Boundary Spanning

BOUNDARY SPANNING

Life Experiences Leading to Valuing Diversity, Embracing Community,
Needs Sensing, and Environmental Scanning

Organizational Boundary Spanning

  • As an Employment Training Specialist at Union High School, my job has included many
    boundary spanning activities:
  • Liaison to job-skill training sites
  • Liaison to community-based organizations to develop service learning and volunteering
    opportunities for students.
  • Liaison to businesses to develop work-based learning opportunities for students.
  • Co-chair of the Kent County Community Transition Council: a network group of transition
    services providers from over 30 schools and 10 community-based and government
    organizations.
  • Co-chair of JAM 2002-2005 Student Transition Conferences. The JAM (Jobs, Awareness,
    and Motivation) Conference is an annual conference for 450 students with disabilities from
    31 Kent County schools (Public, Private, and Charter) coming to GRCC to hear over 45
    speakers from business, industry, government, and community-based organizations
  • Master's in Management degree: learned alongside a cohort of corporate managers.
  • Delta Strategy: participant in community development with area businesses, community-
    based organizations, and government agencies.
  • Michigan Organizing Project: participant in addressing social justice issues together with
    members of 20 area churches and neighborhood organizations.
  • Experience Exchange: for description see portfolio item “Community Development
    Involvement .”
  • Career Pathways Design Team: for description see portfolio item “Community
    Development Involvement.”
























Racial Boundary Spanning

  • Union High School: staff member of an urban high school that has students from over 40
    countries represented in its student body and where the white majority is a minority among
    its students.
  • Summit on Racism: for description see portfolio item "Community Development
    Involvement."
  • Racial Reconciliation Workshop: for description see portfolio item "Community
    Development Involvement."
  • Multiethnic Family: My children and I represent three different races.
  • Multiethnic Churches: Member for 27 years and have served on church council. Both
    churches are committed to intentional racial reconciliation. This is deliberate and is seen in
    its staffing practices, neighborhood impact, and its 30+ year model of integrated
    leadership. These churches represent people from over 30 different nations.
  • Neighborhoods: I have intentionally lived in neighborhoods where my race is non-majority
    for over 20 years.
  • Breakfast Club participant: the breakfast club gives structure and guidance to getting
    together people of different races, one-on-one, to discuss sensitive issues of race. The
    purpose is to build relationships and to foster greater understanding of those who are
    different from us.




















Economic Boundary Spanning

  • Career Development Services: As an entrepreneur and independent consultant, I work in
    high schools throughout Kent County, providing KISD WIA Youth Services to youth in poverty.
  • Union High School: Two thirds of the students I spent time with daily for six years were
    qualified to receive free or reduced lunches; a measure of economic means.
  • Degage Ministries: I have volunteered over the past 25 years and have been on staff as an
    Evening Supervisor at Degage Coffee House; a ministry that engages homelessness,
    extreme poverty, and the disenfranchised of society.
  • Single Father: I raised my oldest son alone as a single father with an income that qualified
    me for services for the economically disadvantaged.



















Relational Boundary Spanning

I have befriended, mentored, and been mentored by people with down syndrome, dwarfism,
cerebral palsy, spina bifida, paraplegia, quadriplegia, bipolar depression, borderline personality,
autism, and friends that have fought and lost against aids, cancer, and Multiple Sclerosis. I have
learned deeply from each of them.
























Only by spanning boundaries can we learn

. . . and see beyond ourselves.
Tremendous value and wisdom can be drawn from diversity.

For an organization to become a closed system or a
functional silo,

growth and development is stunted leading to stagnation, to
entropy, and ultimately to ruin.

In the Twenty-First Century, the only viable, sustainable way
to meet

the tremendous needs of our communities is through
collaboration.

Through spanning the boundaries of organizations

silos of practice must become communities of practice.
For me, racial reconciliation is not an option.

It is not good enough for me to just say,

"I am not prejudiced" or

"I am not racist."

It must be visible; something I do.

Racial reconciliation must be intentional and deliberate;

individually, organizationally, and community-wide.
I have friends and family that are upper class and in
poverty.

Life's experiences and choices have allowed me to feel
poverty,

both in others and in myself.

This capacity . . .

to navigate across boundaries and learn from all

. . . is life's gift.
Diversity is a gift.

We must learn to value diversity.

We must learn to embrace diversity.

Not only in our racial attitudes

but also in the input we seek for resolving daily conflicts;

not only in how we accept peoples' appearance

but also in how we accept and embrace differences

in personalities, ideas, and opinions;

as well as values and beliefs.
We find comfort
among those
who agree with
us . . .

growth among
those who don't.

~Frank Clark