Best of Season 8: Inspiring Stories and Insights

Season Eight Break Compilation Outline

Diversity: Beyond the Checkbox

Jackie: You’re listening to the Diversity: Beyond the Checkbox podcast.

I’m your host, Jackie Ferguson, author, speaker, human rights advocate. On this show, I’m talking to trailblazers, game changers and glass-ceiling breakers who share their inspiring stories and insights on business, inclusion and personal development.

The incredible guests on season 8 inspired us, educated us, entertained us and emotionally moved us. This episode shares a few of my favorite moments from this last season of the show.

Season 9 is just 2 weeks away. I’ll be digging in with a former Deputy Secretary of the Army, executives from Salary.com and Edelman, an author who escaped her homeland and can’t return for fear of being killed–by her own family, and an actress from a primetime TV favorite–among many more.

Also, we’ve got some exciting new changes that I’ll be sharing on a What’s Next for Diversity: Beyond the Checkbox? episode next week.

Deke Copenhaver

Jackie: Can you tell me what gives you that courage to step out and do new things and embrace new things with the vigor that you do?

Deke: It's interesting. Jackie? I tell people it's like, I love to snow ski, but I'm not the guy that gets to the top of the mountain that wants to look out on everything. I want to go straight down and get to the bottom. So I've spent my life just basically it's been a circuitous life, but I've gone where I've seen the greatest need. And so deciding to run for mayor. I like to study city demographics, and at that point in time, we were losing population and our tax base was shrinking. But I thought, okay, I know what those trends extrapolated over time. What happens there? American city. The best example is Detroit. If your local economy shrinks, you lose population. It becomes a very difficult situation. So I thought, if I know this and I don't try to do anything about it, I've got culpability, so I have a responsibility to try to do something about it. So effectively, I kind of staged an intervention, and it worked. But that's in my life. I know if I have the ability to make a difference, but I don't take the opportunity to do that. I just don't feel good about myself.

Jackie: Wow, that's amazing. And so inspiring for us to think about pushing ourselves forward and doing that scary thing. I think that's amazing.

Donnebra McClendon

Jackie: Donnebra, you describe yourself as not your traditional HR lady. What do you mean by that?

Donnebra: Okay, so, Jackie, most of my career at Ceridian has been in operations. Right? Operations. People move a certain way. Again, I'm very competitive. I am loud. Most HR people aren't very loud. Right. So that means that I have to be aware of my surroundings. I often use some choice language, is what I will say on this podcast today. Right. Most HR people don't do that, but I lead with authenticity. And I will say that regardless of whatever the situation is, I always try to imagine if I were the employee, if this issue directly impacted me. I try to lead with heart, but when I say I'm not the traditional HR lady, sometimes probably more times than I care to admit, my thoughts or feelings kind of spew out. So although I am a member of the HR team, I will say I am consciously being groomed on being more aware facial expressions. Most HR people are aware of their facial expressions. I'm not quite there. I'm in training. I will say that.

Jackie: Me too.

Donnebra: Because if you really want to know what I'm thinking, just look at me. I give you that face and it's like, we know this is not going over well with her.

Jackie: One of the topics Donnebra, that is getting the spotlight in HR right now is pay equity. What are some of the best practices in beginning that process? It can be scary for a lot of organizational leaders. What are some best practices that you have to start that process?

Donnebra: Yeah. So in all honesty, I think organizations must first do a thorough evaluation of their current policies that's hiring policies, that's merit policies, evaluations of promotions. In order for us to really get to a good understanding of pay equity within our organization, we have to take a step back. Now, I strongly recommend that the evaluations that these organizations are going to conduct are not done using internal resources. It becomes very, very difficult and you can really overlook some of the systemic inequities when you are part of the problem.

Dara Sanderson

Jackie: Dara one of the things that's so impressive about the conversations that we've had is just how you jump into new things, right. But so many of us are afraid to get out of our comfort zone, and it seems like you've done that continually throughout your career. Not being afraid to pick up a book and learn something new. How do you do that? And what advice would you give to those of us who are afraid to make that leap?

Dara: So here's the advice I would give. It's okay to be afraid. It's okay to be afraid. I've been afraid plenty in my life. As you said, I've jumped into a lot of new things. It's not because I'm just fearless. It's because I can say, okay, yeah, I'm afraid and I might mess up and this might not work out, but I do it anyway, right? So go ahead and embrace that. It's okay to be scared. It's okay not to be perfect. It's okay to fail. Once you kind of accept that, then it makes you a little less afraid, and you can always learn more. That's been a thing with me. You do not know everything. You don't need to know everything to move forward in life. This is not just career. This is life. Right?

