Lotus Buckner: We’re going to get started. I know we have people who are still jumping in right now and we will continue to let them in, and they can kind of catch up.

Lotus Buckner: So I’m Lotus Buckner and I’m the founder and CEO of LB talent solutions and this is our kickoff event, I started this virtual round table series on diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging to give back to the cause and also I wanted to find a way to share and amplify stories and ideas that are going to help us as individuals and as organizations do a better job in this realm. I’ve been talking to a lot of people in my network, who have amazing stories to share and amazing ideas of how they’re making real impacts in their organizations and in society. So I wanted to be able to share those stories more widely.

Lotus Buckner: We are very informal here. And so I’m going to be your host today and just a quick thing about my organization. So I help individuals with career coaching and personal branding and also do speaking engagements presentations and workshops for a lot of associations and conferences around anything leadership development, change management, diversity and inclusion, and personal growth.

Lotus Buckner: So like I said, I started these virtual roundtables because I’m extremely passionate about this topic and lucky enough to be surrounded by amazing people who also are passionate about this topic.

Lotus Buckner: So I’ve obviously been having lots of these deep conversations around recent events that I thought, wow, why not spread this passion and these insights further.

Lotus Buckner: So here we are. This series of round tables is meant for us to have completely candid impromptu and authentic conversations.

Lotus Buckner: So there’s no planned questions from me. The only thing that our guests got just yesterday were a few of you sent in questions ahead of time. So I did share those with them to make sure you get what you want out of our conversation. But otherwise, I have no questions and they don’t have a script and there’s no formal presentation for anyone today.

Lotus Buckner: We’re just real people talking about real things so I’m excited to be joined today by an esteemed panel of guests who will introduce themselves shortly.

Lotus Buckner: But first, a few logistics. So I’m going to be putting this into the chat box.

Lotus Buckner: But there are only three rules for today. So the first one is, be respectful and open minded, regardless of your perspectives and opinions as we’re all here to learn and to unlearn

Lotus Buckner: Number two is be unapologetically candid. Because if we’re going to meet our goal of learning and unlearning, we need to have some real authentic conversations and the third rule is, I hope you all have some fun and let your passion on this topic spill out. It’s a safe space.

Lotus Buckner: All participants will be muted until the very end, except for our guests. However, we encourage everyone to participate, along with us using the chat feature in zoom.

Lotus Buckner: So at the very bottom of your toolbar. There should be a button that says chat, please participate along. I totally encourage back channeling so you can start your own conversations or join in on the conversation. I’ll also be monitoring for any questions that you have for our guests today.

Lotus Buckner: So today’s topic as you know, is very general. So anything and everything goes as it relates to diversity and inclusion. So if you’re excited and ready to get started, type heck yes into the chat box for me.

Lotus Buckner: There we go.

Lotus Buckner: Awesome. Well, let’s start with introducing our brilliant, talented, and rockstar guests. I am a huge fan girl of each and every one of them and the great work and passion that they exude on this topic.

Lotus Buckner: So without further ado, I’m going to ask each of them to introduce themselves Morgan, do you want to start

Morgan Williams: Okay, sure. Yeah. I’m Morgan Williams. I have been working in the tech and financial services space for the last almost 10 years

Morgan Williams: I’m joining you from Michigan today, but I actually live in Colombia, and I’ve been there for two years. So happy to share my experiences with you all. Nice to meet everyone.

Lotus Buckner: Awesome. Loren.

Loren Tardi: Hi everybody. I am Loren Tardi. I’m really excited to be a part of this. I know when Lotus reached out a couple weeks ago, I’m really passionate about this conversation and I’m excited to have this roundtable format and just hear from especially with Morgan, Ben and Brian, a lot of different experiences. So it’s gonna be a really great session.

Lotus Buckner: Awesome. Brian.

Brian Stephens: Hey everybody, Brian Stephens. I have been in the consumer packaged goods industry for almost 10 years and I am joining you all from Chicago, the windy city so looking forward to engaging with you all.

Lotus Buckner: Thanks Brian, and Ben.

Ben Cardenas: Everyone happy Friday. Ben Cardenas I am in the training and development space for a little over 10 years now.

Ben Cardenas: Financial Services and environmental services. Super excited to be here. Learn, contribute and just really just learn about everyone’s passion and everyone’s story. So thank you for being here and thanks for having me.

Lotus Buckner: Awesome, so I’ll get those kind of started here. So.

Lotus Buckner: Obviously, there’s a lot of momentum that we don’t want to lose right now. Right? And it’s unfortunate that that momentum happened because somebody’s life had to be taken in order for us to get to where we are right now.

Lotus Buckner: But there’s been a string of black Americans killed at the hands of police just in 2020 alone.

Lotus Buckner: Right? In the last year alone, we’re talking about George Floyd, which everyone obviously has heard about. But there’s also Brianna Taylor, there’s Ahmaud Arbery, there’s Rayshard Brooks.

Lotus Buckner: These are only a few examples and the Washington Post reports that 107 black Americans shot and killed by police just in 2020 alone already, which isn’t over. The year is not over.

Lotus Buckner: And this does not include our long standing history of violence against black Americans like Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, Laquan McDonald, Michael Brown, Eric Garner. This is in addition right to other race based incidences that have made the headlines as well like Amy Cooper in New York called the cops on Christian Cooper. They have no relation, by the way.

Lotus Buckner: And she reported that a black man was harassing her knowing what that mean. And he was just bird watching.

