Welcome to Crescendo Chats: Scaling Diversity & Inclusion. In this series, Crescendo co-founder Stefan Kollenberg hosts conversations with HR and diversity & inclusion practitioners, sharing valuable insights from their work. 

Our latest conversation is with Miriam Warren, Senior Vice President, Engagement, Diversity + Belonging at Yelp. 

Listen to the podcast or read below for the edited transcript. 

Stefan: For people who might not know you, can you share a bit more about yourself and the work you do?

Miriam: Absolutely. I've been at Yelp for a little over 13 years now. I started actually more than 13 years ago as an elite member, our most active and prolific members on the site. They write reviews, upload a lot of photos, and give a lot of great intel on local businesses all over the world. I was one of those folks. In fact, I wrote more than a thousand reviews before I became an employee at Yelp in 2007. I had been living in San Francisco and loved Yelp and an opportunity came my way, and I became a community manager in our Washington D.C. market as my first job at Yelp.

Eventually, I took over a team, expanding further, East coast, sort of from Toronto all the way down to Miami, Atlanta and kind of every city in between. I helped open our first New York office, then moved over to London and helped to open our first London office, and worked on international expansion for about seven years.

In 2016, I had this incredible opportunity to start to really look at after many years of developing the community externally, really start to look at what our internal community meant to us and what we should be doing for them. And so since 2016, that really has been my role from employee engagement to our social impact and philanthropic efforts, internal communications and of course, diversity inclusion and belonging.

Stefan: Have some of these past roles influenced you in ways that maybe you didn't expect?

Miriam: Definitely. In university I majored in ethnic studies. I have always been really interested in the voices and stories and histories of folks who are often left out of normal curriculum in grade school. I always had a wondering inside about if this would be something I could do for work. And my initial thought had always been that I'd have to become a university professor in order to be able to think about issues of race, class, sexual identity and gender identity,  particularly the intersection of all of those identities.

I never would have guessed it in 2007 as a Community Manager in Washington D.C., but particularly helping Yelp in launching in 30 different countries internationally helped me to realize that the most important asset of any company is their community. We're very lucky that the sense of community is really broad. We have this community of users who obviously write and upload content, and then we have this whole community of business owners who are using Yelp to get more people to come into their businesses. And then we have what I would argue as the most important community, which is all of the people who work at Yelp and who are helping to make this product and support this product. I think all of those roles really did kind of lead me to the one I have now, although I wouldn't have known it at the time.

It certainly wasn't something I could have predicted in 2007 or even in 2012 when I was living in London and commuting to a very small office about a block away from my flat. The combination of caring about a community and cultivating a community along with communicating with the community has definitely been a big part of it along with some of my own personal interests around how to create inclusive and diverse environments wherever I go, because obviously those are places that I want to be in myself.

I think all of us inherently know what it feels like to belong. We can probably also unfortunately recount moments in our lives when we didn't belong. The visceralness of that feeling of when you do belong is something that's not only really important to me. I've always been the person who kind of helps everyone order their food, make sure everyone has a drink, make sure everyone's invited. To do this work now every day, it feels a bit like second nature and definitely something I really love to do.

Stefan: Can you talk a bit more about the structure behind Yelp's D&I?

Miriam: In 2016, I sort of took on this role around engagement. As that role evolved in 2017 when I was on maternity leave, my boss, our Chief Operating Officer, gave me a call and said, Miriam, what do you think about adding diversity and inclusion to your remit?

I said I love the idea. I think a couple of things that will be really important is that this role and this work continues to remain in the business and continues to report to you. The reason why that's really important is because for this work to really be taken on and for accountability to really be shared among senior leaders in the company, you'd have to have a role in a department that is able to look across all of these different functions and to be able to hold people accountable. If it is in only one area of the organization, it's much more difficult for that to happen. As a person who's been working in the business for many years, it just seems sort of natural to me that we should have some type of work that everyone could be a part of and that everyone would also be held accountable for.

That was kind of a hunch on my part back then, but has proven really true. In order for folks to really take this on, they also have to feel like it's really important, and they need to be hearing it from their boss and their boss's boss. They understand that this is important work because they are hearing about it not only from me, but also from our COO as well as our CEO.

Stefan: Are there any big impacts or exciting moments that you've seen or had maybe partially due to this structure?

Miriam: I think a key thing here is that I am not limited only to the work around diversity, inclusion and belonging, which is sort of focused on recruiting. If you don't have a diverse organization and you want a diverse organization, you will have to bring folks who are not currently in your organization - so incredibly important. However, I think that so much of this work goes beyond simply getting people in the door.

When you see things like the fact that your organization is losing folks of color at a much faster rate than others, you have to question why that is. If you are noticing that you have a racial leadership gap or a gender leadership gap inside of the organization, it's important to understand how that came to be.

I think being able to use a community channel and engagement channel to be able to drive this work forward has been incredibly important. Taking that sort of corporate social responsibility piece, the social impact side of it has also allowed us to really consider what our role is in spreading equity throughout the community at Yelp, but also beyond our walls, offices, and employees. I think being able to really think about these questions as they relate to diversity, inclusion, and belonging as very holistic and not existing only inside of Yelp, but also about who we want to be and how we live. Our values have been so important and we really truly are embedded in the culture. The coming together of all these different relationships are definitely a big part of the work that I do every day and the way that we get progress to happen inside the organization. I love that that's what I get to spend all of my days doing, and I know that my team really enjoys it as well.

Stefan: With all these relationships, I can imagine you have a lot of executive level communication. Do you still have many 1:1 conversations with independent contributors on a day to day basis?

Miriam: Oh, absolutely. One of the best parts of my job is that I'm interested in communication. I'm interested in engagement because I'm interested in how people find a path to belonging inside the organization. I absolutely have to talk to people at every level and I have to do that pretty much every day. Certainly, there are weeks that are filled more with operational meetings and more executive-to-executive type of chats, but the vast majority of my days include at least a few meetings with folks at every level of the organization. I think being able to have those conversations really reminds me and keeps me grounded on what we're trying to do.

A big part of my role is listening to folks and even listening to some of the roadblocks that they're encountering and moving those hurdles out of the way, either by making an introduction, by providing a suggestion for how they might be able to go about it, or by talking to someone else I know, and it's a real privilege to be able to do that.

A lot of times in this work, we talk about privilege. All of us have privileges. One of the things I love the most about having an enormous amount of privileges, which I do, is being able to use that privilege on behalf of others. One of the big ways I can do that as a senior executive inside the company is to be able to share my knowledge, my insights, my cultural capital with other people.

Stefan: What is your identity and how does that shape the way you view the world?

Miriam: Yeah, so I am an immigrant. I was born in Germany. I'm a mixed race person, Filipino and German. I am adopted, so I grew up as the only person of color in a white family. I am a mom. I am many things. I think what's interesting about the work that I do now is that I have a lot of conversations with people who find talking about race really challenging and pretty scary.

That's something I've never felt personally, but totally understand. One of the reasons why I don't feel that way is because race is something I've thought about probably everyday for my entire life, and that's not necessarily always a bad thing. I think it's just something that's always been very obvious to me, mainly because I look differently than everybody else in my family. I had that difference pointed out to me sometimes in very innocuous ways, other times in really not nice ways. It's something that's always been on my mind.

I was kind of a weird kid. I'm kind of a weird adult. When I was in seventh grade, I entered the talent show with a speech on the scourge of racism. I was the Co-Founder of my multicultural student union in high school and I majored in ethics at university. There have always been issues of race, class, gender, sexual orientation on my mind and to get to have conversations with people about it, even when they find them uncomfortable or tough, I feel like, wow. How lucky for me to be in this spot because I've literally been thinking about this for my entire life. And now all the books, all the articles, and all the conversations that I've had can all be part of the lived experience that I can share with other people and help them along in their own journeys as well.

Stefan: I want to hear your thoughts more on the idea of white folks not relying on people of color to educate them. It sounds like you're very open to talking about it. Would you say that’s something you've made an explicit choice to do because it's your daily job or do you navigate that balance?

Miriam: I remember first having this conversation around a sort of unpaid teaching or for people of color or women to be constantly having to have this educator hat on. I certainly understand and respect where folks are coming from when they say I don't want to spend my days using my limited energy sources on teaching you or that's not part of my job.

I'm lucky that it is actually part of my job, and I also think that if it's not me, then who is it going to be? I would much rather have it be me because I have chosen that and I am happy to talk about it compared to the folks who are just trying to get by, who are just trying to make enough calls to get through their day, make it through their meetings, make it through picking up their kids and entertaining their kids at home, and all of those sorts of things. I do have that expanded capacity.

It's really important for white folks and others who are looking to expand their knowledge to really do that on their own. I always say to people like if you were looking for a new surfboard, wouldn't you just go on and start doing some research, checking out the reviews? Maybe you read a couple books, watch some YouTube videos. All those same resources are available on issues of race, class, gender, sexual orientation. You want to learn about racial injustice, you want to learn about the history of police brutality in the U.S., you're interested in what happened during the Jim Crow era and the laws that have continued to influence voter suppression in this country. All of that is imminently available to all of us.

For folks who may find themselves in a situation where they say, “I want somebody else to teach me or I just don't know, maybe you could tell me”, we also do have to gently push back and say there are a lot of resources available. Read a little bit, do your own research and then absolutely, let's let's have a conversation. It's certainly much more interesting to have that conversation when someone has done their own diligence and says, “Hey, I just read Jess Mercy, can we talk about mass incarceration in the U.S?” It's a much more interesting conversation when you start at a place of similar interest and effort.

Stefan: There's been the deaths of Black people at the hands of the police. A lot of companies are donating and matching employee donations in these public statements. What has Yelp been doing it and what are some of the commitments you've made to systemic change?

Miriam: I think what's interesting about where we sit uniquely in the world as Yelp is the fact that so many people use our services - millions of people a day to make decisions about where to go. When we first started thinking about what our contribution to the movement for Black lives would be, it became very clear that we should use our platform in service of that. We realized that number one, we could drive more business to Black-owned businesses. We know that Black and Brown businesses have been disproportionately impacted just like Black and Brown people have by COVID-19, even prior to George Floyd's murder in Minneapolis.

We can have a serious impact on the lives of Black business owners. We began thinking about what it would look like to have a black owned business attribute, and if we partnered with a black led organization, such as My Black Receipt, which is who we worked with, what might that look like?

My black receipt, from June 19th to July 6th, set out a commitment to try to get folks to patronize Black-owned businesses and then share their receipts online. They were hoping for people to spend $5 million during that time in total, but they spent over seven and a half million dollars, with over 19,000 receipts uploaded from Black business owners and from Black-owned businesses.

I think what's key about this is that everyone, every business, every organization, every person really has to consider what their role in change could be. Because we're Yelp, and because we help people find great local businesses every day, it just stands to reason and is so kind of obvious that we should use our platform for that.

But in addition to that, we also started to dig deeper as a community, in terms of our employees and the people who work at Yelp. We've always had a foundation that matches employee donations, up to a thousand dollars per person to nonprofit organizations. We realized that we could go further, so we raised the matching cap in the month of June for our employees to $10,000. Then, we chose nine organizations, mostly Black-led, but all Black serving to double match the donation.

When we thought about which types of organizations we wanted to support, we thought pretty long and hard. And, you know, recognizing that the black experience is not monolithic and wanting to be able to support organizations that really spoke, to a lot of the different issue areas that have led us to the place where we are today, we chose organizations like.

The Black Futures Lab is helping to build a Black political power at the helm is Alicia Garza, one of the cofounders of Black Lives Matter. The Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) based out of Montgomery, Alabama, is working very much on issues of mass incarceration. Organizations like Common Future, a smaller organization based here in Oakland, is working on the racial wealth gap. Organizations are looking at specific issues around bail, around support for the Black LGBTQ community and so on, to really create this list of organizations that would not only speak to each of these issues, but also to help our employees understand that Black folks in this country have a lot of different issues that they're dealing with.

In order for us to really say, “Hey, we support Black lives”, we have to understand all of the different ways that we could actually support Black lives. This list of organizations is one way that we did that.

Stefan: I know there's sometimes you can give money, but the way that you give money is also very important. What are some ways that you made sure that you were a friendly and simple partner to work with when facilitating that?

Miriam: Well, thanks for asking that question because I have a side hustle, which is that I'm the chair of the board of the Yelp foundation. I've been thinking really deeply about the inherent power inequity around funding organizations, so that's something that's been in my mind for a few years now, since I took over as chair of the board.

In fact in January, I wrote an op ed about this because after really streamlining the process, so no application, all general operating funds for our grantees, no reporting or erroneous kinds of difficult things that folks had to go through in order to get our money. It also made me realize that as a funder again, I could use my privilege as a funder to get the word out. That doesn't have to be so hard because one of the things I noticed with a lot of tech companies, we've all received venture capital financing in order to make our companies become where they are today. And then we turn around and when we start to do philanthropic funding, we have all of these different strings attached that we wouldn't have had attached to our own funding. A VC would never say how much are you going to pay that person? Or don't spend too much on toilet paper or snacks.

When June rolled around and we started thinking about how we can support Black-led and Black-serving organizations, we employed the same methods that we had before, which is we did our own diligence to find these organizations. We simply wrote them a check. We didn't make them go through any erroneous hoops and we also did our best and continued to do this to educate our employee base about what these organizations are doing and why their work is vital. I think that it is really important for folks in different sectors to work together, to solve problems. I don't think that all of our problems will be solved by the corporate sector nor the nonprofit, nor the public sector. I really think that it's important for us to work together on a lot of these issues because there are great solutions everywhere and there are smart people working everywhere. And that's why I feel really lucky to work everyday both with folks, obviously in the corporate sector, because we are a corporation, but also to work with folks from the nonprofit sector, who constantly give me a lot of energy and joy to keep on doing this work because they're thinking about it in such thoughtful ways.

Stefan: I love that, and actually, there is an organization I've been mentoring with called DivInc. They just launched a social justice incubator, and so they're bringing together startups, but also nonprofits, into one incubator program, connecting them to mentors, funding opportunities, all that type of stuff to try and blend that nonprofit and for-profit minds together, which I think is so fascinating.

I love that comparison you make with venture capital funding. For us, we’re raising right now. We've raised funds. Before on safe agreements, which are essentially like five page documents, very simple, like almost no terms. It's pretty much just like money and valuation cap.

Otherwise they believe in you as a team. They're like, okay, we talked to you, we've done our diligence. We believe in you, your team, your idea, the market, the attraction that you do have, and then go take the money and we trust you to make decisions. We should do that with nonprofits as well.

Miriam: Yes, you totally should, and it doesn't happen nearly enough. I actually think that the national and international reckoning with racial injustice and lack of racial equity has also caused us to relook at kind of everything. This is why you're seeing it not only happen in corporate spaces, but also in food journalism.

You know, the evolving story of Bon Appetit and so many other organizations, which you're also seeing this in philanthropy where the calls obviously didn't start this year, or even this decade around funding organizations led by people of color, but certainly voices around that topic have gotten even louder because if you say you care about people's lives, you also have to care about their agency. You also have to care about their power, which includes political power and power of all other types. In order to do that, you have to show that power to them, so it wouldn't be just like, “Oh, I'm going to still keep all of this power for myself, but I'm going to pretend like you have it.”

It's like “No, giving people money is giving people power.” Let's be clear about that. You're absolutely right that in the venture capital funded world. Everything is about how much you believe in the founders or in the founding team. When I go out there and look at the EDS and the CEOs of nonprofit organizations that the Elk Foundation is supporting, I absolutely am funding them and their teams. So many people talk about trust-based philanthropy and responsive philanthropy. A big part of that is saying these folks do know what they're talking about. They know a lot more about what they're talking about than we do as a funder, just because I have the money doesn't mean I have the knowledge and or the experience, right?

I think giving money to folks who do have that knowledge and that experience and getting out of the way it should be something that should be sector agnostic.

Stefan: Now looking into the future a bit, what is your vision for diversity inclusion, belonging at Yelp? What do you have planned next?

