 I'm Tanya Odom. I'm the Director of Equity and Inclusion at the Walton Family Foundation. We wanna thank SoCAP for allowing us to co-sponsor this and just to make sure you're in the right place. The title of this is How Philanthropy and Social Capital Can Help Advance Innovative Approaches to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. We're going to add or just adapt this a little bit and that is we were able to also get an additional panelists who I'll talk about in one minute. So really it's how sort of collaboration across sectors really can come up with innovative approaches and having just attended a couple of the last panels, I think you'll see some pretty similar themes. So a couple of things that we're gonna do, we're gonna do a bit of a fireside chat, although it's really hot outside, so come up with something else like poolside chat. How about that, is that better? Poolside chat where I'm gonna sort of moderate and ask our panelists who have such incredible experience and thoughts. We did a prep panel on a prep call on Friday and really we're all just taken by all of the thoughts that came out even just of that prep call. And then we're gonna ask you to answer some of the questions that they've been answering. And then what we'll do is how many of you are looking or working with EventMobi? Yes, so there's a chat function. If you go to EventMobi, the chat has been enabled for this session. We're not gonna be able to get a report out from each of the tables, but we will be asking for some of you to sort of write some of your answers down there so that it can be captured, sound okay? So to begin, I'd love for the panelists to introduce themselves in chat. You are the person who may not be seen on the app. Doesn't mean you're invisible, right? You exist. And actually we thought it was a really important addition because you are from the not-for-profit sector. So can you introduce yourself and give us a little bio since people don't have your bio? Absolutely, thanks Tanya. It's an honor to be with you all. Chad Hu, I serve as the Senior VP for Strategy Equity and Impact for the YMCA of San Francisco here. Serve with the YMCA of the USA National Office in Chicago and Diversity Equity Inclusion for 10 years before that. Serve on the board of trustees for the Tyler Clemente Foundation in New York City and formerly on the board of Howard Brown Health, the FQHC out of Chicago. Thank you Chad, and thanks for joining us. Jane Marie. Good afternoon everyone. My name is Jane Marie Angba. I serve as a director for the Race, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Change Learning Journey at Charles and Lynn Shusterman Family Philanthropies. I am in many ways a non-traditional equity practitioner in the sense that for most of my career I had the pleasure of serving children and families as an educator and youth development professional and then transitioned into kind of national scale and programming which centered and focused equity as well as professional learning for early career youth development professionals. And so equity has been a clear strand in my career but I have the pleasure now of working in the philanthropic space at an organization that strives for a future in which we all live to our highest values and are striving for just and fair communities in both the US and Israel and we invest in about seven different grant-making areas, criminal justice, education, gender reproductive equity, democracy and voting rights, US Jewish grant-making and we do place-based programming in Tulsa, Oklahoma. So that is me. Thank you. Nice to see you guys. Thank you, Morgan. Hi everybody, so glad to be back in conference rooms again. My name is Morgan Mercer. I'm the founder and CEO of Vantage Point. We leverage virtual reality for training most prominently around topics like anti-arrestment, diversity, equity and inclusion. We work with companies like IKEA, Hyundai, et cetera. Alongside that I'm a program judge and advisor for Headstream Accelerator. It's an accelerator program that's focused on creating inclusive digital spaces, especially for youth. It's backed by Melinda Gates and then I'm also working on a book and I'm an investor and I advise a few other companies. Great, thank you. Before I ask you all a couple of questions, Morgan, we talked a little bit about this on the prep call, but there's a really interesting story behind you founding your company. Can you talk about that a little bit? Absolutely, happy to. So I'm a biracial woman. I was born in North Carolina and my dad is a Trump supporter. He's white and my mom is black and she's a Democrat. They're very divorced. They divorced a long, long time ago. That's always the question people ask me is, how are they still together? I'm like, oh no, they're not. But they did stay together for a majority of my childhood and what that really showed me growing up, every single time I would ask them a question, whether it be around the school system and busing or the way that we were supposed to manage finances, the answers I would get were always completely different and what I saw was that two different people can have completely different perspectives on the exact same point, depending on their life experiences and how they got to that perspective. And so me growing up in this environment, I always thought I was self-aware of my own biases and beliefs and how those interacted with each other. And then when I went to university, I moved abroad and I ended up befriending somebody who was ethnically Ethiopian but born in Sweden and I made a comment to her that I didn't realize at the time was wrong until she called me out on it and she was not just mad at me, but she was hurt. And when she was hurt, I had to really question myself. It's a comment that I'm so embarrassed to this day that I said, and I really had to question myself and I realized a few things, which is that feelings are subjective, meaning each of us with our own personal experience, it informs the way that we come to know a feeling. So everybody has a different version of the word discomfort. And then I also came to