Developing a Diversity Skillset

Episode Summary:

Guest host Donnell Campbell, the AGS global head of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), welcomes Dr. Caprice Hollins, co-founder of Cultures Connecting, to discuss how and why businesses should advance their DEI strategies and not pull back from making a true difference for their company and workers. They share insights on the impact that C-Suite buy-in has on the future of DEI and the importance of continuing work that moves the needle and develops diversity as a skillset.  

Transcript:

Bruce Morton: Allegis Global Solutions presents this Subject to Talent podcast, a hub for global workforce leaders to unleash the power of human enterprise. Listen in as we explore the most innovative and transformational topics impacting businesses today.

Bruce Morton:  Hi, I’m Bruce Morton, the host of Allegis Global Solutions’ Subject to Talent podcast. Today I’m handing over the microphone to my friend and colleague, Donnell Campbell, the AGS global head of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). With over 25 years of experience in the talent industry – 12 of which have been dedicated to social justice – Donnell's role is to support the process of integrating DEI into all aspects of the business with a heavy focus on talent attraction and retention, as well as creating a culture of equity and belonging. Today he welcomes Dr. Caprice Hollins, the co-founder of Cultures Connecting, to discuss the ongoing need for and benefits to organizations incorporating DEI practices in their workforce strategies. Let's listen in.

Donnell Campbell: Hello and thank you for passing the microphone to me today, Bruce. Very excited to talk to my guest here today, Dr. Caprice Hollins, about the mission towards a more diverse, equitable workforce and significant business advantages that come with a more inclusive cultural work environment. Dr. Hollins leads Cultures Connecting, an organization which provides workshops, keynotes, leadership coaching and consulting services to organizations seeking to improve their ability to dismantle institutional racism. Dr. Hollins earned a clinical psychology doctorate with the emphasis on multicultural and community psychology. Featured on TED Talks and a frequent keynote speaker on race relations, Dr. Hollins has over 20 years’ experience providing cultural relevant professional development, assisting individuals and organizations in improving cross-cultural relationships. Her work is crucial in developing a sense of inclusion and belonging in a professional environment. Dr. Hollins, welcome. Thank you for joining us. Happy Juneteenth to you.

Dr. Caprice Hollins: Oh, it's good to be with you on this Juneteenth morning. Thank you, Donnell. Thank you for that introduction.

Donnell Campbell: Absolutely, absolutely. As I was reading through your introduction, as we've got a chance to kind of talk a little bit on the front end of things, I was just so impressed with all the different work that you've done and continue to do, and so I want to start off by saying on this Freedom Day, thank you for the work that you're doing to continue that work on. That means a lot to those of us who understand the hard work and space that it takes in order for us to kind of move in this environment. So thank you for everything you've been doing.

Dr. Caprice Hollins: Thank you. Thank you.

Donnell Campbell: Absolutely. So let's just get into it. I want to have just a little bit of a conversation today. So at AGS, the Subject to Talent podcast, we always ask our guests the same first question, and I can't do the justice that Bruce does it because I don't have Bruce's voice, but I will still ask you the same question and that's just tell us a little bit, how did you get into working in DEI and its relation to professional relationships, and what was the journey to get you where you are today? So how did you get into it? How does it all start for you?

Dr. Caprice Hollins: Yeah, well, it's a great question. It's one I often get asked. For me, it was graduate school. So, my doctorate is in clinical psychology, and I minored in now what is referred to as diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging. And it was the first place I'd ever had any formal conversations, not just about race, but sexism and ableism, classism. The idea was that we could not be effective clinicians if we did not understand the experiences that our clients would bring into that clinical setting. And that included their history of oppression, their communication styles, values, things that connected with their culture and the isms that they experienced. And so the first part of my program, they had us looking at our own bias or where our identities, where we held privilege, and I was kind of defensive, Donnell. I was like, "what, not me." I knew everybody else’s stereotype, but I kind of made myself exempt from it.

