Podcasts about chimamanda adichie

O pocdast aborda a importância da literatura na construção da empatia e na superação do "perigo da história única". A primeira fonte, uma transcrição de uma palestra de Chimamanda Adichie, demonstra como uma narrativa singular pode criar estereótipos, utilizando exemplos pessoais para ilustrar a sua influência na perceção de si mesma e dos outros. A segunda fonte, "Literatura: Uma Ponte para a Empatia Plural", explora como a leitura promove a identificação simbólica e a compreensão de diferentes realidades, enfatizando o papel da literatura no desenvolvimento da inteligência emocional. Por fim, a terceira fonte, um vídeo do projeto "Zoom Out", complementa as ideias anteriores ao reforçar que os livros moldam a nossa compreensão do mundo, oferecendo perspetivas diversas e aproximando-nos de diferentes realidades. Todas as fontes convergem na ideia de que a pluralidade de histórias é crucial para combater preconceitos e fomentar a conexão humana.

Send JKO a Text Message In this follow-up to “The High Cost of Being Judgmental” JKO unpacks the danger of forming conclusions about someone based on a single story. When we reduce people to one chapter of one story they shared from their lives, we sabotage connection, trust, and compassion. If you're a woman walking through the pain of judgment, this episode is for you. Support the show If Messy Can't Stop Her blesses or inspires you, please consider supporting it at supportmessycantstopher.buzzsprout.com. Thank you for being part of this journey. If you would love to share your story on the #MessyCantStopHer podcast, click here to let me know. Thank you so much for listening. Music Credit: https://indiefy.me/wanted-carter

—Be a part of Africa's biggest talk concert on Sunday, April 27, 2025. #WithChudeLive - with Chimamanda Adichie, Pastor Jerry Eze, Funke Akindele, Falz and Bovi Ugboma! Register now on https://www.felefun.com/events/with-chude-live.Watch all new and old full episodes here: www.withchude.comBuy ‘How Depression Saved My Life', #TheDailyJoy and #TheDailyVulnerable books here: shop.withchude.com Donate to the work here: partner.withchude.com Please subscribe to our YouTube Channel: https://youtube.com/c/chude Exclusive Patron-only Content Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

—Be a part of Africa's biggest talk concert on Sunday, April 27, 2025. #WithChudeLive - with Chimamanda Adichie, Pastor Jerry Eze, Funke Akindele, Falz and Bovi Ugboma! Register now on https://www.felefun.com/events/with-chude-live.Watch all new and old full episodes here: www.withchude.comBuy ‘How Depression Saved My Life', #TheDailyJoy and #TheDailyVulnerable books here: shop.withchude.com Donate to the work here: partner.withchude.com Please subscribe to our YouTube Channel: https://youtube.com/c/chude Exclusive Patron-only Content Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today, I celebrate 50 Nigerian TV icons that paved the way for me.Frank Olize Levi AjuonumaYinka Craig Sadiq DabaAbike Dabiri Funmi Iyanda Agatha Amata Cyril Stober Gina Harry John Momoh Teni Aofiyebi Kenny ‘Keke' Ogungbe Dayo ‘D-One' AdeneyeAlero EduAdesuwa Onyenokwe Ohi AlegbeNonye Osi Chukwudi Okolie-Ugbaja  Elaine Otuije Mariam Anazodo Jumobi AdegbesanAdaobi of MBITosin Dokpesi Emma UgoleeComfort OkoronkwoLilian Agbaso Eyiyemi Pratt Kehinde Young-HarryIreti DoyleTosin Ajayi Isaac Moses Nneka Moses Frank EdohoNamure EdoimioyaEugenia AbuSegun Arinze Tonnie Iredia Modele Sarafa-YusufSiene Alwell-BrownNgozi AlaegbuID Ogungbe Yori Folarin Charles ‘Charly Boy' Oputa Bene Uche Mo Abudu Kathleen ObiangIsreal EdjerenPatrick DoyleBimbo OloyedePatrick Oke I am here as a product of your talent, your sacrifice and your brilliance. As I celebrate 25 years in the media and 5 years of #WithChude, It has been the great honour of my life to be led and taught by all of you. Watch the full episode right now on www.withchude.com. And share your memories of them in the comment section! —Be a part of Africa's biggest talk concert on Sunday, April 27, 2025. #WithChudeLive - with Chimamanda Adichie, Pastor Jerry Eze, Funke Akindele, Falz and Bovi Ugboma! Register now on https://www.felefun.com/events/with-chude-live.Watch all new and old full episodes here: www.withchude.comBuy ‘How Depression Saved My Life', #TheDailyJoy and #TheDailyVulnerable books here: shop.withchude.com Donate to the work here: partner.withchude.com Please subscribe to our YouTube Channel: https://youtube.com/c/chude Exclusive Patron-only Content Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

“I spent 40,000 dollars on IVF only to lose the baby. I wanted to die!”“I had a couple of miscarriages and I got a surrogate, I was tired of trying.”Where else would you hear these kinds of truths about ‘infertility'? These kinds of deep vulnerability and authenticity and raw, unfiltered honesty?This special episode to help men and women struggling with having kids is now up on withChude.com.  These guests are doing a service. They are sharing deep truths that connect with people facing these issues and let them know they are not alone. I thank them deeply for trusting me with their stories - and for helping others in their journeys. Watch the full conversation right now on WithChude.com. Share your experiences or the experiences of others you know in the comments below. ❤—Be a part of Africa's biggest talk concert on Sunday, April 27, 2025. #WithChudeLive - with Chimamanda Adichie, Pastor Jerry Eze, Funke Akindele, Falz and Bovi Ugboma! Register now on https://www.felefun.com/events/with-chude-live.Watch all new and old full episodes here: www.withchude.comBuy ‘How Depression Saved My Life', #TheDailyJoy and #TheDailyVulnerable books here: shop.withchude.com Donate to the work here: partner.withchude.com Please subscribe to our YouTube Channel: https://youtube.com/c/chude Exclusive Patron-only Content Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

“I ask myself sometimes if I am going to live long… whenever God decides that I am going to die, I am going to die and I am cool with that.”This is a 19-year-old talking. It's the Afrobeats star, Khaid - who was signed by content creator, Sidney Talker in 2022. For the first time ever, he speaks (even if with a lot of fear) about the gang war in his hood that almost killed him last year and left him in the hospital for a long time after life-threatening internal bleeding. Those dramatic photos in the hospital weren't a stunt. It wasn't content. This young man - one of fastest rising music stars in the country today - almost died. Khaid's life has been shaped by pain, tension, and then deep reflection. He tells me first about life as a mechanic and how he quit that job due to hints of intimate abuse from his mentor. He talks about his battle against depression. And then for the first time ever, he opens up about the conflicts he's faced in the hood, even showing me the scars.He recounts the harrowing moment—being hospitalized while someone broke into his car downstairs. For his safety, he had to continue his treatment at home. But Khaid tells me he's not afraid of death, and that his new faith (he left Islam for Christianity a few years ago) assures him of a full life.I ask him, if his life continues to be in danger - why does he continue to visit the hood that makes it so? Why can't he leave his old life behind with all the money and fame he has accomplished? You have to watch to understand why this brilliant, talented young man - one of the deepest, wisest teenagers I ever sat with - is haunted by the ghosts of his past.Watch the full conversation right on WithChude.com. And I'd like to know what you think in the comment.

durée : 00:44:48 - Signes des temps - par : Marc Weitzmann - "L'inventaire des rêves" de Chimamanda Adichie a paru aux éditions Gallimard. L'écrivaine évoque l'impact du rétrécissement des idées sur la vie culturelle américaine. Puis elle développe le pouvoir de la fiction et explore ainsi les attitudes et corporéité de ces personnages féminins. - réalisation : Luc-Jean Reynaud - invités : Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Ecrivain

Everyone loves Chimezie Imo. A love cemented after Breath of Life and the AMVCA Trailblazer of 2024 prize that everyone was rooting for him for … after he wasn't nominated for any of the prizes at all. But Chimezie tells me he doesn't care about these accolades—he just wants to act and make money. He recalls how his first acting role as a child left an entire room in tears at his RCCG parish in Abuja. He ran to his mom and declared, “I want to be an actor.” From that moment on, he never looked back— even through the many times he almost gave up, and the many times industry has disrespected him, He opens up about the years squatting with a family member in FESTAC because he couldn't afford rent, the directors who have tried to black list him, the insecurities that have tormented him, and the movie crew member who told him to bleach his skin. I have known Chimezie from his first tentative days in this industry - I have witnessed the pain and the doubt, the push and the climb, and to see his sweet success today is to see a man who has earned everything accolade he has received.Today, he finally shares that story in public with me. And it's a story that will inspire you deeply. Watch the full conversation right now on WithChude. Then tell me what you think in the comments. ❤—Be a part of Africa's biggest talk concert on Sunday, April 27, 2025. #WithChudeLive - with Chimamanda Adichie, Jerry Eze Funke Akindele and Bovi Ugboma! Register now on https://www.felefun.com/events/with-chude-live.Watch all new and old full episodes here: www.withchude.comBuy ‘How Depression Saved My Life', #TheDailyJoy and #TheDailyVulnerable books here: shop.withchude.com Donate to the work here: partner.withchude.com Please subscribe to our YouTube Channel: https://youtube.com/c/chude Exclusive Patron-only Content Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Our guest today is Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Her books include Half of a Yellow Sun, The Thing Around Your Neck, and the 2013 novel Americannah, whose popularity propelled Adichie to literary stardom. Like Adichie herself, Americannah straddles the cultures of America and Nigeria, considering the status and perceptions of Africans abroad as well as what happens when they return to their home countries.  This month, Adichie will publish a new novel, Dream Count. As we look ahead to that, and Adichie's upcoming visit to City Arts & Lectures, we're re-broadcasting this 2014 conversation with her friend and fellow writer Dave Eggers.

