 Diversity and inclusion, hot topics in corporate culture here in these United States, particularly this time as we adjust to a global pandemic and racial tension throughout the United States, here to discuss two experts in the field who have a company dedicated to helping corporations and businesses better define diversity and inclusion. Both happen to be HBCU graduates out of the great city of Detroit. Summer Woods and Dr. Michelle Lee Watts, they are the proprietors of the Woods-Watt Effect, which you can find at woodswideeffect.com. As you can see from your screen, proud graduates of North Carolina A&T and Talladega respectively. So sisters, I appreciate you coming on today. Thank you so much. Thank you for having us. So first, let's talk about your company. First, it is so wonderful to see sisters as you always do in our communities leading in so many spaces, but particularly in this realm of diversity and inclusion and equity. What is it that you noticed was a gap in corporate culture and how did you two design or figure out like, hey, there's something that we can do about it to help companies push into the right way to rethink diversity and inclusion, particularly for people of color? Can you see us, Summer? So I think for the most part, for our perspective is that there's not necessarily a lot of intentionality with it. I think once all the things that are taking place and happening and people trying to make some different decisions in their company and make some pivots, they approach it the same way. The approach is we're gonna have training and that's about it. So from my perspective, we really wanted to do something as we've done a lot of projects and organizations we've been a part of is to really find what the problem is to dismantle the system, the systemic isms, racism, gender, all the isms that are there, and essentially reveal from that. So that is our approach is very intentional, but it's also very unapologetic as well. And our partnership came about because we have been in so many different spaces. We've also been in the same spaces. So we met working on a project, the Detroit Super Bowl, which was hosted here in 2006. But before that work and then since that work, we have been doing things within gender, excuse me, within equity and inclusion or with an equity and inclusion lens. And so it just made sense to kind of put our lives together in this form because we've been doing the work anyway. We both come to it with slightly different experiences and slightly different perspectives on it. And so those two things together make us a little bit richer as we bring our own personal and professional experiences to bear. In your experience, what is the primary challenge of addressing organizational approaches to being more diverse and being more inclusive? We know they are two distinctly different things. But do you find that it's a top down process? Is it a bottom up process? Is it somewhere you meet in the middle and try to attack specific instances or sometimes specific people? How do you, in your experience, how have you found the most effective tool to addressing those kind of issues in different companies? Well, one of the things we stated is that there is a difference between diversity and inclusion. Hence the reason why we're being intentional even about our labeling, that we are in equity and inclusion consulting point because diversity allows people to use it as a metrics, right? How many women, how many black people, you could just use it as a checklist, very check the box kind of approach, which we believe the conversation of equity and inclusion is a different one, right? It is having a conversation from the top. The top is a part of it. But those that are the managers and everyone that's a part of it, of those organizations, have to be a part of the process as well as the solution to be able to contribute to the solution. So the challenge that I've seen in a lot of organizations, sometimes it starts at the top, right? Like who is committed in order to do this work? Are they listening to their employees, to their customers, to their clients? Are they understanding what they don't know? And sometimes I don't think that there's always the lens that leadership looks through, but leadership absolutely makes the difference. If the leadership is the one that is saying this is what we're going to do, we're going to invest in it because doing equity and inclusion is not just having somebody who's in a position as a director or a VP or your chief diversity officer. If they don't have support, they don't have resources and they're not going to be successful. And so that is important that the individuals at the top, those that's controlling the budget is looking to actually invest in this work that has to be done because it's so many different fractions. It's not just talent acquisition and HR, but it truly is the entire organization starting at the top. A lot of times the conversation starts at the bottom, right? It starts at sometimes the lowest rung or within a group and then it has to move up to the top, but the top definitely in some of the state it has to embrace it. But they also have to be willing to acknowledge what they don't know, right? And so people think they're all, we all think we're really good humans that we have the best intentions, we would never treat anybody poorly, but without recognizing individual histories that we bring, right? So whether you're a white, black, a woman, Latina, LGBT community, like we all are bringing all of those things to our experiences. And if we're not willing to look and listen to others' perspectives and we keep doing what we've always done because it's always worked, right? That is what leads people down these dangerous dark paths and people have to be willing to challenge themselves, right? And so people aren't willing to stop and listen and say, okay, I might not know something, right? That can be a barrier to doing this