Derek Steele

About Derek Steele

What do I do? Glad you asked. In short, I am an experienced problem solver who started my career as an electrical engineer at Northrop Grumman and is currently the Executive Director of the Social Justice Learning Institute (SJLI). I started my journey with SJLI figuring out how to re-creating local food access systems to solve health disparities and food insecurity in the Inglewood community and beyond. Early into my career, I realized that the equity lens that I saw the world through and my approach to transforming paradigms that cause the pervasive nature of inequity were not only useful to create health in the built environment but could be useful to many efforts to create social and racial justice and equity. During my 11 years at SJLI I\'ve exercised my unique skill sets as a leader in the organization as we solve the inequalities that plague communities of color, particularly the black community. I\'ve had the pleasure of building, training, and mentoring my amazing team in order to provide our services on the highest of levels. The goal is to support not only community members but also fellow team members in becoming their whole selves.Concurrently, the skills I\'ve garnered in my profession as a program director, associate director and now executive director opened the doors for me to begin solving problems in community and also for businesses that employ or would like to employ the ever growing population of millennials of color. With some colleagues, I started a consulting group called Raise the Standards. My team and I aid businesses in curating solutions for overall workplace culture and improved employee engagement in a way that maintains and helps to recruit top talent. There\'s more but that\'s pretty much the gist.#ByReferralOnly

Experience

1. Executive Director

   Social Justice Learning Institute

   Oct 2021 — Present · Inglewood, CA, US

Education

• Morgan State University

  BS, Applied Liberal Studies - Concentration: Non-Profit Management & Engineering

  2001 — 2018

Skills

• Powerpoint
• Microsoft Excel
• Social Justice
• Civic Engagement
• Os X
• Mac Os X
• Program Management
• Testing
• Engineering
• Windows
• Electromagnetics
• Program Development
• Building Relationships
• Event Planning