Journey Towards Anti-Racism EP2: Conversation with David Devan (EP.43)
Last Updated
August 24, 2021
In episode two of the 12-part podcast series, "White Men & the Journey Towards Anti-Racism," Tim interviews David Devan, General Director and President of Opera Philadelphia
This series was created to be a resource for white men who might be wrestling with questions like, “What’s my role in anti-racism, equity, inclusion, and justice work as a white man with power and privilege?” and “How might my personal commitment to do this work manifest itself in the organization I help lead?”
Are you new to the series? Check out episode 54 where podcast co-hosts Lauren Ruffin and Tim Cynova introduce and frame the conversations. Explore the other episodes in this series with guests:
Raphael Bemporad (Founding Partner) & Bryan Miller (Chief Financial Officer), BBMG
Ron Carucci, Co-Founder & Managing Partner, Navalent
Ted Castle (Founder & President) & Rooney Castle (Vice President), Rhino Foods
Jared Fishman, Founding Executive Director, Justice Innovation Lab
Jay Coen Gilbert, Co-Founder, B Lab; CEO, Imperative21
Kit Hughes, Co-Founder & CEO, Look Listen
Marc Mannella, Independent Consultant, Former CEO KIPP Philadelphia Public Schools
John Orr, Executive Director, Art-Reach
David Reuter, Partner, LLR
Sydney Skybetter, Founder, CRCI; Associate Chair & Senior Lecturer, Theatre Arts & Performance Studies Department, Brown UniversityWant to explore related resources primarily *not* by white guys? Check out our compilation of 30 books, podcasts, and films.
Guest: David B. Devan
Host: Tim Cynova
Guest
DAVID B. DEVAN (he/him) joined Opera Philadelphia in January 2006 and was appointed General Director of the company in 2011. Since his arrival, David has worked closely with board and administration on strategic planning initiatives and building partnerships within the community and the opera world.
David guided the company through a transformative period of innovation that led Opera News to describe it as “one of the leading instigators of new work in the country” and the New York Times to describe Opera Philadelphia as "a hotbed of operatic innovation." Under his leadership and artistic vision, Opera Philadelphia has grown to become a company of international stature and a favorite co-producing partner with companies all over the globe, developing fresh productions of classic works as well as premieres written by today’s leading composers. The company has engaged and energized both established and emerging artists, providing opportunities for important role debuts for singers like Lawrence Brownlee, Eric Owens, Nathan Gunn, Stephanie Blythe, Christine Goerke, Leah Crocetto, and Lisette Oropesa. As The Daily Beast recently commented, “Opera Philadelphia has been at the forefront of commissioning new operas with contemporary subject matter and an innovative, genre-blending sensibility to snare a younger audience and revitalize opera for the 21st century.”
Key achievements include the establishment of the Aurora Series for Chamber Opera at the Perelman Theater, an extremely popular and highly-subscribed opera series at the Kimmel Center's intimate 550-seat Perelman Theater; the establishment of the nation's first ever collaborative Composer in Residence Program with New York partner Music-Theatre Group, a comprehensive program supported by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, designed to foster the growth of tomorrow's great operatic composers; the creation of the American Repertoire Program in 2011, solidifying Opera Philadelphia’s role as a national leader in the creation of new works; and the creation of the site-specific Opera in the City series. Under David's leadership, the company established the annual Festival O in 2017, launching each season with an immersive, 12-day festival featuring multiple operatic happenings in venues throughout the city. Opera Philadelphia also presents additional productions each spring, making it the first U.S. opera company to open a year-round season with a dynamic festival.
Under David’s leadership, Opera Philadelphia has commissioned or co-commissioned eight new operas, including Charlie Parker’s YARDBIRD by Daniel Schnyder and Bridgette Wimberly, and starring Lawrence Brownlee, which has since been staged at The Apollo Theater in New York and Hackney Empire in London; Cold Mountain, based on the best-selling novel by Charles Frazier and written by Jennifer Higdon and Gene Scheer, and co-commissioned with The Santa Fe Opera; and Breaking the Waves by Missy Mazzoli and Royce Vavrek, based on the film by Lars von Trier, which has since been staged at Beth Morrison Projects' PROTOTYPE Festival and was named Best New Opera of 2016 by the Music Critics Association of North America.