Miriam: Yeah. We always have a lot of work to do. I think one of the big pieces is making sure that training is happening for every single employee at the company, so that we can begin in a place where everyone has a baseline foundational understanding of how systemic racism in the U.S. works, of how the country's history has h ad a very unjust and very unequal footing and it continues to have repercussions today. I think in order for people to start taking these next steps and really considering what their role is in making the future better, we have to first make sure that everyone's on the same page.

A big piece of this is making sure that training is given to every new hire, to every single employee in the company, so that we can start on that same page. And then from there, what we really can do is say, okay, now that we know what can we do? And I think those are really important questions to ask.

As we are all adapting to this new environment of being remote, we look at how our employee resource groups will function in this remote environment in the past. We used to say, “We're having this great event in the Toronto office”, or “We're having this great event in the Chicago office.” Now, we're saying actually it happens at 10:00AM PST, show up from wherever you are. I think what's really cool about that is that while these events were really interesting in the past, the attendance has absolutely skyrocketed because people can come from all over the place and we get a lot more response from folks.

So we're doing everything from bringing in a lot of those executive directors and CEOs from the organizations that we've been supporting and having them tell us what's going on. We can certainly obviously do our own research and read, but I think to actually hear it from a person who's on the ground, running one of these organizations is super valuable and is definitely the hope and inspiration that everyone needs right now. Mental health is a big issue that all of us face. To care for our own mental health is perhaps more difficult than it's ever been in this environment of being pretty isolated.

As I look to the future, obviously training is going to be important and continuing to have a lot of engagement activities, really keeping our eyes on the fact that the company does in most parts of the organization have a racial leadership gap, one that we need to mitigate, with a lot of different factors.

Stefan: Would you be able to share a few of those things that are working and are not working?

Miriam: Yeah, so something that has worked exceptionally well for us really comes from this very small operational change that we made, a while back. A big part of our organization, more than half of our organization, is composed of folks who work in the sales side. In order to become a manager on the sales side, you have to go through something called the Management Development Program (MDP).

When I started the local sales diversity task force, I started asking lots of questions about how things are done operationally. One of those questions was how does someone become a manager? And they said, “If they meet a certain level of production, they can apply and potentially be accepted into this program that would then allow them to be considered for roles that come up in management.”

So I said, “Okay, great. Walk me through the process.” And they said, “You know, we usually will talk to folks about what the production level is and tell them to raise their hands if they're qualified.” And I thought, hmm, could it be that qualified people for whatever reason that don't raise their hands? And the folks looking back to me asked, “Why wouldn't someone who's qualified raise their hand?” I thought I could think of a lot of reasons why qualified people wouldn't raise their hands. “So, what if we instead sent a note to every single person who's qualified and said you're qualified?” For example, “Dear Stefan, congratulations. You're qualified. Would you like to apply for MDP and potentially start your career in management?”

To me, that sounds amazing. That sounds like even if I don't want to or have no interest in managing other people, I'm thinking that is a win for engagement. That feels really good as it relates to our culture and potentially, it also brings about a whole crop of people who would not have thought of themselves as managers or who have never been told that they have leadership ability, but who definitely do, because as we know that they have met the minimum qualifications.

When we made that small operational change to let everybody who is qualified, know that they were qualified, we saw overnight change. We saw our largest, most diverse class of qualified applicants, which led to our largest and most diverse class of people who actually went through the program, which directly fed a bench of more diverse folks than we'd ever seen.

It also had a major contribution to what we reported in our last diversity report in November of 2019, which led to a 24 percentage point increase in the rate of Black and Brown leadership. I think that's so important because folks often talk about how we brought this many more people in and they don't talk as much about how many people you had to cycle through before you bring in the next crop of people.

Here, what you see are folks really rising in the organization into increasing levels of leadership. That is brought about because we noticed that we had a racial leadership gap. We made some very pointed inquiries as to why that's happening, and then we made some changes to mitigate that as well as really holding the leaders of each office accountable for the diversity in their offices and for making sure that it is as inclusive a place as possible. And when I think about inclusion, I think fundamental inclusion is about making sure everyone has the same chance. It's a success. If you really have an inclusive environment, you'll see that. And if you have a less than inclusive environment, you'll see that too, and obviously may need to make some changes. While other organizations may function in different ways. It is really important to ask all of them, these questions about how we got to where we are today, and if we're happy with the results.

Stefan: I love that. I use my work all the time like behavioral interviews, understanding the process people go through and how they make decisions.

Miriam: Yeah, a community that has been incredibly helpful to me is the Racial Equity Action Institute, and I was part of its first cohort. This is something sponsored by Northern California Grantmakers here in the Bay area and this was a group that they got together, a multi-sector group coming from government, from the nonprofit foundation sectors, as well as the private sector.

Whether I'm going to those meetings or writing to them directly, there's about 20 of us and it's just been incredible to be a part of it because their experiences are so varied. I think in my own experience, I tend to get pretty myopic in terms of just looking at what's happening in tech because this is where we are situated and being able to talk to someone who's working on issues of inclusion and belonging in a city government office, like, wow. I thought my job was hard, but my job isn't anything compared to some. Being able to talk to someone who's doing this inside of a foundation and really trying to think about what are the inherently unequal power structures in the world of philanthropy generally and what role do they play in it. This organization has just been so key and I am really grateful to Northern California Grantmakers for bringing us all together. If you're interested in getting a cohort of your own, they're actually accepting applications now for their second cohort.

Stefan: Now we're going to hop into the lightning round. You ready?

Miriam: I'm ready.

Stefan: What is your favorite quote?

Miriam: My favorite quote is “A small act is worth a million thoughts.”

Stefan: What motivates you in life?

Miriam: My daughter, she's almost three years old and every time I look at her, I think I cannot leave this world worse than I found it. I also have this sort of very unabated feeling, which is, if not me, then who? Also, when people ask me when the people that we've been waiting for will show up, I usually have to tell them what I think is the truth, which is that we are the ones we've been waiting for.

Stefan: What is a book or movie that changed the way you look at the world?

Miriam: Definitely just mercy by Brand Stevenson.

Stefan: What is your favorite recipe?

Miriam: The Brown butter chocolate chip cookie. This one is actually a bone Appetit recipe that if you've ever seen the video - it's Rick Martinez who's making it. I have to say that it's like my main accomplishment in this sort of quarantined time. I've just made it over and over and over again. My freezer is never without a lot of pre-portioned brown butter chocolate chip cookies with pecan.

Stefan: What is the coolest tech product you've ever come across?

Miriam: I'm allergic to coffee and I love tea. So I have to say the tea maker by Breville, which is maybe not the high tech thing you were thinking of, but it is definitely technology. And what's so cool about it is that it has a bunch of different settings, which include are you making green tea? Are you making oolong? Are you making black tea or herbal tea? And do you want it strong or do you want it mild? And it can even keep the tea hot and it's just amazing because I love drinking tea and now that I'm next to this tea maker every single day, it really has a big impact on my life.

Stefan: Thank you so much. This was so much fun.

Miriam: Thank you for having me. It was great chatting.

Stefan: Oh my pleasure. How can people connect with you from here?

Miriam: Yeah. I am just Miriam Warren on all of the familiar channels. So just my first name and my last name stuck together.

Stefan: Amazing. Well, thank you so much for joining today and have a great rest of your day.

Miriam: Same to you. Bye. All right. 

Checking our privilege as white DEI professionals with Megan Dalessio

Welcome to Crescendo Chats: Scaling Diversity & Inclusion. In this series, Crescendo co-founder Stefan Kollenberg hosts conversations with HR and diversity & inclusion practitioners, sharing valuable insights from their work. 

This week’s conversation with Megan Dalessio, Senior Manager of Equality and Belonging at Gap Inc.

Listen to the podcast or read below for the edited transcript. 

Stefan: For people who might not know you, can you share a little bit about yourself and the work you do?

Megan: I work on the Gap Inc. Equality and Belonging team. Gap Inc. is the parent company of six different brands, including Gap, old Navy banana Republic and a few more. We have a pretty small, but a growing team that supports the entire enterprise. So that includes our headquarters, all of our brands. 

I manage our portfolio of external partnerships, most notably with this really amazing organization called Harlem’s fashion row. I also support our seven equality and belonging groups, some places call them affinity groups or ERGs.

Before I joined Gap Inc., I started my career as a first grade teacher, and after doing that for a couple of years, I transitioned into the high tech sector. That was where I got into recruiting, and from recruiting, is where I got into diversity work full time. Once I made that switch, I ended up building two separate DEI programs, one at Cruise most recently, a self-driving car company, and the other at Box, a cloud software company.

Gap Inc. is an entirely new and different scale for me. It's an entirely different industry. It's been really fun to figure out how to work within all these new parameters and also get to work for a legacy organization that has a tangible product that we can impact.

Stefan: Something I love to talk about with guests is identity. It’s something I personally do a lot of reflection on, and so I‘d love to hear from you - what do you think of as your identity and how does that shape the way you view the world?

Megan: Yeah, absolutely. As white people working in the D&I space, it is incredibly important for us to constantly be interrogating our own biases, our relationship to whiteness, and other vertices of oppression. For me, I definitely own my identity as a white woman and all of the complexities that come along with that, particularly in the line of work.

Other aspects of my identity that impact how I move through the world are that I am able bodied and I have struggled with mental health issues for many years in the form of clinical anxiety and depression. Outside of that, I am cisgender. I'm recently starting to really own and come into my identity as queer. The last thing relevant to the work I do for Gap Inc. is that I sit at the top of what we call the straight size range, so I have been into learning more about the fat liberation movement, and really trying to understand weight as a dimension of oppression, particularly because it impacts my life on the daily. I'll say identity is definitely super complex and there are lots of other factors, but those are probably the aspects that are most top of mind for me recently.

The thing that has been most interesting is the body positivity movement, which is all about the self. The idea of fat liberation is about not putting all the pressure on yourself, but contending with the burden of how all of us, regardless of size, think about and process our own bodies and our weight as something that is systemically oppressive. That has been super transformative for me.

Stefan: What privileges has whiteness afforded you throughout your career?

Megan: It's indisputable, right? Specifically, really in a way that it has enabled me to assert myself in spaces that don't often feel safe or even accessible for people of color. Particularly when it comes to issues of inclusion. It's afforded me a lot of privileges. Whiteness predates my career, so I'll share a story from my college days that I think helps kind of illustrate that.

It's my sophomore year at Berkeley and I joined this white anti-racist group and we were discussing the concept of taking up space in predominantly people of color or POC spaces. At the time, it was something that I really struggled with because I felt like my unique personality just wasn't fully taken into account. I'm just the kind of person who grapples with new ideas by thinking out loud. I'm very conversational. It's not that I'm taking up space.

Our facilitator said, “Megan, that may be the case. And it's important to recognize that in POC spaces, that is likely not how you are being perceived.” I return to that moment a lot for the way that my own relationship with whiteness meant that I felt entitled to be treated as an individual without considering my impact or even the disparity of experience for people who don't look like me. A really important part of my practice as a DEI professional is to actively be cultivating curiosity and self awareness so that I can be a better accomplice in the struggle for justice and a more critical, double agent in my work.

Stefan: How have you gone about unpacking your own privilege along the way?

Megan: It's lifelong work, it doesn't stop. It's not like I graduated from Cal and was done with my learning. I'm still learning all the time. The most part of unpacking my privilege has been having a community. A community that is also committed to reckoning with white supremacy and other systems of oppression that I benefit from, and to have friends and colleagues who are committed to that same kind of ongoing process of interrogation.

It is really helpful to have folks that I can talk through those big ideas with, and the other thing I'll share that has been probably the single most important thing that I do as a pretty avid consumer of social media, is diversifying my social feeds.

I used to have a pretty long commute to work and I'm a huge podcast head because of that. I remember going through my podcast one day and realizing that every single podcast I listened to was hosted and produced by white men. From there, I made a really concerted effort, in the same way I had already done with my Instagram, to mix it up and get some new voices and perspectives. It's super important to actively seek out perspectives different from your own and I do that across every platform. 

Having the point of view of queer people, Black people, indigenous folks, people who are disabled, people who are experts in immigration, and fat liberation activists has contributed to and continues to contribute to my own personal growth.

Stefan: What are a couple of podcasts you'd recommend listening to?

Megan: First and foremost, I am a die-hard Code Switch fan - it's a really fantastic podcast, all about race and culture, hosted by Gene Demby and Shereen Marisol Meraji. She's half Persian and half Puerto Rican and Gene himself a Black man. They regularly have guest hosts that are entirely people of color. 

I've been pretty obsessed with Throughline, which is all about connecting current events to parallel moments throughout history, so that we can understand the current moment better. 

Stefan: a lot of white people have been woken up to the reality of racism and discrimination - and so I think it’s crucial that we talk about white supremacy & privilege to start our conversation today. As a white D&I practitioner, what are some of the things that you are mindful of when doing this work?

Megan: Absolutely. There's often this real cult of personality in this space, and I feel pretty strongly that it's important for me as a white woman in this space to primarily use my platform to amplify the voices of people of color. This looks like crediting the POC leaders that I learned from. It means that I defer to the leadership of people of color. I'm always in that process of suspend your disbelief. Let's honor the fact that for this person, that experience is true. If there's a disconnect here, what am I missing? Constantly arriving with curiosity and humility to those conversations.

Stefan: What mistakes have you made along the way? 

Megan: I think that it’s really important to be open and honest about our own learning. At Cruise, I was pretty new in my role. I had been there for a little over a month and we were coming up on Juneteenth, the celebration of the end of slavery.

The prior year, Box had this really beautiful, amazing, Juneteenth celebration. It really was an inspiring and uplifting moment for the Black community at that organization. So I came in, fired up, and I went to the Black employee group meeting. “We got Juneteenth coming up. Let's pull our committee together. We got to get to planning.” And I was pretty much met with blank stares, which I was surprised about. The first thing going through my head, in all transparency, was what is wrong with these folks? Why don't they want to celebrate Juneteenth?

I had to take a step back and say, help me understand what the disconnect is here and what it came down to was the fact that that community just wasn't ready to have a visible celebration centering around the end of slavery within the organization. My assumption put everyone in an awkward position. I hadn't asked the right questions. I did my best to receive that feedback and gratitude, and to apologize sincerely for my mistake and rectify the way that I had been so hasty, to listen. It's important to be a continual student in this space.

Stefan: Did someone call you out or call you in for that mistake? How did you respond?

Megan: In the previous example, the blank stares were a bit of a call out, right? I would say the most important thing is to receive feedback. However, it comes with a spirit of gratitude because you think about the amount of discomfort and energy it takes for a lot of folks to call out a racist moment or an inappropriate moment.

I often think about all the times that I have made hurtful comments that I wasn't aware of that impacted people. They just swallowed it and wrote me off. I think feedback in general and call outs can be such precious gifts to us in our own growth. It's a sign of mutual respect and what I mean by mutual is that whoever is calling me out is showing respect for themselves, either their identity or their values, by naming a behavior that's problematic. They're respecting me enough to trust that I can and will do better, and I'm able to receive it. 

Stefan: When someone is being called in or called out for a comment that they didn’t perceive as racist, but is racist, how should they react and respond in order to reduce any further harm being caused to the individual who took the time to share that feedback?

Megan: In terms of responding to feedback. The approach that I take first is pause, breathe, sit with it. Try not to react because when it comes to issues of identity, belonging, fundamentally, those are questions about our values, and our values are at the core of who we are as people. When people are generous enough to really share that feedback and to say something important, receive it. 

First is pause, the second is to be curious. “I didn't realize that I was doing that. Can you help me understand?” Ask questions and know that no one owes you answers to those questions. It's important to be interrogating yourself in that moment. 

The third thing is you have to own it. Own a mistake, own the impact it had, and most importantly, commit to doing better. The thing about all of this is no one owes you any follow up. White people must reckon with the fact that people of color may not ever fully trust you, which is fair and deserved given the history.