realize different things like in order for us to feel compelled, we have to feel like a problem impacts us. So of course being a woman, having my own life experiences with things like gender normative stereotyping, discrimination, variations of harassment, I realized that in order for people to have empathy and awareness and be able to make a change, we needed to really address this concept of communal language, then allowing people to learn new behaviors effectively. It's so interesting because for those who heard my colleague Chelsea Peters talk, one of the things we talk about at the foundation a lot, what she just underscored is how do we get people to talk, right? And I think in the work around racial equity, diversity, equity and inclusion, I've been doing this a long time and I think that is the challenge, that is the work to get us to be able to learn the different perspectives. But I appreciate something you just said, which is the humility when you do make a mistake, right? Because I think we all get in this positionality sometimes and we don't always go to that place of learning. So I'm gonna ask you all a question I'm asked all the time and we could almost have this entire session about this question, which is since the summer of 2020, after the murder of George Floyd and several others, some have said that the U.S. has gone through this period of racial reckoning and we're now sort of two years, plus by the way, a global pandemic. Thank you very much, right? So all of this. So I'm curious what you all would say to people who ask about, has there been progress? What have you seen? Who wants to start? Jane Marie, any thoughts you wanna start? I think it's an interesting question. And I think when we think about how embedded systemic oppression is in every facet of this country and honestly globally, right? I think it is a large ask to say, has progress been made in two years to dissect and dismantle something that is 150, 300 years plus in the making? I will say that I think that we are in a place where we are having the right conversations, that we are elevating voices, perspective, the historical landscape of racism, anti-blackness in this country and equities in a meaningful way. I think that this work is a marathon. I think that this work is a lot of small incremental changes that ultimately will lead to massive shifts and change. And so yes, I think that there is a different level or measure of accountability than we've seen in a very, very long time. But I think the thing that we are tackling is so immense that this is hard work and long work. And I'm not completely sure if all of the right stakeholders are invested at the right level in dissecting systemic oppression that they need to be. Chad, any thoughts on this? No, I think my colleague said it wonderfully. We need to recognize the historical context of our country, right? And the historical context speaking from the nonprofit sector of the nonprofit industrial complex. And when we think about, like Jay-Marie mentioned, the anti-blackness that exists, there's a reason for it. Our country is founded on a really tragic and challenging history of inequities across multiple dimensions of diversity. I think the challenges in here in San Francisco but across the U.S. and around the world, it wasn't that we woke up to it, it was that our words needed to match a certain narrative after George Floyd was murdered. It made it harder, I think, for us to really have, in my opinion, real conversations because everyone started to understand that if you don't use certain words, you're not seeming as socially conscious, right? But it's not just the work, it's the actions. At the Y, we're trying to dive into systems change, trying to uncover the policies, practices, procedures that can help us to really do that work, and it's hard. And I think to your point, when we think about and we use words, the expectation of the people we serve, the people we employ, the people we are accountable to is that we know what we're talking about. When we say equity, when we say diversity and inclusion, when we say anti-racism as we're trying to do in the Y, the expectation is we are doing some work around that. And that's the challenging part, I think. I also think it sort of raised the stakes, right? So at the foundation, we've been working on diversity, equity, and inclusion. And it raised the stakes in terms of what our partners were wanting to hear, but also people internally, right? How are we talking about sort of what we're doing? How are we bringing this to the forefront? And one of the reasons I said yes, I mean, I'm a serial entrepreneur. I have had my own business for over 20 years. One of the reasons I said yes to the role at the foundation, and those of you who've done DEI and civil rights work will get this, is that prioritizing diversity, equity, and inclusion was put in the strategy before I even got there. You all know what that's like, right? Because my work then wasn't going to be the first X many years, making sure that it was elevated to be in the strategy. And with that shared goal that's across all of our programs, that means there's accountability related to it. That means there's evaluation related to it. That means there are conversations with each program area, which definitely takes the conversation. I want to come back to another question about partnerships, but I want to say there was an article in the Wall Street Journal, I believe, that I think captures what you all both said so interestingly. And it said that black employees, and it was talking private sector, it said black employees feel that there have been more conversations about race in the workplace, but that there's still challenges with promotion, advancement, pay equity, et cetera. So this notion of the marathon to Jane Marie to your language, right? And the systems chat I think are there. I'm gonna start with you on this one, Morgan, but we've heard and if you look at the SOCAP agenda, partnerships are really important. I know we focus a lot on partnerships. So when you think about partnerships, what are things to really think