As immediate past Chair of the Board of Directors for the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance and a member of the Opera America board, David is privileged to serve in a city with rich and diverse cultural roots. He continues to work tirelessly to make opera as an important part of our community.
Host
TIM CYNOVA (he/him) wears a multitude of hats, all in service of creating anti-racist workplaces where people can thrive. He is the Principal of the consulting group Work. Shouldn’t. Suck. and has deep knowledge and experience in HR and people-centric organizational design. He currently leads curriculum design in WSS’s areas of expertise: from sharing leadership and power to decolonizing the employee handbook and bylaws; talking with humans to how to hire. His book, Hire with Confidence, based on his experience leading hundreds of searches and “retooling” the traditional search process to center anti-racism and anti-oppression, is scheduled to be published in Winter 2021. In April 2021, he and WSS produced the Ethical Re-Opening Summit, a one-day online convening that explored the question, “How can we co-create a future where everyone thrives as we move into this next stage of a global pandemic?”
In August 2021, Tim closed out his 12-year tenure leading Fractured Atlas, the largest association of artists in the U.S., where he served in both the COO and Co-CEO roles, and was deeply involved in its work to become an anti-racist, anti-oppressive organization since they made this commitment in 2013. Additionally, he serves on the faculty of Banff Centre for Arts & Creativity and The New School teaching courses in People-Centric Organizational Design and Strategic HR; he's a trained mediator, and a certified Senior Professional in Human Resources (SPHR). Earlier in his career, Tim was the Executive Director of The Parsons Dance Company and of High 5 Tickets to the Arts in New York City, had a memorable stint with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, was a one-time classical trombonist, musicologist, and for five years in his youth he delivered newspapers for the Evansville, Indiana Courier-Press. Also, during a particularly slow summer, he bicycled 3,902 miles across the United States.
Transcript
David Devan:
But basically, I'm a good guy. And I believe in equality and I believe in everybody is important. And that's what I've been taught my whole life. And the big aha is none of that is true. Not a single thing of it is true.
Tim Cynova:
Hi, I'm Tim Cynova. Welcome to Work. Shouldn't. Suck., a podcast about, well, that. At Work. Shouldn't. Suck., we spend much of our time focused on the how organizations could become anti-racist, anti-oppressive workplaces. With this in mind, we thought, why don't we do a mini-series as part of this podcast, where we take a deeper look into different organizations and their journeys? And in particular, why don't we take a look at organizations led by white men? I know this might seem a bit strange. Organizations with white male leaders engaged in anti-racism work, why focus on them?
As a white man, who for a number of years has been on a personal and professional journey towards understanding my own privilege, my role as a leader in positions that can either help or hinder the creation of workplaces where people can thrive, workplaces that have commitments to become anti-racist and anti-oppressive, I spent a lot of my time talking with other white men who similarly are at various stages of this personal and professional journey. So I thought, why don't we record some of these conversations and create a series that might be of service to other white male leaders or members of organizations led by white male leaders?
While anyone who is interested can certainly give these episodes a listen, the stories are shared with other white men in mind who might benefit from this sharing of stories and journeys as they themselves are embarking on a similar path. These conversations are definitely not meant to replace the deep, personal learning and introspection required of leaders, but more are a supplement to that work.
One theme we'll hear from these organizations is that this journey, both personally and professionally, hasn't been perfect. The reason we're spending time with this topic is not to highlight organizations and leaders who have it all figured out. I mean, I've yet to find anyone who's genuinely engaged in this work who will admit that they have. But in that sharing our stories with each other, the hope is that it can help inform the work we're all doing.
Taking a quick moment here to say, if you're interested in learning more about our approach to human-centered workplace design, including the brand new Hire with Confidence course we launched, I invite you to visit workshouldntsuck.co, where you'll find a wealth of materials and resources covering everything from shared leadership team models to virtual workplace arrangements to today's subject, organizational journeys towards anti-racism. Now, onto today's conversation.