A weekly magazine-style radio show featuring the voices and stories of Asians and Pacific Islanders from all corners of our community. The show is produced by a collective of media makers, deejays, and activists. Tonight we present our sister podcast Continental Shifts. Hosts Gabriel and Estella speak with Tavae Samuelu.   Opening: [00:00:00] Apex Express Asian Pacific expression. Community and cultural coverage, music and calendar, new visions and voices, coming to you with an Asian Pacific Islander point of view. It's time to get on board the Apex Express.   Swati Rayasam: [00:00:35] Good evening, everyone. You're listening to APEX Express Thursday nights at 7 PM. My name is Swati Rayasam and I'm the special editor for this episode. Tonight, we're wrapping up the podcast continental shifts created by bi-coastal educators, Gabriel Anthony Tanglao and Estella Owoimaha-Church who embark on a voyage in search of self, culture and the ancestors. Last time we featured the concept's podcast, Gabe and Estella, talked with union leader and educator Yan Yii about creating culturally relevant classrooms, the importance and emotional toll of teachers being a social safety net for marginalized students, and the ever-growing union presence in education. Tonight. They're talking to Tavae Samuelu about what it will take to organize across ethnic groups, specifically Pacific Islander and Asian communities, beyond ethnic or national lines. And what future we're visioning for when the US empire falls. If this is your first touch into the conshifts podcast, I strongly recommend diving into the apex archives on kpfa.org. Backslash programs, backslash apex express to check out the previous episodes. And also to check out the podcast on ConShift's site at continentalshifts.podbean.com or anywhere podcasts are found. But for now, let's get to the show.   Tavae Samuelu: [00:02:05] When Toni Morrison talks about Invisible Man and asked this question of like invisible to who? Like, what do I care if whiteness sees me? Also know I come across folks who are like, I say API cause I was taught that that was inclusive. And I was like, I bet you a PI didn't tell you that [laughs].   Gabriel Tanglao: [00:02:27] What will it take to organize across ethnic groups, specifically Pacific Islander and Asian communities. In this episode, we rap with the amazing Tavae Samuelu to strategize ways we might organize AAPI folks across and beyond ethnic or national lines.   Estella Owoimaha-Church: [00:02:48] What up, what up? Tālofa lava, o lo'u igoa o Estella. My pronouns are she/her/hers, sis, uso.   Gabriel Tanglao: [00:02:53] What's good, family? This is Gabriel, kumusta? Pronouns he/him.   Estella Owoimaha-Church: [00:02:56] Tavae Samuelu is the daughter of a pastor from Leo Lumoenga and a nurse from Salemoa in Samoa as the executive director of Empowering Pacific Islander Communities, she's a passionate advocate for Pacific Islanders and is committed to liberation for all. Tavae was born, raised, and currently resides on Tongva territory. She credits her time on unceded Ohlone land for her political consciousness. During the pandemic, she has learned that her most important title is Auntie Vae. I had the pleasure of meeting Tavae at the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance Conference in Vegas a couple of years ago when I sat in on her workshop related to organizing Pacific Islander communities. It was, and I'm sure I've told her this by now, one of the first times in my life I have ever felt seen as a Samoan woman. Uso, thank you so much for joining us today. Please go ahead and take a few minutes to further introduce yourself to our listeners.   Tavae Samuelu: [00:03:57] Thank you, Stella. I've heard you say that before and it always makes me tear up [laughs]. That's also probably the most rewarding aspect of this job, of this community work, to be able to hear from people that they feel seen and validated. By, you know, by what we do and what, by what we put out there in the world. As I said, you know, currently residing on Tongva territory, what is momentarily known as Long Beach, California, until we get this land back to who it rightfully belongs to. You know I'm really clear and really intentional in this pro indigenous approach of naming the original stewards of this land because it's important to me that we know who to return the land to when this empire falls and that we're really clear, right? Not to just be in solidarity as a performative aspect, but naming our indigenous siblings who continue to exist, who are incredibly resilient and are still the experts on the best way to take care of this land and each other and how to be good relatives.   Estella Owoimaha-Church: [00:05:13] She said, “when the empire fall,” I went [laughs].   Gabriel Tanglao: [00:05:16] When the empire, when the empire falls. When…so.   Tavae Samuelu: [00:05:19] I mean, let me credit to Dakota Camacho, who taught me to say “momentarily known as” I was like, yeah, that is a manifestation, if ever. I like that. I'm gonna, I'm gonna borrow that. Let me also cite Dakota Camacho for that.   Gabriel Tanglao: [00:05:33] Tavae I would love to know just a little more about your backstory. What brought you to this work in particular, organizing in the Pacific Island community and spaces.   Tavae Samuelu: [00:05:43] My path was circuitous. I think there are a couple of milestones that are important to be explicit about. I've been Pacific Islander my entire life, right? Whatever that means to be born into racism and understand that race is a social construct. And so what it means to be Pacific Islander has also changed every single moment of my life. I would say that the way that I language and articulate my Pacific Islander identity most definitely needs to be credited to black feminist thought and that despite being Pacific Islander my entire life [laughs], it wasn't really until, you know, I was an undergrad at Cal and an ethnic studies major and introduced to Audre Lorde and bell H=hooks and Angela Davis and especially Kimberlé Crenshaw, right? The person who so often is not credited enough for coining intersectionality. But I want to be really clear, I didn't understand Pacific Islander until I got language from these black feminist thought leaders. Folks who were so so brilliant about naming what it means to walk around in a world that is both racist and sexist. And then, through an ethnic studies class that was on time on American History, right? I'm a first year Cal and it also meant I went kindergarten through 12th grade not hearing a single thing about Samoans. And had to get to my freshman year of college to see anything about us and having a lot of critical questions about why that is right. And everything leading to one thing or another. I was like, oh, well, there's not enough of us in higher education. So, well, why aren't there enough of us in higher education? I know. Brilliant smart, talented Pacific Islanders. So you start getting into like the systemic and institutional barriers around. So there was a lot of critical race theory consumption that happened for me really in gaining an elitist language for things that I experienced my entire life, right? And then after getting black feminist thought, then being able to read about Pacific Islanders through Epeli Hau'ofa and Sia Fiegel and Haunani Kay Trask and so many ancestors and elders who really blazed a trail around things, who became definite, and more recently, Teresia Teaiwa. So I say that, and there's also a piece of it where I would love to say that there was like this drive that came from this really positive place, but a lot of it was just anger. Like that initial phase of building your political consciousness where you wake up and realize how up is, oh, man like, what can I do? And then sort of moving throughout these other phases of political consciousness building where then I'm like, oh, but there are ways that I participate in the systems that disenfranchise us, but also that internal work and still being there. And so even most of my organizing and like even professional career has actually been in multicultural spaces outside of the Pacific Islander community. And it's really only with EPIC that I've been able to deeply engage in that. And the irony of being called Palangi or the Samoan word for white my entire life and then never feeling Pacific Islander enough and now being charged as the leader of a national Pacific Islander organization that is frequently asked to define PI, so, you know, that is the irony of the universe for me.   Estella Owoimaha-Church: [00:09:07] There was so much, so much there. Our listeners cannot hear me like banging on the table and snapping and, but, again, you are another guest who has affirmed the absolute importance of ethnic studies in our education, in our process, and you are another guest who has affirmed the absolute necessity of black feminist thought, like in all of our upbringing and conscious awareness rising. And like maybe there's a case study here in season one [laughs] that's formulating on how we became the educators and organizers that we are. Gabriel, you were a social studies classroom teacher, and then moved into taking on union labor work like heavily, what was some of your motivation or inspiration to make the move from the classroom and step heavy into union labor organizing?   Gabriel Tanglao: [00:10:16] If I'm keeping it 100 percent real, I didn't want to leave the classroom. I loved the classroom. I still love the classroom. It was the foundation of just my passion in specifically the Bergenfield community, which we've talked about in the past episodes has a larger Filipino population. So not only was education, just a pathway to be able to help uplift, engage my people, young folks in my community. But the union organizing space in Bergenfield was also formative in allowing me to engage on a broader scale. So that said, when making the transition out of the classroom, which was a difficult decision, to step into the union organizing space on a statewide level, it was really just with the possibility of being able to support educators on a larger scale and have a broader impact and specifically in my role in professional development, I consider this the only type of full time union work that I would leave the classroom for because it's the closest to the classroom. And in professional development, I think there's this old school perception on PD that's really sit and receive canned PowerPoints. And I feel like this conversation around organizing, there's actually a really fascinating exploration between facilitation, education, and organizing. They all pull from the similar skill sets, right? Sharing resources, bringing people together in shared learning, collective understanding, trying to figure out how the collective wisdom can allow us to just transform the community spaces, the up society in which we live. All of the things, Tavae set it off so we can do that she established some new rules. But to keep it relatively brief, I would say the professional development role and the opportunity to organize on a larger scale is the only reason that I considered leaving the classroom.   Estella Owoimaha-Church: [00:12:30] I know you, you touched on this already, but I'll go ahead and ask it and I'll ask both of you and I'll toss it to Tavae first. In what ways does your culture and your identity inform the work or vice versa?   Tavae Samuelu: [00:12:46] I think that it always has. There was a point at which I thought I needed to come to EPIC and sometimes that's still true. That I needed to come to EPIC in order to give primacy to my Pacific Islander identity, I had spoken earlier about most of my professional career and even like, as a student organizing was done in multicultural spaces that were, you know, in, in this sort of umbrella way identified as black and brown. But they weren't spaces where I was PI, I was like, you know, most often a woman of color, more broadly, a person of color, but there was never really an understanding of Pacific Islander. Whether people knew it or not, everything I was doing was in a very Pacific Islander way. From the way I speak to things that people would have identified as very humble. I was like, oh, that's just how PIs do it, right? That there's a protocol to things. The deference to elders, the, I love my best friends says, all I do is quote people [laughs]. But there's this part to me where it's like, everybody quotes people I just cite my sources. But there's a part to it too where even citing your sources is very Pacific Islander in that you are naming the genealogy of something, of a thought, of a practice, of a story, right? That you are always going back to the roots of where you came from and that conclusion. And also like a lot of ways where things that I was recognized for was in storytelling. It's like, oh, that's a really good. And folks not realizing like, oh, that's, that comes from me being Pacific Islander. Like that comes from me being Samoan. Not in spite of, but because of it. And so now there's a lot of ways where the work is defining Pacific Islander. And this other really interesting piece that EPIC does leadership development. That means we work with a lot of young people and the vast majority of our young people are second, third, fourth generation, right? Fairly removed from their indigeneity. And because of that, growing up in diaspora, in particular, growing up in the U. S., that there's always this thirst for Pacific Islander culture, and that's what they come to us for but also this notion and kind of this living conversation about what is PI, right? And that we ask them, and then many of them not feeling Pacific Islander enough, like that being the through line. But when you ask, like, what is Pacific Islander, is advocacy Pacific Islander, is education Pacific Islander? And oftentimes hearing from them, really troubling narratives that they've internalized about what PI is, and then having to untether and tease out, like, where did you get that from? Where did that story come from? Did it come from PIs? Very often, not, right? That, that what it means to have to constantly interrogate the ways that white supremacy controls how you understand yourself, controls your story, right? And so, you know, what does it mean that to our young people, that being PI means automatically and inherently means being part of the military, because that's what it means to be a warrior culture. Or that being PI is playing football or that being like that many of the narratives that they had taken to be factual were also grounded in the consumption of their bodies and wanting to trouble that notion. Right? And then also empower them to participate in the creation of a new narrative. So we sort of sit at this place where our work is to both remember culture, spread that remembering, and also watch it evolve and empower our young people to participate in that evolution and feel ownership of it.   Gabriel Tanglao: [00:17:05] I'm just gonna have a real moment right now on this episode and just say I wish I had a rewind button right now just to run that back because I'm trying to process some of the knowledge you just dropped and thinking about the ways that our culture and identity inform the ways we show up in spaces, specifically the ways that our perception is grounded through the lens of white supremacy culture and the consumption of our bodies is the way that you framed it, but how do we transform those narratives to be grounded in our own indigenous authentic cultural lens. So just Tavae, thank you for jumping in there. I was thinking about this question in what ways does my culture and identity inform my work? And I'm going to keep it real with you that I'm still exploring that right now. I recognize that the knowledge of self, the knowledge of Filipino history is something that I am becoming more familiar with and drawing more connections with in my adult life. Of course, being Filipino, having the cultural roots be present in my life, but also being a first generation person in a predominantly white suburban area, assimilation is something that is very much the reality for first generation folks. It wasn't until college, it was an educator, a professor Osei, on the literature of African peoples that started to help spark that critical race consciousness and sent me down a journey to become more race conscious and explore that. So to respond in short, the cultural identity, I'm still exploring that now, but I will say this. that the more that I learn, the more connections that I'm starting to realize. Being that I'm now heavily involved in the union spaces, and that's been a big part of my journey recently, I've come to learn about the farm workers and the Filipino organizers across Hawaii and the West Coast that have been pivotal in American history, labor organizing that I wasn't aware of. It was actually a moment of pride as I learned about that through APALA so APALA was one of the places where I was educated about this history and I'm realizing a lot of the connections that I'm making in my people, cultural roots.There's something there that I'm still unpacking right now, still exploring right now, and that's part of this Continental Shifts podcast. It's a real time exploration of how our culture and identity inform the ways we show up now. So that's, that's how I think about it in this moment.   Tavae Samuelu: [00:19:56] I love that and I think even as you were saying that what comes up for me is a lot of stuff too. That's also what's unique about EPIC is because I know our young people everywhere else they go will tell them that culture is a deficit. Right. It's the thing that you need to put away in order to succeed. And that we're also really clear of like, well, we are asking them to define success. It's not about aspiring to whiteness. Right. That I'm not trying to replace American exceptionalism with PI exceptionalism. And this other piece around culture is like, culture is not a costume. But it's most definitely a uniform for me, right? Like that when I go to the Capitol, if I'm lobbying in Sacramento, if I'm in D. C., I'm wearing my mom's fulakasi so that everybody can see, right? So to bring her with me as like a physical reminder. But also so my people see me there, right? Like a pulakasi, you wear it for ceremony. You also wear it to do faius or work when you're in service, right? So if I'm wearing a pulakasi, you know that I'm there for teltua. You know that I'm there to be in service, and that signaling to our young people, and then like the ceremony part of it, right? There's a sacredness to it. So if I'm in it, you also know, like, that you know what I'm there for. You know I'm about that business if we're, if we're in it. And you know, it tells other people, like, yo, this is how much we belong in the capital that I didn't put on, you know, I didn't put on some pantsuit or a blazer or whatever the case so that white people will recognize me. I put on a fulakasi so you all could see me. Right? And I think, and I've talked to this to a couple of folks about it, right? Like when Toni Morrison talks about Invisible Man and asked this question of like invisible to who? Like, what do I care if whiteness sees me? Like, the first time white people saw us, they decided, like, we were savage and they needed to take our land from us. It's actually not safe for white people to see me. Like, I just need our folks to see each other, right? And this other piece too, around narratives and story and culture, right? Like, that's the importance of APALA, of EPIC, of, of Ethnic Studies, is like, it'll give you the stories white supremacy never wanted you to know about yourself, right? That, like, white supremacy will tell people about the Aloha spirit, and that, like, Kanaka are just so grateful for tourism to have you on their land. It's like, yo, my favorite stories about Native Hawaiians are when they killed Captain Cook, cause that just like stepped out of line and tried to take too much right.   Like, those are my favorite stories. And so, you know, they'll tell you about us being warriors to recruit our young people for empire, like, yo, if you're gonna talk about words, talk about the Polynesian Panthers who stood toe to toe, inspired by the Black Panther Party to surveil the cops who were harassing, deporting and doing all of this up to our community. Or like tell the stories about our healers, right? Big Pharma will copyright things that we've been using to treat and heal our people for years so that it's not accessible on our lands. Like those are the stories where I'm just like, yo, I need all of our folks to know more of this. And I think even to that note Estella and I got to, after that APALA workshop got to reconnect through LE GaFa. And LE GaFa is also really important, like all of these language revitalization programs that are coming up, because even in a Fa'a Samoa or like a Samoan context, the three pillars of identity are land, family, and language, right? And so many of our young people come to us, you know, if you're in diaspora, that means you, you're divorced from your land. Many have lost language and then family is complicated. Family is real complicated [laughs]. And so how did we also become that space of redefining Samoa?   Estella Owoimaha-Church: [00:23:36] Oh, sis. So much has been said, but when you were speaking earlier, I thought back to how I felt when I first met you. And for the first time I was seen by my sister. You know what I mean? Like, I have never been in space with other Samoan women and felt at home until then. And then in thinking about LE GaFa and why I chose to take the class at 30, trying to learn a language is hard at 30, trying to learn Samoan at 30 oof! It is one of the biggest challenges I've ever accepted in my life. But every time we are in class, things just feel like they were already in my bones. And I didn't have a name for it or I didn't know what it was. So folks are always telling me, Stella, you're a storyteller. And you know, obviously I'm a theater major. Ended up in storytelling. And it's definitely a part of my practice as an educator. But like, now I know, well, that was in my bones, that is my lineage, that's my heritage, that's my ancestry. From both sides, you know, you know what I mean? I'm Nigerian and Samoan, I get it strong from both sides of who I am. I just love holding on to that thought that all of these things that someone tried to rip away from me, tell me was not okay, they couldn't because it is deeply innate. It is literally in… in me and it cannot be taken. And so my journey throughout my life to it was just that. It was something that was misplaced and I just had to find it again and I'm happy that I am there and to what Gabriel said earlier, that was definitely a reason why we chose to start this podcast because I can see it on my social media feeds, that there is a thirst, especially among young Samoans, to find out more about what's going on, I now have so many, oh, Samoan daily words and Samoan proverb, you know what I mean? Like so many folks I'm following and people are also trying to learn the language, I'm meeting and making connection with random Samoan artists on Instagram who now are in the LE GaFa class. And like everyone is now connected through social media. Because all of us, like you said, we are living in diaspora and those three parts of ourselves, we are now having to find. They're misplaced and we're in search of them and are lucky and blessed to be able to find each other so that we can rediscover those pieces of ourselves.   Gabriel Tanglao: [00:26:09] Tavae, when you were talking about the different stories that aren't told that should be told, you got me thinking about Lapu Lapu in the Philippine Islands, the chieftain that defeated, Magellan and stemmed off the first wave of colonizers coming through to the Philippines. I didn't learn about that in my, in my fourth grade class when I had to do a history research project. I learned about Magellan discovering the Philippine islands and that's not the story. Tell me the story about Gabriela Silang and all of the Filipino revolutionaries. So I was feeling what you were saying earlier. And also, with the deficit narratives that are placed on us, Dr. Tara Yasso, who introduced the Community Cultural Wealth Framework, the idea to challenge the dominant culture's narrative, the deficit thinking around us, and recognize the value-based, asset-based, capital-based thinking of cultural wealth that we're bringing to spaces, that's real.   Swati Rayasam: [00:27:07] You are tuned in to APEX Express on 94.1 KPFA, 89.3 KPFB in Berkeley, 88.1 KFCF in Fresno and online at kpfa.org.   Gabriel Tanglao: [00:27:22] Tavae, I do have a question about your organizing work with EPIC. That's a dope name, by the way just got to shout that out. But what success have you and EPIC had in organizing across PI communities?   