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hi my name is stephanie creary and i'm assistant professor of management at the
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wharton school university of pennsylvania and i'm delighted to be here today with gwen houston who is
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consultant advisor committed to issues of diversity equity inclusion for over 20 years
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she was a business leader and a former chief diversity officer for several global corporations
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gwen we're so excited to have you here and to learn from you our topic today is is around the broad
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idea of creating equity and opportunity no small feat um in corporations today but we're
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interested in getting your insights on this topic um what you have had to deal with and address in the past our
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current times that we're dealing with now as issues of racial injustice and racism have become
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exacerbated and magnified on the global stage and certainly our future is it hopeful
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and what do we have to think about that so that's sort of going to be the flow
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of our conversation today um and i'm just happy to have you here uh you wrote this brilliant piece
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uh it's called corporate america's black equity gap ceos must take the lead and you posted
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it to medium on june 29th and i just it hit me i think in a really um deep place probably because you know
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i am a black woman and certainly a piece about black equity and black experiences in the workplace
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is going to feel personal but like you for for some time i've been examining these
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issues of corporate diversity inclusion and i just wanted to start by reading an
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excerpt just to set the stage for some of the more specific questions i have uh for you so in reflecting on the past
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here's what you said for decades now corporate diversity equity and inclusion
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programs have been in place across various u.s industries but the level of sustainable commitment
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from leadership has edged and flowed dramatically as a retired corporate business leader and
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former chief diversity officer for several global corporations this has been my life's work although
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diversity practitioners have effectively proven the business value of dei initiatives
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very few companies and organizations have made meaningful strides to improve the workplace and then you go on to say
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that some industries are at the beginning of this work and some but many are making little to no
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meaningful change so let's start there with that sort of i i often like to refer to things as you know
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pre-summer of 2020. that was certainly the situation can we talk a little bit about the racial
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equity problem for black professionals in the corporate sector historically what is this problem
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and how bad has it been well with first of all thanks for having me stephanie it's wonderful
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to engage in this type of conversation because it is it's so timely it's so urgent it's so
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relevant and boy is it real uh so when it comes to talking about you know the whole issue of racial equity
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and and black professionals in the workplace what i think what strikes me in terms of
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how severe and how how bad it is is that even after a generation of very well-educated and
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um and extraordinarily talented black professionals have forged a path through corporate
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america and with another generation following we still don't see significant and sustainable
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progress case in point in 2014 black ceos made up about 1.5 close to 2 percent of the fortune 500 today that number is
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only four black ceos making up less than one percent of the fortune 500 population so we're not moving in the
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right direction you know we're losing ground and it's this constant feeling of
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you know two steps forward three steps back when it comes to to our our success in the workplace
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and i think that's what's uh what's really glaring for me also when you look at the the nation's
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largest uh healthcare companies so you have you know cvs uh they have no black executives on
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their senior leadership team what's interesting is they acquired aetna a company i used to work for
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which had us a black ceo and one of the most racially and gender diverse executive
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leadership teams i've ever worked for and so you know you see that in finance
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you've got bank of america jpmorgan chase wells fargo none of them have black professionals on
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the executive team and then let's move to tech which is my last foray i retired as
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microsoft's chief diversity officer zero members of the executive leadership team
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at amazon microsoft facebook and google so this is a real glaring issue you know and i hesitate to ask this next
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question especially since you just explained a downward trend um in progress if you can you can sort
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of make a downward trend sound like problem my question is for you is maybe this is
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part of our lessons learned right what practices have have firms put in place to manage these
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issues because clearly they're they're probably not helping would be my assistant based on