work. And so as Summer mentioned, we really wanna be very intentional in those conversations to say, we know you don't know everything and that's okay. And we're here to help you understand what you don't know and what you need to know to move into this so that the culture of your organization is about equity inclusion. Not that you just go out and hire a DEI person that it is within your company's DNA. Do you find that people reach out to you for consultation and guidance in the midst of a hurricane? Like something is going terribly wrong or do they try to be preemptively wise and say, you know what, it would be helpful if our people could get more exposure to these kind of conversation and this kind of work? Particularly now, particularly in the last two years, are people calling you when they've already effed up or are they saying, I don't wanna eff up in the future. So y'all come on in. Well, I think as a reason, I mean, one, we just launched our company together as a reason, but we've both been doing the work for 25 years. But it definitely is a different conversation now, right? I do think that what happened with George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, all these, just the injustice that it is, the interesting thing is that COVID made people sit down and watch what was happening, right? The things that we have known as black people, like we're like, oh yeah, like this has been happening. It's been going on, right? COVID literally allowed us to sit the nation, the world to sit that it did not allow companies, organizations, institutions to force people to say something, to address it, even if they didn't necessarily have a plan. So yeah, it definitely has triggered the conversation, a lot differently. Some people who are in the space is funny because they're like, oh, this is great. You're getting in the space now that it's so much we need you. And I was like, I don't know, we've been in this space, right? It didn't even look different because people wanna call this out to be something different. And to Michelle's point, it is supposed to be in the fabric of organizations. It is supposed to be in how they do everything. And so, and that's what we've done in every place that we've ever occupied is we've made sure, but now we were like, let's be more intentional and I'm not mad at it. But just as it was years ago, that the hot thing in marketing was to have the multicultural marketing agencies to have these agencies that were marketing and speaking to a different demographic, then it shifted. Then people said, well, we don't necessarily need to talk to black and brown communities differently. We can go ahead and use the general marketing approach. And then it stopped. Now all of a sudden, they're starting to have a conversation going back that you're starting to have these conversations about multicultural. But we hope that this conversation doesn't stop because when you stop, go, stop, go, you're never gonna be able to find a solution if we do when it's hot, when it's not, versus to have to continue them to continue on. And COVID does play a role in extending this conversation. So if you think back to the Me Too movement, a lot of energy, a lot of passion, and what was there real change that happened out of that? Were there councils set up? Were there committees organized within organizations? Were there documentaries made? And so you can see now that this intentionality around, particularly right now, race is partly because people had to just sit and watch and then reflect. And so even as people's families have, people are not speaking to family members for, because of different things that people were posting and reactions to the Black Lives Matter movement, it has been an important part of, or is going to be an important part of our country's history of what happened because of COVID, right? That we were able to sit down and we had to have these hard conversations that we might not have had because the next thing was coming to take over social media or to take our eyes off the ball, so to speak. Does your calming in the South kind of influence the way that even in Detroit, even in the Midwest, that you look at helping folks to understand equity, inclusion, microaggressions, all those kind of cultural things? Is there a little bit of the DNA that you built up over your time in the South helpful now? You know, it's interesting because I always see people, that I think that Southern Black people are the most magical people I've ever met in my life. And Caledonia is a small little city in Alabama, which has a lot of history. The one thing that's so beautiful about attending an agency, you expressly a small one, but in these rural towns in Mississippi and Alabama, and some of the Louisiana, these rural towns, is that it is probably one of the times in my life where you're gonna get to the closest of the diaspora, of the African diaspora, food, accent, hospitality, like certain things in terms of who we are as African people, right? The South and some of these smaller towns, they give you that. For me, it was coming from a high school that was a majority white high school, where I dealt with all the microaggressions, which I didn't know at 14, 16, 17 years as an adult. I mean, I knew it was some like, oh, you know, this is some, but going to Talladega balanced that for me. You know what I mean? Like if anything, what it did for me in the approach of the work is being in Detroit and Detroit being such a black city, that was the, that's what's so beautiful about the city that I love that you just show up unapologetically who you are. And even when I went to this white high school, I still showed up unapologetically who I was. And once in Talladega, it was a little different because the energy was a little different, it was a little slower, but it was the balance of who we are that allowed me to connect in to a lot of things of who we are as African people. And that part has