Podcasts about jennifer brown consulting jbc

Join our guest, Jennifer Brown (she/her), award-winning entrepreneur, speaker, author, and diversity and inclusion expert.  As the Founder and CEO of Jennifer Brown Consulting (JBC), a certified woman- and LGBT-owned firm, Jennifer and her team design and execute inclusion strategies that have been implemented by some of the biggest companies and nonprofits in the world. If you like our content, please remember to follow and leave a review.

Being an Inclusive Leader with Jennifer BrownToday's episode is with Jennifer Brown. Jennifer (she/her) is an award-winning entrepreneur, speaker, author, and diversity and inclusion expert who is deeply passionate about building more inclusive workplaces where more of us can feel welcomed, valued, respected, and heard. As the Founder and CEO of Jennifer Brown Consulting (JBC), a certified woman- and LGBT-owned firm, Jennifer and her team design and execute inclusion strategies that have been implemented by some of the biggest companies and nonprofits in the world. She is also the bestselling author of two books, Inclusion: Diversity, The New Workplace and The Will to Change (2017) and How To Be An Inclusive Leader: Your Role in Creating Cultures of Belonging Where Everyone Can Thrive (2019), a shortlist winner of the O.W.L. Award, and winner of the 2019 Nautilus Book Awards' Business & Leadership category. The Second Edition, released October 4, 2022, addresses some of the most pressing challenges of our times and takes a deeper dive on complex topics including identity, privilege and equity. With more than 50% new content, it provides an effective roadmap to help individuals navigate through their journey to become an inclusive leader. The Second Edition was one of the titles chosen by the Association of University Programs in Health Administration (AUPHA) for the AUPHA Bugbee-Falk Student Book Award for 2022. Connect with Jennifer Brown:Company Website: https://jenniferbrownconsulting.com/How to Be an Inclusive Leader, Second Edition: https://www.amazon.com/How-Inclusive-Leader-Second-Belonging/dp/152300200X/Jennifer's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenniferbrownconsulting/Connect with Tayo Rockson and the As Told By Nomads Podcast:Tayo's Website: https://tayorockson.com/Tayo on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tayorockson/Tayo on Twitter: https://twitter.com/TayoRocksonTayo on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/tayorocksonTayo on TikTok: https://www.youtube.com/tayorocksonAs Told by Nomads Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/as-told-by-nomads/id910739730UYD Management: https://www.uydmanagement.com/UYD Collective: https://tayorockson.com/uyd-collective Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Adrienne Lawrence, VP and Senior Consultant for Jennifer Brown Consulting (JBC), joins the program in recognition of Pride Month to discuss how to create a more inclusive workplace where everyone feels valued and heard. Adrienne reveals what it means to have authentic inclusion in the workplace and how to keep diversity, equity, and inclusion front and center in an organization throughout the year. Adrienne also reveals the business case for focusing on diversity, equity, and inclusion.

In our most wide-ranging interview yet, we speak with Jennifer Brown, a DEI thought leader, author, and entrepreneur who explores the boundaries of where we can go to ensure everyone has the opportunity to succeed. Classically trained in performance, she harnessed the courage it took to perform on stage and dance in the fire of the spotlight and cultivated that into standing for others and creating cultures of inclusion. She's spent years finding ways to elevate voices that need to be heard, shine a light on those that need to be seen, and create institutions that pull people to success. For more, visit https://jenniferbrownconsulting.com/ and https://jenniferbrownspeaks.com/ Guest Biography Jennifer Brown (she/her) is an award-winning entrepreneur, speaker, author, and diversity, equity, and inclusion expert who is deeply passionate about building more inclusive workplaces where all of us can thrive. As the Founder and CEO of Jennifer Brown Consulting (JBC), a 20-year-old certified woman- and LGBT-owned firm, Jennifer and her team design and execute inclusion strategies that have been implemented by some of the biggest companies and nonprofits in the world. She is also the bestselling author of four books on inclusive leadership, including her most recent, a second edition of How to Be an Inclusive Leader, which addresses some of the most pressing challenges of our times and how identity, privilege and equity can drive opportunity for all. Her keynoting has taken her from everywhere from Google to IBM to the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center to leading business schools around the world, and her podcast, The Will to Change, is in its fifth year, and recognized as one of the top DEI podcasts ever.

“I want to challenge the comfortable in all of us and in myself. I want to invite us to walk that path together because the comfortable amongst us is needed in the change equation so desperately for change to be sustainable, to be at scale, to be accelerated, to address the real pain and inequities in our society.” In Episode 31, I am joined by Jennifer Brown, Founder and CEO of Jennifer Brown Consulting (JBC), to discuss the challenges of being an inclusive leader, how to overcome these challenges, and what inclusive leadership means. Jennifer's DEI journey has spanned for over 15 years in public speaking, entrepreneurship, consulting, thought leadership, and writing. She is an acclaimed keynoter and podcaster, with her podcast The Will to Change, which has 15,000 listeners per month. She has received several recognitions, having been named Woman of the Year, Social Entrepreneur of the Year, one of the Top 40 Outstanding Women and so much more. Her sincere commitment and determination to DEI have led to her numerous successes as a best-selling author of two books, a shortlist winner of the O.W.L. Award, and a winner of the 2019 Nautilus Book Awards' Business & Leadership category. These achievements drawback to her mission of creating inclusive organisations where all of us can thrive, and, encouraging leadership and allyship at all levels with concrete behaviours and actions. Jennifer offers insight into her DEI journey, and her shift from focusing on DEI representation to ensuring that diverse individuals are respected, understood, hired, and retained in their respective organisations. She shares her personal story, and delves into the importance of this, as an authority figure and as an LGBTQ woman advocating for her community. As she explains, there is an ease in hiding, and seeking what is comfortable but what we actually need is to challenge what is comfortable. Setting that tone and creating psychological safety will normalise open conversations about things that frighten us and are not so often spoken about. These include questions about privileges and invisibility, and the significance of utilising that as a way of fuelling our allyship with others. Lastly, she speaks about the inclusive leadership continuum, which features in her book – How to be an Inclusive Leader. She describes that leaders tend to get stuck at each transition stage: 1) Phase 1 and 2, that is between ‘I don't know what I don't know' and ‘now I know what I don't know'. This is complex as they have to overcome resistance, apathy, cynicism, and skepticism.. 2) Phase 2 and 3, from the ‘I know what I don't know' to ‘deepening my knowledge'. They will have to experiment and fail a lot to learn, which is quite overwhelming, and shame and guilt-inducing for leaders. 3) Phase 3 and 4, here the issue is being stuck in the perfectionism trap between aware and active ‘not knowing' and ‘not having mastering of how things will turn out'. Leaders will find that they are more vulnerable, they will hold themselves accountable and train themselves to notice bias around them and speak up. In Phase 4, leaders are advocates and that can be difficult to achieve. As such, leaders require support, patience, flexibility, resilience, forgiveness, and graciousness. It's not about having a short-term focus on calling people out and canceling them when they make mistakes, but about having a long-term view of nurturing the journey of others. This holds more power than pushing people out from contributing to the DEI conversation because of their privileges. Links: Jennifer can be found on: -       Instagram -       LinkedIn -       Linktree For more from Jennifer Brown Consulting, you can visit their website at: https://jenniferbrownconsulting.com/

Jennifer Brown's path in life unexpectedly changed early on. She thought she would find her fulfillment as an opera singer, but fate had other plans. After experiencing issues with her singing voice, she now helps everyone around her find their own unique voices in work and life. This podcast is jam-packed with insights about thriving in today's workplace. As an expert in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), Jennifer shares with us how she finds motivation and creates communities of inclusion. She thinks it's important that you let your voice be heard and find out what you're a leader in. Jennifer gives us great tips on developing your own personal brand and standing up in your power. She talks to us about how she connects talent with companies and gives back to her community through education. She doesn't really believe in gurus because she feels there is wisdom in all of us. Join us as we learn so much more from Jennifer. Visit gobeyondbarriers.com where you will find show notes and links to all the resources in this episode, including the best way to get in touch with Jennifer. Highlights: [02:53] How the performing arts paved Jennifer's path [09:14] Becoming an expert in the DEI space [15:03] Motivating self and others [19:29] Working with a diverse team [23:05] Developing your own brand and owning your power [35:00] Creating a community of inclusion [43:12] Letting all voices be heard [46:54] Lightning round questions Quotes: “As adults, we have to be able to connect concepts to our learned experience.” – Jennifer Brown “Be willing to be shaped by the moment.” – Jennifer Brown “A lot of us write our own books to figure out our own story.” – Jennifer Brown Lightning Round Questions: What book has greatly influenced you? - “Flawless Consulting” by Peter Block What is your favorite inspiring quote or saying? - Say yes, and go figure out how. What is one word or moniker you would use to describe yourself? - Light and illuminating What is one change you've implanted that made your life better? - Digging deep to build my team. What power song would you want playing as you walk out onto a stage? - “Golden” by Jill Scott About Jennifer Brown: Jennifer Brown (she/her) is an award-winning entrepreneur, speaker, author, and diversity and inclusion expert who is deeply passionate about building more inclusive workplaces where more of us can feel welcomed, valued, respected, and heard. As the Founder and CEO of Jennifer Brown Consulting (JBC), a certified woman- and LGBT-owned firm, Jennifer and her team design and execute inclusion strategies that have been implemented by some of the biggest companies and nonprofits in the world.  She is also the bestselling author of two books, Inclusion: Diversity, The New Workplace and The Will to Change (2017) and How To Be An Inclusive Leader: Your Role in Creating Cultures of Belonging Where Everyone Can Thrive (2019), a shortlist winner of the O.W.L. Award, and winner of the 2019 Nautilus Book Awards' Business & Leadership category. She also recently co-authored a groundbreaking book on diversity, equity and inclusion in society with thought leader and fellow bestselling author, Rohit Bhargava. The book, Beyond Diversity: 12 Non-Obvious Ways To Build A More Inclusive World, is a 2022 Axiom Award Gold Medal Winner in the Women/BIPOC Category, a Wall Street Journal bestseller, a 2022 Nautilus Silver Award Winner in the Multicultural and Indigenous Category, a 2022 Hermes Creative Awards Platinum Winner, a 2022 Foreword Indies Awards Finalist in the Multicultural Category, and one of Inc Magazine's 22 Books to Read (or Reread) in 2022. Jennifer's podcast, The Will to Change, is downloaded by nearly 15,000 listeners per month, and she is a sought-after keynote speaker and expert for leading research institutions and business schools. She lives in New York City with her partner of over 20 years, Michelle. You can learn more at www.jenniferbrownspeaks.com. Links: Website: https://jenniferbrownspeaks.com LinkedIn URL: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenniferbrownconsulting Twitter: https://twitter.com/jenniferbrown Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jenniferbrownspeaks/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jenniferbrownspeaks

