[vc_row type=”in_container” full_screen_row_position=”middle” column_margin=”default” column_direction=”default” column_direction_tablet=”default” column_direction_phone=”default” scene_position=”center” text_color=”dark” text_align=”left” row_border_radius=”none” row_border_radius_applies=”bg” overlay_strength=”0.3″ gradient_direction=”left_to_right” shape_divider_position=”bottom” bg_image_animation=”none”][vc_column column_padding=”no-extra-padding” column_padding_tablet=”inherit” column_padding_phone=”inherit” column_padding_position=”all” background_color_opacity=”1″ background_hover_color_opacity=”1″ column_shadow=”none” column_border_radius=”none” column_link_target=”_self” gradient_direction=”left_to_right” overlay_strength=”0.3″ width=”1/1″ tablet_width_inherit=”default” tablet_text_alignment=”default” phone_text_alignment=”default” column_border_width=”none” column_border_style=”solid” bg_image_animation=”none”][vc_row_inner column_margin=”default” column_direction=”default” column_direction_tablet=”default” column_direction_phone=”default” text_align=”left”][vc_column_inner column_padding=”no-extra-padding” column_padding_tablet=”inherit” column_padding_phone=”inherit” column_padding_position=”all” background_color_opacity=”1″ background_hover_color_opacity=”1″ column_shadow=”none” column_border_radius=”none” column_link_target=”_self” gradient_direction=”left_to_right” overlay_strength=”0.3″ width=”1/1″ tablet_width_inherit=”default” column_border_width=”none” column_border_style=”solid” bg_image_animation=”none”][vc_raw_html]JTNDaWZyYW1lJTIwc3R5bGUlM0QlMjJib3JkZXIlM0ElMjBub25lJTNCJTIyJTIwc3JjJTNEJTIyJTJGJTJGaHRtbDUtcGxheWVyLmxpYnN5bi5jb20lMkZlbWJlZCUyRmVwaXNvZGUlMkZpZCUyRjE1OTQ4NzE5JTJGaGVpZ2h0JTJGOTAlMkZ0aGVtZSUyRmN1c3RvbSUyRnRodW1ibmFpbCUyRnllcyUyRmRpcmVjdGlvbiUyRmZvcndhcmQlMkZyZW5kZXItcGxheWxpc3QlMkZubyUyRmN1c3RvbS1jb2xvciUyRjBmNDYyYSUyMiUyMHdpZHRoJTNEJTIyMTAwJTI1JTIyJTIwaGVpZ2h0JTNEJTIyOTAlMjIlMjBzY3JvbGxpbmclM0QlMjJubyUyMiUyMGFsbG93ZnVsbHNjcmVlbiUzRCUyMmFsbG93ZnVsbHNjcmVlbiUyMiUzRSUzQyUyRmlmcmFtZSUzRSUwQQ==[/vc_raw_html][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row type=”in_container” full_screen_row_position=”middle” column_margin=”default” column_direction=”default” column_direction_tablet=”default” column_direction_phone=”default” scene_position=”center” text_color=”dark” text_align=”left” row_border_radius=”none” row_border_radius_applies=”bg” overlay_strength=”0.3″ gradient_direction=”left_to_right” shape_divider_position=”bottom” bg_image_animation=”none”][vc_column column_padding=”no-extra-padding” column_padding_tablet=”inherit” column_padding_phone=”inherit” column_padding_position=”all” background_color_opacity=”1″ background_hover_color_opacity=”1″ column_shadow=”none” column_border_radius=”none” column_link_target=”_self” gradient_direction=”left_to_right” overlay_strength=”0.3″ width=”1/1″ tablet_width_inherit=”default” tablet_text_alignment=”default” phone_text_alignment=”default” column_border_width=”none” column_border_style=”solid” bg_image_animation=”none”][divider line_type=”Full Width Line” line_thickness=”1″ divider_color=”default” animate=”yes” delay=”50″][vc_row_inner column_margin=”none” column_direction=”default” column_direction_tablet=”default” column_direction_phone=”default” text_align=”left”][vc_column_inner column_padding=”no-extra-padding” column_padding_tablet=”inherit” column_padding_phone=”inherit” column_padding_position=”all” background_color_opacity=”1″ background_hover_color_opacity=”1″ column_shadow=”none” column_border_radius=”none” column_link_target=”_self” gradient_direction=”left_to_right” overlay_strength=”0.3″ width=”1/1″ tablet_width_inherit=”default” column_border_width=”none” column_border_style=”solid” bg_image_animation=”none”][vc_column_text]
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][divider line_type=”Full Width Line” line_thickness=”1″ divider_color=”default” animate=”yes” delay=”50″][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row type=”in_container” full_screen_row_position=”middle” column_margin=”default” column_direction=”default” column_direction_tablet=”default” column_direction_phone=”default” scene_position=”center” text_color=”dark” text_align=”left” row_border_radius=”none” row_border_radius_applies=”bg” overlay_strength=”0.3″ gradient_direction=”left_to_right” shape_divider_position=”bottom” bg_image_animation=”none”][vc_column column_padding=”no-extra-padding” column_padding_tablet=”inherit” column_padding_phone=”inherit” column_padding_position=”all” background_color_opacity=”1″ background_hover_color_opacity=”1″ column_shadow=”none” column_border_radius=”none” column_link_target=”_self” gradient_direction=”left_to_right” overlay_strength=”0.3″ width=”1/1″ tablet_width_inherit=”default” tablet_text_alignment=”default” phone_text_alignment=”default” column_border_width=”none” column_border_style=”solid” bg_image_animation=”none”][vc_row_inner column_margin=”default” column_direction=”default” column_direction_tablet=”default” column_direction_phone=”default” text_align=”left”][vc_column_inner column_padding=”no-extra-padding” column_padding_tablet=”inherit” column_padding_phone=”inherit” column_padding_position=”all” background_color_opacity=”1″ background_hover_color_opacity=”1″ column_shadow=”none” column_border_radius=”none” column_link_target=”_self” gradient_direction=”left_to_right” overlay_strength=”0.3″ width=”1/1″ tablet_width_inherit=”default” column_border_width=”none” column_border_style=”solid” bg_image_animation=”none”][vc_column_text]Jennifer Brown, CEO and Founder of Jennifer Brown Consulting, joins the program to discuss the importance of diversity, equity and inclusion in the workplace, and reveals the formative experiences that led her to her current work as a DE&I leader. Discover the importance of noticing our biases, and why good intentions aren’t enough. Jennifer also reveals how the disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic can potentially help to create a more equitable and inclusive workplace. [/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row type=”full_width_background” full_screen_row_position=”middle” column_margin=”default” column_direction=”default” column_direction_tablet=”default” column_direction_phone=”default” scene_position=”center” top_padding=”0″ bottom_padding=”7%” text_color=”dark” text_align=”left” row_border_radius=”none” row_border_radius_applies=”bg” class=”custom-p” overlay_strength=”0.3″ gradient_direction=”left_to_right” shape_divider_position=”bottom” bg_image_animation=”none” shape_type=””][vc_column column_padding=”no-extra-padding” column_padding_tablet=”inherit” column_padding_phone=”inherit” column_padding_position=”left-right” background_color_opacity=”1″ background_hover_color_opacity=”1″ column_shadow=”none” column_border_radius=”none” column_link_target=”_self” gradient_direction=”left_to_right” overlay_strength=”0.3″ width=”1/1″ tablet_width_inherit=”default” tablet_text_alignment=”default” phone_text_alignment=”default” column_border_width=”none” column_border_style=”solid” bg_image_animation=”none”][toggles style=”default”][toggle color=”Default” title=”Episode Transcription”][vc_row_inner column_margin=”default” column_direction=”default” column_direction_tablet=”default” column_direction_phone=”default” text_align=”left”][vc_column_inner column_padding=”padding-3-percent” column_padding_tablet=”inherit” column_padding_phone=”inherit” column_padding_position=”all” background_color_opacity=”1″ background_hover_color_opacity=”1″ column_shadow=”none” column_border_radius=”none” column_link_target=”_self” gradient_direction=”left_to_right” overlay_strength=”0.3″ width=”1/1″ tablet_width_inherit=”default” column_border_width=”none” column_border_style=”solid” bg_image_animation=”none”][vc_column_text]Speaker 1: Welcome to Hidden Human, the podcast where we explore the stories behind the business leader. Get ready to hear insights from business leaders speaking candidly about how they became who they are today, and the lessons they learned along the way. And now, here’s your host, leadership coach and speaker, Kelly Meerbott.
