Jordana Vasquez on Starting WOC/CS, Grassroots Public Art, and Being Curious - Ep 13
This week on First Coat we have Jordana Vasquez. Jordana and I met at a Placemaking conference a few years ago and we've stayed in touch ever since. Jordana studied architecture and has worked in design, art, community development, and sustainability. She recently co-founded the Women of Color Collective in Sustainability (WOC/CS), which facilitates strategic exchanges between Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) sustainability pioneers, climate justice organizers, and advocacy groups to fight inequity and address climate change.
On this episode we talk about how she and her co-founder started WOC/CS, her experience leading a grassroots public art project, her project Urbanonsite, and what it's like to be the only woman of color in the room. We brainstorm business development, for both Distill Creative and WOC/CS and how we're creating our directories. Jordana also shares how to use a personal project to connect with change-makers and artists around the world, thoughts on the role of public art, how to collaborate with sustainability organizations, and tips for career development.
This interview was recorded July, 2020.
LISTEN & SUBSCRIBE HERE 👇🏾
LINKS
Sign up for Women of Color Collective in Sustainability (WOC/CS) and their directory: https://www.woccs.co
Women of Color Collective in Sustainability (WOC/CS) LinkedIn Group: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/8839721/
Guest | Jordana (Jordie) Vasquez, Co-Founder WOC/CS and Energy Efficiency and Sustainability Professional
Co-Founder WOC/CS + Energy Efficiency and Sustainability Professional for the built environment in NYC. Jordie is experienced in providing high-performance design strategies, cost-effective building system operations, and energy-saving practices during the design and construction phases. As the Co-founder of WOC/CS her mission is to serve as a key resource in the sustainability industry—especially by helping underrepresented women identify work, access development opportunities, form meaningful connections, create community, and feel supported within all the sustainability professions. She is passionate about diversity, equity, and inclusion for socially-driven multidisciplinary projects that advance green, healthy, and inclusive environments. Raised in the Dominican Republic and determined to pursue mediums that could empower minority communities she created Urbanonsite-a creative platform that specializes in producing photography and content for sustainable, socially-responsible businesses, and local champions.
Follow Jordana on Instagram (@vasdana, @urbanonsite, @woc__cs ), #thisiswhatsustainabilitylookslike, Twitter, LinkedIn, and check out Urbanonsite and WOC/CS.
Your Host | Stephanie Eche, CEO & Founder of Distill Creative
Stephanie Eche is an artist and art consultant based in Brooklyn, NYC.
Follow Stephanie on Instagram (@distillcreative or @stephanie_eche), Twitter (@stephanie_eche), YouTube (Distill Creative), LinkedIn, and check out her art website.
Support First Coat by backing us on our Patreon.
Learn more about Distill Creative’s services for real estate developers.
Are you an artist? Sign up for our Distill Directory and you’ll be considered for art commissions and future projects.
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Stephanie Eche 00:02
Welcome to First Coat. Where we explore public realm art, how it's made and why it matters. I'm your host, Stephanie Eche, an artist and entrepreneur based in Brooklyn, New York. I run Distill Creative, where I curate and produce site-specific art projects for real estate developers. I focus on creating more equitable and inclusive projects and I want to get more exposure for the artists and developers doing this work. Happy New Year, everyone. Thank you so much for listening to the First Coat podcast. I am so happy you are here. I have a very special bonus episode for you this week to finish off season one. As you may know, I started working on this podcast in March of 2020, when I was stuck at home and well, I'm still social distancing and staying at home, but I have released 12 episodes of the First Coat podcast and this will be number 13. If you haven't listened to episodes one through 12, please go check them out. I interviewed some amazing mural artists and we discuss everything from how to use parachute cloth to how to make a creative brief for client. I'll be releasing Season Two of the First Coat podcast in about a month. For the next season, I'll be doing some shorter episodes that explore the nuts and bolts of public art, as well as some book reviews and how I started this podcast. I want to know what you want to know about art and public space, so please email me your questions at Stephanie(at)distillcreative.com. That's S-T-E-P-H-A-N-I-E (at) D-I-S-T-I-L-L creative.com. Also, if you would like to support this podcast, find me on Patreon at patreon.com/firstcoat. For as little as $1 a month, you can help keep this podcast going. Okay, now for our final episode of Season One. This week on First Coat we have Jordana Vasquez. Jordana and I met at a placemaking conference a few years ago and we've stayed in touch ever since. Jordana studied architecture and has worked in design, art, community development, and sustainability. She recently co-founded Women of Color Collective in Sustainability, WOC/CS, which facilitates strategic exchanges between Black, Indigenous, People of Color sustainability pioneers, climate justice organizers, and advocacy groups to fight inequity and address climate change. On this episode, we talk about how she and her co-founder started WOC/CS, her experience leading a grassroots public art project, her project Urbanonsite, and what it's like to be the only woman of color in the room, which I also could relate to, having the same experiences. We brainstorm business development for both Distill Creative and WOC/CS and how we're creating our own directories. Jordana also shares how to use a personal project to connect with changemakers and artists around the world, thoughts on the role of public art, how to collaborate with sustainability organizations, and tips for career development. Please note, this interview was recorded in July of 2020. Here's our conversation.
Stephanie Eche 02:42
Thank you so much for being on First Coat. I'm really excited to chat with you today. Can you tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do?
