BIPOC Executive Transition in White Dominant Cultures

Ingrid Benedict is the director of the Daphne Foundation, which invests in organizations that empower community residents affected by poverty, violence, and discrimination. Prior to joining the Daphne Foundation, she served as a Senior Fellow with the Movement Strategy Center, supporting youth-led and intergenerational social change leaders, organizations, and networks. Since 2011, Ingrid has acted as an independent philanthropic and organizational consultant for several clients, including Urgent Action Fund for Women's Human Rights, NoVo Foundation, and Ford Foundation. Ms. Benedict is a co-founder and co-chair of New York Blacks in Philanthropy and serves on the boards of United We Dream Network, Solidaire, and BOLD (Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity). She holds a B.A. from the University of California, San Diego and a Masters of Public Administration from San Francisco State University. Ms. Benedict is a first-generation immigrant from Nicaragua. She moved to California with her family in the early 1980s. She currently resides in Flatbush.

I grew up on Osage & Caddo lands in an Ozark Mountain town. My mother raised me steeped in protests against the occupation of Iraq, for Palestinian liberation and environmental justice, and in the history of Black resistance and art. Though the South gave me an appreciation for moving slowly and seasonal rhythms, the broader context of whiteness made me hungry to find a place where I could experience a deeper sense of belonging to recover from the alienation of white supremacy. My path led me to social justice movement-steeped Oakland, California where I graduated from Mills College with a BA in Ethnic Studies, a field formed by Black and Brown student-led protest movements in the 1960s. ​The depth of apocalyptic suffering that my Syrian community is living is one of the hardest truths I have had to grapple with in my life, and the key to my heart-opening journey to becoming a healer. Finding a spiritual practice, sitting long meditation retreats and doing a decade of personal healing work supported me deeply. These experiences helped me to become intimate with the root causes of suffering within myself, and to recognize how these same causes, on a macro-level, create the institutions that harm Black and Brown bodies. I came to see that when we have access to enough safety, support, and resources to sustain awareness of our own suffering with compassion, we can open to the suffering of others. We can interrupt intergenerational cycles of harm. We can deeply transform ourselves and our world. And we each hold within us the medicine for our collective healing, more abundance of it than we might even imagine. The holistic healing modalities and lineage practices from which I benefit include somatic work, herbalism and curandurismo, dream work, energy healing, Sufi dhikr, Muslim prayer, and Buddhist meditation. I trained as a transformative facilitator, a doula, and an instructor of trauma-informed mindfulness meditation. I completed a two-year certification as an energy healing practitioner in the Syntara System method which gave me the principles of healing I would need to practice formally. Through my practice and study, I commit to creating containers for healing and safety that align us with our most beautiful selves, repair wounds caused by systemic oppression, and restore harmony and peace (“Weyam wa Salam”) to the earth, ourselves, and each other.