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those statistics that you just shared with us but what have we been doing what have
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firms been doing and and what's been the challenge here well as you said earlier
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they have embraced i think to a significant point the value proposition of diversity
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uh equity and inclusion i think that you know that being that diverse teams are much more innovative
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much more effective at problem solving and creatively anticipating the marketplace than
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uh homogeneous teams are beyond that they've invested in in unconscious bias training there has
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been a strong recruiting efforts uh mostly at the entry level and maybe into early
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management there have even been a number of training programs leadership development
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programs there have been employee network groups to really help employees of diverse
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backgrounds uh find affinity help support the organization's business outcomes through recruiting through
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retention uh through all kinds of initiatives community based as well so there have been a lot of things done
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but i think what's missing and what what causes companies to lose um you know to the progress they've made is
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that the commitment from the top is not there and so what you and i both know is that
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effective dei engagement is leader-led to be the most progressive it has to be led from the top
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so the message is only as important as the messenger and that is why my article focused on
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ceos have to step up you know they can no longer defer to hr or suggest okay it's let's go do dni today
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this work has to be central to a company's culture as well as to is as mission
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critical for driving significant and long-term business progress that's how important it has to be so
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let's unpack that a little bit because certainly you held this title of chief diversity officer um and
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rightfully or wrongfully this is sort of what has traditionally happened and certainly has
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happened now that there's all of these chief diversity officer roles opened i guess what would be
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interesting to understand from your perspective is what are the opportunities and the
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limitations of that role and how what's the ideal working relationship between the cdo
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and the ceo because i feel like there's attention and opportunity there as we're
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having this conversation about whose responsibility is it right and so i've had the chance to work
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in companies where the cdo role reported into hr versus reporting into a business
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president or the ceo and it's an interesting difference in terms of that reporting relationship
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and i'm not so sure i'm on i lean on the side of having the cdo role always reporting the ceo because i think
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it to some extent it depends on the maturity of the company's leadership around this
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topic because i've reported into a ceo who couldn't care less that i was even there
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and really didn't exercise uh are engaged with me very often because he was uncomfortable
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with this work and it was just something that you know that the the leadership team chose to do because
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i think they were trying to force a lot of a lot of change in this on this family-owned company at the time
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what ended up happening though is that the ceo went out to a business roundtable to talk about
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diversity never consulted me to say how are we doing give me some talking points
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you know as you would expect and got blown out of the room by some of the ceos from major
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corporations and this is food and manufacturing who really were doing some things
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you know to the best of their ability and also were sharing their their deep frustrations
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with you know their sense of commitment but not necessarily seeing the the outcomes they desired the next
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thing i know i came back you know i was at the office and i was told you know ceo wants to see you and i thought i
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wonder what this is about and when i got up there he said to me you know how long have you been with the
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company and i said at two years and he said well i imagine you're about trying to leave you know i
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bet you're frustrated because i've not really connected with you i've not
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spent much time with you and he said and i just came back from a meeting and it's sad to say it took
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my own circle of ceos to really open my eyes to the importance of this work and he said if you stick it out
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with me i promise i will make it up to you and we will drive this deep and aggressively and we're going to
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start with some you know give me five things you would want to see me do tomorrow if i could things that you told
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him you wanted him to do first of all i wanted him to get a little bit of education and i
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always start with that because sometimes you know when right rightfully or wrongfully
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when ceos are empowered by the board and have high expectations they tend to imagine they should know
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everything and quite honestly nobody does and i i personally you know submit to a learner mentality