Stefan: How can you effectively create space for Black employees to be open and vulnerable with the challenges they face at work without putting the burden to solve those problems on them?

Megan: It's not Black people's job to educate folks on the Black Lives Matter movement or why their personal Black life matters. It is our job. We have chairs of our Black employee group, called AANG, an African American networking group.

I had side conversations with the two leaders of that group and I said, “I want to fully empower and give you space to lean into this conversation. However much you want. You're a valued extended member of this team, and this is a huge moment for the community. At the same time, it's an exhausting moment to be a Black person, so whenever you need support, throw it my way, because it's my full time job. I literally get paid to field these questions.”

I think there's a little bit of a balance where you give people the space to lean in and make sure they know that they have your support. Give them the permission to act out what I had noticed in a lot of conversations.

We've been doing these listening tours, with our Black and Latinx employees. A lot of the Black people on the call expressed a feeling of guilt around not having been more actively engaged in conversations before, and actually the lead of our Black employee group, Carrie, made a really beautiful return question when this one employee mentioned that and said, “but did you feel safe to do that at the time?” 

I want to help make this as safe as possible for you at this time and feel free to lean out. They've been stepping up and doing amazing work and they're very high in demand. Every now and then, I'll get an email saying, “Hey, I'm looping in Megan from the equality and belonging team, she's actually a better resource for you on this than I am.” So it's a little bit of a give and take, but that's how I've been navigating that specific conversation.

Stefan: What are some of the things you’ve done at Gap Inc. to help employees start their anti-racism journey?

Megan: The one thing that I’m most excited to share is this virtual series that we're hosting called Real Talk. It's essentially a moment for all of our employees across the company to tune in or to watch a recording of a conversation about race. This past week, the discussion topic was microaggressions, and we've talked about Black lives matter versus all lives matter.

Not only are we hosting these real talk sessions, we are also providing tools and resources for teams to have follow up and debrief discussions. For a lot of folks, this is the first time they're being exposed to this information. We've seen a lot of really amazing vulnerability come out of those sessions. It's been a good reminder to me that everyone's in a different place. It's super important to create space for newcomers to learn, mess up, and recover and acquire new knowledge. 

It's also really important to protect people who are living through those experiences. The other thing is supporting and coaching leaders, people leaders, for how that conversation is going to look different when you have Black people on your team.

Stefan: Who are three amazing Black Practitioners that you look up to in the DEI field? Can you share a memory that really sticks out for each of them?

Megan: On the Real Talk series that we're hosting, one of the main featured guests who has been creating and planning a lot of that content is Amber Cabral, who owns and operates Cabral Co., a full cycle DEI consulting firm. The memory I'll share about her is when she was delivering her first quote, “Real Talk” to the organization. There was a moment going through the content where she was talking about how being Black is a never-ending experience. You could kind of hear it in her voice and see the emotion in her face. That generosity of spirit to share herself in that way to be engaged in this work, in this way, when it is so deeply personal, that is part of what makes her so effective.

I want to highlight Stacy Parson and Angela Taylor, two folks who operate the Dignitas Agency together. I worked for them for a time, and the memory that I'll share from my time partnering with them was when we got together at this cafe in Palo Alto for a brainstorming session. Just getting to watch them bounce off each other - they are both such big thinkers who are truly taking off on systemic change. What is brilliant and beautiful about their practice is the way that they managed to break it down into bite sized pieces that are digestible for individuals. Both of them have backgrounds in executive coaching and have been mentors and coaches to me.

I would also give a shoutout to Abby Maldonado, now an HRBP at Pinterest, who was the person that really built up their D&I program in the early days. When I was starting to dip my foot in at Box, Abby was super generous with her time and resources. We were trying to figure out how to redefine our university recruiting practices and our employee referral program. We talked through her journey and her experience and that advice was fundamental to my own development and establishing myself.

I want to give a shout out to Kisha Modica, Head of Equality and Belonging at Gap Inc., and then an educator, an activist, a writer who does not work in the D&I space specifically, but has been an incredible teacher to me, Sonya Renee Taylor. If you're not following Sonya Renee Taylor on Instagram, I strongly and highly recommend checking out some of her videos.

Stefan: Do you follow any Black Yoga Teachers? Any recommendations?

Megan: Anasa Yoga is co-founded and managed by two Black women, Jean Marie and Zola, and they are currently offering virtual classes online right now during the shelter in place, which is exciting because it means everyone has access to them.

They use a variety of different instructors as well, so there is a little something for everyone. The other Black Yogi that I really admire is Jessamyn Stanley, and if you're not following her already, definitely missing out. She's someone who really understands the mental and physical connections between well-being and brings that lens of body positivity to the yoga space.

Stefan: Lightning round: Favorite quote? 

Megan: Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing themselves, which is a Leo Tolstoy quote.

Stefan: What motivates you in life?

Megan: Justice, the goodness of people, ice cream and my dog Peperoncini.

Stefan: Top recommendation for social media accounts to follow?

Megan: Sonya Renee Taylor, but I would also give a plug for the Fat Liberation Movement, Your Fat Friend @yrfatfriend.

Stefan: Favorite podcast? 

Megan: Code switch.

Stefan: What is the coolest tech product you've ever come across?

Megan: I got to tell ya that I am not much of a gadget gal, but what I will say is I did buy a battery operated handheld fan that saved my life when I was in Italy last summer.

Stefan: How can people connect with you?

Megan: Absolutely LinkedIn.

Stefan: Thank you so much for joining us today!

iPride’s Ashantè Fray On Building Intersectional Pride

Welcome to Crescendo Chats: Scaling Diversity & Inclusion. In this series, Crescendo co-founder Stefan Kollenberg hosts conversations with HR and diversity & inclusion practitioners, sharing valuable insights from their work. 

This week’s conversation is with Ashantè Fray, Team Lead, Inside Sales & iPride Regional Co-Chair [Americas] at Indeed.

Listen to the podcast or read below for the edited transcript. 

Stefan: Can you share a bit about yourselves to get us started?

Ashantè: Of course. I want to start off with my day job. I currently work at Indeed as a Team Lead. I was promoted back in September 2019 after being promoted to a Senior Client Success Specialist back in February. A lot of my day to day is finding ways to support my manager and my team. I also strategize with sales reps to figure out ways that we’re helping our clients. 

Outside of that, I have my “gay job,” as I call it. I’m the regional co-chair of iPride, a position I was promoted into after being Site Lead in Toronto. I was overseeing all Pride events in Toronto and now I moved up to help oversee that on a global scale. I currently manage a remote team of five people - a lot of what we do is figuring out ways we can manage our iPride chapters. Right now, I believe we have 18. We also figure out ways to help develop strategies for diversity, inclusion, and belonging at Indeed to make sure that we’re always in alignment. 

Stefan: What is your identity and how has that shaped how you show up at work?

Ashantè: When I speak about my identity, I like to take the time to break it down intersectionally, because I wholly believe that we are multifaceted people by nature. I like to start with that I’m a Black female woman and I am bisexual. I’m 25 years old and I’m second-generation Canadian. Our background in Jamaican. I grew up Christian, but I now identify as being spiritual. I’m also a small business owner - I own a business called Synchronized Soul. I also did my masters in English literature, focusing on intersectionality in Toni Morrison’s novels. I’m also a survivor of sexual abuse and I’m living with PTSD.

Those identities on the whole very much shape the way I show up to work. What aspects I’m able to bring to work authentically shapes the way I’m able to interact with my coworkers. I try every day to be as authentic as I can and to show up. If that means I’m crying, at least I’m being honest. 

Stefan: What does your business do?

Ashantè: What I do specifically is Taro and Oracle readings. It’s a different form of divination that I use to connect with guides and with your higher self to bring clarity. It’s focused on self-development. I feel like all forms of religion or self-development are really focusing on growth. I try to be that person to intuitively use my gift to help. 

Stefan: What are parts of your Jamaican heritage that you bring into your life today?

Ashantè: I love my Jamaican culture. We’re very proud people and we have every reason to be. Jamaica is about the small things like taking a walk or bathing in a river - it can be moments of happiness and joy. I feel like North American culture doesn’t really appreciate the small things. We’re so focused on where we’re heading that we don’t really focus on where we’re at. I love going back and being able to just be present in the moment and really find myself again. 

But there are faults with all cultures. And for me, one thing I have a big struggle with is finding a place between how proud I am with my culture but also recognizing how they feel about homophobia. A lot of the songs I grew up with explicitly stated, for instance, that Adam and Steve did not work or stating that girls can’t dance with each other. It was something that was constantly reinforced in that culture. It didn’t really occur to me that it could be ok to be bisexual until I really started my education and really opened my eyes to what is out there. 

It’s tough at times to navigate the differences, especially when seeing old family, friends, and stuff like that. You’re never sure. 

Stefan: What was your coming out journey?

Ashantè: It was really hard. Honestly it didn’t occur to me that I could be bisexual. And it really took a lot of time for that to even be a thought. A lot of that came from the fact that there wasn’t a lot of representation of Black queer females or Black queer individuals - period - that I could identify with. In addition to that I had grown up Jamaican. In that culture, it’s reinforced that the LGBTQ community is a white people thing. It was always: we can’t be gay because we’re not white. 

It wasn’t until university when I was out on my own that I started seeing a therapist and started unpacking my sexual abuse, but also what it was like to be on my own for the first time, but still trying to uphold the expectations that I feel were reinforced by society. 

My therapist convinced me to start experimenting and doing things I’ve never done before. So I got dressed up for Halloween as a kid, but I never got dressed up again because growing up Christian, it was always reinforced as the devil’s work. I didn’t really do it again until I was seeing this therapist and she convinced me. It was something I fell in love with. 

I came out a little later when I was at Indeed. I had such a support system and this incredible therapist who was reinforcing it and saying to do it - go out there and experiment. 

I had done my masters and still didn’t come out. Then our VP of Human Resources at Indeed came to Toronto for a panel and started talking about the importance of being yourself fully. Hearing him say that was a wake up call. I came out at work and called my mom when I was in the office. She said it was ok, and that kind of it. I’m happy to be in a place in my life where I can show up authentically. 

When you’re fully yourself, you start inspiring other people to be themselves, because they recognize what’s possible. 

Stefan: What does having an intersectional pride mean to you?

Ashantè: Intersectionality is really important to me. I honestly believe that it’s probably one of the reasons I was appointed to the position of Regional Co-Chair, because that was something the DIB team also recognized at Indeed. We wanted to start opening up these IRGs that were historically very white representation. 

It was about how we ensure that Black queer women or transgender individuals also have representation and are highlighted. So myself and co-chair Shannon were very intentional about pride because we wanted to make sure that we were not just representing ourselves, but creating space for other people to be represented, seen, and heard. 

In the beginning of 2020, we sent out our mission, vision, and values statements. One of our values was authenticity, but also learning. We wanted to make sure that we were creating those spaces. So when we ran into the COVID situation, intersectionality for us was about amplifying those voices. 

We had a jam-packed pride month, and I am so proud of our team. So many IRG leaders were reaching out asking how they could support. It really does take a village. A lot of people see my face and they credit it to me, but I credit pride month to everybody on the team. 

Stefan: Can you say more about being an active ally - with other IRGs supporting your pride efforts?

Ashantè: Yeah, the important thing to acknowledge here is sometimes people assume that because you are an ally, you can’t make a mistake or can’t have a negative impact on somebody because your intentions were good. But even being a regional lead, I’m not perfect. I will always make mistakes and my intentions will always come from a good place, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that the impact was negative. 

That is what I have to hold myself accountable to as an ally to ensure that I’m continuing to educate and continuing to amplify. If I don’t know, then it’s about creating those spaces and saying I don’t know, which is something I openly do with my team. But then I will find the knowledge or create a space so that experts in that particular space can speak. 

Stefan: What do you love most about pride?

Ashantè: When I started with Indeed in 2018, it was my first pride event. A lot of people think of pride and they think of parades. I’m grateful that I was able to find myself in a community with great people - the whole place was love all the time. I never felt so much joy in my life until pride. 

But the important thing to recognize is that it’s still a march. It’s still a fight for equality and something I wanted to recognize, especially being Canadian, is that a lot of the things people are fighting for in the States we already have, especially healthcare. Until we’re all free and there is no discrimination, none of us is going to be free. So it’s taking the time to recognize we’re still fighting, even if you aren’t currently. 

Something I always heard was “what kind of gay are you?” A sports gay, a video game gay… What do I need to do? Do I qualify? I felt like I didn’t understand all these stereotypes - it’s a spectrum, and it’s fluid, and I’m allowed to sit down and take the time to figure out what that means for me. 

Stefan: What’s a heartwarming story you’ve heard lately from the Black queer community?

Ashantè: The media has been so filled with negative energy. Important information is going out but it’s so heavy and overwhelming. I’ve been feeling numb a lot of the time. Something that woke me up a little bit and made me feel was watching RuPaul’s Drag Race. I was watching this particular season with Jada. I took the time to research her story and found that she auditioned back in season seven. She had to re-audition in season 12 to get the role. At the same time there was a post floating around instagram talking about the fact that prior, she was a makeup artist and was actually doing some of the queens’ makeup for their season finale. 

So it was being in that space and being so close, but not being close enough. But recognizing year after year, she would have been a winner.

With 2020 as this year of disaster, I’ve been taking the time to wake up and recognize what it is that I’m fighting for, what I stand for, and what I value. Until I know those foundations, I don’t think I’ll be able to go anywhere. I feel like 2020 is a really great time of awakening and taking the time to look within - it’s causing a lot of various reactions. 

But one thing that I say, especially being in Canada, is that a lot of the racism that we face here is very subtle. I don’t know who likes me or doesn’t like me because they’re very politically correct. They use correct terms. They say the things they need to say in my face. I don’t know what’s happening behind the scenes. In America, if someone is outrightly racist in your face, I know what you value. Not saying either should take place. Just that I feel like I’m in a place where I don’t know where my enemies are. It’s a very Canadian thing. 

Stefan: What are some authentic actions you’ve seen from brands during pride?

Ashantè: Everything is so performative, especially the examples of brands and logos with rainbows. I can’t really attest or speak to what work they’re doing behind the scenes, which means it’s so hard to figure out where that is a performance or whether they are taking the time to be an advocate. 

Something I’ve been asking people to start being is an accomplice. I’m over allyship and logos and brands. I’m over people stepping up saying that we’re doing things. I want to know about the work that you’re actually doing - with concrete evidence. 

I also want to start hearing people call people out. I’ve been loving LinkedIn for that to call out racist remarks, tag managers, and say this is what your people have been saying. We’re in a day and age where people have to start holding themselves accountable and recognizing that the things they do and say have actual consequences. The internet is literally forever. 

Stefan: What are some things you organized during pride?

Ashantè: I was asked to be part of a Here to Help interview with Chris Hyams, our CEO. I was so excited. The interviewer took time out to talk about my identities and talk about the way we can start being an intersectional ally. 

So we took time this pride month to focus on allyship. We had a 21 day allyship challenge with Pride Circle that was taking place - we were a rewards partner for that. Every day there was a new challenge where people talked about different ways to be an ally. 

We also took the time to do a Gender Cool workshop with the Gender Cool Project. They’re doing great things - they say who we are, not what we are. That was something that resonated with Indeed-ians because we were really focusing on core empathy and compassion and realizing that we’re all human.

We also did Say Her Name for unsung heroines. Taking the time to highlight women throughout history who have not been highlighted for whatever reason. We had guest speakers come in who really took the time to sit down and start talking about their own unsung heroines and what we need to do be allies to Black women and the Black trans community. 

Another thing I organized was a panel on intersectional allyship, moderated by Chris Hyams. He took the time to ask questions and create space that needed to be created for our panelists. 

I think that’s what any month is about and what any organization is about - how do we build engagement and leaders? Because that’s what I’m trying to build at the end of the day. I want to figure out who can take over for me when I need to step down from this position, because I want to make sure there’s a constant flow to the next generation. 

Stefan: How have you pivoted programming to be more remote friendly?

