Welcome to the eighty-second issue of CEE News! .

In the wake of last week’s deadliest school mass shooting in Texas’ history, which happened nine days after one person was killed and five were wounded while attending church in Laguna Hills, CA, one day after ten people were gunned down as a Buffalo supermarket, you may have missed that last week marked the second anniversary of the murder of George Floyd.

The last days of May, when the calendar signals the promise of long summer days ahead, will now also be marked as a season of violence, tears, and mourning in America. Fifteen years after the massacre at Virginia Tech, 10 years after the Sandy Hook rampage, four years after the carnage in Parkland, we have yet to see serious bipartisan efforts at gun reform.

It is easy to think that nothing will change. I fight this sentiment myself and want to believe the words written on a sign posted on a pole near the spot where Floyd was murdered which read: “You have to act as if it were possible to radically transform the world and you have to do it all the time. If not now, when? If not me, then who?”

So, whatever you are feeling this week — don’t run from it. Don’t bury it in your work. Sit with it. Check in with one another. Before you start your next meeting with co-workers, ask, “What are you bringing into this space today?” Then listen. Be there for one another. Allowing colleagues to acknowledge their collective grief before talking about CY Q2 goals, may be your first step towards radical transformation.

Sheri Nasim | President & CEO