Everything you need to know to go beyond the buzzwords ‘Diversity, equity, and inclusion’ and put your policies where your values are.
In 2020, there was a cultural reckoning in the US and Canada around the prevalence of systemic racism. Since then, there’s been a wave of companies, organizations, and brands declaring their belief in the importance of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI).
But saying you believe in DEI isn’t enough.
In this episode of Ampersand, we unpack this with Sharon Nyangweso (CEO of QuakeLab, an end-to-end inclusion agency) and Kai Scott (President and Co-Founder of TransFocus Consulting, which supports organizations with gender diversity and inclusion). We get into the details of what communicators and designers need to know to employ a DEI lens and serve equity deserving groups, both internally within our workplaces, as well as in the work that we do.
This episode is dedicated to the Canadian Centre for Gender and Sexual Diversity.
If you’d like to support their work, the best way you can do so is through a donation if you’re able.
This transcript was created using speech recognition software. While it has been reviewed by human transcribers, it may contain errors. Please review the episode audio before quoting from this transcript and email media@emdashagency.ca with any questions.
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Caitlin Kealey
Welcome to Ampersand, the show helping communicators and designers be more thoughtful about the work we do, the audiences we serve, and the processes that we follow. I'm Caitlin Kealey, the CEO of Emdash.
Megana Ramaswami
And I'm Megana Ramaswami, Senior Strategist at Emdash. Through our work, we've been lucky enough to make a lot of connections with knowledgeable people, and we've also had to ask ourselves a lot of hard questions about how we do our work.
Ampersand is the space to share our learnings.
Caitlin Kealey
Today, we're talking DEI. Or is it EDI? Or is it EDID? No matter what acronym you use, diversity, equity, inclusion, justice, and decolonization are important concepts as they are deeply intertwined in the communications and design work we do day in and day out.
Megana Ramaswami
And it's our responsibility to ensure the images and messaging we use reflect the people we work for and those we work alongside.
Caitlin Kealey
In this episode, I'm super jealous because Megana gets to chat with my good friend Sharon, who's the CEO of QuakeLab. QuakeLab's a full stack inclusion agency focused on radical and measurable approaches to diversity and inclusion.
We're in the middle of doing a DEI strategy for our own business with them.
Megana Ramaswami
So I’ve gotta say, it was fantastic getting to chat with Sharon. And we also got to chat with our other expert guest, Kai Scott. He's the president and founder of TransFocus Consulting. It's a firm that helps organizations find innovative solutions for gender inclusion.
So our guests help us understand how to employ a DEI lens and serve equity deserving groups, both internally within our workplaces as well as in the work that we do. So I'll let the experts take it away.
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Thank you both for being on with us today. It's an honor to have you.
Kai Scott
Thanks so much for having me here. I'm really excited to be here to talk about this very important topic. So my name is Kai Scott, as you said, and I use the pronouns he and him, and I'm based here in Vancouver, British Columbia, which is the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Tsleil-Waututh, and the Squamish Nation. And of course, I'm very honored to be living and, uh, working on these lands as they've been stewarded by ancestors for many years, thousands of years. And also I've been doing this kind of gender inclusion work for the past six years, uh, six or seven years.
And then before that I was actually working in the mining industry. All kinds of different experiences across the range.
Sharon Nyangweso
My name is Sharon Nyangweso and I am originally from Nairobi, Kenya, but I'm currently based in Ottawa on Algonquin territory. And the most important part of that acknowledgement is to also say that we believe a big part of that is just land back and the repatriation of land.
And so I run a small but mighty team, an agency called QuakeLab. And like you said, we try to do equity work a little bit differently, that we focus on structural change and we really try and think about what systems are working and why aren't they working and who aren't they working for. And then, we redesign.
Megana Ramaswami
Fantastic. We've all been looking forward to this conversation for many weeks now. Very excited to dig in. So I hope you'll both indulge me a little when we start off with our first question, which is what comes first, DEI in the work, or DEI in the workplace? Sharon, I'll start with you.
Sharon Nyangweso
Let's start a little bit spicy and say neither.
I don't think it's a matter of choosing. Um, these things are going to happen together. They're going to happen hand in hand. More importantly, I think you don't need to lean yourself into saying, okay, we're gonna do X first and then move to Y. But when you start figuring out where your gaps are, where your equity challenges exist, it's going to be across the board.
You're gonna find some aspects of it are in the work that you're doing. Some aspects of it are in the workplace. And when you're building a plan to figure out how you're going to tackle that, it's gonna be a mix.
