 Thank you. I have the pleasure of presenting this a case study of sorts using applied improvisation If you are familiar any of you with doing the work we call DNI diversity and inclusion That's what this talk is going to speak to the work that I've been doing in it in the last two years I'm going to jump right into it. So if you are not particularly familiar With the terms DNI I wanted to kind of put something that kind of just kind of get a definition of sorts So that we could be familiar with it and diversity inclusion work is mainly around the space of sensitivity Using different businesses whether it be nonprofit or for-profit. It's sort of making your workplace Sort of diverse and equitable Now we talk about that in many different ways. We could talk to about as far as gender race culture faiths or sexual orientation, but there are many other ways to as well Now that's of course the tip of the iceberg we often say that just saying that definition is not enough We often say in the space of DNI that it's we're often going in and working with Individuals and and often when I'm working with them It's just a tip of the iceberg and what I'm trying to do is just really open themselves up to sort of this Dialogue and this conversation around what that means and so what I find is This this quote sort of from a really great quote that highlights that it's great to seek out diverse candidates and Include them in the company culture, but what happens next right? How does one go further in creating an actual space that truly embraces differences so I Find that applied improvisation works wonderfully for that because what it does is It speaks to this term Intersexuality sectionality that's easier word to write than say And so intersectionality now. What does that mean? That is actually this sort of field that's been really popularized in the last kind of it last five to ten years of What separates or makes me unique? I could relate to some of those things that may also to someone I mean right in my workplace a fellow co-worker or a manager I could relate to maybe What makes them different or? The same so sort of these differences in other words my religion of being maybe the only Jewish person at a mostly Christian workplace I could sort of relate to that feeling to someone is that on the other spectrum someone who is maybe gay or lesbian or Transgender and they're the only one in a maybe heterosexual mostly Workplace so we could find some similarities in there and that's that's where I find that applied improvisation sort of could speak to Now how do we do that? And I think it relies completely on making space for the different folks Emotions and using empathy to do this so diversity inclusion means allowing employees to actually bring their whole selves Into into the space and it kind of bring it to the table So it's hard to do that though. It's easy to say, but it's hard to do that in the workplace. These are actually Businesses and I do most of this work In banks some of the top banks in the United States the United States I've been working with for the last two years and there's reasons why a lot of those Businesses are actually regulated and mandated to do this work. Well, that's even makes it you might say well great, right? That actually puts a challenge because people are in a way forced to go through this training Let me explain how I kind of manage this so I'm lucky enough to be working at this wonderful place called coca-biz coca-biz is actually a part of this Non-profit arts center based in st. Louis, Missouri coca The first four letters coca-biz gets its name from coca, which is actually the third largest fully arts integrated complex in the United States, so it's multi its opera its dance its Fine arts its theater. It's all those things under one roof and coca has been around for a little over 30 years And coca-biz has only been around 10 years and what the mission of that The the kind of the problem that we're solving is using arts To actually go into corporations and businesses and use the artist the dancer the storyteller the musician to kind of Touch on these topics. What can you with the art and so myself using improvisation was a perfect match And so we created about two years ago this program called acting with awareness that was specifically addressing this idea of diversity And and sensitivity training Mostly again in think of these big banks, you know these big corporate banks What we found was that This is something that was radically different when we actually went into spaces And and that photo is one of my colleagues Kathy Bentley who is a playwright and a director What we found is that we were giving them different tool sets They were used to kind of like just really going through workbooks and manuals and PowerPoints But what we were doing is we're actually playing those theater games theater games and then unpacking them So one of the processes that where we start this where it's anchored is in this really Prime the kind of the first game that we play and it's really anchors the whole day It's it's based on a game that is used often in many Theater classrooms Which is sometimes called I like cake or truth chairs where everyone sits in a circle And there's only enough circle of enough chairs except for one person in the center and the center person has to say something True about themselves and if it's true for anyone in the circle They all have to move and it it sort of creates this one person's gonna end up always in the center Well, we've morphed that into a different version of that where it's called where I'm from and the first level We play it and this game is played for about 45 minutes to almost maybe quite an hour The first level is just geographical so people stand in that center and they have to say the phrase where I'm from There were mountains or they might say where I'm from the streets Never were quiet right and then whatever's true people move right the next wave We go into where I'm from a cultural truth. So I'm from women always stayed home and raised the family right or where I'm from You didn't see to same-sex couples holding hands Right, and then the last way is personal That's the last process where they will start to get up after about 30 40 minutes and start to kind of say where I'm from my dad Didn't see me pretty much until I was about 17 Right something real personal so this goes on for a while and you could see this is sort of an example of a Really literally a bunch of executives at a multi-level. They could actually be management and actually bank teller could be a VP It could be someone that works behind the scenes and they are all in that circle and they're doing this We go from this process directly to creating Tableaus so the groups have to kind of get in pairs and then pairs get into four sums and then four sums get into groups of six or eight and they have to pick a where I'm from that resonated to them and After they do that they build a tableau and the tableaus are Amazing what we see out of these tableaus are things that these groups have never addressed or never tried and and and From the tableaus, there's just there's nothing about it other than watching them produce them make them and then reaction The conversations we have a great critiquing format that really gets people to kind of address they don't get to respond we critique in a positive way or questionable way and These are some of the ones that actually came from one of the recent one that I did Where I'm from our marriage was illegal 20 years ago. Now the person who said that Was saying it because they were in an interracial was an african-american woman But when they translated the tableau a group they did it too. That's a those are high-level two VPs from a bank Who are heterosexual? And they actually got to recreate that tableau Where I'm from bombs were used to kill black and brown people this bank is the headquarters is based in Birmingham, Alabama and so For them that was a real and some of the people that are there living actually remember it as a child and Where I'm from I saw death all around me growing up Where I'm from black and brown people were the service workers And I have one more here where I'm from interracial dating was forbidden So they get to kind of sort of create these tableaus and you could see there's Laughter in some cases and there's some cases there's tears and the whole point and function of this is to kind of move them through this process of Of warming them up and getting to play the game and in the process of playing the game They actually lose all the all those things that separate us in the workplace, right? And they're actually able to finally have a conversation now. I'm not gonna lie people do have triggered moments There is sometimes people that will have a Argument or a feeling and that's processed in the last portion That's why we save a lot of time in 90 minutes to even more than that Sometimes we take a break and come back in a debrief to talk about those things It's all about starting the process of a conversation So if you're interested in this space I empower all of you to kind of really think about how you can bring those different co-workers together using that Intersectionality and empathy. Thank you