Jackie: Yeah.

Dara: I'm still learning stuff every day. And so that makes it possible for me to just say, all right, well, I'm going to go ahead and try this new thing, and I'm going to learn something.

Jackie: That's fantastic, that's so important, because so many of us want to try the new thing or have an idea about where we'd like to go with our career or a personal change or anything. But it's scary to make that leap. And what you're saying was just such good advice. Is it's okay to be afraid? That doesn't mean don't do it. Don't try it.

Dara: Absolutely. And just to add in too, for so many of the young people today, we've all just been through a very trying time. But even before that, everyone feels like they have to have it all figured out. I went to school and I graduated, and now I need to X. No, you don't. Right. It can be a path that is winding. You don't have to have it all figured out at 19, 20, 21, 22. It's an experience.

Catarina Rivera

Catarina: Ableism is just as harmful as any other ism in our society. And what it is, is that it believes that nondisabled people are more worthy or valuable than disabled people. It prioritizes their experiences, their lives, and it does not prioritize disabled people in that same way. So that real centering of the non-disabled experience is crucial to ableism. When we think about what the impact of ableism is, it really creates discrimination and prejudice within our society. We have so many processes and environments that are designed with the idea that nondisabled people are the default. And there's such a lack of understanding of the power and the benefits of accessibility, because disabled people are very othered in our society historically have been. So. For example, the ugly laws were on the books for a long time. They forbade disabled people from going outside because they oh, they're too ugly. That's the name of the law to be kept at home is away or to be institutionalized. That's worth the fate for many disabled people for so long in our country, in our society, and unfortunately around the world, some countries are still there where you don't see disabled people out. They are kept at home, they're not accessing education. And that's still a silly big problem, when it comes to Ableism in our country. I hope that we're moving forward. We have had the disability rights movement, we have the Americans with Disabilities Act, but of course those are still limited and they're in fact, we still have a lot of work to do today. But I want everyone to know that Ableism is out there. It has to be addressed in our workplaces and our families and our societies. And it's really keeping us apart. It's creating a world that doesn't work for all of us. Because eventually disability is just going to be a part of everyone's life. Even if it's not a part of your life now, it's within your family, or will be within your family or with old age. You will experience a lot of people experience temporary disabilities and then view of the world changes. If you have your own Crutches, you all of a sudden notice where there aren't ramps or where there are buttons to automatically open a door. This is the same world that you were in and taking for granted. So the more accessible we can make everything, the more inclusive we can make everything, this is going to be better for everyone. And that's what I'm always talking about. But we have to start with Ableism, who we value. Another impact of Ableism as well in capitalism is the value of productivity being someone's worth. And so the contributions of disabled people who might not be working are really devalued and minimized. But there are so many ways to be a valuable human.

Jackie: Thank you for sharing that, Catarina. It's so important. And I love what you said, because one in four people has some type of disability that is a lot, right? When we're thinking about disability and how often we other people, we think it's, well, it's this small group over here. No, that's not a small group, it's a large group. And you're so right that whether you're experiencing that yourself or in your family, the disability diversity category is something that any of us can become a part of at any time and as we age, right? If we're lucky enough to do that, there are those considerations as well. And so this is something that we have to address universally and make things more accessible in our workplaces, in our communities, in our environments, because of the number of people that have disabilities of some kind.

Tony Lowden

Tony: I'm sitting at home and my phone was going off like crazy at four o'clock in the morning and a friend said, congratulations, I'm, congratulations on what? And then he sent me an article saying that President Trump intends on appointing president's Carter's pastor as the re-entry czar for the whole country. And I'm like, you got to be kidding me. And so that night, well that morning, I, I, I got up early so I can get to President Carter before the news got him, unfortunately, had already gotten to him, and I sat down, drove down to the, his presidential compound, sat down and told him what was going on and how we got there.

And, he said, well, I, I think you should take the job because when your country calls you to take the job you have to answer if you are a true servant leader with a servant heart. And then he said to me, I just got one question. Are you still gonna be my pastor? If that's so then I need you to come home every weekend and, and be my pastor. And so I said, absolutely, I keep my word to you that I will be your pastor. And so for the moment that I got sworn in, when I put my left hand on the Bible and raised my right hand, I made a commitment to serve the nation, not to serve the president.

Jackie: Mm-hmm.