Jordana Vasquez 02:48
Thank you for having me. It's good to be here. So what I do, ooh, that's that heavy loaded question because I've been able to wear a lot of different hats throughout my professional journey. So maybe instead of saying the title right away and saying my professional current position, I can tell you a little bit about the words that describe me and then we’ll take it from there. I am a curious person, I always try to find connections between people and places and spaces, and you know this, we connected over placemaking. So I try to always find a way of connecting my background in architecture with the work that I currently do with sustainability and just asking questions, and I think that's what's been one constant in my professional journey. The second thing I would mention, I am a social connector. I am not an extroverted person, by any means, I am sociable, but I do enjoy building relationships and building genuine relationships. And I'll talk a little bit about how that got into play with WOC/CS. Third thing that I can think of would be changemaker slash social impact agent. And I would say this one can bit get a little bit technical, I am trained as an architect, I went to architecture school at Pratt Institute, I graduated a couple years ago. Not to give away any, any age but it was 2014. And since then, I've worked in different capacities, worked in architecture firms, interior design, design build. Found my way navigating the construction, architecture side of things and social impact with economic development and work with Hurricane Sandy. I think at the time you and I met, I was probably working at one of these organizations. So from that work, I eventually had an opportunity to go more into sustainability, energy efficient specifically, using the skills from an architecture and construction and but also the technical part of it and implement it to new construction. So high performance buildings, working with programs like LEED and NYSERDA, and Enterprise green communities, actually having a seat with the designers and the architects that were working on these projects and making sure that their buildings were the most high efficient and sustainable building that it can build. That's in a nutshell, a little bit of everything that I would say would be on my resumé. There is a bunch of other things that are not there, but hopefully a little splash of creativity and all of those, that would be a constant.
Stephanie Eche 05:18
Can you tell us about your heart of the maker project?
Jordana Vasquez 05:20
So that was a project for my venture Urbanonsite. So Hands Of The Maker was a, well a little bit of context. This was part of STooPS, so STooPS in Brooklyn, it's a yearly gathering of artists, the initiatives led by an artist by the name, Kendra Ross. She's a phenomenal artist and she's a dancer amongst many other things in the visual arts world, and she had this idea that she wanted to bring public art to BedStuy and she wanted to have the artists be from BedStuy or have lived in BedStuy had a connection to the community, and it was an array of, you know, dancers, there's a little bit of like, performance, spoken words, and visual arts. So I was living in BedStuy at the time, we just recently moved, I can't remember exactly a year, I submitted a pitch for doing a mural with mosaics called the Hands Of The Maker. It was part of my work with Urbanonsite, which is a platform for work with content and photography for sustainable business. So that was the original, my creative outlet, like my excuse to meet artists and my excuse to learn about them. For this particular project, I wanted to map out Brooklyn. So I was running around the whole city finding maps where I could find them, like the subway, old magazines, you name it, found recycled materials from different companies were selling tiles. So you imagine me in the city next to Home Depot with a bunch of tile pieces that [INDISTINGUISHABLE]. I put them all together, I mapped it out the exercise that I wanted my part of the community to do was come in, see it as a puzzle, and try to put the puzzle together of the map of Brooklyn. And the interesting part of that was to see what kind of conversations were going to take place. Were people just going to be fixated in the idea of making the map, or were they going to be talking about like, oh, I lived in this neighborhood or my family's from here, which was eventually what happened. People were talking about like, yeah, I grew up in East Flatbush, and this, I know for sure that this part goes here. It was fun. I mean, I had a great time. I’ve not done anything like that ever since, but the program, the initiative still happens, every year, if you look up STooPS Brooklyn, there gonna be a lot of interesting public art happening.
Stephanie Eche 07:36
That's awesome. I remember you talking about that project. It's like a casual, but also complicated approach, right, to public art. Because anytime you engage with the public, it becomes more complicated, but if you didn't do that, then it wouldn't really be as I think maybe impactful.
Jordan Vasquez 07:50
I think it was interesting to see how the public was going to react because I think we all had an idea of like, this is probably what's going to happen. But if you just let the art be or the pieces be and see how people, you know, start either configuring the pieces or interpreting their understanding of what they were looking at. It was completely different from the idea that you had at the beginning. I noticed that with the dances or the spoken words and people's reactions were really, really diverse, I would say.
Stephanie Eche 08:16
Where are you living now? Did you, did you move since then?
Jordana Vasquez 08:18
So, this is 2017. I moved across Brooklyn, so I lived in Ditmas Park and from Ditmus I moved to Park Slope, and from Park Slope I moved to Hoboken, so I’m in New Jersey now. I’m in Hoboken.
Stephanie Eche 08:29
Oh wow. That's why I don't see you that often. I'm just kidding.
Jordana Vasquez 08:33
I know. It's been, it's been interesting because I was the first person who said I'll never moved back to New Jersey and here I am, trying to convince friends to come out for lunch or dinner. It's a beautiful place. I love it. So I, it's hard for me to go back to Brooklyn and come back at night the whole story, but I would do it.
Stephanie Eche 08:51
How has your relationship changed with pre-COVID commuting into the city and then now that you don't have to?
Jordana Vasquez 08:58
It’s weird. I mean, just like in Brooklyn, I had everything that I needed within a mile. I had the stores and entertainment and the park, where for COVID we know you, we've been in a bubble ever since March, I had to leave the house because I had to take care of family members that were, you know, hospitalized. So I had to go back to the city all the time. But my partner who was working in the city, he had to stay here for four months. For me, I did everything from getting to, from being the only single person inside the bus at 7am to go to city and trying not to breathe and move to taking cabs to walking and taking the subway, it was, you know it's scary. The whole commuting, that whole navigating the city. The city, if you go, I don't know how it is now because I haven't been in for last few weeks, at the beginning of April it was like ghost town, everyone Wall Street, because I was there, nobody was there. You only saw like the black and brown folks working but it was, where are all the Wall Street people there in there.
