Be Black. Be Bold. Be Innovative. Show the World Equitable Geo. We're coming together as a collective to celebrate people of African descent, the diaspora, and talking about geospatial equity and justice. You're listening to The North Star Gaze, a podcast with intimate stories from geoluminaries. I feel like we've been telling this North Star origin story in bits and pieces over the past few years. And I wanted to pull us together to document and finally get this story on the record once and for all. So I'm here with Clinton Johnson to talk through the North Star origin story. hi Clinton, introduce yourself. Hey, I'm Clinton Johnson. I use he, him pronouns and I volunteer as the executive director for the North Star GIS. Okay. And I'm Aisha Jenkins. My pronouns are she, her, hers, and I volunteer as the vice president of the North Star GIS. So Clinton, take us through where we were. I believe it was January or February timeframe, and we were in a particular headspace. So take us through you initiating the series of calls that led to the informal formation of Northstar, and then we will take it from there. You know, what's wild. I never actually thought about this before until you mentioned but I'm sure that I could track down. The first conversation that I had that was the origin of the North Star, the seed for the North Star idea. Because it was one or two days following the murder of Fernando Castile. And I had seen his name trending on social media. And at that point in time, it was clear that when you start to see a name trending like that, that it means something. And in that meaning came lots of weight and I just didn't have the energy physically, mentally, emotionally to deal with it when I first saw it trending. So I started to shut down technology, it's okay I'm not going to be looking at my phone because I'm seeing our alerts on all of the channels, text messages too. Get home and it's on TV. And I'm like, now I'm watching TV. So that night I'm like, I'm checked out of humanity. And then the next morning I'm on my way to work and I see it trending again. And I realized that I was using a privilege that this person's family didn't have. So I thought, okay the least I can do, folks are trying to communicate. They're trying to get the word out, trying to catalyze change. The least I can do is just, I can watch and I can be inspired or, Or moved in some way, and so I get to work, go into the office, close the door, watch this video, and just a few minutes long, when it gets to the part where the little girl is in the backseat consoling her mother, that broke me. And now I'm in the office, and I'm weeping, and I see a message come over. The email saying, Hey, everybody come into the break room. It's cake day. Let's enjoy cake. And it was never more clear to me than in that moment that I was living a completely different experience while I was at work. I had worked in local government for years and I thought that I knew what it meant to be underrepresented in GIS, underrepresented in tech, underrepresented at work, but at least in local government, especially a local government that's situated in. A city like Philadelphia, a significant majority, a significant number of the people who were in the spaces I moved through were Black. As I got into meetings, that number decreased. As I rose the ranks in terms of leadership, those numbers decreased. As I excelled in technology, those numbers in the rooms decreased. But when I got to this new organization, I was 100 percent of the Black staff. in that building for a while on the campus I was on. And so in that moment, when we are, finding ourselves on a daily basis, new imagery of a Black person being brutalized or killed at the hands of law enforcement. In a space like that, it was so hard because the rest of the people seemed to be oblivious to what the U. S. was experiencing, but specifically to what Black people were experiencing in that moment. And then I remembered that there was a Black woman who recruited me. So I reached out to her and I just checked in Hey, this is what I'm feeling. How are you doing? What is it like? And she appreciated the call. I had thought that because there were, when I met her once at campus, there were other Black people on her team, on her larger team, but in her day to day work experience, she was the only one on her floor and it was hard. And so she encouraged me to reach out to other people if I knew any. And so I started doing that. and I'm reaching out and initially around Philando and others who we lost in that time period, but then later just around connecting with the black folks in general. One of the people that I ended up connecting with at some point was Aisha. And I can't remember if that was before or after this one user conference where I was all fired up and at that one user conference, this is one of the largest. Geospatial user conferences in the world, definitely in the U. S. And for years I had attended that conference and very often felt ah there's only about five or six black people that I'm going to run into while I'm at this conference. And most of them probably will be nervous about even interacting with me if I'm a stranger to them. But this time I was fired up and I wanted to just start to connect with people and get us thinking about what we could do together to be the change that we needed. And while I'm doing that, I'm just going up to people who may identify as Black and I'm just talking to them about their experience in NGIS, not just at this conference, but NGIS in general. And at some point I run into somebody who says, You know what? There's