The sixth annual Northwest Regional Equity Conference (NWREC), hosted by Clark College’s Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion from February 12-14, exceeded expectations—cultivating compelling conversations, powerful learning, meaningful connections, and the deep, intentional dialogue that occurred throughout the event.

For the first time, the conference featured a full day of in-person sessions in addition to virtual sessions, responding to past attendee feedback and creating new opportunities for engagement. Over three days, more than 400 participants took part in thought-provoking presentations and workshops designed to advance equity and inclusion in our communities.

Next year’s NW Regional Equity Conference is scheduled for February 11-13, 2026.

Ijeoma Oluo’s keynote: Make connections to do this hard work

On the opening day of the conference, attendees gathered in the Gaiser Student Center to listen to keynote speaker Ijeoma Oluo, who presented “Be a Revolution.” It is the title of her most recent book. Its subtitle is “How Everyday People are Fighting Oppression and Changing the World—and How You Can Too.” For more than an hour, the rapt audience listened as Oluo provided encouragement and practical advice woven together with her stories.

Some excerpts:

Oluo began: “I know it’s a tough time to be doing equity work in education. We have to keep fighting because not only are our educators showing up, but so are our students.”

She encouraged educators to create spaces of safety for students and teach students how to be in community with each other.

Recalling an earlier conversation with poet Saul Williams, he told her, “Not everyone wants to be alive during a revolution. Some people don’t want to fight.”

Oluo said, “It’s important to know our history. We have in our blood and bones the making of revolution. We fight systems, but we have to find our successes in the people we’re fighting for. Make connections with people who are doing equity work.”

She added, “Remember what you’re fighting for. It’s so easy to be consumed by what we’re fighting against.”

Stating that systemic racism robs us of time, she said, “Now that racism is really at the doorstep of everyone, it’s suddenly an emergency. It’s important that we take this deeper. We have to start building accountability. It’s important to recognize how exhausting this work can be.”

Oluo referenced the 381-day Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott (December 1955-December 1956) that began with Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger. She asked the audience to imagine how exhausting it must have been for those who showed up for more than a year to protest racial segregation—and stopped riding the bus and instead walked everywhere. What would have happened in the civil rights movement if the protesters had given up because the work was too hard?

“How do we keep going?” she asked and then offered this practical advice: “I realized that I had to start treating my mental health as part of my job. When I start planning for my own care, I do better work. We’re going to have to treat our care as part of the work.”

Oluo said, “The work was always going to be hard. The systems were built this way. At times like this, hopelessness is a privilege. But my father survived genocide. What does hopelessness mean when I am the walking, living dream of my ancestors? I want more for us than just struggle. We must have struggle, but we also must have joy, care, connection, love.”

She encouraged people to seek community: “Invite people to join you in this work. We survive by working together. We share resources. We protect each other. We’re going to need each other in these times ahead.”

Learn more about Oluo here.

Keynote Addresses from Virtual Sessions

Thursday virtual fireside chat: Dr. Bettina Love, author and William F. Russell Professor at Teachers College, Columbia University. Vanessa Neal facilitated an engaging dialogue with Dr. Love about various aspects of her New York Times best-selling book, Punished for Dreaming. Learn more about Dr. Love here.

Friday virtual keynote: “JT” Jasmin Marie Mageno Torres presented “Beats of Liberation: Hip Hop, Education, and Decolonizing My Story.” JT advocates for equity for students at West Valley College in Saratoga, California.

Colleges/educational institutions that presented workshops included:

• Ball State University
• Bellevue College
• Cascadia College
• Clark College
• Clover Park Technical College
• Columbia Basin College
• Columbia University
• Edmonds College
• Highline College
• Lane Community College
• Lewis & Clark College
• Lower Columbia College
• Mayo Clinic College of Medicine and Science
• Oregon Health & Science University
• Pierce College
• Portland Community College
• Portland Public Schools
• Renton Technical College
• Seattle Colleges
• Shoreline Community College
• South Seattle College
• Tacoma Community College
• University of Washington
• Washington State Board for Community and Technical Colleges (SBCTC)
• Washington State Diversity and Equity Officers Commission
• Washington State University
• West Valley College
• Western Washington University