Lotus Buckner: So my question to all of you is how have these events impacted you personally and professionally and what has changed for you. Um, so, in your life, as well as what’s changed for work for you. If anything?

Lotus Buckner: Anyone can jump in.

Ben Cardenas: So hey Lotus, Ben here. So, I guess, personally, you know, over the years, I’ve obviously I’ve grown up with a diverse network and friends.

Ben Cardenas: But recently, personally, I’ve made it a point to really just educate myself even more and understand the statistics around the police brutality. Right.

Ben Cardenas: Um, I’ve even recently just ignited a passion to bring awareness to this topic and really talk about it right and not just talk about the numbers, but the behaviors right behind what is it that we can do to make a difference to bring awareness.

Ben Cardenas: To this, um, especially at work right. I started to have conversations with people at work around this and these are conversations that I think people are uncomfortable to have because we’re not well aware of the subject. We’re not well educated on it. And there’s nothing wrong with that.

Ben Cardenas: I think that there’s something wrong if you choose not to educate yourself or be involved with it. Right. And so that’s why I’ve really pushed myself to say get more involved. Educate yourself more and bring these conversations, even though it might make you uncomfortable to know that the person you’re talking to might be uncomfortable, but at least it gives the opportunity, opens the door to say, hey, this is real. It’s not going away. In order for us to fix it, we got to talk about it.

Lotus Buckner: Awesome. I love that. I think that’s kind of one of the reasons I wanted to start these roundtable discussions too, right? Because you’re absolutely right. If we don’t talk about it, we’re not even taking that first step and Brian, I know that you and I had talked kind of right as a lot of these events have been spring some attention in the media and your organization did a whole week of events. Can you talk a little bit about what’s changed for you?

Brian Stephens: Sure. With within my organization. We’ve got Employee Resource Groups like probably many companies do. And we’ve had this structure stood up for a number of years.

Brian Stephens: So I have the privilege of helping to lead our regional black employee resource group within our company and the task and charge that I’ve had for the last couple of months has been let’s continue to have conversations and let’s be a part of conversations that are happening to help drive an internal culture that brings awareness to issues, helps to remove biases, helps to ultimately just inform those who are unaware about the things that ultimately impact the black community as a whole.

Brian Stephens: And over the last probably two months or so I’ve been in more meetings and more conversation than I can probably count in the almost 10 years that I’ve been with the company engaging on topics that are specific to people that look like me.

Brian Stephens: And on topics that normally we would be having outside of that maybe on a phone call with friends or having a conversation with my parents or talking to my dad about his experiences in the 60s and 70s, and we’ve had opportunities to have conversations like that in the workplace and it’s been a very, um, I don’t know how you describe it, but it’s very catchy in the moment type of experience where you’re literally engaging in topics that you would have never thought to bring to work.

Brian Stephens: And trying to tell people about things that you lived or experienced or friends or family members that have lived in experienced and you’re bringing it to the conscious of someone that has never even fathom or what someone may have experienced or going through. So it’s been it’s been a very, very eye opening experience.

Brian Stephens: With that comes the burden of feeling like, well, darn I’m still talking about stuff that’s been going on for years and it’s not new to many of us.

Brian Stephens: It’s just that it’s been amplified and that it’s made the news and the news cycle.

Brian Stephens: So the things that folks were living and maybe experiencing some form of trauma for. When that would go in the new cycle and go away, some folks are constantly getting that reminder that things are still the same, in a lot of ways, and there hasn’t been a change that folks would have hoped for.

Brian Stephens: And that’s really how it shows up at work. So we’re continuing to talk about it and we are committed to continuing to have conversations in different areas.

Brian Stephens: And initiatives are being spurred based off of things that the company thinks that they can do to address these issues and continue to bring that conversation to the forefront in various different ways, in ways that they can capitalize on.

Lotus Buckner: So I’m curious. You had mentioned that, you know, a lot of people have been surprised by the experiences and you know it’s things that they haven’t experienced themselves. How has the response been at your company starting to have these conversations or is it making people uncomfortable? Is it a positive response that you’re getting? Are there challenges?

Brian Stephens: I’ve heard from a number of different people. At this point, it kind of falls into three different buckets, I think, yeah, some folks that are hearing it and saying like, yeah, that’s messed up.

Brian Stephens: Then you’ve got folks that are like, all right, I’ve heard enough of this. I’ve heard a lot where we’ve talked so much about this that we’re not talking about business anymore or it doesn’t seem like we’re talking about business as much as we were prior to all of these things happening.

Brian Stephens: The bottom line of this is very sad, these things are happening, it’s enraging for people. But okay, we’ve talked a lot about this area, but we’re not talking as much about business at this point.

Brian Stephens: And then I’ve had a really gratifying experience where a co-worker that I’ve worked with for number of years, who we talk and have conversations, all the time.

Brian Stephens: And, you know how you have a conversation with someone at work and it’s, you know, more surface level? You’re not talking about anything that’s really deep. It’s just: Hey, I care about you, you care about me and I want to know that you’re doing okay. Well, we finally had a chance to have a conversation about my experience and things that I’ve seen or been around and the comment back to me was, you know, I’ve got to apologize to you that I have never tried to acknowledge or to look at you in a way to acknowledge that you’re different because of your race.

Brian Stephens: And based off of that. I’ve got to apologize to you because I’ve never really taken the time to think about how your experience might be different from mine. And this was a white women.

