“You’re not helping Black people by helping them get jobs that they’re not qualified for.” “Community college students are too low-skill to benefit from pipeline programs.” “You’re doing ‘skin deep’ diversity and that’s not fair, just pick the best person for the job.”

These are just a few examples of things people have actually said to our faces. Sometimes it’s so off-base, so clueless that we’re just lost for words.

One skill that every DEIB practitioner builds is keeping composure in a micro-aggression moment like this, taking a deep breath, and taking a step back to reframe the issue by calling out biased assumptions and correcting the record. Sometimes these are moments of opportunity to claim the narrative and educate the people around us. Sometimes they are moments to center our own well-being and avoid draining our cup with someone who does not want to change.

It’s all part of a larger DEIB skillset that we unpack in today’s episode, which is really about what to do – what we do, because it happens all the time – when people say wild sh*t to us about DEIB.

When a hateful voicemail message hurtled out of the clear blue sky to explode on Tanya’s sunshine-y Saturday, we knew that the kind of hate we fight against had come right up to our doorstep. This wasn’t ODEIB’s first experience with shameful hate mail, but it was the first time that we had been targeted with a message of explicit violence.

We were all shaken up, there’s no way around that. In that numb moment of pain and bewilderment, the crew decided to process and heal together by talking through our emotions and reactions. And we knew we wanted to document that process for you, our listeners, in order to model the way that we draw on community and self-care to sustain ourselves in the most harrowing moments of DEI work.

We’re making sweet lemonade with some pretty rotten lemons today. Tanya said it best right on this episode: “We're gonna take that hate, we're gonna hug it and love it, and we're gonna turn it into love and education for the rest of the world. This is how you turn obstacles into opportunities.”

Everyone thinks they know what DEI is. But the disagreements over what DEI is, what it should do, and how it should be done stretch far into the past. Far before the attacks on DEI that characterize this moment in 2025.

On this episode of the podcast we continue wrestling with our own attitudes towards these foundational questions by unpacking what, for us, constitutes the worst of the DEI that we’ve seen as well as the most heinous of the mischaracterizations that are gaining traction right now. It’s all the hollow DEI work that we’ll actually be waving a happy goodbye to even as we mourn the end of many vital DEI programs that we admired. No goals, no metrics, no fact-checks, no spine. This is what “boo boo doo doo DEI” efforts have in common.

In the first episode of Building Belonging season two, ODEIB dives deep into the fundamental question: What is DEI really? With the haters circling and pushback in full force, a lot of people are returning to this question to understand how to move justice forward.

The team explores their individual journeys into DEI and what it means to them. As Eli puts it, this conversation seeks to address 'what DEI is, what it is not, where it is going, and who our allies are,' clearing up misconceptions and providing a nuanced understanding of essential concepts.

Tanya highlights the innate human essence of DEI, saying, 'At its core, it is one of the most innate and human things that we have.' Angie drives home the practical importance of DEI: 'It's everything that makes the world more accessible to everyone.' By offering their personal insights and discussing the broader significance of DEI, the team aims to inspire listeners to open their eyes to new opportunities and get involved in this transformative work.

Malaysian/British trained attorney, Christina Chelliah, connects with the Office to explore the complicated journey a foreign-trained attorney must embark on to practice law in the United States. The plight of establishing oneself in the legal profession continues to be a hard-fought challenge even after being admitted to the Bar. Join Tanya, Angie & Mary Ellen as they speak with Ms. Chelliah about her legal training, career trajectory, and her transition to the US legal system. From there, the conversation looks to the future, exploring what an inclusive legal landscape might look like with more intentional in-roads for foreign-trained attorneys.

Today it’s time for a dose of inspiration because we’re talking to a group of young activists who have joined the fight for racial justice and equity. The ABLE initiative was started by a group of high school students. It uses art merchandise to donate to five organizations aiding the Black Lives Matter movement, encouraging youth volunteers to become active changemakers in their communities. ODEIB talked to ABLE leaders about how they launched ABLE and overcame pushback even from within their own families. It was an object lesson in making the kind of change you want to see in the world. We are so proud of these DEIB leaders and they gave us a touch of much-needed faith in the power of community, truth-telling and empathy in change work. We all have a thing or two to learn or re-learn from the young leaders of ABLE.

Learn more about ABLE and support their work: https://www.ableart.studio/about

Join ODEIB’s 21 Day Antiracism Challenge https://form.typeform.com/to/F8vDU0EP

Access a transcript of this episode here: https://bit.ly/3UzkRgE

In this episode of Building Belonging we talk to a few folks who have found their belonging by exploring alternative career paths outside the law. Margaret Segreti and Sam Choi join us from Bloomberg to discuss their personal journey from being practicing lawyers to discovering unanticipated roles in data analysis. Margaret and Sam emphasize the importance of being open to taking systematic, informed risks and embracing non-traditional roles when marketing yourself. They also share their expertise on developing artificial intelligence tools in a way that mitigates bias and incorporates DEI principles from step one.