Today, I'm joined by David Devan, general director and president of Opera Philadelphia. You can find David's bio linked in the description of this episode, so in the interest of time, let's get going. David, welcome to the podcast.
David Devan:
Thanks, Tim. It's great to be here. I'm happy to be with you.
Tim Cynova:
How do you typically introduce yourself, and how do you typically introduce Opera Philadelphia?
David Devan:
I introduce myself as David. My pronouns are he and him. I am the general director and president of Opera Philadelphia. Opera Philadelphia is a dynamic evolving place where opera finds a voice, hopefully in a contemporary sense, and is part of the future of the form. And that's kind of who we are or we're trying to be.
Tim Cynova:
Well, it has certainly been a challenge the past 18 months to two years. We're recording this episode in August 2021, still amidst a global pandemic. How has this been for you and the organization? What has it been like?
David Devan:
I'll say that the last 18 months have been challenging, but they were challenging before that, it was just a different kind of challenging. And certainly, the intensity of some of our work and the uncertainties have increased. But as arts organizations that are very Euro-centered and were built on a subscription model in the last 50 years, which is largely effort and exclusion, we've been on a journey and it's been challenging.
The last 18 months in particular, the uncertainties are great. Opera singers are super spreaders. Our droplets travel over 12 feet. And so being able to care for artists, care for community in a time of great uncertainty and health risk, it's really required us to really look at what has been working and what hasn't been working, and how to make good bets on our activities in the future.
Tim Cynova:
So where do you currently find yourself?
David Devan:
We find ourselves in what I'll call pivot number three. Way back in 2015, we did some seminal research and introspection into our work and we reinvented our season, and we created a contemporary, forward, progressive fall festival as part of our season that really did have a wider aperture on who was invited to participate and who got to create work. That was pivot number one.
Then the pandemic hit and we were into pivot number two. And we started doing heavy digital work, not taking what we've done and just putting it, archives on screen, but actually creating artistic vital work for screen.
And now we're in pivot three, extended pandemic. What do we do now? We used to have two product lines. Now we have three. We've been in big dialogue with members of historically marginalized identities and communities over the last two years. And that's changing, continuing to change that product mix. And so what do we do now? And we are right in the middle of this week, in the middle of interrogating that and what pivot number three may look like with great amounts of flexibility.
Tim Cynova:
A while back, we connected around the conversation around an equity inclusion conversation and what this means for organizations, in particular opera organizations that traditionally haven't been at the forefront of inclusion, equity, diversity, anti-racism, anti-oppression. What does this journey look like for the organization, and then for you personally?
David Devan:
It's hard to find words, to be honest, because it's been a deep, is very much a journey and every day is learning. So to put it in a CEO nice bite-size sound bite response is going to be difficult slash impossible.
I think the biggest thing for me, as it has altered my leadership, our leadership team's work and is about to, or in the process of changing the scope of the leadership and the nature of the leadership of our board of directors. What does all that mean? You know, we early on started looking at the 11 characteristics of white supremacist organizations and started interrogating that and thinking about belonging and creating distributed leadership and giving voices. And so as a leader in chief, I started being the active listener in chief, which was really hard. I come from doing a number of turnarounds at opera companies. And you have a big idea, you get everyone behind your idea and you move forward. And that's not what this work's about.
I actually went and engaged with a coaching organization that both helped us institutionally and me personally with leadership attributes and how to distribute leadership. And we have a particular model that seems to be working for us in that journey.
The other thing I've learned is, is that our industry, the performing arts industry, suffers from great performative wokeness and checking diversity boxes to demonstrate progress, but it's still serving the same power and the same people. So interrogating that has been the big part of the work and learning to be quiet about the work and not in a marketing sense being public about it, that's what it feels like.
