Broderick L. McBride

Describe the career and lived experiences that have best prepared you for the role of Co-Executive Director at LABWC.

I am a Black man born and raised in the Delta of the South, in communities shaped by poverty, labor, faith, survival, and deep dignity. Many of the people I come from are only a generation removed from domestic labor, sharecropping, and systems that required Black people to work hard while still being denied full access to opportunity. My own path into higher education, leadership, and broader exposure has always felt like both a blessing and an anomaly. I know that intelligence, discipline, and dignity do not always protect Black people from poverty, underemployment, housing instability, or systems that were not designed with us in mind.

That reality became painfully personal through the life and death of my friend, Taronda. She was college educated, deeply capable, and in her mid-40s when she fell into abject poverty. She experienced homelessness, health issues, and the harshness of systems that often meet people with exhaustion instead of care. She was a Black woman who fell on hard times and could not find a system strong enough, humane enough, or responsive enough to help her recover. Her death remains one of the clearest reminders in my life that economic justice is not theoretical. It is life and death.

After my oldest brother killed, my family experienced how poverty, limited access, and political power imbalances can shape justice itself. We were working poor. We did not have the resources, education, or influence to navigate that moment with power. We lost my brother, experienced a miscarriage of justice, and still remained in poverty. That gave me a lifelong sensitivity to what happens when people have pain but no power, need but no access, and truth but no leverage.

Professionally, I have built systems that help people move from crisis to next steps. In my current role, I oversee community-facing teams that manage intake, resource research, and resource mobilization for people navigating employment needs, housing instability, rental assistance, utilities, and case navigation. I provide final approval for community resource requests, but I do not see those requests as transactions. Every application represents a person, a family, a story, and a moment where the right response can help someone regain stability.

The Grier family comes to mind. Mr. Grier was working multiple jobs, including seasonal work that left his income dependent on factors outside his control. His family was in the red with housing, and he was carrying the pressure of being the primary breadwinner. My role was not simply to approve assistance. It was to look at the whole picture. We helped him find affordable housing, assessed the family's financial condition, helped him gain employment, and secured scholarship support for two of his children to attend HBCUs. Today, his family is stable, his wife is working, and he continues to grow professionally. That is what I believe good leadership does: it does not only respond to the emergency; it helps build a pathway beyond it.

I have also been prepared through moments that required repair. When I entered one leadership role, I inherited a team after a serious breach of trust and financial stewardship. Morale was low, systems had been gutted, and people were unsure whether they could trust leadership again. I knew I could not demand performance before I repaired trust. I gave the team room to name what they had experienced, assessed the department, clarified roles, rebuilt job descriptions, strengthened documentation, and created approval systems that safeguarded both people and resources. I partnered with executive leadership, staff, stakeholders, and volunteers to create a more accountable and humane structure. Over time, morale increased, the team began owning the work, documentation improved, and staff became proactive in identifying partners and solutions.

My leadership is rooted in the belief that care and accountability belong together. Care means I see the humanity of a person, not a case number. Accountability means I am willing to address the behaviors, systems, and decisions that keep people and organizations trapped in cycles that harm them. People who are afraid or overwhelmed need safe space, honest education, practical resources, and empowerment to make wise next decisions.

I feel most prepared for this role through staff leadership, resource stewardship, partnership building, and stabilizing systems. I build leaders, align teams, steward budgets, cultivate partners, and create infrastructure that helps organizations serve people with dignity and discipline. I would be growing in direct worker campaigns, policy advocacy, and the Los Angeles political ecosystem, and I would enter that growth with humility, urgency, and respect for LABWC's members, staff, and movement partners.

The sentence I hope you remember is this: care is not soft work; care is power-building work. When care is organized, accountable, and rooted in justice, it can transform people, communities, and systems.