And I think the challenge for me was in understanding that my being a person of color or my being a woman or my having a stepmother who's from Thailand or a brother who's gay or a mother and siblings who are white, that those relationships did not keep me from having bias. It didn't mean that I didn't have my own work to do. That I in some ways, unconsciously used those relationships as proof that I was different from everybody else. And so the program had us looking at these things and unpacking them, and I was just learning so much. This was the first time, for example, that I was having conversations around how, as a light-skinned black woman, how I have privileges; that my experiences are different from darker skinned black women. And it was a painful journey to look at ways in which I colluded with racism or ways in which I'd done harm out of my ignorance or good intent.

And at the same time, Donnell, it was so liberating to be able to just acknowledge and admit that, yeah, I stereotype. And so I did private practice for a little while. I taught graduate school on this topic for over 20 - 25 years. But really I thought I want other people to experience and learn and grow like I've had the opportunity to without having to go to graduate school and go to my particular graduate school in order to do it. So I slowly moved away from the clinician in the more traditional sense and started teaching and facilitating and eventually started my own company. And so now I'm leading other people in the work, and woo, is it hard!

Donnell Campbell: Trust me, I know. I hear you there. But I want to go back to something you said. You said, "I understand the unique experiences," right? When you mentioned that earlier. And I love that you talked about that relationships didn't help me from being biased. Right? I think sometimes that's one of the things that go on in our head. Well, I'm a black male, so I can't possibly be biased, right? It's like when it comes to these particular things and I don't have these things built into me, I have these relationships and those kind of things. That's a pretty powerful way to hold that mirror up to ourselves, right?

Dr. Caprice Hollins: Yeah, absolutely. And I think this is one of the bigger challenges that I face in this work is getting people to shift from this good/bad narrative that “I have this friend who is…” or “I am…,” or “see I'm a good person, I'm different from everyone else.” To a narrative that says good people do harmful things, good people can stereotype. I stereotype other women, I stereotype other Christians, I stereotype other black people. Right?

And so where we see the harm is that in that kind of colorblind, which I wasn't operating as if I was colorblind, but that's something that we commonly see that when people operate under colorblind ideology, they're actually more likely to do harm because they're not intentional. They're not bringing those stereotypes to a level of consciousness so that they can make sure that they don't get in the way of who they hire. Right? If I think I'm colorblind, right, then I'm not going to be in the interview committee being intentional about making sure those automatic assumptions that I have about you because of your race, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, that those things don't get in the way of who I end up selecting. So it's often the good people, I shouldn't frame it in that way, but it's often the people that see themselves as good that are doing the harm.

Donnell Campbell: Right, right, right. Wow, that's powerful. I want to shift a little bit, so thank you for kind of walking us through how we got to this point. I would love to hit on something that I think in the past on these episodes, we've spoken about the business imperative of DEI and looking at the numbers and the lens of profitability. And there again, there's data and facts to kind of holistically back that up. But however, you've witnessed this in your own company, initial benefits received from working with people who bring unique perspectives to your organization. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Dr. Caprice Hollins: Yeah, absolutely. I was the first director of equity and race for Seattle Public Schools. That's our largest school district in Washington State. And they ended up closing the department. And I was trying to figure out what's the next part of my journey, and I decided that I wanted to start this company. And I'm trying to think about who would I ask to partner with me. And I realized that I wanted somebody who was different from me in every way that you can, in as many ways as I could bring someone on board that was, essentially, that brought a lens, brought experiences, brought a different perspective than what I held. And so my business partner, Ilsa Govan, is a white queer woman who is atheist, not married, no children. She loves backpacking up in the mountains. We could not be more different really in every way imaginable. She's vegan. I love my beef and pork, right?

And so I think that one of the reasons our company, even from the very beginning started to do so well is because we thought about things differently.

Donnell Campbell: Right.

