5 Things / Code Switching

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We have a new consulting client that’s a law school. Our kickoff meeting was recently, and in advance, I was asked to swap out any language that sounded too “corporate.” Consultants became partners. Employees became faculty and staff. They wanted to de-emphasize our corporate work so we would have more credibility with the academics in the room.

The kickoff went great! As we were walking out, our contact thanked me for being able to speak to the audience in that way. I replied “My pleasure! I know how to code-switch.”

It’s a silly story, but these are the skills we build when we’re members of underrepresented groups. And they can come in very handy in leadership roles…great leadership qualities are born from oppression. I actually have a keynote on just that topic called Born This Way. Reply if you’d like to learn more about it!

This Week’s Good Vibes:

1. Racial Diversity Leaders to Higher Box Office ROI

   • The latest Hollywood Diversity Report from UCLA reveals that movies with casts reflecting real-world racial diversity saw the highest return on investment (ROI) in 2023. Films with 41-50% BIPOC casts led to the highest median ROI, while less diverse movies yielded lower returns. Proportionately representative films also made bank with Barbie leading at $1.4 billion. Despite audience diversity, film industry employment lacks parity, highlighting the need for greater inclusivity behind the camera to mirror the diverse audience in front of it.

2. Tyson to Hire 42,000 Migrants

   • Amidst a surge in asylum seekers, Tyson Foods Inc. partners with Tent Partnership for Refugees to hire migrants. With plans to employ an additional 42,000 immigrants, Tyson's move not only fills jobs but also offers opportunities for these folks who traveled thousands of miles to get here for a better life. But what I particularly love here is Tyson's investment in retention, including legal aid and citizenship assistance, and that reflects a commitment to inclusion and workforce stability.

3. It's OK to Say Gay

   • In Florida, a settlement over the "Don't Say Gay" law means LGBTQ topics can still be discussed in classrooms. A resolution has been added clarifying that the law doesn't prohibit LGBTQ references or anti-bullying measures. This is a big win for students' rights and inclusion and essentially nullifies the law. The settlement sets a precedent for similar cases nationwide, impacting students and teachers beyond Florida.

4. Inclusive Bridal Dresses

   • Designers like Brides by Nona and Alonuko are leading a shift towards inclusive wedding attire, offering diverse skin tone options without extra charges. Thankfully, because in the bridal industry, women of color often encounter challenges finding wedding attire that accommodates their skin tones. There are systemic issues where the default "nude" often caters to lighter skin tones, leaving darker-skinned brides feeling marginalized and overlooked.

5. Walmart Teaches Compassion

   • Walmart’s Manager Academy instills compassionate leadership among store managers, emphasizing worker well-being and community engagement. With Walmart’s status as the largest US private employer, the ways it trains its managers impact millions of workers. With a focus on fostering a supportive culture, the training emphasizes the importance of compassion in driving employee satisfaction and overall business success. This sets a precedent for the retail industry, emphasizing the significance of empathy and understanding in creating a positive work environment.

This Week’s Call to Action:

It’s Women’s History Month! Learn about some amazing women by exploring the inductees of the National Women’s Hall of Fame. The 2024 class has its first trans woman, Sandy Stone.

5 Things / 5 Ways

Happy new year! I hope this year is a wonderful one for you, personally and professionally. As always, I’m optimistic that we’re all on the right side of history. I’ll keep sharing the good vibes with you every week and cheer you on along on this DEI journey.

Lately, I’ve had some conversations with people who’ve shared with me how they’ve been using 5 Things. You’re a creative bunch! I can’t tell you how happy it makes me that 5 Things resonates with you, and that you actually use it.

Here are 5 ways you can use 5 Things:

• Bring it to a weekly team meeting and choose an item to discuss as part of the agenda

• Share a story from 5 Things in your internal DEI newsletter

• Bring one idea from 5 Things to each DEI Council meeting for discussion

• Share it with someone you’d like to reconnect with - tell them that you saw this and thought of them

• Test some things out! If you see a story that sounds like something that could work at your org, then get the right people in the room to figure out how to make it happen.

My word of the year is deepen and that includes deepening my relationships with any of you. In part, that means that I’m going to start sharing these 5 Things daily on TikTok…you can find me over there @5ThingsDEI. Doing this makes me very uncomfortable, but I’m doing it anyway because the world needs these messages.

Here are the good vibes I found this week:

1. Hershey Launches 1st Bilingual Manufacturing Facility

   • The Hershey Company turned one of its manufacturing plants entirely bilingual. All training is now in both English and Spanish and all signs, labels, and forms are in both languages as well. There are also bilingual employees available on the floor to help with communication. The Say Hola program, developed in conjunction with Hershey’s Latino Business Resource Group (LBRG), has led to increased diversity, higher retention rates, and reduced recruitment costs. This matters because it’s a win-win – employees have more positive experiences and feel more supported, and the company benefits.

