“With all due respect, Supervisor Burke, you’ve had all these positions, and you’ve often been the first, do you ever feel that you’ve been a token?”

Twenty-eight years ago, Jonathan Holloway, Northwestern University Provost and former Parker parent, was with a group interviewing Los Angeles Supervisor Yvonne Burke when one of his colleagues asked her the question. “I thought, ‘oh my God,’” Holloway said, “‘that was blunt.’”

Burke––the woman who’d made history as the first African American woman from California to be elected to the House of Representatives, to be appointed as a Supervisor to Los Angeles County, and to serve as Vice-Chair of the Democratic Convention in 1972— answered without blinking. “Of course,” she said, “but the important thing is that I haven’t acted like one.”

On the evening of October 18, Holloway shared the story before an audience of over 70 administrators seated in the Harris center to address the fear of being hired to “check the boxes” and the importance of “keeping the door open” for diversity in leadership. His keynote kicked off Parker’s first Administrators of Color in Independent Schools Conference, which was primarily organized by Assistant Principal Ruth Jurgensen.

Over the course of two days, leaders from 33 schools in 13 different states attended keynotes led by Holloway, American University Professor and 2016 National Book Award winner Ibram X. Kendi, and scientist in residence in liberal arts at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago Eugenia Cheng. Attendees also had three options for a breakout session, which were titled “Leadership Branding for People of Color in Leadership in Independent Schools: The Critical Role of Authenticity,” “Measuring Inclusion: Conducting a Climate Assessment at Your School,” and a panel, “Aspiring Heads.”

The idea for the event came out of Jurgensen’s frustration over the lack of diversity in educators’ conferences, generally. Last fall, at one hosted by the University of Pennsylvania, she noticed that in the room of around 400 administrators, she was one of a handful who were of color.

“When I came back, I said to Dan, ‘I’m not going to conferences anymore,’” Jurgensen said. “I’m a leader in education, and not one speaker was speaking to me and the way I approach the job.”

Then, Principal Dan Frank suggested she build her own conference. “We thought, why don’t we do what we do well, create environments where people come together and think about matters in education?” Frank said. “We’ve taken that Parker entrepreneurial spirit to create something that’s never existed before and has social impact.”

And so Jurgensen set out to bring together a portion of the 9.1 percent of all independent school heads who identify as of color, as reported by the National Association of Independent Schools, as well as administrators of color who hold other positions, including CFOs, admissions officers, and division heads. “We’re in similar spaces and move through similar stories,” Jurgensen said.

For Head of Edmund Burke School in Washington D.C. and former Assistant Principal at Parker, Damian Jones, a sentiment that resonated with him was the need to train educators of color for higher administrative positions. In addition to attending keynotes, he spoke on the panel beside Randall Dunn and Lucinda Lee Katz, Head of Latin School of Chicago and former Head of Marin School in California, respectively, and Frank, the moderator.

“Unless institutions take the time to cultivate leadership, we’re never going to move the needle,” Jones said. “We’re never going to see the heads of color increase because they’ve not been prepared for the work. We all have a responsibility to do more work to advance leadership development for people of color.”

The Conference was significant to Holloway because it allowed administrators to form a valuable network and acknowledge each other. “By coming together, we’re recognizing that we’re not alone in our endeavors,” Holloway said. “The thing that resonated with me is that a number of people came up to me after I spoke and said, ‘I know exactly what you’re talking about, that was my lived experience. I’ve been there.’”

When planning his keynote, Holloway had options—he could’ve recited any of his speeches about post-emancipation African-American history, his expertise. He chose a different route.

“Given the fact that I know that world,” Holloway said, “I’ve been the only black person in various positions for the longest time, most of the time the first, I said, ‘maybe we just have a heart to heart kind of conversation.’”

To Jurgensen, the conference as a whole could be summed up as a heart to heart conversation. “It really did fill a need for administrators, specifically of color,” Jurgensen said, “that we could immediately be in affinity, in conversation in an intimate setting.”

Parker plans to host the Administrators of Color in Independent Schools Conference again next year, though it might not look exactly the same. “Absolutely everybody I spoke to afterward said, ‘not only am I coming back next year, but I’m bringing more people’,” Jurgensen said. “I think it’s going to double in number. I’m overwhelmed by the need and the opportunity and provide this space for it.”