Systems can’t help people thrive when they’re built with inequities at their core. We provide leaders with the insight, skills, and strategies to reimagine those systems so they work fairly and effectively for everyone.
We start by offering training that builds a strong foundation of knowledge and a clear framework for understanding how race and racism have shaped American culture and institutions. Using this framework, we work alongside organizations to help them gain insight into their own culture and practices, and to develop the capacity and processes needed to create lasting, meaningful change.
The Racial Equity Institute’s phased approach typically includes several workshops, consulting, and coaching for organizational change. We offer BOTH workshops for organizations AND host public training for individuals. Components of our process include the following coursework.
To learn more about hosting a workshop, please review our latest REI Hosting Guide.
Understanding Racial Inequity: A Groundwater Approach
LEARN MORE ABOUT THE GROUNDWATER APPROACH MODEL
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An interactive presentation on the nature and impact of structural racism and what it looks like across institutions. We examine narratives around racial disproportionality and make use of compelling research data to illustrate the systemic nature of racism and the fallacy of typical explanations like poverty, education, social class, individual behavior, or cultural attributes that often get associated with particular racial groups. Before addressing racial inequity or perceived acts of discrimination or oppression, it is critical to understand what institutional racism looks like and the devastating impact it wields on our nation’s people, economy, and social institutions.
The Groundwater Approach teaches how to use data to measure the systemic impact of racism and to track institutional change. Once grounded in what the problem of structural racism is and what it isn’t, participants are ready to move to Phase I training, which introduces an analysis of how and why racism was created and how it has been embedded and maintained within and across America’s institutions.
Some organizations use the Groundwater as a first training; others may use it later in the process to focus on data as an organizing tool, focusing on data from their own institution, community, or state. Some organizations bypass the Groundwater and start with Phase I, which is the foundation of our training and organizing strategy.
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Half-day presentation (3 hours) with several breaks.
The Presentation is capped at 50 participants.
In-person and virtual options are available.
The virtual Presentation is conducted via Zoom, with only one participant per registration. Multiple people cannot share a screen. REI will set up Zoom links and send them to the host.
Please read the REI Hosting Guide for fully detailed logistical information.
REI Pre-BRIEF & DEBRIEF:
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The REI Pre-Brief is a 60-minute introductory session designed to prepare participants for the depth, pace, and transformative learning of the two-day Phase 1 workshop. This session introduces our core Fish–Lake–Groundwater framework, explains the structural and historical perspective that underpin REI’s analysis, and helps participants shift from individual explanations of racial inequity to a systems-level understanding. The Pre-Brief also establishes shared language, expectations, and norms, so participants start Phase 1 grounded, open, and ready to engage fully. It provides a welcoming and clarifying space that ensures every participant begins the workshop with context, courage, and a sense of collective purpose.
For detailed agenda, check here:
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The Pre-Brief is 1-hour in duration.
The participant count is capped at a firm 35.
In-person and virtual options are available.
The virtual Pre-Brief is conducted via Zoom, only one participant per registration. Multiple people cannot share a screen. REI will set up Zoom links and send them to the host.
Please read the REI Hosting Guide for fully detailed logistical information.
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REI offers debriefing sessions with groups who have experienced a Groundwater, Phase I, or a Phase I and II workshops. Debriefs will be based on the particular needs of groups or organizations.
Participants will review and examine the concepts presented in a workshop or Groundwater Presentation, paying attention to how they relate to each other and your organization's work. The lessons of each piece will be explored in relationship to REI’s analysis of structural racism.
The session aims to connect all parts of the workshop or Groundwater Presentation to a shared understanding and analysis of the problem. It will include an analysis of the roots of racism and its contemporary manifestations. Participants will explore the meaning of each piece and its relevance to a vision for change.
Debrief participants will discuss one or more of the following, or REI will consider questions your organization proposes:
How does the analysis explain our present circumstances?
How has racism remade itself in contemporary times?
Specifically, what does racism look like today?
Why is an organizing approach necessary to challenge or end racism?
How do you apply workshop concepts to the work you do?
What does an organizing approach look like?
What are the narratives of the dominant culture?
How do we understand the narratives better? What underpins them and inoculates generation after generation?
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The Debriefs will be based on the specific needs of groups or organizations and include a half-day (3 hours) and full-day (5.5 hours) opportunity with small breaks and/or a full lunch break.
The participant count is capped at a firm 35.
In-person and virtual options are available.
The virtual Debrief is conducted via Zoom, only one participant per registration. Multiple people cannot share a screen. REI will set up Zoom links and send them to the host.
Please read the REI Hosting Guide for fully detailed logistical information.
EDUCATION MODULES
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Title: Mindsets, Maps & Margins (How Bias, School Zones, and Resource Patterns Shape Student Outcomes)
This REI session is designed for educators and education leaders who want to understand how our perceptions of students and the structural patterns that surround them affect achievement, discipline, and school culture. Participants will explore how cognitive shortcuts influence expectations, how concentrated poverty impacts classrooms, and how school zoning and housing policy create the very conditions that Title I funding tries to remedy. Participants will leave with a new language, new lenses, and a stronger case for equity-centered decision-making at every level, from classrooms to central offices.
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Title: How Systems Shape Thinking, and Thinking Shapes Schools (The Neuroscience of Bias Meets the Geography of Education Disparity)
This REI session breaks down how unexamined beliefs about students, families, neighborhoods, and achievement get encoded into school policies and practices. Participants will explore how discipline disparities, special education referrals, school closures, and underfunding are not random or inevitable. They are the result of deeply embedded systems of race and class. We will study how poverty is concentrated through school zoning and land use policies and why eliminating Title I schools requires more than just better test preparation or breakfast programs. It requires confronting the systems that create concentrated disadvantages in the first place.