another person doing the same thing and you should talk to them and she's from an HBCU then I run into another person and say, you know what, there's another person doing the same thing and he's from an HBCU. I was like, Oh, do you mean her? They were like, no, it's another person. So it turned out there were two other people. Doing something very similar at the same time. One person, Dr. Linda Loubert, who was an educator at Morgan State University, who had been a part of a cohort of other HBCU educators, who some 17 years prior to that moment had all met up during the conference. They just met each other at a coincidence and they started talking and they realized that they all were HBCU educators and they started to convene with intention every conference year after. The other person, Kendrick Faison, was a Black geospatial business owner who had interned in a GIS role early in his career and had been really inspired about the work and had long struggled with the lack of representation in general. And then once becoming a business owner, was really struggling with the notion that he was very often the only. Black business owner in the room with other business owners. And while other folks aren't necessarily excited about having other competition in the field, like other businesses spring up, he saw it differently and he wanted to see other black entrepreneurs prosper and wanted to see other black professionals prosper in GIS. And so at some point I do bump into both of them at that conference and. The little spark of an idea that I'd had started to grow. And once I had a conversation with Aisha, it grew even more. In some ways, Aisha was revealing a lot of the struggles that we would encounter if we did anything to try to either create space for us to connect and get together as people of the Black African Diaspora at NGIS or try to advocate for change or introduce more folks to opportunities in NGIS. And that was really helpful, right? That I felt was the start. And then at some point we landed on a code name of Northstar and it stuck for a lot of good reasons. All right. Thank you for that, Clinton. Okay. So let me rewind. Philando Castile's death happened around 2016, 2017. May he rest in peace. So if I'm getting this timeline correct, this is when the seed was planted. And then around 2018 might've been the time where you went to the conference and you met Dr. LaBaer and Kendrick Thasen. And then I believe we had a conversation probably that winter of 2019. And I remember that because I was pregnant and preparing to go out on maternity leave. And so now I will backtrack just a little bit about some of my story. I had also been in a large office where I was one of a few, probably the only Black female in the office. And I had entered into leadership roles and had encountered the same scarcity of people who look like me, but it had always been my nature that whenever I would see Black people, I would get so overjoyed and so happy. And I'm like the first person to greet them with a smile, with open arms. That was my mission. That was my job. but I had always noticed that whenever I went to the home office, that's where I saw a lot of Black individuals in different roles and different positions. Probably once a year for eight to 10 years, I would travel back to the headquarters location. So then I started meeting up with other Black people who reported to me or who were in the vicinity of wherever I was meeting and Hey, you Black, I'm Black, let's do lunch, there's always this gaze, this white gaze that way, any more than two. what do they say in the Christian church where two or more join in my name, whatever. So where two or more Black people join. Suddenly you feel very seen. So we would get our phones out and we would plan a lunch meeting. And so we would meet at this clandestine location on a corner outside of the office. And we would drive someplace out of the way and we would have lunch and we would let our hair down and we would just talk and it's just real talk amongst Black people and it was the diaspora. And so it was through the years of traveling back and forth to that location. one of the Black employees was like, there's a Caribbean massive, right? So it means that there's a Caribbean community that converges, that works out of headquarters. And at some point in time in the future, we should get together, we should meet. And so I got the person's name and. We didn't really get an opportunity to meet because I had decided that I had enough of microaggressions and stress that I had stepped out of leadership. I was also pregnant. So around that January, February timeframe, I was transitioning my projects, my role over to someone else. I was done. So that is the frame of mind that I was in when Clinton called. It was just like, Hey, you into this thing? And I was just like, yes, signing up. What can I do? And it was almost no additional words because it was almost like this outspoken language. Like I knew why you were calling. You knew how I was feeling and it's cool, sign me up. What can I do? I was not able to participate in that year's users conference because I was out on maternity leave, but Clinton would sneak me little messages like, Hey, you would be so proud. We did this thing. And so I knew coming back that I was going to be so excited to hear the update. And so Clinton, what was the update? I'll also go back just a little bit. So when you. Aisha, I thought was creating a human being and that was super important. And at the same time, here we are trying to birth this movement. I'm not even sure we thought about it that way, but I didn't really