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Meet Dr. Matthew C. Whitaker of Diamond Strategies

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Today we’d like to introduce you to Dr. Matthew C. Whitaker.

Dr. Whitaker is a native of Phoenix, Arizona. His mother, Covey L. Whitaker, an Arizona State University (ASU) alumnus and a middle-school teacher, raised him amidst a diverse and loving family in Phoenix’s south and westsides. His father, the Rev. Michael L. Hopwood, played basketball for ASU, where he and his mother met, professional ball in Europe, and later became a teacher and administrator in Los Angeles United School District. At an early age, Dr. Whitaker began playing the piano, in addition to serving as the Assistant Superintendent of Sunday school at his family’s Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church. Always intellectually curious and “proper,” he earned the nickname “professor,” decades before he earned a Ph.D. He attended St. Matthew’s Catholic Elementary School in Phoenix, and graduated from Alhambra High School in 1988. Dr. Whitaker had a notable high school career, lettering in both basketball and track and field, and becoming a member of the Lettermen’s Club. He also developed a love for the game of chess in high school, and was, for a short time, a member of Alhambra’s chess team. With the help of several friends, Dr. Whitaker co-founded Alhambra’s first Black Student Union, and served as the organization’s first Vice-President.

After high school he enrolled in South Mountain Community College in Phoenix and later Arizona State University. He was a double major, studying Sociology and History. Ever-committed to social justice, particularly racial, economic, and gender equality and equity, he emerged as a student leader at ASU, having served on the Campus Environment Team (CET), Students Taking Action to Reach Success (STARS), and African Consolidated Mentors for Enhancement (ACME), for which he served as secretary. ACME was a student association organized to promote black history, culture, and socio-economic advancement. A key component of ACME’s efforts was an after school program. This program endeavored to increase the self-esteem and academic performance of “at risk” students in Phoenix, Arizona’s predominantly Latino American and African American Roosevelt School District. Dr. Whitaker graduated from ASU in 1993 with a BA in sociology and a BA in history and went to work for the Federal Government (Social Security Administration).

In 1995 he returned to ASU to pursue a Master of Arts Degree in United States History. Dr. Whitaker was selected as the Lorenzo J. Greene Scholar by the Association for the Study of Afro-American Life and History in 1997, and completed his M.A. that same year. He then traveled to East Lansing, Michigan, to study with one of the nation’s leading historians and social justice advocates in Darlene Clark Hine, then John A. Hannah Distinguished Professor of United States History at Michigan State University, now Board of Trustees Professor of African American Studies and Professor of History at Northwestern University. He earned his Ph.D. in History, with honors, on May 4, 2001. During the spring of 2001, Dr. Whitaker accepted a professorship at his alma mater, ASU, where he taught for 16 years and founded and directed the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy, winner of the 2014 Arizona Diversity Leadership Alliance (DLA) Inclusive Workplace Award.

He specializes in U.S. history, African American history and life, race relations, social movements, cultural competency, equity and inclusion, teaching excellence, and community partnerships. He has edited three books, including Hurricane Katrina: America’s Unnatural Disaster, and he is the author of Race Work: The Rise of Civil Rights in the Urban West. He is currently completing a memoir entitled The Undisputed Truth: A Revolutionary Journey to Black Manhood. He has also authored a number of award- winning articles and penned over 40 opinion pieces. Dr. Whitaker has won over 30 distinctions for his research, teaching, and service, and has consulted, spoken, and lectured in Australia, Canada, China, Czech Republic, England, Ghana, and Ireland. Has been featured on CNN, NPR, PBS, WVON, KEMET, and is also a co-founder of the Healing Racism Public Dialogue Series, winner of the 2008 National League of Cities Promoting Inclusive Award and the City of Phoenix 2006 Martin Luther King, Jr. Living the Dream Award. In 2015 he was giving the ASU Pioneer Award for working to improve African-American life, community and culture. Most recently he was given DLA’s 2016 Diversity and Inclusion Leader Award.