Megana Ramaswami
Kai, when it comes to the work you do with organizations on gender inclusion, do you find it's very similar as what Sharon said?
Kai Scott
I was gonna completely agree with Sharon, but I also, uh, gonna add to the mix that it's a bit of a feedback loop so that the employee experience informs the client experience and then the clients, seeing how the employees experience it, they're all kind of reading each other's experiences. And if they're not consistent, then things fall apart.
And oftentimes if something has changed for the client and not for the employee, it's like, wait, wait a second, what about me? And then they're just not as motivated, not as committed to the company and are not being fully served. Right? So bringing all those different things together I think is key.
Sharon Nyangweso
If I can also just add to that, that sometimes there's the argument like you just said, that you know, so you have to clean your own house before you start going elsewhere.
Megana Ramaswami
That makes sense for starting with saying no absolutes on this, which is nice. And sort of speaking of those deliberate, coherent processes, so currently Emdash is in the process of putting together a DEI strategy for our own organization and we are of course using QuakeLab’s Quake Care process. So, shout out to you, Sharon, and your team, and in that process where we're beginning to see how many areas of a company DEI can and should reach.
And the honest truth is that sometimes that process can feel a little bit overwhelming for us. So Sharon, what would you say are the best ways to either break up the process or start just so it feels a bit more manageable for the entire team?
Sharon Nyangweso
That's a really fair comment. It's something that we hear pretty consistently, whether we are just starting to work with someone or we’re in the deep of it. There's a lot here.
One of the best indicators that an institution or a group of people or a team are going to be doing some really meaningful long-term work is having a lot of comfort in the fact that you are not going to get everything right now.
In fact, if anything, it's a bit of a red flag for me when there's this feeling of, “We are overwhelmed because we need to get it all done now.” Because that to me is communicating that you're assuming that there is a end point and then once you get to that end point, whether it's, you know, Q4 of next year, that this will no longer be something you are working on or something that you are integrating into your overall work planning and that is why you are feeling that sense of urgency.
And so what you can start thinking about is the way in which you make decisions about everything else. What is urgent? What is pertinent? What do you want to tackle now? What do you have the expertise for? What do you have the resources for now? And do that now, knowing that there is also long term planning, as well as that short term planning.
Kai Scott
Well put, so well put. I also very much agree with that and building on that as well, you know, it's cheesy but true: the quick wins I've seen time and time again allow for momentum to be built and confidence. Because I think a lot of it is also confidence. So the sense of urgency, which shows that perhaps it's not seen through the lens of a journey, but also people are, are uncertain and they don't know if they can do it, right?
And so really if we can show, hey, it's not as perhaps complicated as we thought. It's really just a series of steps that we take together in a coordinated fashion that eventually produce a result, and that result is exciting for people. And you can see that there's something tangible you can point to.
Like you said, Sharon, measurable is huge, right? Mm-hmm. To be able to see something that's materialized out of that collective effort. And so that's what I really invite people to focus on at first, but not exclusively. I know people can get, just, oh, that we're done with a quick win and wasn't that amazing and we're done.
It's like, no, no, no. That was just the kickoff to show ourselves and to others that we can do it, and then now we can take a bit more heavy lifting and continue down that journey, that pathway. So, yeah, I, I've done quick wins.
An example of that for gender diversity is washroom signage, which is certainly not the end all be all, but it is a very tangible way to show commitment, progress, and also it does actually tangibly help trans and non-binary folks to see institutional commitment to their being able to access these facilities, right? So that's just one tangible example.
Megana Ramaswami
And so going along with what you're both saying about this being a journey, this deeper process, I kind of wanna dig into that a little bit and you know, ask that for anybody that's maybe considering doing quote unquote the “bare minimum” when it comes to DEI, gender inclusion. You know, let's say they want a more representative workforce, but they are maybe not necessarily willing or have even thought about overhauling systems.
What's the first thing that you say to them?
Kai Scott
I typically start where people are at and go with them. So, if that's something that they wanna undertake, and if we get the journey going, typically people figure it out for themselves along the way to be like, “oh, wait a second, this is gonna take way more.” And I'd rather them say it than me try to cajole them along.
Although sometimes if you present it in a way, “hey, just so you know, I've done this a few times, and this is typically what happens when you just do this X, Y, and Z, and certainly there's some benefit to that for certain people, and it's important part of a journey, but it's actually not a good use of your money.”
And so we embark on that journey and then 99% of the time people realize really quickly that there's actually way more to this and that there's actually value to doing the deeper work and to keep going.
