What's The Difference?

Sara Taylor earned a master's degree in Diversity and Organizational Development from the University of Minnesota. She served as a leadership and diversity specialist at the University of Minnesota for five years and as director of diversity and inclusion for Ramsey County, Minnesota for three years.

Sara is the founder and president of deepSEE Consulting and has worked with companies as large as Coca-Cola, General Mills, 3M Company, AARP, and numerous others. She has a new book, "Filter Shift: How Effective People See the World," that explores how our unconscious is actually making choices and decisions for us, all without our knowing — and how to change that.

• How nearly everyone has been impacted by the global pandemic outbreak, and how there is a universal sense of stress
• What changes and reactions experiencing trauma and stress cause in our bodies and our brains, even small day-to-day stress
• How our sympathetic nervous systems activate a survival response that redirects energy from our core organs and channels it to our extremities when we are under stress
• Why overtime repeated exposure to stress can create a host of health problems that we may not even be aware are related back to the stress
• Why the best response to stress is to intentionally activate our parasympathetic nervous system to redirect energy back to our core organs
• Which three key techniques and practices can be used to help you activate your parasympathetic nervous system during times of stress

• Website: www.deepseeconsulting.com
• Twitter: @deepseesara

The 32nd Annual Forum on Workplace Inclusion Conference was held from March 10-12, 2020 at the Minneapolis Convention Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Conference brings together attendees from across many industries and from many different backgrounds who all share a passion for and focus on diversity and inclusion in the workplace.

In this special episode of What's The Difference, host Sara Taylor attends the Forum on Workplace Inclusion 2020 Conference and speaks with special guests Scott Fearing (Manager of Diversity Education at the University of Rochester), Lisa Fain (CEO of the Center for Mentoring Excellence), Patricia Jesperson (Chief Curiosity Officer at EmployeeEXP), Richard Webb (founder and principal Diversity and Inclusion consultant at Second Layer Consulting), Kurt Wiger (Coordinator of Volunteers and Interns at Courage Kenny Rehabilitation Institute), Rosemond Owens (Director of Health Equity Integration at Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota), Jackie Thomas-Hall (Director of Culture, Diversity & Inclusion at Allina Health), Deborah Dagit (President of Deb Dagit Diversity, LLC), and Chris Matuseski (Organizational Development & Effectiveness Consultant at HealthPartners).

• Scott Fearing, the University of Rochester's Manager of Diversity Education, discusses why today's divisive and polarized political climate is a particularly challenging obstacle for the furthering of diversity and inclusion, and he explains why being invited to a seat at the table isn't the same as being included. He discusses why the increasing prevalence of digital conversations has made no impact on the commonality of marginalization, and he discusses why focusing on commonalities is the solution to polarization.
• Lisa Fain, the CEO of the Center for Mentoring Excellence, explains why she believes that social distancing, remote work and virtual offices can make building a thriving workplace culture more challenging due to the increased difficulty of building trust and relationships. She explains why intentionality and creating deliberate touch points is the key to overcoming this challenge.
• Patricia Jesperson, Chief Curiosity Officer with EmployeeEXP, shares why she believes that a fully integrated diversity and inclusion curriculum rather than a chapter-by-chapter approach is the secret to adapting to the needs of today's organizations.
• Richard Webb, the founder and principal consultant at Second Layer Consulting, shares why diversity and inclusion frameworks used today often date back to the 1960s and 1970s, and he shares why there is an urgent need for more modern frameworks. He explains why there is often a disconnect between older and newer educational models, and he suggests that moving from viewing diversity and inclusion as a job to viewing it as a way to live is the key to modernizing our understanding. He shares why it is important to devote time to developing your understanding of the field.

• Scott Fearing's LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/scottfearing/
• Lisa Fain's LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/lisazfain/
• Trish Jesperson's LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/patriciajesperson/
• Richard Webb's LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/richardwebb2/

A seasoned digital professional with over 15 years of experience, Stephen Ruiz has worked directly with high-profile brands including Google, Bank of America, Mattel, Disney, and Toyota to name a few. He is an expert at the conceptualization and execution of multi-channel digital marketing campaigns, complex data-driven websites, the development of intricate digital ecosystems for consumer and B2B markets, SaaS software and the use of analytics tools to optimize digital properties to increase the ROI for clients based on tactical strategy and deep research of the end-users.

Stephen has a firm commitment to championing diversity within the technology sector. As host of the UX of Diversity Podcast, and founder of the Silicon Valley Diversity Meetup, he is striving to create a more level playing field in the tech industry for women and minorities.

