Faye Richardson-Green will share life experiences in lecture series

For nearly 40 years, Faye Richardson-Green held leadership positions with nonprofit organizations and Grand Rapids institutions, such as Steelcase. Now owner of a consulting firm, she is also a founding board member of Partners for a Racism-Free Community.

Richardson-Green, the Frederik Meijer Honors College’s Meijer Endowed Chair in Entrepreneurship and Innovation, will share her experiences with Grand Valley students, faculty and staff at 5 p.m. on September 29 in the Grand River Room of the Kirkhof Center. 

Her lecture opens the 2023-2024 Wheelhouse Talks and the Meijer Lecture Series, which present leaders from a variety of backgrounds to share their philosophies and expertise with the Grand Valley community. 

On Friday, she will examine a technique she has used multiple times in her antiracism work, and one she currently employs in the classroom for her honors seminar class.

“I want to help deepen my students’ understanding of diversity, equity and inclusion, so that they really get a deeper understanding of themselves, and how their own biases for and against whatever, and how their biases impact decisions that they make and or will make as leaders,” Richardson-Green said.

It’s an activity centered around “cultural mapping,” she said. Students in her class first identify the groups that they associate with, then share the beliefs and values those identities have instilled in them. 

During her Friday presentation, Richardson-Green said she will share her own cultural map and discuss the influences they have held in her life.

She said one of her earliest professional influences came during her time as a crisis responder at a 24-hour hotline in Grand Rapids. She dealt with people experiencing a range of emotional, psychological or mental issues stemming from divorce, job loss or sexual assault.

“Going through that initial crisis intervention learning experience has helped me more than anything else in my own personal education because I learned two things,” she said. 

“One is I learned how to listen to others in a variety of circumstances, nonjudgmentally. And the other thing was how to give and receive feedback in a way that it could be heard.”