When Deirdra “Jen” Brown talks about her work in the world, the phrase “for the greater good” comes up regularly: it’s what she believes and what she practices. In this interview, Deirdra talks about her work as a lawyer within a system fraught with injustice, starting out in criminal defense and now taking up civil rights cases related to discrimination and mistreatment in the workplace. Alongside being an attorney, she is actively engaged in addressing one of the most challenging issues – racism and the toxic ideology of White supremacy. She is a steering committee member and facilitator of the Race Unity Circle in Poughkeepsie, which she founded with friends in 2014 after the murder of Michael Brown, and involved in a number of other related community initiatives (see links below). She shares her passion to facilitate collective learning, encourage systematic investigation the truth, and grow capacity to sustainably engage in difficult conversations along with her wisdom on how and why she chooses to orient to and maintain a connection with hope and put into practice values she sees as essential to collaboration, like: consultation, detached candor, courtesy, humility, moderation, patience, and persistence.
