August Featured Author | Efraín Gutiérrez
Welcome to our featured author series where we share different points of view on advancing social justice and DEI+B efforts through the ever evolving fields of multicultural organizational development, human resources, implementation science, equitable evaluation and applied research, improvement science, learning science, performance measurement, and team science.
Each month we highlight someone in this work we admire and have learned from in the past. Our hope is that you find new perspectives, ideas, and insights to inspire and challenge the way you live and work.
Efraín Gutiérrez
Senior Fellow, Center for Evaluation Innovation
Efraín Gutiérrez supports individuals, teams, and organizations moving from fear to liberation. His consulting practice and bodies of work represent his lifelong commitment to promoting love, integrity, and mutuality in our bodies, relationships, and work. He is currently partnering with organizations looking for new strategy and evaluation approaches that are in service of healing, justice, and liberation through From Fear to Freedom Consulting.
He promotes radical imagination, curiosity, and wonder through Freedom Dreams in Philanthropy. A collaborative of social sector professionals who embrace the tradition of freedom dreaming to imagine what our field and institutions could and must be to center racial justice. Finally, he is building a body of work to help those raised and socialized as men, heal and free themselves from the conditioning of patriarchal masculinity. He believes in moving through life and work with ease and grace. He is eager to be in conversation with fellow travelers who share his musings and passions.
Why do you do the work you do?
I want people in the social sector to be free because I think we are the sector’s biggest asset. We need all of us to show up as our beautiful, authentic, liberated selves, that is how we will make meaningful advances towards justice. That’s why I’m part of Freedom Dreams of Philanthropy, a new collaborative of social sector professionals who embrace the tradition of freedom dreaming to imagine what our field and institutions could and must be, to center racial justice. The world tells us to perform and conform and my work is an invitation for people to venture inward, get to know themselves, and have the self-respect to center what they and their communities deserve and desire.
These days I’m also particularly interested in helping those raised and socialized as men free themselves from the conditioning of patriarchal masculinity and reclaim their right to feel, connect, and love.
What technique, method, tool, theory or practice would you like to highlight that is promising and/or proven for advancing social justice?
I suggest working on their personal healing. Often in the social sector, we think about what our communities need but we don’t turn the mirror and look into what we need to be better humans, which in turn will make us better professionals.
When I think about how my practice has improved over time I don’t think about techniques or theories, I think of how I’m able to show up differently thanks to the internal work I have done through therapy, reading, etc.
What are some books you wish everyone would read?
Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love by bell hooks.
This is hooks's seminal work on masculinities and it changed the way I see the world. It helped me understand myself better as well as the men in my life, and the effect of the patriarchy on all of us.
What are a couple of practices, resources, and/or tools that help you live more to your values on a daily?
Instead of focusing on what others would think about my performance in meetings, I think about whether I’m being honest and true to myself and what I believe. The goal is to be me, not to comply with what is expected from me.
The expanded Equitable Evaluation Framework™ just came out recently. I love its complexity and how it has helped me think more expansively about what it means to do an evaluation that centers on racial justice.
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