focus on in center, particularly when we're talking about, our title is innovative approaches to DEI. What would you say, Morgan? What are some of your thoughts on that? Yeah, absolutely. So I think that we live in a day and age where CSR is a part of capitalism. Within the pandemic, we saw our adoption of online usage accelerate 10 years per McKenzie, right? And so we've always appealed to global audiences. That's always been true, but it's even more true now than ever and that's never gonna change. And so as a part of that, it's understanding your audience and our audiences care about consumer or corporate social responsibility, excuse me, our audience is scared about that, right? And so an aspect of innovation and how companies can leverage that or even social entrepreneurs can leverage that, I have two really great examples. So one is a jewelry designer. It's called Pave the Way or Pave the Way, an E with a little mark over it at the end, but she donates 100% of her profits to a charity of the consumer's choice when the person purchases the necklace or the jewelry. And she has all of these different themes. So one of them is talking tools. It's oriented around feminism. She has no plan B, which is basically no plan B. It talks about everything that's going on with the earth, right? And so basically as somebody who purchases a piece of jewelry, I can choose that I want that to go to the YMCA. I want that to go to a different cause that I care about. And I think that's a really powerful example of how brands and companies can engage with their consumers. Another example would be my really good friend who recommended me for this panel today, David Simonic, who's the founder of Soapbox Soaps. He's been a long time friend and mentor to me and he founded a company where for every single item that you buy, they donate an item and they focus on soaps, hair products, et cetera. So they allow people the gift of cleanliness and of washing our hands, which for so many of us, that just seems like an everyday thing, but for a significant portion of the world, it's not. And they enable people to have that gift every single time somebody purchases a product. And so it really doesn't take that much lift for companies and organizations in the private sector to think about how to relate to their audiences in a way where they're leveraging partnerships in a very impactful way that's powerful for different audiences. Before, Jamie, I'd love to hear your thoughts. I just have to say, you mentioned the jewelry company on Friday, I'm kind of annoyed at you now because I spent a lot of time on that website in the last couple of days. So I don't know, don't do it now because you're focused, but the website is quite lovely. So thank you for that. Jamie, what are your thoughts? We've talked about this, what about partnerships, particularly when you think about philanthropy? Yeah, I think by virtue of being in the philanthropic space, we do two things, right? We invest in systems level change and we are conveners. And by design, we lift up voice, we lift up best practices, we lift up the scholarship with the long-term goal of getting those pieces of information, resources and tools into the space where they are usable in a really broad and genuine way. I will say that the deeper we lean into equity as an organization, the better we understand that the true art or act of partnership is lifting up the voices of the most marginalized in a genuine way with a level of humility that mitigates the power and privilege that is embedded in what we do and gives voice to those who would not be at the table or who were voiceless by virtue of their identity, markers or positionality. And so I will say that as we think about our grant making, our programs, our policy and advocacy, and we're thinking about partnership, we are one seeking to identify who are the most marginalized voices and believing that those are truly the experts in whatever issue or focus area we are addressing and making sure that we are leveraging that, listening, hearing and receiving that and using it to inform our practices and using it to inform or influence where we situate ourselves as an organization. Chad, what might you say about that partnerships and the YMCA's work? I think Ditto to everything that Jane Marie just said, the words, especially the responsibility of partnerships to really focus on those that are most marginalized. I think in the nonprofit sector, partnerships, they provide space, they provide accountability and they provide impact. I think human beings, all of us are much more thoughtful now about where we spend every dollar, about where we work, about where we volunteer, about where we shop, about where we everything to your point. I think partnerships across sectors now are the only way to the earlier question that we'll be able to actually create real change because nobody's sector is doing okay. We're all not doing okay. And I think that when we think about the dynamic of two organizations, as you modeled, both of you modeled across sectors, that's how we can actually push each other's organizations to grow, right? If Jane Marie and my organization, if the Y, and our sister family are able to really make sure that we're holding each other accountable, you could push the Y to do more than we can do internally. Maybe we can push you to do more. And that's, I think, the beauty when we think about the folks that are in this room and across all sectors, what really is the magic of the courage of leaning into those conversations that we're maybe not even safe inside our own org, but we're gonna have them in a room like this, thereby could be real change. And the other thing I'd just like to add is that this might be a given, but who is the most marginalized? Changes, depending on the contents, context, community, focus area. And so I think that we should not take for granted that we always know who the most marginalized is. And we need to do the good footwork to find out who those people groups are and make sure that we are meeting them where they're at and giving them the opportunity to be