Sharon Nyangweso
I feel like I'm your, like, chaotic evil twin. Because the way I love to cajole the way, the way that is all I do.
I, ok. So I wanna start somewhere first. I just have this visceral reaction to the idea of this work as a journey and I think it is because at somewhere, at some point we started defining this work as like a, almost like a personal development process or like a self-help process. And so we use this language like “journey”, like “grow and learn”, like “listen and learn.”
And so then it removes two things: A) the expertise in professionalism required here, but B) it also makes it a personal decision to the point where if someone wants to do something that does not have tangible results, if they want to make it more about their own personal journey, rather than like systemic change, they have that area to go through.
Now, onto my cajoling, my love of cajoling. One of my superpowers, I'd like to think, is when I am speaking to people who come to us, and like you said, perhaps are looking at, “we want to do this three hour training. We want to find a way to hire more people.” Those are the tools we have had at our disposal for decades.
When people have thought about doing this work, they have thought about one time training, they have thought about, you know, these sort of sporadic tools. And so when they come to you, I, I come with a lot of compassion and assuming it's not that there is a desire to do the least, it is that this is not their area of expertise that's why we’re here.
I’d like to go a little bit backwards and sort of explicitly state that you have come to me with a solution, but I don't know if we are both clear about what the problem is we're trying to solve for. And what that allows me to do is walk someone back and say, okay, so you said you wanted to do this three hour training on September 12th for your management. Talk to me about what the intended outcome is for that. Where has that emerged? What is the need we’re trying to meet? What is the content? What has been done before?
And as we walk back into that there is often, if not always, a realization that there was no actual investigation of what the specific challenge is. And then the second thing I try and do is really take them through that investigative line of questioning to help understand what do you actually know? Because sometimes, even though there hasn't been that deep investigation into what the challenge is, there are some anecdotal stuff.
Sometimes people say, oh, “we had a problem with our colleague Bobby who just kept saying lots of racial slurs.”
Stuff like that. It's never usually that bad, but there's these pieces that come in, these nuggets, and it's like, ok, well what it sounds like is A, there is a need for an investigative process, perhaps. Cause there seems like there's someone who's causing a lot of harm. B, let's actually review your system for reporting harm, for investigating and for holding someone accountable and for providing care.
Because we know that for a lot of organizations, although they have mechanisms for, you know, physical violence, for sexual assault, they very often don't have anything for like identity-based harm or violence. And so that becomes this more robust but also tangible conversation.
So that's usually how I try and move folks from, like, these sort of little pieces that aren't working towards anything and then getting really focused like, ok, but what exactly do you need? How do you know this information? Who is it for? And that's my favorite question is, who is this in service of? Because you go far enough into any type of one-off thing and you realize it is in service of the people who are the most privileged and are probably not being harmed by the things that are happening in the organization.
Megana Ramaswami
And sort of thinking maybe, perhaps changing the perspective on what we're doing these things in service of for us. At Emdash of course, we're doing communications and design work for a variety of different organizations and clients, many of which are in that justice and advocacy space. We're often working with equity-deserving groups.
There are many communicators that do that type of work, so, what advice perhaps would you be able to give to communications and design professionals to be able to better employ, you know, an, an equity lens, a justice lens, an inclusion lens when we do our work for clients?
Sharon Nyangweso
I like to remind everyone as often as I can that the best version of equity and justice work is the least sexy.
Some people wanna put out equity work as like, oh, you know, we had this session where we were together and everyone cried and it was so transformational when like some of the most important equity and justice work is just process. This is like a lot of boring process.
And so in talking about where does that question of justice and equity show up in your work, you're gonna have to investigate your process. Like when do you start including those questions? When you're talking to a client about their audiences? Are you getting really into the depths of it and talking about not just the audiences in these broad terms, but also demographically speaking?
Are you asking them what the relationship with these groups of people have been? Are you in the process of actually creating tangible output, whether it's social copy or whatever, where does accessibility come in? Is it the very end when you've already created your final product, or is it all throughout when you're doing the design, when you're doing the testing, when you're sending it back, that type of thing.
And so process is going to be your biggest friend, and it's going to become very useful for two reasons. One, it means, again, equity work is not sort of the bow stuff at the end, but it also means that your equity and inclusion and diversity and justice work is not going to be ad hoc. It's going to be process driven, which means that if you were to get hit by a bus tomorrow, that it would still go on.
