Back in mid-November, my next fellow co-authors and I joined our publisher for a group call. We had all signed up to author a chapter in A New Vision for DEI and were meeting each other for the first time.
Diversity has been important to me for a long time. Part of the vision for this book came about as I was speaking to my Greener Data publisher about concepts for a book we were ideating that would allow me to re-release my Summer 20XX thoughts in a new way, and maybe still bring about the lessons learned as I’ve been able to move away from the pain of loss suffered shortly after its first publishing. As we talked about our goals and vision, it became clear that another work was so timely that we had to join forces again to share different thoughts on diversity.
So she set about arranging another multi-author publication that would capture these new collective thoughts. Our first call helped to guide us all together to be part of this conversation as a way to speak our vision into existence. We all shared how we needed to be “in the room” in order to do this.
Because the subject is DEI, I love that this is a multi-author work, because none of us can do this alone–we weren’t meant to.
We were each asked to answer a few questions and, to lay the groundwork for my portion, I excitedly wanted to share my answers with you today.
Why did you say yes to writing a chapter in this book?
I have faced my own share of discrimination. The sad thing is that we all have. Either age, gender, background, or some other perceived difference have caused others to form negative opinions about us without ever giving us a chance. I wanted to leave a legacy of bringing these conversations to the top with new perspective to help shape a better path for others in the future.
In the past, I have run ERGs, spoken on panels about DEI, and because of my visible role writing and marketing, was asked to champion diversity as a female millennial and a public face at a former company. The tech space I work in is a huge adopter and supporter of diverse efforts. This led to my personal career mission to strive for a world that is connected, sustainable, and equal. With this background, I’m doing more writing, more public speaking, and even some consulting for organizations that are just starting to build their employee groups.
What does the word diversity mean to you?
I believe it is not only possible, but necessary for us to embrace people from all walks of life, both physical/tangible attributes such as race, gender, age; as well as intangible such as personality, function, belief systems, backgrounds. Diversity is our recognition of humanity in others and respecting them regardless of differences.
What have you noticed is missing from the DEI conversation today?
Some of our means of driving DEI practices just aren’t working or aren’t well received. As society, we need to discuss things we can do that won’t anger or incite. We need to understand the different challenges to the various forms of equality, what we can do differently, and how to reach an agreeable path to a better world.
What is one leadership book you love?
This was such a challenge to answer! In books, I am influenced by both nonfiction and even fictional works that elevate strong characters. But nothing is more impactful to how we lead than what we have experienced ourselves, both the positive and the negative. We’ve all encountered a manager who was a terrible leader that we hope to never be like. We all also have hopefully benefitted from an excellent leader or two that helped shape us for the best.
In closing, it is time for us all to work to shape a different world, and the aspirations for this book are so pure as we strive to do that. I can’t wait for the next call this week where we all share updates on what we’ve been working on this past month. The final book is slated for mid-April with a lot of great work and updates to come.