Meet Jaya Kaushik, a trailblazer whose journey began as a new Canadian immigrant and transformed into a powerful force for change in Canadian society.

As a Talent Management Professional and because of her lived experience, Jaya is integrating numerous components of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging in her work.

Her story is one of resilience and ambition, weaving together her experiences from transportation, retail, banking, and leadership development, which has led her to the incredible role of preparing for Canada's first ever Hard Rock Hotel and Casino!

Stay connected with Jaya:

https://ca.linkedin.com/in/jaya-kaushik

Script:

If you receive a roadblock from one person, always look outside the box. That's what I do. Do not hinder yourself just because you received one no. If there's like one no, there could be four yeses. So just think outside the box. The world is a beautiful place. People are willing to help you if you are willing to receive that help, love and compassion from them.

Welcome to Weirdos in the Workplace, the podcast that celebrates authenticity, transparency, passion, and purpose in our world of work today. And what a crazy world it is. My name is Erin Patchell, and I am your host, and I'm here with Jaya Kaushik. Thank you so much for joining us, Jaya. Pleasure.

Thanks, Erin Erin for inviting me here to your podcast. Thank you uh okay so folks Jaya is an immigrant a person of color if you can't see Jaya if you're not looking if you're not watching this on YouTube but you're you know watching this on the podcast she is a person of color and a woman who believes in fostering impact through diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging. She is the talent management lead at Hard Rock Ottawa, developing strategies around recruitment and training initiatives to prepare for the launch of the first Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Canada, which is really exciting. And I'm really curious to learn more about that as well, Jaya, if you have a few minutes. Yeah, for sure. For sure.

Definitely. I mean, a quick snapshot is I relocated my entire life from Winnipeg to Ottawa for this exciting thing that is coming into existence in April next year. We are going to have the first Hard Rock Hotel and Casino. It's right now in 74 countries across the globe. And finally, Canada is going to have its first one. So we've taken over Rideau, Carleton Casino, and we are building a hotel. So it's going to be, the racetrack's still going to be there. We're going to have like 10 restaurant outlets. So, you know, it's going to be a whole new entertainment business with the tinge of gaming added to it. So it's going to be fun, exciting. But the best part about it, Aaron, is, you know, bringing in all those folks.

So we're going to be hiring for around 500 folks. So, you know, going to have massive recruitment initiatives. We are starting right now in August up to April next year. So it's going to keep all of us quite busy. No doubt. No doubt. How exciting. I cannot wait to actually see this in action. It sounds like it's going to bring a lot of value to Ottawa for sure. That's great. Well done. Yeah. And also congratulations to you for like uplifting your whole life and moving here. You know, I think that's an extremely brave thing to have done. That's an extremely brave thing to have done. Yeah, I moved quite a bit. So I came as an immigrant in 2019 here in Canada, and I was back there in Nova Scotia. And then, you know, I've always moved for my career. I moved to New Brunswick. And then, you know, there was some readjustments within the family. So I relocated to Winnipeg. And finally, when this opportunity came knocking at my door, I'm like, I cannot say no to this.

I mean, I did not have experience in the casino or entertainment industry, but I thought that this is exciting. This is something which I believe in because I really value constant learning involvement, along with bringing innovation through continuous improvement mindset so I'm like what impact can I bring when something is not built but is in the transition phase so that was my motivation to come and join as a talent management lead here and you know move my entire life from Winnipeg to Ottawa. It's been quite a few months. I relocated in February this year, but I'm loving Ottawa so far. That's good.

I'm glad because it would be kind of unfortunate if you didn't like it. So because it sounds like you're going to be stuck here for a little while longer. But, you know, I love Ottawa as well. I think that the community here is lovely and the it's so close to so much nature as well if you love nature and um now it sounds like we have a new director of nightlife in Ottawa um so maybe we'll even have some exciting things to do you know after dark at some point uh it sounds like Hard Rock Cafe fits right nicely into the strategy. For sure. I mean, Hard Rock is keeping busy. The amount of professional networks. I mean, I met you at the social HR camp, Erin, and, you know, building that professional network within the community is so amazing.

