PARTNERSHIP SERIES - Matriarchal Futures in the Workplace: Redesigning Systems That Don’t Demand Our Disappearance
**This program is organized by our partners in the Pacific Northwest ODN Chapter! Join our partners, alongside Minnesota, Oregon, and Triangle OD Networks for an opportunity for learning and cross-regional connections.
We are excited to welcome Lovette Jallow, all the way from Sweden! Lovette's work has earned national and international awards for leadership in anti-racism, neurodiversity, and systemic inclusion, spanning government, education, and civil society.
This 90-minute session challenges the assumption that working with women particularly racialized, neurodivergent, and system-disrupting women is what makes inclusion hard. The real difficulty lies in organizational systems built on dominance, compliance, and erasure. Lovette Jallow unpacks how patriarchal systems selectively uplift sanitized versions of marginalized women while punishing the leadership, boundaries, and brilliance that challenge extractive norms.
Through the lens of matriarchal governance, relational intelligence, strategic refusal, and care-based accountability this session offers OD practitioners actionable frameworks for redesigning systems that support rather than silence. Participants will leave with tools to shift workplace culture from extraction to reciprocity, from control to collective strength anchored in equity, not performance optics.
Learning Objectives for this Session:
- Identify how traditional workplace structures are shaped by patriarchal and ableist norms.
- Analyze how underrepresented women are systematically excluded, co-opted, or punished.
- Examine matriarchal governance principles as models for structural care and non-hierarchical leadership.
- Apply equity-centered design strategies to organizational policy and culture.
- Develop interventions that do not require marginalized women to assimilate in order to survive.
About the Presenter: Lovette Jallow
Lovette is a nine-time award-winning author, strategist, and international speaker specializing in neurodivergence, anti-racism, and structural equity. As a Black autistic woman with lived experience across Europe and West Africa, her work spans systems consulting, humanitarian coordination, and published critique.
She founded Black Vogue to challenge Eurocentric beauty standards and document how Black women are erased across industries a theme further explored in her books. She also leads Action for Humanity, supporting racial justice and neurodivergent advocacy across Sweden, The Gambia, Libya, and Lebanon. Lovette’s lectures interrogate diagnostic bias, institutional harm, and racialized pathologization offering evidence-informed strategies to build environments rooted in justice, not compliance.