Brian Stephens: Same age as I am, 33, and it was, I have to apologize to you because I’ve for the most part, tried to dance around it and act like it didn’t exist that there was a difference. So in that if I’ve been tone deaf in any way, if I’ve made a comment that’s been out of the way, or something that was insensitive based on not wanting to engage and understand and in a sense, having let’s say, the privilege to not even think about some of these things, I wanted to apologize to you and I’m now committed to wanting to learn and engage as best as I can to learn the things that impact you that are different. And then just be more aware of the differences that all people have and how those things show up at work and how they show up in your personal life and all the things that you may experience that we leave from the walls of work may be different than what I might experience as I walk down the street or go into a store or anything like that, that I’ve never even taken a chance to think about.

Brian Stephens: So it’s probably been the best experience that I’ve had. And it’s been an ongoing conversation with this person, and they’re now stepping up to the plate and saying: How can I do more? How can I be involved in this employee resource group and bring programming or be involved in leading programming that may help people that look like me understand the things that I’m learning and uncovering for myself now? That was a really great experience in that realm.

Brian Stephens: I love that. I think that, you know, the work that you all have done in your organization as well as any others is opening up an opportunity for people to become more authentic allies. So that’s great. Thanks for sharing that. Along those similar lines, maybe Morgan and Lauren, you can jump in here. We got a question from Kharissa. And her question is: if our companies are not making any diversity and inclusion efforts, how can we support the cause?

Lotus Buckner: I lied, That’s from Carol.

Lotus Buckner: But do you have any thoughts on what we can do as individuals if we feel like our organizations are not doing anything about this?

Morgan Williams: Yeah, I definitely think so, um, when I was working at an organization about two years ago.

Morgan Williams: And I was working within tech fintech in Chicago, and there was just very few black people in the organization. There was about 200 of us. In the office, of people in general, and then of black people, we had one black engineer, one black person on our finance team, which was me, and then you had one black person on our sales team and we didn’t have any Latinos and we barely had any Asians. Right. And so we, you know, as diverse people, we identified that and we went to our GM and said, hey, we’ve discovered that like there’s just no diversity here.

Morgan Williams: And especially thinking about tech, which is an industry that has like even a large Asian population. We said we don’t even see that here. Like, where is the diversity? It’s just white men.

Morgan Williams: And our CTO was actually Cuban. And so, you know, I’m like, hey, you have to have understood this, you have to have said seen this, you know? And so he was very open to hearing us and seeing how we could establish, you know, ERGs. And so that’s kind of where our ERGs started to come out.

Morgan Williams: Within this organization, simply because we raise our voices and we raised our voices to leadership and it was more like asking, you know, not necessarily accusatory.

Morgan Williams: But more asking like, what, what are we doing, what are your plans. Like, how do we serve our clients well if we don’t have the diversity here that’s building our products.

Morgan Williams: So yeah, so I think as individuals. It’s really on us, you know, if we see something, say something and I do it you know in in the leadership capacity.

Lotus Buckner: I love that. Thank you! Loren, I see you’re about to say something.

Loren Tardi: Morgan, that was great. I saw Rachel actually just prompted me to talk about this, but I love what she said in the chat about how do you change from it being a check the box activity and really having enacting true equitable and inclusive policies. I think that’s so important too and lots of companies, whether you have ERGs you have inclusive diversity departments in place, I think it’s really important to have those conversations. Just as Morgan was alluding to.

Loren Tardi: Internally as teams too. I think sometimes we’ll see, I’ve seen, inclusive diversity where it’s an exercise and I know one of the things that we’ve been really working on at work too is creating a culture where we’re talking about this. You’re uncovering what are those unconscious biases and it really comes from, I think, from the top down, but also the bottom up in those regards to have these conversations and how do we ingrain this within our culture, but I love that.

Loren Tardi: I saw that in the chat with Rachel. So I just wanted to bring that up but I think that’s really important. Whenever you’re thinking about anything from a diversity standpoint if you have something in place, how do you, how do you really change that momentum?

Lotus Buckner: I’m gonna stick with you for a second, Lauren, because being an HR. I thought this question was a really good question that Felipe brought up.

Lotus Buckner: And he said, there’s a skills and experience gap between people of color and mostly white men population.

Lotus Buckner: In the workforce. It’s difficult to hire someone of color when there is a white candidate with more experience education and skill sets, I recently saw this come to fruition when a white male was chosen per position over an African American female. She was qualified, but he was way qualified.

Lotus Buckner: No one could argue with the choice the hiring manager made. It seems like this is a challenge since no one wants to settle for less.

Lotus Buckner: Even if people of color upscale through education, there will always be a white person with more experience since white men have dominated the business landscape for so long. How do we get past this hurdle?

Loren Tardi: That’s a big question, I think, and I know you sent that to us Lotus. I think what’s really important and I come from a talent acquisition and recruiting background as well.

Loren Tardi: But I think one of the things that I have, I have seen work really well. Every company is working with how do we also recruit talent.

Loren Tardi: There’s Morgan spoke to this earlier with in IT, there is a shortage of diverse talent and how do we begin to look at that.

Loren Tardi: One of the things that I know that we’re doing. I work at Allstate. From a recruiting standpoint we’re really looking at the sourcing of candidates and really ensuring that we have, if you look at your candidate pool that you have also candidates that are diverse that you aren’t moving forward until you’ve sourced, you’ve networked, you’ve gotten referrals.

Loren Tardi: It goes to back to that check the box activity to ingraining it in your culture. But how do we make sure that we’re partnering with organizations.