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that i'm all about always learning continuous learning so i wanted to begin with some key books
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that i thought were were important i also in one of the books i recommended at the time this was
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years ago was a book by dr beverly tatum why are all the black kids sitting together in the cafeteria and other
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stories of race and i set him up with a mentor and that mentor was dr jeanetta cole i had him
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meet with employee groups and spend time out in the field and then i wanted him to have a deep
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conversation with me about the strategy like how do we get the leaders to own aspects of the strategy and drive
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greater accountability at the top of the house so those were some of the things that
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that we immediately began to put into place so i think that and he said i also invited ted childs
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i don't know if you remember ted who was probably the guru of diversity chief diversity officers at
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ibm under gerstner at the time and i invited him to come and speak to the executive
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leadership team and ted came in with all of his ted-ness which is profound and um amazing and awe-inspiring
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and after he left my ceo said to me you know why he's so effective because his ceo empowered him that's
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what i need to do for you right and boy was that a turning point and probably one of the best
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experiences and relationships i ever had with a ceo was in that you know in that scenario
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and and then and the aftermath of it so so a ceo empowerment endorsement of of this role and what it can become
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uh can be the difference between a highly effective sense of dei engagement commitment and
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progress versus one that can hardly get off the ground or is fleeting at best so it's a lot about that senior
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executive and ceo accountability and and empowerment so before i ask you some questions about
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that bring us to the current context i have one more question for you um and i think you started to hint at
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this a little bit when you were saying the progress that's been made around the business case
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for diversity what would you say if you had to summon her eyes are the key challenges or have been the
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key challenges in creating a conversation about racial equity and inclusion in corporations in the past
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yeah i think in the past has been the discomfort that comes from you know white leaders
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in thinking that um you know that they are the cause that they are the problem and um and so you know
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i even wrote that you know for a long time it seemed that racial issues were black
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people's problems to go fix go resolve that that's how it felt for me and many others
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and so it was really difficult to talk about racial equity unless the world gave us a major reason to go
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do it right otherwise in the tech world there's a desire our comfort with exceptionalizing the problem
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saying that there just aren't enough blacks in the pipeline getting computer science you know degrees
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engineering degrees um becoming developers they're just not there and eventually to prove that wrong i
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mean they said the same thing about women too in computers in in computing and we started to go gather numbers
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in partnership with the talent acquisition team we engaged upon an effort to hire a
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recruiting firm to just go find all of the individuals map them out across the u.s who graduated with those degrees and
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who happen to be hispanic are black and we presented this sort of mapping and said here they are and they're there
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they exist now we just have to convince them to come work for us because guess what just like women
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they're not choosing us that you know even though the pipeline may not be as robust as we
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would want it to be ultimately in this field it is it is certainly present and it exists but they are opting out of
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coming into companies like ours right they're choosing to you know women were choosing
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to go to banking and healthcare companies and working as computer scientists technologists in
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those firms because they were more female friendly right and so certain groups of color
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latinos latinx and blacks were not choosing to come to big mega companies perhaps like microsoft and
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and others so so it was to help them see the error of that thinking because that
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took they that that let them off of the moral hook or their moral the emotional hook of thinking
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that they just we were not aggressively going after this population we had got gotten complacent thinking
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that they just don't exist and now we have to come up with a new way to explain
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this outcome and it forced them it forced them to really think on it the other thing is we went and did a
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study of the marketplace because you know we talk about the value proposition of dei
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and also talk about the fact that we want to be able to reflect understand and anticipate an
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increasingly diverse customer base and so we went and did research on who over indexed on microsoft products