Dr. Caprice Hollins: So we were able to approach this work from multiple perspectives versus had I brought someone to partner with that was the same as I, then we're going to be limited in our thinking. When we grew our company, when we got to the point where we could start to bring on more consultants and facilitators, we then had conversation about who would be different from us? Okay, we've got two women, we don't have any men. What about the people who have an immigrant background or who may be of a different race than us?

And so as we've continued to grow, we continue to think about that diversity as a skillset, that the experiences, the values, the beliefs, the ways of thinking are all, what would I say, value added to our company. And it's worked really well for us, age diversity. Yeah. So it's really what we're trying to get companies to understand that you're not hiring for the sake of diversity, right? You're not hiring for, I've got this percentage of people of color in my organization, that it's so much more than that. It's about what that diversity can do for your organization. Now, you were getting into inclusion, right? Because just having the people isn't enough. How are you including that diversity into your everyday practices?

Donnell Campbell: Wow, I love that. You hit on something and I wrote down here and I was like, ooh, I like this diversity as a skillset. I want to talk about that one for a minute because that one, you crashed onto something for me. I'm like, ooh, I love where you're going with this. So can you talk a little bit more about why that's so important or how we use diversity as a skillset?

Dr. Caprice Hollins: Yeah. I think about the areas where I am consciously incompetent. Right? I'm not even aware, I don't know what I don't know. And then I do some work and I do some reading and I listen to some podcasts, like Subject to Talent, and then I watch some documentaries. I try to learn and grow. And I get to this place where I am... So, the first place is unconsciously incompetent. I don't know what I don't know. And when I bring other people in that do know, that helps me to grow. And I do all kinds of things to learn and understand more. Currently, I'm doing a lot of work. My team is doing a lot of work in understanding the indigenous peoples and how to do land acknowledgements, but I was at one point unconsciously incompetent. And then I moved to this place of conscious incompetence. I always call that the sucky place, right, Donnell. I know I need to know more, right? I see where I'm incompetent. Right?

And then we moved to this place called conscious competence, and that's really this stage of it's more mechanical. I think about it, like when we first started recycling, they gave you all these bins and you kind of knew, okay, does it go here? Does it go there? You're not really sure why. And I'm trying to get to this place in my life where I am unconsciously competent. I don't even have to think about how I interact. I don't have to think about how I move in spaces, the language that I use. When I think about diversity as a skillset, I think about some people come with – because of their life experiences, because of their identities, they already come in with an unconscious competence. Right? And so I can learn from them. I can grow through my mistakes, through the conversations, through the interactions that we undervalue in our society.

You can't discriminate and hire based on diversity. Right? And I'm like, why don't we see diversity as a value? Why is it like we see a degree as a value, we see that I have this amount of experience or training, or I've got this certification, but my life in what I have grown up in, what I've experienced has taught me ways of interacting that I'm not even thinking about that other people would benefit from, and that it becomes a conscious skill for them to learn where for me, it's unconscious. I don't know. Is that making sense to you

Donnell Campbell: No, that's making total sense. Diversity has a value, right? I think one of the things that kind of clicked for me as you were talking about this, I think about when people talk about, well, I have book smarts, but I don't have street smarts, and vice versa. But they both equally can be used depending on how you leverage that, depending on the space that you're in, right? And so I hear everything that you're saying around that piece of it because I think it's so important that we look at that as a skillset. And I love what you said, hey, my degree says that I have a skillset, so why would my not lived experience not echo that exact same thing?

Dr. Caprice Hollins: Absolutely. Absolutely. There's a quote, I don't know who said this. It's awareness without knowledge is just as dangerous as knowledge without awareness, that we really need both, not just people's knowledge, we also need what they bring.

Donnell Campbell: Right.

Dr. Caprice Hollins: You're getting into, for me, the social emotional intelligence, and we're finally talking about that and seeing that as having value. How I interact with people brings value to a company that someone with a degree may have no social emotional intelligence. I don't want to work with them on my team. I don't want them leading me, know how to work with people, yes, they've got that degree.