elevated and heard. Yeah, and I think we talk about this a lot internally and, Jamie, we've talked about this. That power privilege is inherent in philanthropy. It's there, so we don't try to skirt it, right? But how do we use perhaps where we are and the tables where we are to be able to bring other voices and maybe to open the door? I mean, that's what actually we've had to do in parts of the US. I also think about some of the work we're doing in Northwest Arkansas. Recently, there was a diversity report released in Northwest Arkansas, which is one of our key areas. And it talked about Latino people, Latino communities being the fastest growing community. Well, someone from New York, I was like, yeah, right? You know, this notion of we know this, but we're being really strategic about having conversations with people and saying, well, what does this mean for us, right? You know, I'm in Bentonville, Arkansas once a month, having conversations with members of Latino-serving organizations, not deciding what we think capacity building looks like, but sort of saying, what's the capacity building we can think about together? Bringing in some partners who are Latino to sort of challenge us, maybe, in some of the ways we've been thinking. So I think just being aware of those dynamics that you both named. I'm gonna ask you this, you know, I have a couple of questions for each of you individually that I wanna go to the table groups. But, Jane Marie, just I know there's been a lot that your organization has done and it's been very intentional in terms of the approach. We were just talking outside about a speaker that you're bringing in that I wanna hear how it goes. But can you talk a little bit about the journey because you all really set things out with measurement attached to it that I think would be helpful for people to hear? Yeah, thanks for the question, Tanya. So I will say this, I think built into our grantmaking areas was a commitment to equity. So we have four grantmaking areas that are focused on systemic change around equity. But I think what we realized about three years ago was that there are ways in which we were not fully living into that. And we wanted to hold ourselves accountable to doing that as an organization. And so what I would say the starting point was is a non-traditional starting point, right? It was expanding our grantmaking to include issues related to equity. So that would be education, criminal justice, gender and reproductive equity and democracy and voting rights. And then we started to do an assessment of where we were as an organization. And this was a really informal assessment. But we started to think about one, does our fully fleshed out and articulated commitment to equity truly reflect what we believe? And we thought that it did. And then we started to think about if we are going to dig deeper, if we are going to stretch as an organization, are we all equipped personally in our own individual equity journeys to be good leaders and mentors to do that? And so we started with one having a vision for what equity would look like as for us internally as an organization and what it would look like for us to exist in the philanthropic space as models for equity. And then we did equity coaching for our executive leadership team, our chair, any leaders that we felt like would be leading this work. After that, we did a series of cultural assessments. We conducted an equity audit to look at our systems and practices to determine how well they leaned into our commitment to equity, how well they reflected it. If our organization, you were to access it and felt like we were living up into it, we did a listening tour in which we engaged about 25% of our organization in individualized interviews and conversations around how they perceive our culture, how they see and fit and connect to our organization. And that was synthesized into a fully fleshed out report. The last thing that we did in terms of cultural assessments was an equity lens map. And those are individual like equity assessments in which we asked and it was voluntary and we had over 70% of our organization complete them and we received an aggregate of that. And my work was to take all of that data and synthesize it and really be able to articulate for our leadership where we were thriving and what were our areas of growth. And I would say that led into a ready change team which was 23 members, cross-sectional from across our organization, different identity markers. We have five offices across the US, different offices, different backgrounds on a lot of different levels. It included our entire, I wanna repeat, our entire executive team and our chair. And we met monthly to dig into the data to better understand the narratives around who we were as an organization. And we used that to create three different working groups that we felt like reflected what we learned. There was a HR and talent or work experience working group. There was a learning and healing journey to working group and there was a leveraging diverse voices working group. And those working groups worked so diligently to really make proposals around the ways in which we could shift and change not only internally but externally. And I will say that we are at a phase in our work now where I am working with a new ready change team, our executive team and chair cross-functionally within our talent and HR impact and operations, teams as well as with our grant-making teams to think about how we implement some of the things that were recommended in our proposal. And we are now, and this might be non-traditional in terms of often how strategies are developed, we are now working on our ready strategic plan, which will be our short and long-term goals around how we assess and make change on where we see our gaps in us leaning deeply into our commitment to equity. So we are in a different phase in this work and I would still argue early in this work. I will say the hallmarks of where we are are, one, making sure we have the foundational systems and practices to support our commitment to equity. And I would say, two, embarking