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and it turned out the number one and number two groups who over index on using our products were
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latinos and black people and it was like a drop the mic moment uh a drop your surface moment
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and and you could see how shocked leaders were and we presented this at a a broader leadership conference or a
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discussion and it was a real eye-opening moment and those are the types of things that
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cdos have to do to really convert leaders into re thinking so sort of like learn i want
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you to learn about some stuff and then i want you to unlearn some things you were doing and relearn
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how to go after this group of very very talented people and by the way when i when we talk about
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diversity there's no substitute for equality right and one of the phrases i'd love to
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get out of people's mouths are saying qualified diverse candidates you really
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think i want to go after unqualified talent that's not who i am but those terms are
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not mutually exclusive and those are some of the microaggressions that that people of color black people
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experience all the time that were lowering the bar lowering the standards to hire them
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and that is it couldn't be furthest from the truth right so it's interesting is as i listened to
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you to talk about all this work that you did um from it from a tech space to attract
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and recruit and bring people to tech i can't help but reflect on how much we've talked about
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in the context of uh you know my own university is how we've seen the shift from students who've traditionally been
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going to banking and consulting moving towards tech so i think you know just sort of anecdotally
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qualitatively listening to what's been shared with us i think it there was some effectiveness
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to this strategy to draw people towards tech that said i wanted to reflect back on
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i i actually had pulled that same quote that you had started to share about black people's
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issues so i want to read that as i transition us into the present context and so you write um
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after years of being told that racism was black people's issues to solve this new response of white solidarity is
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at times disorienting but also cautiously uplifting it is a time of deep reckoning
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and activism i found that very powerful so i want to in your own words and certainly i just
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gave them some some of them back to you is how would you describe this outpouring of corporate support for
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black racial equality for black lives this summer the summer of 2020 yeah it's been it's been very difficult
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to express the myriad of emotions i have had and i know so many of my friends and colleagues have had
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as we watched what unfolded in this country i still don't have words to explain it
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but i i don't think any of us saw it coming you know while we hoped for um more than just our own bodies to be
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present in this in this public demonstration and outcry for social justice who would have
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expected that such a broad coalition of people i mean white suburban housewives you know certainly millennials exers
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boomers corporate leaders all stepping into the mix to declare uh how unjustice was and and and and
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calling for deep activism and deep change uh at the heart of this country you know
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it's sort of like uh it was a soul-searching moment in a highly reflective moment
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so it's it's been um it's been crazy i i really haven't known what to make of
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it and i think part of it is deeply personal for me because i'm so afraid to get let down
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if i get if i allow myself to get emotionally invested in the power of these voices even though
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i do believe in them i'm so not sure where this is going to go and if we're going to hit a free fall
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because when you think about the cross-section of so many different coalitions of types of people coming
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together to demand equality you have to wonder how do we problem solve for such a
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a diverse spectrum of expectations right uh because our millennials will want a certain
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outcome and will that match what you know other groups expect and want so so i i've been a little restrained uh on
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the emotional side because i i've feared getting let down uh so let's talk a little bit about um
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and we started to get to this but i just want to give you an opportunity to say more um when you look inside corporate
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um entities and you know we could think about the talent management system we could think about just day-to-day
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management what would you say have been some of the barriers that have prevented this type of support
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internally internally to firms yeah i think the barriers particularly around black black equity
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is that people have sometimes lulled themselves into a false sense of believing hey you know we're all equal all lives
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matter and in the workplace it's all about meritocracy when in fact that is probably the
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biggest misconception that i've seen in many of these corporate sectors because there is