Donnell Campbell: Right, right. That makes total sense. I'm going to shift this a little bit because actually as you brought that up, it made me start to think about, we talk about diverse talent, right? So, one of the key aspects of integrating DEI practices into organizations is what happens is after you've attracted, and you've hired a – quote unquote – diverse talent. You have to retain and develop that talent. In many ways, that means creating work environments that are welcoming the people from a variety of backgrounds. So, from your experience, how are successful companies investing in this aspect of DEI?

Dr. Caprice Hollins: Yeah, so this goes back to our earlier conversation that hiring for diversity is not enough. You can have people within a company that essentially had to leave themselves at home, their communication styles, how they wear their hair, their religion, their language, their gender identity. And so I think when thinking about that and what does it require or what are some things that we can do to retain them, is to create a culture where people can bring themselves into the workplace. I identify as a Christian, so all of our national holidays work really well for me. I get that time off during Christmas. We can name it something else, winter break or what have you, but they still align with my religious identity. And thinking about some things that people can do is if I am Muslim, do I have a place to pray in that workplace?

I'll say something, and I don't mean this in a negative way, you're using a certain platform, but the platform that we're using only allowed me to put so many letters to put my name, and I wanted to put my pronouns to be inclusive. What if my name was a long name? What would I have had to have shortened it to? Right? I think about how organizations could get better at doing stay interviews. How are things going for you? Is there anything else that I can do to make you feel more welcomed? Are you experiencing microaggressions? Handling discriminatory incidents quickly and taking them seriously. Talking about race, talking about differences. I even think about how leaders are afraid to take risk if they don't feel like they're experts in DEIB. So they're often only leading in areas where they feel where their strengths are.

So they're not modeling this way of being in the workplace culture. What am I trying to say? In how they want to see. How do you want that workplace culture to be, then you practice being it, right? You practice showing up in that way. It can even be, for example, I've done a number of things as an employer where I've made mistakes. I've done workshops that I facilitated, and the DEIB person is saying something that is harmful, committing a microaggression and owning it, showing up authentically. Right?

I also, in all honesty, Donnell, pay equity is huge. We know that there's research that shows that even people with degrees are getting paid less than their white counterparts that don't have that same degree. And so looking in your organizations and assessing and doing surveys. And it's such a big question, and to me it doesn't feel like it has to be a huge thing to retain people, show people respect, show them that you care about them and go beyond just that mission or vision that says you're committed to DEIB. Live it out, right? And then that's a company that I want to be a part of. You don't have to be perfect in it, but show me that you're doing the work.

Donnell Campbell: Right. Absolutely. We have a saying in the Allegis family where we talk about people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care, right?

Dr. Caprice Hollins: Right.

Donnell Campbell: And that's what I took from some of the things that you were saying there is that some of it just means that you don't necessarily have to have this grandiose thing that you move this piece. It's the small things. It's the little things that when we think about retaining that talent, for people to feel like that this is the place that I can be at. This is the place that I belong. This is the place that welcomes me as I am and takes me as I am, and that's okay. Who I am is okay, and it's enough here. Without the judgment on the other side of it or the mindset that I have to fit into this specific box in order for me to be successful and be a valued employee at this organization.

Dr. Caprice Hollins: Yeah. Donnell, what I find is a lot of companies will bring in diverse individuals, but they are really asking those individuals, as you said, to fit into the company rather than the company doing the work, the harder work of figuring out what do I need to do to make sure that people here are included and feel like they belong and that they can bring their whole authentic selves to the workplace. I still have situations that clients will call me up, potential clients, and they'll talk about situations where someone is saying, this is America. We speak English here. Versus there is value in people who can speak more than one language, and we're fine with using someone as an interpreter, but not allowing them to speak their native language with the person that they're talking with during their lunch break. Right?