Becoming an inclusive leader is not a final destination. It's a lifelong learning experience and commitment. When it comes to diversity, equity, and inclusion work, many of us are practicing and are bound to make mistakes.  In this episode, Jennifer Brown, award-winning DEI advocate, author, and speaker, joins me for a discussion about DEI work and leadership. She shares how to embrace DEI from a humanistic perspective in both our personal and professional lives, and reinforces that all of us have the power to make a difference. As the Founder and CEO of Jennifer Brown Consulting (JBC), a certified woman- and LGBT-owned firm, Jennifer and her team design and execute inclusion strategies that have been implemented by some of the largest companies and nonprofits in the world.

In Episode 65, Melinda is joined by Jennifer Brown and Rohit Bhargava, the incredible authors of the book Beyond Diversity: 12 Non-Obvious Ways To Build A More Inclusive World. Jennifer and Rohit share their personal experiences and perspectives on creating a more inclusive world. They present key learnings from their book on storytelling, retail, and leadership, as well as their own educational moments they experienced while writing the book and how those moments helped them grow as allies.About JenniferJennifer Brown (she/her) is an award-winning entrepreneur, speaker, author, and diversity and inclusion expert who is deeply passionate about building more inclusive workplaces where more of us can feel welcomed, valued, respected, and heard. As the Founder and CEO of Jennifer Brown Consulting (JBC), a certified woman- and LGBT-owned firm, Jennifer and her team design and execute inclusion strategies that have been implemented by some of the biggest companies and nonprofits in the world. She is also the bestselling author of two books, Inclusion: Diversity, The New Workplace and The Will to Change (2017) and How To Be An Inclusive Leader: Your Role in Creating Cultures of Belonging Where Everyone Can Thrive (2019), a shortlist winner of the O.W.L. Award and winner of the 2019 Nautilus Book Awards' Business & Leadership category. She also recently co-authored a groundbreaking book on diversity, equity, and inclusion in society with thought leader and fellow bestselling author, Rohit Bhargava. The book, Beyond Diversity: 12 Non-Obvious Ways To Build A More Inclusive World will hit bookshelves on November 9, 2021. Jennifer's podcast, The Will to Change, is downloaded by nearly 15,000 listeners per month, and she is a sought-after keynote speaker and expert for leading research institutions and business schools. She lives in New York City with her partner of over 20 years, Michelle.About RohitRohit Bhargava is on a mission to inspire more non-obvious thinking in the world. He is the #1 WSJ bestselling author of 8 books on marketing, trends, and how to create a more inclusive world including Non-Obvious Megatrends & Beyond Diversity. Rohit has been invited to keynote events in 32 countries around the world. He loves the Olympics, actively hates cauliflower, and is a proud dad of boys.Find Leading With Empathy & Allyship useful? Subscribe to our podcast and like this episode!For more about Change Catalyst, and to join us for our monthly live event, visit https://ally.cc. There, you'll also find educational resources and highlights from this episode.Connect On SocialYouTube: youtube.com/c/changecatalystTwitter: twitter.com/changecatalystsFacebook: facebook.com/changecatalystsInstagram: instagram.com/techinclusionLinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/changecatalystsProduction TeamCreator & Host: Melinda Briana EplerProject Manager: Emilie MaasFinance & Operations: Renzo SantosMarketing Communications Coordinator: Christina Swindlehurst ChanCreative Director @ Podcast Rocket: Rob Scheerbarth[Image description: Leading With Empathy & AllyShip promo with the Change Catalyst logo and photos of Jennifer Brown; a White cisgender woman with blonde wavy hair and royal blue blouse; Rohit Bhargava; an Indian-American male in his mid-40sSupport the show (http://patreon.com/changecatalysts)

Today we are joined by Jennifer Brown, author of “How To Be An Inclusive Leader.” Jennifer has a Masters in Leadership and Organizational Development and formed Jennifer Brown Consulting (JBC) to help companies meet their leadership goals. JBC subsequently transformed into spearheading Diversity & Inclusion consulting for many organizations. Jennifer and host Phil Wagner discuss what it means to be a D&I consultant, encountering apathy within the business space for D&I work, and what lived experiences, if any, is necessary to do D&I work in a formal capacity. If you'd like to follow William & Mary's School of Business or learn more about the Diversity and Inclusion podcast and our programs, please visit us at www.mason.wm.edu.

38. Jennifer Brown - Inclusive Leadership "When you're Advocate Level [Phase 4 in Jennifer's Inclusive Leader Model], you're really swinging every day, fearlessly, tirelessly, unapologetically. You don't wait for permission." — Jennifer Brown   Guest Info: Jennifer Brown (she/her) is an award-winning entrepreneur, speaker, author, and diversity and inclusion expert who is deeply passionate about building more inclusive workplaces where more of us can feel welcomed, valued, respected, and heard. As the Founder and CEO of Jennifer Brown Consulting (JBC), a certified woman and LGBT-owned firm, Jennifer and her team design and execute inclusion strategies that have been implemented by some of the biggest companies and nonprofits in the world. She is also the bestselling author of two books, Inclusion: Diversity, The New Workplace and The Will to Change (2017) and How To Be An Inclusive Leader: Your Role in Creating Cultures of Belonging Where Everyone Can Thrive (2019), a shortlist winner of the O.W.L. Award, and winner of the 2019 Nautilus Book Awards' Business & Leadership category. Her podcast, The Will to Change, is downloaded by nearly 15,000 listeners per month, and she is a sought-after keynote speaker and expert for leading research institutions and business schools. She lives in New York City with her partner of over 20 years, Michelle. You can learn more at www.JenniferBrownSpeaks.com   Favorite Quote: "Culture eats strategy for breakfast." — Peter Drucker Resources: JenniferBrownSpeaks.com Jennifer on LinkedIn (JenniferBrownConsulting) Jennifer on Twitter (@JenniferBrown) Jennifer on Instagram (JenniferBrownSpeaks) Jennifer on Facebook (JenniferBrownSpeaks) How to Be an Inclusive Leader LGBT Workforce - The Diversity and Inclusion Imperative Uncovering Talent: A New Model for Inclusion (Deloitte, 2019) Emerge Stronger (Jennifer Brown Consulting) A Guide to Gender Identity Terms Jennifer's Podcast: The Will to Change WICT - Women in Cable Telecommunicaitons Credits: Jennifer Brown, Holly Kalyn, Pproduction team:  Ian Devitt.  Sheep Jam Productions, Nani Shin,  QodPod network