Just inviting all those community partners and building that strategic relationship and just people have been just so nice and kind and they are so open to any opportunity sometimes even if the partnership does not work they're always willing to keep that connection and that's that's really inspiring for me well I think your energy is amazing And I know the last conversation that we had around, we were talking more around, you know, DEI and B and a little bit of the accessibility, because that's kind of more in my, in my purview these days. But your energy around this is amazing. I think that, you know, you have a really interesting perspective on it, that you have a really interesting perspective on it, mainly because it sounds like you've really thought about how to integrate DEIB into the business processes, which I think is really interesting. And one of our previous podcast guests, Kathleen Johnson, a few weeks ago, we were talking about how important that really is, you know, to integrate DEIB as an operational process.

It's not just a philosophical values driven thing anymore. What do you think about that? is professional or me being interested in DEIB is what that motivates me. I think when you feel or when you've been through something over a period of time or through your professional journey, that kind of lets you in as in, okay, why am I feeling this way? And if I'm feeling this way, maybe someone else, my peers might be feeling the same way. You know, they could belong to different race, religion, ethnicity, maybe a different gender, LGBT community. But if I am feeling a certain way at workplace, we're in a workplace calls it more most diverse. And, you know, they've won so many awards just because on paper or in reports, they show, oh, we did, you know, this event, we did this awareness day, but they do not know, like, you know, it's not just a checkbox. It's basically how your employees are feeling in the moment.

Have you ever, you know, there's always one-on-ones with managers and there's performance evaluation, there's employee engagement surveys, but has anyone gone down that pipeline and asked, hey, has your manager ever, you know, looked down upon you in a certain way because of your culture or because of your identity, or, you know, you've been laughed at by your team members, just because you have a different pronunciation, because you just came from a different country. So, you know, those things get ignored in the process, no matter how many surveys we do, no matter how many one-on-ones we do, no matter how many lunches we do. So it is so important to integrate that. And again, I would say it's not just checking the checkbox or meeting the criteria or winning some awards. It's more about how you're feeling, how you are, you know, how are the employees embracing that culture of the organization. For me, when I join an organization, the values, the, you know, we talk about values, we talk about models and mission statement. It's good we talk about that, but do we actually implement it?

You know, when we say we believe in, you know, authenticity or we believe in bringing your best self forward, and then you are actually doing it, but then your manager's like, oh, why are you dressed this way? That's against the, you know, the dress code policy. Or, you know, if I am a Muslim, and I do not want to attend a meeting in the afternoon, just because I'm'm fasting and I want to have my prayers. Why, you know, my manager is not able to understand that or, you know, why am I not feeling, why am I not being felt included? You know, I've told my manager a month ago that, oh, I'm going to be fasting during Ramadan, but still we have a week-long potluck during that same week or same month. It's just those small examples which a lot of folks at works do not realize. And for them, it's quite normal. And you know, that normalization, Erin, passes on to employees like us where we are like, oh, we cannot make any change maybe that's how we are supposed to be or that's how the culture here is specifically for immigrants like I can speak because I am an immigrant myself you know we have a different culture back in our country and we embrace a new culture here but when we are embracing the diversity, we tend to forget that we can raise voice for ourselves, that we cannot say yes to any, you know, wrong actions or any microaggressive behaviors that have been hurled upon us.

Right. So the question that the world's becoming more multicultural, right? I mean, there's, there's literally no question. The only reason the Canadian population grew last year was because of immigration. And yeah. And I mean, even the most staunch conservatives that I know who are business owners, you know, you know, some people quite close to me, in fact, they admit that, you know, sometimes immigrants are actually the hardest workers that they can actually employ. And so I think that, you know, if you're a business owner and you're not thinking about how can I make my work, my employees, all of my employees, especially people who are immigrants or, you know, have maybe felt like they didn't belong in some way.

How can I make them feel like they belong, like there's a place for them here, like we're taking their culture, their sometimes their religion as well. culture, sometimes their religion as well, and any of the elements that we're not used to, that we don't have experience with, how do we take that into consideration? So how do you do that? My question for you, the big question I think a lot of people think about is how do you find the middle ground when there's so many variables? So one thing we need to realize is that we need to be patient. Right. I cannot, you know, walk into a room one day and be like, OK, you got to understand my culture. You've got to understand, you know, I like this and I don't like this.

And this is not part like no it takes time like that's one thing that both the parties need to realize and we need to be really we need to like have that mindset that okay like people are not going to know that I belong to a certain religion and things are done in a certain way in my culture or in anyone's culture I mean I learned so many new things when I came to Canada so that is one thing is realization and acknowledging the fact that it's not going to be perfect you know it's it's it's you know we we always say it's a journey and it's not a destination so how smooth and how empowering that journey can be. You know, what can you take and what can you leave during that journey? You know, we talk about unconscious biases.