Loren Tardi: Were in the, I’m in the Chicagoland area. There’s many organizations that we can partner with but I think that’s really critical is..

Loren Tardi: Thinking, what’s your sourcing as well. And coming from that sourcing background as well, but the sourcing is also so critical. Building relationships, building partnerships as well.

Loren Tardi: And you will find top talent with that too and you’re going to have people with all different skill sets, but also I think sometimes we need to look at roles. I know.

Loren Tardi: I was speaking with a senior leader a little bit ago and we were also talking about how do we get people ready and prepared for next steps. I think sometimes we look at job descriptions and we think, okay, they are 20 line items here, we have to have some one that checks every single one. What’s really critical for that role. But then also, how do you look at your internal talent.

Loren Tardi: And how do you create development for those individuals to get to those positions because you will see when you get to certain leadership levels in organizations that your diversity drops off just substantially. So how do you create programs in place, also for your internal talent, so that you’re developing and you have the best of the best going into those those roles.

Loren Tardi: I know, for us, we have lots of talent and it’s really, it’s our jobs too to help develop them.

Lotus Buckner: So those are awesome ideas that people can take back to their organizations. I saw in the chat a few people asked are any of you…so Loren, maybe with all the programs you just talked about, how are you measuring that? So the question is, are any of your organizations using certain metrics to measure your success with diversity and inclusion efforts?

Loren Tardi: Yeah, we have plenty of metrics in place and I know a big part of that something that we’re going through right now is just even thinking about succession planning. So a big part of that is looking at our diverse talent pool for that. And from that we’ve created internal programs that may be towards women and people of color, or we’re looking at specific programs to build to really help different groups within the organization. So we’re looking at those metrics across the board. And where are we lacking? I saw that Jackie also had a really great point on partnering with your, ERGs internally. This is a great way to get that talent and talking with them.

Loren Tardi: We have plenty of ERGs, I know at our company where they’re involved with the hiring, they’re helping with referrals. They’re helping with sourcing they’re helping to also build programs.

Loren Tardi: And that’s a big part of it, but from the measurement piece, there’s anything from your succession planning. What is their pipeline look like. So if you look at your, your senior leadership.

Loren Tardi: Who’s in that pipeline for succession. If it’s lacking something needs to be done, whether it’s development. It’s identification. It’s having those conversations with other leaders to identify top talent that could go into that.

Loren Tardi: It’s also looking at your recruiting. So if you have, we have new grad programs, for example, that come in.

Loren Tardi: We really want to look at the diversity of those programs, too. And we want to make sure that we have diversity across the board within that. We’re constantly measuring who’s coming to the organization also looking at your retention.

Loren Tardi: That’s a big piece of it too. So if you’re finding that you have a group that’s leaving the organization what maybe is happening internally that you need to be measuring and what do you need to be talking about with that.

Loren Tardi: A couple other ideas to is just looking at employee engagement. So how do employees feel about just how those conversations are going, the diversity of the organization. So that engagement piece is really important as well.

Lotus Buckner: Awesome. Anyone else have any thoughts on measurement?

Ben Cardenas: Lotus, not measurement, but I wanted to comment a little bit on some of the points that we’re being brought up.

Ben Cardenas: First and foremost, going back to Rachel’s comment with, you know, the not making sure that you’re checking off the box.

Ben Cardenas: I really think that it’s important to, you know, focus on the behaviors and I guess that led to the comment that Loren was also talking about with diversifying your talent pool.

Ben Cardenas: I was having a conversation with a colleague, just a few days ago around how do you diversify your talent pool. And I think one of the things that popped in my mind is diversifying your job descriptions, where you’re welcoming minorities right and not always focusing on a job description that’s traditional, if you will.

Ben Cardenas: For example, you know, there’s minorities that don’t have the opportunity to educate in the traditional sense of going to college right out of high school due to finances or cultural differences or influences, if you will.

Ben Cardenas: What I’ve experienced a lot is that you look at job descriptions that focus primarily on that education piece and then it intimidates people from minority groups to say I’m not good enough for that position, you know, and I think it’s important nowadays for organizations to diversify the job description.

Ben Cardenas: Not saying necessarily you settle for less. But you’re welcoming a diverse talent pool where you now get to measure and average out the technical skill, right, because you might have someone that doesn’t have a college degree yet and has incredible life experiences and technical skills or certifications that they’ve done in order to validate that skill compared to someone that has a college education. Not degrading these in any sense, but again, to me, that really helps diversify the talent pool.

Ben Cardenas: Diversifying those job descriptions and not focusing on such traditional sense of education first versus life experience, if that makes sense.

Lotus Buckner: Absolutely. Thank you.
Loren Tardi: I just thought of something Ben. That was so great looking at the job descriptions.

Loren Tardi: There are ways that you can internally. I know that there are programs, even the words that you choose in your job description. There are certain roles that may attract more men than they do women, for example. So really taking a look at your job description. I know that a couple years ago, we actually did audit, an audit just on what words are in the job description because there’s been scientific research around that actually shows these certain words may attract this type of person or this type of person. So how do you really make that neutral.

Loren Tardi: Or how do you, to Ben’s point, how do you look at the actual requirements, what’s truly needed the knowledge, skills, and abilities for the job. But Ben, I thought that was such a great point.

