She+ Geeks Out Podcast

Theodora Skeadas is back for round two, and we packed in a lot! In Part 1, we got into red teaming, AI governance, and social scoring. This time we went wider, starting with what's happening to remote work and who gets left behind as companies pull people back into offices, tighten visa rules for trust and safety roles, and automate outsourced content moderation jobs.

We talk about the "portfolio life" as a way to future-proof your career instead of betting everything on one role, what happened to Twitter's workforce demographics after the layoffs, and Theo's survivor-centered approach to fighting AI-generated intimate image abuse. We also make the case for treating cloud infrastructure as a public utility, and dig into the climate and water costs of data centers. Whew!

00:00 - Felicia and Rachel intro: Spider-Man's Vulture and class solidarity

11:02 - Remote work

18:45 - The case for a "portfolio life"

24:33 - Centering survivors in the fight against AI-generated intimate image abuse

32:13 - The case for treating cloud infrastructure as a public utility

35:54 - Data centers, water, and the climate cost of cloud infrastructure

46:41 - Panpsychism, consciousness, and AI

Visit us at InclusionGeeks.com to stay up to date on all the ways you can make the workplace work for everyone! Check out Inclusion Geeks Academy and InclusionGeeks.com/podcast for the code to get a free mini course.

Theodora Skeadas has spent her career at the messy, consequential intersection of technology, governance, and harm reduction, long before "responsible AI" became a job title. She studied philosophy and government, witnessed the Arab Spring firsthand, spent years at Twitter facilitating the Global Trust and Safety Council, and now heads AI red teaming at Humane Intelligence while also serving as a PhD researcher at King's College London, board co-chair of the Integrity Institute, and advisory board chair of All Tech is Human. As she put it: she sleeps occasionally!

We get into what red teaming is and why everyone, not just researchers and AI labs, should be doing it. We also talk about how trust and safety and AI governance are more connected than the headlines suggest, what social scoring actually means (yep, like that Black Mirror episode), the human cost of Meta pulling its content moderation contracts, what it takes to get into responsible tech right now, and how companies should be thinking about AI in hiring and performance reviews. 

We didn't even get into all of our questions, so we had to do a part 2... stay tuned!

00:00 - Felicia and Rachel get into it... Knicks win, New York City, and the need for human connection

09:30 - Theo's origin story: philosophy, the Arab Spring, and landing in responsible tech

14:51 - Twitter's Trust and Safety Council, AI governance, and why they're more connected than you'd think

19:01 - Red teaming: what it is, who does it, and why everyone should be involved

24:30 - Guardrails: from social media deny lists to the EU AI Act

30:33 - Meta, BPO contracts, and the global human cost of cutting content moderation

32:34 - Social scoring: from Black Mirror to reality

37:31 - Online fraud, vulnerable populations, and the case for critical thinking

42:07 - Getting into responsible AI: honest advice for a crowded, shrinking field

50:33 - AI in the workplace and the global picture: governance, bias, language gaps, and what's next

Visit us at InclusionGeeks.com to stay up to date on all the ways you can make the workplace work for everyone! Check out Inclusion Geeks Academy and InclusionGeeks.com/podcast for the code to get a free mini course.

Julia Regier is a policy and research manager at MIT's Stone Center on Inequality and Shaping the Future of Work, where she focuses on workforce and policy impacts. Her path here was anything but straight, from studying philosophy at Wellesley to an MBA at Yale to translating dense economics research for people who don't speak economics.

We talk about what the data shows for workers without college degrees (spoiler: it's not great, and it’s been getting worse since 1980), why the self-checkout AI surveillance story is a perfect case study in automation gone wrong, and what it would take to redirect AI development toward something that works for workers, not just around them.

We also get into the market failure at the heart of how AI is being built, why a handful of people setting the vision for all of us is a problem, and what policy levers could shift things. Julia also makes the moral case, loud and clear, for a living wage, and we’re here for it.

Chapters

00:00 - Intro - Felicia and Rachel talk local politics, civic assemblies, and more

20:28 - Welcome Julia! Her Nonlinear Path: Philosophy, Recruiting & Landing at MIT

25:00 - Worker Ownership, Co-ops & Why It's Harder Than It Sounds

29:35 - Job Quality for Workers Without College Degrees: What the Data Shows

37:00 - AI Surveillance, Self-Checkout & the Annoyance Factor

43:45 - Taking the Long View: Policy Impacts & the Case for Investing in Children

49:40 - Who's Setting the Vision for AI (and Why That's a Problem)

54:26 - Pro-Worker AI: Policy Levers That Could Actually Change Course

62:00 - Gender, Diversity & Who's Missing from the Research

65:20 - If You Could Change One Thing + Closing Thoughts

Visit us at InclusionGeeks.com to stay up to date on all the ways you can make the workplace work for everyone! Check out Inclusion Geeks Academy and InclusionGeeks.com/podcast for the code to get a free mini course.

