Intentional Conversations

Welcome to Intentional Conversations, where we intersect diversity, equity, and inclusion with leadership and business.

This week we welcomed Jil Littlejohn Bostick to Intentional Conversations!

So, grab your headphones 🎧, press play, and let the conversation begin!

** Be sure to SUBSCRIBE to our channel because we're all about keeping the great conversations flowing. **

RESOURCES FROM THIS EPISODE:

https://www.blackfolkscamptoo.com

https://outdoorafro.org

KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM JIL:

• Leaders need to be clear, transparent, consistent and focus on the why.
• Stop looking at the work of diversity, equity and inclusion and if you can focus on it being a part of the core values, you will continue to see the work go forward. Just start taking the practices, and embed them across the board.
• Do the right thing. Put people first. Be the best. All of our work (Winnebago) is based on these core values. It’s not about a name or an acronym.
• Embedding these values will lead to inclusive action and inclusive leadership.
• What we don’t know and understand is when we allow a narrative to create for ourselves or that someone else creates.
• Black folks camp too!
• If you aren’t learning, you’re not growing.
• Corporate responsibility is a shift from compliance, this is what you have to do, to strategy, how do companies do well and do good. It allows the work to take place, what is the true driver around innovation and talent retention, it’s not a “nice to have” it’s a business imperative.
• Do well and do good!
• The idea people aren’t hearing and get misconstrued is that ultimately we are better together.
• When you are strong and performing, it allows me to see the possibility of what could be. We have been fighting against each other. When we get to a point where we understand, we will be at a better place. We are better together.
• Work/life balance doesn’t exist, but I believe in integration! Having the trust and psychologically safe at work to do what you need to do at home determines how you show up for family and work. Focus on family and show up and produce the results that are needed for work.
• When your parents are gone, you can’t get that time back!

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On LinkedIn

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Pre-order her book

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Welcome to Intentional Conversations, where we intersect inclusion, belonging, leadership and all things business! We are thrilled you are here.

What a fantastic episode our Q2 Reunion show was. Emmanuel Kulu and John Graham joined Dr. Nika and the IC community for an hour of intentional conversation.

So, grab your headphones 🎧, press play, and let the conversation begin!

** Be sure to SUBSCRIBE to our channel because we're all about keeping the great conversations flowing. **

RESOURCES MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

Upfront.love

John's Book - Plantation Theory

Emmanuel's Books

KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM THIS EPISODE:

• We can’t have the reparations conversation if we don’t talk healing first.
• There is a lot that can help heal some wounds, but it can’t happen without building the trust.
• The same hands that built the pyramids built the White House.
• When are we going to start working together building our own and having success?
• What are we doing to make them suffer? If we withheld our funds from companies we know are intentionally racist, we could make a difference.
• If the only time you are experiencing community is at work, that’s a problem.
• How many are viewing people as colleagues and cofounders, we see each other as competition.
• Why are people so upset over the rollback of DEI when we’ve not seen a systemic change in the lat 60 years.
• DEI was never intended to do what you thought it was.
• If your activism is limited to the confines of a corporation. You’re cooked.
• Emmanuel - Faith has kept me grounded.
• John - From reconstructing to 1978 we were most married group in country - today least married - How can we start to restore community through virtue of impacting strong marriages?



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Welcome to Intentional Conversations, where we intersect diversity, equity, and inclusion with leadership and business.

This week we welcomed Amri B. Johnson to Intentional Conversations and if there is one phrase that summarizes this entire episode, it is #BounceHigher.

So, grab your headphones 🎧, press play, and let the conversation begin!