Ashantè: I was quite happy that everything was remote this year. It’s so hard to fly out senior leadership to Canada. It’s so hard to link up schedules to figure out when they could possibly fit in time for an event with various stakeholders - then things like budget. This is my gay job, not my day job. 

Going remote this year was a blessing because I got access to a lot of senior leadership who were already participating and stepping up, but also recognized that we all had to figure out time zones. 

We even did a virtual pride celebration with a call for virtual DJs. There were a few glitches, but nothing crazy. In the end, people actually requested that we start doing monthly virtual dance parties - we actually had people joining from Australia and London because of time zones. 

I was really happy to see children, families, dogs, cats - all on zoom. People were having the time of their lives. It’s so hard to feel that sense of belonging, and I was really happy and very proud we were able to do that even with the pivot to remote.

Stefan: What are the biggest learnings from your time as an IRG leader?

Ashantè: First: We are lifetime learners - there’s always more learning to be done and more educating that needs to be done. Even recognizing that we had a successful pride month, it’s taking the time to recognize how we make it better and continually do better. 

The second learning is that you can’t please the world. You will make mistakes and there will be times when you mess up. But support given in silence is not support. I would rather you make a mistake, talk it out, flush it out, and ensure it doesn’t happen again instead of being silent and not being a support system at all. 

Stefan: Is there a community for IRG leaders to learn from?

Ashantè: One thing I use as a database is Catalyst. That’s a huge I go to. In addition to that, I would say start finding mentors and sponsors. I’m out there. A mentor can be anybody in a position that has experience to give you, whereas a sponsor you’re looking for somebody at the senior leadership level. You can have both as a support system.

Stefan: Lightning round: Favorite quote?

Ashantè: “In times of change, learners inherit the earth while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists” - Eric Hoffer.

Stefan: What motivates you in life?

Ashantè: Resilience, or some would say grit or optimism. The ability to pursue goals after setbacks.

Stefan: What’s a book or movie that changed the way you think about the world?

Ashantè: You Are a Badass: How to Stop Doubting Your Greatness and Start Living an Awesome Life by Jen Sincero. 

Stefan: Favorite podcast or music?

Ashantè: Serial. 

Stefan: What’s the coolest tech product you’ve ever come across?

Ashantè: Muse Headband - a meditation headband synchronized with an app to tell you when you’re calm or at peace.

Stefan: How can people connect with you?

Ashantè: People can connect with me on LinkedIn or an email (ashante@synchronizedsoul.com)

Stefan: Thank you! 

Building Accessibility Into Products

Welcome to Crescendo Chats: Scaling Diversity & Inclusion. In this series, Crescendo co-founder Stefan Kollenberg hosts conversations with HR and diversity & inclusion practitioners, sharing valuable insights from their work. 

This week’s conversation is with KR Liu, the Head of Brand Accessibility at Google’s Brand Studio.

Listen to the podcast or read below for the edited transcript. 

Stefan: Can you share a bit about yourselves to get us started?

KR: Absolutely. I’m currently the head of brand accessibility at Google. I’m a very passionate, fierce advocate for people with disabilities, LGBTQ people, and women in tech. I’ve been in the industry in sales and marketing for over 25 years, and I’m very passionate about inclusive design and bringing an inclusive lens to brand accessibility in our content, media, and products. 

Stefan: How does your identity shape the way you view the world?

KR: I’m a very curious, passionate, empathetic person. I’m always looking for ways I can help people and how I can change perceptions in areas where there’s a lot of stigma and pushback. I’m someone who has had hearing loss her entire life and struggled to belong. It’s been hard when you don’t feel like you don’t see yourself anywhere. And that really shaped me into what I do now. I want people with disabilities - which is itself a diverse community - to see themselves. To make sure that they are heard and their stories are told. 

Over the years, living through different challenges, hiding my hearing loss, and then not coming out as a gay woman… I had steps I had to take to feel like I could truly be myself. Once I started doing that, it opened up the door for me to see that there are more people like me, so how do I use the position I’m in to elevate that and to show the world that. 

Stefan: How do you help someone else feel heard and seen?

KR: I was fortunate. I only came out 8 years ago when I met my now-wife and she had also not publicly come out. So it took the both of us saying we want to be proud of our relationship and we know this is long-term, so why hide it. If people don’t accept us, that’s on them, not us. 

Stefan: How has that shaped the way you build user or customer personas?

KR: I’m always bringing the lens of a few different areas where I don’t see a lot of representation. Whether it’s disability, LGBTQ, race, gender, sexual orientation… it’s something I definitely try to amplify in a more positive light. For me, it’s about the story. 

I’m in a product field, so I’m all about how you tie products to the human connection - and thinking about how it’s helping someone do something they love or pursue a passion or create new opportunities. I’m always thinking about that when I’m building a user story or looking at how to apply a product or a tool. And my area of expertise is very much about accessibility, so we are thinking about how we help people solve problems so that they can do things everyone else can. 

Stefan: Can you share some examples from your years of experience?

KR: For many years I had hearing loss. I worked in hardware for at least 10 years before I came out with my hearing loss. And there was this moment where I wanted to break into the audio industry and innovate in hearing. The reason being is I had a brick-wall moment where I wear hearing aids, and they are thousands of dollars not covered by insurance. So a lot of people have hearing loss that don’t wear aids or can’t afford them. They are also highly stigmatized, so even if they could wear them, they wouldn’t. 

So one day at work, my hearing aid stopped working and I had to go to an audiologist on my lunch break to try to get it repaired. They said I couldn’t repair it and it would be over $3,000 - I did not have that money. I couldn’t believe it. I was thinking, do I pay my rent or pay for hearing aids? I just need to be able to hear and communicate. I gave him two credit cards and my life savings, sat in my car, cried my eyes out, and went back to work. I had to keep figuring out how to do my job. 

In that moment I was vulnerable for a second. When I went back into the office, I was grateful that my CEO at the time saw me and pulled me aside, asking what was wrong. I told her I have hearing loss - and I can’t hear because my hearing aid broke. She said first of all they would have supported me but then second that I needed to do something about this problem of access. 

I remember sitting thinking who is going to listen to me. No one will take me seriously. I’m just trying to be taken seriously as a sales and marketing person in this industry right now. She said to think about it and keep telling my story because you never know when the right moment might come. 

I left that company a few years later, and ended up at Pebble. I was fascinated by Pebble, which is a smartwatch before the Apple watch or anything like that. I loved it because it would give me a vibration notification on my wrist when I would get a call or text message. I was often missing my phone calls because I couldn’t hear them, so Pebble was a really cool accessibility tool for me. So when I started running their national sales and marketing division, the CEO came up to me one day and asked me why I loved the watch. I said because it allows me to know when my phone is ringing. 

Then a couple of weeks later I went to him with the idea of bluetooth hearing aids that allow me to stream my phone calls to my ears, but whenever I want to change the volume, I have to pull out my phone and people think I’m being rude. I said I had an idea - the watch has an open API where I could work with the company to make an app that would go on my watch, so I could touch my watch when I want to change the volume so I don’t have to pull out my phone. He said I could work on it as a side project. 

I contacted a hearing aid company and met with them - we built an app in a week. It was really just a passion project for me. I showed it to a couple people in my office. Our PR team saw it and asked if they could tell my story. I said yes, and my story was published on this idea and changed my entire life - it kickstarted my career into innovating in hearing technology and becoming a known advocate in the space. 

Stefan: What was the story you told?

KR: I didn’t want to hide my hearing loss. I was tired of the stigma and being ashamed. And I wanted to show that you could merge the world of medical devices that are highly stigmatized and wearable devices that are socially acceptable, affordable, and cool. 

So an idea that came from a random person like myself, who’s not even an engineer, is something that is massively used today. And I think there are so many stories like that, especially around disability, that people don’t know. Like email and text messaging: those were things created by people with disabilities, and people don’t know that. 

You never know. The lesson for me in that was if I had been too afraid or I was too worried I was going to get rejected, where would I be now? So I always tell people the worst thing that can happen is you hear no. You always have to try - and that’s hard. We all don’t like that feeling. But sometimes you’re not right. Other times someone will listen and the timing is right. For me, the timing happened to be perfect. 

Stefan: How can people start when building intersectional, diverse personas?

KR: For me, it’s always starting with the disability lens. Then looking at things like demographic, geographic, and sociographic lenses. That’s how I approach it because that’s the world I’m in. I’m trying to solve problems and create opportunities for people with disabilities, so I’m coming from that lens of who is my audience and who I am trying to help. 

Stefan: Are there any mistakes you’ve made that you do differently?

KR: A couple stand out for me. I wish I had not hid my disability for 10 years. I think the emotional, psychological drain on me personally and on my mental health was so painful. 

The other I would say is that I used to be very stubborn and think that my way was the way and I would push for something that I thought was the direction to go. And instead of sitting back and listening to all the opportunities or voices or looking at the bigger picture, I’m thinking about the right direction for that moment and whether I agreed or not. Now I take a different approach where I’m looking at the product narrative. I’m taking a broader view. And I’m bringing more voices to the table including ones that don’t agree with me. I think all of that was because I felt intimidated - I was the only woman in the room 95% of the time so I felt like I had to put my foot down and be pushy and strong about it. 

You have to have your voice be heard, but you have to make sure that you’re looking at the whole picture, all the voices, and really being thoughtful in your decision making process. 

Stefan: How has your work in accessibility changed due to COVID-19?

KR: Disability has always been looked at in certain buckets. You have an older population, you have people with physical disabilities, hearing loss, low vision. In representation, people always thought it’s an older white person. What I’ve seen happen with disability representation is more people are self-identifying because more people are at risk with COVID-19 now. If you have high blood pressure, lung disease, heart disease, or if you’re recovering from cancer. Those are all disabilities, but people never really looked at it like that before.

More people are talking about it than ever before, and learning from people in the disability community who have been living with these issues their entire life. We’re learning from each other and helping each other, and that’s definitely been a huge shift that I’ve seen. 

The community is also much more vocal than before. The disability community was vocal, but usually within our circles. It wasn’t such a mainstream conversation. 

Stefan: Have any personal stories stood out to you in the community around COVID-19?

KR: There are two things I’ve seen. 

Representation is showing up more diverse. It’s not just white. It’s Asian, it’s Black, and so many other different backgrounds and socioeconomic statuses. I always knew it was there, but it just wasn’t gaining the platform or the visibility. And not just from the COVID situation, but also the Black Lives Matter movement. The disability community is stepping up - and there’s the Black Disabled Lives Matter movement happening in parallel. That’s really important as well to make sure that the community is really getting seen. 

Stefan: Have you seen interesting virtual ways of getting involved with movements?

KR: One of my favorite campaigns right now is the Crip Impact Campaign, which is based off of the Netflix documentary Crip Camp, which talks about the history of the Americans with Disabilities Act and how that came about. It’s a very diverse amazing group of disability advocates that have come together every Sunday and do a town hall to talk about the different issues facing the disability community. And there are incredible conversations being had with thought leaders in the community, and even around the Black Lives Matter movement and COVID-19. 

Our community is thinking about things and how we can support each other not just now but in the future. That’s been wonderful to see. 

If you go to CripCamp.com and go to Crip Impact, you’ll see a webinar to sign up for that they do every Sunday. 

Stefan: Have you seen increased talk about mental health in the disabilities community?

KR: Absolutely. The disability community has always talked about social isolation and depression, because often we are very isolated, but now even more so - the conversation has rapidly grown. 

There have been some great thought leaders in this space. One is a personal friend, Margaux Joffee, the director of accessibility marketing at Verizon. She also started her own organization called Kaleidoscope Society, which is a platform for women with ADHD. And more thought leaders are gaining a platform to elevate the conversation, not only where they are in the workplace but also the things they are passionate about bringing up and raising awareness on. 

The disability community is worried - emotionally, mentally, and physically. Our unemployment rate was already high. Now it’s super high with COVID-19. Then there’s access to healthcare and worrying about if they are going to save you because maybe you’re too high risk. Or will they give you access to a ventilator. Those are real things that are happening - the disability community has lost a lot of people through this. 

There’s a fear that even if we get through this pandemic, what’s going to be left for us. How are we going to go back into the classroom? How are we going to continue to work? How are we going to financially support ourselves? There are some serious fears and worries about if people are going to do anything to help us. 

Stefan: What do you see as the future of accessibility in tech?

KR: We’re definitely seeing where voice is going. The power of voice technology and how that has given so much to people with disabilities. So much more independence and being able to do things as simple as turning on a light or being able to control different devices in your home. Or when you go outside using voice to navigate your phone. Those technologies will continue to get better and better. Also help with visual impairments and ways that people can stay connected when you’re blind or low-vision. I see that definitely getting more advanced. 

I dream of a world where I have devices in my ears and I walk into a room and I look at someone -- and that is the only thing I hear because that’s the thing I want to hear in a moment. So voice segmentation is something I’m really excited about in the future, and I think that’s a couple years away. 

I also see the hearing aid industry maybe not being the same. I think AirPods could be something you wear to listen to phone calls I use to hear the world. We’re both wearing the same thing and it costs a couple hundred bucks. 

I see that becoming more and more standard that companies will see just how massive this market is and how big the disability community is. And more focus will go towards innovating in that space. 

Stefan: Lightning round: Favorite quote?

KR: “Nothing about us without us”

Stefan: What motivates you in life?

KR: Helping people. 

Stefan: What’s a book or movie that changed the way you think about the world?

KR: Crip Camp documentary on Netflix. 

Stefan: Favorite podcast or music?

KR: I don’t listen to too many podcasts cause there are no captions. I’m looking forward to that technology evolving more. I listen to all kinds of music. But I would say my favorite podcast right now is 13 Letters by Be My Eyes.

Stefan: What’s the coolest tech product you’ve ever come across?

KR: When I worked at Doppler Labs -- the hearing augmentation earbuds we made were definitely a life changing moment. It was two wireless earbuds that you put in your ears. With an app on your phone, you could control everything you heard around you. You could filter out noise, change the frequency, all of that. 

Stefan: How can people connect with you?

KR: Check out my website and get in touch.

Stefan: Thank you!

Building Antiracist Organizations

Welcome to Crescendo Chats: Scaling Diversity & Inclusion. In this series, Crescendo co-founder Stefan Kollenberg hosts conversations with HR and diversity & inclusion practitioners, sharing valuable insights from their work. 

This week’s conversation is with Marcus Cooper, the Global Head of Inclusion, Diversity and Equity at PagerDuty.

Listen to the podcast or read below for the edited transcript. 

Stefan: Can you share a bit about yourselves to get us started?

Marcus: I’m a native New Yorker and have spent my whole life and career in New York City, which is a place that’s right for the kind of social justice work that I do. I’m pretty passionate about the city and the potential that it has to really change lives, particularly through local government and some of the social programs we have. 

As it pertains to my work, I’m the head of inclusion, diversity, and equity at PagerDuty. Our collective mission is to enable all of our people, which we affectionately call Newtonians, to be champion facilitators. If I had to break down my role, it would be into three main buckets: systems of equity and compliance (like EEO and affirmative action planning), talent development (like executive development and coaching), and community (like volunteerism and our foundation).

Stefan: Why did you get into this work?

Marcus: It’s the typical tale of a person of color being marginalized and feeling frustrated with the status quo. I started out my career in recruiting, working for a San Francisco-based recruiting agency, and I could not believe the homogeneity in the candidates that we’d engage. We would service these incredibly aspirational, famous, well-publicized tech companies. They were looking for carbon copies of talent and they would come back to us when a certain hire wouldn’t work out, and I would say the definition of insanity is to do the same thing over again and expect different results. 

I was sneaky about it, to be honest. I just started sending over full panels of Black and Brown candidates. The first time that I did that, I’ll never forget the hiring manager sending me a direct email and asking if I was new on the account. I said oh I’m still learning, can I send candidates that are different from the main profile. She said I could send them, but they probably wouldn’t end up engaging them. It was such a bias thing. Then they started to get interviewed and started to get hired. It was truly the most gratifying feeling to see them break down barriers and change their professional and economic landscape for their entire future, just by landing their first job in tech. 