Workshop presenters represented included:

• BJS Consulting
• Clark County Public Health
• Crown & Heart Healing
• Co3 Consulting, LLC
• DAWN
• Education Policy Improvement Center
• Kaiser Permanente
• Love and Justice Consulting, LLC
• Me Out Loud, LLC
• Multnomah County
• Museum of Nature
• NAACP
• Parfait Bassalé Consulting
• PeaceHealth Hospice
• Share the Flame
• Story Spark Collective
• Washington Student Achievement Council
• Whatcom County
• Whatcom WAVES
• Wild Iris Consulting, LLC
• With the End in Mind, LLC

Thanks to these conference sponsors:

• Community Foundation for Southwest Washington
• Clark College
• CareOregon
• College Spark Washington
• Oregon Department of Transportation
• PeaceHealth

Learn more

• Access the complete Conference Agenda
• NWREC on the web: NW Regional Equity Conference (clark.edu)
• 2026 NWREC is scheduled for February 11-13, 2026

More than 600 people attended the fifth annual Northwest Regional Equity Conference (NWREC) from February 21-23. Clark College’s Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion partnered with Southwest Washington Equity Coalition and their Advancing Racial Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion learning series to produce the event. The entire conference was offered via online modality.

It is gratifying to experience the growth and continued impact of the Northwest Regional Equity Conference. The first conference in 2020 had 250 participants. This year, our fifth year, we had more than 600 participants! We hosted 36 workshops and provided nine students with scholarships to attend the conference, thanks to donors.

Our intentional partnership with the Southwest Washington Equity Coalition (SWEC) allowed us to expand attendance and deepen our collective approach around diversity, equity, inclusion, and anti-racism work. I am proud of the NWREC planning team and the many people who made the conference happen. A heartfelt thank you!

2024 NWREC quick statistics:

• Participants: More than 600
• Workshops offered: 36
• Student scholarships provided: 9

Conference keynotes represented intersectional identities and covered topics including LGBTQIA+, immigrant experiences, and Black liberation with a common thread of what it looks like to build towards the future we want while staying grounded in hope.

Workshops covered topics including academic instruction, student and employee support, equitable policy development and decision-making, community care, strategies for disrupting harm, cultural competence, identities and intersectionality, and professional development.

Conference highlights included:

• Keynote Dante King revealed the totality of how White supremacy and Anti-Blackness are codified into the American legal system, institutions, and everyday life.
• Kendra Duncan, Clark College’s BAS-Teacher Education Chair and tenure-track faculty member discussed diversifying the educator workforce in Clark County, the new Bachelor of Applied Science in Teacher Education (BASTE) program, and Clark’s partnership with Vancouver public schools’ para-educator pathway.
• Clark College’s D. Harris presented a workshop on the impact of representation of Black people in popular media.
• Clark College English faculty Chris Smith and Cydney Topping presented the ways language/accent bias and discrimination persist in and outside the classroom.
• Clark student Tammy Pham presented a workshop Neurodiversity and You: Why Brain Differences are not Deficits.
• Another workshop focused on applying a racial equity framework to the auditing of campus policies and procedures.

Colleges that presented workshops include:

• Clark College
• Bellevue College
• Columbia Basin College
• North Seattle College
• Portland Community College
• Renton Technical College
• San Jose State University
• Shoreline Community College
• South Puget Sound Community College
• University of Washington Bothell
• Washington State University Vancouver
• Western Oregon University

Workshop presenters represented a host of nonprofits and agencies, including:

• American Civil Liberties Union Washington (ACLU)
• Clark County Community Services
• Equity Consortium
• Puget Sound Sage
• Southwest Washington Equity Coalition
• Vancouver Public Schools
• Washington Coalition for Police Accountability
• Washington State Department of Health
• Washington State LGBTQ Commission
• YWCA Clark County

Thanks to these conference sponsors:

• Southwest Washington Accountable Community of Health
• HAPO Community Credit Union
• Community Foundation for Southwest Washington
• Clark College
• CareOregon
• Inatai Foundation

Refer to the complete conference agenda: Agenda (clark.edu)

Learn more: NW Regional Equity Conference (clark.edu)

 

Registration is now open for Clark College’s 2021 Northwest Regional Equity Conference. This year’s theme is “Sharing Strategies for Equity and Anti-Racist Practices.” 