Kelly Meerbott: Welcome to Hidden Human, where we share our own personal humanity to connect to humanity at large. This is one of my favorite people. Jennifer Brown, what can I say about her? She is a world changer. She’s an incredible human. She and I talked, what was it like almost a year ago on Hidden Human?
Jennifer Brown: I think so. Yeah, last year sometime.
Kelly Meerbott: We’ve been talking about this issue for a long time and unfortunately a man named George Floyd had to pass away May 25th of this year in order to get us to come back and have the conversation we’re about to have. Without further ado, let me introduce Jennifer Brown, President and CEO of Jennifer Brown Consulting, and author and I’m going to toss it to you and let you plug your books because anybody doing anti-racist or inclusion or diversity or equity work needs to buy and read these books. Highlight right in the margins, so just now.
Jennifer Brown: And send me pictures of all the highlighted pages, please. I love that. I totally geek out on that. Thank you, Kelly. I’m so glad to be here. So the first book was called Inclusion: Diversity, The New Workplace & The Will To Change and that was 2017. And then the second one is How To Be An Inclusive Leader which came out last year which is 2019 in August. We did not know what was ahead, but it is really resonating. Both books are actually really resonating a lot right now. In fact, I’m learning that a lot of corporate book clubs are reading through them and working through them together. I like to think they’re very practical. They’re very grounded in why is this good for business. Not just sort of the moral argument for change and development, which I think should be powerful enough, but we all know, it’s not enough.
Jennifer Brown: And that’s my sort of consultant coming through, which is the, I really want to see change, and I want it to be sustainable change. And I don’t want to leave certain people behind in terms of who goes forward. I really very much care about making this an inclusive process as we improve the world as we need to.
Kelly Meerbott: Yeah. So why don’t we back up and give everybody a little context to who you are and how you got here. Can you give us an overview of what drew you to this work of inclusion, and equity and diversity.
Jennifer Brown: I didn’t even have the words for it for a very long time. Nobody knew this field existed and a lot of people haven’t until now. I was an opera singer. Believe it or not. I moved to New York. I studied opera. I got my equity card, I had all these big dreams. And then unfortunately, I had to get surgery of my voice because I was overtraining and I just kept getting injured.
Jennifer Brown: And so I knew that I wouldn’t be able to perform for a living. And I sort of followed this stream of performer, exstage performers that move into this world of training and development, which means that you’re in front of a room, but you’re not singing and performing, you’re delivering skills and learning.
Jennifer Brown: And I ended up loving that, it was a real fit for obvious reasons. And I ended up getting a second master’s degree after the music masters in organizational change and HR, and I would go on and be a corporate HR person and various roles. And then I said, “I think I have a bigger change. I think I need a bigger platform. I need the freedom to articulate what I think needs to change. And I need to be more radical, if you will, about what I’m recommending, and I need to be listened to as somebody that has a strong point of view.” And I didn’t feel like that was compatible with organization.
Jennifer Brown: And I have so much heart for our friends and all of our clients who are full-time employees. Some of them are really happy. Some of them are like, “I want to do what you do.” I’m like, “Good luck with that because being an entrepreneur is not for everybody.”
Kelly Meerbott: No it’s not, at all.
Jennifer Brown: At all, you know this. I would go and then subsequently on to found my own company, start to hire people and build my team, start to get clients and also I’m a member of the LGBTQ community. And so the role of being closeted as an opera singer, number one, in the early days, and then sort of the scary process of putting your name on the door and then sort of going through the process of what did people find out, are they going to pay me? Are they going to take me seriously? Are they going to judge me? Are they going to be uncomfortable around me? If I’m out as all of who I am. That was something I had to work through. And proudly, I think I’m very much on the other side. We’re a woman owned, certified, we’re LGBT owned and certified. I’ve had a-
Kelly Meerbott: I love our friends at the NGLCC.
Jennifer Brown: Yes, totally like 20 years of that.
Kelly Meerbott: Yeah, Jonathan Lovitz is a great friend.
Jennifer Brown: I know, I saw that you talked to him. I actually met him.
Kelly Meerbott: I love him. I love the work the NGLCC does. And I’ll tell you my own story that started me as an ally when you finish.
Jennifer Brown: Thank you so much for saying that and being an ally. We work across the Fortune 500 and Fortune 1000. And even in this market, and all of this times that we’re living in, lots of smaller companies are starting to invest in their first ENI position, or they’re starting to say, we need a strategy. Our employees are asking for it. So I’ve been kind of waiting for this moment for a long time to happen, and we just happen to be right place, right time, right expertise, I think a very, very inclusive message, one that says, we believe that we’re capable of change and we believe in sort of the power of all of our humanity. It’s not an us and them kind of scenario. We’re very, I like to think we’re a very sort of, what’s the word? Careful, thoughtful, good-
Kelly Meerbott: Methodical.
