Podcast Summary

Podcast: GovLove – A Podcast About Local Government
Episode Title: #715 How Not to Engage Historically Marginalized Communities
Guest: Chyanne Eyde, Deputy Chief of School Planning, DC Public Schools
Host: Tony Thompson
Release Date: February 13, 2026

Episode Overview

This episode explores the pitfalls, lessons, and evolving best practices in engaging historically marginalized communities, specifically from the perspective of Washington, DC. Chyanne Eyde, with more than a decade of experience in DC's public sector, shares candid reflections on her failures and growth as a local government engagement practitioner. The conversation goes beyond platitudes, delving into real stories, awkward moments, and actionable advice for building authentic relationships and making public services more equitable.

Lightning Round – Getting to Know Chyanne

[01:49]–[06:23]

• Professional Inspiration: Chyanne is currently inspired by service design in local government, noting how DC has benefited from experiences with organizations like USDS and 18F.

  • “There've been a lot of great opportunities to learn lately.” (B, 02:31)

• Recommended Book:

  • Recoding America by Jennifer Palka
  • "It does a really good job of…synthesizing what the challenges are in government. She was talking from a federal perspective, but so much of it resonated with me on the local level…” (B, 02:50)

• Favorite Food from Sicily: Granita – specifically, pistachio granita, which she describes as "creamy, icy" and unique to breakfast in Sicily.

• Fictional World: Inspired by the dual-moon world in Haruki Murakami’s IQ84—“...the idea of living like 80s Tokyo and seeing two moons, I think would be fun.” (B, 05:19)

• Professional Advice:

  • Quoting Ta-Nehisi Coates: "What is eminently doable and what is morally correct are not always the same. And while actualizing the former, we can't lose sight of the latter."
  • “That just feels like actually a great sign to me.” (B, 07:38)

Path into Local Government

[06:42]–[08:08]

• Chyanne started as an intern at DC Public Schools and was won over by the effectiveness and culture of her team.
• She highlights the importance of open team norms, especially the ability for team members to share honestly both positive and negative feedback.

Main Discussion: Failing at Engagement and Lessons Learned

Why Engage Historically Marginalized Communities?

[08:57]–[12:25]

• Chyanne credits inspiration for her conference talk on failing at engagement to Civic Tech Toronto and Victor Urua, emphasizing vulnerability and learning from failure.
• Engagement is essential for effective public service design; not everyone can be fully pleased, but everyone should feel heard and respected.
• Standard engagement methods (emails, surveys) often miss marginalized groups who may lack time, financial resources, or comfort with government processes.

“You can't do that unless you hear from people directly...part of engagement is upsetting people. And I don't mean that to be flippant...when people's opinions are different, not everyone can walk away really, really pleased, but they can walk away respected and feeling what they said was heard.” (B, 10:46)

Failure Stories and What They Taught

[12:46]–[18:26]

• Early failures included low turnout at events and missing input from key subgroups.
• Chyanne recounts small-scale failures—like lackluster events or teacher disagreement—that allowed her to experiment and ultimately refine her strategies without high stakes.
• Relationship building, though often cited, is awkward, slow, and vulnerable for government actors, especially when asking for trust and time from community members.
• She emphasizes the value of persistence and "showing up" even when initial efforts flop.

“If you are not clear about the ways that you failed, you're not going to ultimately succeed.” (B, 13:31)
"It's not always this beautiful, magical process...sometimes it's awkwardly making some phone calls and feeling annoying and just keeping at it." (B, 18:08)

How Chyanne’s Engagement Process Has Evolved

[18:48]–[23:10]

• Planning Engagement:

  • Treat engagement like a campaign, identifying specific audiences and tracking communication levels.
  • Use tools like Excel to visually map out stakeholders and necessary touchpoints.

• Engaging Engaged Participants:

  • Invest intentional time with highly-resourced, “loudest” participants—they can serve as ambassadors and help reach others.
  • Proactive relationships with these individuals mitigate future escalation and complaints.