Tim Cynova:
I remember at Fractured Atlas, as we were starting work toward understanding racism and oppression and how it was built into our organization and the characteristics of white supremacy culture, as you mentioned, and then wrestling with, if we should say anything, because we are doing the work internally and didn't want to put out a statement about we're doing this work or felt weird about doing the work because we were a predominantly white organization.
And then one of the facilitators we were working with said, "You should talk about it because other organizations are in your exact place and wondering what people are doing, what's working and what's not." And that really led us to start to publish and just to sharing, here's what we're doing. This didn't work well, we wouldn't do it again that way. From that, we've dug into more organizations who were doing the work and that shared the shared experience. Also, the hope with this series here is lending another lens to the work.
David Devan:
That's going to be the next chapter for us, talking about it. But our employees of color felt very strongly that we just really focus on the internal work and we create a place of trust within the organization first. That's taken a year and a half.
And our journey started before the spring of 2020. We had a production in one of our festivals that had some choices in the production and by the director that were going to be harmful and how we managed that was not well. And that led us to opening up a conversation with our employees of color. And that started the learning about harm and that process. And then the tragic George Floyd incident escalated the thought, but it was there.
And what we did learn is we're actually just finished, one of my colleagues and I, just finished a chronology of E and I work that the company has done since 2006. And what we did was we measured initiatives and programs since 2006 that were invitational to historically marginalized communities and artists. We filled up a whole giant timeline, but the learning there was is that again, the performative wokeness checky box, is we weren't intentional about asking who the audiences were, what they wanted, what they needed, who the artists were.
And so while we have this body of work, it hasn't had the impact because it didn't have an authentic intention that was rooted in anti-racism and removing white power from the activity. And so we're actually using that as a dialogue point with our board coming up to make the point that this work is who we are. We just have to be better at it, and we have to be intentional about it. We need to let others share power in doing it, but it's not starting from scratch, in our particular case.
And I think that our industry and a lot of performing arts organizations have done things in the past that they've just done them for the, not the right reasons. So we have to interrogate that. And as a white leader, really learning how to share power or give power away more importantly to others to make those decisions is a big step. And that wasn't in place since 2006. Everything was tightly controlled as they tend to be in these multimillion dollar arts organizations.
Tim Cynova:
You include a number of threads that I want to pull on. The first is around, you talk about E and I, equity and inclusion, and don't often include the D that a lot of organizations talk about or the EDI and DEI. Why is that?
David Devan:
Yeah, we had a conversation about it internally. And again, a number of my colleagues of color in the organization made the case that diversity is that performative checkbox and the real work of changing and being anti-racist lives in inclusion and equity. So we decided to focus on that side of the equation. If you're doing equity and inclusion, you'll get diversity. It's really easy to do diversity and not get equity and inclusion.
I was sent on an errand by the group to define equity. I did a literature search. I talked to people. And I came back with, "This is really hard. This is maybe what it is, but this is maybe what it isn't." And we decided to work through that together. But I think if we'd had the diversity bin that we were trying to fill, we wouldn't have gotten to that richness of understanding.
And really, our understanding is, is that we have to first be inclusive and that's about belonging and trust and safety. And you have that as a prerequisite to getting to something that could be equitable. So that's the answer why, because it's just too easy to check the D boxes through demographics.
Tim Cynova:
What did you come up with for the definition of equity?
David Devan:
Again and less than perfect, but equity is about creating space for where people are at and giving them agency to move forward from their starting point and the institute and adapting to what their realities are and helping them, the organization being open and inclusive and accepting their realities.
Tim Cynova:
I'm often struck by, with my HR had an on and employment law, the difference between equality and equity.
David Devan:
Equity is not equality.
Tim Cynova:
Exactly. But employment law at best strives for equality, not equity. How does this show up in organizations when you're actually living true equity that might run counter to what employment law says everyone is able to have?
David Devan:
My understanding of labor law is, I would call it, its faux veneer of equality precludes equitable actions in many ways. It doesn't allow you to compensate people differently. It doesn't allow you, based on life experience, bring things outside the professional realm that they are bringing. It lays the burden of racism on the people of color, because you're not allowed to create different space and different compensation for people of color. So that's why I call it faux equality, that I think there is a real tension.
