Greg / Joy

Talking to Kathy Bowser, ‘72, in the Union, fall of 1971.

A freshman year drawing of Frederick Douglass.

Greg at Western Reserve Academy, WRA Today Program, May 2022, announcing the Class of 1971 Class Gift—The Frederick Douglass Initiative—in the Chapel where Douglass delivered Commencement Address in 1854.

Organizational psychologist Greg Pennington had an epiphany at his 50th boarding school reunion in May 2022 at Western Reserve Academy in Hudson, Ohio. As one of four Black students out of 240 boys, he was reminded that his white classmates were looking at him back in the day because, as one of them later told him: “the first time I ever was in a room with a Black person was when I met you.”

But being able to reflect on that time now, he says, is “a great opportunity to say, ‘we all have our own version of this journey. And if you just pause long enough to appreciate somebody, you can really understand them a little bit differently.’”

For PasstheMic75, he shares his thoughts on leadership as the intentional exercise of power, and reflects on the persistence of the great orator Frederick Douglass—in his time and beyond.  In one goosebump moment, Greg draws the connection from the commencement address Douglass delivered in the chapel of Western Reserve in 1854, to a portrait of Douglass he sketched freshman year at Harvard, and on to his recent launch of the Frederick Douglass Initiative, created to remind students at his old campus of its rich history of social activism.