Lotus Buckner: Bernadette just brought up a really good point too in the chat if anyone’s following. If you don’t recruit at HBCUs there’s an issue and her other idea was, what about taking out names of candidates when you’re sending the resumes over to the hiring managers. So blind screening could certainly be helpful in that situation too. I want to get to a question. Morgan. This is kind of in your wheelhouse. I saw a few tech people here and they’re asking in the tech and financial sectors, it’s been a challenge, they get a lot of a lot more white candidates. How can they diversify their recruiting efforts within that sector that is very homogenous.

Morgan Williams: Yeah, definitely. I think to Bernadette’s point you can partner and you should partner with HBCUs, however, black people don’t only go to HBCUs and I think that was one of the things that I was suggesting to even my previous company about recruitment because I went to the University of Michigan and there were quite a few black people in the University.

Morgan Williams: And yours in Illinois, there’s tons of black candidates and you rarely find companies that come to those universities and just look for black talent. I can recall two companies.

Morgan Williams: That came to our business school that we’re looking specifically for black students. And so I hear much about again HBCUs. And don’t get me wrong. Absolutely, you should definitely strategically partner with those universities.

Morgan Williams: But within, you know, predominately white universities, there are still a ton of black and Latino candidates. And in fact, you know, at those predominately white universities, you have a group of black people who, you know, maybe don’t have the means to go to HBCUs, right, because if I think about Michigan, it was more affordable for me because it was a public university than if I had gone to an HBCU.

Morgan Williams: Right, so just kind of keeping an open mind that there are other blacks, like there are other black students outside of HBCUs.

Morgan Williams: And that we have our own organizations, you know that you can strategically partner with.

Morgan Williams: I think the other thing is, I think, Loren mentioned this about kind of working with ERGs and really trying to have them be a part of the process. I know for me before, you know, we had an ERG, we were trying to figure this out. And at that time, this organization called Blavity, I’m sure a lot of you probably heard it heard of it, was just coming up with their first ever Afro tech and I had just heard about this. And so I told my organization, I was like, hey, this is going to be an opportunity where a lot of black people who are interested in tech are going to be at. And I think we have to be there.

Morgan Williams: And so, you know, my organization was like, All right, you. You’re the expert in this, you got it. We’ll be there. What do you need.

Morgan Williams: You know, and so we, you know, went and we went out with a bang. We kind of designed these shirts that said make tech more black.

Morgan Williams: And, you know, I’m the next year. Everyone’s asking for these shirts and like we were more involved and we were able to bring in a lot more candidates from like an engineering and operations standpoint.

Morgan Williams: So I would just, I would just suggest that, again, like, really think about how you want to tackle diversity and inclusion and really think about how you can leverage your internal resources because I do think again. Like for me, I have the resources and connections at the University of Michigan for black students.

Morgan Williams: So I can easily make big build that bridge for my organization to kind of reach out to those students right. I’m also very tapped into the black community. So I know the different events that are happening. So again, leverage that information. Now, what I’ll say is that is a lot of work, right, for a person of color, not only to do your job, but also have to do the job of diversity inclusion.

Morgan Williams: But I guess you have to start somewhere. And so I definitely suggest you know if you have no clue. It’s better to ask your diverse talent. You know what, what makes sense to kind of really have, you know, a black voice are Latino voice involved in the process.

Brian Stephens: Hey Lotus, can I jump in on that as well?

Brian Stephens: One of the things that we’ve just had a conversation about in the series of ongoing conversations and it’s been if the company identifies that hey, we don’t have an issue with recruiting black talent, just to say just a black for purposes of this conversation.

Brian Stephens: We have more of an issue of recruiting, not recruiting, retention of the black employees, once they get in the door. Are they staying. And if they’re not saying why are they not staying

Brian Stephens: Are they are they leaving due to a lack of opportunity, are they leaving due other things that are showing up within culture that they don’t feel welcome, they don’t feel like there’s someone that’s helping them come along in the opportunity. When you look around. If you’re seeing that your peers that you’re starting out to start with at the same are getting opportunities prior to you even getting a chance to show what you can do.

Brian Stephens: And you’re seeing people, someone mentioned that before, getting promoted based off of potential and getting opportunity to develop based off of potential and you’re not seeing that.

Brian Stephens: Folks are quickly going to say, well, there’s the door. Let me go ahead and go somewhere else where I felt like I can get that experience and that development that I’m looking for, so that I can raise up to the senior level positions into the C suite and fulfill the aspirations.

Brian Stephens: So if the problem is not the recruiting and it’s more so once you’re in the organization and you’re not getting that equal opportunity, you’ll feel then what does the company do to ensure that you’ve got that after their there, how do you nurture and continue on that journey.

Brian Stephens: So a few of the things that we thought through, or we’re thinking through now is how do we create specific programs that say or specific initiative that say let’s ensure that folks are receiving mentorship. Let’s ensure that folks are receiving partnership with folks that might be able to expose them to other things that they don’t otherwise see.

Brian Stephens: Because we know that those opportunities and those relationships are existing with other people that don’t look like us.

Brian Stephens: And some of the sad parts about it are you don’t even realize that it’s happening until you hear that you weren’t a part of it.

Brian Stephens: And we find out from someone that’s raised up into a senior level position that oh yeah I had someone that was helping me out from a skillset perspective on how to go and present myself in this meeting or how to present a specific business problem that would go over in a very effective way. If your dad as a senior level person at a company and he has overplay with your company, he’s got specific insights that he can give you that says, oh, yeah, you need to show up like this, save this.

Brian Stephens: Think about it that way, ask this specific question or just drop some type of knowledge based on what’s been given to you.