** Be sure to SUBSCRIBE to our channel because we're all about keeping the great conversations flowing. **

KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM AMRI:

• When you’re in the midst of chaos the best thing to do is act. You learn, you sense, you respond to that and you do it again.
• When you get close to a disability, you’re seeing the world in a completely different way.
• People are more than just that part of who they are, it has to be addressed as the whole human. My niece is not her prosthetic, she’s Jasmine. She’s fun and she’s compassionate, bi-sexual, into old school hip hop.
• People want you to honor whatever helps them thrive.
• Emerging inclusion framework - how do we build capacity to get stronger after stressors?
• DEI has been heavily focused on racilization and we were not always as prudent who that was about and for as what we should have been.
• We need to be honest enough to move where we want to be.
• I love to be right, it’s one of my favorite things. Rightness has never transformed anything. If we’re only focused on being right, we probably won’t have very much transformation.
• The lines and boxes don’t exist, because they put us in the space of “what” and we need to be more focused on “who”.
• Leadership is the capacity of a human community to shape its future. That means we all have to be a part of that dance and all of us can make a contribution inside of it. If we want human flourishing, we need to do it when we are all responsible.
• The way your muscle grows is to tear it down and then build it back up with diet and rest, in a way, you’re always gonna have a certain amount of stressors, and sometimes you avoid them, the avoidance actually makes them more difficult. The stressors are opportunities and not something you’re a victim of.
• Resilience gets you back to baseline, anti-fragility gets you better.
• It’s not I get better and you don’t, it’s we get better or we don’t. You don’t get too far by yourself.
• Lean into love and do whatever you have to do to get to where you want to together. Sometimes you need to have someone that is that caring, unconditional space, and we all need to cultivate that.
• Not super human, we need to be super connected, that is the only way I know to bounce higher!



CONNECT WITH AMRI:

On LinkedIn | X

On Substack

Visit his website

Get his book, Reconstructing Inclusion

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Inclusion Uncomplicated Dr. White's latest book (Hard copy & NEW Paperback version available)

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Welcome to Intentional Conversations, where we intersect diversity, equity, and inclusion with leadership and business.

This week we welcomed Dr. Kim McLear to Intentional Conversations!

So, grab your headphones 🎧, press play, and let the conversation begin!

** Be sure to SUBSCRIBE to our channel because we're all about keeping the great conversations flowing. **

KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM DR. KIM:

• I’ve always been someone that is driven to learn, live and laugh.
• Sharing space with someone is powerful and sacred and speaks to co-creation.
• If the intentions are to have something beautiful emerge from our connection,
• Intentionally put herself in uncomfortable places to work through her comfort zone boundaries.
• I’m going to demonstrate radical belonging.
• It was a reflection about how unaccountable systems are.
• Designed a movement around joy, aliveness, rhythm, tempo - all centered around how do you expose unaccountable systems but live your life with joy, indignity and integrity.
• Individually we are all powerful, but what is more important, especially now, is that we find our community.
• There is strength in silence.
• There is power in observation, power in documenting what you’re seeing even if you don’t have the power to change it. That helps to reclaim the narratives for how to fight back.
• Find your confidantes, find your community, lean into trusted relationships. When you find your senses are being inflamed, lean into those trusted relationships. Have a space to be with others and cultivate spaces of love. Nourish your mind, your bodies and observe how you feel when you’re in those spaces of love. That is where we will have an abundance of intentional actions, not from toxic spaces.
• Right the ship wasn’t just about the Coast Guard, it’s about this country, any organization that is failing and not doing the business of the people.
• Used my talent and reputation as strategy and community.
• Tremendous power in how we move, what we feed our minds and you never know what will emerge in the future.

CONNECT WITH DR. KIM:

On LinkedIn

Follow The Art of Civics Project on LinkedIn for updates about her future events

Visit her website

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Inclusion Uncomplicated Dr. White's latest book (Hard copy & NEW Paperback version available)

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Welcome to Intentional Conversations, where we intersect diversity, equity, and inclusion with leadership and business.

This week we welcomed Tommi Paris to Intentional Conversations!

So, grab your headphones 🎧, press play, and let the conversation begin!

** Be sure to SUBSCRIBE to our channel because we're all about keeping the great conversations flowing. **

KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM TOMMI:

• As referees, we are absorbing chaos and create calm.
• Try to create calm by underlining needs and values that are connected to what I’m seeing in someone else.
• Even when I’m 100% right and someone else is 100% wrong, I still want to understand what’s going on.
• I rarely look to agree, especially in this work, we’re not going to arrive at agreement. I generally look for closure.
• My goal and my motive isn’t going to be to change their mind, it’s impossible… but trying to achieve closure is the key.
• We’ve lost the art of nuance… and we’re atrophying our muscles around dialogue and really centering understanding, versus agreement.
• We don’t have the hard conversations becuase they aren’t safe, so as a leader what am I doing to create a safe space where taking a risk is ok?
• Your orientation to learning has to be humility.
• It really moves people when there is no difference in status, people who are seemingly untouchable, versus the people who are always getting ganged, when we reduce the strata, and someone is called in of a high status, how you show up in those moments will shift an organization overnight.
• You might be rocking it out on the spreadsheets, but you’re leaving dead bodies behind you.
• Inclusive leadership is our access to high performance. If we stay the course it will be a beautiful thing.

