United States
Rhonda Broussard (USA 2014) is founder and chief executive officer of Beloved Community, a leading consulting firm on diversity, equity and inclusion. At the time of her fellowship, she led an association of language-immersion charter schools in St. Louis. She traveled to New Zealand and Finland in 2014, and her aspirations were to see how two countries known for their equitable education systems could inspire her to do more for her community back home in the United States. But before she left, Mike Brown was shot and killed in Ferguson, Missouri, outside of St. Louis.
Brown’s untimely death sparked an entire movement to address excessive use of force by police in communities of color across the U.S., and got Broussard thinking differently about equity. She realized that schools alone cannot fix the racial and economic divide in U.S. communities that were driving the violence and pain felt in St. Louis and many other U.S. cities. She sought a full, comprehensive approach to dismantle systemic racism and injustice.
She connects her experience as a person of color in the United States with the indigenous Maori community in New Zealand and its effort to counter oppression by taking back control of and celebrating its culture. After her fellowship, she moved to New Orleans, her hometown, a city that is experiencing a rich language and heritage movement. She is linking this movement with the development of her own work on community well-being through diversity, equity and inclusion strategies.
Today, Broussard strives to live in a world with “real shared humanity without war,” a peaceful solution built on the attainment of racial and economic equity. She consults with cities, schools, companies and legislators to embrace racial and economic equity in a deep, long-term way. Broussard even works with Eisenhower Fellow Susan Patrick (USA 2016) on education reform across the U.S., lending her deep expertise in diversity, equity and inclusion to their work together to transform U.S. systems of K-12 education, both using their fellowship journeys to New Zealand as a point of reference and inspiration.