Jennifer Brown: Yes. Methodical partner to help complex organizations that are dealing with a lot of pressure right now, to sort of move through this in a way that they can sustain because that’s important, too, that this is not a flash in the pan. This has to be a long term commitment that’s being made right now.
Kelly Meerbott: You and I talked before the show that this is a marathon, not a sprint, and we’ll talk about kind of the overwhelm and weariness that both of us felt, but I’m 44 so 30 years ago, I had a family member and if anybody knows anything about the Italian American dynamics, cousins are really sisters, etc, etc. So this person was very close with me. And she came out to me and she came out to me when I was 14, by giving me a book, she gave me the book Rubyfruit Jungle.
Jennifer Brown: I remember.
Kelly Meerbott: And I was an avid reader, voracious, I finished it in 24 hours and I was like, “What does this mean?” In my 14-year-old mind. I’m awakening in puberty and I’m reading all of this and Rubyfruit Jungle. Anybody who read the book knows what I’m talking about. And we won’t go into details because I don’t want to ruin the story for you because it is a good story. And I looked at her and I said, “Does this mean?” And she goes, “That I’m gay.” And I said, “Yes.” And she goes, “Yes,” I was like, “Cool.”
Jennifer Brown: Of course, like a Cheeto.
Kelly Meerbott: But then as I started going through life and walking alongside her as a cisgender, heterosexual, white female, I noticed all these things that I was getting the benefit of so tax breaks, or filing jointly with my spouse, and I would watch her struggle with her partners that she was with for years not have the same access as I did. And my question always, in my mind was what makes her any different than me? She loves this person. I love this person. That should be enough. Why is there any question beyond that?
Kelly Meerbott: And I think that was the seed of me becoming an ally. And I don’t know what it is about me Jennifer, maybe it’s a past life thing. I don’t know if you believe in that, but I get enraged when things aren’t fair. When it’s not fair and equal, and then somebody doesn’t have a fair and equal shot. I get mad, and I’m like, “Okay, what can I do about this?” And we all watch the tragic eight minutes and 46 seconds as a man was, again, four on one was basically murdered in front of all of us. And at that point, I hadn’t been as vocal on my platforms about what I saw as injust I was doing a lot of things behind the scenes that I just don’t talk about because I don’t think it’s a good job A plus gold star that you do all of this stuff. That’s not what it’s about.
Kelly Meerbott: But that to me, watching that whole thing was not only an assault on the black culture, but I feel like it was assault, an assault on a humanity at large. And this is not to me, and maybe I’m wrong. And this is why I’m kind of like getting to this question, but if they’re doing that, what else are they doing that we’re not seeing number one, and number two, why is it that if you put a white man in George Floyd’s place, he would probably be standing here talking to us right now. Why is that behavior okay? And I think also, why is it and I already know this answer and you know this answer, but I really want to hear it from your beautiful mind. Why is it important for the white culture to be the ones leading the charge on this?
Jennifer Brown: There’s a lot in that. The bias is so deep in us that I don’t know… It is so deeply conditioned that even just to decide I’m not going to be biased, whether I’m a police officer or a manager in a company. Even deciding cognitively that I’m going to watch out for this in myself and allegedly spot it when it happens. Sometimes it’s too late because it’s this very primal part of us, this part that is, that’s why we call it unconscious bias because we’re almost powerless to see it. And then we have to have the courage and the sort of self awareness to interrupt it and then we have to make a different choice and all that has to happen in a split second.
Jennifer Brown: And so that takes a lot of I think maturity, and sort of accurate self understanding. And then self control and then humility, humility to say, “Whoa, I was just about to do that. I decided not to do that. I have another alternative and I’m ready to do something else in its place.” And imagine all the learning that has to go into completing that cycle. White America is nowhere near any of that. And I would just argue, biases is born from fear of the unknown. It is this really primal part of us that keeps us safe. So it has purposes, we’re women, we walk around the world. And we have a bias for watching for our safety. We walk differently down the street.
Jennifer Brown: And so some of our biases, it’s not that it’s bad or good. It’s important to just notice it, because it protects us but it can also hurt us and definitely can hurt others. I think that we’ve got to all go through that process. And along the way, it requires saying to ourselves, I’m not a good person, and therefore I’m off the hook. And that’s the huge thing to say, I’m not a racist. I’m good, I have daughters, therefore, I understand what to do around women. Not just because I’m related to one, newsflash, we’re all related to women.
Kelly Meerbott: I think you’re getting to a really good point here is that proximity doesn’t erase it from you, and I said this to a client the other day and he got up in arms and I said this to you before we started recording is that everyone in the white culture is racist. We have racist tendencies. And to your point, it’s not binary. It’s not the guys marching with hoods and flaming crosses and the Confederate flag, that’s not just white supremacy. It’s people in HR positions in corporate, it’s the military, it’s the police, its judges and lawyers and doctors and teachers. All of this because and again, jump in because I’m okay with being wrong and learning, because that’s what I’m doing right now, is it’s a system. It’s these policies and procedures that were founded back 450 years ago that we’ve never questioned.
Kelly Meerbott: And I think, for me, at least what I’m seeing in my own self, because let’s talk about the overwhelm, when George Floyd was murdered. I was like, “Okay, I got to educate myself. So I’m going to read all the books, listen to all the podcasts, watch all the documentaries, listen to the playlist.” And it got to the point where I was, “What am I going to do? How am I going to dismantle the financial system and the justice system.” And I decided in that moment when I was really struggling, how am I going to do all this by myself?
Kelly Meerbott: That Rumi quote floated in my mind, which is, yesterday I was clever, I wanted to change the world, today I’m wise and I’m changing myself. So I backed up and I’m like, “Where have I had a hand in this? Where have I perpetuated it? Where have I said things that maybe made people not feel like they belonged or included? Where did I ignore things? Or were complicit? Where did I stay silent.” And those are the areas that I’m focusing on because it got to be too much. I couldn’t… And I don’t know if this happened to you, and I really want to hear your experience, but I felt like when I was in that place where I’m like, “How am I going to do this?” It literally paralyzed me, like I couldn’t move. Because I didn’t know where to go and what to start with, and then that quote came into my mind, I’m like, “Start with you.”
Jennifer Brown: And think about your sphere of influence, you cannot boil the ocean. Geez all the tired business jargon phrases you want, I think we have to affect what we can that’s within our control. And examine what have I not questioned? I would even back up from that and say, I’m not even sure white Americans know… I think we don’t even know where to look, let alone what to question.