We are SO excited to share that we launched a new podcast called Public Speak! If you've listened to our intros lately, you may already know that we're engaged in local government. As it turns out, there's a lot to it! ☺️

In this teaser episode, we pull back the curtain on our unexpected journeys into local public service, with Felicia serving as City Councilor in Easthampton, MA, and Rachel freshly elected to her North Park Neighborhood Planning Committee in San Diego.

What prompted this new pod? Our shared conviction that local government is wildly misunderstood, frustratingly slow for good reasons, and way more accessible than most people think. From demystifying city council meetings to explaining why your park might take five years to materialize, Public Speak aims to make civic life feel a little less like a foreign language, and a lot more like something you could actually be part of.

Guests from around the country are coming. Robert's Rules will be explained.

Subscribe on any platforms or you can support us and get full episodes at https://publicspeakpodcast.substack.com/!

Visit us at InclusionGeeks.com to stay up to date on all the ways you can make the workplace work for everyone! Check out Inclusion Geeks Academy and InclusionGeeks.com/podcast for the code to get a free mini course.

What happens when a former White House policy nerd realizes the real work of culture change isn't in politics? Let's find out!

In this episode, we chat with Rhodes Perry, social entrepreneur, author of Imagine Belonging, and founder of Rhodes Perry Consulting, for a thoughtful, grounding conversation about what it takes to build belonging at work when the ground keeps shifting under all of us.

We dig into why the epidemic of loneliness at work is a business risk most leaders aren't tracking, why Rhodes welcomes diversity of thought but draws a hard line at diversity of respect, how somatic leadership and nervous system regulation are becoming essential skills for leading through chaos, and what it means to support trans, non-binary, and gender diverse colleagues when just existing feels targeted. Rhodes also shares how burnout cracked him open five years into building his company, why he made unapologetic trans joy a personal commitment, and why the leaders we've been underestimating the longest are the ones this moment is calling for.

It's one of those conversations where we left feeling steadier and a little more hopeful, and we think you will too!

Chapters:

Visit us at InclusionGeeks.com to stay up to date on all the ways you can make the workplace work for everyone! Check out Inclusion Geeks Academy and InclusionGeeks.com/podcast for the code to get a free mini course.

What happens when one of HR's most seasoned leaders gets fed up with broken systems and decides to build new ones? Let’s find out! In this episode, we sit down with Kristy McCann, multi-time founder, CEO, and HR powerhouse, for a wide-ranging, energizing conversation about the real state of the future of work.

We dig into why change management is ultimately just project management (and why most leaders are failing at it), the growing ethics and efficacy crisis around AI adoption in the workplace, what's gone wrong with SHRM as a certifying body, and why consumer power might be the most underutilized lever we have right now. Kristy also shares how she reads pattern recognition as a superpower, and what her next chapter looks like as she works to close the skilling gap she's spent her career fighting.

It's one of those conversations where we left feeling genuinely fired up and we think you will too!

Also in this episode: we introduce Ask the Librarian, our new AI-powered tool built on the Inclusion Geeks resource library. {blush emoji}

Chapters

00:00 - Introduction & Episode Preview

01:14 - Introducing Ask the Librarian, Our New AI-Powered Resource Tool

11:47 - Welcome, Kristy McCann Flynn

12:03 - Kristy's Career Journey, From Scranton to HR Founder

18:02 - Rethinking Change Management for a World in Constant Flux

22:00 - AI in the Workplace, Enhancement or Replacement?

28:33 - AI Ethics, Data Privacy & the No-Guardrails Problem

31:11 - Leadership Gaps, Accountability & Why Ideas Aren't Enough

33:21 - Kristy's Stealth Next Chapter, Education, Skilling & AI Efficacy

35:13 - The SHRM Problem, When Certifying Bodies Lose Their Way

44:49 - Rebuilding Critical Thinking & Trust in Institutions

50:18 - Consumer Power, Boycotts & Collective Action

52:59 - Unionization, General Strikes & Protecting Workers

57:42 - Think Globally, Act Locally

61:14 - AI Displacement, What History Tells Us

64:31 - Closing Thoughts & Where to Find Kristy

Visit us at InclusionGeeks.com to stay up to date on all the ways you can make the workplace work for everyone! Check out Inclusion Geeks Academy and InclusionGeeks.com/podcast for the code to get a free mini course.

This episode goes somewhere we didn't plan, and we think that makes it one of our best yet.

We sat down with Jarah Euston, co-founder and CEO of WorkWhile, a fast-growing app-based staffing platform connecting 80 million frontline workers with flexible shift opportunities. Jarah grew up in Fresno working retail, got burnt out building software for tech people, and decided to build technology for workers instead. It's a compelling vision and a genuinely interesting conversation about flexibility, AI, and what the future of work could look like for hourly employees.

But after that conversation wrapped, we learned that WorkWhile had recently settled a second major lawsuit with the San Francisco City Attorney's office for misclassifying workers as independent contractors. So we spoke with David Chu, the San Francisco City Attorney, and asked for his side of the story.