Tavae Samuelu: [00:27:37] Credit for the name goes to Ono Waifale. You know, so EPIC started in 2009 by a group of young Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander leaders, mostly in higher ed, Ono, and a lot of it's sort of like the seeds of it planted, in the Pacific Islander leadership pipeline. So there's like a lot of hands that went into building it. Ono Waifale was one of the young people who went through that. And so the name EPIC comes from him. You know, something about the word success gives me trepidation. Like I have a thing about it, and maybe this is also me having a hard time just discerning between, humility and insecurity of like when you call something a success that people come and like want to hold you accountable to that. There are things that I feel good about, things that I feel proud about and. You know, it's my own recovering perfectionism that has me hesitant about it. That has me like, Oh, if I call that a success, there are so many things that I would have nitpicked about it, that I would done differently. You know, I'm always going to say the young people are my favorite part of this work of EPIC as an organization. On like that Huey P Newton, like, the revolution is always in the hands of young people. There's also a way that they are the best compass and litmus test, right? In that audacity that young people have of it could be better. And I'm just like, Oh, that's dope. Like, cause I think there's also a lot of ways where you know, I'm always an aspiring radical elder and trying to figure out how I can be that radical elder right now. But recognizing, a lot of the markers for adulthood and maturity are about sometimes, like, how much closer you get it to status quo, to like being more served by existing systems. And so there's a way in which I'm going to age out of this role. And I'm always looking for the young person who's going to take it on and keep up that mantle of demanding more, right. Of keeping us accountable to that. And so I think it's always the young people who are like over inspiring and also so brilliant and have so much heart around this and are such a good reminder because there's also ways in which they're closer to the problem because of their youth, right? And so because they're closer to the problem, they have more solutions and they're also a better way of vetting the viability of something that I might think is so great, but I'm doing all this grass top of what do I know if I'm spending all my time talking to funders and elected officials?   Like, I need the young people who tell me stories about I couldn't do homework because I had to do files for my mom and my grandma. And then I also had to take care of my little siblings and like, that's the kind of where I'm like, Oh, that's actually what should be dictating our policy agenda, right? Of like, how young people are thriving in this world, right? Because they're always going to be the marker of a healthy society, right? And that because they are part of that most vulnerable group, because they inherit so much . And then also the ways that we're developing young people into adult allies. Like, how are these young people also then looking at themselves of like, oh, let me be that, like, that OG that all the younger folks can come to as well. Like that they're preparing themselves also to take up the mantle and they feel good about it. Like that they feel ready and maybe if not ready, that they feel supported like, when they take that on, all the adults aren't going to disappear. And then there's also like a relativity to it, right? Like, in many spaces, I'm the youngest ED, or I'm the youngest “leader” whatever that means. And so there's me kind of also feeling young in that way, but then sometimes I'm like, oh, I'm the adult in the room [laughs]. Lamenting that ugh I gotta be the grownup. So I think that piece too is a weird in between that, that I'm in, but like I I think those are the parts of EPIC that feel good. And I think this speaks to the API aspect of this episode and where we're going to be diving deeper in. It's always a success to me when I've got more accomplices and allies for the Pacific Islander community. Right. When I have more people beyond PI's that are asking about us, that are fighting for us. Right. And that's a solidarity and then, you know, this is also an inspiration and something I like feel good about the direction that we're moving in is being really explicit about our organization being pro black and pro Indigenous and anti racist. Not because it's trending, because Imma be in this, [laughs] like even after it stops trending, but because it also signals to folks that we're a safe place to land. That if we say it out loud, you can hold us accountable to it, but you also know that you can come here and talk about and go there with us.   Estella Owoimaha-Church: [00:32:48] What you said about young people, I think, is my favorite part about being a classroom teacher. It is, I think, exactly for that reason. And I can sit and sit and lesson plan, lesson plan, lesson plan, get to class, and kids are like, nah. Now you, that's corny. You thought it was, you thought it was great, but Miss, let me tell you, but then I love that they feel absolutely comfortable telling me that it's not as dope as I thought it was [laughs]. And then we, you know, I just let them take over the lesson at that point. What are the critical issues that you foresee us needing to mobilize around? Maybe it's right now or in the immediate future.   Gabriel Tanglao: [00:33:28] Yeah, I guess what's present for me based on this conversation has me thinking about education, thinking about the stories and the narratives that are out there, and thinking about decolonizing curriculum as a primary frontline issue, but I actually need to shout out Kai, who was one of our guests, that decolonizing curriculum, if we flip that framing to indigenizing curriculum, is perhaps a better approach in terms of how we are more historically and culturally responsive in our approach. Why is that important? I think it's important to mobilize because I'm starting to recognize that the narratives that are being shared throughout public education in this country really do have a major impact on perpetuating white supremacy culture and continuing the violence that we're seeing. So, the obvious physical violence, but the forms of emotional violence and trauma that are just part of the mythology of the ways this nation state perpetuates white supremacy, patriarchal culture, capitalist system at large. So, I feel like part of my educator roots always calls me to that. But I think because Tavae and Estella, you're making sure we're grounded in understanding the youth perspectives that's present on my right now as a critical issue. And that's also going to be now and forever, perhaps, right? Oh wait, no, actually, Tavae, I'm gonna take some learning from what you shared at the beginning. The empire, when it falls, right? We're preparing for when it falls. So I'll just, I'll leave it there.   Estella Owoimaha-Church: [00:35:17] I think right now, like, educators across the nation, an immediate charge is to pass ethnic, like, ethnic studies has to be it everywhere, across the board, preschool to 14, like, mandatory, we've got to make sure that ethnic studies, um, so whatever state association across all of our unions. When ethnic studies ends up on your legislative body on the floor, yes on ethnic studies and push it and make sure that, it is what it's supposed to be and not some watered down, BS where you've taken out words like anti blackness and white supremacy. Let's make sure that. Every child has access to that, and it is what it's supposed to be because, like you said, I'm not trying to hear about Magellan discovering some he didn't discover in the first place. I'm trying to learn my whole truth, and it'd be great if I could get it, you know, starting at preschool instead of having to go, like Tavae put it earlier, I had to get that elite language in order to name the stuff. Like, I shouldn't have to go all the way to Graduate school, undergrad to figure out who the hell I am and then do something with that. So ethnic studies, I think, is the thing that needs to happen like right now.   Tavae Samuelu: [00:36:43] Well, I guess I'm also thinking about this ethnic studies piece too, because I fully support it and I know there's like a save PI studies coalition full of brilliant, like PI educators, also like very much Manawahine which folks should definitely follow. I think there's this piece too, where if you're going to mandate ethnic studies, I also need a pipeline for teachers of color and not just a pipeline, but Right, to support and retain teachers of color. Because there's this concern that I have too of what does it mean that most teachers are white? Like that's the other part, right? I was like, oh, white people are, I've never met a white person who teaches ethnic studies well. Never. I don't even know if it's possible, but you'd have to break yourself to do that, right? And also to think back of, like, the origins of ethnic studies in the 1969, the Third World Liberation Front. What it was created to respond to, the fact that it was also meant to be a college, not a department of, what does it mean to do ethnic studies in biology, right? Like, what does it mean to do ethnic studies as a lens through which we observe everything, right? Because if you have ethnic studies, you actually don't need US history anymore. Like, if you have ethnic studies, you don't need European history anymore, because ethnic studies is all of that, right? It's all of that. It also, you know, I agree, Ethnic studies it taught me a set of values and a way to look at the world and not just stories, right? It made me question all the things of like, what is essentially like the propaganda that our young people receive in formal education spaces [laughs]. And so I say this too, of like, yes, absolutely, all of that, it should be accessible, it should be invested in, it should be from us, there should be a naming of the fact that the US and education systems are, traditional education systems are invested in and fans of revisionist white supremacist history and that there's simultaneous campaigns that need to happen. And I defer to you all in your expertise and brilliance as educators. Right.   Every issue is a critical issue right now. Everything. You know, especially like COVID-19 and Pacific Islanders, I think in the context of this episode, in this podcast, this conversation, I'm at an impasse with Asian Pacific Islander or API, the terminology as an aggregate has been around since, you know, 1970s ish, and for me, because it's been around that long, it means that, API spaces and organizations have had since the 1970s to figure it out. So we're in 2021 right now and I'm having conversations with folks about what about PI and like there's a request for patience that just frankly is not fair. There's also just, like, this dynamic that doesn't get investigated. So when I talk about being at an impasse, it's that PIs already don't do API, that data disaggregation is actually just a request for data to catch up to the ways we already organize ourselves as communities API is a false promise and a site of erasure for many communities, not just Pacific Islanders, right? That Southeast Asian, South Asians, Filipinos as well get erased in these things, right? That even under API, we were still actually just being held responsible for a majority East Asian representation. And that it doesn't investigate the inequitable dynamic that exists between and AA and PI so this impasse is that the work that we do in advocacy is in recognition of the fact that power and resources are still distributed and disseminated through API. So we have a critical conversation to have as a community because PIs are already not using PI, and it's actually Asian Americans that use API and that it doesn't feel very good, these accountability conversations of calling folks in of like, how can we be good relatives? How can we talk about, because there's also like, you know, Asian American spaces aren't talking about colonization, like the PI as a colonized people, all the forms of racism that we experience being facilitated through that means, and, you know, if we're real, that some of our PI nations are colonized by Asian Americans, like not American, but like Asian nations, right? That there's like some healing that needs to happen. And so this, I don't know that it's a critical issue so much as like a critical conversation that needs to occur in our communities that is inclusive of PIs. Cause I also know I come across folks who are like, I say API cause I was taught that that was inclusive. And I was like, I bet you a PI didn't tell you that. So, yeah, you know, I think about that in the context of this episode, but there's this other piece too of like, You know, my family and I had COVID back in August, and so that was its own, I don't know that I say wake up call, because I, like, what's the humble way to say, like, I've been awake? It was asking this question of, like, what facilitated our survival, right? And a lot of actually what came to me was around labor. Was around union organizing and those wins of like we survived because I got a livable wage. I have paid sick leave I have like health insurance I have all of these things that I'm really clear were won by unions were made possible by labor and they're treated as privileges right or even like speaking English Like, all of these things that I was just like sitting with, like, oh, those are actually now shaping our demands of how we are going to move our advocacy work, or, you know, that we're housed, all of these things where I was like, oh, these are actually, there's not one critical issue, because the insidious nature of racism and poverty is that it could manifest itself in so many ways in our community that lead to premature death, and in that, like, Ruthie Wilson Gilmore way where she defines racism as the set of systems that lead to premature death. So that being like, oh, those are all the critical issues for me.   Estella Owoimaha-Church: [00:43:12] We need to, we, we're going to have to like come up with a syllabus for this episode, like to drop this [laughs] episode next week that has everyone cited all the articles and all the things listed so that we can like, yeah, I'm disseminating a syllabus with this episode. And I think that you were, you were right in that. First of all the disaggregation of data is something that is a theme that has come up on nearly every episode too in this podcast. It was another reason why, when Gabriel and I met, that was one of the first conversations we had because I have been very vocal in our caucus that there is some healing and reconciliation needs to happen. There is a reckoning that needs to happen. We need to deal with the anti blackness and et cetera, et cetera. In our caucus, right? And the fact that this caucus is meant to represent too many dang people and you try to squeeze us all together and make, like, all of our issues one issue, and it just does not work like that for all of the reasons that you said, but it doesn't mean you said, how can we be good relatives? It doesn't mean that moving forward, we can't be good relatives and figure this out. I think you're right. We've got to stop and have the conversation, before we can really move forward. And it's probably gonna be a long conversation. It's going to be a long conversation and one that happens continuously and in various spaces, but it definitely needs to happen moving forward aside from what you've already shared with us, what do you think it will take to increase the visibility of our communities and mobilize PI people around some of the critical issues that you've already talked about.   Gabriel Tanglao: [00:45:08] So Estella, your question has me thinking, and the energy from this episode in particular has me fired up, if I'm keeping it real, that if we're talking about visibility for our communities, obviously organizing is at the core of that, making sure that we lift up and create spaces for our people to come together and discover that collective wisdom within our own respective communities. But the fire that you all lit right now has me thinking that just being unapologetically and fearlessly courageous in the face of white supremacy culture within our own spaces, whether that's in the organizations, institutions, businesses, all of the places that we exist. I'm recognizing actually in this moment that one of the things that Tavae said earlier about not being seen by white supremacy institutions is actually safer, which is also very true in the way that things manifest. But what I'm feeling right now is increasing visibility. We're in a moment where, we're in this moment where our ancestors have prepared us to do battle in the ways that we are in our generation to try to disrupt the colonizers in our own respective ways. So those are my thoughts.   Tavae Samuelu: [00:46:34] Well, you know, I think the part of your question that I'm grappling with is this visibility piece, right? Because there are a lot of ways where I feel like our community is actually hyper visible, right? Like we've got The Rock, we've got Jason Momoa, we've got like all of these like really visible figures in our community who are also like very loud about our culture. And so there's this piece where I sit with is it that we need to be visible or is it like in this, man, I don't want to cite Chimamanda Adichie because she's like super TERFsy uh, and she had this Ted talk about like the danger of a single story and that actually, what, what troubles our visibility is the community is the singularity of our story here in the US, how there's like one thing that people get to know about. And I think, and maybe it's better to think about Stuart Hall and how he talks about there's no such thing as good or bad representation, because good and bad is constantly changing, right? Even the word bad in some contexts means good. In that sense, that actually what you're looking for as a community is a multitude of representation so that nothing becomes the single story of your visibility. Of how you're seen and understood, right? That that's also like, what white supremacy gets that white people get to be poor and wealthy. They get to be teachers and doctors and criminals, right? And even when they're criminal, we make it Godfather and like, glorify that criminality and so I think that's the part of our community is of wanting that to of, like, how do we get to see ourselves everywhere so that there isn't a limitation around how we mobilize. I also think, and I think this is always the conversation around representation of, like, how do I feel represented? Like you know, I never felt, Tulsi Gabbard is a Samoan woman, and I never felt represented by her like, that's not my people. And so, even that representation piece of, and I've stated this before, of like, yo, if it's not pro Black and pro Indigenous and anti racist, it doesn't represent me. Like, those are not my people.   Like, I'm not throwing down with people who aren't trying to get free. And so if I'm thinking about representation to invisibility, like I want our folks to be exposed and see as many examples of freedom as possible. That the other thing about young people and like language and all this stuff is young people already, really anyone like has a sense of what is not fair or doesn't feel right. That our young people actually, and many of us as marginalized communities, are experts in oppression. Like, you don't need to teach us what up looks like, because we've experienced it our whole lives. And so what does it mean to develop and invest in and build a whole pipeline and lineage of folks who are experts in liberation, who have so deeply exercised that muscle that they don't know anything else, that they only know how to be free. Like, I think that's the part where I'm thinking about, like, that's the kind of visibility I want to see. That's the kind of that I hope that our young people, that I, like, not just our young people, that I also need. And that I also am seeking so much, especially during this pandemic and always as somebody who struggles with anxiety and depression is, you know, on that Miriam Kaba, like hope is a discipline. I am internalizing more and more what that means. You to have to exercise hope as a discipline, as a muscle that needs to grow. I mean, I'll share this with you all, like, thank you Stella for saying happy birthday. It is, just probably one of the most difficult birthdays I've ever had. It is hard to age during a pandemic. In particular, like, because it's so macabre right now. But also because I've been wading through a lot of survivor's guilt. For the last couple of months, I'm just kind of like wondering why other people didn't make it and I did and so I have like a systemic analysis of all the privileges that kept me alive, but I'm still sitting here feeling guilty about making it or about surviving COVID thus far. And then sitting on a birthday, then having, like, every wish just felt really warm, but also sharp. And having to, like, say thank you to every single one to, like, exercise a muscle of gratitude. Like, try to replace some of that guilt with gratitude. But all that to say that I think this is also the direction that EPIC is going in, that like, when I think about these critical issues that it's like translating this thought experiment into tangible action around stuff. I'm sorry, I turned it off, I just completely lost you all.   Estella Owoimaha-Church: [00:51:53] No, I'm, I am with you, I was, y'all, like, I'm. dizzy from just shaking my head. Yes, I legit got lightheaded a second ago. Like, I was just shaking my head. What you just said, I was just like, isn't that the dream? Like, isn't that what we were supposed to be fighting for all those years ago and still today? A whole generation of people who don't know what it is to experience oppression. Like, that's the dream. Like, that's the dream. That, that is what we want and so what you were saying about visibility, you know, I'm, I constantly am struggling, like, with, I think, yeah, The Rock is there, but like, he's a wrestler, he's a movie star, you know what I mean? Like, it's always that same story. And while I appreciate him, I do, because being Black and being someone I always felt like a damn unicorn and The Rock was the only one who was there, who existed other than me and my brothers. And so I do appreciate him and the other celebrities or stars that we have to look to. But like you said, I want where we get to be. Any and everything and all of those things all at the same time.   Gabriel Tanglao: [00:53:19] I'm not sure if this makes it to the episode, but I have to express my gratitude for you just coming through and blazing this whole conversation. And really, I feel like there's just so much that I can't wait to. process and think through. I feel like the impact in this conversation alone is just gonna reverberate not only in my experience, but also our listeners that are tuning in. So Tavae, thank you so much.   Estella Owoimaha-Church: [00:53:47] Recovering perfectionist, that phrase. I'm walking away with it. Actually, it just posted something on like characteristics of white supremacy and the ways in which I was thinking about the ways in which as a theater educator, I have been guilty of perpetuating characteristics of white supremacy because it's so much a part of the way theater folk we do things. And so I was thinking like, but no wait, theater folk and artists, we also have the skills to dismantle white supremacy. It's also in the way that we do things so we do know better and when we know better we should do better so that recovering perfectionist is like in me and it also speaks to something that Gabriel has shared earlier about, you know, assimilation and being a first gen and that very typical immigrant story or child of immigrants like you're going to go to school get straight A's and essay like that show. And then your only options are doctor and lawyer. And don't come talk to me about anything else. So, you know, that that's definitely always been a part of. Me too, is it being in the diaspora and first gen American born, and always feeling like whatever I've done is not good enough. And, but then I'm like, but in whose eyes, whose eyes is it not good enough? And if it's in mine, then I need to sit with that and work past that. So recovering perfectionist, that's where I'm at.   Gabriel Tanglao: [00:55:14] My favorite line from today was aspiring radical elder. I'm holding on to that one. I was feeling that.   Estella Owoimaha-Church: [00:55:22] I wrote that one down too. Fa'a fatai te le lava. Thank you for listening.   Gabriel Tanglao: [00:55:28] Salamat. Thank you for listening.   Estella Owoimaha-Church: [00:55:29] We want to thank our special guest Tavae, one more time for rapping with us tonight. We really appreciate you.   Gabriel Tanglao: [00:55:36] Continental Shifts Podcast can be found on Podbean, Apple, Spotify, Google, and Stitcher.   Estella Owoimaha-Church: [00:55:43] Be sure to like and subscribe on YouTube for archived footage and grab some merch on our site.   Gabriel Tanglao: [00:55:48] Join our mailing list for updates at CONSHIFTSPodcast.com That's C O N S H I F T S podcast dot com. Follow us at con underscore shifts on all social media platforms.   Estella Owoimaha-Church: [00:56:06] Dope educators wayfinding the past, present, and future.   Gabriel Tanglao: [00:56:10] Keep rocking with us, fam. We're gonna make continental shifts through dialogue, with love, and together.   Estella Owoimaha-Church: [00:56:16] Fa'afetai. Thanks again. Deuces.   Gabriel Tanglao: [00:56:19] Peace. One love.   Swati Rayasam: [00:56:20] Thanks so much for tuning into apex express and an extra special thank you to Gabe and Estella for allowing us to feature your incredible podcast. Like I said at the top, you can find other episodes of the ConShifts podcast on our site at kpfa dot org backslash programs, backslash apex express. Or even better, you can go to the ConShifts site to listen on Podbean or wherever podcasts can be found. And make sure to follow them to keep up with where they go next. Please check out our website, kpfa.org/program/apexexpress to find out more about the show tonight and to find out how you can take direct action. We think all of you listeners out there keep resisting, keep organizing, keep creating and sharing your visions with the world. Your voices are important. Apex Express is produced by Miko Lee, along with Paige Chung, Jalena Keene-Lee, Preeti Mangala Shekar, Anuj Vaida, Kiki Rivera, Nate Tan, Hien Nguyen, Cheryl Truong, and me, Swati Rayasam. Thank you so much to the team at KPFA for their support and have a great night. The post APEX Express – 8.1.24 – Continental Shifts Organizing & More appeared first on KPFA.