Jennifer Brown: Because it’s so in the water. It’s baked into our institutions and policies and practices, and it’s invisible to us, but because it benefits us, we don’t notice it. So the question always has to be who is this benefiting and who is this sort of singling out or omitting? Or who does this process not include, and becoming curious and sort of an anthropologist about that, digging through, I love the example of the pay gap. No, there’s probably not an organization out there that doesn’t have one.
Jennifer Brown: Some have been really intentional to start to look at it. But I think the assumption is, of course we don’t have a pay gap here, we would never let that happen. So that’s the I’m a good person. We’re a good company, or I’m a good leader. I’m not the kind of leader that would let this happen. Then we say let’s look at the data. We see the gap. Then we say okay, so now you’ve been shown. And now how can we not just put a bandaid on it and it was interesting to see Marc Benioff go through this, who’s the CEO of Salesforce, the pay gap was pointed out to him.
Jennifer Brown: And the first thing he did was write a $3 million check to gross up the gap. That is the short term Bandaid solution. Great solution. I’m not knocking the bandaid. But the systemic question is, how did we get here?
Kelly Meerbott: Yes.
Jennifer Brown: How did we not ever think to look at this? So complicity is really interesting because it’s this sort of very unwitting thing, you got to know where all this stuff is sort of lurking and then you’ve got to go and seek it, and then you raise it. And our job is to actually sort of be the squeaky wheel to keep raising it to saying, “So next year, the same thing is going to happen, we’re going to have to write another check.” So let’s swim upstream, and understand how did this happen in the first place? Let’s fix it there so that the next generation and the next year and the next year this doesn’t perpetuate, but we actually get to the root causes.
Jennifer Brown: And then I would argue the people with power are the ones that need to change the system. And this is where white people because we still dominate leadership positions in organizations, which is my focus area, I still see those largely white and male mastheads. That’s the fact of life. So if you’ve got the power of the pen and the purse, you cannot expect your diverse employees however we define that to do the heavy lifting because there is lot of emotional labor there. And it’s not even an appropriate assignment of accountability or responsibility.
Jennifer Brown: You should be utilizing all of your talent to literally point out what you’re missing, what you’re not looking at. And then your job is to be curious and humble. Drop the ego, drop the perfectionism, which by the way is a hallmark of white supremacy culture. Not wanting to admit that, “I’m not perfect. I don’t have all the answers. We messed up.” We need to hear leaders literally like going through this and talking about that openly. And the more we do that, I think the more inclusive, we have a shot at building cultures where we’re actually having an honest conversation and where there’s commitment’s being made publicly. So accountability, this is not sort of hush, hush, I’m so embarrassed we have a pay gap.
Jennifer Brown: And so you’ll notice some companies write about their journey. Some leaders will say I’m horrified to learn XYZ and here’s my commitments and I’m going to share it publicly and I want you to hold me accountable for change a year from now, here are my goals, here are my targets etc. That’s the kind of leadership we really need. It’s brave. It’s bold, it’s not perfect. It’s humble. And it’s committed.
Kelly Meerbott: Well, and it’s transparent too which is what everybody’s calling for. And for me when I talk to my clients, I always say mistakes can be forgiven, cover ups can’t. And talk about the ego. That’s the main component of my work is dismantling the ego and the ego likes to hide things away, because that’s where they fester. They fester in the darkness. If we can shine light on stuff and there’s an episode of my new YouTube series called What Is White Privilege. And that’s something else I want to talk to you about because I feel like sometimes the white community gets hung up on vocabulary.
Kelly Meerbott: Let’s use the term social distancing for instance, somebody somewhere said social distancing. Well, they really don’t want us to stop socializing. If you look at the real definition of that word.
Jennifer Brown: It’s physical distancing.
Kelly Meerbott: They want physical distancing. It’s somewhere, someone in the media said, social distancing. And it was like, okay, that’s what we’re going to call it. And I know that for me, when I first heard the term white privilege, I got very defensive. I was like, “Nobody has handed me anything. I built this business on my back, it’s my blood, sweat and tears, blah, blah, blah.” And this person who called me out on it, and I’ll never forget it, she’s a white woman, doesn’t matter. But she said to me, “Yes. But you are never followed around a grocery store just based on the way you look.” And I was like, “Oh.”
Jennifer Brown: Oh.
Kelly Meerbott: Got it. I feel like and I don’t want you to think, I don’t have white privilege or I’m not going to resonate with that because that’s what they call it. It’s not that but I think it’s almost misleading because I’ve had these conversations with some of my clients who are, let’s just say high ranking officers, have a very, very large organization that employs hundreds of thousands of people in the country.
Kelly Meerbott: And I remember bringing it up to one of them. And he was like, “Why I don’t have that? I grew up poor in the south Kelly, we didn’t have anything extra.” And I was like, “Okay, you’re missing the point.” Like you said, that defensive reaction where it’s, “No, I’m not a bad person.” And I think that also the perfectionism is a piece of it, too. I heard Austin Channing Tatum interviewed on Bernie Browns podcast, and she talks about, she’s like, “Listen, I make mistakes when I talk about the LGBTQIA culture and I make mistakes on the pronouns, you’re going to make mistakes. And that’s really what I keep telling my clients is you’re going to make mistakes, but you need to be humble enough to apologize, humble enough and drop your ego to hear the feedback, be open to that feedback. Like you said, gently notice. This behavior is happening again. All right, instead of going in this direction I’m choosing to go here, which is more humane.
Jennifer Brown: That’s it. That’s just the redirection. I’ve been doing this work for so long. And those biased thoughts keep coming up from my parents from the way I was taught, from the fact that I barely knew any people of color until I graduated from college. Literally when we think about this, the sheer lack of exposure to other cultures and lives, it’s stunning. Our networks tend to be really homogeneous.
Jennifer Brown: Let me explain how I’ve tried to de weaponize privilege when I give my talks, I didn’t know how to talk about my privileged identities, which I have many of, many. And mine are not just skin color, but as an LGBTQ person, I’m actually straight passing. You can even call that a passing privilege. So when you can pass through the world, if you’re a light-skinned person of color, maybe you don’t correct people if they assume that you’re white. Each of us I think when we think about this as a black and white issue, it’s like, there’s actually all kinds of privilege when we walk through the world with.
Jennifer Brown: And so I think of mine as my LGBTQ identity though, and my female identity is, I might say they’re more difficult identities, they’re marginalized identities. And so I need that allyship. I need those with more privilege that are straight, that are male. To kind of have solidarity with me and be my accomplice. So that they do things for me, alongside me, behind me. Not looking for glory, but to literally sort of lessen my emotional burden of defending myself, of speaking up when I feel like it. Sometimes I feel fine speaking up for myself. I know how to do that. But it’s just really amazing. It’s an amazing feeling to experience allyship from that side.