Tony: You serve the you at the will of serving the president, but you are, you are chosen and appointed to serve the nation. You don't look to make rules or opinions. That's in the best interest of the president is always in the best interest of the nation. And that's something I learned from President Carter. Was it tough sometimes? Absolutely. Cuz there was a lot of things that I didn't agree with. The toughest part from me, which was the greatest disappointment, was when I had an opportunity and other African Americans with me to stop our nation from exploding because of George Floyd, all the African Americans on the staff that worked on criminal justice reform, including some other members that was elected, went into The oval office and he asked for recommendations and we all went around the room.

And I was very wide open about what we should do. I talked about the recommendations from the police commission that I was also a part of, that we've already had some issues, some policies that can address the issues to stop our people from rioting that would give them clarity that no officers should have immunity, that the entire world saw that this was murder.

Jackie: Mm-hmm.

Tony: And we should call it out like we call it out. Don't worry about a base. We don't, we don't worry about a base. We lead and sometimes those places are hard to lead from, but we'd lead and we tell the truth. And then we talked about the fact that, you know, you should hold a press conference and, and, and, and call it out. And, and don't worry about the police, what unions and all just call it out because a lot of them are calling it out. And that didn't happen and, and several nights later, our nation was on fire in so many places, even in DC And it broke my heart. It broke my heart that, you know, we had an opportunity to lead and get out in front of it and, and be able to let America know that we are gonna stand up for justice like everyone else was up for justice.

Laura Sanderson

Jackie: Laura, tell us, what does it mean to be inclusively led?

Laura:So I think the leader of the board is the chair of the board. But it goes for any team leader, doesn't it? I think you need to put effort into understanding at a deep level who each of your team members, your board members are, their identity, their values, how they tick, as well as their experience. Because it's only when you understand who they are that you will really be able to anticipate what they bring. And then you will know when to turn to them for their opinion and when to look to them for their particular contribution. There are some basic practical things about inclusively leading, particularly a board. Some bad examples from the bad old days. I evaluated a board once where there was a view that the women on the board weren't adding a lot of value. And when we watched a board meeting, it became very clear that what was going on was that every time there was a topic under discussion, the chair and he was the chairman, this one would ask all of the men on the board their view first. And only after all of the men had spoken would he come to the women. And funnily enough, there wasn't always all that much left to say at that point. So there are a few kind of inclusive Leadership 101 about make sure that you don't just listen to loudest voices in the room. You do get people to talk in turn, you do draw people's voices in. You ask for a perspective even when it's not being volunteered. But I think a good chair or a good team leader does that because they really know who they've got and they value who they've got absolutely. And then they lead them inclusively.

Jackie: I love that. That's such good advice for all of us who lead teams, right? Are we leading our meetings, are we leading our events inclusively, and are we mindful of who we have in the room and pulling those voices through?

Meisha-Ann Martin

Jackie: One of the reasons for turnover, particularly among underrepresented professionals, is microaggressions or sometimes the macro aggressions, right, in the workplace. You mentioned microaggressions a moment ago. Will you define that for people who have not heard that term before and then share why leaders can’t minimize or ignore those effects on their employees?

Meisha: Right. Yeah. So the terms change every few years. Right. But unconscious bias, which is another big one right now, is how you feel. That’s the cognitive shortcut. That’s you having a prejudice or jumping to a conclusion based on who somebody is or how they look, the microaggression is the behavior and the consequence of that unconscious bias. So a microaggression is what you do based on your assumption. And the reason you can’t ignore it is because, number one, it’s wrong. But number two, in organizations, it has a negative impact on engagement. If you feel like, oh, I’m being prejudged, you don’t really see me, or you see something you think is me but is not me, then I start holding back at work. Right. How people feel affects what they do, and what they do at work is their performance. So you cannot have people or it’s very difficult to have people who are extremely high performing consistently when they’re constantly battling microaggressions. You’re not getting that person’s fullest and complete potential that way.

Jackie: Absolutely. And one of the things that I’ve learned in doing my own research is that employees that are happy at work, right, and when you’re experiencing microaggressions again and again, you’re not happy at work. But when employees are happy at work, they’re significantly more productive, which means more profitability. If you’re just thinking about the bottom line, it’s better for your business to have your employees be happy at work. And that goes, again back to your measurement. Right. And that data collection and understanding. You want your employees happy so that they’re productive, and it helps you recruit better. It certainly helps with retention and so there are so many benefits to measuring and acting upon creating those environments that are more inclusive and more equitable for your workforce.