Jennifer Brown is an award-winning entrepreneur, dynamic speaker and diversity and inclusion expert. She is the Founder and CEO of Jennifer Brown Consulting (JBC), a strategic leadership and diversity consulting firm that coaches business leaders worldwide on critical issues of talent and workplace strategy.  Jennifer is a passionate advocate for social equality who helps businesses foster healthier, more productive workplace cultures. Her book Inclusion: Diversity, the New Workplace & the Will to Change (2016) will inspire leadership to embrace the opportunity that diversity represents and empower advocates to drive change that resonates in today's world. Jennifer's second book, How to Be an Inclusive Leader, is a shortlist O.W.L. Award and Nautilus Book Award winner in Business categories, and provides a step-by-step guide for the personal and emotional journey we must undertake to create an inclusive workplace where everyone can thrive.  In my featured episode we delve into: How your upbringing and identity can shape your unique voice, and why using it can be powerful. Where power really can be found organizations (hint: not on the organizational chart) and where we are currently leaking the power we have What privilege has to do with power and how we redistribute power in organizations What are the ‘real' conversations that happen on executive teams that enable transformation  How to bridge the gap between executives knowing tactics to carry out vs feeling the importance of equity and enfranchisement ‘in their hearts' - and how to get through the painful conversations without blame or feeling diminished in your power in the process. Listen to this informative episode of The Power Shift to learn how to bring everything you have to the table to realize your full power. Please let me know your thoughts!   Connect with Jennifer Brown Website: https://jenniferbrownspeaks.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/jenniferbrown Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jenniferbrownspeaks Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jenniferbrownspeaks/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenniferbrownconsulting   Connect with Dr. Sharon Melnick Website: https://www.sharonmelnick.com/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sharonmelnick/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Jennifer Brown is an award-winning entrepreneur, dynamic speaker, and diversity and inclusion expert. She is the Founder and CEO of Jennifer Brown Consulting (JBC), a strategic leadership and diversity consulting firm that coaches business leaders worldwide on critical issues of talent and workplace strategy. Jennifer is a passionate advocate for social equality who helps businesses foster healthier, more productive workplace cultures. Her book Inclusion: Diversity, the New Workplace & the Will to Change inspires leadership to embrace the opportunity that diversity represents and empower advocates to drive change that resonates in today’s world. Jennifer's second book, How to Be an Inclusive Leader, provides a step-by-step guide for the personal and emotional journey we must undertake to create an inclusive workplace where everyone can thrive. In this episode Jennifer and I discuss... Self-awareness and some of the truths we need to face to open ourselves to become an inclusive leader The difference between performative and authentic allyship and how we can be a more authentic ally in the workplace The need to accept that “the work” is messy and if we can embrace failing forward we will grow, learn and become more inclusive The importance of organizations preparing the way for their employees to bring their whole self to work Links Website: https://jenniferbrownspeaks.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/jenniferbrown Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jenniferbrownspeaks Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jenniferbrownspeaks/inclusiveleaderthebook.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenniferbrownconsulting WTL Leadership Survey I’d love it if you could help me to do some research on the coaching and training that is most needed right now. I’ve put together a quick survey (5-10 minutes) to gather this information so I can make sure you are getting exactly what you need as a leader right now and in the near future. Go to womentakingthelead.com/survey to add your voice to this project. Thank you so much for your help! Sponsors Zebralove Web Solutions: Close your online marketing skills gap, learn how to remain relevant in a quickly changing marketplace, and get ongoing support in promoting your businesses online. Stay ahead of the game by signing up for these Digital Marketing Forum. Go to womentakingthelead.com/zebraworkshops to register. Resources Create Goals that are Worthy of you: If you are done with either pursuing vanilla goals, suffering through the struggle of goals that are not aligned with your strengths, or dealing with heartbreak of an unattainable goal this course is for you! Accomplished: How to Go from Dreaming to Doing: A simple, step by step system that gives you the foundation and structure to take your goals and make them happen.

Jennifer Brown is an award-winning entrepreneur, dynamic speaker and diversity & inclusion expert. She’s the Founder and CEO of Jennifer Brown Consulting (JBC), a strategic leadership and diversity consulting firm that coaches business leaders worldwide on critical issues of talent and workplace strategy. A passionate advocate for social equality who helps businesses foster healthier, more productive workplace cultures, Jennifer’s book Inclusion: Diversity, the New Workplace & the Will to Change inspires leadership to embrace the opportunity that diversity represents & empowers advocates to drive change that resonates in today’s world. Her second book, How to Be an Inclusive Leader, is a shortlist O.W.L. Award and Nautilus Book Award winner in Business categories, and provides a step-by-step guide for the personal and emotional journey we must undertake to create an inclusive workplace where everyone can thrive.Together, we discussed the implications of the Black Lives Matter movement to workplaces; how organizations are & perhaps more importantly, should be responding. The importance of not sacrificing yourself to make others feel comfortable at a time when sharing yourself with the world has never been easier. And in our increasingly-polarized culture, the stakes have never been higher. We close with an incredible discussion surrounding allyship & the resilience business leaders need to push through change fatigue. We had an awesome conversation & I hope you enjoy it. Jennifer BrownJennifer Brown is an award-winning entrepreneur, dynamic speaker and diversity and inclusion expert. She is the Founder and CEO of Jennifer Brown Consulting (JBC), a strategic leadership and diversity consulting firm that coaches business leaders worldwide on critical issues of talent and workplace strategy. She is a passionate advocate for social equality who helps businesses foster healthier, more productive workplace cultures. Her book Inclusion: Diversity, the New Workplace & the Will to Change (2016) will inspire leadership to embrace the opportunity that diversity represents and empower advocates to drive change that resonates in today’s world. Jennifer's second book, How to Be an Inclusive Leader, is a shortlist O.W.L. Award and Nautilus Book Award winner in Business categories, and provides a step-by-step guide for the personal and emotional journey we must undertake to create an inclusive workplace where everyone can thrive.LinkedInWebsiteThinking Inside the BoxConstraints drive innovation. Each week we tackle the most complex issues related to work & culture.LinkedInInstagramTwitterWebsiteApple PodcastsGoogle PodcastsSpotifyStitcherPocket CastMatt BurnsMatt Burns is an award-winning executive, social entrepreneur and speaker. He believes in the power of community, simplicity & technology.LinkedInTwitter

JENNIFER BROWN is an award-winning entrepreneur, dynamic speaker and diversity and inclusion expert. She is the Founder and CEO of Jennifer Brown Consulting (JBC), a strategic leadership and diversity consulting firm that coaches business leaders worldwide on critical issues of talent and workplace strategy. Brown is a passionate advocate for social equality who helps businesses foster healthier, more productive workplace cultures. Her book Inclusion: Diversity, the New Workplace & the Will to Change (2016) will inspire leadership to embrace the opportunity that diversity represents and empower advocates to drive change that resonates in today’s world. Jennifer's second book, How to Be an Inclusive Leader, is a shortlist O.W.L. Award and Nautilus Book Award winner in Business categories, and provides a step-by-step guide for the personal and emotional journey we must undertake to create an inclusive workplace where everyone can thrive.

ROUNDTABLE: Exploring Human Diversity And Social Justice You're listening to another episode of the Sacred Changemakers podcast. My name is Jayne Warrilow and we have got a great roundtable lined up for you today… This podcast is about change and transformation, but not just any old change, we believe in change for good, which lies at the intersection of 3 things: personal, professional and social transformation. So come with us on a journey, as we go behind the scenes with people who are making a real difference in our world. Each episode we will be diving deeply into a variety of topics that keep you inspired and at your best, sometimes we'll be interviewing thought leaders, and sometimes we'll be leading deep-dive conversations tackling the challenging issues of our times. And that's what we're up to today, we have gathered together some incredible changemakers to talk about Exploring Human Diversity And Social Justice, the challenges and opportunities that are present for us right now at this disruptive time on Earth.. But before I introduce today's guests, I have a simple request. I'd be so grateful if you would share this podcast with your friends or colleagues, I'd love as many people to listen to this conversation as possible, it's such an important theme to shape our future, and would you please subscribe and leave a review on iTunes or whatever app you are listening to. It is so helpful. It enables the algorithms to find us, and it helps our guests get their messages out to more people. Thank you! We actually have 4 esteemed guests with us in roundtable today: Jennifer Brown is an award-winning entrepreneur, dynamic speaker and diversity and inclusion expert. She is the Founder and CEO of Jennifer Brown Consulting (JBC), a strategic leadership and diversity consulting firm that coaches business leaders worldwide on critical issues of talent and workplace strategy. She is a passionate advocate for social equality and helps businesses foster healthier, more productive workplace cultures, she has written 2 books Inclusion: Diversity, the new workplace and the will to change and How to be an inclusive leader Dr Terry Maltbia is an Associate Professor of Practice for Adult Learning & Leadership Programs in the Department of Organization and Leadership at Columbia University and Faculty Director of The Columbia Coaching Certification Program. Since joining TC in 2006, he has become internationally recognized as a scholar-practitioner in strategic learning; executive and organizational coaching; global leadership development; emotional, social and cultural intelligence. He spent 25 years various roles in Corporate and Consulting prior to Columbia Indrani Goradia is a native daughter of Trinidad and Tobago who survived childhood abuse. She is a warrior, in-demand speaker, a noted advocate, activist, philanthropist and the founder of RAFTcares, a non-profit dedicated to empowering advocates of domestic and sexual violence shelters to honor themselves and combat compassion fatigue Angelo John Lewis is the Director of the Sacred Inclusion Network, the originator of the Dialogue Circle MethodTM, and the author of Notes for a New Age. He is also a coach, consultant, and organization development practitioner whose clients have included Verizon, The Rockefeller Foundation, Princeton University and the U. S. Department of Commerce