want to get started without her. I had talked to lots of people who had interest, but I knew right away that I wanted to lead this thing with Aisha. And I was just insistent that we could wait. Oh, you're going on maternity leave? That's fine. When you get back, we'll do things. And I did. Before we set up, before we established leadership team and real organizing, I waited until Aisha came back. So the event that happened, that first event that happened was a true collaborative of these HBCU educators, this notion of Northstar and this person, me. These business owners, he didn't just come alone, he brought other folks who were entrepreneurs. And we all came together and we delivered an experience that did a couple of things, did a few things. For one, while all of us Black folks who've been coming to that conference for a number of years had all felt like there can't be more than 20 of us because our experience in that large ocean of people was that we would only see a handful of people who look like us. When we put this thing on the agenda, when the three of us, Dr. Lubert, Kendrick, and myself are also now going around the conference and letting people know we were able to get a hundred people to show up in this room. It got to a point where people were standing, sitting in the aisles. And that was important. As it turned out, there were also about another 100 people who were upset that they couldn't make it because they had attended a different event that was at the exact same time. In that moment, Kendrick was able to get one of the leaders of that big conference to speak at our event and express solidarity with the event. And since that person was going to be there, I wanted them to know that not only was it important for us to Create spaces that were safer, where we come together and see each other, grow a sense of belonging, but we also had something to share to impact and change the GEO community. One of the things I didn't say about the conversations I was having with people was that there were a lot of common themes, common things about barriers people were being presented with, common themes about experiences of exclusion that people were faced with, and common things around times when their customers were asking for help using GIS to advance racial justice. And all the people with GIS hats on in those conversations would either change the subject, be confused. Not know the relationship between race, racism, and maps. Not know how to talk about it. And so therefore, a lot of missed opportunities to use the power of geo thinking and geo practices and geo technology and data. To really just call out in sharp belief racial disparities and then do something about it. While there were some folks who, despite those challenges, were moving ahead anyway. And so there was a person in the GEO communities who was pushing forward despite the barriers, despite folks discomfort with it. For lack of understanding about the relationship between race, racism, and geography, Nicole Franklin was moving forward anyway. And she wanted to share some of her work at the conference and we were able to get her some space to share their work. the room was standing room only. People were looking in the plastic windows. It drew a lot of attention and a lot of excitement. She also co hosted a fireside chat at an event the Sunday prior with me. And while all the other attendees of all the other fireside chats around us had closed up shop and left, there were 10 to 12 people just standing around us, not wanting the conversation to end the catering Had to come over and ask us to leave because they had to clean up. And so I put all of that on display for this leader and he got it. He really understood why this stuff was important and authorized some of the folks in the room to start to take on work from our users that would focus on equity, racial equity, racial justice, all issues of equity. And that meant that not only did we create a space that was Healing and empowering for us. And when I say empowering, we all have power, but very often the barriers that our industries present us with, the experiences of exclusion can become barriers that disconnect us from our agency. And suddenly we were all energizing each other. So we did all of that. But we also changed the industry itself. We changed the industry itself to become one that now much more focused on using Geo to address injustices. And that was the update. We had pulled together this great experience in this event. There were people who showed up across those sessions but particularly the one session that we co hosted with an organization that Kendrick was a part of that's called Black in GIS. We co hosted with the HBCU educators, and the people who attended that event, you would have thought that they were friends and family for a long time, because for the rest of the conference, they showed up together. They experienced the events together. It changed what all of the social experiences looked like, because suddenly you knew that when you got there, there were going to be people who would connect with you. You would be bringing them with you. Suddenly, more of us were showing up to the biggest social events than ever before, because again, we knew we would have each other and no matter what, we'd have a great experience and we had that great experience with everyone else as well, but having this community that we started to build this family, this network, this overground railroad, if you will, to the possibility of thriving and finding belonging in geospaces was just helpful and empowering. And that was the update. And