2026 Bridge Conference

Ilsa Govan, Co-Founder of Cultures Connecting, believes we stifle children’s innate sense of justice when we tell them, “Life’s not fair.” As a child, she questioned why girls were supposed to like pink and boys like blue, why her parent’s LGBTQIA+ friends were targets of hate crimes, and why her Black neighbors were evicted from the apartment next door. Later in life, this led to a deep examination of her own identity as queer, White cis-gender woman. This exploration resulted in writing What’s Up with White Women? Unpacking Sexism and White Privilege in Pursuit of Racial Justice. Co-authored with Tilman Smith, they invite other White women to join them in looking at their stories of assimilation, resistance, and justice-centered leadership. Facilitating Conversations on Race: Strategies for Group Discourse, co-authored with Dr. Caprice D. Hollins, is a guide for leading the necessary conversations to promote racial equity practices.
Prior to Cultures Connecting, Ilsa worked as an Equity and Race Specialist for Seattle Public Schools where she was tasked with addressing institutional racism in a large public organization.