So there's so much. We see around the world, well, around this country, we see where kids are being excluded from schools, people are being excluded from jobs because they have dreadlocks or their hairstyle is not done up in a Eurocentric based on those norms or standards that they deem as, quote, professional.

Donnell Campbell: Right, right. And so it's those things that I talk about. Micro inequities, right? Systematic micro inequities, that kind of as an organization, if you don't look at those things, they can start, those little small things can start to peel you away at your organization. It can make actually bigger things because it's not necessarily, again, just one big thing that's over here. It could literally be those small micro inequities that are changing the opportunity for those individuals. Things like, hey, this person has dreadlocks and that probably doesn't fit within our culture, or those kinds of things.

And I've definitely talked to people a lot of times about are we talking a culture fit or are we talking about a culture add? I'd much rather have a culture add than a culture fit, because I know that a culture add is going to broaden things out, which means that I have more opportunity from a business standpoint to tap into other cultures that I may not be able to tap into today. So I love everything that you were talking about there.

Dr. Caprice Hollins: Yeah. And then I think what happens, Donnell, is oftentimes people end up feeling tokenized.

Donnell Campbell: Yeah, absolutely.

Dr. Caprice Hollins: If you didn't really hire me for my talent, for my voice, for what I bring, you really hired me because you have this... In some ways, I was this check of a box. In some ways, I became this proof that you're about diversity when I really am not welcomed into this space, not who I am.

Donnell Campbell: Right.

Dr. Caprice Hollins: One other thing that I'll add about retention, and there's so much I could say, I know you could as well, is the idea of promoting within and mentorship programs and things that help people to gain some of the skill sets that they might need, mentoring them in their journey so they can move beyond the position that they came in with. And one story I want to share about my sister, my younger sister has been an executive assistant most of her life only for the C-suite. So she's top level of executives.

And usually she's the executive assistant for multiple people in the executive leadership level. And her skills at program managing, her skills at handling multiple things, managing stress well, thinking ahead, planning, all of these important skills to do what she does. She would try over and over and over again to get positions that would really be a next level up. And yet she would be locked in this box of, no, this is what you do. And so they'd hire, of course, people from the outside to be a program planner or a project manager. And here you have someone right in your organization that has the skillset. But because it wasn't on a resume, that those doors don't get open. Oftentimes it's for people of color, right?

Donnell Campbell: Right. So, wow, you hit a lot there, but it's making me think about the challenge that still exists when you think about integrating DEI practices into many organizations. I think that that's still a challenge even to this day that it continues to show up. So what challenges have you found companies are still struggling with to overcome right now based off of some of the work you've been doing?

Dr. Caprice Hollins: Yeah, I saw this study that said in 2020 that companies committed to investing 50 billion dollars in DEI initiatives, but only 0.5% actually really donated anything.

Donnell Campbell: Exactly right. Wrote the check.

Dr. Caprice Hollins: Yeah. Wrote the check. Thanks for saying it plainly. Right?

Donnell Campbell: Right.

Dr. Caprice Hollins: Just in some ways I see that same kind of thing happening, not necessarily with dollars, but with a commitment. So, you might have the mission statement, you might have hired the DEI director, but you're not doing the work. You put the work on the shoulders of the DEI director, but you as a leader, don't see yourself in that work with them. It kind of becomes that work over there. It becomes separate from everything that we do. The other thing is that when you take on the doing DEIB work, we don't really know what we're going to get, right? In some ways, I think of it as we're committed to something without a certainty of what the outcome will be. We know we hold this value and this belief that equity and inclusion and justice are practices that our organization wants to be a part of.

And yet, leaders are often afraid of the unknown. They are not willing to take the risk to try new things. I had a company once tell me that I worked for that if we, for example, changed our practices to include the LGBTQ community, we might lose funding from our donors. And I'm like, yes, you might. You might. But that is still the work. Right?

Donnell Campbell: Right.

