to propose different visions for how to improve Boston. It’s too bad more of that energy wasn’t directed into something longer lasting. 

YW Boston: What suggestions do you have for LeadBoston alums, and others, about how they can advocate for greater equity and inclusion in the city? 

Derek: There’s not just one answer since different actions are needed for various situations. In some instances, becoming better educated is the best first action. In others, adding your voice or sharing your knowledge in a way that supports nuance and substance might be the best form of advocacy. Or in others, supporting people who are being denied their visibility and dignity may be the best. Overall, I’d say that being and remaining curious and open to learning and stretching oneself is the connecting thread among my three suggestions above. 

YW Boston: How have you stayed connected with other LeadBoston alums? 

Derek: I have LeadBoston alums as friends and neighbors who I see socially. Others are peers and colleagues who I’m in touch with on LinkedIn. But, with Boston being the size that it is, it’s not uncommon to have overlapping social circles that include LeadBoston alums. 

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

About LeadBoston

Our signature leadership program, LeadBoston, supports all individual participants as they create and implement a leadership commitment. This leadership commitment is an action plan that confronts some of the systemic inequities they’ve learned about and that are showing up in their organization. This plan, and the collective LeadBoston experience, empowers leaders to create meaningful change in their workplaces, in their communities, and in the city of Boston itself. Staff work alongside alums for a year following the program to ensure participants have what they need to see their plan through. Click here to learn more.