Como parte de mi experiencia de convertirme en padre decidí leer esta carta transformada en libro que ofrece 15 consejos prácticos para criar a una hija en la igualdad de género. Adichie proporciona orientaciones para fomentar la independencia, cuestionar los roles tradicionales y promover el respeto y la libertad desde la infancia.

In dieser Folge spreche ich darüber, wieso Alkoholkonsum und Scham so stark miteinander verwoben sind und wie Du es schaffen kannst, diesem Kreislauf zu entkommen. Das Buch “Pick Me Girls” von Sophie Passmann findest Du zum Beispiel hier: https://www.amazon.de/dp/3462004204/ Den TED Talk “The Danger of a Single Story” von Chimamanda Adichie kannst Du Dir hier ansehen: https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_ngozi_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story Die beiden Studien, von denen ich spreche und in denen es unter anderem darum geht, welchen Teil ihres Umsatzes die Alkoholhersteller mit Rauschtrinker:innen machen, findest Du hier: How dependent is the alcohol industry on heavy drinking in England? https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30136436/ How the alcohol industry relies on harmful use of alcohol and works to protect its profits https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27785844/ Meine Programme “Die ersten 30 Tage” und “Abstinenz stabilisieren” findest Du hier: https://oamn.jetzt/meine-programme/

Agba Podcaster sat down to drink his beloved garri for a few days, but it spoke to him in a way that caught his attention. Garri said, "Agba, I'll blind you," prompting Agba Podcaster to rush to the recording studio and make a three-minute podcast declaring his desire to write a book titled Lagos Stories, a collection of 12 stories. He now wishes to add Agba Author to his already impressive bio, and he believes he can rival Chimamanda Adichie's success. Although some may assume Agba Podcaster is drunk, it is merely the hangover from his garri that motivates him. Despite his disdain for motivational speakers, he is a firm believer that anything is possible with the right mindset. During the podcast, Agba Podcaster showcases his thick Nigerian accent, which he previously tried to suppress in favor of a British accent. Despite spending a month learning the British accent, Agba Podcaster has realized that he is unlikely to leave Nigeria anytime soon, but he still holds onto his big Japa dreams. Agba Podcaster is the name of the man behind the microphone, and he is eager to share his plans with his listeners. Last year, he released the first season of his podcast, also titled Lagos Stories, co-hosted by Tami and Evaleni. This year, he plans to launch a second season with fifteen gripping episodes that will keep you glued to his Anchor FM page. Agba Podcaster has now monetized his podcast, but he knows that his struggle is not only to achieve success but also to fight poverty. Therefore, he urges his listeners to support him by listening, sharing, and commenting, enabling him to achieve both his dreams of success and combating poverty. You may be wondering who Agba Podcaster is. Well, "Agba Podcaster is me, and I am him." --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/daniel-lawrence12/message

No quinto episódio desta temporada do Podcast "Arte e Cultura remota para os seus ouvidos", a equipe multidisciplinar do projeto de extensão "Nas Entrelinhas: o direito à literatura escrita por mulheres em presídios femininos" recebe a professora e pesquisadora Feibriss H. M. Cassilhas para discutir "Hibisco Roxo", da autora nigeriana Chimamanda Adichie. A conversa gira em torno da importância da obra de Adichie e traz reflexões sobre colonialismo e religiosidades a partir da análise de personagens centrais da narrativa. "Hibisco Roxo" foi um dos livros selecionados para o projeto de extensão "Nas Entrelinhas", que objetiva incentivar a leitura e promover a reflexão crítica de mulheres em privação de liberdade. Participam deste episódio: Feibriss H. M. Cassilhas (UFBA) Leonardo da Silva (professor do IFSC - São José) Rachel Pantalena Leal (Pesquisadora - USP) Produção/Edição: Gustavo Guimarães de Araújo (discente IFSC - Itajaí)

Pendant ce vol, Aissata et Laurence discutent d'un entretien inopiné avec Chimamanda Adichie (02:23). L'affairage commence avec le récent coup d'état au Burkina Faso (08:48), la vidéo cocasse du candidat à l'élection nigériane, Bola Tinubu (22:17), une critique équilibrée du film Women king (30:04) et des origines africaines de la chanteuse américaine, SZA (49:28). Plusieurs coups de cœur à l'atterrissage (57:02) comme handle me d'adekunle Gold feat Lous & the Yakuza et Chasing de Bolu Ajibade. Allez, bon voyage! P.S: votre podcast préféré est enfin sur Twitter!

