Leadership coach and former statewide education CEO Dr. Maya M. Faison knows what it looks like when organizations want your brilliance but not your voice, and she is done staying quiet about it.
In this episode of Ronderings, Ron sits down with Maya, founder of Faison Advisory Group and creator of the UNMUTED coaching experience, to talk about what it actually costs black women to lead inside systems that were never designed for them.
Maya grew up in Philadelphia, where a classmate once told her she was not smart enough to get into Masterman, the top-ranked magnet school in the state. Her parents went to the school to apply. The counselor hesitated. But a principal who chose to see her potential advocated for her admission. What Maya found out later was that her older sister had been turned away years earlier. Different principal, different outcome. One block separated Masterman from a school where a third grader could not read the words "press enter to start." That gap set everything in motion.
She went from the University of Pennsylvania to Harvard to the classroom, then into policy work as one of the original teacher ambassador fellows at the US Department of Education. She eventually led a statewide charter school advocacy organization for nearly a decade, passing legislation at rates most policy shops only talk about. But behind those wins, the personal cost was compounding. Board members suggesting she hire a white man to run the organization she was already running. Colleagues undermining her team. The quiet, constant pressure to shrink.
When Maya started attending EdLoC convenings and connecting with other black women in nonprofit ed reform, she realized her story was not an individual one. It was systemic. Women hospitalized from stress. Women blackballed for speaking up. Women who left the country entirely. That pattern is now the foundation of her research project, I Survived Ed Reform, and the reason she coaches women to stop muting themselves and start leading from wholeness.
Tune in to hear why Maya believes your job will never love you back, and what it looks like to lead without giving away your soul.
Chapters:
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01:36 Publish your book at
www.leveragepublishinggroup.com 🎒
02:42 Meet Dr. Maya M. Faison: Philly kid, educator, truth teller
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06:19 The little girl who said "you're not smart enough" and the gloves came off
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08:24 Tutoring a third grader who couldn't read the screen one block from the best school in the state
📻
13:33 Mavis Beacon, summer spelling lists, and a nerdy family dinner radio show
🎓
17:26 Traditional teacher licensure, Harvard, and the long route into policy
✍️
21:45 Find support for writing your impact-driven book at
www.booksthatmatter.org 😤
23:10 "There's this other guy": being told to hire someone to do the job you were hired for
🤝
26:19 Walking into EdLoC spaces and finding out it was all of us
📓
28:35 Interviewing women across the country for I Survived Ed Reform
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30:23 Hospitals, Ghana, and the physical cost of leading under fire
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37:12 The biggest regret: putting off families for organizations that moved on without them
🌟
38:19 If you are a leader or changemaker looking for support, check out
www.geniusdiscovery.org 📉
41:16 A love letter on LinkedIn and what 300,000 layoffs mean for black women
🧭
44:19 Negotiate from abundance, not desperation
💎
47:54 Maya's Rondering: you don't owe them your soul
👕
50:47 The shirt says healing over hustle and she means it
🎧
58:37 Want a podcast just like this one? Check out
www.podcastsmatter.com
Links:
Episode 88