Jennifer Brown: And I know you’ll agree, you probably can think about the men that have made a huge difference in your life and have sort of just been like, “You know what I’m right next to you. What do you want? And how can I help you accomplish it?”
Kelly Meerbott: I haven’t had that. I haven’t had that. And it brings up a thought that I’m wondering, is it hard for, and again I don’t want to get off on a tangent about white men. But is it hard for men to align themselves with women because of the perception of what it looks like?
Jennifer Brown: Profession is the question?
Kelly Meerbott: Yeah, I remember there was one time very briefly in my corporate career where I had somebody who was an ally for me, and the rumor came out that we were sleeping together.
Jennifer Brown: That’s always a tricky thing.
Kelly Meerbott: Despite the fact that we were you know happily married and all that, not to each other obviously, to our spouses. And since then it hasn’t happened. So I’m just wondering when you’re doing that work and you’re promoting allyship and promoting accomplices, I consider myself an accomplice to not only the LGBTQ+ community but the black… Anybody who’s an underdog, I’m your ally. Come on, let’s go, I’ll kick down that door for you. I don’t care. I just never had that myself. So what would you say to the men that shy away from being accomplices because we need them.
Jennifer Brown: We do.
Kelly Meerbott: And I’ve said this to… I have a friend who runs a foundation, very wealthy, older man, runs in that circle the Weinstein’s, the Epstein’s and all of that. And I remember after watching the Epstein documentary, because I grew up in Palm Beach, I went to high school two miles from his house, so it could have been me. What I said to him was when you hear it, when you smell it, when you get a sense that it’s happening, you need to call it out, and you need to put these guys in check. Not in an asshole way, but… Listen, I don’t put up with that because it’s going to take people at that level, who carry that kind of power and privilege to dismantle this. You and I can’t do that on our own, we just can’t, as badass as we both are we still can’t do it without help.
Kelly Meerbott: What do you say to men who have that fear of aligning with somebody and oh my gosh, if I do that people are going to think I’m sleeping with her or [crosstalk 00:26:52].
Jennifer Brown: I think you should be mentoring and sponsoring all kinds of talent. If you have power, it’s all about power sharing. And I think that’s the rebalancing we have to start to see is that to me, that’s accomplice behavior. It’s literally joining your, what we call social capital or professional capital, because you’re the one that has it and so many don’t have it. And it’s one of the things that has been shown by research actually to have the most impact on our ability to ascend to senior level positions, for example, because you and I both know, it’s not about being good at your job. It’s who you know, and who’s playing your card. It’s literally an entire relationship game, and it’s political.
Kelly Meerbott: It is.
Jennifer Brown: I think that I would say, who you’re sharing your power with, who are you mentoring and sponsoring and does that group of people look diverse. So I would coach and counsel somebody to say, talk about your mentoring and sponsoring activities, don’t let somebody put you in a corner and say, “This is inappropriate, what I saw,” and say, “Well, actually, I have 10 mentees, and let me tell you about all of them.” They all don’t identify like I do. If I have [inaudible 00:28:03] man, I have this many women, I have this many people of color, I have LGBTQ people. And here’s the group. And here’s how I think about it. And here’s how I do it in work and also outside in the community or wherever else we’re leading, because we can lead from any level.
Jennifer Brown: And I would just say, don’t let people weaponize that against you, beat them to the punch and like talk about, if you’ve got a good story to tell what you got to do and then talk about it and say, “No, it’s actually not that at all.” And I would hope that male leaders aren’t just mentoring white females. They’re mentoring all of us that aren’t represented in the workplace. And they’re cognizant of not just one identity that’s missing from the equation, but there’s so many identities, like where do you start?
Jennifer Brown: So that’s the one piece and then I would say to be aware of where and when you ask for those mentoring. I think it’s kind of inappropriate that at hotel bars, after hours. I don’t even know. I think the where and when of mentoring has been really unfortunate and if you haven’t read… I don’t think we’ve been checked in with as the mentee to say, “Hey, where would this be comfortable for you? When would be a good time for you?” Then there’s bias, when you are a straight white man and you walk around the world feeling safe relatively bars are okay places for you. Sports environments are okay places for you. Alcohol being around is I don’t know, maybe okay, whatever.
Jennifer Brown: It’s just the fact that we have not paused to say, “Where would this person feel comfortable?” And for those supportive conversations that I want to have, and putting them in the driver’s seat, honestly. I know that seems so obvious, but it hasn’t been done. I mean, we’ve had to conform to where other people are comfortable and I can tell you LGBTQ people do not feel comfortable in a million places where quote unquote business has happened. We are not in the room.
Jennifer Brown: And even if we were invited, which we’re not invited, we wouldn’t feel comfortable and no one has questioned that. If it’s your world and the world is your oyster, like you walk around, and it doesn’t occur to you, and this is one of those changes I’ve been talking about for a long time. I think, if the onus is on the mentor to be sensitive to this. That’s one piece I would say.
Kelly Meerbott: I have 15 mentees all from diverse backgrounds, and anytime we meet, I’ll say, “Pick a place that inspires you, that you can get to easily because in Philly, if you’re younger, you don’t drive a car necessarily. And also a place where we can talk where it’ll be confidential and people won’t overhear you.” And if they don’t think of a place and I’ll say… I always pick a coffee shop because I think coffee is a lot more innocuous and I don’t want to be in a bar, the only time I drink usually is with close friends and my husband just because that’s just the way it is.
Jennifer Brown: It’s appropriate.
Kelly Meerbott: And it’s appropriate and I’m safe. As a-
Jennifer Brown: Spoken as a woman, just notice this.
Kelly Meerbott: And I’m a two times sexual assault survivor, my radars up immediately when I’m in a bar, if somebody gets too close or get energetically inappropriate, then I can feel the armor go up. I try to be sensitive to that. And luckily, I’m doing the right thing based on what you’re saying. But you’re right, most of the conversations I’ve had with quote, unquote, and I’ll use this term very loosely because nobody’s ever mentored me, is it’s being in a bar and it feels a little bit sleazy to me.
Jennifer Brown: Totally.
Kelly Meerbott: Whether the intention is there or not. It still feels sleazy.
Jennifer Brown: I don’t know why, I think a lot of companies need to do some serious work on not primaring alcohol related to client, all that. And it’s interesting in the work from home world. I think a lot of clients have tried to be more inclusive around like happy hour, virtual cocktails, they’ll do high tea, they’ll do coffee and chat or whatever, they’ll try different times of day because remember that we’re all managing parenting and homeschooling. God forbid. We’re getting a lesson right now. I hope people are getting a lesson in sort of what has to go on behind the scenes for people that you didn’t even know that it’s necessary for them to show up and do the work and the chaos going on and the sort of whether it’s illness relating to COVID that’s impacting some communities that you are clueless about.