We talk about microaggressive behaviors. How can we make sure that those can be eliminated during this journey? It could be in the form of a conversation. It could be in the form of sensitive training, right? But a lot of it comes down from leadership, you know, how effective the leadership is at your organization, how inclusive, progressive, or how embracing that leadership is. Because I feel that, you you know leaders have a really really really big impact in terms of how it trickles down to managers supervisors and in general all the team members so leadership representation plays a huge role sensitivity training and just in general, like, I feel that whenever, like, if I'm joining an organization and I know I'm going to have, I'm going to be the only person of color there, right? So maybe kind of educating or, you know, generating awareness through lunch and learn or through coffee and chat, but taking that initiative, being bold enough to take that initiative.

And again, I say it, that not to think of yourself as a victim because I feel in most of the cases, like the places I've worked, they have been quite open to the feedback. They've been quite embracing. I mean, I've worked at Hard Rock Hotel and Casino and I think I am the only person of color in my team and probably at site like we do not have, we will soon have a lot of representation. But it's quite fascinating, you know, when I talk about my culture, when I talk about a strategy that can impact someone who is more diverse, or, you know, who has a different representation or an identity. So I feel like there are so many steps, but you got to be, you got to start somewhere. You need to take that initiative and you need to realize it, that it's going to take time. I mean, I came here in 2019, it's 2024.'s 2024 it has taken time you know I was a person who would be like oh why did my manager say that to me and I would be a person who would like who has cried in the washroom and be like why am I feeling that I do not belong here there have been times when you know I want to just run back to my country because I feel I belong there and not here. But then always there is a team member resource group, there are your mentors, there are people who encourage you.

If there are some people who are going to pull you down, there are always going to be people who will lift you up. There will always be like-minded people. There will always be people who really want to think from an inclusive perspective and who are going to understand what you're going through, even if they do not have the same skin color or they do not belong to the same culture, they will be there for you. Right. So whose responsibility is it and whose responsibility should it be? Maybe those are different answers. Maybe it's the same answer. I don't know. To really drive the education on this within an organization. As I mentioned, it's a two-way street, right? I mean, in my case, I was bold enough to be like, well, I know I'm not perfect and this is what I do and this is how I was brought up.

So being vulnerable from, and I know it takes a lot of courage to be vulnerable and a lot of people cannot do it or are not comfortable doing it but even if you do it with your manager or one level up it can have a drastic change but again it needs to be a two-way street the organizations you know a lot of them I think I was talking to someone from our education group and they were saying that how they incorporate sensitive training or like cultural amalgamation training into people coming into the country or you know who are still adapting to the Canadian way of culture or the Canadian lifestyle so that's a great way we're in you know they can be made aware of certain like say business or professional like educates that we follow here and you know like one one basic thing was like back in my country we'd call everyone sir and ma'am right and like it's it's it's a common thing you know sometimes people laugh at you like why are you calling me sir and ma'am whereas it's it's a cultural way it's a way of respect in our country, right? So just for small time things, if they are trained and if even the managers, supervisors and everyone, like I believe it should not be limited to managers and supervisors.

I mean, all the team members, they should go into this cultural immersion training wherein there needs to be a culture that's diverse, there needs to be one company culture that needs to accept. And so I didn't hear human resources anywhere in there. And I know you're an HR professional. So like, a lot of I feel like a lot of managers, sometimes, like, you know, they believe this is an HR core responsibility. You know, the HR should drive all of this. What's your opinion on that? HR, definitely. We build policies. Like right now in my current job duties and responsibilities, I'm responsible for training. So HR has a huge responsibility, but, you know know as HR professionals or like for the outside world we need to realize that we get a lot of pushbacks and challenges as in why do we need it you know what's what's the purpose of this um does it fit into our revenue or does it fit into our budget like what's what's one thing we're going to get out of it you know HR is always thought of like you know we spend money on things right whether it's DEIP initiatives whether it's recruitment whether it's training it's not thought of how we are bringing money back into the organization.

So I would say HR has a role, definitely, Erin. And we have a role in bringing this to life or like coordinating this, but this really needs to start from that awareness standpoint view. I mean, what can HR do when we launch a training, we say that it's mandatory and there is a manager sitting there, and what they're doing is basically click, click, click, click, click, and not even learning what is being told them in the training. So how can we force them to do it until unless they themselves do not realize that it is important for them and the other team members? I mean, that's a huge challenge when you think from a learning and development perspective. How can we make it interactive? How can we make it engaging?