Jennifer Brown is an award-winning entrepreneur, dynamic speaker and diversity and inclusion expert. She is the founder, president, and CEO of Jennifer Brown Consulting (JBC), a strategic leadership and diversity consulting firm that coaches business leaders worldwide on critical issues of talent and workplace strategy. Brown is a passionate advocate for social equality who helps businesses foster healthier, more productive workplace cultures. Her book Inclusion: Diversity, the New Workplace & the Will to Change (2016) will inspire leadership to embrace the opportunity that diversity represents and empower advocates to drive change that resonates in today’s world. Jennifer’s second book, How to Be an Inclusive Leader, is available everywhere! — Many of us look at leadership and say, “I don’t see anyone that looks like me or shares my story.” We leave parts of ourselves at home for fear of not being accepted. Jennifer Brown has been a member of the LGBTQ community for 22 years, and she struggled with her self-image in almost every role. Today, she is working with businesses and leaders across the country to eradicate that fear. As a consultant and speaker, Jennifer has worked with Fortune 500 corporations like Wal-Mart and Microsoft to help them integrate strategies of diversity and inclusion in the workplace. But small businesses are starting to adopt these practices as well. Companies need a culture that promotes inclusivity because they will only recruit and retain the top talent if people can bring their full selves to work. It is a significant competitive differentiator. In this episode of the Absolute Advantage, Jennifer Brown discusses the “full self” and the advantages of bringing it to work. She explains the impact that building a culture of inclusivity has on small businesses and Fortune 500 companies alike. Click here to listen to the episode, and make sure to visit www.absoluteadvantagepodcast.com for more content that inspires, encourages and helps you grow and make an impact QUICKLY both professionally and personally. Ways to contact Jennifer Brown: Website: jenniferbrownspeaks.com Twitter: @jenniferbrown