RESOURCES SHARED DURING EPISODE:

https://www.nikawhite.com/from-the-hardwood-to-history-dawn-staley-s-uncommon-favor-and-the-power-of-storytelling

CONNECT WITH TOMMI:

On LinkedIn

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Welcome to Intentional Conversations, where we intersect diversity, equity, and inclusion with leadership and business.

This week we were joined by Diya Khanna!

So, grab your headphones 🎧, press play, and let the conversation begin!

** Be sure to SUBSCRIBE to our channel because we're all about keeping the great conversations flowing. **

KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM DIYA:

• Community is more important than ever. All of that other stuff is majoring in minors and we should be saving our time and energy for other things to move this work forward. 
• You learn and grow from places of discomfort, as long as they are safe places. 
• Challenge each other in a way that is respectful and mindful of others competencies. Don’t discount other people’s competencies.  
• Community doesn't come overnight. We need to invest in community.  
• We’re stronger when there’s more of us with the same message. When we begin echoing what someone else says, people begin to listen. 
• If someone is speaking up, amplify out loud so they don’t feel alone. Show up for your community. 
• Equity of opportunity! Give people the opportunity to share their skills. If we don’t people wait in the shadows, when we do that we are all better for it. 
• People are in different areas of their learning journey. Allow people the space to be on their journey. 
• There’s power in asking questions. Rather than tell, ask. Inspire curiosity. 
• Lean into storytelling, it’s so impactful for DEI.
• There’s nuanced differences in how we approach this work. Invite the differences. 
• Don’t give people mass information, give them prompts to get their minds thinking. 
• You can have similarities, but always invite the differences and being challenged. 
• The best way to shape mindsets is to spend time around that difference. 
• VUCA is an acronym that stands for Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity, and Ambiguity, and it's a framework used to describe the turbulent, unpredictable nature of the modern world, particularly in business and leadership contexts. The reframe is Vision, Understanding, Clarity, and Agility.



CONNECT WITH DIYA:

On LinkedIn | Instagram

Visit her website

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Inclusion Uncomplicated Dr. White's latest book (Hard copy & NEW Paperback version available)

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Welcome to Intentional Conversations, where we intersect diversity, equity, and inclusion with leadership and business.

This week we welcomed Ernesto Aguilar & Paige Barnett to Intentional Conversations!

So, grab your headphones 🎧, press play, and let the conversation begin!

** Be sure to SUBSCRIBE to our channel because we're all about keeping the great conversations flowing. **

KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM ROBERT & PAIGE:

** DOWNLOAD THE DEI COUNCIL RESOURCE GUIDE

• Change is non-linear.
• When organizations are resistant to change, there are typical indicators we see at the corporate level. When organizations become reactive, there is a lot of burnout, leaders are anxious, there is a sense of exhaustion and overwhelm across the board.
• When you’re proactive about culture change is when organizations begin to see progress.
• The goal is being strategic about culture change and it’s possible.
• TRUST is the through line. Trust is the currency of change.
• To change your organization it is the responsibility of the people with most power.
• Make sure you’re mature enough about building trust with staff and building systems of trust with staff.
• They communicate, they participate, they show up, they’re grateful and express gratitude.
• For the people who are volunteering or volun-told, have a budget or at the very least recognize them.
• Being genuinely curious and really listening and taking that to heart and responding and reacting in a time bound fashion with people.
• Councils are not HR.
• Communication is key.
• The little behaviors or resistance keep staff from participating, but ultimately keep people from staying.
• Write this into your recruitment strategy.
• Senior leaders show up less defensively with staff for councils that are growing.
• Never take for granted the work you are doing and the impact you are having, they may not see in 5, 10, 30 years the impact you’ve had, but quietly they are saying thank you!