What you'll hear in this episode is both interviews back to back. First, Jarah's perspective on building worker-centered technology, and then David's perspective on what happens when "flexibility" becomes a cover for avoiding worker protections.

Together, these two conversations raise a question that feels urgent right now: Is it possible to build a genuinely worker-centered future of work, one with flexibility, innovation, and fair treatment? Or are we just repackaging old inequities in new apps?

Visit us at InclusionGeeks.com to stay up to date on all the ways you can make the workplace work for everyone! Check out Inclusion Geeks Academy and InclusionGeeks.com/podcast for the code to get a free mini course.

It's February 2026, and everything is happening all at once. In this unfiltered bonus episode, we try to make sense of the polycrisis… from billionaires losing it (looking at you, Benioff), to the Epstein files, to AI potentially developing consciousness, to Tesla pivoting to humanoid robots. We dig into why the people with the most power and money seem to be the most broken, how institutions (including Felicia's own alma mater!) are choosing money over morals, and why this might actually be the reckoning we've been overdue for. Plus: Reggie Watts' optimistic AI theory, the case for dismantling the patriarchy, why capitalism is the connective tissue in all of this, and an honest conversation about aging as women in a world designed to make us hate our wrinkles. 

Let’s get into it!

Visit us at InclusionGeeks.com to stay up to date on all the ways you can make the workplace work for everyone! Check out Inclusion Geeks Academy and InclusionGeeks.com/podcast for the code to get a free mini course.

We're catching up with Chris Haigh, founder of True Change Associates, to discuss the dramatic shifts in DEI work over the past few years. From the surge of interest post-2020 to the current backlash, we explore what it means to do this work within a capitalist framework and whether it's even possible to create real change from within existing systems.

Chris shares Dr. Carmen Foster's powerful framework of the time-space continuum, a reminder that today's challenges are a blip in the larger arc toward justice. We discuss language shifts, the persistence of this work despite market pressures, and what the future might hold 10 years from now, including the role of AI in creating equitable workplaces.

This conversation is both a reality check and a beacon of hope for anyone navigating the complexity of DEI work in 2026.

0:00 - Intro and Felicia and Rachel chat about the state of the world
13:30 - Catching up with Chris: Where in the world & what's new
22:15 - DEI as an industry: Can it exist within capitalism?
32:40 - The 2020 surge and subsequent backlash
42:50 - Language shifts: From DEI to "culture" and "belonging"
48:20 - Islands of psychological safety: Doing the work where you can
55:10 - Companies still doing the work (quietly)
60:54 - The time-space continuum: Taking the long view
62:40 - Future of work: AI, humanity, and what's next
65:35 - How to connect with Chris & True Change Associates
66:48 - Wrap-up

Visit us at InclusionGeeks.com to stay up to date on all the ways you can make the workplace work for everyone! Check out Inclusion Geeks Academy and InclusionGeeks.com/podcast for the code to get a free mini course.

In this episode, we sit down with the brilliant Anouska Bhattacharya, VP of Programs at YW Boston, for a conversation that somehow ties together the imperialist history of the gin and tonic, the absolute barbarism of mammograms, and the future of equity work in a post-DEI world.

Anouska shares her origin story as a "recovering academic" who traded the ivory tower for community organizing, and explains how her neurobiology background helps her understand why systems can, and must, be unlearned. We get into how DEI work is evolving (spoiler: call it civility, call it employee engagement, the work continues), what it means to find joy as fuel for sustainability, and why she's currently tap dancing in her Watertown basement while performing in a burlesque reimagining of the Nutcracker.

Plus: ice shipped from Massachusetts to India, dense breasts, and a love story between Pluto and its moon. You know, the usual. 😂

Chapters:

• [00:00] Intro & Workshop Promo: Reimagining the Future of Work Together
• [09:19] Meet Anouska: A Recovering Academic's Origin Story
• [14:07] Why History of Science? Drawing Lines Between Normal & Abnormal
• [17:30] The Three Pillars: Leadership, Community & Joy
• [21:13] How Felicia & Rachel First Met Anouska
• [22:01] The Imperialist History of the Gin & Tonic
• [28:06] Ice Ships from Massachusetts to India
• [33:36] The Mammogram Rant
• [38:37] Hard Pivot: The State of DEI Work
• [43:40] Renaming the Work: Civility, Employee Engagement & Beyond
• [49:52] Did Companies Ever Really Care? Risk Mitigation vs. Real Change
• [53:11] Finding Balance: Tap Dancing, Plants & Pluto's Love Story
• [56:22] The Slutcracker & the Radical Power of Art
• [60:35] Colonialism, Modesty & Reclaiming Our Bodies
• [61:14] Station Eleven: Survival Is Insufficient
• [64:05] Building Community in Hard Times
• [66:10] Where to Find Anouska & Slutcracker Performance Dates

Visit us at InclusionGeeks.com to stay up to date on all the ways you can make the workplace work for everyone! Check out Inclusion Geeks Academy and InclusionGeeks.com/podcast for the code to get a free mini course.