And at the end, how can we make sure that this learning stays with them? You know, I've seen that, like, you know, when I see some of the training courses, like people complete it like a 30 minutes course probably in five minutes skip skip skip skip skip and I'm sitting there and I'm like what's what's the whole point like you know you you pay the vendors you put this entire training but what if like the other person doesn't want to learn? Yeah. Yeah. We have to teach them or like, you know, we have to engage them in the conversation around why it's important and provide that business case.

And that has to, you know, if your leadership can make that case for you even better, because people are much more likely to listen to them. Yeah. I think, why do we have to do that? You know, why do we always need to have someone higher up, right? You know, you got to do this just because I'm your boss. Like that is the mindset I feel as an HR professional or as a DEIB, a person who's really passionate. I just feel how we can, you know, switch that mindset. And, you know, Aaron, sometimes I feel it's simply through a conversation. It's simply through, you know, letting them know that, you know, I know you believe in equality. I know you want the right fit and not a diverse pool of candidates but just think about from perspective of what struggles they've been through or what resources they have not had that is hindering them from like applying to whatever positions we are open I say this because I'd worked with a leader and I was like, you know, we need to do diverse recruitment, as in we probably should focus on LGBTQ, we should focus on women representation, we should focus on this and this community. And he looks at me, he's like, no, we should focus on the best fit. And I'm like, okay, but how's that fair? He's like, because we believe in equality.

And I'm like, what about equity? Right. Like, you know, there is that, there's that picture, which shows that there are two people who are standing on a pedestrian and they both like, you know know they've been provided equal opportunities but one is taller and the other is shorter right so he needs to give be given a higher pedestrian so that the vision is the same for both of them so you know we we say we want the right fit we say that you know like i i just feel that sometimes I missed all this um um you know profit making or revenue generation sometimes we lose that basic human touch the fact that you know not everyone has like you know we were talking about we need to create our own privileges but not everyone has had the same opportunities as everyone else I mean according to a recent yeah according to a recent stats like we talk about representation of women in leadership positions so in Canada women hold about just 35 percent of management occupations and 30 percent of like senior management positions right like that that that really tells like why why we are not doing it it's not that women don't want to go up there or look at the representation of of um like bipoc women it's much much smaller yeah exactly fraction right um and so the representation is is very weak in those cases so um or lgbtq you know uh communities as well um yeah so yeah we've got a lot of work to do i think in those areas and I think it does a lot of the time boil down to like what are the opportunities that people are given to learn yep and um I think from a personal like my personal experience again you know you asked me who's who's role who's who's responsible for this and I say it again and again and I've learned this the hard way that you know if you want it go get it like you know there's like you need to push yourself again like even you know Erin you are you are looking for a job I'm looking for a job just because I feel that I am a visible minority and like you know I'm I'm going to have an upper edge or over you.

No, like I need to strive as hard as you would have to, you know, to get that opportunity. It's just that, you know, you, you got to grab it. You can't just like, I think that is also very important to learn that, you know, we need to strive. We need to have that. We need to learn that you know we need to strive we need to have that we need to take that initiative you know even if I you are my manager I'm like okay Erin like you know you say something to him I'm like okay I'm not okay with it so I need to voice my concern and more and more people need to start doing that rather than like shutting themselves because yeah what if you are willing to learn what if you are the best manager but in my head because of my past experiences I've just made a whole vision of you that you're gonna be the most bitchy manager the most you know like a manager who's not gonna support me being a visible minority at workplace and I'll just because I've heard stories or I've been through some previous experiences so even I as a visible minority need to give you a chance and need to like you know open my spectrum as much as you're gonna do it for me yeah yeah that's I think that it's interesting um that you know, a lot of hard work accumulated over a whole lifetime, I think can balance things out quite a bit.

But I think there's also a lot of truth in that it is a, it's really hard for people to find jobs right now. There's, I mean, you guys have 500 jobs, which is amazing, by the way. So 500 new jobs, like in the Ottawa area. So awesome. But it is actually really tough right now. The economy is really tough right now for job seekers. And I think sometimes immigrants, it's easy. It's kind of easy to feel like it's because of you, like you're the problem. And it's not, I don't think that it's like, I hear this from other people who are immigrants and like when I explained to them that they're, they're struggling to get immigrants.