At that time I was already volunteering and pursuing some more of my social justice oriented passions. I thought to myself that this might be an opportunity to merge those worlds and really do some good. 

It took a more substantial form when I joined Oscar Health in New York a few years ago, which is where I was before I joined PagerDuty. 

Stefan: What challenges have you faced or mistakes did you make in your journey?

Marcus: The biggest lesson I’ve learned is probably around the meaning and value of service leadership. Early in my career, there was some ego involved. It was all about I understood there was a need, but I had done my diligence, talked to professionals… I thought I had all the answers and I wanted my ideas to win more so than I wanted specific communities to win and more so than I wanted my team to win. 

It’s a mistake a lot of young people make, but the truth is sometimes my ideas aren’t what certain communities need nor are they always the right decisions for the organization. I had to reorient myself on our people and our community and take my ego out of the equation. I’m reminded that this is not about me - people are depending on my resilience. I have to keep going. 

Stefan: What are some things you’ve shared with employees to keep them engaged in Juneteenth antiracist work?

Marcus: The content we posted on LinkedIn around the murders of George Floyd and Breona Taylor and many others - and the role we play as an organization in one of the wealthiest countries in the world - it’s a clear responsibility on our part to not just say the things that sound right but to do something ongoing. So we came together as a leadership team and decided what we are going to do. 

We introduced an initiative, called A Date for Change, and this is essentially a company sponsored holiday for all of our people to take action in service of the Black community. From education to volunteerism to protest and lobbying, we saw hundreds of employees step up to practice real, tangible allyship. It was an incredible moment for us to not only leverage our platform but also our resources to educate our staff but also support a critical population within our community. 

Stefan: How do you decide on which resources to share?

Marcus: We tried to make this structured as a program in terms of setting the right expectations for our staff and giving them opportunities, but also wanting them to have their own identity and voice. When it came specifically to lobbying, that was offered across a suite of other opportunities. It was for people who felt passionately enough for change that they were willing to go above and beyond and use their voice for good. All we did was put the resources out there. To be honest with you, I didn’t expect that particular opportunity to be as popular as it was. 

Stefan: How do you make sure momentum continues?

Marcus: It’s at the heart of everything we do. We did a video interview with the Wall Street Journal and they asked me how we are differentiating ourselves from other public statements we’ve seen from other companies. And number one, the best thing about A Date for Change is that it’s annual. Meaning we’ll be closing our business to support our Black community every single year. Consistency is what creates change. 

It’s also worth mentioning that a deeper change isn’t an isolated effort. It’s part of a suite of commitments we made as part of our corporate platform in response to many of the things we’re seeing in the world. We’re committing over half a million dollars to creating justice and equitable communities. We’ll use our foundation, PagerDuty.org, for the bulk of that work. We’ve totally refreshed our volunteer time off policy, which is the hourly allocation to all of our employees to participate in volunteer activities throughout the year. We allocate 20 hours per year, but we’ve augmented it to allow employees to participate in human rights protests as a form of volunteerism. We’ve also changed it so it supports voter engagement work with a focus on voter turnout in underrepresented communities. 

We’ve also committed to driving more transparency around our inclusion, diversity, and equity work and we’ll be launching pagerduty.com/diversity in July 2020. It will be its own unique format, but similar to the reports you might see in the industry. 

Lastly, we’ve renewed our commitment to doing business with partners who demonstrate and prioritize IDE. That means looking at our current contracts and thinking through what the plan is to get them to a space where we feel like they’re demonstrating the values that are consistent with ours. And how do we make sure that any new business we engage going forward has an awareness and understanding of what we mean when we say you have to prioritize IDE. 

Stefan: What ways have you seen systematic racism exist within companies and how can we adjust processes to address that?

Marcus: I try to pay respect to the fact that it might be a triggering question for a lot of folks. For a long time, racism was considered in such binary terms.It was either you're overtly racist or you're just not at all racist. Of course we know that's not the case.There's a number of microaggressions to speak to that. But more broadly, people are just kind of starting to wake up to it. 

Consider first that the systems we have today are relics of hundreds, of years of government regulated business, right? These are the same governing bodies that made discrimination, slavery, et cetera, all legally permissible. It's almost like a game of telephone. The message might dramatically change by the time it reaches the destination, but it still has elements of that original note, our HR and people systems, even the way we buy, sell, or just generally do business, all STEM from those original racist governing bodies, regardless of how much we've innovated. We have to actively seek out and audit our systems that have the capacity to adversely harm underrepresented populations. This is what it means to be actively anti-racist.

We see this pop up in all areas from benefits compensation to our corporate policy, to promotion and performance management, hiring the entire end to end talent experience, to be quite honest.My advice would be to map out your talent process from brand exposure, which is more along the lines of talent branding all the way through to post hire and even exit, and then ask yourself, what are the critical moments or milestones within each step? What structures exist within those? How are we mitigating bias within those structures? Are you even aware of how bias might impact these structures?

To be totally clear, this is going to be a lot of work.It's a tremendous amount of work to deconstruct every element of your people experience.

I'll tell you that you won't see the benefits of this overnight, but the key is just to get started and you'll see those changes happen. You have to pay respect to the fact that it took a hundred plus years for our particular industry to get to this place. We won't be able to solve it right away.

Stefan: What are your opinions on unconscious bias trainings?

Marcus: They're flawed in the way that humans are flawed. They don’t quite get to the root of the matter. Many times they've become these check the box type of learning engagements for the operations.I do think they have some utility, but the challenge is most unconscious bias trainings, focus on bias awareness and not necessarily bias mitigation.

Now I see these trainings being really successful when you can ground an audience in bias awareness first and then deliver a bias mitigation module that is specific and measurable enough, for example, Michelle Kim’s company Awaken. It's great because they absolutely cover the basics of bias awareness, but they help drive action and behavioral change by rooting the mitigation element in our feedback culture.

Stefan: What actions can recruiters take to have more balanced groups of candidates and hires?

Marcus: Yeah, they have a tough job, because I think a lot of organizations don't spend enough time enabling and coaching these teams.

So, in my mind, I see this in three critical buckets. 

Tools and systems. This is more focused on the resources available to recruiters to both hire efficiently and inclusively. My recommendation is to invest in tools that support a candidate centric hiring process. That's typically activated by your ATS and supportive tools like, travel and relocation, et cetera.

Recruiters should always be expert relationship builders. So they should want to see talent win and be successful, but that means setting the right expectations and over communicating, coaching for the interview, and advocating for them behind closed doors. I’ve seen a few companies do this really well, an example that’s top of mind right now is the way Google recruits. They’re great at coaching candidates through the process. 

The third bucket is more around domain expertise and consultation. This is the concentrated nature of the recruiter and the hiring manager. Recruiters should educate hiring managers on things like market trends and availability, role expectations, search criteria, and everything in between. This is an opportunity for recruiters to create a pathway into the organization for underrepresented talent by setting a fair and equitable hiring bar.

Stefan: Lightning round - favorite quote?

Marcus: From a colleague back at Oscar. I don’t know who originally said it: “Service unto others is the price we pay for our time here on earth.”

Stefan: What motivates you in life?

Marcus: Family is a key driver for me. My grandfather is a personal hero. He was the original director of the NAACP and was one of the first Black engineers at IBM. 

Stefan: What book or movie changed the way you think about the world?

Marcus: Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. 

Stefan: Favorite podcast?

Marcus: I don’t know that I have a favorite podcast. 

Stefan: What’s the coolest tech product you’ve ever come across?

Marcus: I saw a Kickstarter campaign for a mobile dog washing station. I know that sounds ridiculous, but I was watching the videos and thought it was so cool. 

Stefan: How can people connect with you?

Marcus: Check out my LinkedIn or Twitter and get in touch.

Stefan: Thank you!

The Process of D&I Self-Education 

Welcome to Crescendo Chats: Scaling Diversity & Inclusion. In this series, Crescendo co-founder Stefan Kollenberg hosts conversations with HR and diversity & inclusion practitioners, sharing valuable insights from their work. 

This week’s conversation is with Jessie Wusthoff, the HR, culture, inclusion, and diversity director at Clover Health.

Listen to the podcast or read below for the edited transcript. 

Stefan: Can you share a bit about yourselves to get us started?

Jessie: I came to Clover Health about two and a half years ago. Before that, I did a little consulting support, and I worked in tech companies and nonprofits. I bring those different points of view toward my current culture, inclusion, and diversity work, on our employee engagement and D&I teams. Then I started supporting the HR partners, which is really all about integration.

My role is about making sure all of our people processes integrate D&I. There are pros and cons to the integration, but so far so good. We’re feeling good about that. I’ve been in the Bay Area doing this work for global companies for a few years now and what I like most about where I’m at is that a mission-driven company is really important to me. As someone with a disability being in a place where they’re serving the Medicare population is particularly awesome for me.

I didn’t think I’d get the chance to do the role I wanted at the kind of company I wanted, so that’s been great. 

Stefan: What motivated you to get into D&I work?

Jessie: As someone with a disability, I spent my whole life fighting stereotypes, proving them wrong, and proving that wasn’t me. And then I had some pretty explicitly bad things said to me, and I felt like I was held back at my job. They tried to let me go, which they found out you can’t do just because you doubt someone if they are doing their job. And I worked in people operations at the time. 

I can’t change the world necessarily, but it motivated me to see if I could reduce one or two of these conversations happening, it would be great. The big pivot then was that I was already doing D&I, but at that point I decided to start doing public talks about disability specifically. 

Stefan: What challenges did you face early on with D&I work?

Jessie: One thing you have to understand with D&I work is you will never know everything. You will always be learning and always be making mistakes. I think when you expect that you won’t make mistakes, it becomes paralyzing when you do. 

And when other people assume you’re never going to make mistakes, it’s setting the work up for failure because we all need to learn and progress. And I think people need to remember that messing up isn’t about some atrocious thing you did. It can be something said in passing that was still quite harmful. 

People talk about microaggressions. They’re still hard for people to wrap their head around sometimes. 

For example, we as a leadership group had people from leadership present different things about the group at our yearly update. I had tapped out of some of the planning because I was working on other parts of the event, but I was still watching them happen. I missed the opportunity to point out that everyone presenting was white. And I’m still disappointed in myself for that. It’s a tangible example because it was a group of diversity people. It was a problem. But sometimes you’re just tired and you don’t speak up - and that is no excuse. It did not register well with people in the room who were asking why we had all white people presenting at a diversity group meeting. 

I think the other thing to flag too is that what we see as the problem is often the results of the actual problem. So people were asking why it happened and the actual issue was the pool of people to pick from were almost all whites. Those who weren’t white were out of town that week. So when it’s a smaller number of people, being out of town means all your presenters are white and you don’t have people of color presenting. That to me was the real problem that manifested in the representation of the speakers in the group. 

Stefan: How do you balance doing all the work without beating yourself up?

Jessie: A lot of emotions come with this work. Especially because so many people who are motivated to do it are motivated by personal experience. It’s personal. 

Early on I took on too many things. I think that’s common. People say the problem is trying to boil the ocean and you can’t prioritize. But I think the problem is that everything is equally important - how do you pick one group of people being discriminated against over another?

I think I have gotten better at prioritizing now, but it’s understanding who will change and who will not change so you can preserve your energy. I don’t necessarily need everyone on the boat to move it forward, but no one can be pulling us down as an anchor. So I invest energy into making sure no one is pulling us down. But if someone just wants to chill on the pier, it’s not my favorite, but I only have so much energy at the end of the day. 

It doesn’t mean you dismiss everything else, but it helps. You can’t spend 80% of your time into your bottom 20 causes.

Stefan: What are the different stages of learning people go through with D&I?

Jessie: I think there’s a lot of reflection and general learning. You start with you not knowing what you don’t know. Then you know what you don’t know. Then you actually start over again. In D&I there will always be things you don’t know. 

I’m grateful when people point out or ask me questions that help me understand a little bit more about the topic. They’re humbling. And that’s an important thing to understand when you’re going into this work, too. A lot of people just feel so uncomfortable talking about these things. 

If you’re in a Black family for instance, raised in America, you are aware of what it is to be Black in America. But if you were a white child growing up in a white family, you can easily not have those conversations ever. 

I didn’t go to a diverse school. I felt very much like an outsider because of my disability and under-representation at school. So I clung to people who I knew felt the same, so I did have a very diverse group of friends in high school that really helped me quite a bit. 

Learning can be frustrating and uncomfortable. People ask why I’m comfortable talking about race, and really it’s just that I’m always uncomfortable but I’m just powering through and trying to make it work. 

Stefan: How can you push people to start learning?

Jessie: It depends on the person, but some of the more common ones is closer exposure. If you grew up in a homogenous geography, then moved to a diverse area, the general exposure will start making you ask questions. You hear personal stories or things you’ve never thought of before. Those kinds of realizations get people caring a bit more, but I think what holds white people back is fear of saying the wrong things. But if you can understand where they’re coming from, they’re going to engage because I think everyone deserves empathy and meeting them where they are at. 

So it’s finding what encourages people. If they feel there’s a safe space where someone’s going to meet there where they’re at. There are a lot of people who care and don’t engage because of that fear. So trying to help people get past that is really important. 

Stefan: Do you recall a mistake or misstep, and how you handled it after?

Jessie: Sometimes we say things that hurt people, and it’s not that person’s job to surface it to us. But we’re fortunate if they do. I think going back to my theme of little things making a bigger impact. 

I will say one of the microaggressions I struggle with is my southern California dialect which includes things like ‘dude’ or ‘girl’. I had gotten feedback that was telling me to stop calling a group of people ‘girls’ and I realized I did need to stop. 

It’s such a small thing. It’s one word to change. But I had to spend a lot of time and a lot of focus on it. I think it’s important to have an example of something little like that because the paper cuts can add up. 

I think the one thing is to not make the other person do the emotional labor when you mess up. Don’t make a big fuss with ‘oh I’m so sorry, oh my god.’ I think there’s a balance. When that happens, the person who provided the feedback about being harmed ends up feeling like they need to make the person feel better - it’s the social programming we’ve been submitted to. I see it a lot in that context with white guilt. It’s particularly frustrating when you see white people just starting to notice trends about people of color being shot and they’re so upset - but this is a thing that’s been happening for a long time and it’s not Black people’s jobs to walk you through that emotionally. 

There’s also a whole other layer of people needing to maintain work relationships, so it’s a question of how honest you can be. And people think about the different labels that are going to be associated with them if they speak up. That kind of stuff. 

Stefan: How have you helped others navigate uncomfortable emotions?

Jessie: I think coming from a place of curiosity. People might ask questions as though they are curious but really they are frustrated and you have to keep yourself in check and come from that place of curiosity. That’s helped people take a breath and be able to engage in harder things. 

But it requires a lot of self-care and is extremely hard. It’s not done nearly as much as it’s talked about. 

But generally I just like to call things out to say yeah, this is uncomfortable. It’s ok, though, you can process things so much more and can deal with so much more. I also try to bring humor to it. I learned as a child to keep it real, it didn’t come from the happiest place. But I think it serves me well in my work. Not everyone thinks I’m funny but when someone does it helps people. 

Stefan: How can you help really excited people come in a bit more slowly instead of jumping all-in at first?

Jessie: I think you sometimes need people to do that. But it’s about encouraging people to focus on the desired outcome. Think about the desired outcome you want to see then think about the best way to get that outcome. Very rarely is it calling someone out in front of a bunch of people. That’s probably not going to teach someone something new - it will likely shut them down. But if someone is insisting upon saying harmful things, then maybe you need to. 

So it’s about looking for the harm being done and how you can shut it down. Think about what will allow you to have your best outcome. 

There is such a thing when you’re trying to focus on the outcome of over-coddling. I worry sometimes that I do that. You can overcompensate for fragility and then no one wins. But keeping my eyes on the prize is important. 

Stefan: Clover Health uses Crescendo - what got you initially interested in our platform?

