By Louise Moulié
In this podcast, we explore the secrets behind leading authentic, impactful and successful diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in business. Through meaningful dialogue with leaders in the field,
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The podcast currently has 34 episodes available.
#33 Welcome back to Diversity Secrets Podcast!
Numerous articles are pointing to what is being called the rise and fall of DEI. After the protests following George Floyd’s murder in 2020, many companies pledged to increase their investment in DEI initiatives, leading to a two-year boom in DEI funding and staffing around the globe. However, DEI initiatives seemingly lost steam in 2023, with many of those very same organizations making pledges in 2020, cutting back on their DEI efforts, in a context of backlash, pushback, as well as political and regulatory pressure targeted at DEI programs. Within 3 years, DEI went from being the right thing to do in business, to being a largely controversial topic in the corporate world and in our societies at large.
Taking a step, back, is DEI's peak really behind us? How can organizations and practitioners continue delivering on commitments made in 2020? How de we get out of this extreme-to-extreme DEI and ensure sustainable results over controversy? As an industry, how can we regain credibility, and change the narrative to highlight what DEI really is: inclusive and equitable societies for all!
With over 15 years of experience leading DEI initiatives at a global scale, and as former Global Chief Diversity Officer at Google, Sanofi, Pfizer and Bristol-Myers Squibb, Wema Hoover, shares with us her unique insights and perspective to better understand this DEI crisis. (visit Wema's website here)
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#32 Welcome back to Diversity Secrets Podcast!
June is around the corner and companies around the globe are getting ready to celebrate Pride Month.
While more and more organizations are being proactive in their LGBTQ+ inclusion, even LGBTQ+ friendly companies usually focus more on the “LGB” than on the “TQ+.”
So at Diversity Secrets we wanted to mark this year’s Pride Month by slightly shifting the focus. We invited Magda Stega, DEI practitioner and LGBTQ+ advocate, to discuss how to create inclusive workplaces for transgender and gender-nonconforming people.
In this honest conversation, Magda shares with us her personal journey, as well as her HR expertise on building inclusive workplaces. We share concrete tips and advice for organizations to transform their recruitment processes, their management practices, rethink their employee benefits, and their culture in order to support transgender and gender non-conforming colleagues. From the small actions with big impact, to what being an ally really means.
Tune in to find out!
Additional resources:
Curious to learn more about Diversity Secrets Agency Training & Consulting services? Get in touch: [email protected]
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#31 Welcome back to Diversity Secrets Podcast!
Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DEI) leaders are driven by two things: passion for humanity, equity and inclusivity, and their will to create systemic change. In other words, the perfect mix for potential burn-out! So how can we achieve systemic change for DEI, in line with our passion, without running out of fuel along the way? What stakeholders, allies, and systems can we rely on in our organizations to increase our impact and safeguard our mental health as DEI advocates?
To help us explore this topic, we're very excited to welcome Dharshni Padayachee. A charted accountant by profession, Dharshni switched career paths to lead Inclusion, Equity and Diversity at a large corporate and investment bank in South Africa. She shares with us how she finds balance between passion and strategy, to achieve impactful results for inclusion in the workplace.
To follow Dharshni's work, don't hesitate to connect with her on Linkedin.
Curious to learn more about Diversity Secrets Agency Training & Consulting services? Get in touch: [email protected]
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#30 B, from Belonging, is the new letter that we increasingly find attached to the Diversity Equity and Inclusion acronym: DEIB. As an industry, we've reached the tacit agreement that the success of DE&I in a company is measured by the feeling of Belonging of its employees. But what does Belonging really mean to each of us? What does it take to belong, and who is made accountable for the act of 'Belonging'? Pushed to its limits, can Belonging fall in a performative trap and end up hurting those of us who most long to belong?
To unpack the complex concept of Belonging, we are joined by Apolline, Founder of La Piscine Media (if you're a French Speaker, sign up to Apolline's newsletter to continue unpacking topics related to diversity, inclusion and purpose at work).
This is a new episode format: candid conversations with DE&I peers to unpack relevant DE&I topics. Let us know if you like it!
Cited resources:
Curious to learn more about Diversity Secrets Agency Training & Consulting services? Get in touch: [email protected]
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#29 Today we welcome Nichelle Appleby, Founder of Work Imagined Compensation and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Consultancy.
