7 Questions with Dwayne Steward
Dwayne Steward joined Equality Ohio as Executive Director in the fall of 2024. He previously served as director of inclusive excellence, accessibility, and belonging of The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center. He is also the founder and CEO of Make It Better Consulting. As executive director at Equality Ohio and Equality Ohio Education Fund, Dwayne leads a 25-person team and is focused on organizational development, fundraising, policy, and advocacy.
Join us to learn more as he answers 7 Questions!
To start us off, can you introduce yourself and share a bit about how you got to Equality Ohio?
I have been doing health, health equity, and community organizing for about 15 years now. And my background has been mostly in the kind of community health, health research, and population health type of work.
And then the world kind of changed. And so, I shifted my focus and wanted to be more active. And I knew that Equality Ohio was about to be in transition when it came to their leader, and I started having conversations and applied. And somehow, they said yes. And so, I found myself here in this role, but it really does align with my background. I was doing this work.
I feel like in a little bit different way, but this has really been what I've been doing, just creating space for marginalized communities, fighting for access and opportunity for marginalized communities for many, many years. And so, this is very much in line with that.
Leadership transitions can bring a lot of uncertainty, especially when it’s someone new coming in to take the lead. What were some of the first roadblocks you encountered as Equality Ohio’s new leader?
Well, my first thing, because truthfully, this is my first role as the ED, as the executive director. I've had lots of executive roles in nonprofits and worked for a long time in nonprofit leadership, but this is my first time being in an executive director role. I came in ready to learn and ready to listen.
I think one mistake a lot of leaders make is when they come in, they feel like they must hold the world on their shoulders and make all these sweeping changes and all of that. And a lot of times it can, in a way, leave the staff behind. I was very intentional. I wanted to be different. I spent the first 60 days intentionally listening.
I dedicated my first year to learning. My goal was to make as few big changes as possible in the first year, to allow the staff to get to know me, and for me to learn the role. I met with every team member one-on-one and developed a needs assessment. I took time to intentionally learn the agency so that I could develop my strategic vision for it.
After those 60 days, I presented the needs assessment and my strategic vision to the staff. It was a very important moment because, again, there had been a long history of another leader. I wanted the staff to understand where I was heading and provide as much transparency as possible so they could decide if my vision was something they wanted to get on board with.
But they wanted to get a board with my vision so that we weren't getting a year down the line and people were confused or felt blindsided or whatever. I wanted to be transparent from the beginning, and I wanted to be intentional, and I wanted to create a plan that included the voices of staff and community.
Equality Ohio was a bit unique in this because, you know, I can mention there was that leader for 10 years, but then there was like 18 months when there was, there were interim leaders, and there was no permanent director. There were several folks and several staff who were putting their kind of stamp on the leadership.
I felt like I was dealing with a lot of leadership ghosts and having to manage not only just like one person’s style but also having to shift many different people’s styles that had tried to hold agency in this moment. So, for me, it was really taking a moment, making clear what my vision was, and then really working with staff to understand the history and what we have done.
I wanted to be sure I was being transparent in every decision I made, being clear as to the why and not just moving, running forward with the plan. I think that has really been helpful. Transparency, collaboration, and leading with those pieces have been helpful.
How did you approach building—or rebuilding—trust with your team, board, or community partners?
A good culture is built on collaboration and trust, and integration—everyone needs to understand where they fit and how they can support each other to ensure we're all moving forward. Everyone has their individual roles, things that they have purview over or are focused on and then understanding how that intersects with everyone else. I think that creates a good culture. I think coming into call to how, because they have been through a bit of an 18-month transition. There was a lack of culture, a difficult culture, at the agency. Infusing transparency has been helpful to bring everyone along. It also formally defined the culture.
There was this idea that everything was an emergency all the time. You can't operate in crisis all the time, or you're not going to be effective. We put some things in place immediately to slow things down, define what an actual emergency is, and what isn't. That also created some space for people to breathe and to have less burnout.
Well, we have a very passionate staff. They're activists, they are community leaders, they're people who are trusted by their communities. I wanted to create space to uplift that passion and target it towards areas where we can have better returns on investment.
That’s something I don't ever want to change at Equality Ohio. I think that's a key piece. The key ingredient for someone at Equality Ohio is that they have passion and experience with advocating for their community. If that is a central part of who you are and what you do, we will work with you to figure out everything else. I ensured we work with the community, and this is a community-led project.
Were there moments where you had to challenge narratives about what leadership “should” look like?
Yeah. As a black queer man in the world, I've had to deal with this challenge for my entire career—with what leadership looks like. But for Equality Ohio, it's really been about stripping us of this narrative that we must lead everything and be everything to everybody. And we'll really allow us to be specific, own what we're good at, and really give ourselves permission to say no, allow others to lead in certain spaces.
We don't always have to be the big person in the room doing all the things. we, I truthfully believe collaboration is going to get us through this moment. We're going to have to start sharing resources. We're going to have to figure out a way for us all to come together. Taking up all the space in any room is never going to be helpful. And so that's what I've been trying to challenge, not only myself as a leader and my team, who are all community leaders, but also challenging how Equality Ohio leads in Ohio.
How did you navigate conflict, particularly in a movement that is so deeply personal?
Yeah, that's not been easy at this moment. But I truly believe that we no longer have the luxury of division. Historically, division within progressive spaces has been successfully used against us, truthfully. Collaboration is going to get us through this. We all have to figure out a way to come together and unify in order to make it out of all this.
Because I also believe that all roads of liberation are valid. So if we all understand that the goal is to get towards equity, know, liberation, freedom, or however you want to define that, whatever path you're on to reach that goal is a valid path. I can build a different path that's alongside yours. How do we support each other to also get to the end? In conflict, we have to get back to refocusing the conversation on our aligned interests and how we move from there. Because truthfully, any conflict right now is a distraction from what's actually important. Any type of conflict.
There’s often pressure in nonprofits to “get it right” all the time. How did you deal with perfectionism, burnout, or the fear of making the wrong move?
This is something I struggle with even now. Being aware of it is what's most important. I did have to do a lot of work to just release myself of this kind of Black excellence and Black exceptionalism type of tropes that come with just me being the first Black male to lead this agency in its 20-year history. There was a lot of expectation of me coming in, of wanting to make sure that I'm doing right by the race and making all the right decisions and all these different things. That type of pressure can kill you.
I have always been a believer in you fail forward. You always figure out a way to learn from whatever mistakes you're making, and you fail fast, move as quickly as possible, so you can understand, evaluate, and figure out a new plan forward. I've always been very intentional about speaking up, especially when it comes to promoting just the allowance of grace by my staff.
We all need to be showing each other grace right now because we're literally having to rewrite the playbook in real time. That's helping move us forward. I still struggle with it. I deal with impostor syndrome. But I do believe that if you have a good plan, that's your North Star, and you keep moving forward on that path we talked about. And if you trip up, that's fine. But as long as you're headed in the right direction, it will all work out.
For other LGBTQ+ leaders stepping into existing organizations, what advice do you wish someone had given you?
I think it goes back to that excellence or getting it right piece from earlier. I wish someone had told me before getting into any leadership role that you're not the end-all be-all. You don't have to be the one who always gets it right. Yes, you are the leader, but your team is what helps you facilitate success. Building up your team will help you succeed.
Putting your focus on your team and creating opportunities for them, building team culture, and making sure it's the best culture it can be, will make sure you have success. I wish I had heard that it's okay to say no, it's okay to slow down, like all those different types of things around. It is okay to take care of yourself. I don't think leaders hear that enough, truthfully. It is okay to take care of yourself.
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