And you and I have talked about the tension between HR compliance and equity and inclusion work or anti-racism work. You know that I have, I share, one of your colleagues opinions about chief diversity officers and positions of that nature in terms of really being there to make white people feel better about things. And how I think one of the things as leaders we need to be open to thinking about how we don't keep those things as competing bins in our organization and how we bring in that tension in whatever way we choose for us to work through it.
Tim Cynova:
Let's talk a bit about the people who are in your community, and in particular the board of directors of your community and how they are engaged in this work.
And you mentioned, we've been talking about legal risk, which is usually something that boards of directors are pretty attuned to, what their risk tolerance is. So there is that, but there is also a change, I would assume, for many of your boards, board of directors who have been a part of the organization, and now things like racism are coming into the conversation and oppression and white supremacy culture. What have those conversations been like as you're talking with your board and how is that playing out?
David Devan:
We're the same as most organizations I think is that there is a big discrepancy about the depth of this work with the staff and the board. There is a different life experience, there is different age and there is different financial resource experience.
With our board, we have, our conversations have been focused on training to get language and understanding of some basic concepts. Board leadership and the Equity and Inclusion Committee, which has board members on it, decided the best thing we needed to do is to do an audit. Boards, their governance is about measurement, measuring and ensuring mission fulfillment. And so we needed to do an equity and inclusion audit, so that we could have facts in front of us about what we're doing well and what we're not doing well. And that, that should be the springboard for the board to lean in and do the work.
So the past year has been about doing some training and introducing some, the concepts that you just outlined. And at the end of August, we will receive our audit from an outside firm. And that will be the basis of a dedicated two hour board meeting on accepting that audit, understanding the context of where that audit lands and coming up with agreements on what we're going to do about that.
And along that way, I mean everybody is on different parts of the journey. We have board members that show up to weekly Equity and Inclusion Committee meetings every Thursday for 90 minutes and have done for 15 months. And then we have some board members that don't want to talk about it, "Go ahead, do it, but I don't want to talk about." So we're trying to create a space with data that we can have a leveling conversation and come to some agreements about actions.
Tim Cynova:
Can you talk a little bit more about your equity and inclusion committee? Because it's one of those questions that a lot of... I'm sure you get it a lot of times with organizations who are starting the work like, "Should we hire a facilitator? Should we start a taskforce? Should we start a committee? Should we start caucusing?"
David Devan:
Yes, yes and yes. So we started with a facilitator having a conversation with our employees of color, as well as our artistic, some of our artistic leaders coming out of this production I talked about earlier, that there had been some harm done in terms of how we managed racial identities in the production. We fix it, but how we fixed it was really not great. And that led to the idea of creating a committee.
And we decided that it needed to be a board and staff committee because you didn't want those two existences to drive further apart. And we also wanted to make sure that it had employees of color. It also had to have representatives through the different authorities of the organization and representing each department.
And we brought a facilitator in to help us decide how we were going to govern ourselves. And that facilitator brought in the 11 principles of white supremacy culture. And so we wanted to make sure that our committee was not emphasizing or rallied around any of those characteristics, so that led us to no chair. So consensus, agendas, consensus work. I sit on that committee, not as a C... with no CEO power. I sit there as the CEO who can learn and take direction and take actions that the committee wants to do.
We also identified that trust was paramount. And so trust comes through frequent, often transparency and frequency. And so we decided that weekly meetings needed to be the way to go. It had some community, came up with some community agreements that would govern how we acted.
I would say the first five months was nothing but trust building. I mean, we were working on things, but we didn't really hit a trust stride until, I would say honestly, really eight months. It's because there was a lot of microaggressions and there was a lot of good guy, white, exclusively white-centered power in the Zoom room. We need to leave time for that to become un-assembled.
Tim Cynova:
And on the topic of white guys in positions of leadership-
David Devan:
Ta-da.
Tim Cynova:
... yeah, who have relative privilege and power here, what has this been like personally for you? What's resonated most? What learning have you done? Where do you still struggle personally and professionally in this?