The online, two-day conference aims to improve equitable, sustainable experiences and outcomes for historically under-represented students and employees of the higher education system through effective instruction and anti-racist supports. This year the conference will broaden its scope of topics beyond higher education.  

“We see racism playing out before our eyes, and conversations around anti-racism are as much needed right now as they have always been, but what is really needed is anti-racism in action,” said Rashida Willard, Vice President of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion at Clark College. “We all benefit by sharing our experiences and learning from those who bring their expertise to these vital conversations.”  

This conference has been broadened to include governmental, non-profit, and corporate sectors. It is really geared toward individuals across the nation who would like to broaden their social justice knowledge or remove institutional barriers for historically underrepresented populations.  

Workshops include: 

• Bias and Discrimination in AI systems 
• A Call to Anti-Racism -Teaching Cultural Diversity to Health Care Students 
• Data Storytelling   
• Creating IMPACTful Mentoring Opportunities for BIPOC Students  
• Restorative Justice  
• Employee Engagement and Retention 
• Best Practices for Working with Incarcerated Students 
• Disability Justice 
• Building a Community of Collective Care  
• Making DEI Training Count: Overcoming Common Pitfalls 
• Creating Pathways for Native, Latinx and Afrocentric Education from High School through College 
• Equity in Student Conduct  

“We created the conference last year because we saw a need to elevate the discussion, seek out best practices, and take action,” said Willard. “These are the very issues we are working on at Clark College. We are working on becoming anti-racist – not just on paper, but in everything we do. We want to share these best practices with community. We are in a time of seismic change as our nation grapples with systemic racism, politics, the pandemic and the economy. The Northwest Regional Equity Conference provides a pathway forward for communities ready to take the next step.”  

For more information about NWREC: http://www.clark.edu/campus-life/student-support/diversity-and-equity/equity-conference/index.php. Those who need accommodation due to a disability can contact Clark College’s Disability Support Services Office at 360-992-2314, 360-991-0901 video phone. 

Keynote Speakers 

Talila “TL” Lewis is a community lawyer, educator, and organizer whose work highlights and addresses the nexus between race, class, disability and structural inequity. Recognized as a 2015 White House Champion of Change and one of Pacific Standard Magazine‘s Top 30 Thinkers Under 30, Lewis engineers and leads innovative and intersectional social justice efforts that illuminate and address grave injustices within education, medical, and legal systems that have gone unaddressed for generations. A recent graduate of American University Washington College of Law, Lewis has received awards from numerous universities, the American Bar Association, Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton, American Association for People with Disabilities, the Nation Institute, National Black Deaf Advocates, and EBONY Magazine, among others. Lewis is a 2018 Roddenberry Fellow and a 2018 Atlantic Fellow for Racial Equity.  

Aaron Reader is a practitioner, poet, activist and educator, with extensive experience in diversity, equity and inclusion in higher education. He has served higher education in a number of capacities over the last decade from teaching, social justice, education equity, and currently is the Vice President of Student Services at Highline College. In addition to his work in higher education he has a passion for poetry and spoken word. He has been identified as workshop leader, facilitator and speaker for colleges, summits and conferences. Reader has been recognized as a local spoken-word artist who has a powerful, emotional, real, and conscious style.  

Dr. Angel B. Pérez has worked for over two decades to realize his belief that diversity and academic excellence go hand-in-hand, and that every young person who aspires to higher education should have the opportunity to achieve. A recognized thought-leader on issues of equity and access in American education, Peréz is a tireless champion for under-represented communities and a creative advocate for reform. Named by a Forbes article in 2019 as the most influential voice in college admissions, Peréz strives to build an educational ecosystem that better represents today’s America.