Heather McGhee’s specialty is the American economy—and the mystery of why it so often fails the American public. She is a champion of creating bridges across cultural and racial divides that keep Americans struggling to understand each other.

Heather designs and promotes solutions to inequality in America with 20 years of experience as an advocate for change.

Her powerful exploration of the self-destructive bargain of white supremacy and its rising cost to all of us —including white people—from one of today’s most insightful and influential thinkers.

“We can’t be a union that collectively bargains, we can’t have our strength in numbers if Black, White, and Brown workers are not all on the same side,” Heather believes. Everyone is affected in this struggle for bargaining with equality.

It’s a toxic mix of American racism and greed. Is there a way out?

In unlikely places of worship and work, McGhee finds proof of what she calls the ‘Solidarity Dividend.’ These are mutually beneficial gains that come when people come together across race, to accomplish what we can’t do on our own. These advantages can only be unlocked through collective action, but communities that are racially divided can’t muster the power to win the policies they need; wealthy private interests often set the rules.

“This is one of the most important conversations we need to have in this country,” Heather said. “I want an injection of hope because it feels like things are really bad. And the good news is that I found the hope! I found stories of cross-racial coalitions that have won against the odds and some extraordinary human beings.”

Heather also finds proof of what she calls the Solidarity Dividend: gains that come when people come together across races to the benefit of all involved.

“Why do we accept so much inequality and struggle? It’s not because we don’t have the data. It’s not even because we don’t know what the solutions are. It’s because we have not been able to come together and fight for them, Heather expands. “It’s because there is a disconnect between the people in power, whether it’s in business or government and the people who are impacted by the decisions that they make and that race is a big piece of that disconnect—that social distance—and it’s a big piece of our inability to come together and fight for the solutions that we all know we all need and would benefit us all.” Heather presents a roadmap for repair.

Prejudice is not just in the most obvious indignities for people of color. Racism has costs for white people, too. It is the common denominator of our most concerning public problems, the core dysfunction of our democracy, and constitutive of the spiritual and moral crises that grip us all.

Heather’s New York Times bestseller The Sum of Us is a brilliant analysis of how we arrived here as a nation: divided and self-destructing, materially rich but spiritually starved, and vastly unequal. The heart of the book reveals stories of people yearning to be part of a better America, including white supremacy’s collateral victims: white people themselves.

“My faith in the next generation is profoundly strong and it was restored by being among them,” she said in an interview with The Boston Foundation.

Heather partnered with the nation’s largest online racial justice organization, Color Of Change, to create a companion guide to her podcast, The Sum of Us, available on Spotify. It is an invitation to organize and fight injustice in many forms.

We can all come together. We can be part of that change.

Heather McGhee is the keynote speaker at the 2024 Celebration for Resilience Gala on September 19 at the Omni Hotel in Tempe. Register today.