Recess Board:
A New Approach
2024
Recess formed 15 years ago (2009) to build a more equitable arts community. In 2020, staff and board compiled a framework of Care & Accountability toward Abolition, centering values of fairness and justice not only in our external programming, but also attempting the same in our internal operations. This led to major shifts in pay equity, shared executive and board leadership, and an ideological framework for our work within and beyond systems of oppression. Over the last 4 years, we’ve experienced and learned a lot—through conflict, failure, opportunity, and success. We have also experienced significant leadership transitions–from the implementation of a Board co-chair model alongside the arrival and departure of many board members, to the expansion of Shaun Leonardo’s role to Co-Director in 2020, the departure of Founder and Co-Director Allison Freedman Weisberg in 2022, and the arrival of Lindsay C. Harris as Co-Director in 2023. As a creative practice, then, we must embrace constant and intentional change, in all its difficulty, as we reconfigure and reimagine our structures and inner-workings. Through the lens of this practice, we must also bring understanding and acceptance to the complexity and messiness of relationships, particularly during necessary shifts in power.
It is from these learnings that in spring 2023 Recess began conversations with consultancy Sadao Ghosh to guide the organization through a reimagining of a new board structure—one which builds upon our framework of care and accountability and operationalizes an ethos of power-sharing. We aimed to learn from Recess’ past and other leaders in the field to reorient closer to our mission and stretch the boundaries of a nonprofit board model operating within capitalism, while creating a culture where board and staff work in exchange.
The project to develop a new board culture incorporated a process of research through a ‘Discovery Phase’ of confidential interviews with colleagues at nonprofits, both in the arts and social justice spaces, that have implemented experimental distribution of power across board and staff, as well as colleagues who bring fieldwide knowledge and philanthropic experience.
Recess Board Discovery Report - Sadao Ghosh
Sadao Ghosh and Recess Co-Directors convened an Advisory Circle including American Artist, Keonna Hendrick, Tiffany Lenoi Jones, KT Kennedy, Salvador Muñoz, Christopher Udemezue, and Sarah Workneh for a series of facilitated workshops to review and add onto high-level recommendations from the Discovery Report. Collectively we determined a value set for a reimagined board, considered roles that would support Recess’s abolitionist framework, and developed ideas on how to untangle governance from fundraising while prioritizing mutual learning:
Recess Board Manifesto
Recess Board Roles
With these ideals, Recess moved through Board recruitment over the spring and summer of 2024. After an initial open call and nomination process, Recess received 28 applications, moving forward with interviews with 14 candidates based on criteria that prioritized alignment with the recently formed board roles and the organization's mission and vision. The 4 individuals invited were identified as those who bring a wealth of lived and professional experience and a deep alignment with Recess’ core values. Together, in August of 2024, they joined Recess as its first ever consensus-based, compensated Board, built as a trust-based support network for staff, and for accountability to the widest configuration of the Recess community.
The Recess Board
Wanett Clyde
Wanett Clyde is the Collections Management Librarian at CUNY’s New York City College of Technology, where in addition to managing the library’s collection she oversees the university archives. Her research seeks to explore the intersection of Black history and fashion history, drawing out under credited African-American contributors, their critical innovations and accomplishments, and other meaningful connections in the overlapping research spheres. As an active participant in the Brooklyn maker scene, she highlights the rich textile history of the Americas and fosters introductions between academics and fiber enthusiasts. Viewing art, textiles and Black maker history through an abolitionist lens has broadened her research horizons and forged new, fruitful partnerships in both her academic and personal research circles.
Che Gossett
Critical Writer
Che Gossett is a Black non binary writer and critic. They are currently associate director of the Center for Research in Feminist, Queer and Transgender Studies at the University of Pennsylvania and a 2024-2025 Mellon digital humanities fellow at the Penn Price Lab. Prior to this, Che was a postdoctoral scholar at Columbia Law School and a visiting fellow at Harvard Law School. Currently Che is finishing two manuscripts, the first being a political and intellectual biography of queer Asian American AIDS activist Kiyoshi Kuromiya that critically inhabits his archive and puts the register of life writing in contact with the fields of medical and digital humanities, queer/trans studies, literary studies, and Black studies. The second book, emerging out of their dissertation, theorizes the ways in which abolition is activated in Black contemporary art.
