(Re)Imagining the Work: Counter-Storytelling in a Time of Organizational Change

• In Event: Shaking the Table: Centering the Voices of Identity Center Practitioners

Abstract

This work is a story about stories—mine, ours, and those that came before us. It engages in counter-storytelling to explore how storytelling that centers the experiences, insights and assets of communities of color illuminates the complexities of identity, space creation, and history within higher education (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002). Grounded in the author’s role as interim administrator of the Unity Office—a multicultural support center at a small liberal arts college—the narrative examines how personal experience, institutional history, and collective storytelling intersect to inform organizational change. Central to this story is the question of how counter-storytelling can function as both a reflective and strategic tool for reimagining equity work during moments of institutional transformation.

To explore this question, the chapter documents the author’s recollections of a campus storytelling event that brought together seven former Unity Office leaders, each representing a different era in the office’s fifty-year history. Over the course of one evening, these leaders shared narratives of resistance, coalition-building, institutional struggle, and transformation. Their stories revealed how the Unity Office evolved in response to shifting student needs, political climates, and organizational pressures. The event surfaced tensions between past and present visions of the office’s mission, including debates over naming, programming, and the role of student activism. Through this autoethnographic account, readers gain insights on the intergenerational dialogue and how storytelling can challenge dominant institutional memory, complicate linear narratives of progress, and offer new frameworks for identity-based support services rooted in both legacy and adaptability.

The chapter’s key contribution lies in its methodological approach: a deeply personal, reflexive narrative that blends memory, dialogue, and institutional critique. Written in the tradition of counter-storytelling (Solórzano & Yosso, 2002), it centers the researcher’s lived experience as a site of inquiry into the structural and emotional dimensions of organizational life. Rather than offering a blueprint, the chapter reflects on process—on asking better questions, embracing discomfort, and recognizing that meaningful change cannot—and should not—be carried alone. It affirms that lived experience is not only a valid source of knowledge, but also a powerful tool for collective transformation. Most importantly, the story provided highlights how rejecting isolated change efforts in favor of intergenerational leadership and shared institutional knowledge is essential to building futures that honor both legacy and possibility.

Solórzano, D. G., & Yosso, T. J. (2002). Critical Race Methodology: Counter-Storytelling as an Analytical Framework for Education Research. Qualitative Inquiry, 8(1), 23-44.

Author

• Kandi Bauman, The Brotherhood Initiative/University of Washington