Ensuring equal opportunities for students and employees across Minnesota

If you had told 10-year-old Desiree' Clark that one day she'd choose to move back to St. Cloud and start a family, she wouldn't have believed you.

Now, she can't imagine calling anywhere else home.

Originally from Kansas City, Missouri, Clark moved to St. Cloud in the late ’80s when her mother, Debra Leigh, took a faculty job with St. Cloud State University. Clark participated in the University's summer dance institutes and performed and toured with its Repertory Dance Theater throughout the ’90s.

"I have a very long history of pretty much growing up on campus. Every building, every hallway has a memory for me," she said. "It's quite a unique place."

Her relationship with the city of St. Cloud itself, though, was complicated at that time.

"Growing up in St. Cloud, I was the only Black person in the building in kindergarten through fourth grade. That experience was challenging," she said. "On the flip side, I would go back to Kansas City every summer and be with my dad in all Black neighborhoods, all Black communities, Black churches, with my Black family. Learning the differences of how to act and behave in those two very, very different environments really shaped the person I am today."

Clark pursued her undergraduate degree at the University of Missouri in Kansas City to be closer to family, but would still return to St. Cloud each summer for the dance program. She also met a number of SCSU students and staff when she studied abroad in South Africa in the early 2000s, and she taught a body conditioning class for dancers as an adjunct professor at St. Cloud State.

After earning her bachelor's, Clark moved to Arizona and took a job with a law firm.

"That's where my professional career outside of dance really started to form. There's the saying, 'Started from the bottom, now I'm here,' I started out in their mail room," she said. "I literally learned the business from the bottom and came in as a temporary employee in that job, and moved up very quickly within two to three months to being the lead in that space."

With the law office being a foreclosure firm, its business skyrocketed with the housing market crash of 2008.

"They went from a couple hundred different cases a month to over 3,000 with a ginormous backlog. And they had no idea how to get everything back in order," Clark said. "This is where my dance experience came in, because I am a very creative person. I can think outside of the box and I'm very good with project management. Theater is project management when you think about it and its scope."

Eventually Clark moved to another firm that still worked in foreclosures and evictions, but the work ultimately wasn't fulfilling.

"It was working for these big banks and corporations just looking to get their money. The hard part, especially on the eviction side, was hearing from people and their real life stories. You know, 'My spouse is in the hospital. We don't have any money because we've been paying medical bills. Please don't kick us out of our home. It's all that we have,' right?," she said. "It was story after story after story. And the bank oftentimes only saw black and white. There wasn't much space for gray, and that became too much for me."

When considering next steps, the newly married Clark was encouraged by her mother to return to St. Cloud and pursue a master's degree at SCSU. While hesitant at the time to return to the area, Clark couldn't turn down free tuition from using her mother's tuition waiver.

"I was like, 'Two years, I'm going to do my degree and we're out. We are not staying. I do not want to be back there.' But the difference, all of the work that was done, all of the trainings that had been done, all the relationships built between the city of St. Cloud, local business owners, the University had held and it had worked. Even policing was different. There had been a lot of reform done with officers. St. Cloud used to have that bad reputation — 'It's white cloud. Don't send your Black son or daughter up there. They're not safe.' And that wasn't the case anymore," she said. "I remember I drove through a neighborhood deep on the south side of town. I drove past this park and it was a big open field, and there were all these women in long dresses and hijabs. It was summer and it was breezy and all of these colors are just blowing in the wind. All of these people with brown skin like mine, and I remember being completely in shock to see that."

Clark also noticed a shift in not just demographics, but community attitude.

"It's not only welcoming our Somali neighbors. I was gone for quite some time and there was a lot of change over that time in the demographics of people who were here, but also in the way you felt. For a person like me, a Black woman, to feel welcomed walking into a business or in a restaurant and being greeted by kind strangers saying, 'You look beautiful today,' or when I had my sons, 'You have a beautiful family.' That didn't used to be the case, because people didn't understand; there was the fear of the other," she said. "But that wasn't the case anymore. And I feel that. I actually feel safe in our community. I feel valued in our community. As much as there is noise about St. Cloud not being a good place, the people who are here are good. The people who are here are supportive and caring. I think we all have similar goals of wanting that same thing: safety and friendliness and community. I think that's been achieved. That's why I stay, and that's why I want to be a part of it. I think it'd be really hard to go someplace else and think it would be better than here, because the reality is I've lived in other places. And what St. Cloud has is actually really special."

Clark earned her master's in social responsibility from SCSU in 2017. She worked as an office manager in what is now called the Office for Institutional Equity & Access at the University, before being promoted to affirmative action officer. She's now system director for equal opportunity and compliance in the HR division with Minnesota State.

"It's a very non-traditional path that had absolutely nothing to do with higher education until I started working at St. Cloud State. And I realized, 'This is my jam. I really like this. I really like being in higher education.' And I had a strong connection — because of my parents' teaching — around the civil rights era. A lot of the dance work I did was oftentimes during Black History Month or on MLK Day, doing performances like that, doing marches and standing up for civil rights. When it came to working in affirmative action and making sure people had a fair and equitable opportunity to work, that resonated deeply with me and it still does," she said. "And not even just in that. When we're looking at some of our broader policies and procedures around prevention of sexual assault, domestic violence, anything under Title IX — all of those things are very, very near and dear to me, both personally and professionally. I want to make sure people have a good experience, not only at St. Cloud State, but across the state of Minnesota. We (Minnesota State) have 54 campuses, 33 colleges and universities, and we impact so many communities across the state."

Clark — who spends much of her time working on the city's annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Community Celebration, volunteering with her sons' school choir, and working with GREAT Theatre — encouraged others to give back when they can and lift up their communities.

"I stand with other leaders, other women across the community, and I do what I can to give back and share my experience and encourage others to keep reaching for their dreams," she said. "When I'm meeting with young adults who are just coming into their professions, I like to say, 'Don't ever give up on your dreams, because anything is possible. When you work really hard, you can get there.'"