Tune in to learn how Jennifer Brown of Jennifer Brown Consulting (JBC) first best-seller Inclusion: Diversity, The New Workplace & The Will To Change inspired me to pursue Grad School and what that means. And why you need to get a copy of her new work How to Be an Inclusive Leader. Your Role in Creating Cultures of Belonging Where Everyone Can Thrive. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Jennifer Brown is an award-winning entrepreneur, dynamic speaker, diversity and inclusion expert. She is the Founder, President and CEO of Jennifer Brown Consulting (JBC), a strategic leadership and diversity consulting firm that coaches business leaders worldwide on critical issues of talent and workplace strategy. Brown is a passionate advocate for social equality who helps businesses foster healthier, more productive workplace cultures. Her book Inclusion: Diversity, the New Workplace & the Will to Change will inspire leadership to embrace the opportunity that diversity represents and empower advocates to drive change that resonates in today’s world.   Questions   Couldyou share with us a background of how did you end up in this arena of diversity and inclusion, what was your journey like? As it relates to diversity and inclusion, could you share with us some of the issues that have been may be barriers to preventing a fully diversified and inclusive workplace based on your experience? As it relates to diversity and inclusion, could you share with us maybe one or two strategies that you think small and medium-sized business owners could employ? Now in terms of how this impacts the customer experience, could you share with us some of the best practices that you've seen in organizations and how it has translated into retention and better customer experiences overall? Could you share with us how you stay motivated every day? Could you share with us what’s one online resource, tool, website or app that you absolutely cannot live without in business? Could you share with us some of the books that have had the biggest impact on you? What’s one thing that's going on in your life right now that you're really excited about - either something that you're working on to develop yourself or your people? Where can our listeners find you online? What’s one quote or saying that during times of adversity or challenge you revert to that quote to help you to become refocus?    Highlights   Jennifer shared, as we like to say in this field not a lot of standard paths towards a career in diversity and inclusion. In fact, if you try to find academic programs that address or degrees that address this topic you probably will come up empty-handed. We all come from different places, for her,she was an activist in nonprofits in her 20s, but she was also always a musician and it was sort of an amateur pursuit in those early days in her life, but it was a huge passion. So, she decided to make it her profession and give it a shot, she moved to New York to become an opera singer and study at a conservatory and get her Masters in voice which was really exciting and heady times for her.But unfortunately, through the course of training she injured her voice and ended up having to get several surgeries on her voice to repair it but ultimately, she realized it wasn't going to work, her voice just would not be an instrument that she could count on for a career where she could make her living.   It was heartbreaking but it's led her towards where a lot of theater people go because they love the stage and they're so good in front of people, a lot of them become trainers and educators. In fact, we find a home in leadership in the whole kind of field of leadership whether that's as consultant or a learning and development person. So, she ended up getting a second Masters in Organizational Development/ Organizational Change, it goes by a lot of different names but it's basically the HR education realm and she was a corporate learning and development, training and development leader for a while as an employee and then she got laid off and she said, “I think I can have more impact from the outside if I became kind of that third party, that expert.”That really appealed to her, it still appeals to her to this day, it's the best role for her to play which is that agitator, but not the employee which helps give her some authority, gives her some distance, gives her some credibility earned or unearned or deserved but it is what it is. People tend to want to listen to people who've written books on things and people who are external when they don't do a very good job of listening to their employees, which is another maybe we'll talk about that. So she ended up hanging her shingle out about 12 years ago and doing leadership and team development and morphing into DNI because she felt pulled in that direction to specialize because she’s a member of the LGBTQ community and she has been out since she was 22, and yet she had really struggled with being out throughout her life and even in the nonprofit world certainly in the opera music world and then as an entrepreneur where she felt very exposed to bias if she were to be honest and authentic about who she actually is and it's a huge part of our lives to deny and to walk around and do business without talking about it, without kind of leaving that hole and not feeling it's going to be accepted and it's also going to hurt your ability to make a living which is really problematic.   So, now they do specialize in Diversity and Inclusion, and she’s fully out all the time, you could Google her and it's very plain.It is actually, she considers part of her secret sauce, it's part of where she has cut her teeth on developing her own voice, her bravery, her courage, her resilience has a lot of that has come from that identity and the pain of some of the painful lessons of exclusion that that has allowed her and enabled her to feel, to think about, to empathize with and hopefully made her a more inclusive leader, not just because she’s LGBTQ, but for all communities that needs her voice as an ally. So, it's a very cool place to find herself where she gets to write books and speak about all this stuff and it's particularly timely because the topic is, she would say, there's never been more attention on the topic than there is now.   Jennifer stated that it has a lot of reasons and a lot of factors, it's rather complex and yet it's kind of simple at the same time because the mandate is simple, the need to reflect your customer base which is diversifying quickly who has the spending power for example that non-white communities are the fastest growing consumer communities with the largest spending power.She thinks the gay community now has a trillion dollars of spending power. So, consumers are getting smarter, they're getting organized, they're finding their voice, they're using it to hold brands accountable which is exciting and make spending choices that reflect their values. And yet companies in terms of their employee mix particularly in the top half or third of organizations really don't reflect that diverse world and companies structures are old school, there is no better way to say it, they have been unchallenged and they haven't challenged themselves in terms of the makeup of their senior leadership in particular and many companies not all but many companies have kind of gone about their merry way trying to make money and really not focused on anything larger than that, whether it's how employees feel, who's succeeding and feels they can thrive in the organization, who may be reaching senior leadership roles and who's not and why they're feeling thwarted in that process up the pipeline. And so, she thinks there's this business as usual, we're here to make money, we’re here to generate shareholder results and there's not been a lot of attention paid to values, the importance of the workforce and what they want and need in order to stay and thrive and there is honestly a lot of bias around, “Well, I worked hard and all you need to do is work hard too and you'll achieve what I've achieved.”So, this belief and meritocracy and it's really easy to believe in meritocracy when people that look like you have benefited from that, it hasn't been a challenge, there haven't been stereotypes that have affected you, you have been pulled forward by others that look like you without even knowing it sometimes, and so there's this willful blindness to the difficulties that are faced by anyone that is not of a certain demographic in workforces, it’s sort of, “I write it off. I don’t take it seriously. I don't listen to it. I don't even know it honestly.”So, there's a lot of education that's needed around micro inequities, unconscious bias, HR processes that are so critical like recruitment, retention, promotion and advancement, all those moments in the employee life cycle where bias occurs, it's in a large part still allowed to kind of continue and so what their job is to interrupt those things and come in as a company and build strategies that help companies wake up, get educated, care about it, honestly have empathy for other people which you shouldn't even need to say but it feels that it's hard, it feels that if I explain something to you and you don't care and then you don't take action, that hurts, there's a ton of research on this it's not even like this is a mystery. It's right there and so the best leaders and the best companies are really forward, they're asking all these great questions, they’re humbling themselves to their own learning, to their own mistakes, they're publishing their data and saying, “Hey, here's our data and I know it sucks and we're working to change it.”That's what courage looks like, that's what leadership looks like these days and she wish she saw more of it.   Yanique shared, I like the fact that you mentioned that it's not something that people are accustomed to and change is hard. Unfortunately, human beings don't adapt to change very readily, and I don't think it's based on the geography in terms of where you're from in the world, I think it's just general human nature. So, it would mean that you have to put yourself in a place of being uncomfortable in order to move from one stage to the next.   Jennifer agreed and stated that nobody wants to be uncomfortable, but the flip side is it makes you so much better of a leader and a better team member, better colleague and by the way better parent, better community leader, all of these. There's a reason that you open a paper today and diversities in every headline, it's everywhere because institutions are really struggling with it of all kinds for profit, nonprofit,community organizations, church leadership, so there is probably, no area of your life where you can afford to not understand and embrace this conversation and do your work, your kid could come home tomorrow and say, “Mom, I think I'm transgender.”You would be completely ill-equipped to deal with that and to be fair most parents are, it's something that is life and does not prepare you for that but at the same time don't you want to be ready? Even if you're interviewing for jobs, even if you're leading teams at a company that values diversity and you don't or you haven't paid attention to it, you've assumed it's somebody else's job to care about it, none of that is going to work for you in the long run, it's a little bit of a scare tactic but she has to use every tool she has to convince people that this is important which is really tiring and honestly kind of depressing sometimes because you're wondering how they don't get it, “Please have empathy for people that haven’t had as easy of a road as you.” It's just that and then she doesn't know why we have to ask and convince and scare, how many different techniques do we need to basically talk about something that's such a human right and is all about the dignity of everyone in this world to do their best work and to feel their sense of purpose every day.   Yanique agreed and stated, and to feel appreciated, a lot of people work in organizations and they just don't feel appreciated and I think they've lost the purpose if there was even a purpose from day one, they've definitely lost it. It comes out in the interactions that they have with customers, it comes out in how they relate to their team members sometimes unconscious of the fact that the customer is observing you in every interaction once they're standing in front of you or you’re on the phone and you ask them to hold but you didn't actually put the phone on hold, so they're hearing everything that's happening in the background.   Jennifer shared that small companies have a great opportunity, it's actually much easier to shift things than for large organizations, and certainly remembering that if you build it right from the beginning, you will have a much easier time down the road. So, it's very important to think about how you are recruiting and retaining all kinds of talent, how comfortable they feel once they are in your organization and really being open to feedback about when that inclusiveness, the desire for inclusiveness is actually though being interpreted and the impact of an intention is one of exclusion. She thinks that sometimes we don't want to know the answer to that question so we don't ask and so it's very critical, particularly, if you're not a person of a marginalized or underrepresented background yourself, you're going to have some blind spots, your network is going to look a lot like you so you will tend to recruit from that network. You will have blind spots around how people perceive your brand and by even blind spots probably about your desired customers so that to the extent that you can ensure your team that you build reflects the world that you're doing business in, it will allow you to resonate and to see around that corner and to anticipate that audience and that customer and gear your communications accordingly and have kind have a check in balance on how are we coming across in the marketplace and like you said, we're being observed all the time, so your future talent is looking at your current organization and looking at your website and thinking about, “Would I be comfortable there? I don't see anyone that looks like me there.”That's something that's hard to fix in some cases because when you're an entrepreneur you're grabbing warm bodies, you're trying to get work done, it's very fast, you are going to pull from your own network because it's most expedient and that network is going to tend to look like you and so you've got to actively counterbalance that in your outreach, in the talent pools that you're seeking, in the way you talk proactively and very overtly about your commitment to inclusion.Shewould really recommend you have that in all of your marketing materials, it doesn’t matter what business you're in, there's always a way to talk about what inclusion means as a value to you and to what you're trying to build and to the customers you're trying to serve, there are ways to do that and she would recommend you do it because it's a beacon, not only for talent you hope to recruit and to say, “Hey, this is a safe place for you.This is a place that you are wanted and needed not just tolerated or accepted. We need all of you to bring your full self to work, this is a place in which you can do that.”Then we want to best serve the customer and their needs and wants, and companies are at real risk of missing some key….There's just a lot of mistakes that are made because diverse talent is not at the table when creative decisions are made or marketing collateral is designed, we've seen very high level mistakes made by brands like PepsiCo with the ad that they had where there was like a mock black lives matter march and one of the Kardashians was handing a Pepsi across the police line, it’s a nightmare and they pulled it immediately. And it became a kind of a case study that a lot of us talking about where we wonder who was at the table making those decisions, and if they were at the table, were they listened to, were they really considered, was that feedback taken into account?So, she doesn’t know where the error happened in their process because she doesn't have the inside look into them but at a smaller scale this stuff can happen all the time and she thinks you've got to make sure your mentored and coached and you run things by people, you think about the nuances of the diversity conversation because it is really nuanced, languages changing all the time and she gets a lot of complaints about are trans and gender non-conforming friends will say, “Yeah, I identify as they, them.So that's my preferred pronoun.”People will literally say, “Well, I don't feel comfortable referring to you as that, it's grammatically incorrect and I feel uncomfortable.”It's just amazing to her, to the point earlier, it’s a small action on your part that allows somebody to feel seen and heard is that so much work, she thinks it's such a red herring, it's just an excuse to not grow and she doesn't understand it. Jennifer thinks if you're in business, you should want more language, you should want more ways to talk to people in and resonate with them, that's what you should want.   Jennifer shared that she thinks that companies that are designing products for example for different communities, some of the larger organizations she worked with literally have something called Employee Resource Groups or they're called Business Resource Groups, but they are diversity networks, maybe they're a multicultural talent network, maybe they're a black employee network, maybe there are an LGBTQ network and most companies are trying to reach those diverse demographic so they can sell more to them, but they realize that they don't have the intelligence on the inside to really do this well and effectively, the smart ones realize that so they have these groups or these networks for a lot of reasons, these networks serve a lot of purposes in organizations and these can exist in small companies to by the way. She has worked with 200-person companies that have a full diversity committee, they have several Employee Resource Groups that are literally playing kind of this market intelligence role for the company so you don't have to be big to access this idea and they are at the table informing product design, informing marketing strategies, informing sales, educating the sales team and anyone that's external facing around cultural nuances and behaviors and language.In banks and financial services, a lot of the financial advisors are tend to be white and to be male and yet the biggest growth and wealth is in diverse wealth holders, female heads of households, people of color and yet you have a financial advisor community in all the big banks and insurance companies that doesn't really look like that and they're struggling to diversify those ranks on the inside.So, literally there are certifications you can get for example as a financial advisor, you can get certified in selling to the LGBTQ community, selling financial products to that community and you go somewhere, and you get a designation that you can put after your name and yes, you're an ally, you're a straight ally, you're not in that community but you know and you're investing in how to be culturally competent when you are selling to that community. So, you're listenership probably selling a lot of different kinds of things, we're all in sales all the time, we all have customers and it's all about resonating with them and making sure you're staying up to speed on what their care abouts are and how they talk about themselves and how they kind of getting inside their lives and anticipating what they want and need.It's just that awareness and there's just a lot of examples of brands that have done this really well. Heineken had a great ad that aired a Super Bowl ago that she would encourage everybody to go look at where they introduce people to each other without providing a lot of demographic information about the person and they give them some questions to talk about and they pair somebody who might have very conservative views with somebody who's in the military and who identifies as transgender.But they don't tell them any of these things and then they encourage some conversation and then they kind of reveal later on, “Well, actually this person that you've bonded with, this is who they actually are and how they identify and are you surprised and do you feel your bias is being challenged?”It's really, really neat and there's a lot of interesting ads, Gillette just came out with an incredible ad, she would encourage everyone to go and watch it on masculinity, it was so good and there was a lot of threatened boycotts and she watched it with her partner and they literally cried and it was so moving and to think that something that could move us and touch your soul could make so many people angry is really indicative of the polarized times we live in but by the way, Gillette's sales went up after that ad, by a considerable amount.So, threatened, boycott or not, anger or not and social media, they correctly diagnosed the bump that they would get through putting their values out there and saying, “Here's what we want to be about and we know that as a brand we haven't always been all that hip to the issue, so, we're trying to be.”She thinks it really worked.It definitely burnished the brand for her and a countless other potential customers.   Yanique stated, so this is definitely something that's new and of course it's definitely going to continue into another couple of years as you said people are trying to flesh out what does that mean for them based on their organization, based on where they operate in the world, based on who they are trying to target and as you said, how much sales they're trying to increase in what community and if they can connect with these people because as you stated at the beginning of our conversation, people are now buying from brands that represent the values that they hold near and dear to them and sometimes that's very hard to find and it's amazing that consumers are taking this stance because it just goes to show that the power is really in the hands of the consumer and it's going to be continuing even more, social media has given themso much power in terms of the things that they do, the comments and the feedback that they give and so it's not so much about what the brand says about themselves, but what the consumer has to say based on their experiences with the product or the service.   Jennifer agreed and stated that it goes beyond the four walls of the company, there is no such thing anymore, there's total transparency as you said, there's a lot of accountability and a lot of communities are diverse communities who are questioning - Do we want to work at a place like that? Do we want to patronize a place like that? What do they stand for? People really now want to hear what do you mean and are you walking the talk?And she’s really excited to see this accountability and the visibility that they have, they can peer into how companies do business and employees are finding their voice and really being public about it like the Google walk out of a couple months ago had 20,000 employees all over the world walking out and protesting their whole process that they handle sexual harassment claims and pay equity.They had his whole list of demands and it was really inspiring to seeing Google had to pay attention. They just had to and they've been kind of on a journey of addressing some, not all of the requests/demands that the employees had, so, we're going to see this is not going away, this accountability and it's exciting because brands have gotten away with a lot in the past, they've gotten away with unfair workplace practices, they've protected their data, they haven't been forced to admit where they're board is entirely white and male but it's never been talked about in the news before, those days are over and if you're in a company where you haven't been called out publicly, it will happen.And so, a lot of their work is actually these days about helping brands and companies make sure they're doing their work internally, and so hopefully that day never comes, hopefully they never mess up but that accountability is fierce and swift and she almost feel like we need to start teaching the art of the apology to our customers because they're going to make mistakes, they are absolutely going to and so the question is, how do you come back from a mistake? How do you apologize, own what happened, say you're learning, talk about what you're going to be recommitting to, what are you going to do differently in the future, even that as something you're prepared for, that's a new idea but she thinks it would behoove all business owners and even all managers to think about when I say the wrong word, do people trust me enough and they know that they can come to me and tell me, that's what you really want, you want to ask for that, you want to earn people's trust because by the way, you can't just one day and once only say, “Hey, can you let me know if I ever make you feel uncomfortable?”It's not a one and done. So, you've got to earn that trust that somebody then will trust you enough to be honest with you and say, “Hey, that joke you say or that saying you say or you know that you stole that person's idea in the room or assigned it to, you took it and you attributed it to somebody else or did you realize that men did 90% of the talking in that meeting?”We've got to be sensitive to these things and we just haven't been in the past and we need help to learn and so it's not just something you do need to do a lot on your own, you need to educate yourself, you need to read a lot of books about bias and team dynamics and being an inclusive leader, her book is helpful she has been told by a lot of people, she hopes it's helpful, so read these books, but they commit to making behavior change in yourself and inviting feedback and then act on that feedback, adjust, be humble be resilient, have that growth mindset which is failing forward.You know you're going to fail, it happens to all of us, we're all bias and it's hard to keep up with this, but you just have to try, that's huge points for trying.   Yanique stated, I like the fact that you made a point to the fact that the change starts with you because I find in a lot of organizations, the managers or the leaders are quick to say well they need to do so and so and they're not including themselves in the process because it all starts with them as well and as a leader or a manager, if I'm in an organization, I'm looking to see what you are doing because I'm taking lead from the behaviors that you've demonstrated, the attitudes that you've demonstrated and yes, I may have my own values but in an organization people kind of watch what's happening and they kind of conform to the culture that exists and if they do anything out of the norm, it means that they're going to stand out and because most people don't want to stand out, there kind of just going to go along with whatever is happening there, whether it's good or bad sometimes.   Jennifer agreed and stated that the best example of what Yanique is talking about is watching how many men take paternity leave or parental leave. We don't get a lot in this country, some companies are really trying to become much more generous around leave and actually going as far as requiring some employees to take leave because there's such a stigma around taking leave and particularly for men and male parents in any family configuration, it is particularlyshamed to take. Even the leave that's provided, take all of that leave, it's not viewed as a positive, you get pressure, it's spoken and unspoken pressure and men follow other men and follow what they do and they decide what the norms are based on what they see particularly senior people doing so you're right that we take our cues from everyone we watch above us in a way and we say, “Well, that's acceptable, that's not acceptable, that's a boundary I can cross or that's a boundary that I shouldn't cross.”This is why it particularly would leave and also vacation interestingly, there are some companies that are starting to require vacation because we don't take all the vacation we haveand that’s not because we don't want to take the vacation, it’s because we don’t think it's going to be okay to do. So, the norms that are communicated through behavior of others particularly senior people, we are watching, and we are then deciding, “What should I do that's not going to hurt my career in this particular culture?”So, she wouldn't encourage people to think about, it almost needs to be mandated because until such time as we can change this dynamic of pressure and peer pressure and watching these role modeling behavior happen and kind of employees not taking care of themselves and not really doing what they need to do to have a balanced life, we may need to mandate some things. She just interviewed this woman, Erica Keswin, and she really recommend her book called Bring Your Human to Work  and she has so many examples of what companies are doing in this vein to encourage leave, to encourage parenting and to encourage balance and flex and literally power to the employee to really have that balance that is the theme, the theme of women's month is how do we achieve this?But remember men need balance too, we single parents need balance, people without children need balance who are caregiving, we may be doing none of those things, but we may need just balance for our time off. So, let's not be biased in terms of how we set systems up as well and assume that only one group of people needs to manage their work-life balance, but traditionally was spoken of as a sort of women's challengeand that's really changing, and she hopes it's changing. She hopes men are thinking about what they need and they're advocating for themselves, younger men, she has a lot of hopes for millennial generation to say, this is what I need and want whether that's a sabbatical, whether it's flexible work assignments and arrangements, whether it's different career opportunities and moving around a lot more often and she just hopes that employees are in the driver's seat, it's time to assume our more powerful position as you mentioned earlier.   When asked about how she stays motivated every day, Jennifer shared that she calls it self-care and when you do diversity work, it has to be radical self-care because it can get kind of depressing to have to have these conversations over and over about why empathy matters. We have not succeeded in building healthy workplace cultures and that is wearing us down, it's tiring us, it's actually making us physically ill from stress-related issues when you can't be yourself, it’s harmful. So, talking about this all the time as is equally inspiring and also kind of depressing and makes her angry and frustrated and she has days when she wants to give up but that's also entrepreneurship. You have this passion, you're trying to raise money, you're trying to hire your team, you're trying to get contracts signed. So, how she fills her cup is gathering with people that care about what she cares about and just being able to let her guard down and be real about the frustrations and how it feels every day and for her, that might be in a room of women entrepreneurs as it fills her up to think about how are you growing your business?Just to see herself in them is a way of finding that space where you can say, “I'm not alone.” As she thinks isolation is really dangerous for us. So, who your community, where can you be real and let your hair down and let your guard down, be honest. Where can you go to feel re-inspired to realize the size of the community that's trying to do similar things or that shares your values.There's a lot of conferences on conscious capitalism and so, it's not just diversity conferences, it's conferences about values at work and culture conference, which is about why workplace cultures matter, there's a lot of great HR conferences that are talking more and more about what she does. So, it's this incredible convergence that she’s seeing in her conversation to many other sort of parallel worlds, which is a really cool thing to see. So, she would just recommend find your community, gather with them, put yourself around people that are having the highs and lows and everything in between, find folks you can be really real and honest with where it's off line and so nobody's watching and people who will hold your confidence. But ultimately, to her that has really sustained her. She has an amazing team as well, she doesn't try to do this alone, she has always wanted to build this beyond herself because she knew she wouldn't be able to touch all the lives that she wanted to without a team of people that could be going out and being in those classrooms and building those strategies for the companies and bringing those practices back to their group, so that they could do more of it. So, she has an incredible consulting team that does client work but also has a great marketing team that feels like they are all very aligned in terms of how much they believe in what they're doing every day and they're all sharing articles all the time, they're sending inspirational stuff to each other, they're sending discouraging new data to each other which just fuels the fight. So, she’d say if you're the kind of person that for maybe a team would feel that it would help you do the work and get up every day for a reason, then you might want to build a different kind of organization.There's a lot of us that just want to do it alone and that takes a certain kind of personality, it was never really her so, it's important to know what kind of leader are you? What do you need around you? Who do you need around you to be able to do your work and really find your sweet spot and your voice in that work and then who needs to surround you to enable that so that you can focus on what you do best.   When asked about an online resource, tool, website or app, Jennifer stated that it's such a hard choice, there is so many, she has her favorite podcasts, she has her favorite research institutions.She really relies on research by McKenzie and Deloitte are probably her favorite things, her go-to resources for data on the way the workforce is changing. So, there are these amazing think tanks, they very well resourced, they are very cutting edge and a lot of that information fuels their consulting work, they just take that to clients and they hadn't seen it, it's compelling data about the future and they can help kind of flush it out because of their expertise, so it really works well. And then on the personal side, she really loves this woman who runs a daily Facebook live called, Resistance Liveand that's more of a sort of for her personal fuel.It talks about what's happening in our political system, the new generation of democratic leaders and candidates and the whole developing conversation around progressive values is exciting to her and again, kind of feeds her the certainty that she’s going in the right direction and that there is a big community that is asking the same questions that she’s asking so, but there's so many women's podcasts that she listens to, so many where she also gets her education around difference.She listens to code switch which is an NPR Podcastabout race and ethnicity and code-switching which is a critical foundational principle in terms of what we talk about diversity and all of us are code-switching all the time around a variety of aspects. So, that's one of her go to podcasts to learn about how other people experience code-switching and how she can be an ally to lessen some of what people feel that need to code switch every single day, how she can lessen that need and support people to bring their full selves to wherever and not have to put all that energy into hiding and minimizing and shifting and speaking a different language to different people, it's exhausting stuff and we shouldn't have to do it.   When asked about books that have had the biggest impact, Jennifer shared that she has many favorite authors that are difficult to narrow it down as usual, but there's a new book called Better Allies: Everyday Actions to Create Inclusive, Engaging Workplacesby her friend Karen Catlin and literally she's a woman in Tech.She was a VP in a technology company in a technical role and today she's an author and keynoter and she has a million ideas for how to be a better ally. She's got a hashtag and a handle on Twitter called #betterallies, which she really recommends everybody follows but she has a new book that literally pulls all that together in one place which is so helpful.So, that's one book that she would encourage reading. She doesn’t think there's a lot written on Allyship, so, this is an emerging area. Her new book coming out in August does talk about this a lot as well and sort of the allied journey, how you can get on board, how you can put one foot in front of the other and whether it's adopting one new word and trying to understand what it means and using it all the way to kind of advanced Allyship, which is she’s an advocate in her organization, she’s a big-time voice, she’s challenging the system and everything in between so, Better Allies is great. David Smith wrote a book called Athena Rising: How and Why Men Should Mentor Womenabout why men should mentor women and she really pays a lot of attention to men and there are not many men who are writing about inclusion and men who speak on it because it's so important in so many ways. The (a) that they're involved but (b) other men are going to listen to them and read them in a different way and she thinks maybe many people are used to people who look like me and you speaking about all these things but for a man to speak about it is powerful.So, those are two amazing books she would point people towards that are great reads and full of practical advice.   Jennifer shared that they are embarking on a big shift in their business strategy at her company, they've been highly like white glove bespoke consulting has been their bailiwick and then she gave a lot of key notes, which is great, and she loves, and she just plan to do a lot more of them. She thinks it's really her sweet spot honestly, but she thinks they're moving into the online product arena and they've launched their first online program in the last couple of months and have their first cohort of students and thinks their programs could be so many things. They're going to launch a new assessment behind the second book that's coming out in August around how inclusive of a leader are you and actually give people a score and then kind of break down their score within 6 different domains. And so, it’s the first assessment they've ever really had like that as a company. She thinks it has a lot of potential because people want to know where they are and then they want resources and tools whether it's a quickie online program that's really affordable or whether it's much longer, six months multi-course program where they can really do a deep dive. They're starting to build all those things on the back end, to get access to their knowledge, you don't need to hire them to come into your company basically, there's going to be a whole way to access what they do online. So, she’s just really excited to investigate that, it's a great revenue generator for them, a different kind of workstream business unit and who knows what's in store for them with the economy, but it's been a long time since they've had a correction and corrections and recessions are really difficult for consulting companies, a lot of us don't make it through and she thinks they're recession-proof now but it's very important and every entrepreneur that listens to you will know this, that we must diversify your revenue, spread out the ways that you make money in as many ways as you can to protect yourself against downturns particularly if you are a service company, and you're attached to corporate budgets.And diversity has been viewed as a nice to have traditionally and so, she thinks a lot of us, it really would behoove all of us to think about how are you going to weather storms? Because we know storms are going to happen and so that's another aspect that she’s really excited about having these online offerings.They're more affordable, they are something that people can do even with in a recession environment to invest in themselves, continue to learn and grow and prepare for the upswing, not to be morbid but it is something that has crossed her mind and she’s sure has crossed everyone's minds that are listening to you if they run a business.   Jennifershared listeners can find her at – info@jenniferbrownconsulting.com Stitcher Radio – The Will to Change: Uncovering True Stories of Diversity & Inclusion Twitter - @jenniferbrown Instagram - @jenniferbrownspeaks Facebook – Jennifer Brown Consulting LinkedIn – Jennifer Brown Consulting   ****Special Note: the book is available for pre-order on Amazon in order to get into the flow that way   Jennifer shared that she likes to think about the quote that was on President Obama's rug in the Oval Office. It says, “The Arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.”You talked about like an idea that keeps you working and getting up in the morning and thinking that what you're doing is making a difference, there's no better quote than that. I think Martin Luther King originated it, but she thinks about it a lot because it is a struggle, because progress can feel slow, sometimes it's a real galvanizing idea for her and many others who do the work that she does.     Links   Inclusion: Diversity, The New Workplace & The Will To Change by Jennifer Brown Bring Your Human to Work: 10 Surefire Ways to Design a Workplace That Is Good for People, Great for Business, and Just Might Change the World by Erica Keswin Better Allies: Everyday Actions to Create Inclusive, Engaging Workplaces by Karen Catlin Athena Rising: How and Why Men Should Mentor Women by David Smith  

