New look coming soon

Network of Intersectional Professionals is an independent nonprofit that spun out of the Center for Behavioral Design and Social Justice (CBDSJ), founded by Anthony Barrows. While the CBDSJ has closed, the network continues. Please pardon our appearance as we work to build out our infrastructure and new website.

In the meantime, we are still actively continuing all of our programming and accepting new members. For more information check out our substack: https://cbdsj.substack.com/ or reach out to our team by emailing community@intersectionalprofessionals.org.

About us

What is the Network?
The Network of Intersectional Professionals is a community of people with personal and professional experience of human-serving systems. By attending to our collective well-being and influence, we are giving ourselves the permission and power to envision systems that actually work for the people they’re meant to serve.

 

Who are Intersectional Professionals?
Intersectional Professionals are people with a dual expertise—the first-hand expertise of navigating systems as clients, and the professional acumen to understand how these systems work. When you combine that expertise with our intrinsic motivation to improve the systems we work in, we believe that we are uniquely positioned to drive change. Examples of Intersectional Professionals include former foster youth working in child welfare, formerly incarcerated people working in re-entry, and former public housing residents working for a local housing authority.

 

Why a Network?
Typical approaches to leverage lived experience in systems change include temporary focus groups, ongoing advisory boards, or outside advocacy and pressure campaigns. While these are undoubtedly important efforts, they don’t recognize the unique contributions of Intersectional Professionals as practice and policy experts already embedded in systems. Despite our unique value, we’ve gone un-named and un-organized, and the Network hopes to change that. By lifting up a shared identity, we can increase a sense of belonging, reduce tokenization, and collectively build a values-based community. By nurturing that community, we can organize for the changes we know the social sector needs.

 

What does the Network do?
Through regular virtual and in-person meetings, the Network focuses on three outcomes: Increasing the Well-Being of our members, Expanding the Influence of our members, and creating Actionable Visions for the future.

 

Who should join?  We are recruiting people with both personal and professional experience in the social sector, including experience with systems addressing poverty, housing, food security, incarceration, mental and physical health, marginalization, discrimination, and inequality. As the “Intersectional” title in our name suggests, we seek a membership base that represents diverse experiences, identities, ages, and professions. To join the Network, please complete this New Member Form and someone from our team will be in touch.

 

Join Us
To learn more and get involved, contact community@intersectionalprofessionals.org