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so much um opportunity and and privilege if you will afforded certain communities at the
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expense of others and i think not coming to grips with that and not understanding that and not
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having willing to have an honest conversation about that i think in the advent too of electing a
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black president a lot of people wanted to believe hey you know we're a post-racial
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society now we don't have any issues everybody's equal don't ask me for
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you know for for me to have to give up my piece of the pie so that someone like you can actually get ahead
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because you guys have made progress you're in you know everything's good and i think
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that that's the biggest misconception uh about racial equity in the workplace
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is that everybody is is you know on the level playing field and we know we're not
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um i wrote about amy cooper in my piece and the and what she represents um amy cooper for those who just as a
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refresher was the white woman who was in central park with her dog and she came into an area where there was a
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black man bird watching and there was a legal leash requirement for dogs and she didn't have her dog on the
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lesion this man asked her to please put her dog off on a leash and he videoed her ranting at
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him and one of her rants was to say i'm going to call the police and tell them that a black man is
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harassing me is threatening my life and and the fact that what's huge about amy cooper
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and her presence and and and what she understood was that her behaviors toward this
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individual were conscious there was nothing unconscious about her racial rant right there was nothing
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unconscious but number two she also understood the power that she had in this position as a white woman
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calling the police about a black man she understood all too well that her white privilege afforded her
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the ability to do that and imagine the police would just come to her rescue and arrest this guy or
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worse off even kill him right there for nothing but she knew it and she's a woman in her
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forties and i imagine working in the financial industry amy cooper had an opportunity to recruit hire
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promote and manage black people and i wonder how that went i mean she's an executive right
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she was an executive she was a vp absolutely and it made me reflect on the reality
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that we have personalities like amy's and even worse perhaps in our workplaces because our workplaces are
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microcosm of broader society what's happening in the world finds its way into the work environment
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so we're not on a level playing field this is not a post-racial society not when you have a 40 year old white woman
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doing what she did and obviously educated obviously um very successful in her professional life
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so so to the extent to which amy cooper mindsets our mentalities exist in the workplace
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how then could we say that we're post-racial that everybody's on a level playing
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field and i think it's because of that that we see at times black people getting some of the lowest
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promotions in the company when you think about what we call readiness for advancement
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promotion readiness we sometimes say we'll assess people you know ready in two to three years
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um you know three to five years you know or longer and i know in one company we actually
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did a study of that and we began to look at the difference between how black and
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brown people blacks and hispanics are latinos progressed along those career advancement
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recommendations versus white people and we often found that if they if if for a black person it was noted that
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they were ready for promotion in you know two to four years it actually took three to five
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or it actually took double um for them we could we could see evidence of that with no real explanation
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for why um so the reality is is that yeah we've loved people have loved themselves until false sense of
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thinking that everything's good and everything's okay but i have often been in rooms
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where the conversation allows us you know if i'm in hr to look at the data on
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performance ratings if you will and see where the demo racial demographic mixes come
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out and in many sad scenarios i have seen situations where uh black and brown people are in the
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lower quadrant of those promotion opportunities or those ratings and having to to begin the series of
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questions like a two-year-old but why but why is this per so okay so you say they plateau but why did
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they plateau who was managing them did they have a mentor did anybody reach out you know you start to do that you can
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see you're aggravating people because you're forcing them to have to go get a reason
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rather than an excuse to just say well you know they just they just didn't perform
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are they just not a fit that's the other catch-all phrase for when certain people don't quite
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measure up or we're not comfortable with how they show up in the workplace the excuse again not a good fit