together, regardless of where you're situated in your own personal equity journey on learning and healing collectively and building a culture where we can agree to disagree. We can have difficult conversations with the angle of continuing to serve our communities of practice. I mean, I hope you all, I always, when I ask that question, I know it's a lot, but that, to me, is something to think about, right? Just all those pieces. The other thing I think you did, and I think we model this by the learning that we do, is even when we had our prep call, we talked about what if one of us said something that we disagreed with? And Jamie Marie said, well, hey, here are some practices that we use internally that we can then show so that we can model on stage, we don't have to agree, but how do we sort of maybe disagree respectfully? I wanna ask two questions, the last two questions, and then we'll go to the group and then come back to you all. So Chad, I noticed in your Zoom signature and in your bio and on LinkedIn, you haven't written that you're an aspiring anti-racist. What does that mean to you? Yeah, so I think, you know, a lot of times in the field of diversity, equity, inclusion, and this is just my opinion, so my colleagues might disagree on that, or you might disagree, that's totally cool, but I think sometimes folks will say that they're an expert in the field of diversity, equity, inclusion. Just my opinion, if diversity is about humanity and if equity is a process of addressing every system in the entire world, then who's an expert in all of humanity and every system in the world? We can have experience, we can aspire, but I think we have to name both what we think we know and also sometimes in our seats, like you both mentioned, we might be taking up space from others by virtue of the roles that we hold and the titles that we hold and the privilege that comes with that, we have a responsibility to not gatekeep, right? And when we think about aspiring, sometimes money can be healing, money can be harmful. And if we think about really tying money in its current context and inflation, I'm sure we're all paying more for everything. Every dollar means more in that. And so I think for me, aspiring anti-racist means that I'm trying to, in every way, shape, or form, humanize what has been dehumanized. And race has, as a dehumanizing social-political construct is defined by the People's Institute, one of the wise national partners in that, really is something that we can only break through by building community, by being in community, by talking and learning to other stories. Thank you for that. So Mauryan, you're not just a founder, but you're an investor. So when you think about investing, how do you think about identifying companies or organizations that really prioritize diversity, equity, and inclusion? Absolutely. So when I was thinking about my answer to this question, I was really thinking there's two sides to this coin. So I'll just give a quick story and then talk about how there's two sides to this coin. So I was presented with an opportunity to angel invest into a company and I passed on it because there was no diversity on the team. And then 12 months later, the company IPOed. And so I sit here and I question other investors for sometimes making decisions whether or not backing diverse founders or teams with diversity. And then when you think about the startup space and the Silicon Valley space, and this might be a bit of a contrarian opinion considering I'm also a founder, but when you think about Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley in the way that it's structured from a fund perspective is that you have to make the bets that basically return back the fund. And so it puts investors in a really, really difficult place, just in general. And so it's one of those things where I think in A, there needs to be a lot more accountability in Silicon Valley and I think that there have been some conversations around that and a lot more accountability for investors in general, because there are tons of investors outside of Silicon Valley. So I will not say it's just there. But then on the other side of the coin, I think B, when I think about it, I think about a few different things. I think about, I love access to information. I love democracy. So anything that allows for groups of people or various audiences to have access to new systems, new ways to interact with healthcare, new ways to service, maybe supporting the feminine reproductive system, whatever it may be. And so I always think about that from a mission alignment perspective. I love investing in teams that have diversity on them. And then the other thing I think about as well is, one of the companies that Angel invested in, he's a really good friend, but he's a white founder. And when I think about it, he's one of my strongest mentors. So it's also, how does the founder pay it forward? Because with the structures and systems that are in place, and unfortunately with the amount of funding, 0.06% goes to black women, 2.2% goes to female founders. And those numbers have barely changed in the last two years. So when you think about it, how do founders pay it forward outside of what criteria do they have and how well do they performance? How do they pay it forward? Do they mentor other founders? Do they actually invest their time into increasing access and increasing resources for other founders who maybe want to come in and may not necessarily know everything, but want to come into the space? And so I really think about the personality side of things as well when I think about investing. Thank you. So now's a couple of minutes for you all to connect with each other. And it's not the time to go on your phone. It's really a time to talk to each other. And I know that could be a little uncomfortable for some of us, but here are the two questions we want you to sort of talk about. And by the way, here's where you can go on EventMobi and there's a chat function on EventMobi so you can either answer it there or take some notes at your table. So one, what do effective partnerships look