• Why the tech industry has historically struggled with becoming more diverse, and why there is an urgent need for improvement
• What kinds of racial and ethnic microaggressions Stephen has experienced throughout his own career
• Why many different communities would greatly benefit in many ways from a more diverse and inclusive technology industry
• How more than $1 billion has been spent by major players in the tech field since 2014 without showing notable results
• Why an improvement in the level of cultural competence in tech is the first step to improving the situation
• Why a more diverse tech environment would benefit the bottom line of organizations within the industry
• Why designing technology for a more diverse consumer base can also improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the tech
• Stephen offers examples of how software and tech devices can be designed for a broader and more diverse consumer group
• What steps organizations can take to improve their cultural awareness and create a more diverse and inclusive workplace

• Website: https://stephenruiz.com/
• UX of Diversity podcast: www.stitcher.com/podcast/anchor-podcasts/the-ux-of-diversity
• Silicone Beach Diversity Group: https://www.meetup.com/Silicon-Beach-Diversity/

Melissa currently works in organizational development in the private industry, focusing on building and sustaining diverse and inclusive workplace environments. Prior to her organizational development work, Melissa was a contract lecturer and researcher at York University, Queens University, and the Ontario Technical University in Canada. At York University, she was involved in developing and implementing the First Nation, Métis, and Inuit Infusion in the Mainstream Teacher Education Program from 2008 to 2016. Research on the successes and challenges of this work has been published in several Canadian Education Journals. In December 2018, she defended her Ph.D. in Language, Culture, and Teaching in the Faculty of Education at York University in Toronto, Canada. Melissa is a member of the Algonquins of Greater Golden Lake First Nation from the Kichi Sibi (Ottawa) Valley in Ontario, Canada. She is an auntie to eight four-legged creatures, including 3 Newfoundland dogs, 1 rescue hound, and 4 cats.

• How three key familial experiences in Melissa's life drove her to work as a diversity and inclusion practitioner
• How Melissa's experiences as a member of Canada's Indigenous population have given her a unique perspective into the work she does
• How Melissa explored her heritage through a diverse group of Indigenous teachers from across Canada
• Why accepting the differences between groups of First People rather than putting all Indigenous populations into the same category is key
• Melissa explains the concept of and communication power of a Talking Circle and its origins with Indigenous people
• Melissa describes a widespread protest across Canada sparked by the construction of oil pipelines crossing the land of Indigenous people
• Why learning the history and culture of a group is the ideal starting place for opening a dialogue and creating better understanding and inclusion
• Why a passion for learning new things has been a key skill that Melissa has relied on throughout her career

• Website: www.cnl.ca/en/home/default.aspx
• Email: [email protected]
• Telephone: (313) 584-3311 ext. 46308
• LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/melissa-blimkie-33296a46/

Lisa Fain is the CEO of Center for Mentoring Excellence, and founder of Vista Coaching, the coaching division of the Center. Her passion for diversity and inclusion work is fueled by her strong conviction that leveraging differences creates a better workplace and drives better business results.

She has conducted mentoring training programs for corporate, government and educational institutions. Lisa coaches mentors, mentees and program administrators on how to achieve mentoring excellence and create the right environment for achievement of career and personal goals. She is highly regarded for her special combination of knowledge, expertise, humor and a no-nonsense practical approach.

As Senior Director of the Diversity and Inclusion function at Outerwall, Inc. (the parent company to automated retail giants Redbox and Coinstar), Lisa spearheaded the development, establishment, and implementation of its diversity initiative, including launching the company's first mentoring program for its Women's Business Resource Group. Prior to that position, she worked as Outerwall's in-house counsel, where she coached leaders and partnered with Human Resources to establish fair and effective policies and practices that would sustain the organization as it grew in size, revenue and renown.

• Lisa shares how she found her passion for diversity and inclusion work when she brought her mother Lois to her workplace to help set up a women's mentoring program
• Why mentoring programs can help build meaningful business relationships across differences and help empower people to thrive in their careers
• Why Lisa feels that diversity and inclusion training by itself doesn't work, and why it needs other programs to support it
• Why successful diversity and inclusion initiatives create a fundamental cultural change throughout all levels of an organization
• Why a mentorship needs to be a two-way relationship between the mentor and the mentee, and why the mentorship needs ground rules and clear communication
• Why it is important to measure the success and progress of a mentorship through mutually established and agreed-upon goals
• Why leadership skills don't necessarily imply mentoring skills, and why developing your mentoring ability is an important ongoing process
• Why listening is a cornerstone skill that an effective mentor needs to have, and why leaders may struggle to listen effectively
• Lisa shares an experience she had with a well-meaning senior partner while working at a law firm after returning from maternity leave
• Lisa shares an important takeaway from her book, Bridging Differences for Better Mentoring

• Website: www.centerformentoring.com
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CenterForMentoringExcellence
• Twitter:
  • @C4Mentoring
  • @lzfain
• LinkedIn:
  • https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisazfain/
  • https://www.linkedin.com/company/center-for-mentoring-excellence/

Murray Allen Moshe ben Gershon Martinez Mann is of Argentinean, Mediterranean, and Russian heritage; he lived in a Catholic and Jewish household – as Murray says "with a round guilt trip ticket."