Meisha: Absolutely. And let’s even talk about innovation. There’s so many companies right now that want to be innovative. If I constantly experience microaggressions, do you think that’s going to make me want to raise my hand and give you my idea? No. You might ridicule me or you might jump to conclusions about me that I’m just being disagreeable. For example, when people experience microaggressions, they shrink, they don’t flourish. Right. And so innovation, in my opinion, really suffers in that context as well.

Nina Simons

Jackie: Tell me about the intersection of preserving nature and diversity, equity, inclusion, and justice. How do you move between these two ideals?

Nina: For me, Jackie, they're all one thing. So if we adopt a mindset that says human activity is a subset of the natural world, then what applies to nature applies to human social systems. So, for example, scientists have proven that ecosystems that are rich with diversity rebound much faster after trauma than monocultures. In many ways, that has been a guiding principle for me. And I think that part of our challenge is to recognize the amount of unconscious conditioning that all of us as human beings tend to take on from a society that is rife with dysfunctional social systems and belief systems. I think we're seeing it everywhere. We're seeing it in business, but we're also seeing it in policing and governance and economy and every aspect of our social systems. And for me, the leap is to recognize difference in all its forms, not just racially, but difference in terms of gender, difference in terms of ability, difference in terms of age and background and class and ethnicity, and to recognize difference as a virtue, not as something to be overcome. Because if we go back to that natural proving that scientists have shown we want to cultivate diversity in all its forms, the healthier system is, is a direct correlative to how much diversity it can encompass and integrate. And so part of what we do with bioners is to model and co-create a space where true pluralism can thrive and where there are some common values that everyone can share while really recognizing and appreciating all the differences among us.

Jim Morris

Jackie: Just recalling what you said earlier about ageism, especially in the workplace, right. But in society in general, a lot of times what happens is certain groups feel like, oh, this isn't my conversation, this isn't my fight. But in fact, when you think about ageism as a form of discrimination or just age as a part of diversity or disability, which, as we all know, any of us can become a part of that diversity group at any point in our life, through age, through accident, through illness. Right? And so this is everyone's conversation, this is everyone's responsibility and everyone's work to make sure that we as humans have equal opportunity and access and the opportunity to grow our careers, be respected, feel safe in our communities. And that's, again, everyone's responsibility. So I love that. And I love that you're having those conversations too, Jim.

Jim: If I can add one other element to it, Jackie, one of the things that I think a lot of not all, of course men just like everybody, white guys are not a monolith. There's a lot of different kinds of us. Right. But one of the things I think that's true for a lot of white men in the US. Is we were acculturated not to feel, but to think and not to understand how to empathize, but to learn how to problem solve. Right. Most men in your audience will identify with a time when their partner, if they're in a heterosexual relationship, their partner said to them, I had this problem at work today, and instead of just listening, we drop into problem solving for them. Definitely. But one of the things that I'm just becoming more and more aware of in terms of my own self-interest is when I really work on my understanding about how to develop better relationships with everyone, particularly people who are across different. My world is so much more robust now in terms of the people I work with, the kind of work I do, the way we get projects completed, the kind of innovation that we have for the projects that we're doing. All of those things have gotten better as a result of me expanding who I consider part of my peer group and who I work with and how I do it.

Jackie: I love that it's so important to think about that, because you're right, Jim. We have to message people and how it's going to affect them. Right. What's the benefit? What's the benefit to your organization if you're an organizational leader and so understanding all of those pieces and how it affects your recruiting and retention efforts, how it affects innovation as you mentioned, how it affects productivity of your employees when they feel safe and happy and they feel like they can contribute or are contributing something valuable to the organization.

Kai Weidie

Jackie: Kai, what do leaders often get wrong about DEI and what advice can you offer?

Kai: I would say this work can't be done by only one lead or someone splitting their time or by volunteers. It's a job that to be done successfully requires a seat at your leadership table and a team to support that person. Don't rely on your business resource groups or your employee resource groups to get this work done. These folks, they join BRGs or ERGs as volunteers. They have a whole other jobs with clients demanding their time. So we don't want real critical DEI work to be an afterthought or a volunteer side job. Don't treat it like that. DEI requires a full time commitment to power this work and it requires subject matter expertise.

Jackie: Absolutely.

Kai: So it probably has to be treated with that respect.

Jackie:That makes sense. And you're right that's one of the things that people very often get wrong is making it a part of someone's job or making it a volunteer committee or having it roll deep into the HR function rather than having a direct line to that C-suite. And that's so important in order to ensure that there is buy in across the whole organization and that you have the resources that you need to successfully shift that culture. And that's so important. Absolutely.