Nichelle is putting pay equity and dignity back at the heart of DE&I. With multiple years of experience in compensation and compliance, Nichelle is helping organizations committed to DE&I put their money where their mouth is. In capitalistic societies where value, self-worth and respect are largely derived from the amount of our pay-check, pay equity takes a whole new dimension in building dignified and inclusive work places.
Nichelle is also the creator of what she calls the Dignity Standard, a framework to help DE&I leaders reframe their work around what she considers the bedrock for workplace inclusion: dignity.
Tune in to find out what it's all about!
If you’d like to follow Nichelle’s work, do visit www.workimagined.com or her LinkedIn.
Curious to learn more about Diversity Secrets Agency Training & Consulting services? Get in touch: [email protected]
Your feedback helps us grow: add a review wherever you’re listening to this podcast!
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#28 Welcome back to Diversity Secrets podcast! In this episode, Laure Bereni, Sociology Research Professor at CNRS lays out the key findings from her latest book “Management of Virtue: Corporate Diversity in New York and in Paris” (published in French). This comparative study of Diversity & Inclusion management in New York and in Paris offers a unique perspective into the work of DE&I managers.
Laure's findings demonstrate the inherent contradictions that lie at the heart of DE&I as a field of management. Trying to solve the equation between social justice and business profit, DE&I managers and practitioners are trusted with the unbearable task of smoothing and masking the contradiction between virtue and the appearance of virtue. Faced with what Laure is calling the stigma of virtue, they try to legetimize their work with the ubiquitous idea that ‘diversity means business’.
Can DE&I managers overcome this stigma or must they continue upholding these contradictions? What does the ethnic and gender identity of DE&I professionals have to do with their credibility? Will political and external pushes help DE&I managers face the inherent duality of their work?
You can continue following Laure Bereni’s insightful work on LinkedIn and purchase her book here (soon available in English).
Curious to learn more about Diversity Secrets Agency Training & Consulting services? Get in touch: [email protected]
Your feedback helps us grow: add a review wherever you’re listening to this podcast!
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#27 For the first episode of season 4 'So, What Now?', we are thrilled to welcome an experienced DEI advocate and practitioner, Elizabeth Anderson.
Elizabeth says that Diversity, Equity and Inclusion is at a Mirror Moment in its history. What does that mean and how did we get to this point? What comes next, once we've taken a good hard look into the mirror? Find out with us on this episode as we tackle DE&I at crossroads and its implications for the industry and its practitioners.
Elizabeth is also the founder of Venn DEI, a consulting and community networking agency that aims to connect people who believe in the potential of DEI to build stronger companies and a more equitable world. Follow their work on LinkedIn.
Curious to learn more about Diversity Secrets Agency Training & Consulting services? Get in touch: [email protected]
Your feedback helps us grow: add a review wherever you’re listening to this podcast!
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#26 Welcome back to Diversity Secrets Podcast!
We’re back with a brand new season called ‘So, what now?’ Why this question? Well, because at Diversity Secrets we feel that DE&I is at an inflection point and we want to make sure that as an industry we take the right turn.
For several months now I’ve been asking myself wether DE&I, and its practitioners (myself included!) are holding themselves accountable to the very principles that we preach: authenticity, integrity and impact. DE&I hasn’t had it easy. But faced with backlash, stalling results, cynicism and a lack of common standards, we believe that together, we can find a new way of bringing DE&I forward. Our expert speakers will help us answer this season’s pressing questions: are we going in the right direction and aiming at the right goals, should DE&I get political, can practitioners set themselves common standards of integrity and results?
Listen to this episode for a sneak preview of what we have in store!
Trigger Warning: A section of this episode refers to an event that may trigger trauma connected to racism and violence against BIPOC. (5:14-5:50)
Curious to learn more about Diversity Secrets Agency Training & Consulting services? Get in touch: [email protected]
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#025 And that’s a wrap for season 3 of Diversity Secrets Podcast! We’ll be back with a brand new season during the next quarter.
In this episode, we go over what we’ve learned during this season, and give you a sneak preview of what to expect from season 4.
This season, we wanted to build a hands-on, practical blueprint to help YOU set your DE&I work up for success!