Jennifer Brown's personal diversity story isn't obvious at a glance. A blond, white woman, she admits people are often confused to find out she's the diversity & inclusion keynote for the day and they wonder why she was hired to speak about the challenges people of colour or other visible minorities have in the workplace. As a member of the LGBTQ community, Jennifer says she separated her true self from her work until she couldn't anymore. Jennifer believes everyone has a diversity story - for some it's visible, for others it's more hidden like socio-economic disadvantage, or mental illness or even a physical disability. Today's episode is your opportunity to learn from one of North America's leading diversity & inclusion speakers and thinkers about how important it is for all of us to bring our whole selves to work. Jennifer is an award-winning entrepreneur, dynamic speaker and diversity and inclusion expert. She is the founder, president and CEO of Jennifer Brown Consulting (JBC), a strategic leadership and diversity consulting firm that coaches business leaders worldwide on critical issues of talent and workplace strategy. Brown is a passionate advocate for social equality who helps businesses foster healthier, more productive workplace cultures. Her book Inclusion: Diversity, the New Workplace & the Will to Change will inspire leadership to embrace the opportunity that diversity represents and empower advocates to drive change that resonates in today’s world. Jennifer  is a highly sought-after expert on changing demographics, specific communities of identity including women, people of color, LGBT individuals, generations like Millennials, and the role of male leaders in change efforts. Follow on Twitter: www.twitter.com/beambitious4her Follow on Instagram: www.instagram.com/beambitiousforher      