David Devan:
I am a white, gay, Canadian living in Philadelphia. And so through that identity had always thought of myself as well, I'm Canadian, I'm one of the good guys. Canada is a pluralistic society. It's a mosaic, not a melting pot. And as a gay man, I know of some level of marginalization. I knew I could hide it. And I know it's different than being marginalized because of a cultural identity or color, but basically I'm a good guy and I believe in equality and I believe in everybody is important. That's what I've been taught my whole life. And the big aha is none of that is true. Not a single thing of it is true.
And in my nice white guy-ness, I was centering my experience and advancing what I wanted to advance. And I was bringing people as I could along with that, but it was always on my terms. That's how you get stuff done, I was taught. And as a gay man, I can choose, in many ways, my identity and how people react to me and others can't.
And I come from a lot of privilege, because I had access to serious high-grade education. I did not come from financial privilege, but education privilege. And that shaped also how I accepted people. So if you came from that education experience, I listened to you more. So it's been deep. I have utilized executive coaching as a way to make sure that I am individually interrogating me, so that I can bring the right version of me or a better version of me into the work.
I think the other thing I learned is that I need to stop trying to prove myself. We're put into these positions, and I was very fortunate to be put into a leadership position at a young age. And you get on the urgency and perfection proof wagon. And I think you've got nothing to prove, for me was a very important white guy give up that I needed to do in order to create space for others.
And then finally, you know this, I'm pretty committed to a RACI distribution. And I needed a system to give people authority and responsibility [a way 00:25:15]. And that was part of the institutional coaching stuff. We found something that worked for us. I'm not selling it to anybody, because it doesn't work for a lot of people, but to find your own system, your own vocabulary and way to distribute responsibility and authority.
Tim Cynova:
And for those listening here, RACI, R-A-C-I, it's aa structure similar to [DARCI 00:25:40] or MOCHA. And so if you want to dig into it a bit more, it's an acronym.
David Devan:
And for us, the letters stand for approval, responsibility, consultation, and information.
Tim Cynova:
It's a helpful framework. I mean, as you said, it doesn't work for everyone, but trying it out, seeing what fits as you look to create transparency, accountability, and alignment, it could be useful, just to articulate that those are different things in a group when you're showing up to do work.
David Devan:
Where am I going to share the A? Where am I going to give the A away? Who's got the responsibilities for doing things? And by that means you got to let them do it and they get to make, call the shots.
Tim Cynova:
So right now, Opera Philadelphia is in the process of hiring a vice president of HR and Inclusion. I will say full disclosure. I know this because Opera Philadelphia has contracted Work. Shouldn't. Suck. to be involved in this really exciting process. This is a new role for the organization. Can you unpack how the role came to be and what the hopes are for it?
David Devan:
This is a big, important hire and investment for us. As we've worked through the last 18 months, the welfare of our human resources is very important. It's critical to the future and us building on our greatest asset, which is our people is imperative to doing work that's meaningful.
We decided that we needed to add to our leadership team, we call it the management team, with a vice president. Through that dialogue, we got to the point that there are tensions between HR compliance and equity and inclusion work. And the thought was is that we would hire somebody that would be able to deal with those tensions as part of their practice.
We also wanted to widen the census of what this position would be responsible for, helping us manage and meeting our people goals. Typically, these positions are about administrative structures, but we added all W2's. So that's our orchestra and our chorus and our stagehands. So craftspeople and the artists that are part of our organization is to have a wider census because those issues of compliance and equity inclusion meet or are important to all of those people.
We also, with your great advice, made a choice that we wanted to demonstrate anti-racist behaviors in how we conducted the search. And so it's not only a move in terms of the hire, but it's a real opportunity to put behaviors after a lot of discourse and thought. We can't wait to see what happens.
Tim, you've talked to more employees about it as part of the process, but it did receive full endorsement by our full staff in terms of this hire. We've been very transparent about how we want to go about doing it. Can't wait.
