Maggie Potapchuk is the founder of MP Associates, a national consulting practice that works in partnership with individuals, organizations, and communities, to build capacity and facilitate change to collectively achieve racial justice. Potapchuk works with organizations seeking to align their policies, programs, and culture with their value of racial equity; work with communities to assess racial dynamics, and to build their capacity for community change; design and facilitate workshops and retreats; design curriculum and tools on structural racism, white privilege and change processes; conduct research and curate best practices;  and build networks and communities of practice to increase individual learning and collective action for racial justice.

A sample of her consulting practices includes:
  • building the capacity of staff at the Guttmacher Institute including conducting an organizational assessment, providing coaching and training with Open Source Leadership Strategies.
  • building the capacity of staff and board at the Nellie Mae Education Foundation including conducting an organizational assessment, coaching, and facilitating a racial equity theory of change process with Open Source Leadership Strategies.
  • building capacity of Services and Advocacy for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual and Transgender Elders (SAGE) to integrate their ongoing commitment to diversity and equity into programs, operations and culture with IAM Associates and Open Source Leadership Strategies;
  • researching and writing Race, Power and Democracy: Synthesis of Select Philanthropic Efforts Following Key Flashpoints;
  • developing with Center for Assessment and Policy Development and World Trust Educational Services on the Transforming White Privilege: A 21st Century Leadership Capacity project  (TWP) to develop set of learning modules to help leaders identify, address and talk about white privilege within the system of inequity, as a critical part of their leadership skillset;
  • co-writing Paying Attention to White Culture and Privilege: A Missing Link to Advancing Racial Equity  for the Foundation Review;
  • co-developing the web site, Racial Equity Tools with the Center for Assessment and Policy Development and World Trust and curating over 1,300 resources;
  • managing the Philanthropic Initiative for Racial Equity’s publication on Moving Forward on Racial Justice Philanthropy;
  • working with Diversity Inclusion Team of the William Caspar Graustein Memorial Fund to assess current organizational issues and build staff’s capacity to align their policies, practices and culture to their value of equity with Open Source Leadership Strategies;
  • leading a team to conduct research for the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, as part of their scanning and assessment process for their racial equity grantmaking;
  • partnering with Open Source Leadership Strategies to work with Everyday Democracy’s staff and associates to build the organization’s capacity and understanding of racial equity, diversity and inclusion and to further learn about race and power nuances in the work environment and community change work; and
  • working with a team to conduct an assessment process and build the capacity of the Diversity Team for the Department of Children, Youth and Families in Chester County, PA, to begin a process of addressing racial disproportionality with CAPD and ChangeMatters.
 
Potapchuk was the lead author of the publication, Flipping the Script: White Privilege and Community Building.  She piloted a workshop for race relations and racial justice organizations that are using different approaches and methodologies on how to work collaboratively in four communities: Boston, St. Paul, Santa Barbara and Knoxville. This work culminated in the report, Cultivating Interdependence: Guide for Race Relations and Racial Justice Organizations.

Her work in communities includes: conducting research on the state of race relations in Columbus, GA; working with the Race Relations Center of East Tennessee to create a program matrix for a nine-county region to build an inclusive region; and working with the National League of Cities on the Selma, AL, Community Improvement Initiative to address issues of race, education, governance and economic development. Potapchuk partnered with the Aspen Institute Roundtable for Community Change to conduct her research, Community Change Processes and Progress in Addressing Racial Inequities. She systematically documented the growing trend of CCIRs in, Lessons Learned: How Communities are Addressing Racial Inequities, along with the National League of Cities and Aspen Institute’s Roundtable for Community Change. 

From 2000–2003, Maggie served as Senior Program Associate with the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies’ Network of Alliances Bridging Race and Ethnicity (NABRE) program, a national effort to facilitate communication and provide support for 185 community-based race relations and racial justice organizations. She researched the response of Clarksburg, West Virginia to a KKK rally, which resulted in the publication, Steps Toward an Inclusive Community, which includes the “Inclusive Community Assessment Tool.”

From 1995–1999, Potapchuk was Director of the Dismantling Racism Program at the National Conference for Community and Justice (NCCJ), St. Louis Region.  The Dismantling Racism Institute, a leadership development program, was chosen as one of seven promising practices in the book, Intergroup Relations in the United States: Seven Promising Practices, funded by the Ford Foundation. She was also project director and primary author of CommUnity-St. Louis, a comprehensive community initiative to address racism. Potapchuk was honored for her work by the St. Louis YWCA, which presented her the 1999 Racial Justice Award.

She currently serves on the Center for Educational Equity’s board, an editorial board member for the Understanding and Dismantling Privilege Journal, Advisory Board of the Baltimore Racial Justice Action, serve on the Interim Leadership Team of the Within Our Lifetime network, and co-chair, Illuminating Whiteness and Colonization: Developing a Literacy for Racial Justice Globally. Potapchuk is a racial equity affiliate consultant of RoadMap, and serves on the Technical Assistance Team for the Government Alliance for Racial Equity.
She received her B.S. in child and family community services from Bowling Green (Ohio) State University, and her M.Ed. in organizational development and applied group studies and a Social Justice Issues Certificate from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
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