The Suncoast Digital Connect – A “Learning Thursdays” Webinar #1: It takes a Community of Champions with Kathy Bisbee

In August, the Digital Access for All (DA4A) initiative announced the return of Suncoast Digital Connect – A "Learning Thursdays" Webinar Series! In the spirit of evolving, each webinar was extended to 45 minutes to allow for more learning and sharing, followed by an additional 15 minutes to continue the conversation while still having enough time to head to lunch by noon!

Our first webinar in the series focused on a presentation by Kathy Bisbee, director of The Alliance for Digital Equity. 

Kathy Bisbee is a facilitative leader working collaboratively in partnership with rural, suburban, and urban communities to ensure that everyone has affordable access, devices, and skills to fully participate in a digital world. She is a network-weaver, serving as the director of the Alliance for Digital Equity, a digital equity coalition of 100+ organizations in the four counties of western Massachusetts, housed in the Office of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion at Baystate Health. You can learn more about her here! 

During this first webinar, Kathy shared some insightful and meaningful "cookies" (expertise and knowledge) with our audience of upwards of 25 attendees:

Key Takeaways

• It Takes a Village: Achieving digital access for all is an aspiration that The Alliance for Digital Equity shares, as does The Patterson Foundation (TPF). However, Kathy was clear in sharing that it takes more than just one individual or one network. It takes everyone, that means people, businesses, nonprofits, government, and the media, to rethink obstacles and explore solutions together. 
  
  
• Possibilities Emerging from COVID: The Alliance was formed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. We can relate to that here at TPF. In March 2020, most Florida K-12 and college students went home for spring break and didn't return until fall 2020. Educational institutions switched from in-person to online courses within weeks and finished the school term virtually. Wanting to dive more into this issue impacting thousands of people, organizations, and communities in the Suncoast, DA4A was created in June 2020. In 2020, Baystate's VP of Public Health, Dr. Frank Robinson, recognized that digital equity was impacting health interventions during the pandemic and responded by bringing together digital equity organizations across the region to share best practices, cross-pollinate, and exchange resources. 
  
  
• Keeping People First: One of the Alliance's key core foundation principles is People First. This means centering the solutions on the people impacted by digital inequity. This means ground-truthing ideas and using people's experience to inform the design and implementation. A point that really hit home during Kathy's presentation was her emphasizing that yes, it might take longer to meet people where they are, but it's not important to get there faster. The key is to get there together. 
  
  
• Exploring Possibilities: When Kathy began speaking about possibilities, the term "possibilitarian", a TPF term, came to mind. Rather than focusing on the issues or only what is immediately in front of us, it's important to be open, creative, and imaginative. Actively search for opportunities that can lead to new opportunities and connections that lead to positive, meaningful change. Sometimes, just getting in the same room as people, physically, can lead to ideas and aspirations that we would have never imagined alone. 
  
  
• Change Happens When We Shift: Kathy shared a mind, heart, and strategy shift as shared by the Interaction Institute for Social Change. Two aspects of this shift stood out and aligned with two similar approaches TPF uses in its everyday work. First, Kathy shared about the shift from rigidity and control to flexibility and adaptability, followed by the shift from a fear and scarcity mindset to a love and abundance mindset. Similarly, at TPF, we refer to this as our From Tos, as in change happens when we find ways for people to engage and create their desired future. That requires a shift from scarcity to abundance, or expanding a narrow scope of thinking to a broad view of the collective resources from multiple sectors. It also means shifting from issues to aspirations, shifting the focus from problems, challenges, and barriers to a shared vision and new possibilities. 
  
  
• Finding Who Else Cares: The Alliance continues to grow with 83 communities served by the Alliance for Digital Equity in western and central Massachusetts. Over 200 community-based organizations, funders, municipalities, libraries, housing and health care organizations, councils on aging, United Ways, and more are part of the Alliance's regional coalition. But it all started with asking who else cares, who else needs a seat at the table, and what voices are we still missing. 
  
  
• Value of Connection, Especially In Person: Another TPF From To is that change happens when we shift from silos to systems, rather than acting in isolation, exploring, discovering, and working together in a shared ecosystem. Kathy spoke to the value of conveying people in person, rather than hiding behind the screen of a virtual meeting. Yes, virtual meetings have either value and a place and time, but being in person is the secret sauce to building what we call here at TPF, connective tissue, or as in a relationship. 
  
  
• Shared Aspirations & Objectives: Working together behind shared aspirations, rather than just one person's vision, is invigorating and motivates everyone cause they each have a buy-in to making it a reality. As we say at TPF, we never want to arrive with the answer, the vision, the goal, the end game, but rather a process to discover what the possibilities and opportunities are together, then collaborate to make it a reality.

We are thankful to Kathy for sharing her cookies with us and look forward to staying connected with how The Alliance continues to work toward digital equity for all people. In case you missed the webinar, you can find a recording here. 

We hope you will join us for our next session on Thursday, October 9, 2025, at 11:00 a.m. ES, focused on Building a Digital Equity Ecosystem with Bruce Clark, Digital Inclusion Project Manager at the Center for Digital Equity at Queens College.

• Register here.
• Join our DA4A LinkedIn Group here to stay connected and engaged!