Is your marketing department diverse? Does it reflect the target audience you are hoping to engage?  If not, there's a good chance your communications will fall flat and the chance of recruiting a diverse workforce in the future will be that much tougher. How then do you hire and then manage a diverse workforce and what are the key benefits of doing so? To answer these questions and more, Jennifer Brown is this week's guest on Renegade Thinkers Unite.    Jennifer Brown is an award-winning entrepreneur, dynamic speaker and diversity and inclusion expert. She is the founder, president, and CEO of Jennifer Brown Consulting (JBC), a strategic leadership and diversity consulting firm that coaches business leaders worldwide on critical issues of talent and workplace strategy. Brown is a passionate advocate for social equality who delves into the “business case for diversity” as she helps businesses foster healthier, more productive workplace cultures. With over a decade of experience consulting to Fortune 500 companies including Toyota, Starbucks, and Capital One, Brown is a highly sought-after expert source on changing demographics, specific communities of identity including women, people of color, LGBT individuals, generations like Millennials, and the role of male leaders in change efforts. Brown’s book Inclusion: Diversity, the New Workplace & the Will to Change (2016) will inspire leadership to embrace the opportunity that diversity represents and empower advocates at all levels to find their voice and be a driving force in creating more enlightened organizations that resonate in a fast-changing world. You can learn more about Brown’s mission on The Will to Change podcast.