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Title: Seeing the Unseen in Our Schools: Patterns, Poverty & Perception (What Every Educator Needs to Know About Structural Inequity)
Why do some schools continue to struggle year after year, despite various attempts at improvement? This interactive session helps educators and school system leaders connect the dots between perception, policy, and place. We will examine how our own mental models about race, behavior, and capacity are shaped by broader social norms, and how those patterns shape who teaches, who learns, and who thrives. Participants will leave better equipped to advocate for systemic change while improving equity in their own spheres of influence, from classroom practice to boardroom policy.
PHASE 1 WORKSHOP:
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A foundational workshop that focuses on understanding the philosophy and core principles behind racism, especially in historical and institutional contexts. Even those who are concerned about racial disparities in all American systems and institutions are challenged in their understanding of how racism remains present in outcomes.
Moving the focus from individual bigotry and bias, the Racial Equity Institute’s Phase I Workshop presents a historical, cultural, structural, and institutional analysis of racism. With a clear understanding of how institutions, systems, and culture are producing unjust and inequitable outcomes, participants are better equipped to work for change. Phase I builds the capacity of participants to identify the root causes of disparity and establish goals and strategies based on that more profound understanding. Participants develop an analysis of institutional racial disparities that helps their organization develop a shared understanding of the problem and a common language to address it.
This paradigm-shifting experience redefines equity issues as they manifest in systems and institutions today and the attendant actions of individuals seeking to address them. The Phase I Workshop is the foundation of our training and organizing strategy.
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The Workshop is two full days (8 hours each day) with many small breaks and a full lunch break.
The participant count is capped at a firm 35 with a minimum of 15 for maximum engagement.
In-person and virtual options are available.
The virtual Phase 1 is conducted via Zoom, only one participant per registration. Multiple people cannot share a screen. REI will set up Zoom links and send them to the host.
Please read the REI Hosting Guide for fully detailed logistical information.
PHASE 2 WORKSHOP
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REI believes change is not a one-time event but requires long-term commitment and collective wisdom. We are committed to bringing awareness and analysis to the root causes of disparities to end them. REI brings a movement approach to the work of change, designed to teach an analysis that supports institutional transformation and creates a new narrative. Visions of change can only grow and become real through:
Organizing in both community and institutions,
Creating structures for the work and ensuring those structures allow for accountability of organizations in the communities served,
And periodically engaging in evaluation and reflection.
REI’s Phase II workshop is designed to explore the concepts and analysis taught in Phase I more deeply and to learn to apply those lessons. Deepening participant's awareness, Phase II will examine:
Shifting understanding of racism from personal experience to institutional outcomes,
Shifting the focus of their analysis from fish to lake—individuals to institutions,
Moving from lake to groundwater—from separate institutions to interconnected systems,
Moving from personal to collective— the recognition that personal experience of race is a shared experience of one’s group,
And moving from thinking racism only negatively affects POC— to understanding the harm that affects everyone.
We must have faith that the answer to “what do I do” is in the absorption of the problem. Phase II is a step on the journey from analysis to action
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The Workshop is two full days (8 hours each day) with many small breaks and a full lunch break.
The participant count is capped at a firm 35.
In-person and virtual options are available.
The virtual Phase 2 is conducted via Zoom, only one participant per registration. Multiple people cannot share a screen. REI will set up Zoom links and send them to the host.
Please read the REI Hosting Guide for fully detailed logistical information.
MEASURING RACIAL EQUITY: ASIAN AMERICANS
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Measuring Racial Equity: Asian Americans is a three hour presentation for people who are a part of, live in, or work with Asian American communities and who are interested in eliminating racism and racial inequities in our society. Using data and research, this presentation reveals the often overlooked impacts of racism on Asian Americans communities by using the following approaches:
1. Disaggregating Data: Disparities within the Asian American community and across other racial groups can be revealed by disaggregating outcomes of well-being based on ethnicity and many other factors across indicators of income, poverty, health, housing, and more.
2. Controlling for Similar Profiles: When matched along similar profiles and qualifications, Asian Americans appear to experience relative disadvantages compared to White Americans—similarly and differently from other communities of color.
3. Looking at Major Events: During/after major events such as the COVID-19 pandemic, Asian Americans can be met with negative outcomes and increased vulnerability during turbulent periods–similarly and differently to other communities of color.
Measuring Racial Equity: Asian Americans can serve as a complement to existing presentations that ground people in understanding racism as historically and structurally rooted such as the Racial Equity Institute’s Groundwater presentation or as an entry point for Asian Americans to understand how racism impacts their communities.
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For inquiries or bookings, please visit www.reineylin.com.
YOUTH WORKSHOP:
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The Racial Equity Institute provides a two-day Racial Equity Leadership Institute for Youth for high school students to raise awareness of the role of young people in a movement for systems transformation and social justice. This workshop parallels the Phase I workshop but includes more videos and interactive exercises designed to educate about how racialized history, institutions, and bias impact contemporary culture and experience and, most importantly, how young people can organize to create an equitable world.
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The Workshop is two days (5hrs each day) with many small breaks
The participant count is capped at a firm 35 with a minimum of 15 for maximum engagement.
In-person and virtual options are available.
The virtual Phase 1 is conducted via Zoom, only one participant per registration. Multiple people cannot share a screen. REI will set up Zoom links and send them to the host.
Please read the REI Hosting Guide for fully detailed logistical information.