Megana Ramaswami
So Kai, same question. For communicators and designers, how should we start thinking about this process and is it similar to what Sharon said in terms of what you've done with gender inclusion for other organizations that may have, you know, client facing work?
Kai Scott
Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's a great question and certainly echo all that Sharon said and I, I'll build on that rather than reiterating some of those points, and particularly I'd like to get a little bit more specific in terms of say, gender neutral language, which seems to be a very big focus right now, which is great.
That's to expand beyond the concepts of men and women, boys and girls, and only referencing those in texts, which doesn't include all genders, so particularly misses folks who are non-binary or beyond or between the concepts of men and women. And so I think it's great and people are taking it on and oftentimes a bit prescriptive, just applying it without thinking it through.
Very similar to what Sharon said, not translating it and integrating it in a lot of depth. It's more just like instead of she and he now we say they, which is great. I think that's an important start, but I would invite folks- I have this little quip that really helps—at least the folks that I've worked with or organizations—is really to translate ‘who?’ to ‘what?’
Oftentimes we get very stuck on ‘men and women’ and having particular understandings of what each one of those groups experiences or needs or whatnot. And if people or organizations are able to translate what it is they're exactly wanting to get at, they're much better at communicating specifically to that group and also perhaps expanding it a bit more so that it's not just say, one group or another.
So an example of that, maybe there's a healthcare messaging, right? Breast care screening for cancer. And so typically that's worded in ways that reference only women, which is not always the case, of course, that's primarily the messaging that it's for, but of course there are folks who are not women who also have breasts that also need screening, right?
And so thinking about how to shift the ‘who’—which is about gender, women in this case—to ‘what’—people who have breasts of this age or whatnot, right? So it's thinking through that and targeting that more specifically, which actually takes a few extra steps, but is much more valuable and targeted, which is I think what communicators are all about and are well in the practice of.
But it's just thinking that in a bit more of an expansive way when it comes to gender.
Sharon Nyangweso
I love that also because I tend to have a lot of trouble with this question of language, both internally and, and working with clients or prospective clients. You know, folks who, to us, and they basically want us to maybe have a session or I don’t know, write them a notebook with like, all of them—
Kai Scott
Totally.
Megana Ramaswami
Like a dictionary of language?
Sharon Nyangweso
Yeah! And I, I get it. I get it. It comes from a place of like, we don't wanna slip up. I often have to, you know, let them know that, A, like language, not even just language inclusive, like language in general changes so rapidly and so often that we can't say this is the word, and then you just, you're good to go forever and ever.
But also if you get so caught up in that language, I think there's a thread between folks not wanting to move forward because they're afraid of being wrong and they lean really heavily into that. I don't want to say the wrong thing. And so language becomes this limiting question, and I often want to say like, okay, come into this work knowing you will say something wrong.
I will say something, we will all do the wrong thing, whatever that means. But this is just to say I love that positioning of “from the who to the what”. It's like almost like a perfect little cheat sheet because it doesn't require you to be like, to have a PhD in all of the different, you know, identity and all the languages of an identity.
Because even within communities, like, there are riffs in language, you know, we bring up things like person first versus identity first language with disability. It’s not all agreed upon. But if you're sitting there and thinking, what am I trying to communicate? Then that that changes everything.
Megana Ramaswami
I really appreciate that.
And in terms of thinking about how to apply properly, this idea of process, of systems, of thinking perhaps broader about what we're trying to communicate versus specific groups that we're trying to communicate to.
I'm wondering if we can maybe apply that on a practical level with the next question. Which is that often in our work, we encounter organizations that even in the justice and human rights space they are also, we are all capable of discrimination, harm against other peoples. Given that this is a space that many of us work within, would you have strategies or maybe advice for some of us as service providers in terms of how we navigate this type of lateral harm when we see it, when we encounter it?
Kai Scott
This is something that happened to me earlier this year, right? So it's actually fresh in my experience and, uh, it brought a lot of deep learning to me, uh, in terms of how I approach things. And now that I've been both on, on both sides of that equation, if you will, uh, I have realized that that is a tremendous gift when somebody comes forward and says something that I have done to hurt them in some way or another.
So for me, it's always being open to receiving that and being receptive. And not just receptive, I, when that, that experience happened to me, uh, at first I wanted to crumble. I, I wanted to like cave in and be like, I shouldn't do this work. You know? I, I went to like a, a dark place and then I realized, wait a second.
That's not what that other person needs. They need a solid person right now. Because I thought all the times that I shared with others, “hey. When you do that and say this, this is why it negatively impacts me”. And so I realized, okay, I need to be solid in this moment and crumbling doesn't help anybody. And so really just pulling it together and being present to that moment and continuously checking in afterwards as well.