When I explain to them that they're struggling to get jobs, and I explain to them it's a really tough market for everyone right now. They're like, oh, I feel so much relief because I thought it was because of a bias. I don't know that that's always true. It's hard to know what is the reason that something's happening, right? You're not getting a job. What's the reason you're not getting a job? Maybe it's bias or it could be, you know, it's your resume or, you know, it's, you know, the really tough job, job market, or, you know, maybe it's, you know, it could be any number of variables. Right. And so I think exploring all of those and really being like thoughtful about how you're presenting yourself and working and working really hard. And that's the thing. It's hard for everyone to get a job right now.

Yeah. And I think, you know, we just got to give things the benefit of the doubt sometimes too. I, because when I say that sometimes your past experiences impact your future, you know, observations or your future expectations. I remember I was in Sydney back in Cape Britain in Nova Scotia. And at that time, like that was the truth because I knew the manager at the retail store. And I'm like, why is there not like a diverse representation at your stores and she's like I'm gonna be very honest when we get the resumes we look at the names and if it's a non-white name we do not consider it and I'm like oh I'm like and who has that who gave you that power it's like just because you know there's such a huge influx of immigrants we just wanted to make sure that our current population or the people who've lived like in this town for quite a long time they do not feel disassociated or you know they don't stop coming to our store so and when then these stories start getting passed along every even if you know I'm if I'm scanning through resumes I do not look at like I look at your experience I look at you know how connected you are how much you're trying you know if I get 100 resumes for one position and then there is this one person who's applied who's reached out to me in LinkedIn who's following up through their interview process of course like that that person's gonna remain in my mind so but like stories like this where you know there were some biases in the recruitment practices they did exist and then when other people hear it then they're like oh there is discrimination in the hiring practices or the recruitment process or you know they gave the name that oh that's a white organization just because we do not see any person of color working there so sometimes like it's it's also hard because I've I've personally seen that like you know like that that uh hiring manager was uh pretty open to me I'm like well like you know I'm not seen and what was funny I had a friend who had the same skin color but her name was like a white name like Amy or Anna and she got the interview and I'm like oh like you know so there was a point wherein they started joking around you gotta change your name to a more white name if you wanna get an interview like within the city so there there are things that happen like that for sure.

Yeah. And I can see like one story like that would, you know, would go far, you know, the story would, would go far. So people would hear about it. And I hope that that's not, I hope that that's kind of a one-off, but you know, you hope that people aren't judging people by their names and that, but we know that that's true we know that bias exists of course 100% yeah 100% and talking about biases like I was gonna segment into like you know again like I've been very lucky that I've had a great professional network I've got all these mentors but there were always uh, you know, there were times when you would second guess yourself. So like, you know, whether I belong here or not. And one of the instances was about the name, right?

Like I never, I don't think I'm ever going to change my name, even after my marriage. I love my first name. I love my last name. I love who I am. And I like, yeah, I like how my name is pronounced. Like I just love my identity and I love who I am and I like yeah I like how my name is pronounced like I just love my identity and I love my skin color I love everything about myself I'm not gonna change but then you know like in the past I think like it's it's important because we're talking about weirdos in the workplace right um there there have been situations wherein like you know I've I've been lucky that I've had an impetus to my professional or career growth as in you know I've did mentorship at TD got into like like transportation and leadership development I've I've been like really lucky that way but it comes with its own challenges. For instance, like I was working at an organization and, you know, they select a pool of employees like who've shown their skills or who are really good in terms like great education, great skills, great work.

And there's a specific, you you know leadership program for them so I think my name was taken out a day prior to that you know that training or that whole event and uh my managers like uh I've been here for you know 10 years and my name was never uh you know put into that program so and I had just been in that organization, maybe for two months, I hadn't even completed my probation. So, you know, you get that imposter syndrome, like, okay, like, what's wrong?

You know, I am young, but I am capable as well. And the fact that I've reached here is because I've got that in me but she's like well because I have not been a part of the program and you're fairly new to the country and to the organization I think you need to learn more so you know you face those challenges I think within the same organization, it was a team of, I would say, a different segment. I would say like much older or much mature professionals. I was the youngest in the team. And I was the only person of color in that team. And when I say that I don't want to change anything about myself that would also mean that I wouldn't want to change anything about my dietary preferences so I'm vegetarian and I love Indian food and I would bring lunch and Indian food has a certain smell so I could see people rolling their eyes and you know like those facial expressions like when you talk about how do we integrate that into our culture right like you can just see like people getting uncomfortable or like like you know and I'm like someone came up to me like I think I'm allergic to this smell and I heard that same person mentioning that how much they love butter chicken and they went to the Indian restaurant. And I'm like, how can you justify that?

