Cohort Update: We Can Do This
Our first Skill Building Cohort is discovering about courage, honesty, and change
One of the core beliefs behind Project 2045 is that we cannot learn our way into a new future alone. We need spaces where we can practice together, ask better questions, listen more deeply, and be honest about where we are still growing.
Over the past several months, I have had the privilege of piloting our first Skill Building Cohort with a group of people willing to give their time, attention, and stories to this work. We are practicing being white people who are doing our own work. It is hard to put into words what an honor it has been.
When we first started imagining this cohort, we knew we wanted it to be different from many of the conversations people have experienced around race and culture. We were not trying to create a space where people simply consumed more information or learned the “right answers.” We wanted to create a space to practice. A space where we could build the muscles required to have honest conversations. A space where we could learn how to stay present with ourselves and one another.
And that is exactly what this group has done.
We have laughed together, including plenty of moments laughing at my own mistakes, experiments, and places where the pilot process was still very much a pilot. We have adjusted together and learned together.
We have made room for our own stories and the stories of others. We have slowed down enough to ask not only what we think about issues of race, culture, and belonging, but how our own experiences have shaped the way we see the world.
We have also made space for lament.
One person in the cohort described the experience of wrestling with these conversations as realizing they could not simply go back and live the same way. They used words like “sad,” “confused,” and “a reckoning.” That moment has stayed with me because I think it captures something important about this work.
Growth is not always the immediate excitement of discovering something new. Sometimes growth is the difficult realization that there are things we can no longer ignore. Sometimes it is looking honestly at the ways our society has been formed and asking new questions about how race and culture have shaped the world we inherited.
That kind of reflection takes courage.
Throughout the cohort, we have talked honestly about moments when we found that courage. Moments when we stepped into a conversation, asked a question, listened differently, or chose not to avoid discomfort. And we have also talked about the moments when we did not have that courage.
Those conversations may have been some of the most important ones because they remind us that this work is not about perfection. It is about practice. It is about becoming the kind of people who can keep showing up.
Maybe the most encouraging thing we have discovered together is that we can do this.
The conversations we are practicing are not as dangerous as we have often been told they are. They can be uncomfortable. They can challenge us. They can reveal things we have not seen before. But when entered with curiosity, humility, and care, they can also create connection, understanding, and possibility.
As we reach the halfway point of this first cohort, I find myself incredibly grateful and deeply mindful of the work ahead. Each person has recognized places where they are growing. Each person has also begun to see the work that remains unfinished—not just individually, but for all of us collectively.
That is the gift this first group has given Project 2045. They have not simply participated in a program. They have helped shape what this work can become as we are in conversation about two other fall cohorts.
I could not be more proud of the courage, honesty, and openness this group has brought. And I could not feel more responsibility for what we continue to learn together as we move into the second half of this journey.