He founded Diamond Strategies, L.L.C. in 2015, a diversity, equity, inclusion and community relations consulting firm, to operationalize what he had long done in his writings, classrooms and speeches–use his unique sociological and historical training (most DE&I professionals have transactional business and HR backgrounds or clinical training) to help individuals, organizations, and communities learn about our diverse past and present to promote healing, social cohesion, productivity and profitability in the non-profit and for-profit arenas. Dr. Whitaker is deeply authentic in style and delivery and utilizes his diverse familial background to reach and teach those who have more homogeneous experiences.

After his parents divorced, he was raised by two second-wave Feminist mothers—one black, one white. He has a bevy of bi-racial cousins–Black, Indigenous, Latinex, and Asian. His family also consists of followers of Catholicism, Protestantism, Islam and the Jehovah’s Witness traditions. “Diversity and inclusion was the air I breathed,” he recalls. “I didn’t know that there were words for it until I was an undergraduate at ASU. In fact, I was stunned when I realized that many people live their entire lives in very homogenous environments in which difference is seen as threatening and conflict generating. It was then that I decided to commit my life to bringing people together, but it wasn’t until 2015 that I created Diamond Strategies, a mechanism to help support my family by doing what I love. Diamond Strategies is the culmination of decades of life experience and education, that I am now using to help others navigate what I embody–the efficacy of multiplicity.”

He also serves as a trustee of the Cancer Support Community of Arizona, a member of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul-Arizona Community Advisory Board, and a member of the Board of Directors of the East Valley Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Alliance. He lives in Mesa, Arizona with his wife and three children.

Dr. Whitaker also serves as a member of the Muhammad Ali Center’s Distinguished International Advisory Board, a trustee of the Cancer Support Community of Arizona, a member of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul-Arizona Community Advisory “Vinnies” Board, and a member of the Board of Directors of the East Valley Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Alliance. He lives in Mesa, Arizona with his wife and three children.

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
It has been a challenge sometimes. Many people consider our work “touchy-feely,” as opposed to a necessary investment, insurance if you will, in the cohesiveness and capacity for innovation within their organization. Too often we are enlisted as fixers of problems that would never have arisen if corporate leaders who would have been proactive in embracing diversity, equity, and inclusion. Most homeowners will never see their homes burn to the ground, but they invest in homeowner’s insurance anyway. Why? Because when disaster strikes, they will be able to rebuild. The capital will be there to start again. Likewise, we get flu shots, which actually give us a small dose of the virus to inoculate us again severe illness if not death. DE&I work is an inoculation. It may sting and it may make us feel feverish and uncomfortable, but it will protect us from debilitating illness, and small businesses in particularly, do not have the financial capacity to survive a full-blown case of the homogeneous and unjust corporate flu.  They cannot survive “going viral.”

Like many entrepreneurs of color, I’ve also struggled to secure the necessary capital to grow my business, and have thus taken a “bootstrap” approach to capital financing my business. I have self-funded Diamond Strategies with my own savings and retirement. I haven’t borrowed a dime from any financial institution, but this is largely because most wouldn’t help us anyway. This reality has compelled me to work twice as hard, with half as much, to get half of the work.

My blackness and authenticity is sometimes a plus, but in a world in which HR, equity, and inclusion efforts are increasingly led by white women, in offices that react sensitively, condescendingly, and defensively to large black men (I am 6’4″, 230lbs), speaking authoritatively about uncomfortable topics, among people who consider themselves to be informed on the one hand, but wield authority in largely homogeneous and inequitable environments on the other, but often absolve themselves of any complicity, let alone culpability, is like navigating a minefield in a three piece suit and wingtips.