He is male, straight, and an LGBT ally. Being a person with a disability is one of those things Murray "forgets," until someone, consciously or unconsciously, treats him in marginalizing ways.

Murray is a parent of four who lost two adult children. He is a Baby Boomer and a member of the Sandwich Generation caring for an aging parent and a grandson whom he adopted at the age of two.

Murray's guiding values are Amor de La Vida (Love of Life), Familia (family) y Comunidad (community). Early on, Murray's multicultural upbringing and experience navigating physical barriers and human biases taught him to see every person as unique and differently gifted and started him on a life-long journey to empower people and organizations to follow their calling.

For Murray, trust in the workplace does not come immediately because one has a title or credentials. Trust evolves through the building of relationships, creating mutual understanding and actual experience. Culturally it often involves creating a safe space for self-disclosure and being authentic. Just as respect looks different in various cultures, the same applies to the many cultures of "people with disabilities." For Murray, Respect, Dignity, and Personhood are intertwined.

• How Murray's multicultural upbringing and his family's experiences as victims of hate crimes sparked an interest in diversity and inclusion
• How Murray has observed what started as affirmative action evolve over time into diversity, equity and inclusion work over the course of his remarkable career
• How coaching for diversity, equity and inclusion practitioners differs from other types of coaching
• Why people who are working in this field often lack the resources and support they need from their organizations
• Why there is a significant need for coaching for people of marginalized and underrepresented communities
• How recent study results show that most Latinx professionals feel the need to compromise their authenticity to conform to mainstream expectations
• How Murray founded the Forum On Workplace Inclusion's Coaching Center, and what it offers to conference attendees
• How the Coaching Center has served more than 600 unique individuals from more than 90 corporations since its founding
• How to participate in the Coaching Center's one-hour coaching session if you plan to attend the Forum On Workplace Inclusion Annual Conference

• Email: [email protected]
• Website: https://forumworkplaceinclusion.org/diversity-inclusion-coaching-center/
• LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/murrayamann/
• LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/workplaceforum/

Sara Taylor earned a master's degree in Diversity and Organizational Development from the University of Minnesota. She served as a leadership and diversity specialist at the University of Minnesota for five years and as director of diversity and inclusion for Ramsey County, Minnesota for three years.

Sara is the founder and president of deepSEE Consulting and has worked with companies as large as Coca-Cola, General Mills, 3M Company, AARP, and numerous others. She has a new book, "Filter Shift: How Effective People See the World," that explores how our unconscious is actually making choices and decisions for us, all without our knowing — and how to change that.

• The definition of the words 'appropriation', 'frames', and 'filters', and how cultural appropriation is really about taking someone's cultural frames
• Why it is difficult or impossible to honor the symbols of a culture without honoring the people belonging to that culture
• Sara shares why wearing Native American war bonnets (headdress) while being ignorant of their spiritual and cultural meaning is an example of cultural appropriation
• Why it is important to consider the power differential and history between dominant groups taking from marginalized groups who have been historically oppressed by them
• Sara provides an example where black women often experience heavy social pressure to straighten their hair but white models wear cornrows on the runway
• How to identify whether appropriation is truly cultural appropriation, and why cultural appropriation is often harmful to marginalized groups
• Why understanding a cultural group requires looking beyond its frames and going deeper by understanding its filters

• Website: www.deepseeconsulting.com
• Twitter: @deepseesara

Sara Taylor earned a master's degree in Diversity and Organizational Development from the University of Minnesota. She served as a leadership and diversity specialist at the University of Minnesota for five years and as director of diversity and inclusion for Ramsey County, Minnesota for three years.

Sara is the founder and president of deepSEE Consulting and has worked with companies as large as Coca-Cola, General Mills, 3M Company, AARP, and numerous others. She has a new book, "Filter Shift: How Effective People See the World," that explores how our unconscious is actually making choices and decisions for us, all without our knowing — and how to change that.