Stephanie Eche 09:57
Yeah, I just happened to be at Bryant Park today, actually and it was really weird, because there were still people, but it wasn't, it wasn't how it normally is, you know, but it's just super bizarre. That was the second time I've been in Manhattan since March and it makes me sad, but it's also, I don't know, it's just, it's depressing thinking about all the lives that have been lost and the things that could have been avoided. But on the other hand, forcing people to utilize public spaces for their daily needs, it's kind of interesting. Like, you can't go inside anywhere.
Jordana Vasquez 10:26
Right.
Stephanie Eche 10:27
You have to, like have a meeting in the park or whatever.
Jordana Vasquez 10:30
I saw that happen with the initiatives from the parklets in Midtown. How, yeah, how like, had that became an idea. You know, let's experiment with this open space here and see what happens and now they're using that template or that model across the whole city for restaurants. That's such an interesting thing. You never thought that that was going to be the normal that we're living now.
Stephanie Eche 10:51
Totally. I think, though, it's like, and I'm curious about your perspective on this, but it's like everything that I love about public space is now like, my worst nightmare, because it's in a pandemic, right? So it's like, great, all the restaurants can be out on the street, or in these really cute parklets, but should we really be serving people right now? And then, you know, this like encouraging gathering, even though we shouldn't be? It's just very confusing.
Jordana Vasquez 11:15
I think, you know, it's fortunate, unfortunate that like, the situation that we're in here now, because I've been in places where I've had the option to dine in, and I immediately, you know, I think it twice, I think about how close am I going to be to the table next to me or like, how's the air going to transfer between us, and I felt, through experience, a little bit more at ease with the restaurants that had an open space, either in the back or the front. So I'm a little bit grateful that we're getting creative with like, how are we, you know, socially distancing in recreational activities and things like that. I find it very interesting how folks are doing in parks and how I keep seeing photos of like, either doing circles in the ground, to state that this is the physical distance that we need from each other, or like how nature itself has served kind of a barrier between spaces and people just getting, you know, excited and creative about doing this. So I think we just have to, we have to give people options. Ideally, we would all be, you know, I would think better protected and more conscious of each other. But from what I've seen, like that, our 25 year old neighbors don't want to be held home, it is pretty sad that I feel like as a 30 year old something, I'm here protected and everything, and I want to do the right thing. But I also understand that telling them not to go out and telling them not to do this doesn't get me anywhere. So the best thing I can do is hope for a designer to come up with the spaces that restricts them from going, you know, too close to each other and hope for the best that they respect those barriers.
Stephanie Eche 12:46
Can you tell us a little bit more about Urbanonsite?
Jordana Vasquez 12:49
Yeah. Urbanonsite came about, I would say 2015, Summer 2015, was right when I started Liske, and it was during the period where I was transitioning from architecture and I wanted to do something more impactful. I quickly learned working at lisk, that as architects we had two different options, we can do business as usual, you know, high rise buildings, thinking about aesthetics and make it a function and that said, or we had another option, which was how are we going to be designing the cities that are going to be sustainable, more self reliant, more efficient. So I was learning so much about sustainability and what sustainability meant, from a resiliency perspective, especially. Thinking about floods and thinking about hurricanes, because that was the scope of the work back then, and I just needed a place where I could not only brainstorm, but also learn and, and share that knowledge. But I'm also an architect, so I had to make it creative and make it fun. So I said, I'm going to create a platform that I will use not only as a creative outlet, but also to learn about projects and connect with people. And it has been, I would say probably the most constant project in my life because there's always something I want to write and share or there's something of project photography that I want to do. Thanks to, I would say to that platform, I've been able to connect with people in New Orleans and what I would do is every time I travel, let's say Cuba or Thailand or New Orleans, a couple of weeks before I go, I would reach out to a local artist or a local change agent and say hey, I read about your project, your permaculture in Oahu and I'm going to be there for a couple of days, can I come over? and people are super open to explain to you that they have this permaculture farming in their backyard and you should come over for dinner and learn about it, which happened or they would tell you, hey, if you’re in New Orleans, let me show you these murals that I did. I might as well take you barhopping the whole day and show you the city through my perspective and that happened as well. So I would say Urbanonsite has been my you know, like I mentioned, my creative outlet, but also a point of me to go out there and seek those questions and seek those answers that I'm not able to get through my job because I'm intentional about doing this on another space, another medium.
Stephanie Eche 15:10
That's what, I think what I like so much about it, is that it's not just one subject, it's everything, but it also is related, you know, everything's related and you really do a good job of tying it back to your own personal experience and opening the door to what different people are doing in different places. And I love that philosophy of reaching out to people, researching before you travel. It's one of the things I kind of hate about Airbnb experiences, because they commodify that in a certain way, but I'm not against that as an activity, right? Like, we should all be connecting with human beings when we go places, as opposed to just taking the photo and then moving on.
Jordana Vasquez 15:44
And I think for, I'm thinking, well, let me see one particular example, people, not only do they want to share the story with you, like if you come up to someone and you say, look, I do this kind of work, like I did, for example, in Miami, during our basic, you know what I mean.
Stephanie Eche 15:59
Yeah.
Jordana Vasquez 15:59
We were there for the week and looking at the art pieces, and moving through the city and we connected with the guy who owned an urban farm in the middle of Miami, like this is, you know, full on almost permaculture regenerative farm in the middle of nowhere. And we said, you know, we want to come and check it out and we're gonna take the most beautiful photos of your farm and write a story about it, would you be interested, and he's like, yes, I would love to see, you know, the photography that you come up with and stuff like that and I’ll let you know about, you know, the story behind this, and it was the loveliest afternoon, we came in, we learned so much about, when I say we my printer because my printer always comes everywhere I go. We did the photo shoot and it was just such a great experience and people are super receptive to that, in my experience.
