5 Things / Triggered

I spent two days this week on a retreat with my mastermind group. We’re a bunch of varied founders who come together to learn and support each other as we build our businesses. The theme of this retreat was “communication” and one of the sessions I enjoyed was on communicating with ourselves when we’re triggered by something someone says at work.

We started by learning our individual fear response - mine is flight - and then self-reflecting on the various comments that have triggered that response at work. We then practiced getting triggered (and recovering from it) in pairs. The magic is in the tool we learned to recover from the triggers. Our facilitator, Pavini Coakwell Moray, taught us a technique to ground ourselves, expand, and let the body settle the mind.

There are so many reasons people get triggered at work but I can promise you that the overturn of Roe is a big one. I hope that your organization is having internal conversations on what the overturn of Roe can mean in terms of programming (consider listening sessions), employee benefits, privacy, communications, and more. Brace yourself for business implications like these.

Here are the good vibes I found this week:

1. Allyson Felix Launches a Child Care Initiative for Athlete Moms

   • Olympic runner Allyson Felix launched a new initiative to provide free child care to athletes, coaches, and staff in the U.S. Track and Field Championships. Her sponsor Athleta is supporting this program and has also continued to provide childcare grants totaling more than $200,000 to female athletes. This equitable initiative matters because child care costs often prevent women athletes from continuing to compete at high levels after giving birth.

2. Marriott International Launches “Bridging The Gap” Hotel Development Program

   • Marriott has a new program to increase the diversity of its franchisees. The program provides capital and other resources to qualified historically underrepresented people and helps them become hotel owners. This program matters because, due to systemic racism, access to capital is frequently a barrier for BIPOC folks, and this program can ultimately reduce the racial wealth gap.

3. Google Will Let LGBTQ-Plus Merchants Tag Their Businesses in Maps

   • Business owners can now self-identify their business as LGBTQ+ owned using Google Maps. Businesses can currently tag themselves as Black-owned, Transgender safe spaces, and LGBTQ-friendly. Users can search by typing in “LGBTQ-owned business”. This new tag matters because it increases exposure to businesses that may be overlooked.

4. Walmart Expands Health Services to Address Racial Inequality

   • Walmart is now providing employees in several Southern U.S. states access to a doula as part of their medical benefits. Doulas are awesome and provide emotional and physical support to pregnant people. This benefit is designed to reduce the maternal mortality gap between white and Black women that largely results from structural racism. This matters because Black Lives Matter.

5. Walgreens Aims to Add Diversity to Drug Trials Through Stores

   • Speaking of health care disparities, Walgreens is now offering up its stores to host clinical trials of experimental drugs and devices. These trials have traditionally been held in hospitals, universities, and clinics which has led to decades of homogeneity within-trial patients. With over 9000 stores, Walgreens’ goal is to increase the diversity of the participants in clinical trials, which then leads to data on how to better care for a wider variety of patients. This matters because it can ultimately decrease health care disparities.

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