Brian Stephens: And if you’re looking at that pipeline if many of us don’t have family members or people that were connected to that can give you, let’s say give you the game, then you’re not going to have that going in. So you’re already starting a few feet backwards from someone that’s walking in the door at the exact same spot. And while you’re thinking, you’ve got the same opportunity you don’t.

Brian Stephens: So if you end up being one of those people that goes on further through some stuff that you’ve learned or someone taking a chance and saying let me partner with you and provide the mentorship for you and I can help you to get along your journey that you’re looking for. So sponsorship is key.

Brian Stephens: And it really is the difference between someone coming through the door and saying, yep, we’ve met that number or we felt like we’ve done a good job in bringing in black talent.

Brian Stephens: But if they’re not going anywhere. And they’re continuing leave, then you’re not really solving your problem. You’re just bringing in more people for them to leave and it doesn’t really do anything for that pipeline and getting folks to those senior level position.

Morgan Williams: Piggyback off of Brian I think what’s really really important is that this has to be a priority for leadership, like in a tech space things move super fast and like I love this concept of mentors in having mentors and sponsorship, but like these don’t exist in like the smaller fast moving organizations and so the only way really that you know you can get this being to be prioritized to have mentors or to have sponsors or understand these gaps, is to have this to be at the forefront of leadership. And I don’t know how many leaders we have on the call. But I think it’s really, really important that leaders are not only thinking about the business objectives.

Morgan Williams: But also how like diversity inclusion really helps meet those business objectives, because, like, as you said, you know, black talent and Latino talent will leave you know if they don’t feel like they’re being, I don’t know, if they have the opportunity to grow me promote it.

Morgan Williams: But I think really really for leaders, it needs to be very much in your mind about this is important to me. This is a top priority. We have to get this done.

Morgan Williams: And we’re going to set up…we’re going to set aside prioritization in this because otherwise, like I have like I’ve worked at Discover card and then Discover Card is a big organization, we had this concept of mentorship sponsorship, but at Uber and Braintree this didn’t exist and we didn’t even have enough people to actually start to build something like that. So definitely, it has to be, you know, a leadership priority.

Lotus Buckner: Morgan, let’s take this opportunity to ask you, you have a global perspective and sometimes I think we can get siloed into thinking, right, George Floyd happened in the US. This is us issue the momentum is here.

Lotus Buckner: But this is actually a lot broader. Can you kind of take this opportunity and share a little bit about your experiences on a global level and what issues you see are similar and what may be different or better or worse in other countries.

Morgan Williams: Yeah. So what I will say is, you know, I was fighting so hard when I was at Braintree to really you know, build our ERG and just really build, you know, our Diversity and Equity program and I felt that it was quite difficult. But you know, I was still able to make progress.

Morgan Williams: And then coming to Latam with Uber. You know, I found it to be really challenging. And I’ll say, I’ll say that in a couple of ways. First of all, we had, you know, a Black ERG and it was very US focused it was like, we only talked about US problems. It was like black people didn’t exist outside of the US and I found that even to be you know, a feeling, even when I was at Braintree.

Morgan Williams: But this concept of black people outside, that we have black American problems. And this is a black American problem.

Morgan Williams: But the reality is black people are oppressed everywhere, even in Africa, where we’re at home. So I would say that…

Morgan Williams: You know having, you know, resources and having, you know, D&I programs is super important, but the problems in terms of the funnel are much more challenging. So I was working in Columbia where 25% of the population is black. And it was just me at Uber.

Morgan Williams: Not only in the office. I mean the office just super small, I think there was less than 100 people in our office.

Morgan Williams: And it was just me. I mean, like, not just me like visibly Black but like me as like the only thing that had some black in her right because when you’re in Latam, you know, you have a lot of diversity in terms of multiculturalism.

Morgan Williams: And there was just nothing like that. Right. And so then you go outside, which is kind of like our, our green lights which would be our customer support. And so one of the challenges I had at Braintree was that our customer support was like all black and Latino. That’s where, that’s where, you know, we said okay, hey, we need diversity inclusion. Let’s put more black people in our customer support right.

Morgan Williams: And then you go to Colombia, and there are no black people, even in our customer support, even in like literally of thousands people, not one.

Morgan Williams: And so I think that’s like really an eye opening experience for me. And so when I was working with our leaders… So there was only one other girl. Well, there’s, there was out of, I think, let’s say seven countries, there was three black people that I can recall.

Morgan Williams: One girl in Panama, me and then another girl in Brazil, who were kind of like working on this diversity inclusion effort.

Morgan Williams: And so in Brazil, you know, you have more than 60% of the population black. And again, still really struggling to have representation of black people within our office, even in those again like customer support like roles. So we were trying to strategize. How do we really tackle this problem.

Morgan Williams: And one of the things that I found most difficult, particularly in Colombia is the lack of cohesion of the black community.

Morgan Williams: Right, like I think here in the US, we have a black community. We have resources for black people. And so with those resources and with our community, we’re able to come together and then like work towards a specific effort, whereas here I didn’t feel there was a lot of cohesion. Now, why is there a lot of disconnect in terms of like cohesion in the black community. Well, one of the things that again, that is very present in Latam, is this concept of multiculturalism. So you know someone from my skin tone down to Ben’s skin tone. We can all be some version of black.

Morgan Williams: But we all have some right to say that we’re not.

Morgan Williams: If you will. And so like this lack of cohesion and this ability to kind of be not black. But something different. I think made it very challenging to even know who black people were.