Nigerian novelist Chimamanda Adichie says the country does not have heroes who will inspire its younger population. Adiche says Nigerians should be open to self-criticism. This, she said, will engender good leadership in the nation. Chimamanda noted that there is a need for resurrection adding that they cannot avoid self-criticism but criticise the government.

Ingen tør blande sig i debatter, og de unge forfattere censurerer sig selv af frygt for ikke at være woke nok, siger Adichie. Hør et interview med den nigerianske verdensstjerne, der hævder selv at være offer for cancel culture pga. et gammelt tv-indslag. Men er hun i virkeligheden også med til at presse andre ud af 'det gode selskab'? Kulturjournalist og litteraturanmelder, Bodil Skovgaard Nielsen besvarer spørgsmålet og tager lytterne med ind i en litterær verden af kamp og sladder, hvor alle kneb gælder. Vært: Nanna Mogensen.

Mamileiros e Mamiletes, hoje o nosso papo é sobre o poder das histórias e ele é muito especial. Isso porque as apresentadoras Cris Bartis e Ju Wallauer gravaram o programa ao vivo durante a participação no Rio2C, o maior evento da América Latina sobre tecnologia, criatividade e inovação. Nossas vidas e nossas culturas são compostas de muitas histórias sobrepostas. Neste episódio, conversamos sobre por que é tão fácil nos deixarmos seduzir por histórias? A escritora Chimamanda Adichie, em seu TED, adverte que se ouvimos somente uma única história sobre uma pessoa ou país, corremos o risco de gerar grandes mal-entendidos. Quanto mais estamos emocionalmente conectados à história, menos críticos ficamos, menos observadores. Qual é o risco desse envolvimento? Como a internet ajudou a democratizar a contação de histórias trazendo à luz novas narrativas? Para entender de onde vem o poder das histórias, convidamos para a nossa mesa um trio incrível. Renata Andrade, autora e roteirista da Globo, Eduardo Lurnel, bacharel em cinema, autor e produtor audiovisual e Kim Farrell, head de marketing para América Latina do TikTok. Vem com a gente tentar entender mais sobre qual poder as histórias têm? _____ FALE CONOSCO . Email: mamilos@b9.com.br _____ NATURA Neste episódio, voltamos a ter o nosso momento especial para falar de bem estar e de como a pausa energizante com Natura Tododia Capim Limão e Hortelã é importante. Sabia que desde que a gente conheceu essa linha, estamos mais atentas com a rotina de autocuidado? Agora, prestamos atenção nos detalhes do banho para encaixar momentos revigorantes em tarefas simples do dia a dia. Seja no banho, na caminhada ou até no alongamento, a gente precisa se colocar em primeiro lugar e cuidar do nosso corpo. Por isso, a Natura nos convidou para a nossa última dica de bem estar. E hoje a dica é das duas e se chama: garrafinha de água. Podemos tentar de tudo para melhorar o nosso dia, mas quando nosso corpo não está bem hidratado, a energia despenca. Por isso que a gente leva nossas garrafinhas de água na bolsa para qualquer lugar. E para complementar a rotina de autocuidado, Natura Tododia entrega a hidratação fundamental para o nosso corpo: a hidratação da pele. O Creme Corporal da nova linha tem nutrição prebiótica, que deixa sua pele mais firme, macia e cheia de vida. Com a pele bem hidratada e a garrafinha de água sempre por perto, a energia vai lá em cima. No site da Natura você encontra todos os produtos de Tododia Capim Limão e Hortelã. E não se esqueça de, ao longo do dia, cuidar de você e da sua energia. _____ CONTRIBUA COM O MAMILOS Quem apoia o Mamilos ajuda a manter o podcast no ar e ainda participa do nosso grupo especial no Telegram. É só R$9,90 por mês! Quem assina não abre mão. https://www.catarse.me/mamilos _____ Equipe Mamilos Mamilos é uma produção do B9 A apresentação é de Cris Bartis e Ju Wallauer. Pra ouvir todos episódios, assine nosso feed ou acesse mamilos.b9.com.br Quem coordenou essa produção foi a Beatriz Souza. Com a estrutura de pauta e roteiro escrito por Eduarda Esteves. A edição foi de Mariana Leão e as trilhas sonoras, de Angie Lopez. A capa é de Helô D'Angelo. A coordenação digital é feita por Agê Barros, Carolina Souza e Thallini Milena. O B9 tem direção executiva de Cris Bartis, Ju Wallauer e Carlos Merigo. O atendimento e negócios é feito por Rachel Casmala, Camila Mazza, Greyce Lidiane e Telma Zenaro.

Opera Singer Ulunma Blessing Agu has turned her passion for singing into an amazing career. From singing in her church choir just for fun to studying music as her Bachelor Degree and now furthering her career in sacred music for her masters. Now she performs at important events and has recently performed at an event hosting writer Chimamanda Adichie. Blessing talks about growing up, her love for music, her journey as an opera singer, what keeps her going, her challenges and a lot more.Watch the episodes on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCeccAv-OOahW16yplUXAJhwLLWJ Productions#lovelogwithjokuInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/lovelogwithjoku/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lovelogjokuTiktok: https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMLmJxnqA/Twitter: https://twitter.com/iam_joku

on this episode, we review the film Half of a Yellow Sun by the incredible Chimamanda Adichie. As the lives of the main characters are torn apart by the tumultuous history being made around them, we delve into the entanglement of love, politics and general chaos that follows in a story set during the Nigerian Civil War. Be sure to check us out on Spotify, YouTube, Apple podcasts and wherever you get your podcast. Follow us on Instagram @onceuponanaija. Would you like to collaborate with us or just send some encouragement? Email us at onceuponanaija@gmail.com.

Este episódio oferece duas discussões pelo preço de uma! Começamos refletindo sobre 'exofonia', ou seja, sobre a literatura escrita em língua estrangeira. Sabe o Joseph Conrad ou o Nabokov? É por aí... Falamos sobre várias escritoras e escritores que compuseram suas obras em múltiplas línguas, já aproveitando para discutir Literatura Africana (Chinua Achebe, Chimamanda Adichie, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o), Pós-colonial (Jhumpa Lahiri, Khalil Gibran) e Global (Yoko Tawada, Ba Jin, Eileen Chang, Chinghiz Aitmatov). Falamos também de um lado de Fernando Pessoa que você não conheceu: sua vida na África e seus poemas em inglês e francês! Really, c'est la vérité. Na segunda parte, falamos sobre os hospitais e o seu potencial dramático na literatura através da novela "Paseo de la Reforma" da autora franco-mexicana Elena Poniatowska. Se você quiser saber ainda mais sobre o assunto, assista a palestra aberta "Morrer em Casa ou no Hospital? O espaço do fim na história da saúde e nas artes" na quarta, dia 9/2, às 21:00. Inscrições gratuitas aqui ou no site www.literaturaviral.com.br

This week, the writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie joins Jon to talk through the viral essay on social media that she wrote last June. The two discuss what compelled her to write that essay, how the internet has changed the way we interact with ideas, and the changes she's seen in recent literature. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email transcripts@crooked.com and include the name of the podcast. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week, the writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie joins Jon on Offline to talk through the viral essay on social media that she wrote last June. The two discuss what compelled her to write that essay, how the internet has changed the way we interact with ideas, and the changes she's seen in recent literature. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week, special guest Genesia Alves joins us to discuss consent, new feminist lingo, and whether a generational divide among feminists is hurting the fight for gender equality. Watch the clip of Ziwe quizzing Gloria Steinem about 'WAP' here -- https://twitter.com/ziwe/status/1393552025871429641?s=20

"We have to be able to walk and chew gum." In the latest episode of Black in a Box, we discuss Chimamanda Adichie's blistering essay on cancel culture, after a friend and apparent mentee of hers took to the internet to denigrate her for, what she perceived as, dangerous and transphobic rhetoric (03:25). We then jump into Michaela Coel finally getting her flowers after winning the Emmy for Outstanding Writing (34:24), before closing on our new segment, in which we'll be focusing on Black male mental health (42:22). Like. Share. Subscribe.

Nigeria has a very rich literary culture. From the greats like China Achebe and Wole Soyinka to contemporary giants like Chimamanda Adichie and Teju Cole, the nuances that form the Nigerian experience are constantly being documented. Chibundu Onuzo is just another writer whose insights make us more enlightened. Combining her creative talents as a novelist and sometime singer with a background as an academic, Chibundu is proof of the excellence that has become synonymous with young Nigerians. Afiola spoke to her in London. Enjoy!

Alaa Ben Abdallah is not your typical student. After high school, she started nutrition studies in Tunis but she always felt that something was off and that is not her path. That did not take long for her to change. She participated in Thomas Jefferson scholarship and spent one year in the US as an exchange student and studied psychology.  After returning home to Tunisia, she went for the real adventure to study in the leadership academy in Rwanda defying all the stereotypes and how people perceive education in Africa. Alaa is the first Tunisian to get Mandela scholarship  and she  shares what does it mean to be African and how we can contribute bridging the gap Alaa shares her inspiring story on discovering the world, Africa, and most importantly, herself. Here are couple of books Alaa recommends:- The danger of a single story: Chimamanda Adichie - The perils of obedience: Stanley Milgram- Music and Politics in Africa. Social Dynamics: Allen. L- Wealth of nations: Adam Smith  

The guys discuss Chimamanda Adichie's comments on trans women, the treatment of queer Nigerians before and during the ENDSARS protests, as well as the implications for the future.

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is one of Nigeria's foremost literary voices. Her writing is noted for its touching examination of homeland, identity and feminism. For more than a decade she has been coaching and mentoring promising young authors through her yearly workshops in Lagos, bringing a new generation of African writers to mainstream attention. On the subject of transgender people and feminism, Chimamanda Adichie has been criticised by some on social media for comments she made in a 2017 TV interview, in which she said "my feeling is trans women are trans women". She was branded transphobic and there were calls for her to be banned from book events. This past week, she has hit back, writing a furious online essay slamming some of her critics and arguing that social media platforms have become too toxic. Mark Coles talks to friends and family about the award-winning writer whose outspoken nature has seen her drawn into a social media firestorm. Presenter: Mark Coles Producer: Sally Abrahams Researcher: Matt Murphy and Sowda Ali Editor: Alex Lewis

Hey

Nigerian author Chimamanda Adichie's three-part essay is what millennials get to hear from Gen Z and boomers suffering with over generalisation of the new generation. Read full article here: https://theprint.in/opinion/pov/adichies-attack-on-woke-language-is-on-point-but-right-wing-cancel-culture-is-real-threat/682077/

M.T. is joined by Common Sense Political editor Sithokozile Thabethe as they discuss Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's latest essay. On Tuesday, June 15, Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie published a three-part essay on her website titled “It Is Obscene”. The essay started with personal anecdotes about two unnamed former students, who had criticised her openly for her comment on trans women in 2017, while also using her fame for their personal gain. It went on to address the larger lack of nuance and compassion in discourses on social media, an issue Adichie has spoken of before in her criticism of cancel culture. While many have lauded Adichie's essay for an apt representation of “woke” culture on social media, the motivation for this essay was also largely personal. Specifically, it was a public acknowledgement of her controversy with ex-student Akwaeka Emezi, who has been critical of Adichie's views on trans women. In It Is Obscene, Adichie criticises two writers who attended her creative writing workshops in Lagos. She befriended both, she says, and helped them get published. But both, in her view, betrayed her friendship by targeting her on social media and spreading malicious falsehoods.