Anthonine Pierre
Anthonine Pierre is a Brooklyn-born Haitian facilitator, organizer and storyteller. Increasingly, in a post-COVID world, her work revolves around themes of sustainability, grief, home and Black leisure. As the Executive Director of the Brooklyn Movement Center (BMC), Anthonine works to sustain movement organizing in Black Brooklyn now and for future generations. Her community organizing at BMC since 2011 has ranged from facilitating Community School District 16 parent leadership trainings to supporting the family of Saheed Vassell, a Crown Heights resident killed by NYPD officers in 2018, to organizing Black-led responses to street harassment and gender-based violence with a Black woman-led collective known as No Disrespect.
Since 2019, Anthonine has been researching the current conditions of sustainability within the NYC nonprofit social justice movement. She is currently advancing this work as a second-year Community Fellow in the Mellon Initiative for Inclusive Faculty Excellence at The New School. Anthonine has held previously held positions at the Prospect Park Alliance, the Children’s Defense Fund-NY, and the Manhattan Borough President’s Office. She is grounded in her commitment to collective leadership through her work on the boards of the Strozzi Institute and Recess, as well as the North Star Fund’s Let Us Breathe Community Funding Committee. When she’s not organizing towards the Black Future, you can find her taking slow, sweet walks in Flatbush.
LGL Tenacity
LGL Tenacity (she/her/goddess): is a seasoned polymath Femme and social justice leader with over 20 years of experience as a hotelier, event producer, development & operations expert in both the corporate and nonprofit sectors. She also has over 30 years of experience in musical theatre, nightlife, fundraising, event production, advocacy, and community engagement. Proven ability to secure multi-million dollar funding, forge strategic partnerships, and amplify institutional narratives. A Deep commitment to racial, social, gender, and economic justice for marginalized and oppressed communities.
As a multidimensional force - a visionary cultural architect, radical storyteller, and community catalyst whose life's work spans the realms of abolition, advocacy, philanthropy, and transformative artistic expression. With an unwavering commitment to liberation, equity, and radical change, LGL is dedicated to uplifting marginalized voices and fostering ecosystems of care and accountability. As a proud native New Yorker and seasoned community leader with over two decades of experience, she continues to thrive on leaving behind an indelible mark on the social justice landscape. This can be found sited in the New York State Law review of 2016, as she challenged The Supreme Court of New York State on behalf of name changes for TGNC people.
She is most known for her tenure as Director of Development & Finance at the Sylvia Rivera Law Project where she raised over $5.5 million dollars alone from 2019-2023, 1 million was unrestricted from MacKenzie Scott supporting paid leadership development opportunities and community redistribution. LGL is currently a PrEP Spokesmodel for Amida Care and New Pride Agenda's TGNC Health Coalition in New York state. In 2022, as an abolitionist LGL was awarded BaBEC’s Equity Architect Award and NYTAG’s Sylvia Rivera Exemplary Achievement Award. Her continued efforts recently awarded her 3 different New York State Proclamations from Governor Hochul. One for Women’s History Month, one for Juneteenth in Fire Island and another for LGBTQIA Pride.
She is most proud of being a Co-founder of The Radical Hearts Collective with artist Paco May in Brooklyn, NY. LGL was also a member of the New York Women’s Foundation Director of Development Leadership Circle and the North Star Fund’s 2020 Giving Project, raising over $300K collectively for Black-led NYC organizations.
She has also worked for companies such as Marriott, Hilton & Intercontinental Hotels Group. Ms. Tenacity’s favorite event she has produced to date is the Mx. Juneteenth Pageant during the annual Juneteenth Weekend celebration with over 15 events on Fire Island as a Founding Board Member of The Black & Brown Equity Coalition.
LGL is currently the Operations and Finance Manager at Black Trans Femmes in the Arts (BTFA) Collective based in Brooklyn. She is honored to join the Board of Directors for Recess Art in the new era of transformation!
Along with our new Board, we welcomed six new Advisory Circle members who represent Session and Assembly alums, community partners, and thought leaders. This reconfigured group of advisors will support the organization in project-based non-decision making capacity during this year of transition. The Advisory Circle was formed as an initial group of 6-7 individuals who have been in close proximity with Recess and who agreed to both support and be in close community during the Board and co-directorship transition through distinct projects and open engagements.
We thank our community of staff members, young people, artists, writers, supporters, board members, advisors, and partners, both past and present, for giving us the respect and trust needed to be an ecosystem committed to the difficulty of relational work.