so I got that update and I was so proud. My heart felt warm. And I knew that in the coming year that we would have work to do. What was going through our heads was how do we formalize what this experience offered? And so I chuckle because Clinton, you also left out that before I went out on maternity leave, You were working on a logo. The logo was very cute. We knew where we wanted to go with it, and so I was like, okay. But then when I came back from maternity leave, the logo was all polished and nice and so we actually have an episode with Clinton and the logo designer to talk through. The thought process and the different layers of intentionality that went into the creation of the Northstar GIS logo. So let's go back through the Black organizations because in meeting with the six Black GIS firms, there were a collective of HBCU professors. And what we ended up doing was transitioning those informal communications and those informal connections into a series of meetings that we had that led up to what became our first official homecoming. Because we do consider the 2019 event. The Homecoming. 0, right? And so then Homecoming 1 ended up happening in 2020, and it was a virtual event, but leading up to the Homecoming, we pulled together this collective of Black GIS business owners and this collective of HBCU educators, and we began to think about what was really needed for, you The GLAD or African Diaspora with regards to this tool that's called GIS. And so through those series of meetings, we began to formulate and really create structure around what eventually became the 2020 Homecoming event. And that was a major success. And to put all of that in context, COVID hit in March of 2020. So prior to that, we had already had Northstar in place. We had already established a meeting cadence with individuals and our members. We were talking, we were leaning on each other, and then the pandemic hit. And then we were all. Working from home. And so that meant at the time, it was no real boundary between work and home. It had just hit. And so it was like an explosion of little pieces in our lives. And so we really needed each other at that time. And we know when. America gets a cold, the Black community gets the flu. I know I was hit really hard and a lot of North Star members were hit really hard. So day became night became day. So we find ourselves planning this event at 12 o'clock in the morning. Planning this event, sending emails at two o'clock in the morning. And that ends up being part of the DNA and the fabric of Northstar, because to this day, we still work into the wee hours of the night. And all right, so Clinton, we created this logo. We got more concrete on what the homecoming was going to look like. Yeah. I think, I feel like we also missed the part where, wow. And so was it 2020 when you hosted the North Star event in the, at the Washington conference that I didn't attend? Yes, that February conference. And yes, so the development of that conference just unveiled a lot of trauma, but we got it done I was just like, I was first of all, just trying to get the title right. So 2019 in December, my mother dies. We were in the midst of planning some experiences for that upcoming event. And now we would talk about that as a Black at Geo event where we were trying to add spaces where Black folks are centered and can find belonging around other Geo conferences. And I couldn't do lots of things. Like I couldn't really engage well in the planning. I wasn't geographically in the area, so I wasn't going to attend the event. So a lot of other people had to come together to make that happen. And so that was our second, which was also a success. And Aisha gave me the update on that after it happened. And I think we should talk about that. I don't think we, maybe we never talk about that these days because we're still focused on the quote unquote larger homecoming experiences, but that experience was also massive. The other piece that I think, is important. Is that like you were saying, Aisha, suddenly lots of things were happening and we're hitting our communities harder and it meant that we needed each other more and we started to deliver more online experiences and not just the homecoming and not just that event. And DC, but just like more online experiences. We hosted some quote unquote town hall sessions, conversations about issues that were happening in our world that were largely impacting us. And in fact, I think we hosted over a dozen event between that first in person event that we think of as like homecoming. And our next virtual homecoming, we hosted about a dozen events, some really small, some a little more substantial. We had a Black History Month event that we co hosted with Black Girls Map and maybe one other organization. At the time, there was also the DC event I want to say that the DC event was probably the first place where in person we showcased Aisha, your idea of GIS can look like you and believe what happened was you were a part of a conversation with Black professionals sharing their experiences, journeys, interests, just like any other GIS professional. Yes. So thank you for bringing me back to that moment in time. So may your mom rest in peace. When we got the call that we were going to be a person down, we all scrambled and pulled together. And so people had to step in the middle of a conversation cold. And engage with leadership and get things done. And that in and of itself was quite an interesting and harrowing experience, which left some harm, but we pulled together. So there's this thing that we deal with as Black people, as marginalized