Transforming the Black Experience at Berkeley: An Interview with Takiyah Jackson about The Village and Thriving African American Initiatives

Q. What is your role at UC Berkeley as Director of Thriving, African American Initiatives?

It’s about leading a comprehensive effort to create conditions of thriving for all Black people across campus. Addressing these issues led to new positions being created for staff and that is how The Village began. I would describe my role as creating conditions for people to thrive, and coming up with strategies and innovations to address their needs.

Q. What would you like the Berkeley community to know about The Village and its support services and programs for Black students?

The Village takes a proactive approach, anticipating students' needs and equipping them with tools to navigate and thrive at UC Berkeley. I want people to know that we have a very comprehensive support system for you. Whatever you may need, we either have it ready for you or we can refer you where to find it. 

We asked students, what are your aspirations? What are your dreams? In response to what we learned, we've been building up The Village. When I first joined Berkeley in spring 2017, I was the only professional staff leading African American Student Development and the Fannie Lou Hamer Black Resource Center. Shortly after that opened, we hired two assistant directors. Our village now includes nine professional staff members through partnerships across campus.

Q. What are some recent accomplishments related to The Village’s work? 

One new position that's really exciting is our first ever Black student org advisor role. We have over 30 Black student organizations at Berkeley. We also have a Black housing theme program with a resident director on our team working in partnership with Residential Life. Currently, we have a record number of over 84 students living in the African American Theme Program(link is external)

Our work is about The VIllage understanding and anticipating the things students might encounter and equipping them with the tools to navigate and work through the systems here to have a successful Berkeley experience, and hopefully avoid some of the adversities that we've seen other students experience in the past. This model for programs has implications for retention and the college experience overall, not to mention potential to influence alumni engagement beyond a student’s Berkeley years.

We launched and created a program called Black Lives at Cal(link is external) which is an opportunity for Black graduate students and Black undergraduate students to work together and to develop the research skills while celebrating the legacy of Black people at UC Berkeley, preserving it and amplifying it. From that program, we created a Black History at Cal walking tour and podcast(link is external). The initiative has led to broader impacts, with other communities and even the UC system looking to adopt similar goals and use this strategy to share histories for other communities as well.

Q. What strategy has helped your team stay ahead of the needs of the Black community on campus?

We have made a huge shift in our approach and our mentality around how to thrive. Last summer, we embarked upon a project called “What If we thrive?” focused on making sure that we center well-being in everything that we do, starting with those of us in The Village. 

We defined what our holistic well-being looks like and how we hold each other accountable and support each other. This fall has probably been our best semester ever, because not only were we focusing on well-being, we were proactive about everything that we took on. We always want to say yes to everything, which can spread us so thin that it can make it challenging to actually meet our initial goals. We created healthy boundaries and made conscious choices about what we were and were not going to engage in this year and that helped balance out our work and enable us to make a greater impact on the student community. 

I'm really proud of The Village taking this approach. Now we've seen the students who watched us model that take time for their own well-being, and we have a lot of conversations about making healthy choices in all areas of our lives. Our students are infusing that into leadership, into classes, into their programs. As a result, the Fannie Lou Hamer Black Resource Center is thriving because students are super excited about what they're doing. We created the capacity for them to focus on the thing they're most passionate about, and to consider what are all the things they may be carrying and how to find balance. 

This proactive approach has led to the Fannie Lou Hamer Black Resource Center booming, to the point where we're growing out of the space. We no longer have enough space to do all that we need to do. It’s a good problem to have, but it's still a big challenge. 

Q. Where do you see The Village growing in the coming years?

The Village will probably double or triple in size in the coming years, and that's because right now we are in a time of engagement with partnership across campus. We're trying to shift the narrative of thriving to include the whole campus community and help people understand that in order for us to thrive, everyone has to be on board, not just leadership staff. Within The VIllage programming, we are creating navigational capacity and resources for students so that we can prepare them for Berkeley, but the things that they encounter across campus are harder for us to control. We partner across campus with people who have similar goals, and we hope to see a larger campus-wide plan for thriving students. It is imperative to create alignment across efforts already happening on campus and to create conditions for people to thrive by adding more people to the work, not adding more work to the people.

Some exciting new projects include a Black Wednesday Wall, and a Black Public Arts project fundraising in order to place art installations to celebrate Black history on campus. The goal is to create a comprehensive and impactful celebration of Black history and culture on campus.

Q. How can people support The Village?

People can support The Village and the Black community at Berkeley by helping find ways to sustain staff positions leading these critical programs. Engage with us, participate with our events, come see what we're creating--what we're doing and how we're bringing people together and helping people have a good experience at UC Berkeley. We have worked with partners and individuals for funding support of many of these efforts, and long-term sustainability could come from funding support for staff and space to run these transformational programs. 

Historically, many Black people who have gone to Berkeley, not all, but many, have not had a good story to tell. We want to transform that, and we’re seeing tremendous success with students coming through our programs who say, my Berkeley experience was wonderful. This also depends on the partnership across campus and the conditions that we're able to change in the places where students are experiencing adversities. We want to continue to build on the momentum we have right now with support from the community. 

Q. What advice do you have for students seeking community or support?

Be open to engaging with the community. I encourage students to use the resources that we have for them, and to not to be afraid to reach out if there’s something that they need. The Village offers a Black Student Orientation and various events to help students connect and find support. We have a Black community resource guide that's a living document, and every week it's updated to let students know not only what's happening in the community this week, but also, what are opportunities that are coming up. It includes available resources, job opportunities, internship opportunities, and more. Just come over to the Fannie Lou Hamer Black Resource Center and you'll be greeted warmly. Students will engage with you to see what you're interested in.