Harnessing the Power of Privilege with Board Chair Amber Cabral

What’s the best way to be an ally? 

This is a difficult, yet important question many people have been faced with this year as the country’s dysfunctional political climate has taken center stage. Protests against racism and police brutality have sparked heated conversations between friends, family members, and coworkers. The fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic has also shed light on the comfortable lifestyle many of us have taken for granted as families struggle with job loss, bankruptcy, and grieving loved ones. 

As individuals come face-to-face with their privilege, they are often met with feelings of discomfort, guilt, or shame. Having privilege means having responsibility. Once you realize you have the power to help someone else, what do you do with that power?

Last week, our Board Chair, Amber Cabral, took over our Instagram page to share a ton of insight on how to harness and use your privilege to make a difference. She explained her own privilege and how she uses it to advocate for Brown Girls Do Ballet. Amber also chatted with Brown Girls Do Ballet’s founder, TaKiyah Wallace, in a live interview discussing her upcoming book, Allies and Advocates.

Photo: Danielle Finney

You may be wondering what purpose a board serves for non-profit organizations. Once donations are collected, there’s a board of people who work together to ensure the money is being used to fulfill the organization’s mission. The board is responsible for deciding the best strategy for launching projects on behalf of the organization, with the goal of maximizing exposure and generating support. 

As the Board Chair, Amber is the person who steers those conversations. She is responsible for offering guidance and insight so that the decisions made are in the best interest of the organization. Some decisions include whether or not to launch a calendar each year, what products the organization should sell, how to discover new areas of involvement that align with the organization's mission, and more. 

“It was very important to me to make sure that the people who were on our board understood the space in a way that not even I understood it in a lot of ways,” TaKiyah said, describing the board of Brown Girls Do Ballet. “I’m inspired every single time I look at our board and I just think about how this started and where it’s going.” All of the organization’s board members are women of color.

Amber was naturally drawn to assist Brown Girls Do Ballet because she could fully relate to its mission. A former dancer of 14 years, Amber remembers what it was like being the only dancer of color at her school and struggling to slick her thick hair back into a traditional ballerina bun. She explained how the pressures of fitting in as a ballerina of color were exhausting, eventually leading her to hang up her pointe shoes. 

“I realized I was a little bit too curvy to be a ballerina,” Amber said. She explained how her physique changed as she matured, making it hard for her to remain lean as a dancer even though her technique was great. This brought on feelings of invalidity because she did not fit the traditional mold of what a ballerina was expected to look like.

“Now in 2020, thanks to organizations like [Brown Girls Do Ballet], that is no longer a big deal!” she exclaimed.

Photo: Danielle Finney

Today, Amber is a diversity consultant for Fortune 500 companies, where she educates their staff on ways to prioritize and implement an inclusive culture into their workplace. Having a connection with these major corporations is a privilege, Amber noted. By being an expert in her career field, Amber is often met with opportunities to promote Brown Girls Do Ballet or facilitate arrangements that help the organization pursue its mission.

“I’m uniquely positioned because of what I do for work. I have a lot of access to a lot of big, very commonly, well-known corporations, and I’m always trying to position [Brown Girls Do Ballet] to get that visibility,” she said. In fact, Amber and TaKiyah agreed that Brown Girls Do Ballet likely wouldn’t be as successful as it is today without the work Amber does. 

This is how Amber exercises her privilege. 

Whether it’s because of a person’s race, skin tone, financial status, or skill set, privilege can be found in almost any situation. The trick to exercising privilege, Amber explained, is to not feel guilty about having it, or embarrassed about not having it.  

“I think sometimes we get so preoccupied with how we feel about privilege...What you really should be doing with privilege is figuring out ‘How can I open up doors for people who don’t look like me? How can I create opportunities for people who wouldn’t necessarily have the same visibility and access?’”

Amber’s new book, Allies and Advocates, discusses ways to make the world more inclusive for people of all backgrounds. The book gives pointers on communication, allyship, and advocacy responsibility. She recommends it to all leaders, allies, and those striving to be allies within their community.

Photo: Danielle Finney

“If you’re a person who works at a job and you feel like people don’t get you and they don’t know how to show up as an ally during these trying times, if you feel like you hear a lot of conversations about people that are like ‘Why are we protesting? I don’t understand,’ if you feel like you have people that you are just hanging around that you don’t know how to have good healthy conversations with about challenging topics like diversity, inclusion, equality, belonging, any of those things - this is the book you need.”

Allies and Advocates launches November 17, 2020, but you can preorder the book today. To connect with Amber or learn more about her day-to-day life, visit her Instagram page. To watch Amber’s full interview on Instagram, click here.