THE MISSION:
To serve as the vehicle for professional women of color to explore the art, music, dance, and stories of people of color in their ancestral lands.
The Blue Lake Project envisions a future where women of color engage with their cultural gifts to develop true relationships with themselves, their communities, and the planet.
ABOUT VICKI WILKERSON
Vicki Wilkerson is the great-granddaughter of people of color enslaved on plantations and farms in Virginia and Missouri. She was born and raised in Missouri where her parents were chauffeur and a maid to affluent families. The tapestry of her childhood was woven by both church women who quoted scriptures and medicine women who taught her how to hunt wild mushrooms, greens, and medicinal herbs.
Her formal education began as the country desegregated public schools subsequent to Brown v. Board of Education. Unable to attend kindergarten due to privatization, she was homeschooled by her mother and older siblings. Making art, however, was as much a part of her daily activities as reading, jumping rope, and hopscotch. Being around wise women, from as early as she can remember, Vicki has understood her gifts of being intellectually inquisitive, outspoken, and having an extensive vocabulary. She therefore has been a fearless public speaker whether it was at the church next door or on the debate stage at school. She attended a small private women’s college where she studied law and business. Years later, she was invited and served on the college’s Board of Trustees. The gift she received from these early encounters put her on the most unlikely journey both personally and professionally.
For nearly three decades, she served as a compliance executive in highly visible, multinational corporations where she translated complex laws and regulations into policies and programs designed to maximize the international footprint of their goods and services. She, like many women leaders in the technology field, lived a life in the fine print of those laws and regulations that required intense focus. As an artist from an early age, she came to realize how important art, music, and storytelling became in helping her to maintain a resilient mindset. She was also a single mother of a very energetic boy and that gave her very little free time for art. In those early years, it was late-night art projects and as her son grew older, she devoted as much free time as she could to making art to fill her senses as well as her home.
ORIGINS OF THE BLUE LAKE PROJECT
Nearing retirement, as Vicki contemplated the next phase of her life, she was thoughtful about the unique pathway she had taken and how it could possibly be used as a guidepost for others. In 2019, the vision for The Blue Lake Project came to life. She hosted a dozen or so C-Suite women executives in Lake Tahoe at a private estate where over the course of three days the undercurrent of the corporate agenda was what women really wanted to talk about were the challenges they had endured during their career journey. The stories the women shared were deeply personal and in their respective industries. Despite there being very few women who looked like Vicki in her professional world, the gifts that were perfected through the company of her elders as well as their survival techniques became her primary guideposts for decades.
During the pandemic, The Blue Lake Project hosted various listening programs across the continent and beyond. As the world exited the COVID-19 pandemic, it was quite apparent that the world had changed and people had changed along with it. As the world shifted, many of the structures that were assumed to be favorable for people’s future suddenly evaporated almost overnight. In charting a path forward, we can retrace the steps and reclaim the gifts of our ancestors. Thus, The Blue Lake Project was born.