groups of the global majority. So we. Often tell our stories and it's met with disbelief. We tell our stories of the harm and the folks who are causing the harm are just like, that didn't happen. That can't possibly happen. When we talk about the unique needs of our community, people are giving us the side eye no, y'all just want to be treated extra and special. And so when we came together in this Washington event, it was to a packed room and in the background were those naysayers that were like, y'all don't need this thing, people are not going to show up to this thing, but you're telling it to the people who are actually in need. Who told you we needed this thing. We needed this sense of belonging. We needed this safe space. And you're telling us, no, y'all don't need that. You're not going to get the numbers. And we had a room full of people who came and engaged in this very active, this very energetic, this very healing conversation around what our experiences are like in NGO. And so we walk out of there knowing that we had something. And so that's where we were leading into the summer of 2020, as we were leading into the Homecoming Conference. But it had been a series of validating, reaffirming experiences, healing, Experiences that we had been having with one another to signal you're not alone. That's needed. I want to talk a little bit, I don't want this to be like a huge jump from where we are, but I think it's important in the midst of Kwanzaa to talk about what was my thinking as I was trying to get other people excited to start talking. This thing with me and my background is in a tech strategy with a focus on business, right? So I know how to pull together different versions of a vision statement and build design principles for an organization. And that for me, for North Star meant beginning with our elders, beginning with our ancestors. And so I tried to look to other efforts to unify Black folks, other efforts to make progress for Black communities. Fundamentally, that's. For me that's been a big part of why we do this. I've worked in GIS for 25 years now, and I saw firsthand how maps influence where resources go. And I saw firsthand how the folks in the ring control what that looks like. And then later now in this moment, when I'm connecting with other folks, I'm seeing not just as an individual, but through the voices of others, how a lack of understanding of equity also harms. So I said let's also look to efforts that were about advancing equity, progress, prosperity. for Black communities. And that, that landed me on things like Kwanzaa, Ubuntu. Pan African efforts around Kwanzaa resonated because we wanted to connect people across the entire diaspora and someone else had already developed a set of principles and we looked at each one of these principles and some of them we thought didn't exactly fit, but then later realized how all of them made sense and all of them fit. So when we are. Organizing our steering committees that Aisha was describing that we would host in leading up to our homecoming as a way of guiding everything that we were doing that year. What we wanted to focus on, recognizing that we all exist in harmony together and only in harmony together, could we thrive and other notions that you can think of as Ubuntu. We had always had the support of business owners in the black geo community, investing in. This thing called North Star so that we could be successful. Before we were a formal non profit, people were sponsoring our events, covering the costs that needed to be covered. So we were always collectively working and doing and building and growing faith in each other and being creative about how we do it. So many of the elements and the spirit of Kwanzaa in a group to continue to live in the work that we do. And for me, each year during Kwanzaa becomes a moment to really reflect on each of those principles, why they really matter and find new ways to pour the spirit of those principles into our work for the coming year. So thank you. It's deep that centuries that are represented in this group that we call North Star. We talk about when we make soul food that we don't always measure seasonings and ingredients. We rely on our ancestors, right? And I feel that we didn't 100 percent know The path that we were going to take for Northstar, but we knew that we were going to, we needed certain ingredients and we were going to rely on our ancestors to help us with those ingredients and how much. And last but not least to bring this to a close, cause we could go on and on, but we do have other episodes that will cover different aspects of the Northstar origin story. But let's talk about how these different principles infuse and have interwoven themselves into the Northstar mission, vision statement, and into the Northstar programs. But quickly, I'm just going to run through what the principles are. So the principles of KANSA, I'll say what their sentiments are in English. Unity, self determination, collective work and responsibility, cooperative economics, purpose, creativity, faith. All of these concepts are viewed in the things that we do. First and foremost we do things in the spirit of togetherness. We're thinking constantly about the other organizations that exist as our peers and our counterparts. So we think about the black geographers in UK. We think about black and marine science. We think about black and geoscience. We think about all these other organizations and how we need to be working together in support of each other and how we need each other in the fabric of this work. Self determination. We. Don't let others tell us who