“I'm actually a big advocate of…put a little extra love on them and find a way that you can make this relationship useful.” (B, 22:59)

Effective (and Less Effective) Engagement Methods

[23:38]–[26:22]

• Pitfall: Using the same survey or engagement format for all groups yields poor results, especially from marginalized communities.
• Solution: Focus groups allow conversations to go off-script and surface unanticipated needs (e.g., finding Amharic-speaking families through parent liaisons).
• Engage well-connected, privileged participants to recruit marginalized families for more direct engagement.

“We compare the results to our intended audience list and say, okay, which of our intended audiences did we really not get to through this survey?” (B, 24:11)

What To Do With Off-Topic or Out-of-Scope Feedback

[26:22]–[28:58]

• Be upfront with participants about what input is actionable.
• If issues arise outside project scope, communicate transparently, even if action isn’t possible; sometimes off-topic feedback ends up influencing future priorities or communications.

Prioritizing & Weighing Community Feedback

[28:58]–[33:20]

• Limit choices in public feedback to options leadership is actually willing to consider to avoid frustration and false expectations.
• Publicly share survey results for transparency.
• In binary or controversial decisions, be forthright with rationale—“pick a direction and stand firmly in it.”

Combining Quantitative and Qualitative Data

[33:54]–[35:37]

• Quantitative analysis (enrollment maps, commute times) is shared directly with community working groups for sense-checking.
• Qualitative feedback from these groups surfaces exceptions or neighborhood-specific issues, creating a feedback loop between data and lived experience.

“We'll put that [data] in front of them...Does this resonate with your life?...That can sometimes give us...the big outliers where...we may have been blind to before.” (B, 34:22)

Highlighted Project: Early Childhood Center Siting

[36:13]–[40:09]

• DC invested in early childhood care in marginalized neighborhoods. During site selection, Chyanne’s team skipped conventional surveys and knocked on doors, visited centers, and distributed flyers in multiple languages.
• Turnout from families at a key event provided the data and confidence to go forward with the center.

"We ended up sort of knocking on the doors of anybody that had like, toys in their front yard and said, hey, the city is considering opening a child development center down the street from you. If that's exciting to you, please come to this event..." (B, 38:47)

Key Insights & Takeaways

[40:13]–[43:22]

• Be self-critical about engagement numbers—scrutinize who is responding, not just how many.
• Don’t ignore privileged, highly-engaged participants—redirect their energy towards helping connect with less reachable communities.
• Ask people about their motivations and leverage their willingness to support equity, such as by assisting with outreach.
• Relationship-building is time-consuming but essential.

“Be willing to be critical of your work. Don't just stick to the total number of people you engaged. Really scrutinize who your responses are coming from..." (B, 40:38)

What's Next

[43:28]–[44:09]

• DC continues to invest in middle schools and address changing enrollment.
• Chyanne is transitioning to Canada, looking to carry her passion for service design across borders.

Memorable Quotes

• On balancing practicality and ethics:
  "What is eminently doable and what is morally correct are not always the same. And while actualizing the former, we can't lose sight of the latter." (Ta-Nehisi Coates, quoted by Chyanne, 05:36)
• On building trust:
  "You're asking people to trust you, to possibly waste their time with you and for them to basically kind of vouch for you to other people in their community...It takes being willing to, like, be rejected and kind of come back at them..." (B, 17:28)
• On transparency with communities:
  “If we are getting conflicting input…I want to be able to just up front just say, that's a fantastic…idea. But we're not going to be able to do it. So let's focus on these options.” (B, 29:46)

Notable Segments and Timestamps

• 01:49 – Lightning round
• 08:57 – Importance of engaging marginalized communities
• 14:20 – Failure stories and lessons
• 18:48 – Chyanne’s evolved engagement process
• 23:38 – Effective/ineffective engagement methods
• 28:58 – Prioritizing and weighing feedback
• 33:54 – Combining quantitative and qualitative data
• 36:13 – Project highlight: Early childhood center
• 40:13 – Concrete insights and takeaways

Tone & Style

The conversation is candid, practical, and pragmatic—an honest look at both failures and incremental wins in government engagement work. Chyanne’s style is humble, approachable, and rooted in real-world experience, emphasizing that authentic relationship-building is often awkward, vulnerable, and hard-earned.