The Diversity Gym is a multi-tiered workshop that invites participants to consider their own journey and the journey of others in regards to our individual and collective experience of biases and cultural self-talk.
Rather than assuming the extent to which participants have experience in these conversations, the workshop is built recognizing that everyone is at different levels of their “fitness” in terms of engaging with biases and prejudices.
Participants explore topics that often go unspoken and practice interacting with challenging conversations in an exploratory, self-educational and authentic way.
Goals & Takeaways:
- Distinguish, explore and own our Identity stories
- Increase our capacity for empathy (learn to step into another person’s shoes)
- Increase our ability to think strategically as a team
- Create action plans for implementing learned skills and discoveries
- Identify and learn to not judge our own biases
- Learn and practice skills for communicating when triggered
- Possess a new-found permission to be ourselves, while honoring the differences of others
About Gamal J. Palmer
Gamal Palmer grew up in West Mt. Airy, Philadelphia, a neighborhood characterized by uncommon racial and religious diversity. His parents were advocates for social change and his advocacy started early as he worked in a prison in 8th grade and became enthralled by theater and the power of storytelling, particularly within the context of exploring identity and its overlapping elements.
As a graduate student at the Yale School of Drama, he developed graduate-level programs focused on dialogue, advocacy and community engagement around socio-political challenges in Swaziland and South Africa and Tanzania.
Since then Gamal has designed and led programs in over 10 African countries, Middle East, and throughout the United States. Gamal is the Senior Vice President of Leadership Development at the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles and facilitates workshops and presents keynotes of a myriad of topics that cover leadership, diversity, and entrepreneurship.
Black, Jewish and Queer. These three identities weave the fabric of who I am, but it took a long time to believe that they could exist together.
Lee and Toni Leichtag established the Leichtag Foundation in 1991 following the sale of their business. Lee and Toni were lifelong entrepreneurs with a passion for innovation and for supporting talent. They believed that only with big risk comes big reward. Both born to families in poverty, Toni to a single mother, they strongly believed in helping those most in need and most vulnerable in our community. While they supported many causes, their strongest support was for young children and the elderly, two demographics who particularly lack voice in our society.
Lifelong Baltimoreans, Rabbi George and Alison Wielechowski and their sons, 11-year-old Lennon and 9-year-old Gideon, are more than pursuing the good life in Southern California. Having moved to San Diego more than three years ago, they are fulfilling a lifelong dream.
You would think that as the executive director of San Diego LGBT Pride, Fernando Zweifach López Jr., who uses the pronoun they, has done all the coming out they possibly can. A queer, non-binary individual who has worked for many years on civil rights issues, López also speaks openly and often about their father’s family, Mexican-American migrant workers who tilled the fields of rural California.
Stacie and Jeff Cook understand commitment. They live it.