“Work is where we spend most of our time. And it's where I think so much learning happens. It's often where people are exposed to difference in a way that they're not in their personal lives. We've got to work on global teams. We have to work with multiple nationalities. We have to figure out how to lead virtually without ever sitting in front of somebody physically. So we have to get really good at noticing and valuing diversity in all of its forms, and then being inclusive leaders. I think we're a long way off from that. I'm trying to help corporate America specifically try to tell their story differently and prioritize diversity and inclusion as value that's going to resonate with incoming talent. But I want them to walk the talk. I don't want them to just use it as a marketing slogan. I want them to do the hard work which is the internal work in their culture. It's really easy to buy your way on to lists and get awards and control the optics of the story on the outside. But the harder work and more valuable work is “what are we going to be about as a culture?” I think the role of leaders in setting that framework is really important. They have a huge platform they can use. Yet I find most are scared of it or don't know what to say about it. They just let it go. And it's a missed opportunity because people are hearing that as “I don't matter.” Something is happening in their life that's huge and their expected to come into work and deny it. That's kind of the core of what we need to solve for.” – Jennifer BrownJENNIFER BROWN is an award-winning entrepreneur, dynamic speaker and diversity and inclusion expert. She is the founder, president and CEO of Jennifer Brown Consulting (JBC), a strategic leadership and diversity consulting firm that coaches business leaders worldwide on critical issues of talent and workplace strategy. She's also the author of Inclusion: Diversity, The New Workplace and the Will to Change. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Women & LGBT Entrepreneurship Dissected with Guest Jennifer Brown Jenn T. Grace: I am thrilled to be talking today with Jennifer Brown, Founder and CEO of Jennifer Brown Consulting (JBC), a New York City-based consulting firm that is a womenowned and LGBT-certified business. Jennifer is a vocal advocate for workplace diversity and a passionate social entrepreneur who has created a thriving business by doing the work she loves. Welcome, Jennifer. Jennifer Brown (Consulting): Thanks for that introduction, Jenn. I’m excited to be here speaking with you as well. Jenn T. Grace: Great, then let’s get started. You actually began your career as an opera singer and eventually realized that you were meant to be using your voice in a different way. Can you share a bit about your professional journey and how you came to founding JBC in 2004? Jennifer Brown: My story has been an interesting one with lots of twists and turns. I originally came to New York to be a singer. I got a master’s degree in opera and voice, had an agent and was auditioning on the opera circuit. I really believed that was going to be my life. Unfortunately, the arduous training caused me to injure my voice and I ended up having to get several surgeries. Although I recovered fully from those surgeries, my stamina for performing multiple times a week and for touring became difficult to maintain. While licking my wounds a bit, thinking about what I wanted to do next, I realized that my stage background was actually great preparation for a career in training and organizational development. People who have performance skills do very well in this career because it requires creativity and the ability to improvise. In addition, as is true in many fields, you have to love selling and business development, which I did. I started out in internal HR roles, gaining my chops for the organizational development and consulting world. When I was laid off due to a restructuring at the company I was working for, I realized I was better suited to being an external consultant than working inside. So I made the decision to hang out my shingle. Initially, rather than incorporating myself or establishing an LLC, I took an interim step. I became a subcontractor for other training companies. They would send me into corporations and I would deliver training programs. Sometimes I designed those programs myself but most of the time somebody else designed and I delivered. Through that experience, listening to group after group of managers who attended these trainings, I started to form my own opinions about what was broken in the workplace and how it could be fixed. One thing led to another, and eventually I stopped subcontracting and started getting my own clients. I was finally privileged to start selling directly to my first client, then my second, then my third, then, before I knew it, it turned into 10! I started hiring people, and I began morphing my role from one that focused on delivery to one that prioritized running the business. I essentially went from working in the business to working on the business. That meant a combination of marketing, sales, brand building and thought leadership. Today, I continue to explore the journey around building my personal brand. There is my brand and then there is the company, JBC. The whole concept of being a founder who builds a company while at the same time thinking about your personal brand is something that I’m thinking a lot about these days. Personally, I don’t just want to be managing my business. I want to be out there changing the world in a broader way. This next phase of my professional journey will be about the intersection between my company and my personal brand, figuring out how to make both successful. Jenn T. Grace: Wow, that is quite a journey so far, and as you've alluded to, you are still on that journey. What inspires and drives you to continue moving forward? Jennifer Brown: I’m driven by the fact that there is still so much left to be done related to diversity and inclusion in the workplace. Especially when you step outside of urban areas or the Fortune 100 companies that we tend to work with, many organizations haven’t made building an inclusive workplace a mantra and a commitment. They have not put in the investment, and their employees’ experiences reflect that. This is a very personal mission for me because when I was working in corporate roles, I was in the closet. I felt like there wasn’t a place for me in those environments, and now I realize what a loss that was for my employers. Companies lose when they fail to create corporate environments where employees feel comfortable bringing their whole selves to work. There is a clear, bottom-line advantage to encouraging diversity and inclusion in the workplace. I believe that Find the Gay Business & Marketing Made Easy Podcast in the work we do at JBC is helping to spread that very important message. iTunes Find the Gay Business & Marketing Made Easy Podcast in iTunes Jenn T. Grace | www.jenntgrace.comThis is an especially important message to be heard among executives. They are the people who have the power and resources to stand up and say, “I believe in this, and here’s why we’re going to put our money where our mouth is as a company.” We help companies understand why they need to care about inclusion and how they can go about making progress within their cultures. Creating inclusive workplaces is a tool for growing a business and it’s critical for achieving innovation. Within corporate entities, we need to keep pushing at all levels—certainly at the executive level, but also among employees and entrepreneurs because change happens from the bottom up as well.  Jenn T. Grace: Let’s talk about supplier diversity and supplier certification. Those two terms are still a mystery to many people. As an out lesbian, how have you been able to leverage your status as an LGBT business owner and as a women business owner? Jennifer Brown: At the end of the day, we are all marketers. Whether you have a sales role or not, especially if you are a business owner, you spend a lot of time selling. Supplier certification is very exciting from a marketing standpoint. For example, as a women-owned and LGBT-owned business, I get access to business opportunities that I might not otherwise have. I get access to a network of entrepreneurs, which is useful to me in terms of strategic partnerships, vendor relationships and also suppliers for our company. Also, the corporate network of sponsors that are involved with and support organizations like WBENC, Women’s Business Enterprise National Council, and NGLCC, the National Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce, is highly valuable. The corporate sponsors are all over these organizations’ conferences and other events. The introductions that I have made and benefited from in this ecosystem have been incredible. The relationships we’ve established through NGLCC and WBENC have led to bidding opportunities that weren’t always publicly known. We have bid on some of these RFPs and won! Bidding on an RFP is a time-consuming and expensive task for a small business, but these types of gigs can be game changers. If you win one huge contract, it can really change your trajectory in a positive way. One of our success stories was with a Fortune 50 financial services company. We bid on and won the opportunity to lead a three-day LGBT leadership-training event that this company now holds three times a year. We are now in our third year of delivering the program and the client is extremely satisfied with it. That is just one example of an opportunity that has come to me because of my status as a diverse supplier. People are often intimidated by these certifications because the paperwork can be intense. They want tax returns and letters of recommendation. For LGBT certification, there are even status qualifiers, which essentially require you to “prove” your LGBT status. It is certainly a robust process, but it’s also a very clarifying exercise that can help businesses get things in order. The certification bodies do not require high revenues. In fact, you can be a pre-revenue company and still get certified. So as an exercise alone, I believe certification is worth it. In addition, it is a great networking opportunity, and a feather in your cap that you can use to market yourself. Remember, certainly in the corporate sales space, the leading companies out there are trying to find you. Jenn T. Grace: What is the most rewarding part of working with corporate clients? Jennifer Brown: The number-one most rewarding part is feeling like I am making a difference and leaving a legacy. I am planting seeds. It is so rewarding when I’m facilitating a training with a senior management team and someone finally makes a connection. They have a light-bulb moment. Maybe it’s a woman who realizes why she’s been facing certain challenges. Suddenly it clicks, and she understands how she can modify her behavior. Or I’ll be working with a white male executive, and suddenly he has a breakthrough—intellectually but also in his heart—about what inclusion really means, and why it’s so important. It usually involves locating something in that executive’s story that he can then use to communicate as a leader in a way that resonates with the workplace. I love helping executives understand, and truly believe, that workplace inclusion is an important part of their job, and that it’s important to them personally and to the business. When I can be a part of that change in mindset, especially at the executive level, it is really exciting. Sometimes just a little tweak at the top of the house can have a big ripple effect throughout an organization. The transformation of someone with influence and positional power can be huge. In that way, JBC is at the genesis of organizational change. Jenn T. Grace As a successful business owner, I’m sure you have picked up a lot of valuable insights and tricks of the trade along the way. If you had to narrow it down, what one piece of advice would you give to business owners and entrepreneurs? Jennifer Brown: The most important thing is to realize very quickly your unique gifts. That is a journey. You have to pay attention: When do you get energized? When are you in the sweet spot? When you run a business, you have to do a lot of things that you don’t like. For me, those things have been operational duties, setting up processes, and anything to do with finance and accounting. Immediately when I started my company, one of the first things I did was outsource my book keeping. I knew that I would be much more useful to my company if I was out there selling instead of entering taxicab receipts in Quickbooks. Many entrepreneurs try to take it all on themselves. They think they can learn how to do everything. Maybe you can, but that’s not the point. Running a successful business is a game of time management. You need to figure out what you can do very quickly and intuitively versus what things are going to unnecessarily eat up your time. As a born business development person and marketer at heart, I had to invest in a complementary senior person in a COO/CFO type of role. Without that, I knew I would run out of bandwidth and expertise very quickly. I wanted to safeguard our revenue and ensure that I was running a solid company. If you are at all successful, scalability will become a challenge. I recommend reading entrepreneur books that focus on scaling, such as The E Myth because it’s a very important topic. You can’t be everything to everyone, even if your company has your name on the door. So, ask yourself, what is your towering gift? Then put all of your energy there. Jenn T. Grace: You mentioned that you are a marketer at heart. Can you share one piece of marketingspecific advice? Jennifer Brown: I love marketing. It is what I would do all day long, if I could. JBC’s business is all referral based. We have succeeded to a large extent through our pipeline of interest, which exists because of the branding and marketing work we have done. I am always out there circulating at conferences and events where my existing and potential clients gather. This is great for networking, as well as learning about best practices and thought leadership in your industry. I have built relationships with conference companies so that they now expect me to come to certain events. It has been an incredibly successful strategy for me. I can name 15 clients that have come from audience members when I was presenting at an event, or moderating or participating in a panel. I don’t charge for that kind of work. It’s a “give before you get” mentality. Make yourself useful before you even talk about money. Sales will come if you add value and put yourself in front of the right people. When you present yourself in a vulnerable and authentic way, people respond. When I participate on panels, I make it all about other people’s expertise and do whatever I can to help them get out their insights to the larger community. This has been a great way to build our brand and it has resulted in real business. Put yourself in the business of creating value and sales will follow. Jenn T. Grace You are clearly very passionate about the work you are doing. Is there something specific that you are particularly excited about at this moment? Jennifer Brown: There is an opportunity for me to really invest in my personal brand over the next year or two. I want to become more visible as a person and a founder. There are CEOs, CEO and founders, and just founders. As a business owner, this is something else to ask yourself: Are you a founder? Are you a CEO? Are you both? I am much more of a founder than a CEO. What’s exciting for me is the opportunity to invest in the company in a way that allows me to pursue building my personal brand. This involves professionalizing my management team. The benefits of this will accrue to the company but I also want to monetize and create a good revenue model around the personal brand. I want the success of my company in combination with a refined personal brand to continue creating a rising tide that lifts the workplace as a whole. I am not sure yet how this structure will look, but I have the pieces of the puzzle. My challenge now is to find the best way of putting them together. Jennifer T. Grace: Jennifer, thank you so much for taking the time for this interview, and for your enthusiasm and professionalism. It has been fantastic. Where can people find you if they want to learn more about you and your business? Jennifer Brown: We have various online platforms where people can reach out: Our website is www.jenniferbrownconsulting.com If you need to get in touch with our company, email info@jenniferbrownconsulting.com Our Twitter is www.twitter.com/jenniferbrown We’re on Facebook and LinkedIn under the company name. We also have a group called Diversity & Inclusion Leadership on LinkedIn. The group is made up of are hundreds of people from our network, including entrepreneurs and corporate diversity and inclusion advocates. Members share articles and have lots of interesting conversations there, so if the topic is up your alley, I suggest joining that group. (You can find the group here: http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=4517615&trk=myg_ugrp_ovr) People can find additional information about JBC through researching ERGs, or Employee Resource Groups. A lot of our work focuses on ERGs, and we are one of the foremost resources for consulting in that area. If people Google ERGs, they will find our website as well as several thought leadership papers that we’ve published on the topic.