After learning of your organization’s hard-to-swallow truths, sustain the effort of creating transformative systems of accountability by asking your whole organization why a transformative system of accountability is relevant, necessary, and important. Ask questions like these…
Read More
The very reasons why efforts toward DEI are necessary are best understood through the dark beginnings of racial capitalism rooted in settler colonialism and genocide. Policies, laws, and societal norms have shaped who works, where they work, what they do, and for how much. With so little autonomy for workers, can business be apolitical?
Read More
Justice work isn’t just about compelling statements and campaigns. It is certainly not about leveraging DEI firms as window-dressing to mask the deeply entrenched and harmful practices that persist within an organization, nor should it be centered on maintaining the goodness and sanctity of whiteness. Truth telling and reconciling are requisite to achieving any form of equity or liberation. Put simply… “The truth will set [us all] free.” Ya’ll — the stakes are high.
Read More
I am seeing some very encouraging racial justice work initiated and driven by CEO’s. While it is heartening to see all of the recent statements from corporations denouncing racism and vowing to take action, there is a need to focus on collective accountability and collaboration both internally and externally for real systemic change.
Read More
This movement calls for the CDO to embody the role of an active disruptor—perhaps we call it the Chief Disruptive Officer. A focus on justice is inherently disruptive, as it requires dismantling and correcting systems that have traditionally been exclusionary and harmful. Moving beyond the rhetoric and centering justice in our work means reimagining who we deem as qualified for doing this very important work.
Read More
Many organizations are currently scurrying to leverage the current racial justice momentum to engage senior leaders in this work. Let me first affirm—this segment of work is important to much broader systemic change. I believe that learning, unlearning, relearning are critical paths towards disrupting systems and reimagining new ones…. AND I believe that if we’re not mindful of how we curate and facilitate spaces that seek to engage us down this path, we can end up causing more harm than good.
Read More
Tone-Policing is one of those terms that I’d experienced well before knowing there was a “word for that.” One definition describes tone-policing as a “conversational tactic that dismisses the ideas being communicated when they are perceived to be delivered in an angry, frustrated, sad, fearful, or otherwise emotionally charged manner.” Tone-policing is typically used as a tactic in conversations seeking to address oppression and inequity.
Read More
“What about our employees who voted for President Trump?” Believe it or not, this is a question we get often as we engage with clients on designing learning experiences in support of their inclusion, equity, and diversity efforts. This question usually comes from a place of concern that the content may be too “progressive,” or perhaps challenging.
Read More
There is a point in Diversity and Inclusion work at which we ask ourselves, is this worth it? This...
Read More