Jennifer Brown: Whether it’s how the murder of George Floyd and the movement for black lives is impacting all of us, but certain communities too directly where it’s like, I need to now show up as professional and what is my performance review going to say when I am simultaneously black in America right now I am parenting and homeschooling? What is that… I’m thinking a lot about performance because I was already biased in terms of how performance was right and measured and performance feedback can be biased. Remember, when we get the feedback, “Kelly, she has some sharp elbows or she comes across as aggressive sometimes,” we know that there’s double and triple standards about how people talk about certain identities when we come across as passionate and strong.
Jennifer Brown: And that was pre-pandemic. So I’ve just been really mindful. But back to the mentoring question, I guess in the work from home world, we’ve removed the bars and alcohol and sometimes wonder it’s sort of a great equalizer too. Just being like a face on the screen, not having all the sort of angst of physical location and physical appearance and if I’m a tall man or short man or a gender non binary individual who’s constantly being misgendered, because when I walk in a room and I’m gender fluid, the first thing people are dealing with and totally distracted by is, how do they identify? Why are they dressed that way? I don’t understand. With all this and it’s not about our work.
Jennifer Brown: So I just think there’s this amazing piece of this whole crisis we’ve been in that is an opportunity to feel seen and heard in a more pure way. I’m here for that a lot. There’s been a lot of studies on bias and sort of appearance based bias that happens in the physical world that I think it leaves me not wanting to come back to work and I want to be comfortable. I want to be… As I’m creative, I want to be relaxed, people with disabilities, your accommodations in your home are the best accommodations you will ever have. The workplace can scarcely compete with that.
Jennifer Brown: And to force you to do a commute every day to a physical office is one of the biggest barriers actually for people with physical disabilities, some disability. So I think that like literally when you go through and think about how liberating some of this has been, from this sort of constant microaggressions that so many of us face, it’s a very fascinating thing to play with and hope that we don’t lose as we sort of who knows what we’re going to next.
Kelly Meerbott: What I’ve seen this as and this has been honestly a great time for me creatively because I’ve been able to have one linear thought and finish it.
Jennifer Brown: So true.
Kelly Meerbott: And plus, I’m able to do more in less time, I don’t have to drive to New York to do this podcast, build in drive time, you know what I mean, setup, breakdown all that stuff. I’m able to touch more people because I can do more calls and all that. But for me, I keep going back to the Greek root of the words crisis is to sift and it’s sifting out all the crap and leaving us with a lot of gold. Is this painful? Yeah, but think about this. We’ve all been quarantined for a minimum of four months, which makes people irritable and edgy then Black Lives Matter comes and we have nowhere to channel this anger and then boom, here you go.
Kelly Meerbott: I mean, honestly, I’m a big believer in divine timing. I’m not a big believer in organized religion, there’s no judgment. If you are, understand I’m not judging you for that. But for me in my journey doesn’t work. And I just feel like this reckoning that we’re experiencing is really bringing a lot of things, gaps and blind spots in our society globally too, to the forefront. I didn’t even consider the community of people with disabilities but yes, this much, we so much better for them and I love that, for me. I said going back to that rage that I get when things aren’t fair. This levels the playing field.
Kelly Meerbott: The other thing I’ve been thinking about enrolling and ruminating in my mind is this idea of the scarcity mentality, why won’t white men do this? Well, it’s comfortable. It’s what they were conditioned to believe. Why would I give you some of my toys that means I have less and you and I both know, that’s completely the opposite of what abundance is. So what are your thoughts on that and how it relates to everything we’re going through to diversity, equity, inclusion and how does the role of the ego which perpetuates the scarcity mentality, how does that manifest in this movement? And do we put it in check?
Jennifer Brown: Maybe accountability, because I don’t know. I love your Rumi quote. And I love the starting with the self, but an organization’s accountability goes a long way too.
Kelly Meerbott: Yeah, 100%.
Jennifer Brown: I think it’s so instructive to think about board diversity, for example, for public companies. The fact that California literally just decided to make it mandatory that public companies have at least one woman on the board and by this year, or next year or something, I mean, what a low bar and the fact that, that is not the case, and they have to mandate it to even get one. Think about it.
Jennifer Brown: So if we wait around so long for people to want to do things, it’s going to be very uneven and I think not really create a critical mass that we need to see. Probably needs to be a combination of [inaudible 00:39:01] requirements and pressure and accountability and this is where really good leadership comes in. I always I’m on the hunt for really amazing CEOs and executives because they have the power to actually make this happen for real and I think sometimes I believe that maybe that’s all that’s going to change people and organizations in a lasting way. I mean it’s cynical but I… Look people are people, it may change for a lot of different reasons and I’m here to sort of help meet people where they’re at.
Jennifer Brown: But your question about the meritocracy is I worked hard and I’m going to hoard what I have. And it’s the denial I think of this huge opportunity represented by diversity and inclusion. Let’s just think about companies for a second. The marketplace and the buyers and the customers and the talent that you’re trying to attract. All of those are way more diverse in every way. The world has changed, is changing and it looks nothing like the leadership in so many organizations. And that’s a problem because that mismatch to me, it’s not only unfortunate optics wise, it’s going to hurt your brand in the marketplace. It’s going to hurt your employer brand in terms of attracting people because we’re going to look at that organization, especially millennials and zoomers, they’re going to say, “That’s not a place for me. I don’t think I can thrive there because clearly nobody looks like me.”
Jennifer Brown: We make that. That’s our sort of logic. And I want to think that makes a lot of sense. I do that same thing as a woman. I’m like, “I wonder where all the women are.” And then I think the marketplace and customers, the demand and the accountability that’s coming at brands from customers where the buying power is shifting and to non white, and non male buyers as are like the fastest growing most wealthy, the biggest wealth transfer is happening from the straight white male to the female family member. So the next generation. And that’s happening.
Jennifer Brown: So we’re savvy or awake or paying attention, we want to do things we’re proud of that align with our values. We want to make those smart choices. We want to work for companies with a consciousness and an alignment of values. So I think just sit there and say, “I don’t want to give up what I have.” It’s an assumption again, that one plus one won’t be three and I know that there’s a bit of a leap of faith here, but then I always kind of come back to the business case and I try to say look, it’s change or die, diversify or die. If you’re going to build a product or a campaign and you do not have diversity around the table that’s actually listened to it’s not just having it around the table, are we listened to? Are we consulted? Is our feedback taken on board?