• Why the Superbowl LIV football game featuring the Kansas City Chiefs sparked controversy over the team using the name "Chiefs"
• How the Kansas City Chiefs organization defended the use of their name as well as cultural icons such as traditional Native American headdress and face paint
• How a recent article defending the use of the name "Chiefs" made the case that the name can't be offensive because the intent is to convey strength
• Why intention doesn't equal impact, and why personal experiences determine how we take in and feel about information
• Why listening to others, acknowledging their differing experiences, and being sensitive to their reactions is the key to understanding

• Website: www.deepseeconsulting.com
• Twitter: @deepseesara

As president and CEO of the Science Museum of Minnesota, Alison Rempel Brown leads an organization that is firmly committed to science education and equity. Under Alison's leadership, the Science Museum has adopted a new strategic plan designed to transform the organization into a resource that captures the power and talent of all people – especially women and people of color – so they see themselves as scientists. New programs, like 2018's Year of the Engineer and the ongoing Water Planet initiative, leverage the Science Museum's relationships and rich assets. And the adoption of a brand new Statement on Equity and Inclusion captures the museum's vision to use STEM as a tool to advocate for justice and equity, acknowledging that significant change must start from within. Alison was named one of the Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal's People to Watch in 2017, and she received the publication's Women in Business Award.

Alison came to the Science Museum from the California Academy of Sciences, where she oversaw infrastructure and operations and helped lead the organization through the construction and opening of a spectacular new facility in Golden Gate Park. She is a graduate of Pomona College and the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

Juliette Francis joined the Science Museum's senior leadership team in November 2013. She brings experience in employee relations, workforce planning, compensation and benefit management, and training and development to her position overseeing the museum's service to both its paid staff and its expansive volunteer corps.

Juliette comes to the Science Museum from College Possible, a national nonprofit headquartered in Saint Paul that provides low-income students with an intensive curriculum of coaching and support to help them earn college admission and college degrees. As Director of Human Resources and Operations, Juliette oversaw the organization's HR, new site operations, and technology functions. Her professional experience also includes human resources work at Girls Scouts of Minnesota and Wisconsin River Valleys and Fury Motors.

Juliette has a bachelor's degree in Human Resource Development from the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities. She has been actively involved in the Saint Paul Winter Carnival for more than 13 years, and she sits on the Business Programs Advisory Board at Inver Hills Community College.

• Alison discusses the history of the Science Museum of Minnesota, and its purpose and goal to empower and educate the community
• Alison describes her vision for the museum and shares her commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion work
• Alison shares how eye-opening statistics from an employee culture survey helped her realize the importance of intentionally focusing on internal work
• Juliette shares the steps the Science Museum of Minnesota has taken to support individual cultural competence growth in its employees
• Juliette describes the cultural competence coaching program that the Science Museum has developed internally to support its employees
• Alison shares how the Museum works to bring everyone into their cultural competence processes and continue to improve their program
• Juliette shares the Museum's success, and she explains why the Museum intentionally avoided pairing employees with coaches with whom they had a reporting relationship
• Alison explains why CEOs need to focus on working on their own cultural competence to most effectively lead the organization's efforts
• Alison describes the Science Museum's "RACE: Are We So Different?" exhibit and its traveling component

• Website: www.smm.org
• Website: www.smm.org/equity
• Science Museum of Minnesota RACE Exhibit website: www.smm.org/race
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/sciencemuseum/
• LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/science-museum-of-minnesota/
• Alison's LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/alisonrempelbrown/
• Juliette's LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/inspieringu/

Sara Taylor earned a master's degree in Diversity and Organizational Development from the University of Minnesota. She served as a leadership and diversity specialist at the University of Minnesota for five years and as director of diversity and inclusion for Ramsey County, Minnesota for three years.

Sara is the founder and president of deepSEE Consulting and has worked with companies as large as Coca-Cola, General Mills, 3M Company, AARP, and numerous others. She has a new book, "Filter Shift: How Effective People See the World," that explores how our unconscious is actually making choices and decisions for us, all without our knowing — and how to change that.

• Why "systemic filters" are really just shared patterns of unconscious judgment across a group, and why systems are perfectly designed to create the results they create
• How 95-98% of Fortune 500 CEOs are white males, how 58% of them are more than six feet tall, and why this is an example of a system at work
• An example of unconscious filters creating a real world impact, reflected in the extreme disparities of the initial price a car buyer is given based on their race and gender
• Further examples of how racial, gender, sexual orientation, and body weight bias are factors considered in many different scenarios
• What the Harvard Implicit Associations Test (IAT) is, and how researchers at Harvard use it to test unconscious associations we make automatically
• How the Harvard IAT test results teach us that the vast majority of us hold to the stereotypical bias, and very few of us hold to the opposite of the stereotypical bias
• How systemic disadvantage and systemic advantage create strong disparities between advantaged groups and disadvantaged groups
• How systemic advantage and disadvantage have far-reaching implications up to and including mortality rates
• What the "three sees" are and how they can help you recognize systemic bias, recognize the part you play in the system, and recognize how to take action to change the system

• Website: www.deepseeconsulting.com
• Twitter: @deepseesara

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