Here are the main lessons our guests shared with us on how to succeed at what sometimes can feel like an impossible job, i.e building truly diverse, equitable and inclusive workplaces:
1. Lay the building blocks for success right from the start. Build a solid DEI strategy that gathers the buy-in from the stakeholders that are critical to its success.
2. Setting your organization up for success in DEI, is also about setting yourself up for success as a DEI leader. Set personal boundaries and realistic expectation for you and your stakeholders, prepare for discomfort, and stay aware of your competencies and how to develop them.
3. Don’t build DEI on wobbly structures: deconstruct to rebuild. Review your whole recruitment and employee-life cycle (onboarding, compensation, development, benefits…) and restructure it from a DEI lens, in order to truly attract, hire and retain diverse talents that can belong and reach their full potential in your organization.
4. Finally, successful DEI is DEI integrated from end-to-end in your organization as a core business component. This means DEI sits at the C-suite table at par with other business units, the DEI team has a budget and is embedded in day-to-day business, you measure progress with KPIs and relevant metrics, and each function in the organization is held accountable for embedding DEI in what they are responsible for delivering at their level.
It’s not easy to succeed at DEI but we hope that through these honest conversations we managed to build a blue-print that will help you along the way. In the end, successful DEI not only means better workplaces for all. It also should lead, thanks to trickling effect, to positive impact beyond the company walls.
That’s exactly what we’ll be talking about next season: taking DEI from workplace to workforce and marketplace!
Thanks for tuning in this season and please don’t hesitate do send us feedback: it helps us grow! Don’t forget to subscribe to not miss out on Season 4!
This season was powered by Mixity.co, the all in one digital platform for assessing, managing and promoting DE&I in your organization. Mixity is offering our listeners an exclusive 2 months free trial for their all-in-one platform. Assess your DE&I footprint, define clear metrics and KPIs, and benefit from customized recommendations and hands-on support from their team of dedicated experts, all in one place.
Redeem your free trial here with the code ‘DiversityPodcast’ : Mixity.co
Curious to learn more about Diversity Secrets Agency Training & Consulting services? Get in touch: [email protected]
Your feedback helps us grow: add a review wherever you’re listening to this podcast!
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#24 For our last episode of the season on how to succeed in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), we are joined by the brilliant Jeffery Smith, VP DE&I at the online education streaming platform Masterclass.
With over 25 years of experience as an HR and DEI leader both in-house and as a consultant, Jeffery shares with us what it means to successfully integrate DEI into your business.
Integrating DEI in your business means that DEI should be considered as a critical business component for every activity in the organization. This implies multiple things. For one, Jeffery explains how to foster accountability for DEI in the different roles and at the different levels in the company: making employees responsible for embedding DEI in what they are responsible for delivering, whether they stand in HR, sales or marketing.
Integrating DEI also means that DEI should be at the table. But not just any table: the C-suite table at par with other business leaders, of course. Not only that, but the DEI leader should be considered a business leader first and foremost, weighing in and participating in major business decisions. As an extension, the DEI team should aslo be integrated in the day-to-day of the business.
Finally, we discuss the importance of allocating budget to DEI - just like for any other business component in the organization. In the end, an organization with a truly integrated DEI will see its positive impact not only within the workplace, but also in its marketplace, thus expanding the reach of DEI beyond company walls.
A perfect segue into our next season that will air later this year and where we will explore how to take DE&I from the workplace to the marketplace.
Tune in today, and make sure to subscribe in order to not miss our next episode!
You can follow Jeffery’s work on LinkedIn (@Jeffery Smith).
This season, we’re partnering with Mixity.co, the all in one digital platform for assessing, managing and promoting DE&I in your organization.
Mixity is offering our listeners an exclusive 2 months free trial for their all-in-one platform. Assess your DE&I footprint, define clear metrics and KPIs, and benefit from customized recommendations and hands-on support from their team of dedicated experts, all in one place.
Redeem your free trial here with the code ‘DiversityPodcast’ : Mixity.co
Curious to learn more about Diversity Secrets Agency Training & Consulting services? Get in touch: [email protected]
Your feedback helps us grow: add a review wherever you’re listening to this podcast!
Find us on LinkedIn
The podcast currently has 34 episodes available.