Today, we’d like to introduce you to Jennifer Sarrett and Akil Sanders.
Hi Jennifer and Akil, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
Akil and I met at a diversity, equity, inclusion, and access (DEIA) conference in Minneapolis in March of 2023. We both announced we were from Atlanta during the audience introductions of the first session.
We both attended the same session later that day, sat together, and became fast friends. We started discussing our passions in DEIA and realized we were interested in how history shaped today’s injustices and disparities. The fact that there was little to no history in DEIA work astounded us. We decided to present the importance of history in this work at the next conference, but that conference was canceled.
Undeterred, we decided to start a podcast that presents audiences with historical events left out of the history books, whitewashed, or otherwise changed to be more “palatable” to the majority. It’s called Hindsight, and our motto is “When you Know Better, You Do Better”. Our first episode came out on January 17th, and we publish a new episode every other Wednesday.
Can you talk to us about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned? Looking back, would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Overall, it has been a smooth road. We work well together and don’t take ourselves too seriously. There have been some struggles in making the audio sound perfect, but we are working on it!
We learn a lot about microphones, sound boards, and editing software. And, of course, we want more people to listen so we can help spread this education and message. We have an endless list of potential topics and are excited to hear what listeners want us to discuss!
Thanks – so, what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
Akil has had a long career in the Air Force and has voluntarily entered the DEIA space in that role. As he nears the end of his military career, he is excited to transition into doing DEIA work full-time. He stays busy with two kids, a new house, and his full-time role but makes time for Hindsight. Akil sees this podcast as a way to do the work and impact the community. As a Black man, he is focused on anti-racism and histories of colonization, enslavement, and Jim Crow. But Akil is also tuned in to the intersectional nature of this work and promotes anti-sexism, anti-ableism, anti-classism, and so forth around the world.
Jen has an academic background; she developed and taught courses on health equity, ethics, medical anthropology, and disability studies at Emory for seven years, starting after she completed her PhD there in 2014. Feeling disconnected from the community, she left academia to do DEIA full-time with her consultancy, Disruptive Inclusion. Although she currently works in health equity at CARE USA, she continues to do her DEIA work through Hindsight and other opportunities. As a white woman, she recognizes her responsibility to address racism in all its forms.
As someone with a psychiatric disability, she is deeply committed to supporting the disability community. Like Akil, she knows this work can not be done in silos but must attend to intersectionality.
What has been the most important lesson you’ve learned along your journey?
Other than how to edit audio (sort of!), we learn from each other every time we record. Not only about the events we are discussing, but we learn more about ourselves and our relationship to our identities, interpretations of events, and place in the world.
We recognize that we are always a work in progress – every one of us – and that’s a good thing! We should always be learning, growing, and questioning our pasts.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://linktr.ee/hindsightlisten
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hindsight_pod/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61555739099411
