Building and Leading an Equity‐Minded Collective

ABSTRACT This article documents our learnings from creating and sustaining a three‐year equity‐minded collective supporting over 200 colleagues across 23 community colleges in California (Bensimon, 2005). Within our state context, all 116 campuses serving 2.1 million students create institutional documents known as “Student Equity Plans” that span three‐year cycles under the Student Equity and Achievement (SEA) program (California Community Colleges Chancellor's Office [CCCCO], n.d.). This program, in existence since the 1990s, has required colleagues to create these institutional equity plans since 2014. Each of the authors hold some experience with student equity; whether its writing these plans, spending years implementing proposed ideas within them, or studying the efficacy of them in improving outcomes for racially minoritized students (Felix, 2021). Given these experiences, the authors came together in 2021 to work collaboratively, seeking to bridge the gap between system‐level intent of policy and campus‐wide impact via implementation.