2. 911 Dispatchers in Montreal Are Learning to Stop It Racial Bias Calls

   • 911 operators in Montreal are being trained to detect racial bias. The training is among the first in North America. The training is designed to help operators detect bias in the conversations with callers. For example: is the caller using unnecessary racial descriptors, or even veiled racial descriptors? This bias that starts with the caller can then be transferred to the police officer on the scene. The training’s goal is to “permit our police to intervene based on the actions of a person, not their identity." This matters because every step towards racial justice matters.

3. West Point Will Remove Confederate Symbols from Its Campus

   • The U.S. Military Academy at West Point is removing all Confederate memorials on the campus. One such symbol included an image of an armed man in a hood, with "Ku Klux Klan" written below. It’s about damn time. This matters because the legacy of racial injustice should not be on display – it’s a form of re-traumatizing Black people.

4. The White House Gets Its Own Menorah for the First Time

   • For the first time in history, the White House has its own menorah in its permanent collection. This marks the first time a Jewish artifact has been added to the White House archives. In the past, menorahs have been on loan. This matters because inclusion means everyone – and Jewish people are increasingly under attack in America.

5. The Ex Manifesto; The Definitions, the Values, and the Principles of Ex and Ex Design 

   • There’s a new manifesto called the Employee Experience (EX) Manifesto created by leaders from companies such as Patagonia and Airbnb. They’ve developed principles that “elevate business performance through employee wellbeing.” You can bet there will be more emphasis on EX in the years to come. This matters because happy, well-cared-for employees = happy customers.

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5 Things / The Year in Good Vibes

This week I received a message from a former client: "Yippee for our marriages being codified into law!"

Some of you may know that I spent years as a wedding planner with an LGBTQ+ specialty and a speaker on inclusion in that industry. I started that business in 2004. I was so young! It's been nearly 19 years since the first legal same-sex marriage licenses were issued in Massachusetts -- and only NOW are those marriages — and interracial marriages – codified into federal law, thanks to the Respect for Marriage Act. Those marriages were allowed due to Supreme Court decisions, which could have potentially been challenged.

19 years of waiting for same-sex marriages; 55 years of waiting for interracial marriages to become officially official.

Still, I'll take it. I'll celebrate it. And here it is, in 5 Things.

I'll take progress towards equality in most forms. Progress, even with caveats, as this law has. More equity and inclusion that starts tomorrow, next year, or the year after.

In the new year, I’ll keep sharing 5 Things, and maybe one of these stories will inspire you to take the next step forward toward greater equity and inclusion.

Just start.

To cap off the year, I’m sharing what I found to be the top 5 good vibes of the year, that I predict will become more common and expected in years to come.

Here are my top 5 good vibes of the year:

1. Hybrid Work Models

   • This year brought fits and starts as organizations tried to figure out hybrid work models. It’s incredibly important as employees increasingly value flexibility and women and underrepresented people report a higher sense of belonging when working remotely. A hybrid ideal is beginning to emerge for organizations that can pull it off: remote work as an option for everyone, and requiring employees to come in for gatherings and retreats. The many folks I’ve spoken to who work this way appear to love both the flexibility and the camaraderie.

2. Companies Speaking Out Against Injustice

   • With the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision earlier this year allowing states to set their own abortion laws, many companies spoke out in support of their employees. From reimbursing travel expenses for employees who have to cross state lines to obtain an abortion to reimbursing employees’ relocation expenses, many major companies like Salesforce and Levi showed support. (This doesn’t come without backlash though – now some politicians are in retaliatory mode.) Regardless, a precedent was set and Gen Z, in particular, will expect companies to keep speaking out when there’s injustice.

3. Awareness That Diversity Means Everyone

   • Diversity is more diverse. With the rise in anti-Semitism, increasing awareness of caste discrimination, more conversations around mental health, and increasingly frequent addition of “accessibility” to DEI, there’s more awareness that diversity means everyone. And that’s a good thing because the more people who see themselves as part of the conversation, the more engagement and investment there will be in this work.

4. Diversity in Sports

   • There’s more diversity in sports…a number of races including the Boston Marathon and New York Marathon now have non-binary categories, which leads to a downstream effect of smaller races doing the same. We’re seeing more women in executive leadership in men’s professional sports franchises. And this year, a new women’s professional soccer team in LA began to play – the Angel City Football Club - with founding members such as Natalie Portman, Serena Williams, and Eva Longoria. Not only is there more diversity, but greater access to these stories with the launch of the Women’s Sports Network.

5. Four-Day Workweeks Gain Momentum

   • The four-day workweek is gaining traction. With a successful pilot program in the UK and Unilever adopting it in Australia after a successful pilot in New Zealand, this model is showing leaders that employees can be even more productive in a shorter period of time. While we haven’t seen this take off in the U.S. yet, there’s no doubt it’s coming. And when it does, you can read about it right here in 5 Things!

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5 Things / Sparks

This week I delivered a keynote for a client’s internal event and, afterward, joined them for dinner. I spent much of my time in a pleasantly long conversation with a managing partner who, at one point, exclaimed to me, “I mean, can you believe at one point, people held slaves in this country?”

I replied, “I know!… And it’s still going on…did you know the war on drugs locked up Black people for crack way more than white people for coke, and a lot of those people are still in prison?”

They were caught off guard and asked to change the subject to something more positive, and then asked if I had any dogs…so we showed pictures of our dogs. 