Tim Cynova:
As you think this role, the work that you're doing around equity and inclusion, in three years, what do you hope it looks and feels like to work at Opera Philadelphia? And I'll include, I was chatting with a colleague last week and they mentioned wanting to have a quote unquote, "shared futures contract," as part of their approach to people operations. And that phrase just really resonated with me, responsibilities for an organization as it creates places where people can thrive.
So I'm curious, as you think about these things, you think about the new role that's going to be coming in, the work that you're doing amid a pandemic, what's resonating for you in all of that right now?
David Devan:
I think by connecting to the past, by past opera, we can do so in a way that is about now. And in that spirit, we can look forward to a future. How we do that is the big question. And in three years, I hope the how we're doing that, whether it's commissioning contemporary works, we do a lot of that or the canon, our channel, or our festival, that we really are a community focused organization that has national and international impact.
And by that, I mean, we've been very artist-centered and I think we need to be artist and community-centered, and we need to be able to bring that community in, in a shared responsibility way. And that would be the contract that we are intentional about being here for our full community. And that means we need to create space for belonging and for them to be a part of this, not from just a transactional consumption point of view, but actually what we do.
As an example, there is a lot of troubled work in the canon of opera that deals with identities that have been harmed in the past. And one of those that is a very debated opera is Madama Butterfly.
A number of years ago, we talked to the AAPI community and based on what they told us, we went away and we cast Asian artists in all the Asian principal roles. We found a production that wasn't about Japanese exoticism. It was more about anti-American. There was no yellow face used in it, and it was supposed to happen this coming year. And in the context of all the Asian hatred that is so prevalent in this country, our staff, not me, our staff, because we were practicing transparency in conversations said, "Hold up, this doesn't feel right."
And so we went and created, had a conversation with the AAPI community. And we agreed that we would do what that community told us to do. And they said, "Don't do it right now." So we didn't. And what that meant was is that we ended up choosing another opera and all the Asian artists got roles in this other opera, roles for the first time. Many of them hadn't been cast outside of their cultural identity in four years, because they just, they're the Madama Butterfly people. We didn't have a role for the lead soprano and that changed things, so we are creating a one-woman show for her of her curation and her design in our festival the following year.
And then through discussion with the AAPI community, they said, "Listen, we'd like to be a part of deciding how you're doing. We're not saying don't do it. We just want to be a part. And while you listened the last time, you listened and then you went away and made all the decisions without us."
We're about to propose to them a way that can work together to come to those share conclusions. And that's only going to be better for everybody. And so I just use that as an example. If we can embrace that kind of work and thinking across the spectrum of our activities and that's what it looks like in three years, in my mind that's a home run.
But when I think about the future of Opera Philadelphia, I've said this earlier, but our greatest asset is our people. And I think the person that occupies this VP of HRI is going to be on the ground floor of figuring out what that looks like. They're going to have a committed team that's ready to listen and walk beside on that journey.
Tim Cynova:
Thank you so much, David, for your openness, your insights around the work, where you're struggling, what's resonated and that this is a very long journey that we're on. Thank you so much for being on the podcast.
David Devan:
Well, Tim, thanks so much for having me and thank you for all your great work. As another white leader, you have demonstrated great inspirational behavior for others to follow such as myself, so thanks.
Tim Cynova:
To learn more about Opera Philadelphia and to check out their online channel that's been dubbed, "The HBO of opera," by The New York Times, visit them at operaphila.org. That's O-P-E-R-A-P-H-I-L-A.org.
If you know of anyone who might be interested in applying for Opera Philadelphia's new vice president of HR and Inclusion role, find out more about the opportunity under the executive assert section on workshouldntsuck.co.
If you've enjoyed the conversation or are just feeling generous today, please consider writing a review on iTunes, so that others who might be interested in the topic can join the fun too. Give it a thumbs up, or a five stars, or a phone-a-friend, whatever your podcasting platform of choice offers. Until next time, thanks for listening.
The podcast is available for free on your favorite podcasting platforms:
Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | TuneIn | RSS Feed
If you enjoy the show, please leave a review on iTunes to help others discover the podcast.
