End of Year Updates + Welcome Bruce!
WELCOME BRUCE KING
MIO’S NEW CO-EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
Hello MIO Community,
I am thrilled to have this opportunity to reintroduce myself in my new capacity as Co-Executive Director. Having served as a MIO board member for the past five years, I’ve had the chance to meet many collaborators, donors and members. Now, with a new role and vision, I’m looking forward to helping to develop and implement the next iteration of Maine Inside Out.
I come to this work with lived experience as a previously incarcerated individual which I believe provides insight critical to building connection and promoting healing for the people and communities we interact with. Prior to joining MIO, I’ve worked in the fields of substance use and recovery, mentoring and coaching multicultural youth, and community building. Most recently, I worked for Community Concepts as a workforce development counselor in downtown Lewiston, Maine.
Additionally, as a second generation Mexican Immigrant, I serve as a Commissioner on the Permanent Commission on the Status of Racial, Indigenous and Maine Tribal Populations. In this role, our commission works with Maine's government to address disparate treatment of marginalized ethnic groups and actualize racial justice. I am also on the board of Mindbridge, as an active member of the Maine Prison Reentry Network, and regularly fulfill public speaking engagements.
I am a single father, living in Brunswick, Maine with two young daughters.
I’m hoping to connect with everyone in our community in the coming months and am so excited to help facilitate the growth of MIO alongside each of you. This is big and important work and the only way to truly vision and enact our ideal world is to do it together.
Love,
Bruce
Co-Executive Director at Maine Inside Out
To contact me, send me an email at Bruce@maineinsideout.org
Maine Inside Out's 2020 Planning Period
From January-April 2020, Maine Inside Out embarked on a planning period which included in-depth work across the entire organization. After tremendous growth over the past twelve years, we intentionally chose a period of reflection and visioning to plan for MIO’s future.
MIO staff, board, and members collectively used the time to build strategy toward the transformative vision of MIO’s purpose. We turned inward and took a serious look at our own policies, practices, and norms. With care and intention, we operationalized our long term commitments to creating an anti-racist, anti-oppressive workplace and organizational culture, and identified concrete goals to move us in the direction of our vision.
A few outcomes of MIO’s planning period:
A defined purpose:
MIO builds a world where everyone matters and belongs
Clarity about how Maine Inside Out works toward our purpose:
MIO builds, practices and shares our models for community change: Art, Advocacy and Support, Transformative Justice
A leadership evolution and a deeper investment in leadership development:
MIO centers the lived experiences and expertise of people directly impacted by incarceration. The co-founders and former co-directors of MIO have transitioned into different roles in the organization, and Margot Fine will join Bruce King on the Co-Executive Director team. In October 2020, Stacy Perez became MIO’s Director of Advocacy and Support. There are now multiple opportunities for MIO youth leaders to join the team in staff roles. In September 2020, Darry Shepard and Tyler Jackson became MIO Project Facilitators.
Shared leadership and transparent, equitable decision making:
MIO has transitioned to using the various tools, processes, and guidelines of holacratic organizational design, giving everyone in the organization the power to be creative, make changes, and have an equal voice.
A transformative vision:
MIO will build and practice radical and visible alternatives to incarceration in the Maine communities most impacted by incarceration. Beginning with the city of Lewiston in 2021, MIO will ground our transformative work by opening doors in physical community sites. After 5 years of consistent presence in Lewiston, and the development of a deep, capable MIO youth leadership base, we look forward to focusing our capacity locally while also continuing to offer connection and support to the MIO community statewide
Building a strong foundation:
Expansive visions are wonderful, and they need practical support to become realities. In May of 2020, Maine Inside Out launched an internal capacity campaign to help fund infrastructure for the goals we identified during our planning period. Thanks to the confidence and enthusiasm of a core group of generous donors, we raised funds to support key additions to MIO’s staff team in 2021.
These are just a few of the outcomes of our planning period. We will continue to practice and learn. Please stay in touch on our journey - we will keep sharing our evolution with you. As an arts and culture-building organization, Maine Inside Out is also a laboratory, experimenting and adapting as we grow and learn. We want our organizational structure to reflect MIO’s core values and ensure that we do the best possible work to achieve our vision for a world where everyone matters and belongs.
MIO is an equal opportunity employer. All candidates should have a demonstrated commitment to MIO’s mission. Understanding that our efforts are most successful when they are made up of people directly affected by issues that our work prioritizes, formerly incarcerated and BIPOC individuals are strongly encouraged to apply.
Maine Inside Out is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization. Your tax-deductible support goes directly to support art-making, collaborative advocacy and transformative justice work in our communities, to help build a world where everyone matters and belongs.