CONNECT WITH ROBERT & PAIGE:

Paige's LinkedIn

Roberto's LinkedIn

Visit Robnett Consulting website

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Inclusion Uncomplicated Dr. White's latest book (Hard copy & NEW Paperback version available)

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Welcome to Intentional Conversations, where we intersect diversity, equity, and inclusion with leadership and business.

This week we welcomed Naaima Khan to Intentional Conversations!

So, grab your headphones 🎧, press play, and let the conversation begin!

** Be sure to SUBSCRIBE to our channel because we're all about keeping the great conversations flowing. **

KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM NAAIMA:

• Abundance, authenticity, asset-based core values behind her business… we live in a world where people are really feeling the scarcity, enough time, enough money, whatever, we’re always trapped in this scarcity mindset. But what if we were to break that pattern, inner thinking?
• It reminds us that we are enough, we have enough, just because we are feeling lack in one way or another doesn’t mean that becomes the defining factor in our lives.
• Mindset abundance isn’t always operating in the “I need more” mindset.
• It is critical to establish the needs that communities are facing to help funders understand what the need is.
• Organizations will use diversity, but they don’t know how to really use that when it comes to bringing people to the table.
• Identity is such a hyper-indivualized take, focusing on me, which is important to a degree to have that. This is how I connect and resonate to people as I pursue my journey through the world.
• Have we gone through times of instability before? And how did folx historically participate? Putting into perspective, yes this is our current context, yes it’s uncomfortable, and do we find a way to navigate through it that makes our ancestors proud.
• What we see today is not from an overnight shift.
• How do you center equity? Really embed a decolonized lens, to really see every community’s lives as valuable.
• If you’re not willing to slow down to some degree, you’re probably not setting yourself up for success in equity work.
• I ask my clients, what is the long term effect?
• There are other ways to practice smaller wins to help people to understand the longer term. It does take an intentional and planned investment to stay connected to equity work.
• People don’t pay enough attention to the cost of equity work. It costs in employee retention, in terms of being effective, in terms of having more quality ideas.
• Narratives shape mindset.
• Stories really impact us at a deeper level than we understand. They socialize us, they are all things that impact our world view and directly impact our actions. So critical to build that level of consciousness.
• Take the time to say what calls our spirit to the higher things in life.



CONNECT WITH NAAIMA:

On LinkedIn



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Inclusion Uncomplicated Dr. White's latest book (Hard copy & NEW Paperback version available)

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Welcome to Intentional Conversations, the podcast where we engage in bold dialogue at the intersection of diversity, equity, inclusion, leadership, and business.

I’m Dr. Nika White, your host, and I’m thrilled to have you join us!

This week, we had an inspiring conversation with Janet Stovall, diving into

So, grab your headphones 🎧, hit play, and let’s get started!

✨ Be sure to SUBSCRIBE so you never miss a conversation that matters. ✨

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

• Taught lesson vs. bought lesson… it is the one place that it has the ability and true incentive to do the work. It is not going to be easy, but I think people will figure out they need to keep doing it.
• Infinity groups are about identity, ERG’s are about advocacy and that’s when you provide value to the company.
• ERG's don't happen organically, if you don’t support your people on the first 2 levels, identity and advocacy, they will never get to the 3rd level of value.
• “Companies can mandate diversity, but they have to cultivate inclusion.” We focus on getting bodies in the building, but that’s not enough. Inclusion has always been the most important of inclusion, diversity and equity. Most of us think inclusion as feeling, I define it as behavior.
• Diversity is not a problem to solve, it solves problems. Inclusion is not feeling valued, it is being able to deliver value. And equity…
• You cannot just create a “space” of belonging, then you say “sense” of belonging, but the onus of inclusion is on the person that has been excluded. The only way to create belonging is you have to focus on inclusive behaviors.
• If you’re trying to decide whether you’re going to go public and say something, ask yourself 5 questions, is it: Deliberate, Educated, Purposeful, Tailored, Habitual?
• Sometimes we go up, then we come right back down. In 2020, we went way up, but now we need to expect that we’re going to come way down. What gives me hope is we are still moving all along the continuum.
• I follow what pisses me off, I don’t follow what makes me happy.
• What keeps me in this work… understanding who I uniquely am, where I am doing the work, and identifying the unique barriers to inclusion.
• The data shows up Black women are effected more than anyone else in the workplace.
• Everybody has some aspect seen or unseen of diversity.
• Being a communicator is incredibly important because you have to help people understand how it effects them.
• The heart and mind will never change as long as the behavior doesn’t change.
• We have to keep doing this work, but it has never been easy. We live in an inequitable world, and in that world, equity is a disruption. If we don’t, we see where the world would like to be!