Jennifer Brown: Are we sort of valued in that way and then if we create great products and creative and campaigns, we’ll make sure that we’re calibrating to a very rapidly changing world. And I don’t think any leader can afford not to be good at this. And any company could afford to not be good at it. And then you have parents in totally not in the workplace context where your kid may come out to you as trans tomorrow. And I always think to myself, you may be thrown into the deep end with diversity issues that you have no idea amongst loved ones and friends and it’s going to happen to you if it hasn’t. And you’re going to find that you have to do sort of a wholesale revisiting of where is this in my life? What am I doing about it? How am I preparing myself for the future to not only just be a good leader, but a good human? And a loving human and I’m not sure what is so… You I guess have to stack all that up against the pie as finite. And if I give you a slice, that means one fewer slice for me.
Jennifer Brown: We battle it out all the time with leaders about this, and I don’t know, sometimes in my most cynical moments, I’m like, none of my work matters. We just have to get this next generation in the door, in place to say, “Look we’ve seen the power of diversity because we grew up with this and we’re going to bring this institutions and we’re going to make those institutions better and you need to get out of the way.
Kelly Meerbott: Sometimes that’s where I’m at with my work too. I’m just, “Why are you not getting this?” And here’s the other thing that I’ve been dealing with and we touched a little bit on before the show started is have these moments, educating myself and really, I talked about it on Instagram rants a couple weeks ago that I felt like I was on the set of the Wizard of Oz when Toto pulls back the curtain, like pay no attention to the man behind the curtain and it’s been… I feel like to your point I’ve been fed all of this stuff that wasn’t true. And I’ll give you an example.
Kelly Meerbott: I grew up upper middle class in Palm Beach County, Florida. I went to private school. I did not have a teacher opposite of my race until I got to college. And I think that was only in one class. What I learned about Harriet Tubman was this, just to give you kind of a baseline. She was part of the Underground Railroad. I didn’t know she was the most wanted woman in America, I didn’t know that she dressed as a man and kept going down into the state where she was enslaved and released. These are all things that I didn’t know. And I got to the point where I was so angry and so filled with shame and guilt, I didn’t want to be part of our white culture because we’re the ones that are perpetuating this.
Kelly Meerbott: But then I realized… Being in a coach’s mind and in personal development and in leadership, I knew I couldn’t stay in that space if I needed to lift each other up, but I know that you talked about the guilt and the shame and how do you personally work through that? That’s enough. How do you personally work through that Jennifer?
Jennifer Brown: Yeah, it’s hard. And I have these fragility moments which Robin DiAngelo gave me the wording for that. And I’m grateful because it’s the wait I’m a good person, or that’s not what I meant, or beating up self and saying, “How could I have missed that?” Or how could I have been a part of that institution and not known? That’s the biggest thing I always think about is sort of I wish I could have been an activated ally earlier in my life. That’s like my biggest regret. And it’s not a regret I guess that reflects on my choices because I think I was too young to understand. Like what if we could have studied different things in school, imagine like you and I are so on fire right now, but I could have been on fire for 25 years or 30, whatever.
Jennifer Brown: History is written by the victors, and it’s, you know what’s missing, all this missing, and I’m angry about it. I’m sad about it. It’s tragic. It has caused us to be, I think clueless and many of us have sort of come into this moment now and sort of be overwhelmed with all that we didn’t know or didn’t think about. We should have been thinking about this a long time. I’ve been thinking about it, because I do this work, I’ve been hearing about what’s broken in the workplace or certain identities for so long.
Jennifer Brown: And it’s so frustrating to bring this to executive teams, and say, “Look at how people are feeling in your organization.” This is your problem. And then denying them, not being willing to drop the ego and say, “This reflects on me,” whether it’s something I did or just sat by and let it happen. The bottom line is I’m accountable. And it doesn’t make you a bad person, but it means that now the measure of you is going to be what you do about it like was this feedback offered up for nothing, or is it being offered up for action. And I think that’s where the rubber hits the road. But anyway, I think the fragility to me, the shame. Bernie brown did this great podcast on shame versus guilt.
Kelly Meerbott: I know I heard it, it was amazing.
Jennifer Brown: So good. So go and listen to that because they’re different. Shame is I’m a bad person. And guilt is maybe I didn’t make the best decision.
Kelly Meerbott: I did something bad.
Jennifer Brown: Or I didn’t do something that needed to be done. I think she says guilt is a more sort of proactive helpful emotion and shame is a tricky one. The feelings of shame paralyze me as well, I’m sort of radicalizing. I have to be very careful not to radicalize against white people.
Kelly Meerbott: I know, [crosstalk 00:47:48].
Jennifer Brown: I feel extremely frustrated, and yet I know when I’m sitting here learning these things, I know I’ve got to flip through the fragility into the teacher.
Kelly Meerbott: Yes.
Jennifer Brown: And so that’s the process I’ve got to go through is feel the feelings. Let them go through you because they’re going to go and your amygdala is going to hijack you for a while. So the heats going to rise, the breathing is going to change. You may retreat, you may get angry, you may want to fight, we all kind of respond differently. I would say like notice it. Try to do not a lot of damage to yourself and others as you’re in that reaction. That’s really important. So maybe not the best time to get on social media. Maybe not the best time to self flagellate. That’s actually what I do is [crosstalk 00:48:40]. I’m like, put the hair shirt on. Suffer, suffer, suffer. And sort of sit in and wallow in and I know objectively that I’m not sure that, that’s productive, but at the same time, you don’t want to pass over that because I think some of that stuff is important to sit with and to feel the sort of searing pain of this moment because it means you’re human, just means that… And you cut me and I bleed, and that this moment is giving me a bunch of paper cuts.
Jennifer Brown: I think the thing I say to people is, “Look, a moment of pain for you is a lifetime of every day for so many people that you are working with, and they’re walking through life in a very different way than you are with a lot less freedom. And a lot less assumption of that’s a good person, I’m going to leave them alone. I’m not going to assume the worst.”
Jennifer Brown: The threat of violence to me as a woman is certainly major, but when I came out as LGBTQ, I’m now aware that my privilege shielded me as an LGBTQ person, all of these other pieces of who I am meant that I wasn’t homeless that I didn’t have to turn to the streets to make a living. Meant that I wasn’t afraid of the police in a certain way. So it’s interesting to both have this identity that’s marginalized but also know that like there have been like tail winds that have speeded me along.
Jennifer Brown: And that’s like that definition of privilege, that it just is, let’s stop thinking about it as good or bad. What it is, though, is it’s something that you are given to do something with. And that’s what I believe now is sort of now as I put the pieces together of rather than denying parts of my background that I had nothing to do with choosing, it was literally unearned.