Ruth Rathblott

Jackie: Will you tell us a little bit about your process of unhiding? And what advice do you give to the rest of us for how we can begin to unhide or even understand what it is that we might be hiding? Right. And then how do we know when it's safe to be ourselves and to unhide?

Ruth: Absolutely. I think one of the first pieces of hiding and unhiding is recognizing that it's a continuum, that there isn't an overnight process to unhiding. It's not like you wake up one day and you decide, I'm going to share this and everything in my head, all those stories I've told myself, all those messages I gave myself about this thing I'm hiding will disappear. So the first step is being okay, that this is going to take time, that this is a process. The second part is identifying what is it about yourself that you have where you felt different? How do you understand your difference? How do you understand the messages that were given to you or that you've given yourself about it and that maybe others? And how do you understand other people's differences? Right. So there's an understanding piece of it. And I use the space around journaling and therapy and talking to create that space. The way I unhide and what I often talk to others about is letting one person in. I call it finding your person, letting one person in to share that piece, to kind of check out as a reality check of is it as bad as you have told yourself it is. So for me, I invited someone in to start to share my hand with. And what it allowed me to do, Jackie, is it allowed me to start to actually look at my hand, to actually touch it for the first time, how to actually take care of it, because I had buried it so deeply in my pocket that I neglected it and didn't acknowledge it. I didn't want to see myself as having one hand. I didn't want to see others with one hand or differences. And so by allowing that one person in, they showed me how to love that part of myself that I deemed unlovable for so long. And that's the first step in unhiding. The next step is then starting to take the blinders off and starting to find community. So you start to find others who may be going through. And as much as we complain about social media and think of the tough pieces of it, the positive pieces are you can find a community for anything out there.

Jackie: That's right.

Ruth: And find your people. I randomly happened to be in a Duane Reade pharmacy, and I noticed out of the corner of my eye a woman with one arm. After I was starting to accept that part of myself, I started to want to talk about it. There was this woman, and we started talking about our limb differences. And she said, well, you know, we're not alone. She's like, there's a group called the Lucky Fin Project out there. At that time, Jackie, it was over 30,000 people. Now it's over 70,000 people on a Facebook group. And it was when I went home to look at this, there were all these people who had my hand. I thought I was alone. And often when we feel different, we feel alone, like we're the only ones. And that happens with hiding a lot.

Dr. Fanike Kiara-Young

Jackie: Dr. Fanike there are times when all of us feel overwhelmed or feel anxiety. Can you share a technique can we do it now? To help us release stress and relax in the moment when we're feeling those things?

Dr. Fanike: diaphragmatic breathing, okay? So the thing about it is when we start off breathing, we take full breaths, and I'll tell you exactly what I mean by that. Somewhere along the line in life, usually it's like trauma things that we go through, we stop breathing properly. And so when you breathe properly, you're supposed to breathe in through your nose. Your stomach is supposed to push out, and then when you breathe out, then it should come back in. Right? So we should take in so much air that your stomach pushes out. But a lot of us do shallow breathing. We're like, me too, and we're not breathing right to that stomach. But it's supposed to be so calm. It's supposed to be like, long, right? Your breaths are supposed to be elongated, not shallow. So with diaphragmatic breathing, it's exactly that it is breathing in through your well, first things first is take you can take both hands or one and put it on your stomach. So when you're breathing in, it's supposed to go all the way out. Just let it out. And when you breathe in, you'll feel it come back in. Right? That's how we're supposed to breathe.

Jackie: Yeah.

Dr. Fanike: And if you do that, I do that. At night before I go to bed, I do deep breathing, and it helps me to sleep, and it relaxes me. And so I do that about five times, and I count to four in my head. So I'm counting to four, breathing in, two, three, four, and out, two, three, four, breathe in. Two, three, four, breathe out. Two, three, four, breathe in, two, three, four, breathe out. 2,3,4,1. More time. Breathe in, two, three, four. Breathe out, two, three, four. And resume your normal breath.

Jackie: Thanks for listening to some of my favorite moments from season eight of Diversity: Beyond the Checkbox. If you enjoy the show, please take a moment to share it with a friend,  leave a rating and review, and subscribe so you’ll be reminded when season nine begins on September nineteenth.

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This show is proudly part of The Living Corporate network and was edited and produced by Earfluence.

I’m Jackie Ferguson. Take care of yourself and each other.