Stephanie Eche 16:43
I'll definitely link to Urbanonsite in the show notes so everybody can see these awesome blog posts and your photography. How did that develop into, or how did you develop the idea for WOC/CS, Woman Of Color, Collective Sustainability? And did those inspire each other or were they just completely separate things?
Jordana Vasquez 17:02
So as part of WOC/CS, well, let’s start Urbanonsite, let's start there. I would also go to different events throughout climate week or events throughout the year, in New York City, we have the opportunity that there's events, like every single day about every single topic that you can think of. So sustainability is a big hot topic, back in, it has been the last five years and continues to be, but in 2018, 2017, I can’t remember for sure, climate week was happening in the fall. And I went to an event for sustainability in fashion. And I was there and quickly realized that I was the only woman of color in the room and I knew, it didn't take long for me to realize, almost to the point where like, oh, yeah, there's just no one that looks like me, just one more event in sustainability and fashion, no biggie. I look at my left, and I see this woman on the other side and you know that face of like acknowledgement, I was like, oh, I see you, you see me and we sort of gravitated towards each other and, across the room and you know, struck in conversation and realized that she was working in sustainability and more like a tech and venture capital capacity, I believe at that time, a little bit of policy, and I was working at that time in more of a green technical design and building. So we decided, you know, to share contact information and keep each other updated of similar events. So we did that for the following year, we would email each other and say, hey, there's this gathering happening or there's an interesting project taking place, you should look into it, you should apply. And a year into it, we decided, you know, we're having drinks at Pier 17, I remember this it’s July 2019, and we're like, you know, this is great that we're going to all these events and we're accessing all these different resources, but we should open the door for other women to also join us and to you know, point out that there's great talent over there, out there, but maybe they don't know of each other and there's not enough community around some of the things that we want to do. And leadership, you know, we looked up and we talked about a lack of mentorship, we talked about a series of microaggressions, we talked about similar experiences in the environmental work and talked about the lack of women of color in the leadership status to the board, executive suite, you name it. So, we said you know what, we're gonna start a community, we're gonna start a group, a collective, let it be, and let's have a meetup, let’s have a happy hour. I think you were there for that one. Have a happy hour and see what happens, you know, see if there's any interesting positivity for women who are going to be interested in this kind of event. And lo and behold, we had the first meetup and we sold out. So we cannot even go back to that bar because we reached maximum capacity. But that was an indicator that there was an appetite in New York City and even outside of New York City for a community where women of color with you know experience in sustainability could collaborate, find resources, find jobs, mentorship and just really find other like-minded individuals. So this was, you know, the beginning of it. And it has grown to be something much more bigger and beautiful than we anticipated, I can say.
Stephanie Eche 20:06
How have you been funding it? Has this just been all labor of love so far?
Jordana Vasquez 20:10
So I would say a mix of those. We had our initial capital put in, but we've been able to do a few events here and there. Like we typically don’t charge much, I think, a lot of us don't do it for the well, a lot of us, there’s two of us, we don't do it for like, okay, we need to make a profit, at least in the beginning, we didn't want to make it, you know, that way. So, a lot of our events have been or are still going to be free of charge. We eventually want to move into the point where we do get to pay people that come and speak at our events, we want to be able to pay some of our volunteers, eventually hire an intern. So we've been applying to a lot of different grants, we've been, we've been lucky enough to receive funds for our latest event, which was the grant. So we're going to be granting 10 women with like $300 for you know, whatever basic needs. So those have been, I would say a couple different things with different approaches to capital that we've had. Eventually, we want to move into more of a tech enabled platform, where it could be something that you can navigate on your phone or your computer to find all things WOC/CS, from a map showing all the green projects out there led by women of color to all the job opportunities presented to women of color, waste engage. So that's eventually going to require funding and I think love can get you to a certain point, but eventually, you want to be able to either fundraise or we've been working really hard on funding missions. So hopefully one of them will pan out. Next time you and I talk, it's gonna be like, yeah, we won that one.
Stephanie Eche 21:38
That's interesting, because that similarly, but in a different vein, but I do think they're related, basically, how I envisioned growing, Distill Creative, having it be a more of a tech platform, where like using overlays of Google Maps, and different things so I could have basically a directory of art in public spaces or in the public realm, but also have budget, background of the artist and all of that, and then highlight black indigenous people of color. One question I have actually is, so I'm currently, I may or may not edit this out, but I'm curious on, your directory and other directories have inspired me to want to do a directory of artists.
Jordana Vasquez 22:12
Yeah.
Stephanie Eche 22:13
Specifically artists who work in public spaces, which, as you know, could potentially be any artist, but definitely are specific artists who are already doing that type of work, but it is such a closed environment, it's hard to get in, I would say, particularly for commissioned work by developers, which is what I'm specializing in right now. So I, I'm debating what it would be, like, should it be bipoc? Should it be woman of color? Should it be women and bipoc? Or do you have any thoughts on that as far as what might be more needed? Because I don't, I don't want it to just, I want it to be helpful. And if it's not helpful, then it's not necessary, right?
Jordana Vasquez 22:46
I recently came across, through my partner, of initiative venture that they had an idea for startup that they would connect artists with public, sorry, artists with commercial buildings. So the artists would work on the piece, commercial building property management would have a way to access to them, like a directory. I can link with you later on for a little more info, because me myself, I don't know all the details, but for your particular project, I would think it'd be more interesting to have it for bipoc, so Black Indigenous People of Color, just because there's such a wealth of knowledge there and you can go so many different ways, if you want to really specialize in indigenous art, there's so much resources out there. If you wanted to specialize in Latinx or Black, I think having the bipoc allows you an umbrella that you can explore, depending on you know, maybe one year you explore this, so one theme could lead you to certain kind of artist and another theme can lead you to a different kind of artist. So I would, I would go that way. I think if anything, what we've seen in the last few months is an appetite for more art, for more thought leadership and more, you know, work being represented by people of color and Black and Indigenous and that interest for visibility, the interest for exposure, it's not new, it's always been there, it’s just that now we're getting the recognition that we deserve, and we're not only claiming it, we're demanding it. So I say go for it, if this is something you want to do, I know so many artists that would be so happy to finally find a place where their art can be recognized and easily accessible.