I have to be super mindful of my words, dress, tone, body language, and affability, every second of every interaction with white authority as well. To be accepted, let alone successful in our white dominated business world, black people have to be non-threatening in every way, shape, and form, even as some us engage in work that requires transparency, directness, discomfort, and difficult dialogues. Black people have been in an abusive relationship with white America for 400 years, and yet, white leaders usually want us to check our scars at the door. In the words if writer Greg Tate, they often want “everything but the burden” of our blackness. Many leaders will say please help us become more diverse, equitable, and inclusive, but don’t display any of the vulnerability associated with societal injustices, inequities, and being black in the process.

So, as you know, we’re impressed with Diamond Strategies, LLC. – tell our readers more, for example what you’re most proud of as a company and what sets you apart from others.
DSC provides transformational cultural competency, diversity, equity, and inclusion training and leadership in community relations to our clients through a combination of keynote presentations that augment current efforts, overseeing robust and thematic workshops and training sessions, cultural competency training, one-on-one coaching, informational and bridge-building community forums, and other activities designed to provide the knowledge, skills, attitude, sensitivity, and resources that organizations need to engender healthy, positive, and effective cultures of collaborations within and beyond your organization. No one does it better.

Our team offers adept researchers who have the rare capacity to assess our findings, understand their meaning, and communicate them effectively to academicians, business leaders, educators, students, and everyday people. All of us are keenly aware of, and have deep interests in, many aspects of our culture. We are outspoken, resourceful, and enterprising diversity and inclusion gurus, who are uniquely suited to help you and your institution. We are particularly adept at communicating comfortably and effectively with people from many walks of life. We are professional and collegial, and we do whatever it takes—putting in countless hours—in an effort to produce the best work possible. Not surprisingly, we are devoted to issues that affect the everyday lives of people, particularly those who have been rendered marginal by virtue of their race, class, and gender. We have all of the skills and bona fides required and since attitude reflects leadership, we are as diverse as we advise our clients to be.

Diversity, equity and inclusion, whether manifested in race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, economic status, national origin, faith, physical ability or ideas, are our world’s greatest asset. Our passion at Diamond Strategies is helping small businesses and corporations, non-profits, educational institutions, municipalities and individuals, understand, embrace and leverage diversity, equity and inclusion to make themselves more happy, efficient, resilient, competitive, and successful at navigating our dynamic and constantly changing world. D&I fortifies and encourages us by embracing everyone’s perspectives and consistently compelling us to step outside of our comfort zones and customary modes of seeing, thinking, and doing. Indeed, our skilled leadership, combined with first-rate analytics and data-driven technology, will help your organization move the needle in the area of D&I and community relations.

Our clients are our partners and we are devoted to assisting them in building and retaining skilled and diverse personnel and student populations, and forging environments in which all of them have prospects for advancement. This is the work to which we have placed our hands, work that is all-inclusive and involves everything from helping clients build exemplary global workforces that value distinct worldviews and promote personal development and respect, to helping faith-based institutions built more inclusive followings, to aiding administrators and teachers in their efforts to help each of their students, regardless of their station, become college and career ready. Our efforts are a source of pride and motivation, and we are primed and eager to assist you.

Our mission is to be the catalyst our clients are looking for to assist them in creating inclusive, collegial, and successful environments, by providing innovative and effective strategies and tactics that are tethered to their business plan and mission, to increase synergy, performance, productivity, profitability, brand optimization, and competitiveness.

Our vision is to answer the persistent call for a more inclusive and productive world, by deploying our experts to increase cultural competency and leverage difference to create innovative office and educational environments.

Our goal is to be your diversity and inclusion partner in a larger effort to maximize our human and institutional potential. The great sociologist, W.E.B. DuBois, wrote “there can be no perfect democracy curtailed by color, race or poverty, but with all we accomplish all.” We at DSC believe that “with all we accomplish all”

So, what’s next? Any big plans?
We plan on growing, adding addition trainers, and being more globally engaged in the DE&I world. The demand is there. We simply have to expand our capacity to meet that demand.

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Image Credit:
All images are provided by Diamond Strategies

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