Morgan Williams: You can’t.

Morgan Williams: How do you target black people if it’s hard to identify who they even are.

Morgan Williams: And so then that was one problem. And then the other problem is in terms of the education system here.

Morgan Williams: My understanding of the education system here is that like universities and your ability to go to universities are very much about how much you can pay and like again black people, as I said, are very much oppressed everywhere and so black people are living in some of the poorest cities here in Columbia, some of the poorest cities in in Brazil and these people can’t afford to go to university so you have this very big gap, huge gap.

Morgan Williams: In terms of like where we want to be and where we are. And so I struggled with this a lot because I at least knew where to go, who to partner with, the university’s the different programs, you know, but I was struggling to understand, like, even where to start and in Panama, it’s a little bit more cohesive in terms of the black community. So there is a little bit more effort in terms of being able to kind of help funnel the diversity inclusion there but I found it to be a really big challenge.

Morgan Williams: And the last thing I’ll say is that you know, at Uber, obviously, we had to talk a lot about diversity inclusion just as a priority as an organization, and every time we talked about D&I from a Latam standpoint, it was only about the LGBTQ community and they didn’t say anything else about anything else.

Morgan Williams: When it came to, you know, the the town halls, or our all hands meetings. It was like very much like when we reported the diversity numbers we excluded racial diversity because we hadn’t made essentially any progress so I would say that, like, you know, having been here and reflecting back on my experience in the US, I think that we are very well positioned in the US to continue to, you know, have more diverse talent in our workplaces, very well positioned and I don’t want to take that for granted. I want to make it very clear that as we struggle, and the struggle is very real outside of the US. I mean, most black people don’t even know how to kind of get to this sort of corporate world, right. So I would say that we definitely need to acknowledge the advances that we made in the US and globally, I do think organizations like Uber and, you know, global organizations need to really focus on making a diversity a priority, rather than just kind of understanding it’s a challenge and trying to like sweep it under the rug, if you will.

Lotus Buckner: Okay, wow.

Lotus Buckner: We can, we should do a session just on that. And I think there’s a lot of questions and comments in the chat and I have lots of questions.

Lotus Buckner: And I think it’s a huge topic because we do think in a US silo a lot and business is changing.

Lotus Buckner: With COVID, we are in an online virtual world and there’s so many opportunities there for companies to really go global.

Brian Stephens: And this is going to become a bigger issue beyond our borders. Thank you so much for sharing that perspective.

Lotus Buckner: We should definitely chat about doing a future session just on that. I do want to address a question here. Rachel’s Kudos to Morgan. She said, really great points. How are we thinking about intersectionality and the implications of other experiences and not just the practices, but the tracking in data to support and evaluate. So how, for any of you feel free to jump in, but how does intersectionality play a role in the in justices and biases and experiences that you’ve had in the workplace or in society?

Brian Stephens: I’ll dive in a little bit of that, what I’ve seen in the workplace, specifically, is that there’s been a focus, more often than not, coming from the ERGs, and the ERGs, although they’re open to all people obviously their intent and purpose, especially for the ethnically diverse ones is to focus on the issues that are impacting the majority of that group. So we’ve got one that is largely for women. Women in sales.

Brian Stephens: And we’ve got our black employee ERG, we’ve got our Latino/Hispanic ERG and what we try to do, which is usually ERG driven is to provide content and programming that talk about that intersectionality. So you’re talking about a black woman. Okay, that’s a perfect opportunity for two ERGs to come together and provide content and training and programming around specific topics that impact being a black person and being a woman that not necessarily is addressed in overall broad discussions and things that the company is going to bring forward leading society in large, doesn’t necessarily focus on some of these subsets, but that intersectionality shows up in those ways and we can have further conversations and say, yes, these are the experiences that you have as a woman, but here are the experiences that you also have being black and then you combine the two together and it creates a completely unique experience for someone as they navigate what it looks like in the workplace for them, then what it looks like when they leave work and what those differences are for people as they encounter it.

Brian Stephens: I just got off a call prior to this one at work more of a town hall discussion and it talked about the specifically folks outlook on their opportunity to succeed at the company and the statistics show that black women were scored at 26% that they had an opportunity or equal opportunity to succeed at the company and you compare it to white men white women and black males. Everyone else around 50% or 40, upper upper 40s, and black women were at 26% and it was an eye opening statistic, but it wasn’t anything new.

Brian Stephens: So it further drilled down into saying we’ve got to have conversations. We’ve got to think about the intersectionality and where different experiences converge.

Brian Stephens: And how you have people who really have the differences that needs to be explored and resources that are provided that help them uniquely to what they are going to experience when they go to work and when they leave outside of those walls.

Ben Cardenas: If I can add a comment to what Brian just said, I think it’s like Brian stated, you know the content and the resources are important, but I also think that the empowerment here is key with intersectionality because especially the organizations that have the ERG groups, if you have your ERG groups, you have black group or Latino women empowerment. How are you leveraging them and empowering them to take the charge in initiatives that impact the organization at large, you know, for example, are you going to use these groups to come together and lead forward a business transformation initiative.

Ben Cardenas: That’s going to put them in those leadership positions. And I think that’s also another way to help measure right because I think we get so stuck in the data just my own personal opinion. We get so stuck in that data that brings awareness to it.

Ben Cardenas: And then we say, well, we created these ERG groups. What more do we want. Well now what empowerment are you giving them to take the charge to make decisions for the organization.