Jessie: Well, you reached out to me because you wanted feedback on the product. I’m glad I could do it at the time. Just talking to you through the Crescendo model, I was already struggling with some things related to D&I and L&D, so the whole integration into daily workflows is pretty important to me. 

The customization was also pretty key. I can’t build everything for everyone. I wanted something that was going to make it easy for people. That was the big appeal. 

Stefan: Any major pain points you’ve seen the platform help with?

Jessie: Yeah, people engaging with it. I know specific people engage because they came with a specific question. I’ve seen them start conversations. It’s not just the people in our D&I working group or people who have already attended trainings. It truly has impacted a different group of people. Not everyone wants to go to an in-person training on a topic they are uncomfortable with. 

The platform is meeting people where they are, in a way that I literally could not have. And that makes me so happy to hear. Cause that’s the goal - meeting people where they are at. It’s in Slack, bite-sized, and I’m focused on those stories. 

Stefan: Where could we improve Crescendo?

Jessie: Two things: There’s always information to be updated and you’ll always be building out your library. The world’s changing. One of the biggest selling points was that people could come at beginner or advanced learning - I never could build enough trainings to accommodate for that. 

Customization needed to improve and has improved, which has been great, like sending from Slack to email. Everyone’s daily work streams at not what they used to be. 

(Note: Crescendo is also building for Microsoft Teams as well!)

Stefan: Lightning round: Favorite quote?

Jessie: Do whatever you feel in your heart to be right, for you’ll be criticized anyway - Eleanor Roosevelt. 

Stefan: What motivates you in life?

Jessie: Making things a little less painful for people. 

Stefan: What’s a book or movie that changed the way you look at the world?

Jessie: Poster Child by Emily Rapp.

Stefan: Coolest tech product you’ve ever come across?

Jessie: Old school wearables. And Spire, a company that came out with a breathing monitor that tells you if you’re holding your breath because you’re stressed. That’s pretty cool.  

Stefan: How can people connect with you?

Jessie: LinkedIn is best!

Stefan: Amazing, thank you!

Investing in D&I as a Series B or C Tech Company with Katie Allen & Dean Delpeache

Welcome to Crescendo Chats: Scaling Diversity & Inclusion. In this series, Crescendo co-founder Stefan Kollenberg hosts conversations with HR and diversity & inclusion practitioners, sharing valuable insights from their work. 

This week’s conversation is with Katie Allen and Dean Delpeache, the Sustainability and Social Impact Manager and Senior Manager of Talent Acquisition, respectively, at Fiix Software.

Listen to the podcast or read below for the edited transcript. 

Stefan: Can you share a bit about yourselves to get us started? 

Katie: Sure! In my role as the Sustainability and Social Impact Manager, it’s my job to ensure that we are fulfilling our higher purpose of creating a more sustainable world. We do that by integrating sustainability and social impact into every aspect of the business, including governance, environment, product, community, and workers. 

Dean: I lead Talent Acquisition - so I’m responsible for talent attraction within the organization. Our goal is to bring in the brightest talent we can, so my responsibility is to lead that initiative. I also partner with Katie to lead inclusion at Fiix.

Stefan: What do you love about D&I work?

Dean: I developed a passion for diversity through my masters program. I had a really good teacher who was very plain about what diversity and inclusion should look like. The number one thing I love about diversity is the fact that we live in a society where we have so many different people who have unique experiences and backgrounds. When you put all those in a room, you get so many different thoughts. I can’t even share with you the amount of times I’ve sat in a room with different people and they gave me a different view and perspective. 

I think diversity and inclusion brings people together in a unique way and you can really reap the benefits out of it from sharing people’s experiences and learning about people. 

Katie: I agree with Dean. I think it’s really great to see people unlock their potential and fulfill their own purpose. And when you have the right systems and tools in place to allow people to do that, you just see them flourish - and it’s so rewarding. 

Stefan: What’s been the biggest learning in your experience so far working on D&I in tech? 

Dean: I think the tech industry is ripe for diversity and inclusion initiatives. When employment equity came in the 80s, it was a federally regulated thing where banks and larger corporations had to show numbers and statistics. I feel like the tech industry has the ability to affect how inclusion practices happen - not just in our companies, but even down to elementary school. 

If we in the tech industry joined together, what will end up happening is you’ll have kids in school wanting to be part of this industry. You won’t have this thing where a lot of industries become male dominated. You’ll have an industry that’s bursting at the seams with all different types of people from different backgrounds - we’ll see so many things happening that will breed into post-secondary and breed into careers. 

Katie: To build off that, it’s a journey. You’re not going to get it right and you’re going to make some mistakes. It’s about picking yourself up and keeping going because there’s a lot to it that we’re all still learning. 

Stefan: Katie, we were talking before and you mentioned some 2020 D&I plans. Can you share your top priorities?

Katie: Yeah! We decided to focus on four main areas which have brought forward different goals and actions. 

Our strategy encompasses:

1. Diversity
2. Inclusion
3. Belonging
4. Equity

We defined each one and what they meant to us and then came up with associated topics under each one. For example, diversity might involve a lot of recruiting initiatives, while equity might involve compensation. It’s been a valuable exercise for us, because it allows us to look at the entirety of the organization to assess what we’re doing well and what needs improving. 

Some of our priorities are:

• Recruitment
• Partnerships 
• Training
• Engagement
• Culture
• Career development

Much of this is aligned with our B-Corp certification also. 

Stefan: Can you share the process you used to come up with this strategy?

Dean: Inclusion has been around before my time, and I think the goal of our founders was to create an inclusive organization. I think that what Katie and I have been working on is bringing it together in a tangible way so that our leaders understand it. 

So the real process was: Sitting down with our leaders to get buy in that diversity and inclusion should be at the forefront. Our leadership team is very accepting and wants to push diversity. And this bleeds up to our board as well. And then bumping heads with Katie to hash out things. 

Stefan: Can you talk more about how this aligns with B-Corp goals?

Katie: B-Corp is a third-party certification for companies that meet high levels of transparency, ethics, social and environmental justice… basically doing business the right way. 

Under their workers section, they have a ton of questions - maybe 50-plus that pertain to employees such as health and wellness, career development, or financial security, engagement, and satisfaction. And our mandate is to maintain the certification and also improve upon it. 

So we look at B-Corp as our guide light and our path forward. It provides us with different opportunities to improve through the certification itself but also through the resources and community that it provides as well. 

Stefan: Can you access B-Corp resources online?

Katie: You can find them online and take the impact assessment for free - you don’t have to be a member. 

Stefan: How do you position initiatives to get executive buy-in?

Dean: We’ve just talked. I think that’s really key before coming up with a whole bunch of different spreadsheets to prove it. Just have a real conversation. Most leaders possess a form of emotional intelligence that they can understand and be empathetic to the fact that these initiatives are important to building a strong company. 

Don’t get me wrong - I think business cases are very, very important. And showing data is very, very important. But I would encourage anybody to just start by talking to your leaders. Have a real conversation, give them some true examples, and start with that - then go into data to back you up.  

Stefan: It can be hard to get a budget when you’re in fundraising mode. How do you approach budgeting?

Katie: We’ve allocated 1% of revenue to initiatives that support programming like this - our leadership is fully on board and they understand diverse teams lead to better outcomes. So the real selling of anything D&I or social impact related was around specific initiatives we thought were worth budgeting for. 

Things like how we can justify and prove that a speaker or training or workshop is going to pay off and be effective. We want to assure that any initiative we put forth has a purpose or return - whether that’s people, planet, or profit. 

We used a lot of surveys and data collection, and used those results to paint a picture of what employees want. And that shows that you have support from the masses - it isn’t just coming from us. 

Stefan: Can you share an example of turning data into a story?

Katie: For me, it’s a bit of a process. First, I want to understand leadership priorities. Right now our board is engaged and interested in increasing diversity across all levels of the organization. So we know that it is a corporate goal. 

Now, we want to take that and transcend it further into actionable steps. If we’re going to send a survey, we want it to align to those goals - and then use it in a visual way and send it over to leadership. We’ll usually send a PDF or email and then talk to them about it. We ask for feedback and ask how we can move forward - it’s a conversation, we’re going back and forth. We’ll usually have more than one meeting and refine it from there.

Stefan: Fiix was an early adopter of Crescendo - how has the platform complemented your D&I program?

Katie: Crescendo has been an excellent complement to everything that we’ve been doing. It’s been valuable for us at Fiix because we have something very tangible that we can point to and say ‘this is what you can look forward to and learn from on a weekly basis.’ Then we can support it more qualitatively through discussions or open forums so that we can dive into the topics a little bit deeper. 

Crescendo is not the be-all, end-all, but it’s foundational bedrock in which everything else revolves. And I definitely give kudos to the team because Crescendo provides a lot of resources to support the tool itself. So it’s become a multi-dimensional tool that we use internally. 

Dean: We were running D&I initiatives on a quarterly or semi-annual basis where we’re doing different types of training or stuff like that. But what’s crescendo has done is that it’s become a regular source of information for us, instead of waiting three months to do a training program or something. Those things still happen, but a lot of times you do some type of training initiative about inclusion, it stays with someone for a week or two, and then kind of falls down. But Crescendo complements it, keeping it in peoples’ minds. And I think that’s very important and why I’ve been a great promoter of Crescendo everywhere I go. 

Stefan: Has COVID-19 shifted your D&I programming?

Dean: The first thing that mattered, especially when we went to mandatory work from home, is making sure our people are ok. You could have a million programs or initiatives but if you don’t actually care about the well-being of your people, you’re not doing it right. 

I think the first thing we did was make sure everyone was doing well. Some examples are that our leaders called every single individual in the organization. We also gave everyone $50 a month toward internet or phone usage, just to help. In regards to usage of equipment, we allowed everyone to come into the office and pick up equipment that they needed to use and were accustomed to using in the office like double monitors and things of that nature. We also continue to put out information about how we can still be social, even though we’re physically distancing. 

Katie: We’ve been looking at how to engage our people in a healthy way as well. We always had weekly meditation and yoga, but now that’s turned digital and it’s been a savior for some people who don’t really get a break in their day, especially if they are sitting in the same spot and haven’t really moved. 

We’re also looking beyond wellness activities to things like maybe trivia or a baking class. 

Stefan: What’s one piece of advice you give to HR / D&I teams in a Series B or C company on running a great D&I program?

Katie: Integrate it with the larger business goals - understanding what’s important to leadership. You might not need the business case for every single thing. Maybe your leadership team understands that it’s an imperative, but just showing how they can get there is super valuable because sustainable and social impact is new and isn’t necessarily taught in everyday business class. If you can show them the way to make it easy, you’re bound to get more buy-in. 

Dean: Have a passion for people and figure out ways to make sure inclusion is at the forefront and is top of mind in everything you do and say. Also make space for people to feel like they belong within your organization. That could be simply in a meeting, encouraging people to speak up. Little things like that - sending appreciation and kudos. 

Stefan: Lightning round time: Favorite quote?

Katie: It’s actually a little poem. You may bake the sugar cane, break its joints, crush out its juice - and still, it is sweet. 

Stefan: What motivates you in life?

Katie: Kindness. People are nice. I think right now that’s especially evident. 

Stefan: What’s one book or movie that changed the way you look at the world? 

Dean: Outliers. It made me think differently about humanity and how people are.

Stefan: What’s your favorite podcast?

Katie: Beyond with Mike Kelton. It’s funny and not always focused on present day issues. 

Stefan: What’s the coolest tech product you’ve ever come across?

Katie: Carbon Engineering is a company that sucks carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, and I think that’s the coolest technology that I have heard of recently. 

Dean: My Blackberry, to be quite honest with you.  

Stefan: How can people connect with you?

Katie: Email! socialimpact@fiixsoftware.com

Dean: Linkedin is probably the best place for me. 

Stefan: Awesome. Thank you both!

Discussing How DEI Impacts Sales with Cornell Verdeja-Woodson

Welcome to Crescendo Chats: Scaling Diversity & Inclusion. In this series, Crescendo co-founder Stefan Kollenberg hosts conversations with HR and diversity & inclusion practitioners, sharing valuable insights from their work. 

This week’s conversation is with Cornell Verdeja-Woodson, Global Head of Diversity for Looker (now part of Google). 

Listen to the podcast or read below for the edited transcript. 

Stefan: Can you share a bit more about yourself - so that people who might not know you can get to know you?

Cornell: Yeah. I’m originally from the East Coast, and I moved to California about a year and a half ago from New York. My background is in higher education, and I’ve been doing diversity work in higher ed for some time. 

I decided to make the switch over into tech about a year and a half ago. I’m recently married and have a little dog - all of this happened in a year. Then we recently just bought a house. Lots of change. 

I now serve as the Global Head of Diversity for a company called Looker, which was just recently acquired by Google. 

Stefan: How’s the shift to tech been? How does it contrast higher ed?

Cornell: It’s interesting because I get that question all the time. A lot of people think higher ed is really slow moving - and some of that is there. But in my experience, higher ed is very similar to tech. There’s the same level of bureaucracy and red tape. The same politics you have to play. It’s all there, just a different industry.

Stefan: So in tech you look at user growth or revenue growth as output metrics. What are the metrics you look at in higher ed?

Cornell: I think it’s the exact same thing, except we call it enrollment. For example, when you’re trying to recruit students, you’re trying to make sure you get a certain number of deposits and get people to accept their admission. Then during the summer, you have this thing called “summer melt”. Back in the day, students would deposit at one school. Now you have students depositing at 5, 6, or 7 schools to hold their spot so they can make a decision. So institutions will start seeing summer melt and it’s used to determine enrollment numbers that indicate how well the institution is really doing. 

Stefan: How does a school ensure a diverse population? 

Cornell: It’s very similar to how you do it in the workplace. It’s looking at where you market your institution - which high schools you’re reaching out to, what cities you are in, and getting your school well known. You have to build relationships.

It’s the same thing recruiters do in the corporate world - they have to get out there and find where people of color are or where the women in tech are.

There are many similarities to how things get done. 

Stefan: And what is it you love most about the work you do?

Cornell: What I really love is the “aha” moments when you help people. At the end of the day, my job is to educate and is to get people to consider a different narrative. So when I do a training or have a conversation with a colleague and they walk away going “holy  crap, ok, that’s not something I ever thought about,” that’s what I’m most proud of. 

Stefan: Today we’re digging into inclusion in sales and remote work diversity and inclusion. Can you talk a bit more about how things like privilege and unconscious bias make their way into sales organizations?

Cornell: Sales has historically been - and is still - dominated by straight cisgender men. So there’s a lot of stuff to push through in terms of culture and privilege. We know that when women and people of color, or people who aren’t straight, are applying for these roles, there’s an image of what a salesperson looks like that they may not “fit”. There’s a privilege built in that white men are always seen as the most viable candidates for sales roles. 

The bias comes into the hiring process around that image of what a sales rep looks like and the idea of someone else not being able to hang with the boys and be able to “cut it”. There’s also a question about whether people trust certain demographics of people to understand the technical side of a product. 

Stefan: How can women or people of color excel in a sales function? 

Cornell: That’s a really hard question. I think one of the things is that, no matter your field, relationship building becomes really critical because you end up developing allies and sponsors who know you and know your skill set that can advocate for you. However, I hate that it puts the onus on underrepresented populations to do all the work. There’s also work that white, straight cisgender men can do to break down their bias and understand it. 

The other thing is that women, people of color, trans people, queer people - we have to do our best to make sure we’re dealing with our own self confidence so we can show up, know what we’re talking about, and not allow the ignorance of others to break us down. Our focus is about maintaining a strong sense of self-worth. 

Stefan: So what about when bias comes from an external partner?

Cornell: That’s another hard one. I’ve toyed a lot with my colleagues on how to do this because I have no control over that external partner or potential client. I could report that person to their manager, but the big question I’m asking is that if someone exhibits that behavior, are they someone you actually want to do business with? That’s a controversial question when there’s money on the line and people have to hit their quotas for the quarter. 