always played a lens in terms of that we are not monolithic, you know what I mean? Going to an HBCU, you see that we're not monolithic, we're not all the same. And sometimes being in Detroit, you know, you kind of saw the same, you had your guest dreams, you had that nice green, forest green, culture first, like everybody kind of, but going to an HBCU, especially in this rural town, you were like, whoa, which is, we're different. Which allowed me to just look and appreciate us more as a diaspora. So my experience, so I grew up in Virginia, so I was already in the South, but grew up in the suburbs, my K through 12 experiences were a majority white schools. And so I grew up around Confederate flags, right? They were on my high school classmates' cars. Robert E. Lee is a prominent statue or was, you know, in the city and all around it. And then going to North Carolina A&T to be at an HBCU, as Summer said, you know, it's just a different feeling, right? You just get a different experience. But I credit, you know, all of my success to starting at A&T. And so the things that I've done since then have been completely informed by my experiences, you know, at an HBCU. How I teach my students, right? The way I interact with my students is based around the hug, right? That you get from HBCU, from all your professors and all the faculty. And so, you know, that hit my history of my family in the South and what they had to, you know, fight for, being in the South, protesting, marching the streets, you know, almost getting arrested, like all of that, you know, gets celebrated at an HBCU, where those aren't stories I probably even ever mentioned in my K through 12 experience, right? Because it wasn't necessarily a time or place for it to bring up. I don't remember actually celebrating Black History Month, we probably did, but I don't have strong, you know, recollections of that. And so attending an HBCU for someone who was even, right, in a strong, you know, family that a lot of history just opens your eyes to different things and different approaches to the world. And so both of us are big fans of, you know, having young people go to HBCUs, make sure they consider them because it is just a different perspective that is gonna change how you get the world going forward. We obviously are folks who are watching this, and we need to pay for y'all services. So I won't ask too much about the secret sauce that y'all offer companies and organizations, but I will ask you, is there one training or is there one conversation or one exercise or one initiative that you guys have launched where you said, damn, this thing really works. If people had more exposure to this kind of activity and this kind of energy, the world would be a different place. Is there, for each of you, is there something that sticks out to you that says, yes, our work is meaningful and it took root in somebody, and somebody's life is gonna be different because of what we did? Well, I think what's important for us is one, we don't use the word training, right? You can't train someone into equity and inclusion. Those are experiences. And so we do conversations, right? Change happens at the speed of relationships, right? It doesn't happen at the speed of, you know, non-unit training. And so people have to be invested and spend time with each other, right? And those conversations are where the stories get told where people begin to accept other people's experiences. And even if they don't agree, you know what? I understand. I see why your perspective is different. It's not my experience, but I see I'm listening to what yours is. And that only happens if we spend time together. So those conversations is one of those areas where you see the richness and you see the growth of someone, you know, through this work. I think it's also about organizations really being reflective on the why, right? Like, why are you doing this part? You know, what are you looking to, like that is a part of it and how does it tie into the values of organizations? Because sometimes people say we want equity and it's nowhere listed, reflected into what they do. And so I think some, you know, when you talk about the secret sauce and what that looks like is the conversation, but it's also asking, you know, some hard questions. And sometimes when you ask the why, there's some hard conversations and questions that come with it. We have to be okay to be comfortable and uncomfortable conversation. We have to be, and I think data, like you got to have data. You got to know where you're starting. You got to look at, you know, what that looks like, how you can change it like that does become a part of just organizational change. I think a lot of times organizations want to come in and not do, you know, just do the work and they haven't done an assessment. They haven't looked at the history as to how and how they ended up to, you know, to get to their why. Because a lot of times your why, where you are now is crafted and shifted by a lot of things as to what you did. You need to look at what you have done in order to really get to what your why is now and how do you get to, you know, get into a more inclusive and equitable organization which quite honestly as we talk about all the time, that there is a return on that investment. You have a greater return on your investment when you're more inclusive because people want to be there because they're working there. You have different perspectives at the table. And again, going to the conversation of HBCUs and learning where we're not monolithic, right? When you don't, when you have different perspectives from all different cultural backgrounds, all different socioeconomic experiences, your work is not going to be monolithic. Your customer, your customer base is not going to be monolithic. But if everybody on the table is the same, then what makes for a service or product to be different if everybody is around the table with the same perspective?