Jennifer Brown: But I think of it as coming with so much responsibility and actually opportunity for me to utilize wherever I can get in there and rattle the cage and challenge things just like you, what can I use it for? It’s not something to be hidden and denied or feel ashamed about because that’s not actually helping. What you need to do is activate it on behalf of or alongside or in solidarity with others who don’t have what we have, that’s the way you can kind of earn it back and right the universe. This is how we rebalance as humanity.
Jennifer Brown: And I love that because it’s so proactive. To me it’s very clear. And I can make good on what I was given. And it’s just this, I don’t know, maybe some other people won’t appeal to them because I don’t know, for me I’m very altruistic and I wonder, why was I born in the place I was?
Kelly Meerbott: Me too. I think about that all the time.
Jennifer Brown: What’s it for?
Kelly Meerbott: And where I’ve gotten to and again, you’re validating it, like the whole process I went through is using this, leverage it as a tool for equality. How can I give a hand up to other people who may not be at the table? Can I bring people along? Can I call out in a loving way people who are not in alignment with my views of diversity, equity and inclusion. So I want to honor your time and I know you’ve got another appointment coming up. So I’m going to ask you a last question then if you could tell people how to find you, if they are interested in engaging you for this really powerful transformational work. But for your great, great, great, great, great grandchildren that may be listening to this episode, hundreds of years from now. What kind of wisdom would you have to impart for them, Jennifer?
Jennifer Brown: Oh, my goodness. That’s so interesting. I would say… Well, I hope that world, I even hope the next generation actually destigmatizes our identities because they’re living out loud because somehow we sort of crack that impasse of covering, meaning sort of downplaying all of who we are. That, that world is one where we can be proudly all of who we are and that in doing so we sort of normalize it for others around us. We aren’t sort of hiding all these things about ourselves. And therefore the things we hide are the things that we don’t understand them and we don’t resource appropriately.
Jennifer Brown: If we can’t know how many LGBTQ people there are, who are closeted, it’s very difficult to then resource that community, let alone understand, why would people be closeted? I thought we had gay marriage, why is anybody in the closet anymore? So anyway, my vision is that we would have… And we would have organizations where people didn’t spend energy managing identity, where we would feel valued and all these pieces of us we can truly honor our authenticity, that’s what I’m trying to do and also show the diversity within the diversity.
Jennifer Brown: Understand that communities are not monolithic, but that we would be equipped to talk about intersectionality in a really meaningful way which is that women understand queer women and the experience of women of color, and experience of Latinx women, and that we have this sort of incredibly inclusive definition of these words, and that we don’t get married to binaries.
Jennifer Brown: I know non binary thinking stresses some people out. I enjoy thinking about all the things we thought are very binary that really aren’t and how we’re sort of all on these continuums of gender identity, for example, even sort of introversion, extroversion, analytical thinkers and the stuff kind of changes over the course of our lives. Some of it doesn’t change. And I think this whole like identity piece is really, really cool.
Jennifer Brown: So I hope they build a more inclusive world where we’re not leaving anybody behind, where the allyship is so strong that it is literally like baked into who we are, that when we… I walk in rooms now and all I can see is the diversity or lack thereof. It’s this base on-
Kelly Meerbott: Me too.
Jennifer Brown: So imagine if everyone did that. Imagine if those who have the power, and maybe the power has shifted for our great, great grandkids too. I think it’s going to be a non-white majority, non-white country. It’s going to be majority female in terms of buying decisions. You think about brands that are behind and leadership teams that are behind, this is what I was saying, the world is going to be extremely different.
Jennifer Brown: And you’ve got to plan as a person, how do I fit into all this? How do I tell my story? If it’s a privilege story how do I reckon with what it means, all of this means to me and how do I not hide from it, but how do I like jump into it and talk about it? And I guess normalize somebody that looks like me, talking about it, that’s the thing I’d really like to see is even straight white cisgender males in their 20s, and in their teens when I think about how they can be the advocate and yet the girls in their grades are still sort of suffering on multiple levels.
Jennifer Brown: And the toxic masculinity is also very much harming men and boys too. So it’s all actually, it’s not just some of us who are not bringing our full selves, but actually the man box is alive and well. And that’s something I would really, really like to see different is that we literally stop that nonsense because boys hurt themselves, they hurt others, they do not live fully authentically about their own intersectionality. They are in many ways sort of in this like narrow, narrow lane of acceptable behavior. And the boys will be boys concept is let’s-
Kelly Meerbott: That’s a whole nother show.
Jennifer Brown: That’s a whole other show. So this applies to all of us is my point. And I think we need to look at in all the corners and dismantle it once and for all. Wow, what a dream.
Kelly Meerbott: I know right. We’ll have to do another show on that. Jennifer, somebody wants to get a hold of you. How do they do that?
Jennifer Brown: Okay, so two books, I think that’s a great place to start, Inclusion from 2017. How To Be An Inclusive Leader from 2019. We also have an inclusive leader assessment, which takes 10 minutes and it’s free. And we really recommend you take it and you can get a printout of some suggested, like you were talking about my resource list, reading, podcast viewing things to just be a student about and then my podcast is called the Will To Change. So please join us over there.
Jennifer Brown: We have a lot of interesting guests. And then in social media, I’m on Twitter a lot. I learn a lot from Twitter because it’s sort of that like cutting edge resource about this discussion, so it’s @jenniferbrown and then on Instagram, I’m @jenniferbrownspeaks.
Jennifer Brown: And if you work for a company that needs like solid DEI consulting and training and whether that’s unconscious bias training or inclusive leadership behaviors, etc. look us up, jenniferbrownconsulting.com. I have an incredible team I get to do this work with every day and I just couldn’t do without them. And I learn from them every day. So please resource your organization appropriately. And oftentimes that means working with an external partner so that you can make sure you’re sort of scoping things in a sustainable and a thoughtful way.
Kelly Meerbott: Yes. And it’s our intention Jennifer’s and mine, I’ll speak for her that you go out and have authentic conversations about this topic and anything else because they deepen the connections with us, human to human, and we’re really excited that you spent time with us. Hopefully you’ll take this back. Discuss it, think differently, dig in, make your own decisions. But thank you for joining us and make it a great day.
Speaker 1: You’ve been listening to Hidden Human, the stories behind the business leader. If you’ve enjoyed the episode, please subscribe to the podcast on iTunes. To learn more about Kelly and the services she provides, visit youloudandclear.com. Thanks so much for listening, and we’ll be back soon with a new episode.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][/toggle][/toggles][/vc_column][/vc_row]