Dr. Caprice Hollins: So a lot of companies operate under fear of what they might lose rather than what they might gain as a result. And they're treating it like it's an event. It's this thing that we do. It's Juneteenth, what is the activity? But they're struggling to really get behind it and work alongside. And I'll say that, I don't know if the word is a catch 22, but if you as a leader are not willing to grow in your own understanding of diversity, equity and inclusion, and I mean reading books and watching podcasts and going beyond that one workshop that your company provides that you financed or what have you, then you're never going to understand.

You're not going to grow in your equity lens and be able to truly be committed to this work when it gets hard, when hard decisions need to be made. And so I see leaders often defaulting to what's easy, what feels safe, and there's nothing about this work that is easy or safe. And I also believe that there's nothing that we've ever done in our country where we've made any progress around racial or social justice that was ever safe or easy. Right? And so we want something, I call it pimping diversity. I don't know if I can say that on your podcast.

Donnell Campbell: No, I hear you.

Dr. Caprice Hollins: We want all the shiny parts, but we don't want to do the work behind it. And when I say we, I'm talking about boards, I'm talking about executive leaders, I'm talking about supervisors and managers. It sounds good from that surface level, but when DEI directors, consultants like myself come into organizations and things get hard, they don't see that as being a part of the work, as a part of the journey. I always tell people, this is the work, this messiness, these hard places that you're in right now, this is the work.

Donnell Campbell: That's the work.

Dr. Caprice Hollins: Don't step out of it because we're in a place of uncertainty or somebody cried or you're afraid that you're going to get pushback. I don't know. This is the work. We're figuring it out as we go along because we've never seen what we hope for in our nation. We've not had what we seek. We've not had it yet. Right? And so leading with uncertainty, not something that leaders in this country do well.

Donnell Campbell: Oh man, you say a lot there. First of all, I know it's a Wednesday of Juneteenth, but I feel like we had Sunday service right now because you preaching, and you dropping some jewels for us. But you're not doing the work, right? I heard you say that piece of it. You're not actually doing the work yourself, you're leaving it up to someone else to kind of do it for you. Not certain of the outcome, unwilling to take the risk that it's involved with that. And then being event-based. And then have you done the work on your own? What have you done on your own to make sure that you are actually being better in that space for yourself? We talk about self-development all the time in a lot of organizations, but going back to what you said a little bit earlier, right? As diversity as a skillset, this is something that you could work on on your own to develop that skillset a little bit better if you're doing some of that work on your own. That's what I took away from what you just got through talking about.

Dr. Caprice Hollins: Absolutely. I would say it's imperative, right? Most of what my company does is culturally relevant professional development, particularly around race. Let's say a client invests in doing six, three-hour, half-day workshops in a year, which is a lot. When I get a company that does it, that's a lot. But if you calculate the hours, six times three is 18 hours.

Donnell Campbell: Right, right.

Dr. Caprice Hollins: Really? You think your organization is going to be transformed, that you are going to be transformed, that you are going to leave with the equity lens that you need because you attended six three hour workshops.

Donnell Campbell: Right, right.

Dr. Caprice Hollins: This is about a commitment to a way of being, a way of being personally in the world. How do I navigate spaces when people are around me who are different from me? Do they feel seen? Do they feel like they belong or do they feel othered? And the same is true for our organizations. A whole bunch of individuals make up that collective organization. So if there's not a commitment and an expectation, and if leaders aren't modeling that, then we're not going to see the policy changes that we need to see in organizations and the practice changes that we needed to see in organizations. We're not going to be in workplaces, Donnell, where we feel like we belong if people aren't committed to doing that work.

Donnell Campbell: So, Dr. Hollins, first of all, this has been a wonderful conversation. And we always end our episodes with a look to the future. And I'm going to switch this up a little bit because again, I'm not Bruce, but I'm going to try to bring in my inner Bruce a little bit. So the question is, where do you see the future of diversity, equity and inclusion in the workplace evolving over the next five to 10 years?