like for you? And how do you address privilege and power? So what do effective partnerships look like for you and how do you address privilege and power? And then the question that all of us probably get asked often, which is, how might you think about progress or success in diversity, equity, and inclusion work? Yes, exactly. That's the big question. I heard that comment, yes. So I'll ring the bell in a couple of minutes just to bring us back, but those two, so what do effective partnerships look like? How do you address power and privilege? And how might you think about success in diversity, equity, and inclusion work? Starting now, you can either take notes on the, you know, way we all know or go to the app in the chat function. Thanks. What's this getting from, if you can give advice to an organization, just quickly, some of the key things they wanna think about, right? I think it could be helpful. In the scheme of the world, when we do this again, I'm a morning person. Oh, hi. That's so funny. Really. And right now, body clock time. Now times. This is my first time. Is it really here? Exactly, on the same way. I'm like, after like four o'clock, I come alive up to like three. Usually, I'm the same way, but I'm a little out of storage. Okay, I can't, nothing is the same, but we can do it. No, I'm much better in the morning. It's just, yeah. But like, and when I was younger, it was like five, 30, six, like, and my body wouldn't matter what. And this morning, I got it, I took a red eye. It was like, yeah. Oh my gosh. I woke, it was what time was it, maybe it's five, 36, I woke up, it was like, nope, that's it. Okay. How long did you get this? Like just a couple, like three and a half hours, and then I slept a couple of hours on a plane. Yeah, I'm used to it from global travel, to be honest. Like, yeah, I'll crash though. I told Jay-Marie I was like, after this, like, yeah. I've had two pre-workouts, like the exact opposite. Yeah, David knows. I love coffee, and I love like nighttime, I mean nighttime. I did coffee, my hotel is good coffee. That's when I know I needed it, either. I feel like in a minute, I'm gonna ring the bell, and then, it's not a lot of time, but I'll give him a two minute warning soon. Especially since we don't know when we're ending. Yeah. This woman, this woman, she's sitting, this woman is sitting 12 o'clock, she's gonna be putting up to it. And I think we're probably the last thing probably before a reception or something. We'll see the energy. Yeah. If people start pontificing, wow. So two more minutes, two more minutes. I know, that's what it was. I'm a mindfulness practitioner, and it came from one of my first Buddhist retreats. That's so cool. And this was like over 10, 12, 13 years ago. And when I started using it in sessions, and people started asking me, I'm talking about gang members, when I work with them and they'd be like, Miss, can you ring the bell? And I was like, oh, there's something here. And then I was working in Argentina with a proper group, and this guy had heard me speak, and he was like, do you have the bell? It's a fascinating thing, yeah. And I respect it, I understand. And mindfulness retreats, when you ring the bell, of course, it's to take a deep breath, so I'll say anyway. I meditate every single day sometimes, two or three times a day, so I'm like, man, it's not space. I've done a lot of digital meditation. Well, and you're in LA, you have like a lot. Not that we don't in New York, but LA has a lot of really... That's why I like LA, yeah. I've done like, which I would never admit to anyone, but I've done like plant medicine, I've done like a whole damn bit of everything. So like, you know. But LA's sort of a big step. It's like, you have everything. Like I always like to go to supermarkets and help with stores there, because you get to perform. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So we have someone who's going to be with a mic. So we just want to get, we don't have time to sort of have report outs, but anybody, any table, want to share some of their conversation or thoughts with a larger group? If you can just raise your hand and we'll come to you with the mic. So right there in front of us, thank you. So again, we're just asking you to keep a little succinct. Tell us like what you discussed in relationship to those questions. Wonderful, thank you. I'm Jacques Filipe Vellier. I run a venture fund called Good Light Capital. We back underrepresented founders who are solving some of the greatest challenges of our time, climate, health, education, things of that sort. I was the resident scribe here and the thoughts of my dear co-table lists, if you will, on effective partnership, open dialogue and conversation as well as shared values to all parties such that everyone feels like they're winning and they're getting something out of that partnership. And then kind of introspection and really being clear on what one's objectives are and what your core values are such that when you go into those conversations you stay within the lines and you stay true to who you are. With respect to power and privilege, trust helps to level the playing field and really having a sense for who you're interacting with and why is something to be considerate of. And the last point that you raised around what success looks like, we didn't actually get to cover that. So I figure I'll share my own opinion there. And so my view on success is somewhat different from the traditional Western model. And then I think typically we focus on clear objectives that we look to achieve and that's how we measure success. I find that to be quite flat and uninspiring and doesn't actually leave room for happiness and joy. And so I think it's about the journey and it's about going 100% really following your pursuits. Sometimes one might share that and the idea might be that you lack ambition but the reality is having kind of been on that side of things for a long time. If you really go 100% you're typically gonna do a lot better than you otherwise would have if you follow the traditional models around competition and just trying