And just because of that incident, Erin, I started using heavy cologne on myself, just making sure that I belong. And like, you know, no one gets uncomfortable because the, the food I bring smells. That's disappointing actually, that someone would, you know, this is where something like a sensitivity training would be appropriate because you need to know, you know, like what, how, how to be a person, like, it's really like, it's just how to, how to be like an emotionally intelligent, empathetic person, tolerant person, you know, you wouldn't ever do that to anyone else with any other food, would you? I mean, I don't know. It just seems it's exceptionally rude is what it is. But then, you know, you got out, like for me, I was like, you know, that moment I'm like, okay, I got into trouble even for wearing heavy cologne, of course, you know, sometimes you have the same environment.

So, you know, sometimes like just these small things, they deviate your mind from the regular tasks and responsibilities you're supposed to do just because your mind gets stuck in somewhere where it should not be right like you you just keep thinking about it and then you do not know what the right thing is do you approach HR do you like you don't want to be that bad person like and start an investigation specifically when you're new and you're still fostering those professional relationships with your team members but I think in those moments it's very important for you to take a stand for yourself I think I did not take a stand like you know I did not do anything immediately but after a week when it wasn't stopping I was like okay this needs to stop and I think I was very brave enough. I did go to whichever representative I had. And I'm like, I am being made feel this way.

And I think it's against your company's policies. And, you know, it's also a form of bullying because it does lead into all those sub-interactions. And here it's very important, Erin, that some of the employees do not even know what rights they have as a worker or an employee for an organization. During orientation, we tell them, these are the policies, these are the procedures. No one reads them. No one knows what to do. Like I'm a nature professional. I see people in orientation. They are just so excited to be a part of the organization that they do not go through or they do not know what employee rights they have. Yeah. You know, some people will watch us and they'll probably be thinking to themselves, well, you know, that person who complained about the smell, what if they have a sensory, you know, sensitivity or something like that, you know, but, you know, what we have to understand is, you know, for starters, we can't make everyone happy. You know, I don't think we can make everyone happy.

Tolerance is really important in the workplace. And there are different ways that you can go about problem solving, and that's not the way to do it. Yeah. Yeah. And I think, like, you know, not having any preconceived notions or prejudices in your mind. You know, I was hearing a podcast which said that, you know, being nice, kind and compassion is the new thing which the world needs to learn. Earlier, we used to be like, oh, every, you know, everyone is nice, kind and compassionate.

But these days, it's a thing which we need to start incorporating into our trainings or our culture I mean I always go by the quote I always tell it to my new hires or the people I meet like be a rainbow in someone else's cloud like it's Maya Angelou's quote and I'm like why would you want to do something like you know it's it's okay to do something when you know like when you see unconscious bias like you know every you say something to me and I'm like okay like you know it's not this it's this but you are willing to learn you're willing to be aware of that but it's not okay to do something or make someone feel a certain way when you know that, you know, it's not right. And you also know that the person does not have the power to, you know, say anything. Because that's usually the case, Erin.

Like, what gave me the motivation or what inspired me was, like, if it's being done to me, it's going to be done to many other jayas out there. There's not always going to be me. There is influx of people coming here and, you know, no one deserves to be, you know, made feel that way. Everyone needs to be felt that, yes, I deserve to belong here. Amazing. Thanks so much for joining me today, Jaya. You're very welcome, A Erin. It was a pleasure. Did you have any words of inspiration for anyone who's, you know, who's listening to the podcast or anything like just a little thing you want to leave them with? I would just say that, you know, it's, you know, put yourself in someone else's shoes. Put yourself in someone else's shoes when you are making any preconceived notions.

Just think from other person's perspective. And also, if you're trying to influx any DEIB initiatives into your strategies or workplace, don't stop. Keep going. is a right place don't stop like keep going if you receive a roadblock from one person always look outside the box that's what I do do not hinder yourself just because you received one no if there's like one no there could be four yeses so just think outside the box the world is a beautiful place people are willing to help you if you are you know willing to receive that help love and compassion from them

oh so good such good yes thanks so much yeah perfect

Thanks erin

Don't forget to stay weird stay wonderful and don't stay out of trouble!