Book Highlights Ways People Can BECOME Changemakers

Dr. Dominica McBride is the Founder and CEO of BECOME. PHOTO PROVIDED BY MELANIE BROWN.
Dr. Dominica McBride is the Founder and CEO of BECOME. PHOTO PROVIDED BY MELANIE BROWN.

Book Highlights Ways People Can BECOME Changemakers

By Tia Carol Jones

BECOME was founded in 2013 by Dr. Dominica McBride to foster social change and community engagement. Now, McBride has taken lessons from evaluation work with other organizations and put them in a book to inspire women of color who want to become changemakers in their communities and beyond.

“Becoming Changemakers: The Exquisite Path to Leadership and Liberation for Women of Color” is a collection of stories from different women of color, across Chicago and beyond, that details their journey in leadership development, becoming changemakers, their trials and their successes, traumas, triumphs and healing.

The insights in the book are meant to help women step into their higher selves, with ways to take different approaches to leading communities and organizations. McBride said the book is for anyone who wants to make change in this world. In 2023, McBride knew the book had to be completed. She found a publisher, found the women and wrote the book. The book was released in Fall 2023 and is available on Amazon.

BECOME did evaluation work with Chicago Foundation for Women, Public Allies and Cultivate. Each of these organizations are focused on women of color leadership. Public Allies wanted to look at their impact on underrepresented women in leadership; Cultivate wanted to look at their impact on women of color leadership development in community organizers and advocates; and Public Allies wanted to look at their impact on women of color in philanthropy. Between these three projects, there were themes for development for women of color leadership. It led to an investigation of the most potent leadership task as to what can make someone a better leader.

“We wanted to make these insights known to everyone, across the country,” McBride said, adding there was an opportunity to go deeper with the insights.

As a result, the book covers insights about healing and self-love, the power of relationships, intersectionality and how a leader can use their power for good. For each chapter, there is a woman who is the focus of that chapter telling their story in relation to that insight. Women included in the book are Michelle Morales, of the Woods Fund Chicago, Gabriella Garcia and Tatiana Cortez from BECOME, as well as different organizers from Chicago Foundation for Women, Public Allies and Cultivate.

McBride said what makes a great leader is a person who is on their healing journey. She said a lot of times, leaders are looked at for their strength or how inspirational they are. But, there are so many things leaders adopt that are actually oppressive, because that is the way they were taught to lead.

“We need to heal in order to be the leader that can transform; that can step into our liberation as people of color, our liberation as oppressed communities, moving beyond the current reality,” she said, adding that it is not sustainable to lead the way leaders have been leading, there needs to be a shift and the start of that shift is healing.

McBride added that there should be a focus on relationships and how relationships help leaders on their journey, as well as intersectionality and being conscious of how cultural identity colors how people lead. McBride believes that every single person has power, whether they know it or not, or whether they are activating it or not. By stepping into it for the good of others and themselves, they can use it to be transformative. McBride hopes people who read the book are inspired to be their next best self, as leaders and as changemakers.

McBride is encouraging people to read the book with other people and discuss it in a book club as a way to go on the journey with support. The book has reflection questions in it.

For more information about the book, visit becomingchangemakers.com. For more information about BECOME, visit www.becomecenter.org.

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