to do better than someone else. So success I believe is around really being committed and going 100% towards your pursuits. Thanks. Thank you. Any other table? Thank you for that. Another table, want to share some of their conversation. Anybody else? Thank you. Good afternoon, I don't know what time it is. Hi, my name is Jay Wilson. I'm the founder of Melanated Moms. I'm super excited about this. So we had a really good discussion. We did not get to the second question also. But our general consensus was really talking about how leveling the playing field with the people who are consuming whatever that task is is actually what creates the trust that you were talking about, sir. I don't know your name, sorry. Jacques Philippe. But knowing that that level of investment is actually what creates that change and it creates a bigger opportunity for people to feel that they are going into a space that actually values them and values their opinions, right? But it also shows how much investment you're allowing each of the participants to have because they both are trying to go towards the same goal and that is equitable, right? So you're giving people what they need, not just a bunch of items and saying here, right? So that was what we kind of covered. Did I miss something? No, all right, thank you. Great, thank you. Thank you. Any other table? If I go back to the panelists for a moment. No? So you know, it's interesting to hear what you both said. So one of my mentors, anybody here from Boston? Boston, anyone? So one of my mentors is and teachers and just people who've inspired me has been Mel King who's a civil rights leader, first black person to run for mayor in the city of Boston has just taught me a tremendous amount. One of the things he always says is that if you're really listening, then you have a willingness to change your mind. And I think about that, right? Like if I'm really listening, what am I hearing and what people are saying and who has that dynamic? And I was teaching yesterday before I came here and I teach a course on global workplace and we were talking about cross-cultural dynamics. And out of a class of 25, only two people were from the United States. And it was this fascinating conversation around what they were experiencing in this US university and trying to manage. And I was so present to like things we take for granted. Like small talk is driving them bananas, right? And you know what, one of them said, several of them said, here when someone asks you how they're doing, you're doing, they're walking away before you answer. And I thought about us sitting down at a table with people who we say we wanna be in partnership with not thinking about some of those little things that we just assume because they're part of our culture or part of the way we run businesses or part of the way we run meetings, right? So that comes up for me. The other thing we wanted to, I get that the big question around success and I'm not gonna sort of put you all in the spot. I think one of the things we talked about, those of us in the philanthropy space in particular, in the last two years, one of the things that really concerned me that people would say would be success would be if we only had people of color, like I'm gonna, this is gonna be it if we fund organizations led by people of color. And my colleagues can tell you internally, I kept saying that is not the only thing we wanna think about because what if that person leaves? Is there a strategy? Is there a bench? Is there a commitment to this, right? Of course representation is important but the structure piece also has to be something we take into account. So I'm gonna ask you all esteemed panelists, if there's an organization that's really thinking about this wants to go deeper, you all have done this in different ways and I'm just curious what would be some coaching or advice you would give to an organization around how to do this? Chad, I'll start with you and come down this way. So I think folks have already said it. I think the advice would be to have conversations with folks that come from different perspectives than your own to dialogue with those in the communities and stakeholders that we're trying to serve or sell things to our employee and to really, somebody said earlier, be in community and listen, not just be there sort of performance because we think we have to but really try to build that human connection. The second piece is trying to look at what is the purpose, what's the why? Why are we doing the work? Is it that we're trying to better the quality of life of the why we're trying to do? Or is it we're trying to say that we have a DEI practice? Is it that we want to sound the right way or is it really something deeper? And I think that's the piece is trying to figure out and it's okay to name what it is. There's nothing wrong with any entry point in this work but it is important that we name where that is. Thank you. So I think it's an interesting question. And I will not be redundant and I think I agree with what Chad said. I will dig deeper into your last statement. I think the first question that the organization needs to ask is are we willing to do the hard work that it will take to be an organization that is equitable and inclusive and lives into the words on paper? Because not every organization is primed to do this. And I have shared this with Tanya. I say this all the time. I feel really blessed to be leading this work at an organization where the commitment to equity starts at our chair and trickles down. Which means that it is part of the foundation of who we are, what we're trying to do. And she is willing to push and stretch and do the hard work to get there. And I don't think that's true for every organization. And so it's really doing a true and genuine assessment of where you're at and where you aspire to be. And if you're willing to actually do the work that it takes to get there. The other thing that I will say is make sure that you build the frameworks, tools, systems and practices that will serve as a strong foundation for the work to build. And to your