It’s my job to spark these conversations, even when they get a little uncomfortable. We just move on…I’m happy to talk about my dog anytime, especially after I’ve first gently challenged someone. If you’ve ever heard me talk about the ARC Method, you know that I believe these conversations don’t have to be long, drawn out, or awkward. I believe it’s up to allies to gently challenge others – and it’s helpful to be prepared to quickly pivot without losing a beat.

Good Vibes:

1. Google's Reimagined "Work From Anywhere" Policy Gets Staff Back in the Office

   • Google now allows most employees to work from anywhere 4 weeks per year. This policy shows some flexibility, especially given all the pushback from employees reluctant to return to the office this year.  This matters because, more than ever, employees value flexibility, which becomes a retention strategy, especially for underrepresented talent.

2. Why General Motors’ Diversity Chief Scrapped University Degree Requirements for Some Jobs

   • GM, one of my favorite companies to follow, has removed degree requirements from many of its positions, including some supervisory roles in the manufacturing plants. This matters because more than 80% of Black and Latine’ people in the U.S. don’t have college degrees.

3. Velma Is Officially a Lesbian in New ‘Scooby-Doo’ Film

   • Lesbians around the world, myself included, are rejoining at the news that Velma from Scooby-Doo will be out in the new movie. Trick or Treat Scooby-Doo will be released next week. I can only imagine what impact an out Velma would have had on my tween self. 

4. Nicole Mann Becomes First Native Woman to Go to Space With Latest SpaceX Mission

   • This week Nicole Mann became the first Native woman in space. She’s a NASA astronaut who traveled with SpaceX for a six-month mission at the International Space Station. This matters because Nicole is a possible model for young people, especially Native women, who earn $.60 on the dollar to a white man.

5. Slovenia Becomes First Post-communist Country to Legalise Same-Sex Marriage and Adoption

   • Cuba and Slovenia both made news recently for passing laws allowing same-sex couples to legally marry. Slovenia is the first post-Communist country to do so and the 33rd in the world to have this right (out of 195). Cuba’s law is notable in that voters approved the right by ⅔ majority in a referendum. This matters because love is love.

5 Things / Spring Break

This week my 11-year-old son is on spring break. I thought it might be fun if he watched 5 Things in 15 Minutes on Monday (he was happy for the screen access!) I forwarded him the newsletter but instead of using the YouTube link, he used the LinkedIn link (insert this week) and then was asked to create a LinkedIn account in order to watch. In three minutes, my son Patrick told the world that he’s an Amazon account manager. That was my first LOL moment after the show wrapped.

Then I saw that he left comments on the video like “Such interesting stories!” and “What amazing thoughts!” – and I think he was sincere! Sure, he’s biased, but still, it’s a fun show and I know he’s part of a generation that appreciates and values diversity. Simply by the exposure to diversity in his school and neighborhood, his brain gets messages that counteract stereotypes that I’ve had to train myself out of over years.

Patrick is part of my “why” – why I do what I do, my sense of purpose. I’m raising my cisgender, white son to be aware of his privilege and responsibility to be inclusive of others. I encourage you to discover your why. In fact, I’d love to hear it… what keeps you going, especially in the face of competing priorities, pushback, and the slow pace of progress? What’s your sense of purpose around DEI?

LinkedIn Lets Users Add “Dyslexic Thinking” as a Skill

LinkedIn now lets its users add “dyslexic thinking” to their profile as a skill. I love this re-frame because people with dyslexia (almost one in five) can bring great problem-solving and creative thinking skills to work. This matters because it re-imagines something historically considered a deficit as an asset.

Air Force Offers Help To Military Families Hurt By States' New Anti-LGBTQ Laws

The U.S. Air Force has let its personnel know that they will help families relocate, or with medical and legal help, if they are personally affected by the onslaught of anti-LGBTQ laws in various states that specifically target transgender children. This matters because the Air Force employs hundreds of thousands of personnel, and this sends a signal that family safety comes first. (thanks to Corey for this one!)

One Architect’s Mission to Bring DeafSpace Design to the Masses

The DeafSpace design philosophy, developed by architect Richard Dougherty, will be unveiling its first public space project on the campus of Gallaudet University. This matters because although the project contains more than 150 architectural elements that take into account “the distinct way the deaf people relate to their physical environment,” it’s designed to be inclusive for everyone (in particular, the spherical designs give everyone equal status). New DeafSpace projects will now extend into the neighboring community.

More and More, Brands Are Showing Older Women in Ads

More brands (especially in the beauty industry) are showing older women in ads, and, in fact, an age-positive stock photo library has been launched to represent age diversity. Ageism is alive and well, but I love these stories because they show something tangible organizations can counteract negative stereotypes about older people. (thanks to Karen Catlin for this one!)

Pantene Celebrates a Beautiful Transformation

Pantene gave Isa, a transgender woman in her forties, the quinceanera she never had. They made a short film showcasing this journey and the preparations leading up to the event, including her family’s ultimate acceptance. This matters because these are the stories that largely go untold and because this film celebrates Isa in all her authenticity.