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so there's something that you said that i i definitely want to amplify um and that is this idea that we don't
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leave ourselves at home we actually bring those same selves to to work and so whether it's amy
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cooper or somebody else that's right if you see people acting and engaging in
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racist sexist homophobic ways outside of the workplace it's very hard for us
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to imagine that they wouldn't be doing those same things inside of the workplace
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and when that happens that's why we have inequity and lack of opportunity is that fair
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summary of absolutely that's fair that's very eloquently said too and i and i think it just what i
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what i started to do in some companies again the education the book reading especially if i have senior executive
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leaders who were not born in the united states i try to you know give them a sense of
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how can i offer you something that will help you you know get a grasp of the magnitude the gravity uh of you know
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racial oppression in this country and many of them have absolutely embraced the opportunity
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and i think what they've come away with oftentimes and i love when they want to have that
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deep conversation is how did i not know how did i not see the depth of these inequities in society
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how did i not how did i overlook it and the truth is when something isn't your reality
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you don't see it when it's not it you know it's not your perspective and it's
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like like anything you know imagine for example someone who has not had an experience
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with some type of disability suddenly finds themselves wheelchair bound they start to experience the world very
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differently but before had a person said to them in a wheelchair you know i really can't
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handle this because it's not done this way it's not done that's not not
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convenient for me this environment is not inclusive for me and you know you might not
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be able to understand what they're talking about because it's not your reality
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what's important when that happens is that you see this as a learning opportunity
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to broaden your insights and knowledge about things that you just don't know
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about you're not aware you're not um perhaps you're not paying attention to some extent
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because i certainly think when it comes to race i don't know how they don't know
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it but okay um let's talk about all the things that have happened in the news
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and i think for a lot of the scenarios where we see the police issues happening to people
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and that's why i i like the amy cooper example so much because it's not about
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the police killing black people because i think we've almost become desensitized to it as a culture because
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we see it so much and it's always been out there and in order to protect themselves emotionally a lot of people
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just sort of shut that thing down but when you have a regular person behaving in this way
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to a black man for no real reason it sort of shifts the conversation to wow white
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privilege is real and this sense of thinking that her you know her her ability call the
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police to get this man removed is okay that what she did was okay so i think the ability to to help them
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see no this has always existed you just didn't notice it but now that you do you can't unsee this
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you cannot unsee it and it should stay in your mind and it should cause you to look at things in a with a new filter
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right it should change the way you view things going forward so you've already started to give us some
00:31:05
brilliant uh suggestions for the future certainly uh you know the title of your article
00:31:10
where you're talking about the ceos should lead is certainly a very concrete
00:31:15
uh suggestions you're talking about helping them to see before i ask you about some more
00:31:20
uh concrete actions that you think we should do and by we i mean senior leaders middle
00:31:26
managers and individual contributors basically people who have no particular authority but certainly
00:31:32
might have passion or responsibility i want to just give one last piece uh from your article that i thought was
00:31:39
a nice way of beginning to frame the possibilities for the future and you said um
00:31:44
you know with reference to uh the ceo is the very first step these leaders should take in mitigating
00:31:51
racial inequities in society is to look inward starting with their own corporate
00:31:57
cultures and that struck me i think as being very powerful because so much about these
00:32:02
statements is reflecting on external society and i think that is important because again
00:32:08
i think it helps people to understand is the external world is showing up inside
00:32:14
but i think it's also very possible that we get stuck there that it becomes a very
00:32:18
philanthropic um set of strategic initiatives as opposed to you know retooling um and unearthing the
00:32:26
issues that exist inside our corporate culture so let's talk about cultural change let's talk
00:32:32
about interpersonal behaviors um how do we begin to think about from this perspective again of those three
00:32:37
groups senior leaders middle managers and then individual contributors what should be
00:32:42
they be doing to to help advance racial equity and inclusion well certainly senior leaders have a
00:32:49
considerable amount of power and positioning um on this topic that the other groups don't have but i
00:32:56
think at a base level all groups need to invest in this effort whether you're an individual contributor
00:33:03
or middle manager or senior leader decide make the choice to consciously invest in issues of equity for all employees
00:33:16
