Workshop | Better Relationships Better Outcomes

When starting equity work within organizations we often focus our attention on improving the “customer” experience, but what if we focused on Us instead? Creating improved experiences for your customers, whether they are patients, clients, or community members is difficult. We focus on outcomes, engagement, finances and marketing, which are all important elements for running a successful program; despite all of this we still tend to see inequity within the work.

During this workshop, we will be having an interactive conversation designed to explore how refocusing our energy on our employee dynamics can lead to that improved experience of Equity by our customers that so many of us are searching for. We will cover a review of successful implementation of this strategy and its outcomes, an exploration of the barriers we will face when engaging in this way, and what steps can be taken to help your workplace culture evolve.

Katie Thornton has been a nurse for over 15 years.  She began as an addiction specialty nurse running clinical operations at Oregon’s largest methadone clinic. She transitioned after 6 years to Multnomah County where she ran the refugee health screening program as nursing supervisor for the state of Oregon.  She now happily resides as the regional manager for Multnomah County’s North and Northeast Health Centers; the Northeast Health Center is the county’s historically black American health clinic.  As a biracial woman with 7 and 12 year old sons, Katie strives every day to make sure the world she leaves to her children is made a little better than the one she inherited; this is the long standing tradition of her family.

Vincent N. Pham is a Portland, OR based scholar, trainer, and consultant. With over 20 years of experience working in higher education, Dr. Pham is an expert facilitator, seasoned teacher. A respected researcher with 50 talks and presentations on topics ranging from cultural belonging and citizenship in popular culture to organizational and institutional issues of diversity and inclusion, he has been recognized by The National Center for Institutional Diversity (2013), has been interviewed by NPR’s Code Switch, US News, Daily Beast, and has served on the awards jury of the San Diego Asian Film Festival and Seattle Asian American Film Festival.

Dr. Pham earned his Ph.D. in Communication. Originally from the south suburbs of Chicago, he worked in community colleges, implemented organizational structures for non-profit bike cooperatives in central Illinois, and designed curriculum for ethnic studies and media programs in north county San Diego at California State University San Marcos. Throughout his work, he is energized by possible futures of humans acting collaborative in accordance with a shared vision and has always sought to bring folks together through times of technological, economic, and socio-cultural shifts. His approach utilizes an in-depth intersectional analysis of power. He brings his experiences and expertise in cultivating community, designing experiences, and building organizational structures to re-envisioning and rebuilding workplace dynamics toward more just and equitable futures. Importantly, he focuses on our collective power to reshape power dynamics through communication and structure that allow us to imagine new ways of being with each other and hold each other responsible.