Democratizing and Diversifying School Boards

In this week’s episode of Imagine A World, KHS alum Briana Mullen (2020 cohort) discusses what led her to pursue master’s degrees in policy, organization, and leadership studies and in public policy at Stanford. She shares her experience of being a lifetime Californian, reflects on the joys of being a marching band kid, discusses building an organization that empowers underrepresented communities to create change in their school districts, and so much more.

Highlights from the episode:

• (6:21) Briana's experiences growing up working class in the Bay Area, and finding an enduring sense of home and community, as a band kid in high school; her first experience getting involved in school boards to try to save the school music program from budget cuts
• (17:00) Learning about the history of public education and the experiences of her peers in the public education system at Berkeley and finding a home there
• (21:05) How Briana’s Imagine A World statement shifted over time, from how school boards can build vibrant, multiracial democracies, to building villages and communities for children in and out of schools
• (24:29) Finding inspiration about leadership and vision for public education from colleagues at the California Department of Education
• (28:59) Working with communities to build up representative school boards and raise public awareness of their importance through the Education Justice Academy, a nonprofit Briana founded when she was at Stanford and now works on full time
• (43:30) How Briana deals with overwhelm by slowing down, meditating, and building lasting change at a sustainable pace through meeting people where they are at
• (48:26) Briana’s advice to Knight-Hennessy applicants by finding ways to fit what you want to say into the application rather than just answering the questions
• (51:52) Briana’s Improbable Fact about crafting a syllabus about Avatar: Legend of Korra, and how the insights of the show relate to children’s experiences encountering vast political forces and give insights into how it takes community to make a change
• (59:12) the story of the start of the Imagine A World podcast at an Asilomar Knight-Hennessy retreat
• (1:04:46) Working with teachers, students, and families to save the music program at her high school 12 years later