Editor’s Note: ASA RISE is a six-month, equity-centered leadership program for emerging leaders of color committed to reshaping the future of aging. Archstone Foundation, a founding funder of ASA RISE, offers named fellowship slots to California-based program fellows in support of the Archstone JEDI in Aging series—amplifying thought leadership from a California aging sector lens through ASA’s Generations Now publication.
“A subversive program.”
These words resonate as strongly for me today as they did 10 years ago when I heard them from Dr. Thomas LaViest, then director of the Health Policy Research Scholars Program (now dean of Tulane School of Public Health). I was 21, educated, and as raring to change the world as the 30 other Black, Brown, low-income, LBGT+, and/or otherwise underrepresented scholars who had been deemed “future leaders.”
We’d had a few meetings, learned some things, gotten to know each other, but Dr. LaViest and the program staff went off script for a minute to let us know that what we were doing was different, that it might have ruffled feathers even getting the program together, and that, with any luck, we’d all be ruffling feathers of people in power for the rest of our lives.
Cut to today, post-2016, post-2024, and the joyful possibility of a world of POC leadership cohorts taking top positions at our institutions feels the way it was designed to feel: a cruel, racist, grueling uphill battle. But I’ve found myself in a unique position as a program officer at Archstone Foundation, with the responsibility of finding the ways forward that make winning that battle possible. Enter ASA RISE.
“A subversive program.”
Archstone Foundation proudly contributed to kickstart three years of ASA RISE, and without hesitation, signed on for three more last year. The program equips the precious few underrepresented leaders in aging to take what they deserve and earn, during an administration that seems bent on robbing it from them.
Most of all, the ASA RISE Fellows continue to teach us what it takes to make a leader:
Knowledge
For many of us that come from disadvantaged, underrepresented backgrounds, there is power in understanding why our lives were, and continue to be, so challenging. ASA RISE helps build realizations in underrepresented leaders through six months of development sessions—that systemic barriers are real, not always visible, and hard to uproot. With forces at play attacking truth, data and evidence, equipping our leaders with steadfast, relevant information is a critical stronghold.
‘Combine knowledge with a village, and you start to fuel the rare qualities that make a leader.’
Ultimately, ASA RISE drills down to the questions I had when I was a Health Policy Research Scholars Program Fellow—how does a leader act? Where and how do you apply for leadership positions? If you make it—what then? Once our future leaders in aging see their battle and path forward clearly, they can envision it for those around them.
A Village
I have witnessed a different level of camaraderie when spending time with ASA RISE cohorts. As many future leaders of color venture into higher education and higher paid positions as trailblazers, the path is cathartic but also lonely. Being an ASA RISE fellow gives you a network to celebrate with, share frustrations, ask for help. Many of us come from communities that function antithetical to many professional spaces—no one is on their own, the collective comes first, and resources are shared.
ASA RISE demonstrates how to bring this to life in its programming, with strongly tied cohorts and a continually growing alumni network. This village of leaders in aging and reliance upon community power is a model that Archstone Foundation’s program officers and staff come from and believe in.
Belief
Combine knowledge with a village, and you start to fuel the rare qualities that make a leader. ASA RISE gives its fellows a glimpse of what’s possible, the confidence to reach for it, and it takes the rare step of turning belief into real professional progress. Our team at Archstone Foundation believes in justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion as core ideas that are reflected in the programs and people we support. Neither the ASA RISE program staff nor the Archstone Foundation are in the practice of false hope—we want people to get promoted, go for CEO positions, and help others do the same. When these elements come together, especially in the face of unprecedented strife, we’ll have leaders in aging that can ruffle some feathers, together.
Gerson Galdamez, PhD, is a program officer with the Archstone Foundation in Long Beach, Calif.