Tune in to learn more about:

• The challenges and rewards of shifting gears mid-career

• How to approach marketing yourself when you are looking to make a change

• Navigating bias in the design and build of artificial intelligence tools

• The day-to-day work life of a JD that is not practicing law

Access a transcript of this episode here: https://bit.ly/3tO7qhS

DEIB for the People – a Collection of DEIB Content for Your Screens

Mary Ellen – Little Justice Leaders https://bit.ly/48u1qdf

Angie – One Night in Miami https://amzn.to/41R566p

Tanya – Black Girls Play: The Story of Handgames https://bit.ly/47yYGKn

Building Belonging is joined by Eileen Travis, Executive Director of the City Bar Lawyer Assistance Program. Eileen has forty years’ experience in mental-health services and has been part of the spearhead of the legal profession’s growing awareness of and respect for mental health and well-being. Eileen has great insight to share about the history of how the legal profession has dealt with mental health and well-being issues. She explained how shifting attitudes haven’t always led to substantial shifts in a culture that drives lawyers to burnout. But Eileen also shared her experience of progress being made by a new Gen Z workforce that is driving some of the well-being culture changes that the profession needs.

Tune in to hear more about:

• How the landscape of mental health in the legal profession was dramatically changed by a groundbreaking ABA report (linked below)

• How the legal profession has succeeded in producing more mental-health resources without always giving lawyers meaningful opportunities to utilize those resources

• How LAP has worked to change the character and fitness process to be less stigmatizing and more compassionate

• The history of Lawyers Assistance Programs in New York and around the world, and how they built a foundation for wellness programs in the legal profession today

The Path to Lawyer Well-Being: Practical Recommendations for Positive Change (aka the Krill Report): https://bityl.co/MRc6

DEIB for the People – a Collection of DEIB Content for Your Screens

Mary Ellen – Tips for Consuming Social Media with Intention

Tanya – “The Egg,” (https://ytube.io/3mxh) “Dissatisfaction” (https://ytube.io/3mxg) and “Loneliness” (https://ytube.io/3mxi) by Kurz gesagt

Angie – When They See Us (https://bityl.co/MRJq)

Access a transcript of this episode here: https://bityl.co/MRe2

Aliza Shatzman is President and Founder of the Legal Accountability Project, a nonprofit aimed at extending support and resources to law clerks to ensure that they have a positive clerkship experience. Aliza talks about the mistreatment that she experienced as a law clerk. Her experience led her to discover the shocking lack of labor protections for clerks and the enormous power disparity between clerks and judges. Aliza was ultimately inspired to take on the deeply entrenched status quo in the clerking system. Tune in to hear about:

• The power dynamic that exists today which gives judges the power to mistreat clerks and potentially derail their clerks’ careers

• How law schools and their clerkship offices have been complicit in protecting bad actors and withholding information about bad judges from clerkship applicants

• How Aliza has improved accountability for judges and raised awareness in the community of law clerks

• What law clerks experiencing mistreatment can do to get help

• What changes need to be made to improve working conditions for clerks

• The centralized clerkship database created by the Legal Accountability Project that democratizes information about judges and clerkships: https://bityl.co/K4ND

You can read Aliza’s testimony to the House Committee on the Judiciary here: https://bityl.co/K6EO

DEIB for the People – a Collection of DEIB Content for Your Screens

Mary Ellen – Radical Queer Witches (https://bityl.co/K6EV)

Angie – Women Talking (https://amz.run/6vjB)

Tanya – Wednesday (https://bityl.co/K6EW) a recommendation to watch and to investigate bias: (https://bityl.co/K6Ei)

Ankura Consulting Group is a management consulting firm with over two thousand employees advising corporations in various industries and sectors e.g. cybersecurity, construction, litigation and human resources. Shawn Miles' and Patricia Rodriguez’s social-impact team helps companies ask themselves difficult questions about their own environments and values so that they can make sure that their people feel accepted, welcome and able to show up as themselves.

Patricia and Shawn speak about being intentional with Belonging, about building strategies and spaces for people to be honest and sometimes uncomfortable. They helped us understand the ways in which building psychological safety to get things wrong can be tantamount to building psychological safety to really try and get things right.

The Building Belonging crew carries this idea into a discussion about how to persevere in the face of an “anti-woke” movement that seeks to co-opt and undermine DEIB ideals. Tanya, Angie and Mary Ellen talk with Shawn and Patricia about how to be prepared for “anti-woke” arguments that are made in bad faith and how to keep the DEIB conversation going on a productive track. They also delve into the implications of these strategies in the political atmosphere of anti-woke, anti-DEIB regulations.

The data shows that organizations that succeed in DEIB also outperform their competitors financially. Patricia and Shawn talk about how improving DEIB improves organizational decision-making and makes companies more responsive to increasingly-diverse customer bases. Nevertheless, when recession happens and businesses need to make cuts, DEIB initiatives are often first on the block. Shawn and Patricia shared some of the talking points and strategies that they have used to remind companies that DEIB is good for long-term, sustainable growth as well as for retention of the top talent.

DEIB for the People – a Collection of DEIB Content for Your Screens

Angie – Milk (https://amz.run/6oME)

Mary Ellen – So You Want to Talk about Race? (https://amz.run/6oMF)

Tanya – Overruling Grutter: What Does Ending Affirmative Action Mean for Voluntary DEI Workplace (https://bityl.co/JQIr)

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