But for diversity, equity, and inclusion to be done the way it needs to be done, we have to have our values represented in how we do things and be ready to make that kind of decision about where to draw the line. Silence is an act of acceptance - not saying anything doesn’t make you neutral, it makes you part of the problem.

Stefan: When you’re in these tough situations, are there things you’ve tried that worked?

Cornell: One thing I’ve tried before - when a woman in particular who couldn’t build a connection with a male potential client. I’ve seen it work where a male colleague or manager will step in and say “You’re in good hands and super lucky to be working with her,” and vouching for her in that way. Unfortunately, we know men listen to men differently and white people listen to white people differently. So having a man step in has been of some help. But to me this feels icky because I shouldn’t need to have a man walk in and mansplain how good she is and vouch for her. However, that did help this particular sales rep build a relationship and do her job that we all knew she was fully capable of doing.

Stefan: How have you positioned diversity, equity, and inclusion training to sales professionals?

Cornell: A lot is diversity 101, but I hate the “business case for diversity” conversation. It’s exhausting, and having to connect it with money to get people to care frustrates me. But this is how some people get into the conversation. So understanding that when we’re able to connect with more people, we increase the impact. It’s not one size fits all - you have to have a strategy for how you connect with folks.

Similarly, there are some companies or cultures where you’ll meet for business, but you don’t start off jumping into business. There are formalities and getting to know each other - you focus on the human connection first, then jump into business. The American way of getting down to business is not going to work with every single culture. You’re going to miss out if you’re not aware of the different ways that people communicate and connect. 

For example, we just did our customer success summit, where we brought in all of our customer success team. Then we had our sales kickoff and one of the conversations was understanding the culture in which your client or potential client operates. So when you’re approaching that conversation, what do you understand about the company, the way it operates, how it navigates what it’s doing, and what’s on their plate? It requires a lot of energy and time to do research before jumping in, in order to make the most of the conversation. 

Stefan: Shifting to remote D&I as a result of COVID-19, are there any new challenges coming up for employees?

Cornell: I think one of the biggest things is not being as connected to their team. We have a lot of people who are very relationship oriented. So not being able to grab coffee or go for a walk has been hard on some individuals. Our diversity team has partnered with our HRBPs to create resources and support individuals - to help create opportunities for people to get together virtually. We also train our managers to be sensitive to that topic. 

Then there are our employees who struggle with mental health. Even when they are in the office, the day to day can be different for them. So we’re thinking about how we’re adding extra support for them so if they are forced to be at home, they can get some of that energy from each other. 

Things are just different, so we’ve made a big call to our managers and reinforced that point to be kind, be patient, and allow people to take care of the things they need to in their lives before jumping back in. Also give them autonomy to manage their life as it is right now, because they are doing everything at once. 

Stefan: When it comes to remote communication, what are some challenges you’ve seen come up around conflict, disagreement, or misunderstanding?

Cornell: We know with virtual meetings you can’t see everyone, and 85% of communication is nonverbal. So we’ve had to help managers deal with conflict and manage it, understand it, create strategies for how we give space for people and be able to articulate what’s going on. We also think about getting to the underlying issues that’s happening so everyone can understand each other. 

It’s about asking a lot of questions, having people repeat back what they heard and understood, and being intentional about how we communicate with each other. 

Stefan: What specific things have you worked on with managers?

Cornell: We asked managers to consider increasing the check in meetings they have with their teams and not allowing every team meeting to be about business. One of our teams is doing a funny hat day, where every day of the week is a different hat you wear. A lot of companies are doing things like that. 

I think COVID-19 is reminding us that life is not all about work. You have to look at your employees not just as employees but who they are outside of that. I think there’s a lot of opportunity to find more empathy, and we’re encouraging managers to get to know employees in a different way. 

Stefan: Speaking of COVID-19, you mentioned an article about the privilege of wearing masks. Can you go into more detail?

Cornell: Yeah. The article said the CDC is suggesting wearing masks all the time, which is different from where they were at when this first started. But as a Black man, me walking outside with a face mask or walking into a store with a face mask says something totally different. I think many people think biases take a vacation during a pandemic, but that’s not true. Bias is steeped in how we make decisions and will impact how people get healthcare or other critical attention. 

So when I’m outside, as a Black man I have to think about how to make people know I’m not trying to rob anything - I’m wearing a mask cause I was told to. It’s that added layer of pressure and anxiety on top of catching COVID-19, now you have to worry about some cop or store owner reading me differently because of the color of my skin. 

A lot of this has to do with socioeconomic status, because many people from racialized backgrounds are hourly workers. If they don’t go to work, they get fired. So they have to risk their lives every single day instead of sheltering in place like everyone else. Not all of us have the privilege to work from home and still keep our jobs, not to mention the people who have been laid off that had no safety net. 

Stefan: What topics are you engaging people on right now in your remote training or conversations around these issues?

Cornell: We’re making our diversity conversations relevant for the times. For example, we’re planning to do a couple panels on how COVID-19 is increasing the number of xenophobic instances that Asian folks are facing. So we’re getting two therapists and one individual who wrote an article about this topic to come and talk about what that’s been like. 

We’re also doing an article about Black and Latino people wearing masks outside. We’re doing a panel on how COVID-19 is impacting communities of color. So we’re doing all those things that are still steeped into bias and unconscious bias training, but are very timely so people can begin to make that connection of where bias is taking place. 

Unfortunately, it’s the people who are not the most educated on the topic who are the loudest voices. So it’s about how we stop those people from spreading false narratives and listen to people who are on the frontlines studying this thing with real data.

Stefan: Even though this is a bad situation, what opportunities do you see for structural and fundamental change, especially around remote work?

Cornell: I definitely think it will change our recruiting systems and how we look for candidates. We have a real opportunity to reimagine how work can get done. Any company or manager that did not believe remote work was a viable way to build a team is being shown that it is possible. 

It also opens the gates for even more diversity to enter because people who can’t or won’t relocate can work for more companies. There’s a whole gamut of reasons why remote work can be very viable - we can hire even more people who otherwise wouldn’t have been viable for our positions because we were narrow-minded about what that looked like. 

Everyone will need something different. This is an opportunity for HR to sit back and think about all the needs that need to be met - and put things in place now before we get too deep into this new culture and things get hard to fix. 

As a diversity professional, we have to be ready to show business leaders how what we do is directly connected to the business. We have to come ready with the database and be diligent in putting ourselves in there, because many won’t automatically get it.  

Stefan: And onto rapid fire - what’s your favorite quote?

Cornell: I have it tattooed on my arm: “I come as one, but I stand as 10,000,” by Maya Angelou.

Stefan: What motivates you in life?

Cornell: It sounds cheesy, but making the world better than it was when I first got here. 

Stefan: What’s a book or movie that changed your life?

Cornell: Brenee Brown’s book Daring Greatly. 

Stefan: Do you have a favorite podcast?

Cornell: When I moved to California, I stopped listening to podcasts - not on purpose, though. I recently started picking it back up and my number one favorite podcast is called The Read. It’s not for the faint of heart - they get very real and very raw on pop culture. 

Stefan: What’s the coolest tech product you’ve ever come across?

Cornell: I have to say Looker. It’s a great product that is helping organizations and companies use their data in a way that helps them make better decisions. For a diversity professional, using facts and data to make better decisions is our best friend. We’re trying to help organizations understand that you can’t go off of gut feeling when it comes to diversity issues - you have to know what you’re talking about and read what the data is telling you. 

Stefan: How can people get in touch with you?

Cornell: LinkedIn is the best way - I spend a lot of time there. Drop me a message, but don’t be offended if I don’t get back to you right away. But I love connecting with people and trying to support people any way I can. 

Stefan: Amazing, thanks! 

Discussing The Future of D&I Strategy In Tech with Ulysses Smith

Welcome to Crescendo Chats: Scaling Diversity & Inclusion. In this series, Crescendo co-founder Stefan Kollenberg hosts conversations with HR and diversity & inclusion practitioners, sharing valuable insights from their work. 

This week’s conversation is with Ulysses Smith - Founder and CEO of Archetype D&I Consulting and Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging Leader at Blend.

Listen to the podcast or read below for the edited transcript. 

Stefan: To get started, can you share a bit more about yourself and what you do? 

Ulysses: I grew up in Jacksonville, Florida. I ended up moving to New York to go to school. I worked in New York for a while and ended up falling into the D&I space. I initially started in architecture and city planning - and realized that there was a set of questions I was interested in answering that the study of architecture was not interested in asking. 

I found myself interested in thinking about the policy behind design and thinking through what it meant for an architect or a government official to place buildings in a community without asking the community. It got me thinking about who has access to the venues where all these decisions are being made. 

Through that, I started looking at all these various barriers to participation for different groups. I then moved to DC for a hot second to work on Capitol Hill, learning how much I hated working with Congress and dealing with forced arbitration laws. At that time I was working on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, which ultimately did not pass, was geared at eliminating discrimination against LGBTQ+ individuals in the workplace, which we are still seeing as an issue today. But then I ended up moving back to New York and working at Cornell University for a while, running their D&I strategy, which was exciting for me. 

Then I somehow ended up being approached by the tech sector. I started a consulting firm and was looking to work with small and medium sized tech firms to build out their strategies, focusing on integrating D&I from the beginning. But then I got to work with very large organizations and ended up liking working with those organizations. 

So I’ve been here ever since, but I never really saw myself in tech. 

Stefan: Has there been a major difference in how D&I is approached across those sectors that you’ve been in?

Ulysses: It’s been fascinating because I think tech is a self-proclaimed progressive and disruptive industry. There seems to be this thought that the D&I practice is very new, and it’s not. Especially if you look at these established institutions with established practices and industries, especially for higher education, where we’ve seen successes for some time. 

The big difference is the perception of output, for example. There’s a perception that higher ed is incredibly slow, and that’s not necessarily true. I think higher ed is very experimental because you’re surrounded by a classroom environment and are encouraged to try a bunch of new things. Because you are navigating such large and complex institutions, your inputs are probably 10 times more than what’s going on in the tech sector at any given point in time, but the public only sees the final version of something, so it seems slower. Whereas tech is all about the minimum viable product, hustle hustle hustle. 

I think that other industries are a bit farther ahead of the tech sector in terms of understanding and moving to this point to now reap the benefits of having a diverse workforce instead of being stuck on the business case and on recruiting. You have to talk about the rest of the business. 

Stefan: What are some of the mistakes you’ve made early on as a D&I practitioner? How could someone else avoid them? 

Ulysses: I’d say one of my biggest mistakes is a more personal choice in terms of aligning myself with specific organizations. I think this is for any practitioner. You come in, you see something shiny. For me, it was a novel experience to walk into a small startup environment. But for me to come from a very structured, very large institution to walk into situations where people don’t even know how to put the “p” in process, let alone the “s” in structure… that’s a little difficult for me. 

I’ve just started to be very careful and cautious about the organizations with whom I choose to do business. Because you can easily walk into an organization that says they’re committed to inclusion and diversity and want to do all these things… then you realize your role is actually to just appease people. The role was made from grassroots protests, and the organization itself is not interested in making significant structural and systemic changes. That can be extremely taxing. 

Stefan: What do you love most about your work? 

Ulysses: I think people talk about diversity fatigue a lot. It’s very real. And I think that goes back to choosing the right organization to work for. If you’re going to walk into an organization where you are constantly beating your head up against a brick wall every day, it’s not going to be fun. 

But even with all the hardships and struggles that come with this practice, there are those moments where people have learned things or people feel affirmed. I think it’s those moments that bring it all together for you. 

Stefan: What are some things that D&I professionals should start doing and stop doing? 

Ulysses: When I go somewhere, my goal is to build a function that doesn’t look like anywhere else. And that means we are not going to be a function that is relegated to a small program in HR. I hope going forward that we start treating D&I as an actual business function and getting it out of the HR space. I don’t know what it looks like for every organization, but I know that HR is not the best area for this anymore. There are many people who are successful in HR and I don’t want to discount their work. But it’s time to start applying it to other parts of the organization. 

On the product side, make sure that we’re actually building things that are accessible to a broad range of people. Be able to understand that landscape and have a team with a leader who can guide that. 

And our leaders themselves have to be more equipped with the skills necessary to do that. 

We’ve got to stop putting out descriptions for heads of D&I that are really just a program manager who manages employee groups and recruiting efforts. It would also be great if we started treating these folks as actual professionals who are well-skilled in their craft. 

Stefan: What about having it placed in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR)?

There’s no way that D&I work can be divorced from social impact work. By definition, we are overwhelmingly focused on equity. We’re often responsible for getting people out beyond the four corners of the office to actually do work in the community that establishes us as a responsible community partner. I think it makes sense. 

Stefan: What are some core skills that individuals need to be successful in these roles? 

Ulysses: People need to have a basic understanding of how to collect and interpret data. You don’t have to have a PhD, but you should at least understand what numbers are statistically significant and which ones aren’t when we’re seeing deviation from the norm. 

You also have to be able to tell a tailored story relevant to business leaders. This piece is going to be incredibly important because a lot of the work we do depends on the day-to-day of the business. It also requires a lot of critical thinking skills. You have to be able to engage deeply on some subjects. 

It’s also important as a D&I practitioner to build coalitions. You’re able to navigate very complex organizations, leading with influence because you are often not in a place to make decisions or have the final authority. 

Then I’d also say listening with empathy. You have to hone your skills on these topics. Two ears, one mouth. 

Stefan: Let’s dig into coalition building. How can you build a coalition in an organization? How can you change people’s views or perspective on the world?

Ulysses: I’m not trying to change anyone’s perspective. Rather, I’m here to add to people’s perspectives. I want to create a space and give people the opportunity to see the world through the lens of somebody else. People change on their own.

But for a coalition, it’s making critical connections and being armed with relevant information. A lot of practitioners don’t know what they are looking for, to be honest. They just don’t have extensive backgrounds in this space. But a part of coalition building is to understand the relevant area of the business or understand what is relevant to the person you’re trying to get on board. Then it’s how you position yourself as a strategic partner to them in order to help them accomplish those goals - and that’s what you do as a D&I practitioner, is be someone who aids them in getting those goals. 

We would start with conversations around team composition and such but I’d always ask “What are your goals? What can I do as a partner to help you reach those goals?”

Some people are going to be appealed to with hard numbers and facts. Other people might be appealed to with just the right moral imperative. Then others you have to do some mixture of both of those things. 

You’re making the connection to whatever is most relevant for that person and then positioning yourself as a strategic partner to them. 

Stefan: Where’s D&I going to evolve in the next 5 years?

Ulysses: I think we will see this practice evolve into a standalone business function in the next few years. We’re already starting to see it now. You’ve started to see companies getting more specific with what they need in job descriptions - someone who’s able to navigate a complex business and understand other parts of the business. We’re starting to see positive change. 

I also think it’s going to be standard to have a team and the outlier will be if you have a singular person responsible for doing all of this work. 

Stefan: What would the team look like? 

Ulysses: It depends on the company, but obviously there will be a leader whose job is to oversee the strategy and direction for the organization - and to partner with the rest of the functional leaders across the organization. 

Then there should be: 

• Someone responsible for internal programming around employee experience. 
• A function geared towards bridging the gap between your sales, customer success, and business development functions. 
• A technical program manager with a background in the product side of things, whether that’s engineering or design, who has the knowledge to be that consultant to all functions, making sure the product or service we’re putting out is as inclusive as it’s supposed to be. 

The team should be consultative in nature but has ownership over specific parts of the business. 

Stefan: Ok - lightning round. What’s your favorite quote? 

Ulysses: “I said what I said,” by Nene Leakes.

Stefan: What motivates you in life?

Ulysses: Justice and settling for nothing less than excellence.

Stefan: What book or movie changed the way you look at the world?

Ulysses: A book: The Color of Law. You should read it immediately.

Stefan: What’s your favorite TV show?

Ulysses: Anything sci-fi or thriller. The Expanse is my jam. Salvation. And Ozark.

Stefan: What’s your favorite video game? 