Stephanie Eche 22:56
Right and not just because of the color of their skin but because there is this new interest in it, which is weird, at least they're going to get the commission or the fee or whatever and instead of- I don't want there ever to be an excuse like well, I couldn't find an artist that you know represents the community or- it's too easy, I think, for people to excuse away things even though there are resources that exist.
Jordana Vasquez 24:48
Not only that, but you'll be, I mean tell me if I'm wrong but I see you also advocating for them. I feel like a lot of artists, and you know this, we, I mean I say we, I’ve done like a few pieces, but we can sell ourselves short, you know, like we might not all know the rules and you know the pricing of things, so we say, okay, this is what my worth is and this is the best I can get. If you were to be working under a directory or an umbrella, you'll have the willpower or the power to advocate for them and say, this is what you deserve as an artist, you know, forget, you know, like color for a second here, this is you as a talented really artist what you deserve. And not only you're here because your voice matters, representation matters, but your talent needs to be recognized and paid fairly. I think that will be a very crucial part of it. The fact that you're getting paid what you deserve.
Stephanie Eche 25:38
That's another part of Distill Creative that I'm looking to develop is just having, to your point of what were you talking about with lockss, having more transparency around things, because a lot of artists, whether they're doing a mural or a site-specific thing or community engagement, they might not know that there is real money for this stuff, it's just sometimes you have to ask for it, sometimes you have to educate people on it, but it all starts with valuing your work, which is hard if you haven't had that opportunity yet or if people expect to get things for a low price or for free from you and you're just thankful for the opportunity, you know?
Jordana Vasquez 26:08
For the portfolio.
Stephanie Eche 26:09
Right. Yeah, I've heard from a lot of the interviews I've done from mural artists, they’re like, ‘don't ever do a mural for free, but also my first mural I did for free’, you know, it’s this weird thing.
Jordana Vasquez 26:18
Yeah. Community’s everything, bouncing ideas from each other's everything, so go for it.
Stephanie Eche 26:26
Are you an artist? Submit your portfolio at distillcreative.com/artists. You'll get on our Distill Directory, our artists database and be considered for upcoming art commissions.
Stephanie Eche 26:39
I really liked your blog post that you did for Urbanonsite called Congrats on Obtaining the Environmental Job of Your Dreams. There is Just One Issue; Nobody Looks Like You in the Office. We'll definitely link to this in the show notes, but can you explain a little bit about that?
Jordana Vasquez 26:51
That post, funny enough came a few days before the, you know, the second wave of civil rights movement that we find ourselves in. It happened at a moment where I was going through a lot of self reflection of like, is this the right place I want to be in, the right working environment, you know, as part of COVID, we were all locked in for weeks, and not only there's a lot of work to be done, but there's a lot of moments of you had to kind of analyze the situation of right, this is where I'm at and is this what I want in life. And you know, we all went through all those little self reflecting moments throughout those weeks, or they came in April, I would say. I was struggling a lot with what it meant to be a woman of color in sustainability. I would say perhaps because of WOC/CS, I'm daily, I'm exposed to this kind of work daily. I'm exposed to stories of women that are facing not only microaggressions or facing like maybe why am I not being promoted if I been here for four years, and so and so has been here for six months and I've been in so many other projects and recognize, but my boss doesn’t see me. As part of WOC/CS we have a template that you have to fill out and say why do you want to be part of this? And there's a section that asks you why do you want to be part of WOC/CS, tell us. And there's so many different comments there of like, I just don't find that people see me and I want to find other people who look like me that can understand my experiences and my, you know, what I go through at work. So there was a lot of moments again, self reflection through COVID, being home, and just having the time to finally sit down with my thoughts. I said one day, I was like, you know, I was gonna put all my thoughts into one place and try to make a connection with what does it mean to me being a woman of color in sustainability. And you know, the more that I wanted to find examples of leadership being represented by a woman of color, I just couldn't find them, enough, I mean, there was a few. And thanks to WOC/CS I've been able to meet a few, but there’s just not that many. So I was struggling with that. I was struggling with the fact that as soon as they're, and this happened, as we all know, in June and May, as soon as there's some issue that relates to social injustice, or Black Lives Matter, and you're the person of color in the room, everyone looks at you for explanation, like, please, we want to learn more about this, what can we do? I'm like, wait, you should educate yourself, like why, why should all the responsibility fall on the person of color just because of the color of their skin? Not everyone wants to be, you know, a public advocate. You know, some of us work more internally, we want to write things and express ourselves painting, we don't want to express ourself in a town hall. So, that combined to the fact that I felt that in the industry, there was a lack of initiative that linked climate justice and environmental justice to the work on the ground, that's what led me to write this. All those feelings were, that I mentioned at the beginning, were factors but at the end of the day, it just comes up to be what does it mean to be a person of color in environmental work? What does it mean to be a person that works in environmental work that doesn't understand color, that doesn't understand the links between social justice, links between climate justice, and the work that they're doing. I mentioned this to some of my co-workers, if you're going to be working in urban planning and sustainability, but you don't know what redlining is, there's an issue, you know. So if you don't care about people, you cannot care about the planet, you need to try to connect everything together. First, look at your home, see if your job environment or the workplace is truly representative of diversity, which is, you know, like what I alluded at the title, and then say, we're working about, you know, making the better environment, better planning, everything, but you have to look inside first. So that's where it all sort of came from.