Chioma, Alice, Arinze, and Chinedu, go through a few hot topics, like Buhari banning Twitter in Nigeria, Chimamanda Adichie, and cancel culture, Naomi Osaka and mental health, and Juneteenth. Main topic- Discussing some of the dichotomies in the relationship between Africans and African Americans, part 2. Brown Ambition: Issa Rae Main Topic - What it means to be "Black" in America [2] w/ Chris Brown Like on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/panadolxtrapod Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/panadolxtrapod

Hay Kweenz we fooled ‘em again!! It's another edition of Regular Guy Friday, this week Kev and Kelsey bring you the wild tale of Kev's past 90s adventures with “Grady ‘Lobster Boy' Styles!!” The discussion leads to talks about the sociopaths, vampires and little monsters all around us, and the serious tole they take on our individual wellbeing. Kels shares her own personal adventures with mini monsters, upper endoscopies and the fun of anesthesia. Kelsey then reads a powerful passage by @Chimamanda_Adichie with regards to narcissism and behaviors today, and the duo discuss how it's an inditement of all vs one generation, and how the passage should be used as a tool for all of us to self evaluate and improve..."what I find increasingly troubling: a cold-blooded grasping, a hunger to take and take and take, but never give; a massive sense of entitlement; an inability to show gratitude..." OUCH! Heavy and powerful stuff. BUT we of course end the episode reminding ourselves and everyone else that we are all still Kweens and how summer can be your moment to reset, pause or just blow steam: just be aware of whatever option you choose. Bye Beeeetches! --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/better-together-with-maria-menounos/support

This is a special edition of the 5x5 Crypto News focused on the Bitcoin 2021 conference.Last weekend, I attended the Bitcoin 2021 conference in Miami. I’m new to this space so I figured it would be a great way to learn and connect with others. This is an attempt to capture some of my thoughts. This is the first in a 2-part series. This piece will focus on general observations, the next piece will address some of my learnings. First things first, I did not know what to expect. Bitcoiners have been caricatured in the media as cultists and speculators. Others see them as innovators and technologists. Would I fit in? Secondly, this conference was focused on bitcoin only. This meant that ethereum and other projects in the crypto sphere would not take center stage. Would I be surrounded by only the most fervent bitcoin maximalists? My sense is that multiple blockchains and projects can win. Well, I am SO glad that I went. I continue to find growth and delightful experiences by putting myself out there and taking a risk to venture into unfamiliar terrain. I left the conference with new friends, new ideas, and increased confidence in the future. Much has been said about the conference. A lot of the media focus has been negative. Some folks have latched onto the most colorful and sensational elements. Remember that 50,000 people traveled to Miami with 12,000 attending the conference while others participated in a smorgasbord of satellite events. A handful of loud voices should not define a community. In the words of Chimamanda Adichie, “...beware, there is danger in a single story”.  Observations1. Is Miami the crypto capital?Mayor Saurez has been wooing the crypto community to Miami. I met a 26-year old crypto hedge fund manager who relocated from New York City during the pandemic. He shared that everyone in the luxury high rise he lived in worked in crypto and they were mostly 25-30 years old. He was enjoying the networking, lifestyle and lower cost of living in Miami. While the city has made strides, the talent and funding pools still pale compared to NYC and SF. As the country emerges from the lockdown, will Miami continue its crypto rise? 2. Diversity: What brings you here?Bitcoiners traveled down a variety of paths yet converged on the same destination. Motivations ranged from ideology to profit seeking, efficiency to innovation. I enjoyed this diversity of thought. I liked engaging with everyone from libertarian ideologues to pragmatic opportunists and bitcoin maximalists to blockchain agnosts. At times it felt like an intellectual playground. If you are a curious person, there is space for you within this big tent. 3. Diversity: Who is not in the room?For the first time in my life, I had to wait 10-15 min to use the men’s restroom. In contrast, there was never a line for women’s restrooms. Bitcoin operates at the nexus of technology, economics and philosophy. These sectors have less gender and ethnic diversity than the US population. Unsurprisingly, the conference demographics was not representative of the general population. It’s important for all communities to have a seat at the table as new technologies are being developed and deployed. Again I say, there is room for you within this big tent.4. Hey stranger, do you want to be my friend? I came to the conference by myself. I struck up many random conversations and I ended up meeting people from all over the US and across 4 continents. Y’all are friendly! I found strangers quickly became friends as people were generous with their time and resources. Thank you! We debated ideas. We talked about our personal hopes and aspirations. The next challenge will be staying in touch. Any ideas?5. What are you working on?Everyone is a founder. It was inspiring to meet so many folks betting on themselves and building the future they want to see. One of my favorite conversations was with an entrepreneur starting a VC focused on investing in black and African crypto startups. If you are interested in investing in the VC, I would be happy to make introductions. In addition, I also had more vulnerable conversations with founders who were struggling and questioning whether to pivot. I learned that the crypto bull run has made many folks independently wealthy. They could self-fund their startups without raising money but some were missing external input. This helped reinforce the idea that investors don’t just bring money but insight. Their feedback could be invaluable while launching and scaling a business. Closing thoughtsOverall, I am really happy I went. Knowing what I know now, I would do it again. That said, I am unsure if I will go to the next bitcoin conference. My tickets were pricey but I met many folks who travelled to Miami just to attend the satellite events without going to the conference. Sure if I got affordable tickets, I might go again but I think one could get significant value just from attending the satellite events. I am also really curious about going deeper into DeFi (decentralized finance) and other parts of the crypto ecosystem. I would be open to attending a conference on that. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit afolabio.substack.com

"In this episode Madhuri envelopes us into a warm blanket of poems by Meera Ganapathi Ayappa. and Rutika reads us a short story by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie called 'Zikora'.They discuss the multiplicity of feelings evoked by certain places, foods, relationships and how they affect us. This episode is an ode to all the incredible women out there so join us as we take you through the worlds created by the words of Meera Ganapathi Ayappa and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie! You can write to Rutika on lettersthathug@gmail.com and you can write to Madhuri on adwanimadhuri@gmail.com."

This episode is also available as a blog post: https://validupdates.com/2021/06/years-after-advising-her-family-not-to-post-her-wedding-pictures-writer-chimamanda-adichie-reveals-her-reasons/ --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/valid-updates/message

The last year has been one of grief and sorrow for so many around the world. A new book by acclaimed author Chimamanda Adichie explores her recent personal loss after the death of her beloved father, and the multi-faceted grief she "was not prepared for." Jeffrey Brown talked to her from her family home in Lagos, Nigeria for our arts and culture series, CANVAS. PBS NewsHour is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders

The last year has been one of grief and sorrow for so many around the world. A new book by acclaimed author Chimamanda Adichie explores her recent personal loss after the death of her beloved father, and the multi-faceted grief she "was not prepared for." Jeffrey Brown talked to her from her family home in Lagos, Nigeria for our arts and culture series, CANVAS. PBS NewsHour is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders

The last year has been one of grief and sorrow for so many around the world. A new book by acclaimed author Chimamanda Adichie explores her recent personal loss after the death of her beloved father, and the multi-faceted grief she "was not prepared for." Jeffrey Brown talked to her from her family home in Lagos, Nigeria for our arts and culture series, CANVAS. PBS NewsHour is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders

This episode is all about EMBRACING who YOU are, rather than who society thinks you should be. I analyze Paris Geller from Gilmore girls, and drop some FIERY quotes from Chimamanda Adichie & Brene Brown. I also share a mindset shift & some other strategic tips to help you celebrate the POWER OF BEING YOU!

Today I speak with the highly accomplished Dr. Ebere Okereke. Ebere was born in London and returned to Nigeria at age five, where she grew up. Ebere is a self-professed “ABU”, which stands for “Aba brought up” because she grew up in Aba, Eastern Nigeria. Ebere went to Medical school at the University of Nigeria, Enugu Campus. Today, Ebere is a public health physician with 28 years' experience of practice in many countries, and expertise in epidemiology, health protection, communicable disease control, infection prevention & control, and zoonoses.  Ebere is currently leading the development & implementation of the PHE program to strengthen capacity in low & middle-income countries to comply with the International Health Regulations. Previously as a Global Health strategist, she worked to build the partnership between PHE & International Rescue Committee (IRC) in Kenya. In today's episode, we discuss a wide range of topics. In spite of her great achievements, Ebere says that her biggest accomplishment is her daughter Amara, who won the 2018 Stage Debut Award for Best Actress, for her lead role as Cossette in the London west end production Les Miserables. Ebere is one of the most widely read people I know. Here are some of the books that she recommended: 1. The Guardian of the Word - Camara Laye 2. We should all be feminists - Chimamanda Adichie 3. Who fears death - Nnedi Okorafor 4. Beloved - Toni Morrison 5. The Book of Negroes - Lawrence Hill 6. West African Verse: An Anthology - Donatus I. Nwoga 7. Lagoon - Nnedi Okorafor >>>Subscribe on SPOTIFY | APPLE PODCASTS | STITCHER | GOOGLE PLAY 

Getting an early start in high school with an exchange to Germany [1:43] Obtaining an internship with the United Nations in Geneva as an undergrad [2:15] Darla's dissertation which can be found in the NC State library [4:03] She's written eight books to date Looking at WHAT IS NECESSARY FOR US TO GET ALONG TOGETHER AS HUMANS? What does one do after getting as many diplomas as you can get? [7:47] Darla's current role @ Duke (past & present) [9:24] Working with Association of International Education Administrators (AIEA) [10:43] A focus on those who are leading internationalization efforts at their higher education institutions Leaders In International Education Receiving invitations to speak at different places around the world [12:23] Darla's favorite food from her travels... [15:33] I mentioned above she's written eight books [16:32] Chimamanda Adichie [19:42] Darla's advice to students thinking about studying abroad [20:45]

It's a pledge drive special edition of Access Utah today. My special guest for the hour is Dr. Jason Gilmore, assistant professor of Communication Studies at Utah State Unviersity. We'll reach into the archives for parts of some of our favorite episodes of the program. We'll hear from Phillip Dray, author of "At the Hands of Persons Unknown: The Lynching of Black America." Then we'll hear part of my conversation with Sonia Nazario on the family separation and zero tolerance immigration crisis. Sonia Nazario is author of the book "Enrique's Journey." And we'll conclude with a segment from my interview with Gary Paul Nabhan who is working to use food to unite people across social and political divisions. We also discuss Chimamanda Adichie's TED Talk, "The Danger of a Single Story."