Ulysses: I’m a big gamer. The Deus Ex franchise and the Mass Effect franchise. 

Stefan: What’s the best way for people to get in touch with you?

Ulysses: LinkedIn is probably best! 

Stefan: Amazing - thanks for a great chat!

How Unilever uses marketing to generate authentic connections and promote D&I education

Welcome to Crescendo Chats: Scaling Diversity & Inclusion. In this series, Crescendo co-founder Stefan Kollenberg hosts conversations with HR and diversity & inclusion practitioners, sharing valuable insights from their work. 

This week’s conversation is with Mita Mallick, Head of Cross Cultural Marketing at Unilever.

Listen to the podcast or read below for the edited transcript. 

Stefan: Before we jump in, I wanted to hear more about yourself and the work you do. Can you tell us about yourself and how you got into this line of work?

Mita: My story starts from being a child who was always really fascinated with storytelling. I was the kid watching commercials. I loved going to the grocery store with my mom and checking out packaging. It was just something I was interested in. 

Most of my life I had been really driven by storytelling and had a great career in marketing at Unilever. 

And it was as I finished my assignment running the Vaseline and Dove portfolio for the US business that the CEO at the time as me to take on the assignment to run diversity and inclusion for North America. I was not too eager to do that because I saw my career staying in marketing. After they asked me about three times, it was my younger brother who said “it’s probably time for you to say yes.”

I think your family knows you the best and as I think about my own career - and growing up as a little brown girl in a white suburb in Massachusetts - my own inclusion journey as a leader, bringing Viola Davis to help turn around the Vaseline business, drove me into the role.

Stefan: Yeah, there are multicultural countries but those challenges still exist. How was it growing up - what was it like for you?

Mita: I always say I grew up in a time and place where it was not cool to be Indian. It was not cool to listen to Bollywood music. It was not cool to wear Indian jewelry. And it was not cool to bring Indian food into lunch. I was bullied pretty heavily, both physically and mentally, from elementary, middle school, and the beginning of high school. And that was really difficult. 

I think what I realized out of that is for a long time I had bullies who had taken my voice. I worked really hard to take my voice back. And that’s part of my purpose. It’s what drives me in this work - to empower the voices of those who have been excluded. To help them find their voice.

Stefan: Absolutely. I don’t think it’s fair for people in the workplace especially, where you go to make money and raise your socioeconomic status. You shouldn’t feel like you don’t belong in a space like that. 

Mita: I think when you go through experiences like that, it actually helps you build a huge sense of empathy. People always say to me “you’re incredibly empathetic. How did that happen” 

I wasn’t born empathetic. I actually think a lot of the experiences that have happened through my life have been gifts. It’s hard to think about it that way when you’re going through it and being bullied. But if you look at it on the positive side - why did I go through these experiences - I now have this enormous sense of empathy that I developed only because the experiences I went through. 

Stefan: Absolutely. So back to your role - are there any challenges you faced early on or mistakes you made? How would you recommend others avoid that?

Mita: I make mistakes every day. We all do. This is courageous work and it’s hard. I think one continuous area of opportunity for all of us is to meet people where they are in their journey. And that’s the exhausting part of this work. Sometimes that’s really hard because I have to cross the street and walk 10 blocks to meet you where you are. But you can’t assume when you’re doing this work that everyone is in the same spot. 

You also have to be really open minded and suspend judgments to the questions people might ask. For example, saying “I don’t understand Black Lives Matter - why isn’t it All Lives Matter?” You could come from a place of “how could you be asking me that question?” and flip it to say this is a great opportunity to connect on this topic and to hear your side and share my side. 

It’s an amazing opportunity when someone asks a question and you suspend judgement and help educate. That’s all there is. It’s always intent versus impact. I like to lead my life thinking 99% of people have great intentions. 1% probably don’t. But people don’t always understand their impact. And if you start a conversation or if someone’s asking you a question and you say ‘that’s sexist, that’s racist, that’s homophobic’ you’ve shut down any opportunity for learning and for building a bridge. 

And so that’s the, I think, really hard part; to suspend our own biases or judgment. 

Stefan: I completely agree with you. I think one of the things I find most interesting is when people are willing to be wrong and willing to take feedback - that’s where you see the most growth happen. But just getting to that point can be challenging. 

Mita: It’s important when we’re doing work as allies for whatever community to say “hey, I made this mistake. And I apologize genuinely. And here’s how I continue to educate myself.” 

Stefan: Absolutely. This brings me to another question - what do you love most about your job?

Mita: I love working with people. Although people are the best, sometimes it’s the worst part of the job. 

I also love problem solving and whitespace. This is a really difficult topic - building inclusive cultures - that doesn’t get solved overnight. And it will consistently be a challenge as our society changes. So that to me is what’s exciting - it’s really challenging.

Stefan: How are you adapting and acting on those changes?

Mita: This actually reminds me of a very vivid memory. My father would leave the house at 8 am and come at at 6 pm and watch the Six O’Clock news. And that’s how he got his news. It was the morning newspaper over a cup of tea and then in the evening at six. Now we have 24/7 access to social, political, and socioeconomic issues and we no longer have the luxury of leaving those issues at the door before we enter work.

One of the reasons I wanted to join Unilever was because of this great line Paul Polman, our CEO who stepped down in December, had. He said there is no line where Unilever ends in society - and that’s no truer than in the world we’re in today. 

That’s what makes it really complex because people are not checking their issues or whatever they’re grappling with in their homes, or their communities, or at the door. They come to work. That’s also what makes it exciting. 

Stefan: I’m glad you brought up Unilever here. I wanted to look at a few campaigns Unilever is running. The first one was the pledge for parental leave campaign that Dove Men + Care ran. Can you tell me more about that?

Mita: It’s Dove Men + Care taking a stand around their purpose for championing paternity leave worldwide so that every dad has the chance to care for those who matter most. I think when you think about that opportunity, it’s huge. Think about those critical moments when men are becoming fathers for the first, second, third time - whatever that might be. 

Those men and those moments matter so much. And there’s such a ripple effect when men are given and allowed the space to care for their families. I think it’s difficult as we talk about the stereotypes and the unconscious bias men face when taking leave. 

Stefan: I’d love to dig into that. What are some of the things you’ve seen men go through?

Mita: Some of the things that come to mind for most of us -- what are dads doing? They’re on the golf course. They’re not really helping taking care of the kids. It’s vacation. Men have similar fears about if they are going to be passed up for a promotion when they’re out. Or are they going to be looked down upon for taking this time off. So all of those things go through minds. 

I didn’t check with my husband, but I’ll share this story. I have a four and seven year old. And when I had my daughter, Priya (she’s four), I remember my husband not telling his employer that I was expecting until about a week before I was going to have my daughter because of his own fears, stereotypes, and biases such as “why does my employer need to know?” I said I don’t have a choice because of my body - I carried my daughter. I was physically changing and transforming at work. So it was something I didn’t have the chance to hide, but at the same time he felt like had to hide it. 

That’s just one story of many of how men grapple with that. 

And of course we know the US - everyone thinks their market is special. But in the US we know that less than one in five men are offered any sort of paid paternity leave. So I think the challenges with this understanding is that you’ve got at least, in the US, the opportunity to look at what the government is doing in terms of federal pay leave. 

Second, there’s an opportunity as we have the pledge.html">Dove Parental Pledge. Not just for men, but business leaders. Everyone taking a pledge on what you are going to do for paternity leave, especially at your company. At Unilever, we have eight weeks paid parental leave.

The third piece, which is really interesting and the big nut to crack is the utilization piece. You can have eight or 16 weeks but if men are not actually taking it, what’s the point? We wanted to also think about what our change can impact internally. I always say our employees are forgotten consumers. We often spend a lot of time thinking about how we’re going to sell Dove Men + Care to you or to that person, but what about our employees? We started to do lots of programs and employee forums about this discussion about men on panels, talking about what it was like for them to take the lead, leaving the challenges they faced. And we’ve seen in our own community, the utilization rate has actually increased. 

Stefan: So you built an internal campaign to get utilization?

Mita: It was just from having open, honest forums and discussions. Having panels that were sponsored by Galvanize, which is our women’s business resource group and Men As Allies, which is our group for men who support women in the workplace. And just having employees share their stories of one father saying “this is my third child, and I didn’t really think there was going to be much value in me taking the full leave and my manager sitting me down and telling me to take the full leave.” He shared the ripple effect it had on his family and his wife - and how life-changing it was for him to do that. 

I think it’s really important for people to role model as senior male leaders taking the full leave off. We’ve had a few of our leaders do that which has been phenomenal. 

The other thing I’m proud that we’ve done is Dove Men + Care set up a paternity leave pledge fund. It’s a million dollar commitment over two years. So any father that doesn’t have access to paid leave can apply for a $5,000 grant. That’s really important to us.

Stefan: Can you talk a bit more about what type of ripple effects this has for men who take advantage of paid leave or the pledge?

Mita: It allows men to have the time at home with their families - and they have financial support to do so. It’s easy to say you want time off, but there are financial considerations and other considerations like if you have support. So that’s really important.

Stefan: Awesome. The other campaign I looked at was around “Show Us.” Can you talk a bit more about that?

Mita: It was really core to Dove’s mission, which is the insight that 70% of women still don’t feel represented in media and advertising. I definitely can relate to that. So this idea of strong, powerful women who look like us, that are represented in this beautiful online marketplace of images in collaboration with Dove, Girlgaze, and Getty Images to start Project #ShowUs. 

I have memories of being a marketer and sitting through agency presentations where there were stock images and they would be all white models looking the same. And I might ask a question about if the images can be more diverse. I’d be told not to worry, it’s just stock images. But I should be worried because that’s what gets rooted in our bias and unconscious bias because we start to think, well, this is what beauty looks like. 

Stefan: Yeah. It’s so important to start changing what representation looks like in advertising and media. 

Mita: Yeah. There are 5,000 images that are really inclusive of beauty. And it’s 100% powered by women - 39 in front of and behind the camera. You can also go online and submit your own photos as well - we’re trying to create a movement to make the largest database of images of real women. 

Some of the most important things can be subtle. Whenever I see a dark brown hand holding a product or something I’m thinking wow, that’s subtle. 

Stefan: It’s inspiring to see the type of impact brands can have in society. You mentioned before that there’s a lot of development around cultural competence that you’ve done internally. Can you share a bit more about how you define cultural competence at Unilever and why it matters?

Mita: I would start by talking about my passion for inclusion and marketing. The way I try to explain this to people is to start on the workforce side and say you can hire me because I’m an amazing talent but you can’t include me because I’m a brown woman/ and that’s the inclusion piece on the workforce side. Then you go to the brand side and the content side - you can put me in a piece of content because I am a brown woman but you cannot include me because you don’t understand the history of my community or my experiences. And we see that happening over and over again, the marketplace and people being very vocal about it. 

Cultural competency to me is at the heart and the foundation of marketing because my job is to know you so well and so intimately as a consumer that I can surprise and delight you with a product or service you didn’t expect. But that means understanding you as a person and your experiences in your community. That’s why it’s essential to do what we do. 

Stefan: How do you speak to someone in a way that they resonate with?

Mita: It’s really understanding your consumers and understanding an experience that you might not have lived through or that’s not your own. That’s where empathy and deep understanding is so important because I’m never going to fully know what it’s like to be you. I can only as empathetic as I can to try to understand what that experience is. 

Stefan: How do you build that skill over time?

Mita: We started a series called the cultural immersion series. We started with unconscious bias training. But the cultural immersion series was really to say we need to study and deeply understand the communities we want to serve. So it’s very different than different than unconscious bias training. 

We created the first in the series with a company called Language and Culture Worldwide, based out of Chicago. It’s called The Experience of Being Black in America. We have that understanding The Experience Of content for being LGBTQ, Latinx, and we just rolled out Muslim experience. And we’ve trained over 5,000 people locally and globally. 

Stefan: How does this differentiate from unconscious bias training?

Mita: I think unconscious bias training gets a bad reputation in the marketplace. I would argue that unconscious bias training is really critical if you have a continuous plan of learning afterward. But you have to actually make people do the work. 

We don’t have enough discussions, I think, about continuously learning. The cultural immersion series is very different in the sense that you are thinking about unconscious bias and stereotype threat. And things that a certain community might be facing or up against. But you’re going to deep into that one community. At Unilever, we’re not unilaterally choosing these communities. We’re looking at the majority in the US and the populations we want to serve and have to serve - and figuring out how we can deeply and authentically connect.

I would also say my experience here - people ask me what’s the result. I mentioned 5,000 people we’ve trained locally and globally. We have a lot of our agencies participating now as well. Ogilvy in London, to give a shoutout, has taken their agency through these experiences. Because Unilever is just one of many clients, there’s so much demand for these that we can’t actually have all of our agency partners come and sit on the session. So we offer the curriculum. We’ve actually used our intellectual capital and time to create it - but anyone can use the curriculum as long as they pay for the facilitation costs from Language and Culture Worldwide. 

To our discussion on continuous learning, this is an opportunity to help marketers continuously upskill themselves. Growing up, it was always data, insights, to action. And to trust your gut. And I think that’s really dangerous because the gut is a product of life experiences - and it’s completely biased. So we’re trying to re-train marketer’s guts. It doesn’t happen overnight. 

Stefan: How does this training impact the bottom line?

Mita: The proof is in the pudding. As you think about Unilever and other amazing brands with purpose. From Dove, it’s from marketers thinking really critically about who we are serving and how we can authentically connect with them. Another great example is what Dove is doing with the crown-act.html">CROWN Coalition, a movement to fight hair discrimination in the workplace. 

Stefan: Amazing. How did you get buy in to put 5,000 people through this education?

Mita: I’m really passionate about piloting things and bringing people along the journey. It’s hard to get people to come and have maximum utilization for learning.

We did as much as we could to get the program in a really great place (through pilots). I’ll tell you - when you pilot something with 30 people and those people all feel like they’ve touched it. That it’s an ecosystem that created it. Those people go around and say “oh my god, I was just part of this amazing pilot. We’re going to roll it out. Please go.”

So it wasn’t overnight that we trained 5,000 people. It was really to think about how you can get a group of people who are committed to help and feel like they own it - then they become your ambassadors to spread the word on how important it is. 

Stefan: So you’ve got workshops. What can people do outside of these workshops to keep learning going? 

Mita: It’s never ending. There’s lots of things post immersion that we include. I’m personally very active on LinkedIn, other social channels, or podcasts or articles - there are so many ways to learn online. I just discovered that Yale University has open source education - you can watch a lot of their lectures are recorded and available to anyone. One of them is a course on African American History, which I would like to upskill myself on.

It’s kind of overwhelming the amount of information you have. 

Second, attend business resource group events that are in your companies or colleague’s companies. There are so many events happening that you can participate in. 

Stefan: How does impact change in different areas of the world?

Mita: For sure. The Black Experience, for example, we teach in certain different parts of the world and it’s in a colonized and conquered country.so the theme is still there - it just depends on how it landed in each part of the world. 

When you look at diversity and inclusion globally, gender is always the entry point. So we’re working around issues on gender and we’re looking at how to be a great ally for the LGBTQ community. We’re looking at how we can be a great ally for individuals with a disability. So there are some themes that work globally. 

Stefan: Awesome, thank you. Onto the lightning round - what’s your favourite quote?

Mita: Almost anything Maya Angelou has said, but specifically “people won’t remember what you said or what you did, but they’ll remember how you made them feel.”

Stefan: What motivates you in life?

Mita: My family - specifically my daughter, Priya, and my son, Jay, and what kind of world they’re going to be raised in. 

Stefan: What’s a book or movie that changed the way you look at the world?

Mita: Option B by Sheryl Sandberg and Becoming by Michelle Obama. 

Stefan: What’s the coolest tech product you’ve ever come across?

Mita: I’m going to give the worst answer: Alexa. Only because we ask her for the weather every morning.

Stefan: How can people connect with you or opportunities at Unilever?

Mita: I’m very active on LinkedIn!

Stefan: Awesome. Thank you so much for joining the podcast!