Last Friday during an unforgettable Chapel Talk, Dr. Bertice Berry, sociologist, best-selling author and award-winning lecturer, filled the room with laughter, empathy and hope. Dr. Berry’s speech was the perfect punctuating moment for a week on campus that was filled with activities geared toward building community, led by Head of School Suzanne Walker Buck P ‘24 and the Student Life and Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Belonging Offices. 

Dr. Berry was welcomed to the Chapel podium by Buck, Evanna Adou ‘25, a member of the student DEIB committee, and Iiyannaa Graham-Siphanoum, Associate Dean of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Belonging. Dean of Academic Affairs Wanda Boesch-Cordon also played an instrumental role in the events of the week.

Graham-Siphanoum praised students for their embrace of the events leading up to Dr. Berry’s talk, which included the creation of individual tiles for a campus mosaic and a sleuthing connections challenge that paired players by commonalities that previously may have been unspoken or unknown outside smaller friend or faculty circles. 

“Each of us brings something unique and irreplaceable to the community,” Graham-Siphanoum said. “Over the past week, you took risks and stepped out of your comfort zones. Community takes work, planning, showing up, leaning in, and most of all a shared commitment to take ownership of making it work. Community is more than just a group of people living in the same place. It is a promise about taking care of each other.”

Dr. Berry’s talk emphasized how individuals can manifest care – for themselves and each other – by broadening their circle of contacts and overall mindsets. “The diversity in this room is tremendous, but the diversity that I cannot see is even greater…Without allowing the diversity in your life, you don’t get compassion for others because there has been no diversity.” 

Dr. Berry’s stories spanned airport encounters, dolphins and biodiversity, country music, sewing, the symphony and jazz, the Episcopal church, understanding and forgiveness of family, Michael Jordan and so much more. Her adeptness at storytelling linked all of her experiences into lessons that felt like a warm blanket around the community, with stitches of wisdom threaded throughout:

“In business, we know if your portfolio is diversified, you’re going to win. Why don’t we do this with people? The more diverse the environment, the more creative, productive, brilliant and successful are the things that come from it.”

“Belonging is the opposite of fitting in. If you have to try to fit in, you feel like you don’t belong. Belonging is, ‘I get to be me, you get to be you.’”

“Tell your experience and allow it to invite others to tell their own as well; the more you do it, the easier it becomes. And it sets you free.”

Students asked questions of Dr. Berry after her speech, the last of which was, “What is your favorite gospel song?” She answered, “I try my best not to have favorites, because favorites become preferences and preferences become prejudices in my brain.” Yet she described the particular resonance of Amazing Grace and, to no one’s surprise who had experienced her dynamism throughout the morning, burst into a barreling, powerful rendition of it - bold and unafraid.

Listen to Dr. Berry’s entire talk here.