Stephanie Eche 27:48
I think that you put it so well, right now and in the post that everything is connected and when I think of sustainability, I do think about it as like a very, wealthy white person, upper class thing, right? Like you want to be in a sustainable community, you want to compost, you want, a green roof, you want to live in a LEED building and have everything, solar panels on your car, I don't know, just that kind of utopian view of the future, but it's not, it's not that Black and brown people don't want these things, it's that when I think of the industry, I do think of it as a very white industry, because I only see white people doing it and, and that's, that's why I was so excited when you, when you started WOC/CS, there needs to be more particularly women of color, but just people of color in the industry, because it is, it's for everyone, we can't survive as a race without everyone, like as a human race.
Jordana Vasquez 31:22
Right.
Stephanie Eche 31:23
What do you think, is the role of the artist in all of this, and how can public art or the use of public spaces be more connected with sustainability both on a planning side, and then also as a user of public space, or as a producer of art?
Jordana Vasquez 31:37
I can speak a little bit from experience here. I think, well the way I see art, we turn to art where, especially in moments of like despair, and moments where we're feeling uncertain, we turn to art to get a reaction and to get our feelings expressed, and also to re-experience basic emotions. And what I mean by that is like, sometimes we want to watch a movie just for the sake of crying. Sometimes we want to watch a movie just for the sake of laughing, sometimes we want to go out and see art just for the sake of having, you know, a reaction. And sometimes art comes to you without you seeking for it, you're walking by a place and you see a mural, let's say that is socially conscious or has a message and you're looking at it and there's a reaction, and that reaction, as an artist, that's what you seek in the beginning, but after you get their initial reaction as an artist you're seeking what are the actions that a person or she or he are going to take. I feel like as an, as a public art, artists and mural or any kind of art, getting that first initial conversation of like this is, you know, I feel a certain way and recognizing what the feeling is, and recognizing that you have the power of not only making people either uncomfortable, which it's okay, as artists, people should get comfortable with having people being uncomfortable. And hopefully that's going to either strike a conversation and wants people who are observing it or interacting with it and hopefully that's going to lead to some action to be changed. I feel like art is really good at not only making very complex subject digestible, it’s very good at communicating just social issues. I remember, I think this was in Portugal, in Lisboa, we were walking along, you know, some of the little streets that they had, it was a beautiful city, but there was this huge mural that had a piece about refugees. And it was one of those very ironic pieces, you know, like there was, the refugee was there and there was someone kind of looking over them, and me and my partner looked at that piece for a few minutes and we had a conversation for an hour like what was happening in Europe at a time. And I imagine the artist looking down and saying, this is the kind of things that I want, I want people to have conversations about what I'm trying to express here and hopefully go back home and make a better choice about whatever it is that's bothering them. And I think, you know, in sustainability, it's no different. You want to have art that evokes emotion and hopefully get people into not only making an impact or being more conscious about their decisions, but actually being more respectful towards each other. Love art. I can talk about this forever.
Stephanie Eche 34:15
What tips do you have for an artist who wants to collaborate specifically with sustainability organizations?
Jordana Vasquez 34:21
I think as an artist, first I would identify what part of sustainability they want to work with. So, there's so many different routes that you can take, you can say I'm really interested in agriculture or I'm really interested in energy efficiency or sustainable fashion and find one or two or three that really call to them and find how you can use your superpowers, you know, if that'd be doing public art and talking about how to make this, I mentioned this before, some of the messages just more digestible, or let's say, I've seen great films, you know, talking about sustainability. I've seen, I’ve even seen theater shows, like small skits about how climate change affects, you know, folks in New York City and find your medium. So not only first find which of the sustainability tracks you're interested, find what medium you want to use, and give that a try. I’ve heard podcasts, for example, that are all about sustainability, I’ve heard songs about sustainability, which I thought they were really funny. But you get people talking, you know, the end of the day, people are saying your name as an artist, and that's what you want. I say, don't be shy to use your superpowers. I've seen artists being multi-talented in different facets of different ways to express themselves and see what organizations out there are, you know, speak to their values, or speak to their interests, really need them. More than ever, I think we're in a place where we need to connect with each other, because we're all, most of us, not all of them, are socially distanced. If you can really find a way of plugging art and sustainability that way, hey, you won the jackpot.
Stephanie Eche 35:58
Can you tell us about the WOC/CS directory, and how someone might apply to be on it?
Jordana Vasquez 36:03
The directory that we have, we call it a database, came about this idea of how do we have all the women that are the members of our, of WOC/CS, you know, in one place where we can easily identify them. Not only know their names, but also know their experience, also know where they're working at, or where they want to be working at. And have people that are either interested in finding women of color in sustainability to have those experiences, and matchmaking, or also use their interests to come up with different events. Like if I see that I have 50% of the women in the directory, who are really good at farming, for example, that lets me know, they're like, there's an opportunity here to engage with more work towards farming. I've had people reach out to us, often, employing a new person into my team and I really want this person to be a woman, I'm all about mentorship, I'm all about, you know, different values and things like that and I'm really looking for a very specific profile, and I feel like someone from your members could fit into my company. And that could be either, it has been from sometimes from women of color themselves that they want to look into bringing that profile in and that experience, and sometimes it hasn't. It was a little bit difficult to say, okay, you know, Joanna, let’s say, I know a bunch of people that I can connect you with, let's go one by one. So we say what about we just bring everyone in house one out of a set, people who are seeking to engage a woman of color in sustainability for either a podcast, let's say or for a speaking gig or short term contract, or full time position can find them. And also, for women who are looking for similar, full time or contract, they can go there with their experience, and boom, we can do the matchmaking. It has been quite useful. Hopefully, when we move towards more of a tech enabled platform, it will be more user friendly, where people are just gonna instantly, hopefully, match.