i think you know for some reason and i don't know this is a if my theory holds water but i kind of
00:33:23
feel like if you make the work environment equitable for black people then probably
00:33:28
all ships will rise with that one because certainly we've seen historically that
00:33:34
with initiatives like affirmative action uh white women have actually seen the greatest gains as a result of those so i
00:33:41
tend to think that when we focus on racial equity all all boats get lifted all all
00:33:47
people's lives improve um but i think it's about having crucial conversations
00:33:52
i think the the the honest dialogues creating a safe environment inside the workplace to have these
00:33:58
honest dialogues is critical because uh especially when working in very very large
00:34:05
organizations where you have hundreds of thousands of people you know there and you're trying to get
00:34:10
a grip around what can you do how can you help the culture transform to be more inclusive i do
00:34:17
believe that seeing people as individuals and learning their stories getting to know people having that sense
00:34:25
of connection across a shared humanity makes a huge difference and one of the things before i left microsoft that we
00:34:32
we were really invested on trying to do that and we created with an external consultant uh a learning and development
00:34:39
initiative not a training a learning and development initiative called dialogues across differences and we use
00:34:46
theatrical you know people actors who were very well honed in hr policy mediation and they would create scenes
00:34:57
from the workplace that were very credible and real to our culture and freeze then the activity on stage at the
00:35:05
height of a conflict and then engage with the audience in what they saw and now throughout my 25 plus years i've
00:35:14
worked with a number of theatrical groups they're not all equal this one was extraordinarily good it is a
00:35:19
facilitated um scenario as well and the facilitator plays an important role with setting the tone
00:35:27
in the room and helping to manage the dialogue because you can have saboteurs in the
00:35:32
audience like anything else you really don't want to buy into stuff but but the level
00:35:37
of in-depth tension at times but deep exposure and learning that took place in those sessions
00:35:49
i think garnered us some of the best applause from inside microsoft people said this was the first time that
00:35:56
they had had a chance to hear a person share their truth in in a way that was meaningful to them
00:36:05
because they knew this person they had no idea that they had these lived experiences
00:36:10
so i think when people come together and say places to have these conversations and their
00:36:15
lived experiences are shared in ways that are deep and meaningful and help create
00:36:22
empathy in the workplace then you get somewhere you kind of break down the silos or the the the notion that you
00:36:31
already understand what's happening in the world and and you you know you don't want to invest um but
00:36:37
i so i think that that those those those sessions were extremely helpful we learned to do them virtually and we did
00:36:43
them in on every continent which is not easy um so i think things like that really really help i also believe that
00:36:51
at the executive level having intentional talent talks around black professionals women latinos
00:37:00
asians all the different groups is important because what i find in organizations where where
00:37:07
particularly black and latinos are not well represented no one sees them you know they can
00:37:16
become very invisible they can become the only one in the team and and it is a it is an
00:37:23
issue with retention because of that especially in the tech world developers coming into
00:37:28
large teams and you're the only woman of color woman or black or brown woman there
00:37:33
you feel so isolated so alone and it can be really hard early in your career to build the resilience for that so i
00:37:41
think intentional talent talks get to know who these individuals are and stop just
00:37:46
looking at the data looking at spreadsheets and numbers because at the end of the day and i used
00:37:51
to say this all the time hey they're real people connected to these these definite points and percentages
00:37:57
and they have very differing experiences in our workplace and it's so important that we drill down on what
00:38:04
that is and not just focus on the numbers we have to focus on people at individual
00:38:09
levels i think this has been such a wonderful opportunity to learn the core set of issues
00:38:17
but also to feel that there are things that can be done and i love these two examples certainly
00:38:24
we've heard a lot about having conversations and why that's important and we've certainly seen
00:38:29
an equal amount of criticism let's stop talk let's stop talking and start acting
00:38:34
but talking actually is action especially when we need to learn right we need to understand right or we
00:38:43
actually do and so i think that sometimes gets shortchanged and certainly you know as a faculty
00:38:49
member at an institution we love talking about evidence-based practice and so we love
00:38:54
our numbers but what you're saying is there's a story behind the numbers and let's make
00:38:58
sure got that right so that we can create um policies practices initiatives that are that are
00:39:05
targeted um for the specific needs of individuals and not just based on our gross
00:39:10
estimations gwen thank you so much i just had one go ahead one quick thing sorry just you
00:39:16
know to talk about how do we move from you know from conversation to action the intentional talent talks are all about
00:39:23
getting us to action because when you drill down and understand who these individuals are
00:39:29
what they've accomplished in their time at your company or even prior to and where they hope to go what what are
00:39:36
their ambitions career-wise then you can be much more strategic in making sure that something great happens for them
00:39:43
that we now you know who they are let's go move them forward and we have in in some companies taken
00:39:50
aggressive action steps and created the plans here the hear the ready for promotion
00:39:55
now people they have hit all of the buttons that we've said we needed go promote them within the next month
00:40:02
here's what you will do we actually created the action step for the leader and said here's what you will go do now
00:40:09
so that can actually be one of the most aggressive and probably most successful approaches because it's it is
00:40:17
evidence-based and now it helps the leader know how to go move forward with the right steps
00:40:23
and uh and it was one of the most i think successful initiatives that i had seen in my career fantastic
00:40:30
gwen thank you so much your your time your expertise is absolutely an invaluable resource for us all i look
00:40:37
forward to continuing to engage with you i'm around the topic and seeing all the
00:40:42
great work you're doing so thank you again and again the article that gwen wrote is called corporate america's
00:40:48
black equity gap ceos must take the lead it was published on medium on june 29th
00:40:54
2020. um have a great afternoon gwen and i'll talk to you soon you too thanks so much stephanie enjoyed
00:41:04
it you