Historic Oakland Foundation’s DEIA Progress in 2024
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s we continue our work as an organization to preserve, restore, enhance, and share Oakland Cemetery, Historic Oakland Foundation (HOF) continues to elevate diversity, equity, inclusion, and access (DEIA) as central lenses through which we conduct our work. Part of the transparency that we strive for as an organization includes sharing periodic updates with you.
In 2024, HOF has continued our commitment to substantially expand its programmatic work with a central focus on community and intentionally centering diversity, equity, access, and inclusion. We are proud of some of the new initiatives and programs that we have been able to offer to the public, including:
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New free and accessible family programming, notably our Spring festival Spring to Life and expanded Juneteenth programing;
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An expanded workforce development program (The Youth Landscape & Hardscape Team);
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STEM based summer camps for elementary aged students with needs-based scholarships for students; and
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A new fellowship program for students from typically underrepresented backgrounds in the museum/culture field.
These programs, as well as continuing to expand on projects and initiatives from recent years, will be further expanded and enhanced when the new Oakland Cemetery Visitor Center opens in early 2025. This new facility, the culmination of our $15 million capital campaign, provides the opportunity to supercharge our existing programming, and with weather-proofed facilities, allows us to launch new programming in the coming years. The experiences and lessons of the last three years ensure that all of these new programs and activities will be designed with diversity, equity, inclusion, and access at their core.
As we complete the third and final year of our Institute of Museum and Library Services grant, that has funded some of the initiatives of the last couple of years, it is also a good time to step back and reflect on how far we’ve come on our journey. In assessing the structural and systemic changes that have occurred at HOF in a fairly short period of time, we have produced a Toolkit to document our journey, lessons learned, and progress that we will share with colleagues and peer institutions in the field at forthcoming conferences in 2025.
While we know that we have so much more work to do in the coming years as we continue to elevate and intentionally center diversity, equity, inclusion, and access in all of our work, I am grateful for all of the staff, volunteers, board members, and community partners and stakeholders whose work and intention continually puts us on the right path.
With continued best wishes from all of us at Historic Oakland Foundation,
Richard J. W. Harker
President & CEO, Historic Oakland Foundation