Stephanie Eche 37:59
Is it up yet? Can anyone access it?
Jordana Vasquez 38:02
So, the way it works right now, we have the, we are able to see who submits their, you know, their profile and if someone contacts us for, let's say, particular profile looking for someone who works in public art murals, we go to the database, and we say, okay, there's two people that match what you're looking for, I'm gonna send them an email. But it's not as a, it's not a public directory where other people can automatically see, yet. It's just right now, it's a very simple Excel spreadsheet. So it's not as refined as we want it to, once we have a little bit more, I would say, work on the back end, it's a little bit more techie, I think that way would probably make it a little more interesting for folks to navigate.
Stephanie Eche 38:47
Yeah, that's exactly the issue I'm running through because I have a database of artists, of public artists, but it's like, I mean, it does become a question and something I've been thinking of, as far as like, I want to help expose these, help expose people to these resources, but also, as a business owner, how much of that access do I want to control? Because I foresee it could be like a subscription service, or it could be like here are the featured artists now, but if you want access to the full database, you can pay a subscription, and free for anybody to apply, obviously, to be on it. But on the flip, why not just have it be open, but it's not, it's not so much for me, like I don't want people to have the information, it's just, it's a lot of work. So, literally upload all the files, upload the photo and make sure everything's correct and then I'd have to pay somebody to basically have a system that allows you to self edit and update and you know, whoever is applying to it, so it becomes, yeah, it's totally like a tech thing where I don't necessarily want to put money into maintaining something that I'm not making money off of, yet, but I also don't want to create it just to make money off of it. So it's a weird thing.
Jordana Vasquez 39:49
I mean, I think that there's, there's honestly true value on having a plug for work. If you're able to work out the kinks of matching people automatically. I know for example, like TaskRabbit, right, you tell TaskRabbit I want someone who has experience putting shelves up and that's available on Sunday. And literally within seconds, you're matched with someone that has those skills. But whoever is, I guess the other flip side, they have to pay a subscription to be able to, to be, you know, to find someone, or I guess, like if I were to be hiring someone, I would pay a little bit, it would be baked in whatever I pay.
Stephanie Eche 40:23
Right, right.
Jordana Vasquez 40:24
And if you are, let's say, one of the members who are putting their information they shouldn't pay, but whoever, like if you're a big organization and you're looking to hire an artist, I think you can shed a couple dollars to access the directory.
Stephanie Eche 40:38
Right.
Jordana Vasquez 40:39
Not giving you business ideas, but I think there's value to be added to your time to put you know, a profile of someone out there.
Stephanie Eche 40:48
Definitely. And it seems like it's working out for you with the WOC/CS directory that people come to you anyway for these questions And now you have this thing, and you can really just lift people up using, because they've submitted to it right? What advice would you give to someone who wants to pursue a career similar to yours?
Jordana Vasquez 41:04
I would say that they shouldn't think about whatever their initial profession is, and I mean, initial by whatever you went to school with, for. Whatever you, whatever you went to school for something that's going to be linear, and constant. I went to school for architecture, and every single summer for four years, I tried a different internship. So the first internship I did was working for an art gallery, and I got to work with artists who were put in art displays of art, but I got to work with artists that were doing really cool work and artists that were also architects. The summer after that, I decided I wanted to do something more impact driven. So I worked for another company, not an artist this time, but working with families that were looking to build their homes, you know, put equity there and it was a lot of fun. There was a complete different side of architecture that I didn't even know existed. And the third year is similar thing. So I, by the time I ended my bachelor, I had friends who said, you know, I had four solid summers working in this internship, I'm just going to go back to them when I graduate, and I went up to them, well, I'm going to travel, I'm going to try to find, you know, inspiration somewhere else and I'm going to make a decision, which of the four different areas that I explored, I want to go in. I would say, the best advice I can give anyone would be to explore, not only fields within you know, sustainability or architecture or policy, but really try to meet people who do different things with your same degree or your same experience and see what took them there. In my case, the best thing I can say is you don't have to be a subject matter expert at everything, but you have to be an expert at asking the right questions. So I think curiosity will lead you way further than a very limited set of skills. And that has been proven, you know, to work for me, I’ve been in different, wearing different professional hats, the last five, six years for that same reason, just asking, asking, asking, how can I be part of this? Do you need an extra hand on this project? Why is this, who is this affecting? Why is this affecting these people? How can we- and it was just a constant of asking question until the people were just like, okay, let me just give you a role in this because you seem to be really interested. So yeah, don't be a subject matter everything. We don't need more of them. Just be very curious and open minded.
Stephanie Eche 43:21
That's great advice. Do you have a failure that you learned from that you want to share?
Jordana Vasquez 43:25
I have many failures. But I would say I recently took a test, a personality test that it's one of those, you know, are you a person who likes teams, or you're more independent, or you're more dominant, whatever and it made me realize that within my specific profiles, there's a lot of challenges, but also pro’s and con’s, let’s put it limitations and advantages. I was thinking a lot about that like, okay, so I guess I'm this type of person, I have this kind of pet peeve. But it also made me realize that there's a different set of groups, and I will call them the East who I just, it was immediate, I clicked and I said, these are the kind of people I don't work well with. And the reason I probably didn't work well with is because I didn't understand what their leadership or their work style was. Maybe I didn't make the effort to do it before to really understand that, so because we didn't work or mesh together, I immediately thought there's no relationship that I can really take further. So the biggest failure would have been not understanding different leadership styles and recognizing that we all react to different things different ways. We all react to conflict different way, differently, and that we also need as different personalities, different kinds of affirmation or validation. So I think if I were to, you know, retake that test, or going back to your previous question of what advice do you have, I will also add there that you should be able to once you're working in a new environment or even with your partners and friends, try to understand what their leadership style is, try to see how yours and hers or yours and his mesh. What are the limitations and try to foresee what could be common confrontations you might have before even having them because you have a good understanding of what your challenges are and what their challenges currently are. That's a very general one. But trust me, when I understood that, you know, like these are the challenges that I have and the sort of challenges x, y people have it, it really made a difference for me, it's like, oh, this is why, this is why that didn't work, that conversation went the wrong way, or et cetera, et cetera, so, yeah.
