NEW! FREE consultation hours available - see details to qualifying below.
Organizations all over the country have been making commitments to improve their organization’s equity, diversity, belonging, justice, and inclusion framework. Some successfully achieved aspects of their commitment, others have encountered roadblocks they did not foresee, and some have just plain stopped their process due to numerous challenges or obstacles during the implementation process. This practice has found that many lack the leadership fundamentals, strategies, and tools to integrate this work into their organizational culture successfully. What is important to consider is that one cannot just slip into equity work. The organization should recognize its history, define its why’s for this work and acknowledge the journey ahead will take time.
Equity work with your selected acronyms (EDI, DEI, RJEDI, IDEA, etc.) is much more than writing a statement, creating beautiful core values, and participating in a few training courses. Equity work can feel like an abstract painting for everyone to figure out their own interpretation. For real change to happen, leaders must commit to understanding their own personal readiness in leading, participating, and affecting change in this work. This is a thoughtful journey that demands time, patience, diligence, and self-work.
Through a series of on-demand, pre-work videos, and a live virtual workshop, participants will be able to:
Member - $0/person
Non-Member* - $145/person
*Please contact events@azimpactforgood.org for inquiries about attending via scholarship.
Teniqua Boughton, M.Ed., CNAP - Founder & CEO, VerveSimone Consulting
Teniqua has over 20 years of experience working in the nonprofit sector. She ignites creativity and challenge mediocrity to drive desired outcomes through public speaking, facilitating workshops that focus on nonprofit governance and programming, leadership, and equity readiness.
In 2014, Teniqua established her own consulting firm, VerveSimone Consulting as a means to build an organization where she could control the fruits of her labor. She wanted to expand her capacity and use her influence as a community leader to impact the issues and topics most dear to her heart, arts, and culture, women and girls, and underrepresented communities. Today VerveSimone continues to lead for change by positively affecting partnerships within our community as displayed by my noted leadership in the nonprofit sector in nonprofit formation and building capacity structures from zero to scale. Such work is evident in partnership with the State of Black Arizona, Arizona Impact for Good and the Arizona Opera: LOUD! (Living Opera, Understanding Diversity) and in organizing and facilitating a variety of leadership workshops focused on equity readiness, coaching, and assessments that result in organizational strategy recommendations.
Teniqua curated a space for seven statewide leadership development groups such as Valley Leadership to Greaer Tucson Leadership to commit to developing a shared curriculum on racial justice. Her vision is to empower leaders to have honest conversations about the communities we live, work, and play in, and how we as Arizonans can engage to make them stronger.
As the commissioner chair of the City of Phoenix Arts and Culture Commission Teniqua has led the change in equitable grant-making practices. She also executed the transition of leading and new curriculum for the SBAZ’s African American leadership institute from Valle de Sol and the launch of the inaugural institute in Southern Arizona. She currently serves as the chair of the Western States Arts Federation’s (WESTAF) Board of Trustees. A board member of Desert Botanical Garden Foundation and ASU Knowledge Exchange for Resilience (KER) council.
Teniqua has been awarded Phoenix Titan 100 of Industry in 2022 and 2023. A titan is a person of exceptional importance and reputation. Albert Einstein of their industry. Most recently, AZ Big Media’s 50 Business Leaders to Watch in 2024. 2023 NCBW’s Economic Empowerment Legend Recipient and Arizona Capitol Times Women Achievers of Arizona. In 2021, she was awarded the Arizona State University MLK Servant Leader- Leadership award and Phoenix Business Journal’s 2021 Most Admired Leader recipient. In 2017, she was selected by her peers as the recipient of the Arizona Champion Award for the Central Arizona region from the Flinn Foundation’s Arizona Center for Civic Leadership, for her significant contributions to civic leadership.
Teniqua has a master’s degree in education with a focus on Educational Administration and Supervision from Arizona State University, and a bachelor’s degree in educational psychology, with an emphasis on theater for youth from Arizona State University. She is a certified Nonprofit Accounting Professional (CNAP), with certificates in Nonprofit Leadership and Management from the University of Arizona and Boston College and in Equity and Inclusion from the Nonprofit Leadership Alliance.