Dr. Caprice Hollins: This is a tough question. We are in a nation that's very polarized. We're at a time in our country where words like being woke, which as an example, I feel is language that becomes a tool that says, I know something now that I didn't know before. That kind of language is being weaponized. People are afraid to, again, they're afraid to take risks. I do think that oftentimes pendulums kind of swing in different directions. So we had the murder of George Floyd, everybody's investing. Then the pendulum is now swinging in the opposite direction, where I went from having to book three months out to like, oh, let me see what's on my calendar a month from now. People are pulling back. I do always say, Donnell, that I'm not an expert in this work. And I think that that's really important for people to hear that because it then means in some ways that I have the answers or that I've arrived at something rather than I have some expertise. Right?

And so I always share with people what my expertise is. I know you said crystal ball. My hope let's say five years from now is that we won't be as ill at ease at having courageous conversations about racism. That I think racism is one of the hardest conversations for this nation to have, something that people of color, particularly black folks, indigenous folks, we've been trying to have forever, that without the conversation, we can't get to the results. If we can't talk about racism, if we don't look at racism as a problem, then we won't go to what can we do to fix this? So I would like to see five years from now that the conversation is more of the norm. Right? And I'll just say one other thing, when I was in graduate school, topics like implicit bias and privilege, white privilege, these things were being talked about, but they weren't really being talked about in our country as a whole.

Now they're being talked about, right? So now people can begin to identify where they have privilege or where they have bias, right? Now, we can then look at what can we do to mitigate bias in the interview process. So, I just wanted to give you an example of the power of language as a tool to have these conversations, the power of having these conversations so that it can lead to us actually doing something different. Now, I know that some people are like, well, when are we going to get beyond talking about it? I'm like, I don't know. I don't think in my lifetime, because where we are as a nation, that yeah, we still have a long way to go.

Donnell Campbell: Wow. Wow. Love that. Now, see, that's what we call a mic drop, by the way, just so you know. So listen, what should listeners do if they want to learn more about Cultures Connecting and of you?

Dr. Caprice Hollins: Yeah, go to our website, https://www.culturesconnecting.com/. Read my business partner, Ilsa Govan, and our colleague Tilman Smith's book, “What's Up with White Women?” You can read my book, “Inside Out: The Equity Leaders Guide to Undoing Institutional Racism.” There's so many resources out there that weren't there a number of years ago. Cultures Connecting is just one of them. Watch my TEDx talk. I thought I was pretty amazing, but I'll leave that up to you to be the judge of.

Donnell Campbell: It was. I watched it. It was great.

Dr. Caprice Hollins: Thank you, Donnell.

Donnell Campbell: Well, thank you so much for your time today and spending a little bit of time and talking about the things that you and I are both so passionate about. It's been a great conversation, and I really appreciate you taking some time out of your busy schedule, especially on a day like today on Juneteenth, to be able to just come. And I think actually, it's interesting, I think when we think about this and the fact that we got to this piece of the conversation, thinking about the freedom that this day represents, and again, again, not to definitely to the extent of what our ancestors went through, but I think it just helps me feel confident that more of those freedoms are to come. Right? And so I appreciate this conversation, and thank you so much for taking the time out with us.

Dr. Caprice Hollins: Thank you. What a pleasure, Donnell. I can't really think of a better way to spend my Juneteenth to start it out with talking about what more we can do because we are on the shoulders of our ancestors and we need to honor what they've done and what they've been through and keep doing more. It has been my pleasure. Thank you so much.

Donnell Campbell: Thank you. Thank you.

Bruce Morton: If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. And if you have questions, send them to SubjectToTalent@AllegisGlobalSolutions.com. Follow us on LinkedIn with the #SubjectToTalent and learn more about AGS at AllegisGlobalSolutions.com, where you can find additional workforce insights and past episodes. Until next time, cheers.