Stephanie Eche 45:30
That's great advice, too, for even people who do contract work, or artists who work with different types of clients. It's hard to know how someone's going to react to something, but if you have a sense of what their leadership style might be, you can anticipate what issues might come up and then be more prepared. You might not be able to avoid them, but at least, like I have clients, sometimes I'm like, okay, I know how they're gonna act about certain things, so I can just navigate that without being shocked every time.
Jordana Vasquez 45:56
I know, you become sort of like a, was another synonym for medium, someone that can predict certain things, you know, like, wow, you're in my head already, even before I thought of that.
Stephanie Eche 46:08
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Stephanie Eche 46:39
Is there anything you've read or listened to that's inspired you recently?
Jordana Vasquez 46:42
Yeah, I recently just, I just finished actually, this morning, a book by Tara Westover, book Educated. You know, I was reflecting on this the other day, not because, her upbringing and my upbringing were very different, she you know, grew up in Idaho and a Mormon family, very conservative, and very limited opinions and things like that. But you know, she eventually gets out of her way to earn education and travels abroad and becomes this whole different person than what she expected to be. So I reflected a little bit about my own upbringing, I grew up in Dominican Republic, I don't know if a lot of people know that, but I was in Dominican Republic until I was shy of 20. So I came here as an adult, and a lot of what I consider myself, like my core memories now and core center of who I am as a person, what my beliefs are and my values and things like that, I can honestly say that they probably have been defined the last 10 years. A lot of it having to do with being exposed to different opinions then my own and different cultural values and it’s just something very rich in being in a place like New York City where everyone's almost different than you. Everyone has a different experience than you and it adds so much more to your own critical thinking and how you see the world and how you experience and how you navigate that I felt, you know, back in where I grew up, I love my country, I love my city and my people, I'm not saying in a negative way at all, but I had very limited and very formed opinions about a lot of things that I didn't really know about, just because I would see it on TV and would read it in books, but it wasn't actually until I was here that I was like, oh, wow, this is completely different from what I thought this was. This is a completely different culture and this is so interesting and it just, it was always a moment of I can say of like unconditioned behavior that you have to go through in New York City. So that book reminded me a lot of that, again, not, you know, not parallel stories, but the art of finding yourself through not being your, let’s say, like dedicated to who you were in the beginning of your life to being open to completely evolving throughout the rest of your 20s and 30s and whatever years come.
Stephanie Eche 48:56
That's a great book suggestion. I haven't read it yet, but we'll link to it in the show notes. Is there anything else?
Jordana Vasquez 49:01
I would say to your members who are listening, to artists, sign up for WOC/CS, sign up for the newsletter, how to outline everything from job opportunities to funding, try to keep it open to not only nerds, archetypes and stuff like that, engineers, want to have the creatives out there. If you have an interest in sustainability, you're more than welcome into our WOC/CS family and yeah, come in. Doors are open.
Stephanie Eche 49:26
Awesome. Yeah, I am signed up for WOC/CS and it's been a great resource for me. It's inspiring because you get to see things that you could actually apply for or you know, particularly if you work in sustainability, but also it does cover a bunch of different things that relate to it. Also knowing how much is going on, it's really cool, there's just, you both do a really good job of finding opportunities and finding the beat of sustainability. It's nice to just see that people are doing the work and people like me or people who look like me are doing the work and that makes me able to sleep better at night. It's like you don't have to do everything, right, you can, you can help lift each other up because people are going to continue to do the work and I think particularly at this moment in time where, for me, it's easy to get kind of caught in a spiral of all the bad things that are happening or the people who don't get it, or the people who seem to still not get it, it's really inspiring to see your newsletter of no, we get it, we're doing it and we're just gonna keep pushing people forward who are doing the work. Thank you for all the work you do with it.
Jordana Vasquez 50:28
It's a lot, but it's definitely very rewarding work. So I'm happy to amplify your voice and any other voice of women of color. That's what we're here for.
Stephanie Eche 50:36
Awesome. Where can our listeners connect with you online?
Jordana Vasquez 50:38
Sure. So we have a couple of different outlets, we have Instagram, which is @woc__cs, we have Twitter with the same handle, we have LinkedIn, we have a LinkedIn group that's really active. That's where we go for job opportunities. So we're always posting if not daily, every other day about anything from energy to policy to creative. We have a website, so everything WOC/CS related from events, way to connect, medium publish applications, you can find it there. The last thing I would say email, womenofcolor.cs@gmail.com.
Stephanie Eche 51:14
Well, we'll link to everything in the show notes and I again, want everyone to sign up for your newsletter and find you, connect with you online. Also urbanonsite.com so you can read Jordi’s blog posts, and yeah, thank you so much for chatting with me today.
Jordana Vasquez 51:29
Oh, thank you. This was a lot of fun, stay safe, stay healthy, and I'll talk to you soon.
Stephanie Eche 51:33
You too, okay, bye.
Stephanie Eche 51:37
Thanks so much for watching this episode of First Coat. If you liked this video, please subscribe and check out the next episode in our playlist. Let me know what else you want to learn about public realm art in the comments below. And follow us on Instagram @firstcoatpodcast or @distillcreative. First Coat is a production of my company, Distill Creative. Check us out at distillcreative.com.