Betty García Mathewson , BA, MA

Associate Director in Leadership and Civic Engagement

SUNY Brockport

Betty has spent the last 30 years working in the field of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Starting her career as an administrator of community-based programs serving marginalized groups, she found her calling when she attended a Managing Diversity workshop in 1990. The week-long session crystallized her life experience; the idea of helping people to see each other and operate towards a common mission tapped into her life-experience and inspired her. 

Growing up in an activist family and crossing invisible lines between different worlds within her community she learned to love and be loved by people like her, and she learned the richness and joy of loving and being loved by people who were different. She also witnessed the fear and mistrust people had of each other, and the disparate outcomes based on access to resources. 

In 1991 she met Kathy Castania, the creator of the Opening Doors: A Personal and Professional Journey workshop. Kathy’s approach to personal healing and the Opening Doors Framework added depth to what the broader field was publishing. The two began collaborating through the Working Together Group of farmworker serving organizations. Learning to facilitate the newly designed retreat together, and listening to participants, reading, and incorporating their own healing journeys formed the bases of Betty’s learning. She left non-profit management in 1995 to join the Opening Doors Project full-time. She has a Bachelor’s degree in Social Theory, Social Structure, and Change with a focus on managing diversity in schools and a Master’s degree in Organizational Development. 

Betty is a lifelong student and respected professional examining how our divided society operates and how to create power-with environments that work for everyone. Her organizational development approach is grounded in her years of work serving farmworkers and the study of oppression theory, social identity development, and organizational development. Her integrated and interdisciplinary work draws from researchers in sociology, psychology, organizational development, leadership development, and education.  Shifting from a focus on changing the world to changing one organization at a time provided focus and success  to her efforts. Betty works with formal leaders and work groups committed to equity to develop the system structures to achieve their highest intentions as defined by the group. Through the years she has worked with non-profit agencies that serve marginalized groups, schools, universities, government, and for-profit businesses.

The Opening Doors approach is holistic, we are all fully present as we work to build community and act outside of the power-over structures we have inherited. Opening Doors provides the framework for acknowledging the uniqueness of race in the U.S. based in our history of genocide, slavery, and colonialism, while simultaneously being inclusive of all identities. I grew up crossing between distinct worlds. Being in different worlds was easy, it was when my worlds came together that the divisions limited us all. My life work is to contribute to the creation of spaces that truly work for all people. Spaces that inspire the courage and commitment to uncover inequity with joy – identifying inequity means we can focus on change.

Most adults interact with organizations in their work or community life. Transforming organizations (something about employers for service organizations its not just about the people we serve it is also staff) contributes to community health, and at the core of organizations and communities are individuals and relationships. Quality workplaces promote community growth and health through the quality of life of the people working in the organization. Creating an equitable workplace that allows people to bring their full selves contributes to personal growth and living into one’s inherent power. People go home from work as neighbors, friends, partners, parents, community members. People whose spirits are nourished in their workplace return home from their shift at work nourished and ready to engage with their life. We change the world one person, one organization at a time.

I also felt like I hadn’t learned the isms and Opening Doors changed how I looked at the world. Betty’s words about whether she challenged her daughter enough — asking herself ‘Am I expecting enough of her?’ — stays with me all the time in my adult ESL classes.

Eden Wadsworth
Oswego Migrant Education Outreach Program