Thought Leadership
Empathy, Not Sympathy, is Critical to DEI
NOT Sympathy Empathy is the ability to identify and understand another person's situation without judgment, the full acceptance of their story. You have not lived their situation to be able to relate to it. Sympathy, by contrast, is projecting a feeling of less than...
Perspective Taking is Critical to DEI
Taking on the perspective of others is a critical DEI skill. Rather than pretending to be someone else, try instead to find out what perspective they might have, and is most important when it is different from your perspective. Perspective taking is defined as trying...
Barriers to Allyship at Home
Barriers that cause withdrawal from the DEI conversation As humans, we fear what we don’t understand. This fear can feel very real for people. There are three main categories of fear leading parents, caregivers, and educators to withdraw from the DEI conversation. The...
There Is Still a DEI Problem
We cannot fix a problem if we refuse to see it. As a white woman born and raised in the Midwest in the 1980’s and 1990’s, I was taught to be colorblind. Racism, sexism, and discrimination were of the past. My Mother, a well-intentioned, single, and white, told me that...
Address Your Unconscious Bias
Address Your Unconscious Bias to Foster DEI We all are a product of our lived experiences. This means that our early childhood moments, moments in adolescence, coming of age times, and our adulthood experiences paint a canvas of our normalized behaviors, our...
DEI Best Practices
Top 10 Ideas for DEI Leaders 2020 was a wild year, and 2021 has also been an intense year for diversity and inclusion. Following the fancy corporate statements and donations to nonprofits, 2021 saw deeper commitments to diversity. I was pleasantly surprised by the...
Why share pronouns
Sharing pronouns signals to all people that they belong I learned about pronouns in third grade. I remember my English teacher sharing that a proper noun is capitalized and refers to a specific person, place, or thing. A pronoun refers to an individual and therefore...
Instant gratification is holding your diversity efforts back
Allies stay in the diversity game long-term Diversity and inclusion is a long game. It's not a check the box. It's not a one-and-done. It's not a sprint. It really is a marathon, meaning the work never ends. Diversity and inclusion efforts will go long beyond our...
Empathy and vulnerability, the keys to inclusive leadership
Inclusive leadership is about knowing when to speak vs. listen One of the clear hallmarks of inclusive leadership is knowing when someone truly needs direction versus when they need a sounding board. These two leadership strategies look very different in practice. For...
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