point, Tanya, not be dependent on a person because the accountability comes from the system, not from people. I truly believe that. And if you don't have the right systems in place, it will fall apart when you don't have the right person leading this work. The last thing that I will say is like, while this idea or metric for success can be nebulous or can be difficult to articulate, I think it's really important that you have measures for success. And I say this as a researcher, that you have measures for success that are both qualitative and quantitative. And you have a very clear timeline for how often you are going to assess your progress and how willing you are to make adjustments if the goals and metrics that you have set are not accurate. And then the last thing that I will say is be committed to starting every day with the mentality of hope, grace, and forgiveness and be willing to recommit to that every single day. I have many things to say and a couple of things to add that echo some of the things that have been said. So tied to accountability and metrics, a very common practice is to, or increasingly common I should say, is to actually tie accountability goals to performance within your workforce and then of course tie that to bonus potential. So actually take the goals and metrics that you have and hold your employees accountable for them. So that's an increasingly common practice. A couple other things I would say is think about the sustainability aspect. So one of the things that we recently started doing and it was actually a collaboration that we thought of in conjunction with one of our clients is we actually incorporate sustainability exercises where after every single thing that we do we task employees with now assess, especially if you're a manager or leader, assess your practices that you have. If you're an employee, maybe assess one of the company's rules and tell us where you might see bias or where you might see one of these things coming into play. And it allows employees to critically think about the organization and actually provide recommendations and it allows you to put things into practice. So it helps with the sustainability aspect. Another thing I would say is a lot of employees, companies, organizations, et cetera, the conversation component is really important but a lot of people are scared of conversations and there's kind of like, there's not a lot of clarity around the right way to have conversations. So one of the experiences that we have is actually called carrying the burden of racism and it's around these employees who are unpacking Black Lives Matter and a ton of current events and discrimination towards Asian populations during COVID-19 and this employee sits there and asks and she goes, well, like, hey, you're Black, you explain it to me, right? And so one of the things that we have to think about is that just first of all, just because somebody is a part of a group does not mean that they can speak on behalf of everyone from the group. Second of all, they're probably already having their own experience around what's happening if they see something in the news because they relate to it in a different way. And so asking them a question puts an emotional burden on them on top of whatever they're already going through. But then the other side of the coin is, we shouldn't shy away from having the conversations. There are ways that you can ask people, hey, would you be willing to engage in a conversation with me around this, right? Get consent and then beyond that, there are ways that companies can actually facilitate those conversations and have an open channel of communication because so much of it's around perspective and so much of it's around relatability and being able to understand each other. And so really facilitating that for your employees is important and making sure that you provide some structure around that, I would say is really important. So those are a few of my tips. Can I just really quickly add something or lift up something that Morgan said? I think it's really, I appreciate you highlighting being clear about where the burden of the work sits and who should not be carrying it. So we have a goals and guardrails document where we very clearly and deeply outline our commitment to equity and one of the statements in there is that this work will not be held by BIPOC individuals and that was our first draft. And recently we went back and looked at the same statement and there were two things that we edited and changed. One was not just that the work should not be owned, we added and also be owned by our white colleagues, which is important and we highlighted both the joy and the burden of the work. And this inclusion of the word joy is really important, but it's a reminder that this is difficult work and so often this difficult work has rested on marginalized communities. And if you're gonna do this work and do it well, you need to shift that paradigm. You know, I think when a lot was happening in our country in the summer of 2020, I kept posting on social media, like give flowers, champagne, confetti, hugs, and respect to the people doing this work in your organization. Because for so many years they've been invisible. You know, people would ask me what I do and people would be like, oh, right, after the last couple of years in this country, now people understand and I think they're sort of making sure that people who are doing this work are not the only people because I think one, it's burnout, but two, it sort of takes away from the accountability as a community. So I think what we've tried to do is my role is, yes, looking at DEI at our foundation, my role is actually a non-traditional DEI practitioner in that I'm focused on partnerships in our grant making, right, and then there's the other work that's done internally by others so that we can share it, which I think is important. So can you all join me in thanking our panelists, please, for sharing our expertise and experience? Thank you, thank you, thank you. So thank you for being here. We hope you enjoy the rest of the conference. Thanks so much.