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The Be The Messenger Framework

Be The Messenger examines how identity, culture, diversity, respect, power, and institutional practices shape human experiences, relationships, organizational behavior, and institutional outcomes. It connects self-examination with accountability, institutional responsibility, healing, justice, and meaningful action.

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Dr. Starks in a tan blazer in front of a pink and blue wall

Four constructs

Everyone defines these four words a little differently. The work starts by asking how you define them, where your definition came from, and what happens when it meets someone else's.

  • Identity

    Who you are

    The lens through which a person sees themselves as a unique individual, and the lens through which society sees individuals and groups, which may be grounded in labels, stereotypes, and biases.

  • Culture

    Where you come from

    The beliefs, values, norms, customs, language, and heritage of a particular group that are essential to their identity and that they use to navigate the world without apologizing. Often passed down from generation to generation.

  • Diversity

    What connects us

    A set of beliefs that values differences in perspectives, identities, backgrounds, religion, lifestyles, cultures, and languages. It includes, yet is more than, race, gender, and class. Differences are our strengths.

  • Respect

    How you show up

    Treating yourself and everyone in high regard by appreciating and valuing difference when it comes to identity, culture, and diversity.

"Get uncomfortable to get comfortable."

Dr. Brian Chad Starks

The Messenger Method

Underneath the four constructs runs one process, the same one Dr. Starks lived himself. Every training and every facilitator moves people through it in order.

  1. Self-Reflection. Facing your story: confronting the wounds that shaped you and understanding your own narrative.
  2. Self-Awareness. Understanding influence: seeing how your experiences shape the way you lead, teach, relate, and decide.
  3. Self-Consciousness. Raising perspective: understanding how your choices shape the people, communities, and systems around you.
Dr. Starks mid-sentence, arms open, leading a training

The Framework does not change. The application does.

The four constructs and the Messenger Method are the same in a classroom, a courtroom, a hospital, or a boardroom. What changes is how they are applied to the specific challenges, cultures, professional responsibilities, and institutional conditions of each setting.

The Education Edition

The first application built for one field: a full-day training for the adults in a school, with its own manual and its own facilitator certification.

The Education Edition

Other fields

Applications for government, criminal justice, healthcare, corporate, and other institutional settings are in development. Until they are ready, Dr. Starks shapes the training for those settings himself through BCS & Associates.

His work in your field

Messengers, facilitators, and the Collective

Training develops Messengers. Certification prepares facilitators. The Collective sustains the movement.

  • Training

    Develops Messengers

    Anyone who completes a Be The Messenger training and commits to putting the Framework into practice is a Messenger. Most people come to it through their school, campus, or organization.

  • Certification

    Prepares facilitators

    A separate professional path, with more preparation and more responsibility, for people who will deliver the training to others.

  • The community of trained Messengers who keep learning, practicing, and contributing.

The research behind it

The Framework has been published in the Journal of STEM Education (2018), in "STEM Recruitment and Beyond: The Messenger is the Medium," and in Oceanography (2023), in the article on ALL-ABOARD, a National Science Foundation funded program built on it.

Read both articles

Where it came from

Dr. Brian Chad Starks holds a PhD in criminology from the University of Delaware. The Framework grew out of his own life, his research, and more than 30 years of combined lived, professional, and scholarly experience.

About the founder

Bring the Framework to your people

For groups of ten or more, delivered by Dr. Starks or by a certified facilitator.

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