In this episode, I am excited to have Michelle Wimes on to talk about Diversity and Inclusion and the importance of sharing your diversity story. Michelle Wimes serves as the Chief Diversity and Professional Development Officer at one of the nation's largest labor and employment law firms. In her role, Michelle leads the firm's efforts to attract, develop, and advance a diverse group of attorneys across the firm's national platform. Additionally, Michelle leads the firm's attorney training and professional development efforts.   Topics Covered Her incredible journey from being a lawyer in a multitude of different law specialties, to the D&I Professional she is today and her thoughts on diversity and inclusion in today's law firm. She talks on the challenges she faced as a woman of color that is a lawyer, and how far we have come and have yet to go with social biases and constructs. How Ogletree approaches D&I, by both creating a common language that imbues diversity in the firm's mission and values while making diversity a shared responsibility with everyone. How to get buy-in from white males on D&I efforts, and getting away from the zero-sum game mentality on diversity that some non-person of color lawyers can feel. How getting involved with different D&I events and organizations and spreading your network there can greatly affect how lawyers view D&I in their own firm.     Questions? Comments? Email Jeena! hello@jeenacho.com. You can also connect with Jeena on Twitter: @Jeena_Cho For more information, visit: jeenacho.com Order The Anxious Lawyer book — Available in hardcover, Kindle and Audible Find Your Ease: Retreat for Lawyers I'm creating a retreat that will provide a perfect gift of relaxation and rejuvenation with an intimate group of lawyers. Interested? Please complete this form: https://jeena3.typeform.com/to/VXfIXq MINDFUL PAUSE: Bite-Sized Practices for Cultivating More Joy and Focus 31-day program. Spend just 6 minutes every day to practice mindfulness and meditation. Decrease stress/anxiety, increase focus and concentration. Interested? http://jeenacho.com/mindful-pause/ Transcript Michelle Wimes: [00:00:00] We don't feel like diversity should just be siloed over by itself to one thing, right? We really believe that diversity should be tied into the talent management process. It needs to be tied into how we recruit people, how we hire people. Intro: [00:00:18] Welcome to The Resilient Lawyer podcast. In this podcast, we have meaningful, in-depth conversations with lawyers, entrepreneurs, and change agents. We offer tools and strategies for creating a more joyful and satisfying life. And now your host, Jeena Cho. Jeena Cho: [00:00:43] Hello my friends, thanks for being with us today. In this episode, I am so happy to have Michelle Wimes. She serves as the Chief Diversity and Professional Development Officer at one of the nation's largest labor and employment law firms. In her role, Michelle leads the firm's efforts to attract, develop, and advance a diverse group of attorneys across the firm's national platform. Additionally, Michelle leads the firm's attorney training and professional development efforts. [00:01:11] Before we get into the interview, if you haven't listened to the last bonus episode go back and check it out. I shared a 6 minute guided meditation practice to help you let go of stress and anxiety. It's a preview for my course, Mindful Pause. So often I hear from lawyers that they know they should be practicing mindfulness, but they just don't have the time. And I always tell lawyers, start with just six minutes or .1 hour. Of all the hours you dedicate to your clients, work, and others, don't you deserve to have at least .1 hour to yourself? Mindful Pause is designed for lawyers like you, to fit into your hectic schedule. Think of it like taking your daily vitamins to boost your well-being. Head on over to JeenaCho.com to learn more, or check it out in the show notes. And with that, here's Michelle. Michelle, welcome to the show. Michelle Wimes: [00:01:58] Thank you Jeena, happy to be here. Jeena Cho: [00:02:01] So to get us started, can you give us a 30-second introduction of who you are and what you do? Michelle Wimes: [00:02:08] Certainly. I grew up in the Midwest, in Kansas City, Missouri, and I've always been interested in other cultures and languages. I've had a proclivity in Spanish; in fact, my major in college was Spanish. And I lived abroad in Mexico and Spain for a year, and it's just interesting because I reflect on being made fun of for being an African-American woman or girl who learned another language, and people just didn't understand why I wanted to learn another language and they really kidded me. Like, what are you going to do with that in Kansas City, Missouri and living in the Midwest? And so I've always just found myself being an advocate for equity and representation, and for women particularly, being able to do things outside the norm. So for the last 10 years, I would call myself (and the work that I've done over the last 10 years) an inclusion strategist and a cultural innovator. And particularly, I think my focus has been on challenging leaders and organizations to move beyond the status quo and to really interrupt their own biases so that they can ultimately create environments where diverse talent can thrive. And I try to do that by developing organizational solutions; that includes everything from creating the necessary infrastructure, advocating for and adopting inclusive policies, equipping our leaders to be more culturally competent to understand what cultural competence means, and also developing innovative programming and initiatives that are talent-based strategies. So that's what I do in my day job, and I also do a lot of speaking and training on diversity and equity and inclusion as well. Jeena Cho: [00:04:05] Did you start as a practicing lawyer before you moved into the D&I space? Michelle Wimes: [00:04:11] I did, I did. It's been about 24 years. I was just thinking about that this morning, how long has it been since I've been out of law school? And I graduated 24 years ago. I practice law for about 14 years, so I've been on the administrative side doing diversity and/or professional development for the past 10 years. And my focus area when I was practicing was mostly in the employment arena, some immigration law, I did discrimination and harassment, and I also practiced education law; I've represented a number of school districts and worked with quite a few school board members, superintendents, principals, administrators. So I really enjoyed that area as well. And then I also had a five-year stint where I did some product liability work, particularly I was able to utilize my Spanish speaking skills and travel quite a bit, working to develop expert witnesses in tobacco litigation. [00:05:14] I loved that work because it took me all over Latin America; I was working in Brazil and Venezuela, Panama, Guatemala, Mexico, Costa Rica. I just really, really loved that work; I loved going into different cultures and being able to utilize my Spanish. And they got us a Portuguese tutor at one point, so I was learning a little bit of how to speak Portuguese. I never really picked up a whole lot of it, but I got to the point where I could at least be proficient and read Portuguese. Because we had a lot of documents that were coming in in Portuguese, and we needed to be able to read, catalogue, and sort through those. Jeena Cho: [00:05:56] So in your many decades of practicing law, when you look back on it in hindsight do you feel like we're making progress towards having more diversity and inclusion in our law firms? How does it feel to you, having gone through being a practicing lawyer and then moving more into the leadership arena? Michelle Wimes: [00:06:18] I do feel like we are making progress, I feel like it is incremental progress though. I don't feel like it's like I can just look and say, oh my gosh we have so many more attorneys of color than we had 20 years ago. I don't see it in that respect. Where I do see it is I do see more women moving into leadership roles in law firms, I do see more women serving in and becoming equity partners and things of that nature. But in terms of attorneys of color, those numbers still are very abysmal. And even when you look at African-American attorneys in particular, and African-American female attorneys, the numbers are just so very small. So there is much work that remains to be done. Jeena Cho: [00:07:11] Are there experiences or stories that stand out to you, an experience that you went through because you're African-American that other people let's say who are white would not have, when you were practicing law or just in your professional experience? Michelle Wimes: [00:07:32] I would say there are a number of experiences that I've had as a woman of color practicing law, that I think probably other women of color can identify with. I remember going into a deposition once and they thought that I was the paralegal. Another time they thought I was the court reporter or the person who transcribes the depositions and things like that. And I was like, no I'm actually here to take the deposition. I just remember having those kinds of experiences can be very disheartening because they speak to.. and I had to learn this the hard way, because initially when something like that happens you internalize it and you think that something's wrong with you. But you have to recognize that that speaks to that person's own bias and that person's own personal and professional experiences as to what their expectations are for who opposing counsel should be or what opposing counsel should look like, or what an attorney looks like, right? [00:08:55] And I speak to other women of color attorneys, even younger women now that I mentor and sponsor, who still have even in 2018 those kinds of experiences. And it's disheartening because we ARE in 2018, and you just wouldn't think that those kinds of things still happen, but they do. Jeena Cho: [00:09:16] Yeah, I'm surprised at how common that is. I remember being a baby attorney and walking into the courtroom and the judge looked at me and said, "Are you the Asian language interpreter?" And that question just completely perplexed me, because I was like what, so I know how to speak all 150 Asian languages and the thousand dialects? Michelle Wimes: [00:09:39] Right, assumptions that that judge is making based on your appearance and based on what you look like, and it's just ridiculous. I remember one of my first trials that I had, and the judge addressed me as "little missy." It had to be 20 years ago, right? I was probably a fourth-year associate, fifth-year associate and yeah. The judge, who shall remain unnamed, that is how he referred to me until I had to pull him aside and say, "Could you please call me Mrs. (because I was married at the time) Patterson-Wimes?" And he finally stopped. And of course, he didn't call my co-counsel, who was a male partner at the firm that I was working with, "little mister." But I was a little missy, in front of the jury mind you. Jeena Cho: [00:10:43] Yeah, and of course you can't react. You really just have to keep a poker face when the judge says something like that in front of the jury, because you don't want the jury to get a bad impression of you if correct him. Michelle Wimes: [00:11:01] Yeah, because if you correct them right there in front of the jury, you look like the person who is the a-hole. So you have to be very careful with how you handle that. Jeena Cho: [00:11:12] Yeah, it's that Goldilocks Dilemma; you can't be too aggressive but you can't be too polite, and you can't be too nice but you can't be too mean. Michelle Wimes: [00:11:23] Exactly, exactly. Jeena Cho: [00:11:26] Well, maybe we can shift the conversation a little bit and chat about.. you obviously work in a large law firm, and I would imagine that trying to think about diversity when you have such a large pool of attorneys and also staff, I would imagine it's overwhelming. What's your approach for thinking about diversity and inclusion? Because I think this is such a complex issue, right? It's not just about the numbers, it's not just about saying, well we hire so many of these type of mixture of people. But it's about retention and who gets placed into leadership roles; there are so many different angles to think about. So I guess the overarching goal in terms of how you and the firm think about diversity and inclusion. Michelle Wimes: [00:12:22] The overarching goal for us is to attract super talented lawyers; to attract them to our firm, to recruit them here. And then once they're here, to develop them and to create wonderful opportunities so that they can learn and they can grow. And once they have matured and they've gained a certain skillset, we then want to encourage them to move into leadership positions in the firm, encourage them to become rainmakers, to be key relationships stakeholders with our clients. We just see diversity as kind of a progression, there's a continuum. And we want to, no matter what the person's gender or sexual orientation or gender identity or religion or race or ethnicity, we want to make sure that we're embracing all parts of that. [00:13:29] Those people are talent that's coming in the door, and that they have those opportunities to grow. I'm glad you asked me this question because I do think that Ogletree is a little different in the way we approach diversity because we have combined diversity and inclusion with our professional development department. In some firms, you'll see they've combined diversity with recruiting, which that makes sense. For Ogletree though, and I think we're rare, we're probably one a handful, maybe one of 5 or 6 AM Law 100 firms that combine diversity and professional development. And we do that very intentionally and strategically because we don't feel like diversity should just be siloed over by itself to one thing, right? We really believe that diversity should be tied into the talent management process, it needs to be tied into how we recruit people, how we hire people. What are the programs that we're developing, what are the initiatives that we have in place so that people are learning and growing, and then how do we promote our talent and how do we move them through that pipeline? So our attorneys, we want them to be culturally competent. We want them to be able to work across all different perspectives and beliefs and to understand how to work with different people from different backgrounds. We believe that just as important as writing is to a lawyer's career, learning how to research, learning the professional skillset that you need to be a good attorney, leadership training, client development. We believe that along with all of those things, it's also really important to be inclusive, to act inclusive, to be culturally competent. And so that's why we've combined the two of these things together and that's how we approach it, because we feel like to be successful in a 21st century environment where it's increasingly global, you need to know how to get along with people and you need to know how to respect people, and you need to know how to embrace people from different backgrounds and experiences and perspectives. Jeena Cho: [00:15:45] Yeah. I often find (I don't know if you probably have this experience too) that people want to delegate diversity and inclusion, like well we have that person who manages all the diversity and inclusion. But it's really hard to fold in that conversation in everyday situations. Like there's some meeting, everyone's sitting around and have people look around the room and say, oh this is not a very diverse pool of people. And how do we go about actually adding some more diversity? How do you shift away from delegating diversity and inclusion to either yourself (since that word is in your title), to filtering it into people's consciousness? And have them look around the room and say, everyone in this room is a white male. You know, whatever that situation might be. Michelle Wimes: [00:16:50] I think that it's really important to make diversity personal. I think you have to personalize it, right? I think that everybody should feel responsibility for ensuring that we have diverse voices at the table. And the only way that you're going to do that is when it becomes everybody's responsibility. It's not just the responsibility of the Chief Diversity and Professional Development Officer, it's not just the responsibility of the Professional Development and Inclusion Team. So it is creating a common language so that people understand that this is part of our firm's mission; this is part of our core values, to make sure that we have diverse voices at the table. [00:17:37] How do you get those diverse voices at the table? Many times, it's when you have people from diverse backgrounds and people who have diverse experiences. And the proxy for that many times is people of different genders and races and ethnicities and sexual orientations and what have you. So from my perspective, I want to equip and empower my leaders. I want to make sure that we're speaking a common language; that they understand what diversity and inclusion is, why it's important, why it's a core value in the firm, and what they can do to promote diversity and inclusion. So when I'm not in the room, and I shouldn't have to be in every single room, it is something that they can carry forward as a core value in the firm. It's not something that I or somebody on my team has to be in the room for it to be thought about or for it to be a priority. It is because we are all operating from the same language, we are all operating from the same set of core values, and whether you're a white male or a white female or an Asian female or Hispanic male, you're in the room; you need to be equipped to be able to feel confident enough to advocate and to have conversations advocating for diversity and advocating for an inclusive environment. And we can talk about this a little later, because I know one of the other questions you want to talk about is how do you get the buy-in from white males on diversity, and I can go into that later because I do think that there are some tools that firms can utilize, that chief diversity officers can utilize in getting everyone to personalize what diversity means and to take it as part of their core, so that it becomes part of how they operate. It's part of how you end up doing business. Jeena Cho: [00:19:31] Well, let's just go there then. How do we get buy-in from white males on diversity and inclusion efforts? I find (because I have a lot of these conversations with my white male lawyer friends) it's either like, yeah I can see why diversity and inclusion is important, and I don't want to work with everybody else that are essentially carbon copies of myself. But I feel uncomfortable speaking out in front of my colleagues who all look like me, because they're going to be like well what do you care? You're a white dude. Why is this conversation important to you? Or they think that if we have these special programs like a woman's retreat or a POC retreat for the attorneys of color in the firm, that we're somehow treating them as more special, therefore we're somehow discriminating against the other white attorneys. So I feel like it's such a complicated issue, it definitely is a complicated issue. So yeah, I'll just leave it at that. Michelle Wimes: [00:20:39] No, you're absolutely right. Yes, you're absolutely right. It is a complicated issue, and when I say personalize what diversity and inclusion means what I mean is that we have to move away from this concept of scarcity and this zero-sum game and the way that we approach diversity. That if a woman or a minority is promoted, or they get to go on a pitch and pitch for new business, or if they get promoted, that that's automatically taking away a benefit or a promotion or an opportunity from a white male. Right? So it's having people understand that if you increase the pie, there's a bigger piece of the pie for everyone to share. So if a person of color happens to be the person who's assigned to go to a pitch and they bring back that business, if they hadn't gotten that business you'd have 0% of 0% to share. Right? But that business comes in the door and then you are also working on that business, 50% of something is better than 0% of nothing, right? So it's moving away from this concept of scarcity and really approaching it from an abundance mentality. And many times, this happens for me in the course of relationship building. I think that you absolutely have to get to know people; you have to spend time with them, you have to understand what their diversity and inclusion story is. [00:22:15] And many times when I have these conversations with white male colleagues, they're like what do you mean my diversity story? Everybody has a diversity story. Tell me who you are; just because you're a white male doesn't mean that you don't have diverse experiences or that you haven't felt different, you haven't felt separated or apart from a group or an individual at some point in your life. So if I can talk to them, for instance if it's a white male partner and I've done this, I've had this conversation. Where they have a daughter and that daughter is a lawyer, and that daughter is working in a law firm and battling up against trying to get a seat at the table; trying to meet their billable hour requirement, trying to get good work. So now their eyes are open because their daughter comes home and she's complaining about the very things that we're developing diversity initiatives around. So for the first time it's like they can see, oh my gosh now I see why this is needed. Because it becomes personal to them, because it's an experience that they can identify as having someone in their family who has been treated differently. It's the same with when you talk to people, do you have a child with a disability? Do you have someone in your family who has had to deal with being otherized, because of a special trait or characteristic? [00:23:42] So when you start drilling down on these stories, they can start to identify and empathize and understand where the pain points are, and identify with those pain points, right? So it increases their cultural competency. So my whole thing is that when you personalize this for people, it gives them greater opportunity to look at things from a different perspective and to want to create greater opportunities for other people, because they understand and have personalized it, and understand how difficult it is. In the same breath though Jeena, I should say too that I feel like it's really important that diverse lawyers are excellent. I think that you have to bring your best self to the table, and I think that you have to seek sponsors. And in the course of seeking a sponsor or a mentor, that person can be a person of a different race or ethnicity, gender. And in the course of doing that, again you're making it personal. You are developing a relationship with that person, and that person is going to be more inclined to invest in you when they realize the similarities and the commonalities that you have. So if you bring that excellence and you're doing a great job workwise, it's that much easier for people to want to get to know you and to find out what the commonalities and similarities are, and to want to invest in you and in your career. So I think you get that buy-in through the relationship building, the one-on-ones, and then also teaching a common language so that people feel personally invested. Does that make sense? Jeena Cho: [00:25:29] Yeah it does. The follow-up question I have for you is just the way that law firms are structured, there's this constant pressure to bill. That's one of the things that I keep hoping that law firms will fix, but of course that's not the case. Time is so scarce, especially for busy lawyers, so how do the lawyers go about finding the time to hear the stories of others that they work with, so that there is this sense that everyone has a place in the firm and that there is a sense of belonging? Michelle Wimes: [00:26:12] Yeah, that's such a great question. And I think that if it doesn't happen in the normal course of work, maybe you're not assigned to work with a particular partner that you really want to get to know better, I think you have to look for other opportunities. For instance, is there a pro-bono matter that has come in through the firm that you can ask that particular lawyer to supervise you on? So it gives you the opportunity to be down in the trenches together and working on a matter, even if it's not a billable matter it gives you that opportunity to get to know someone. Maybe it's instead of going to.. Because a lot of times this is what happens with our baby lawyers, we'll have these big firm retreats, which we do every single year. And they'll just be overwhelmed because we bring all 900 of our lawyers together. It's a fabulous opportunity to really get to know other lawyers and other offices and another practice group. And I tell my baby lawyers, you need to be very strategic when we have these firm-wide events. You need to reach out to people ahead of time and say, hey I'd like to get together with you at the retreat (and the retreat always has a jam-packed schedule). But if you can say hey, can we do coffee or can we do drinks or can we meet, I just want to pick your brain for 15-20 minutes. Find the opportunity and be strategic and intentional about getting on somebody's radar. And most of the time, nine times out of ten no one, especially here at Ogletree because we know that 50% of our business in one office comes from another office, no one office is just self-sufficient in and of itself. So our cross-marketing and cross-selling are really big within our firm. So if you say hey, I want to chat with you about doing more work with you. Or there's a particular client that I'm interested in, I would love to have your perspective. People are going to meet; they will meet with you, they will allow you to pick their brains. So I think it's finding those discrete pockets of time, whether it's through a pro-bono matter, whether it's through meeting folks at a retreat, or maybe it's getting involved in the different initiatives, the different community and philanthropy initiatives that the firm is involved in, or the diversity efforts. We sponsor a lot of different national affinity groups, like The National Bar, The National Hispanic Bar, The National Asian Pacific American, NAPABA, and the South Asian Pacific American Bar. So we go to those events, we go to those conferences, and we are always encouraging our lawyers to network there and for the lawyers that we're sending there, to get to know each other better. So I think there are lots of different opportunities, even though we are busy. It's just a matter of taking advantage of those opportunities. Jeena Cho: [00:29:10] Yeah, yeah. Great. Michelle Wimes: [00:29:11] Yeah I do want to mention Jeena, there's another tool that we recently developed that I think your listeners might be interested in. It's called the Diversity Action Plan, DAP for short. This is one example, we've asked our lawyers at the beginning of this year to commit to doing 5 to 7 different daily or weekly or monthly, really we want 5 to 7 actions that they have taken over the course of a year, but if they can do it daily, monthly that would be awesome. But 5 to 7 things, whether it's reading and learning something, whether it's watching something, attending an event. And we give them specific examples of things that they can do to support diverse lawyers in the firm, to support diversity in the legal profession generally, to support our diversity initiatives. And so it's a way again for that personal investment in diversity and inclusion to come to fruition. So we asked them things like read about the American Bar Association's Resolution 113 and understand why certain clients are committed to supporting a diverse and inclusive legal profession, right? So read about that, understand it. We have asked them to do things like watch Verna Myers, her TED talk. She has a TED talk on how to overcome biases and walking boldly toward them. There's another TED Talk, The Danger of a Single Story. I don't know if you watched that one with Chimamanda Adichie? She is wonderful, and she gives insight on how we judge someone just based on who we think that person is, based on their culture and based on where they're coming from. So she utilizes that whole concept of judging people by a single story in her TED talk. So we encourage them to watch that, or we say attend one of our BRG (business resource group) sponsored events; go recruit at one of our career fairs. We go to 7 or 8 different minority career fairs throughout the country, be one of the lawyers that go to that career fair and helps to recruit diverse attorneys to the firm. [00:31:25] So we give them a lot of different activities that they can do, and this is really for I would have to say the white men in many cases. Because a lot of times they come to me and they say, well what can I do to help you? What can I do to further the diversity efforts in the firm? I don't know what I can be doing. So this DAP is meant to give them a list of concrete things that they can do to help themselves, to educate themselves, to educate others to learn what clients want. And then at the same time, to help bring diversity into the firm and help grow diversity once it is in the firm. Jeena Cho: [00:32:04] I love that, I love that bite-sized daily practice of getting to know your own blind spots, and also an action item where you can go out and be an ally. Yeah, I really love that. That's so great. Michelle Wimes: [00:32:22] Thank you. Yeah, that was just one of the concrete things we came up with this year that we thought of, our Diversity and Inclusion Steering Committee. It's a pilot project and I think that so far it's been really well-received. And one other thing, well there's a couple of other things but one thing I'll mention. In my former firm we also had what we called a buy-in subcommittee or task force, and it's something that I'm thinking about implementing here (we haven't gotten around to that yet). It was a group of powerful partners, most of them were white males and white females, who when we were wanting to roll out a new initiative or a new program, or we wanted to get buy-in from firm middle managers and practice group leaders, office heads, things like that. We would go and bounce these ideas off of this buy-in subcommittee and get their feedback, re-frame it or re-tool it if it needed to be re-framed or re-tooled. And then we tasked them with going out and helping us to create buy-in and helping to advocate or sway others to adopt the new policy, or implement whatever initiative or program we were putting into place. Jeena Cho: [00:33:41] That's great. And it's not like diversity and inclusion is something can do once and go oh, I went to that diversity and inclusion training, now I'm perfect at it. It's a practice and I think that's such an important thing to remember; that it's a journey and it's a practice, and none of us are free from implicit or probably explicit bias. I think it's about getting to know our own blind spots, and also sharing our privilege with others and making sure that we don't slam the door behind us when we walk through it. Michelle Wimes: [00:34:22] Right. And I think there's a piece that people don't talk about as much, it's the measuring piece. What I like to do is use our lawyer's competitive nature to help with the measurement piece. So you know that the diversity metrics really tell a story, and you can look at the metrics and you can see, how many attorneys of color have we recruited this year? How many have come in through the door to actually be hired? Then fast forward a year later, three years later, five years later, how many of those attorneys are still with us? Are there practice groups where we're losing attorneys, attorneys of color or women, are there offices in particular, where we're losing a particular subset or group of folks? So if you supply the practice group leaders and office heads with those kinds of metrics and statistics, those people who feel like diversity is a touchy-feely thing and want to stay as far away from it as possible because it's too loosey-goosey to them, but they like numbers. So if you can give people objective numbers and objective metrics and say look, in this particular office you've lost five diverse attorneys in the last two years. What's going on here? And when we look at other offices in your region, these offices are doing much better and they have lost zero or they have lost one. [00:35:53] And so that competitive nature of oh my goodness, what's going on in my office? Or what's going on in my practice group as opposed to other practice groups? So sometimes it's utilizing that natural competitive nature that we have as lawyers to get them to focus on an issue objectively, and then to say okay what strategies do we need to put in place to make sure that we stem this attrition or that turnover is not happening? Jeena Cho: [00:36:21] That's fantastic. Michelle, before I let you go one final question to you. The name of this podcast is called The Resilient Lawyer, what does it mean to be a resilient lawyer to you? Michelle Wimes: [00:36:34] Oh my gosh. You know, I think to be a resilient lawyer it really means your ability to recover from setbacks. I think that every lawyer that I know, including myself, has had professional and personal setbacks. And I think being resilient is how do you adapt well to change, how do you keep going in the face of adversity? Because we're all going to have adversity, we're all going to have setbacks. And when I think about.. recently the ABA came out with a path toward your well-being report. And in that well-being report, they talked about thriving across six or seven life dimensions. And they talked about your occupation, your emotional health, intellectual health, your physical health, emotional and spiritual. I think of being resilient as each one of those different areas; how are you living, how are you making healthy and positive choices? How are you ensuring that your quality of life is such that you are thriving across all of those dimensions, in spite of the setbacks, in spite of the adversity that you may face. And that really means knowing who you are, being self-aware, and being able to adjust when you need to. When you have to adjust, accepting what that reality is but having the belief and having the optimism to know that you can recover, and that you will recover. Sometimes I think people get so negative and so focused on the bad things that are happening, but I think it's important to be optimistic. I think it's important to find meaning across all of those dimensions, and to really be able to bounce back when you encounter those kinds of problems and setbacks. Jeena Cho: [00:38:44] Michelle, thank you so much for sharing your time and your wisdom with me today. I really appreciate it. Michelle Wimes: [00:38:51] Thank you. Thank you for having me Jeena. You are doing amazing, important work and I am so happy to have been part of your podcast today. Thank you for having me. Closing: [00:39:05] Thanks for joining us on The Resilient Lawyer podcast. If you've enjoyed the show, please tell a friend. It's really the best way to grow the show. To leave us a review on iTunes, search for The Resilient Lawyer and give us your honest feedback. It goes a long way to help with our visibility when you do that, so we really appreciate it. As always, we'd love to hear from you. E-mail us at smile@theanxiouslawyer.com. Thanks and look forward to seeing you next week.