CONNECT WITH JANET:

On LinkedIn | Instagram

On her website

Listen to her podcast

Get her book - The Conscious Communicator: The Fine Art Of Not Saying Stupid Sh*t



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Welcome to Intentional Conversations, where we intersect diversity, equity, and inclusion with leadership and business.

We’re shaking things up with a special reunion episode to celebrate our 5 year anniversary of the Intentional Conversations vodcast!

We kicked off the reunion episode with four incredible women, and past guests, who returned to catch up, share insights, and reflect on the world today—plus what they’ve been up to since their last visit.

So, grab your headphones 🎧, press play, and let the conversation begin!

** Be sure to SUBSCRIBE to our channel—we’re all about keeping the great conversations flowing! **

KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM ALL:

Minda - This is a marathon, not a sprint.

Minda - I had to talk to myself nice… what does my life look like? I had to ask myself those questions, putting my stake in the ground, I’m an advocate, will still encourage people. The strategy might change, but the game is still the same.

Minda - Root yourself into 2 - 3 things you care deeply about and focus your time and energy on those things.

Deepa - Found myself really burnt out in a deep way, took time at the end of last year to say what does my life really need to look like?

Deepa - Find the joy where you can… do the small things, it feels overwhelming. But also get smarter to see how you can engage in the conversation.

Deepa - Community is what will help us get through this.

Nika - Strategic patience is so important right now.

Ritu - If there has ever been a moment for us needing to be in community, needing to be witnessed, it is this moment.

Ritu - In moments of darkness, the thing we need most is light. We will have moments of joy and light and whatever they are, those are the moments we’ll gravitate to.

Ritu - Joy is resistance.

Tara - When we have to tear things apart, I can rely on the good reason and the good reason will give me some semblance of peace. So I focus on what I can do to take care of myself, pave the way on how to show up for myself and others.

Tara - What does it mean when things are consumed by fire? That things have the space to be born.

Tara - You are before the world, if you don’t take care of you, you can’t do Sh-t. You sometimes have to pave the way before other people can see clearly enough to move. Human beings are before systems.

Ritu - I am still showing up because I recognize the importance of connection.

Ritu - It’s important to view our actions through everyone on this planet is effected by what I do and say.

Deepa - We underestimated the impact in gender. A lot of companies just weren’t thinking it wouldn’t go there.

Deepa - So much of my work is focused on the we and the me, we need to talk about doing both and how we make it through this time. How do we make change together.

Deepa - Some people worry about themselves, some include their family, some see their community, some may see their state or country, but there are lots of us that see us before the world.

When asked the question, "How did we get here?"

Ritu - Capitalism is destroying our planet. It is the fundamental root problem that connects with power and greed and the mistaken belief in scarcity. There is abundance in the earth and universe and we have brought into the false belief of scarcity.

Tara - Race and gender are like Trojan horses, they really aren’t the point. I feel like greed and power are the point. People know gender, race, civil rights is an emotional issue.

Minda - We’ve always been here… because we had a little more power, we forgot about the other stage, but they were already pulling things together. I’m very optimistic about the future.

Deepa - It’s a last dance… people who historically had power felt like things were shifting. If the stories and things we care about aren’t updated, the sense of winner take all, if we don’t change those narratives, we don’t teach the younger generation how to live. There is more of us in the circles together, and that’s what we need to do more too!

Nika - Don’t stop what you’re doing!



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Inclusion Uncomplicated Dr. White's latest book (Hard copy & NEW Paperback version available)

Join: Weekly Newsletter