What can Natasha Harrison say!? This moment is nearly surreal. And I am so grateful and blessed!.
I am incredibly honored to have been awarded the prestigious The Good Trouble Honor for Championing Equity by Atlanta’s Center For Civic Innovation. Though I could not be present to accept it in person, this award means so much, not only to me but to my team and the people we serve.
The Good Trouble Honor for Championing Equity is proof that everything my team and I have been striving to accomplish is working. We’re causing the good kind of trouble in your workplaces, organizations, institutions, and communities!
When I quit my comfortable nonprofit job and founded CommunityBuild Ventures, my mission was to make a positive impact on local and national communities for Black people. This pro-Black firm is helping others to examine the root causes of issues defined by racism.
For ten years, we have been developing programs to educate and inspire powerful and racial equity-minded leaders. For ten years, we’ve been coaching organizations to learn and practice in brave space.
To understand, embrace, embody and Center Racial Equity. To advance cultural change and Heal Through the Process.
But leading a journey of healing and self-care has not been easy. It has not come cheap, and it has not been without sacrifice. And yet, here we are!
A catalyst for progress. An inspiration for propelling racial equity in organizations, communities, and homes. Our team now has more than twenty members! We have established self-care and healing as pillars of our organization.
All in the name of our core mission: to build a tomorrow where Black is bold, and racism is eradicated. And that is exactly what we intend to do!
We are going to continue to approach our vision and purpose from all angles. Through intentional strategy, inspired creativity, detailed analytics, and innovative digital methods. And with racial equity at the center of all we accomplish.
Thank you again for this great honor! It has inspired us to continue the fight for ultimate liberation and healing. It has renewed our resolve to keep pressing toward our purpose in Atlanta and beyond.
Our loving community at CommunityBuild Ventures is proud to be among this inspiring community of good troublemakers who are also fighting to solve racial inequity in Atlanta and the world.
I can’t sign off without also thanking my incredible and amazing husband, Ayodele Harrison, for his undying support. We are in this thing together!
And for our CommunityBuild Ventures team and supporters who make everything we do possible, productive, and powerful. It is you who inspire me!
To the other honorees, thank you. Thank you for showing me, once again, that we are not alone in our mission. Congratulations on all of your success! Keep going until the fight is over.
Together, we are going to keep going hard in our mission to unravel all of the -isms that were designed to destroy humanity.
To a bolder Black tomorrow,
Natasha Harrison