Mugethi Gitau It is ironic that in the world we live in today, wearing your hair the way it grows as an African person is considered a statement. For generations, majority of urban Africans have been wearing their hair straight, and this has become thet accepted standard for hair. It is not uncommon to hear comments of natural African hair being called unproffessional in the work environment, or untidy in the school environment. Last year, a 13 year old South African girl led a succesful protest against her school, Pretoria High School's racist rule that the black students were required to straighten their hair , while girls of other races could wear their hair natural. This is common in schools all over Africa. Chimamanda Adichie, a bestselling author is quoted as saying that if Michelle Obama had natural hair, Barrack Obama would not have won the presidency. This is perhaps, the ultimate illustration of the politics of natural African hair. In addition, there is little knowledge on how to take care of natural hair by hair stylists, and most products that are readily available, are made for straight hair.In Kenya natural haired women have formed online communities to encourage each other to wear their hair natural despite the stereotypes and perceptions, as well as sharing hair care and styling information and tips.This happens on  Facebook groups like Tricia's Naturals (68,000 members). Hashtags like #teamnatural #naturalhair #nappyhead are used internationally on social media to have discussions on social media, share hairstyles and hair care information with the aim of taking black natural hair mainstream.  Mugethi is on a mission to break cultural stereotypes on hair, change perceptions and encourage people to wear their hair natural. On her Youtube channel, NappyheadsKE, she discusses the various issues like perceptions that sorround natural hair. 

Remember Beyonce's self titled album and how everyone was all excited about her proclaiming her feminism through that? This week we break down what feminism is to us. how it may (or may not be) misinterpreted and Chimamanda Adichie's confession that she was not in favor of how her speech was intergrated with Beyoncé's Flawless all with the help of Noushky of breakingdenmanbrushes.wordpress.comYou can also connect with Noushky on Twitter @BreakingDenmanB and Instagram @BreakingDenmanBrushesHere's a link to the Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie on Beyoncé's Brand of Feminismarticle we discuss inthis episode https://blavity.com/chimamanda-ngozi-adichie-beyonce-feminism-not-mine

Are you guilty of having a single story about introverts or extroverts? This post was inspired by a TED Talk by novelist Chimamanda Adichie. If you wish to read the post, you can find it here: http://theintrovertentrepreneur.com/2015/09/14/the-danger-of-a-single-introvert-extrovert-story/

The Orange Prize-winner speaks about her drive to write, living in Chinua Achebe's house, and why fiction matters.