Ben Cardenas: Right. Are you giving them empowerment to do community outreach. Are you giving them empowerment to help expand and strengthen your organizational brand in the Latino communities, in the gay community, in the black communities. Right. It’s not just about the data. In my opinion, are the resources to give them the resources to educate, but the tools also to feel empowered and take the charge?

Morgan Williams: And the budget.

Lotus Buckner: Yes, put your money where your mouth is!

Morgan Williams: Generally the ERG budget is super tiny and you can’t do enough with it. So the budget too.

Lotus Buckner: Those are such good points and we sometimes see organizations. It’s a lot of talk and not a lot of walk right so we see a lot of them creating or allowing for employee resource groups which are often in most organizations voluntary, by the way, we’re not even paying people and now with the momentum that we have a lot of organizations that I’m talking to are dealing with the fact that their minority communities, their minority ERGs feel like they’re being asked to take on 10 times more of a workload than they had before and it’s voluntary.

Lotus Buckner: They’re not being paid for doing this all on top of their job and outside of their work hours. So that’s a really important thing that I think is important to call out for any leaders in the audience and organizations who have the ability to impact change: pay your ERGs, empower them and really incorporate them into your organizations. Otherwise it’s not going to work. And it’s going to be pretty obvious pretty quickly if you’re just doing it for show. So those are really good points. We are getting close to time. I don’t know how this hour flew by so fast.

Lotus Buckner: But I just got a message. So I wanted to take a quick second to define a couple terms that we talked about, um, that’s my bad.

Lotus Buckner: We often, like in any industry, we use a lot of acronyms and we don’t define them so wanted to just to define that really quickly. HBCUs: that’s historically black colleges and universities. That’s what that stands for.

Lotus Buckner: ERGs are employee resource groups that are also known by the names of Business Resource Groups or BRGs or affinity groups. And so a lot of organizations have these employee lead groups, affinity groups that get together and they do everything from planning educational resources and events to community outreach, anything to really to increase the D&I efforts within that organization. And a lot of times, you don’t have to identify with that group to be a part of it. A lot of times allies are welcome, which I think they should be.

Lotus Buckner: I miss one, I feel like I’m supposed to define three. Oh, and then intersectionality. There’s a question about what do we mean by intersectionality. So I think that might have been answered a little bit hopefully in the comments, but what we’re talking about with intersectionality, there are differences and experiences, not just based on your race or your identity with LGBTQ or your gender. Sometimes those things intersect. Right. I am an Asian female and that experience is very different than, say, an Asian male. Just because we’re both Asian, doesn’t mean that that experience is going to be exactly. So that’s kind of what we were getting at there.

Lotus Buckner: And I did want to talk to you really quickly Ben.

Lotus Buckner: Can you talk a little bit about how intersectionality has impacted you?

Ben Cardenas: Absolutely. So, um,

Ben Cardenas: I as a proud Latino gay man, this is something that impacted me a lot in my career, right, especially, I guess, early on in my career before I even came out and was comfortable with identifying as a gay man in the professional world it intimidated me were scary because I felt that I would be looked upon as we don’t want him in the group. We don’t want him leading charge right.

Ben Cardenas: And you know it’s scary and it was also, impacting not just me, but also the group that I impacted because I wasn’t speaking up right I wasn’t talking about ideas that I had to help improve the organization. I wasn’t sharing those ideas. I wasn’t speaking up at meetings because I was afraid that the fact that I identified as a gay man, it was going to impact it right and it boils down to the comment I made just a few moments ago with the empowerment. Right.

Ben Cardenas: Empower all of your people to feel proud and to contribute to because we all have so much to contribute in the world.

Ben Cardenas: Even now, to this day, you know, I’ll be very honest, I’m very cautious when I meet people in the business world, or if I join a new organization. I’m very cautious with how I identify and it shouldn’t be that way.

Ben Cardenas: I shouldn’t have to be cautious to say, yes, I have a husband at home and two beautiful daughters.

Ben Cardenas: Or I shouldn’t have to test the water and see how they’re gonna react if I use the word partner.

Ben Cardenas: You know, and it’s funny, I was having this conversation with my husband just a few days ago to how I don’t like using the word partner in the workplace to talk about my husband, because to me it’s a business transaction. That’s just my own personal take on it.

Ben Cardenas: And so being in the workplace being gay, being Latino, you know, I have to test those waters. And so, you know, what are my goals in my workplace now is going to be to really start to bring more awareness to focusing on ERGs, right, because I’m sure that there are other professionals within my organization that probably feel the way I felt 10 years ago or probably still have to test the water a little bit before they raised their hand to say, hey, I want to take charge on this project or here are some ideas that I want to share with you, but I won’t, because I’m afraid that you’re going to judge me or I’m afraid that because of the way that I identify, it’s going to hold me back from contributing to the organization.

Lotus Buckner: Thank you. Alright, well, we are just about at time. So I want to take a quick minute. Morgan, Loren, Brian, Ben, I just want to thank you all so much for joining me today. This was not enough time so 100%, I would like to invite all of you back to talk about some more specific topics around diversity and inclusion.

Lotus Buckner: I learned so much in just an hour with you and I know our audience has too. I cannot have chosen a better panel of guests to kick off the series with me and I do hope you all will come back and join us for another session.

Lotus Buckner: Thank you all to the participants as well. All of you in the audience who participated in our session today. I’m in utter all of the awesome engagement and all of your insights as well. I have to go back and read the chat, because there are some really good back channeling conversations going on there.