Welcome

Earlier this year, SBS students and Director of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Amanda Mozea attended the NAIS Student Diversity Leadership Conference (SDLC) in San Antonio, Texas. The theme of this year’s conference was We The People: Leveraging Our Community to Preserve Our Humanity. 

Drew ’24, Hassana ’24, Ijeoma ’25, and Melissa ’25 participated in workshops with a focus on developing cross-cultural communication skills, designing effective strategies for social justice practice through dialogue and the arts, and learning the foundations of allyship and networking principles.

Throughout the conference, which is attended by schools from the US and abroad, our SBS students engaged with students in large group sessions, "family groups", and "home groups" which allowed for dialogue and sharing in smaller units. Melissa ’25 shares, “I met a student named Ava at the conference. I like how they were able to communicate what they stand for, even if everyone else was disagreeing with them. Their ability to speak up and talk about themselves is very effective. I loved how they stood for themselves and didn’t just follow the group.” Ijeoma ’25 adds, “I met a student named Khari who shared a poem about her name and it resonated with me a lot because my name has always been, without a doubt, difficult to pronounce. All my life, people will always get it wrong. She also used the meaning of her name – ‘king’ – to show that the message of her name still applies to her, regardless of gender: ‘This is who I am and this is how I choose to be.’”

The keynote speaker at SDLC was Amanda Nguyen, who made history by drafting and unanimously passing both the Sexual Assault Survivors’ Bill of Rights through the United States Congress and the Survivors' Resolution through the United Nations General Assembly. Amanda’s story inspired our SBS students and all SDLC students to be an advocate for themselves and others and to pursue, with tenacity, a worthwhile goal. In response to Amanda’s keynote, Hassana ’24 commented “...I had chills the whole time.”

One lesson that Drew ’24 took away from the conference is “The core value of ‘suspend judgment.’ I know I am a very judgmental person. Whether I judge negatively or positively, I judge. It really came home with me when a boy came up to me to ask me about what jokes are okay or not okay to say about sexuality. I had to leave my judgment behind and recognize he was actually trying to do the work by speaking to me.” As for Melissa ’25, “I learnt that we all see diversity, but you can only know what diversity is by getting the perspective of everyone. Even as a Black person, I do not go through the same struggles as other Black people, especially as a Black person from Kenya. I can learn about others’ struggles by listening to other people. Yes, we can be in the same groups, but we are not the same and we are not necessarily going through the same stuff.”

At SBS, we prioritize Diversity, Equity & Inclusion inside and outside the classroom as well as on and off campus. Our Community, Equity & Justice Vision Statement, our Land Acknowledgement, and our Gender-Inclusivity Statement highlight our focus on and commitment to DEI and our DEI events demonstrate our community’s work in action. Learn more about DEI at SBS by visiting sbschool.org/dei.