Why am I here? I mean, obviously I’m here on Cape Cod because it’s so beautiful; can you believe this glorious sunset? (#nofilter!) And obviously because it’s a joy to be with three generations of my family in the place that Childhood Me spent all year looking forward to going for two weeks every summer of my life.

Being here, in this place where I have been all versions of myself, gives me a strange and special opportunity to step outside of time and think about who this Me person is and who she wants to be now. How can I shine a beam of light like this sunset?

Today on the porch, I wrote a mission statement for why I’m in this career right now:

My career mission is to learn and practice how I can be a force for racial justice
by building relationships that spark, grow, and sustain transformative financial support
for systemic change that is rooted in the leadership of communities of color.

And so then of course there’s a natural next question: Does what I’m actually doing line up with what I just said I’m here to do in my career? Fortunately, yes, I think so. This is my mission statement for why I am at SCG right now:

I am here to learn and practice how I can use and share my power
to lead SCG forward as a financially sustainable organization
that is committed to doing our part in the fight for racial justice
by helping people with access to wealth more truly see and support
the urgent need for systemic change, led by communities of color,
in the racist root causes of the conditions that philanthropy has always said it exists to solve.

Now, I’m not setting this as SCG’s own official organizational mission statement – that’s not for me to say, especially if I’m authentically sharing power with my brilliant colleagues who are leaders of color! I’m just saying that as long as working for SCG gives me the best shot at being happy to meet myself again next year, and the next, and the next… I’ll be here.