we are. And there have been times when people have told us what we should call ourselves as an organization. And that a part of that should just not reflect black or blackness, but we determine who we are on our own, for ourselves and for our community together. And more and more recently, we talk about our community as a global network of melanated mappers. Collective work and responsibility. There is nothing more true about that than the way that Our volunteer team comes together every single year, often on a daily basis, to execute the mission of the organization, build out that programming that we all know that our communities need. And when our communities have the space we need in GIS, internally, our external Black and Brown communities around the globe will also prosper because of how impactful geo practices are on the communities of the world around different issues. Cooperative economics. We would not be able to do any of the things that we do without the generous investments in our work from our donors and our sponsors, some of which are us in the organization itself, we believe in what we're doing. We have faith in our purpose and we try to hold true to that purpose. Again, that purpose being ultimately to change the face of the world, such that Black communities thrives and other communities of color as well. And we know that will happen when Black folks are equitably represented in geo work and when equity is at the center of that work. We're creative. We don't set limits on what we could possibly do based on what. Others have done. We try to imagine a new future for ourselves all the time and invite our community to help us do that. And again, we have faith in ourselves. We have faith in the fact that our mission is necessary and that if we succeed, our communities will succeed around the globe and that really is embodied in all the work that we do and it's how we can get all these folks to volunteer their time to pour into this work that delivers the great experiences that Our communities benefit from. Thank you, Clinton. I'm curious, what are some of the Northstar programs that we offer? The really great question. There's a number of challenges that we face as a global community embedded within geospaces. And we try to address those challenges through our programming. We face barriers to representation and some of them are about organizations not knowing where to look somehow to find us. And some of it is about organization that recognizing that we have value and valuing our contributions. So we create space and opportunities to showcase Black talent and the talents of Black geo professionals and to showcase opportunities to Use equitable geo practices. We do that through our Horizon program area, which is all about events. We also create pathways to success and support people throughout their journeys through supportive spaces that are safer and educational resources that are equitable. And we do that largely through what we call our North Star Bridge program. That again, is a connector to opportunity and a support system throughout experiences. But also through our guides program, which is really about showing the way for success in geo and also showing organizations the way for creating spaces where, people of all backgrounds find belonging, spaces imbued with the spirit of, and principles of feminism, racial justice, equity, and belonging. And our newest program area is called Telescope. And it's our opportunity to really magnify black stars in geo. So the students, educators, entrepreneurs, and professionals out here who are making strides to advance their own career, do the things that when they were a little kid, they imagined they would do, or when they discovered geospaces the work that they love so much that they wanted to invest their time in. We want to just shine a light on them doing that work. And for folks who are really moving the needle and paving the way, we want to create spaces and opportunities to focus on them. And one of the newest initiatives of the telescope program is our podcast called The Gaze, and it's more formally, The North Star Gaze. This is us sharing our work and the work of the folks who do great things, sharing the stories of, Luminaries and geospaces through a North star lens, which we know is going to be a really important part of that work. Okay. Thank you for that. So I just want to take this moment and read our vision statement and our mission statement. Our vision is a racially just world through a racially just geography. Let that marinate for a bit and our mission to be black, to be bold, to be innovative. And to show the world equitable geo. And on that note, there you have it. The first installment of the North Star Origin Story. And so to our ancestors, to our elders, to our volunteers, to our Melanated and Mapping community, to our supporters, to our allies and sponsors, we Thanks for listening to the North Star Gaze, intimate stories from geoluminaries. If you're inspired to advance racial justice in geofields, please share this podcast with other listeners in your community. The intro and outro are produced by Organized Sound Productions with original music created by Kid Bodega. The North Star Gaze is produced in large part by donations and sponsorship. To learn more about North Star Gaze, Check us out at north star of gis.org and on Facebook or Instagram at GIS North Star. If you'd like to support this podcast and North Star of gis, consider donating at North star of gis.org/donate or to sponsor this podcast, email podcast at north star of gis.org. You've been listening to the North Star Gaze.