Just not assuming that one and done, and, and I've learned this from the Indigenous people that are in my lives, that it's about relationship, it's about connection. It's about staying with one another. That saying something is actually a commitment to that relationship and a true honor. And I try to share that with others.
To see if that is something they wanna incorporate into their practice and whatnot. So, you know, this applies both on a personal level as well as a professional level. But I'm not exempt from that just because I am educating and, and trying to bring this into organizations.
Sharon Nyangweso
I am not exempt. That's, that's a really good way of, um, entering like any space.
Kai Scott
Mm-hmm.
Sharon Nyangweso
The thing that I'm adamant about is come to terms with the fact that harm will happen. It's okay to work, to do everything in your power to mitigate it, but understand that because individuals are individuals and you do not know the state or the frame of mind or the socializing or the everything, the histories that people are walking into every, any given space with you just have to assume that harm will be done.
And then once you have that, understanding, acknowledgement. You then have a responsibility to set up the systems to ensure that you have a way of giving people the space to have the autonomy to decide, what am I going to do that this has happened to me? What are the avenues I have to, you know, resolve it, respond to it, or even just get care, the care that I need?
What kind of autonomy do I have in order to communicate what justice looks like for me? And then what does accountability look like for a person in that scenario? And those are, those are systems that you have to build out and really clearly communicate. And so it's thinking through A, giving the person who has experienced harm, the autonomy, and creating actual systems and structures to give that person the autonomy to say, what is it I need in this moment?
A, in terms of care, but B, in terms of, you know, maybe I just don't want to work around that person, or perhaps I just want to have a conversation with this person and explain to them, or I want them to be able to seek out really specific types of, of, um, knowledge. You know, whatever that looks like. But it also means that when you are looking at this at a systems level, you are not depending on everyone to have the tools and the knowledge to go about this in a way that is not gonna be, um, detrimental to everyone's wellbeing and care.
Darnell Dobson
The following isn't a paid advertisement, it's just us here at Emdash shouting out some good people who are doing important work. You should check them out.
This episode is dedicated to the Canadian Center for Gender and Sexual Diversity. The center offers programs focused on topics such as trans rights, allyship, and anti-discrimination. They're working to ensure gender and sexually diverse communities are empowered through education, research, and advocacy.
Check them out. We'll link to their site in the show notes.
Megana Ramaswami
We've talked about deep listening, we've talked about engaging experts to ensure that we're thinking about these processes in terms of systems, about about the what instead of the who, and what I guess I wanna know is: many of the tools and resources that, you know, either we as individuals or as organizations use, they're always gonna be limited by our own understanding of the gaps that exist.
You've kind of already touched on this, but I know there's tons of knowledge here, so if you could give us your wisdom on what are some approaches that you'd recommend to try to overcome these gaps?
Kai Scott
There's listening at different levels. So there's the interpersonal listening that we've been talking about, but to Sharon's point about the systems, that's at a collective level, and that's where getting people's voices around the table, even if it's anonymously through a survey, is really key.
So I, I strongly recommend for each topic or each group to explore that. And what I typically do that might be a little bit different from others is that we work on gender diversity issues and we actually get both trans, non-binary, two-spirit folks to talk about their experiences, but also weigh in on some of the early ideas for solutions and, you know, share more ideas that they might have or, or come across.
So, getting them involved in the process, but also to Sharon's point that there's not a lot of reporting pathways, and so sometimes surveys is the first time they've ever talked about the challenges they've faced. And really kind of diving into that from a variety of different perspectives.
But we also actually engage folks who are not trans. Two-spirit and non-binary. So we wanna hear from them to see where are you at, what's your level of knowledge? Do you have a pronoun practice? And it's really interesting to see where people are at with that. Not to say that there's one way to do this, but just to see, just checking in.
And of course, pronouns is not the only thing, but uh, certainly an important part. And getting to know, do you know somebody who's transgender, two-spirit, or non-binary? Because then we actually do some data analysis and see there's actually, I mean no surprise here, a really close link to their level of comfort, knowledge, and capacity to respond and be engaged in a deeper journey around this.
And sometimes actually people who aren't trans are giving some really interesting, creative ideas for ways forward as well. So just making sure that we don't lose that wealth of information from a variety of different perspectives. And it also allows organizations to see where there's resistance, and that's actually really, really useful.
What kind of resistance do they have? Why? What's propelling this? How are they talking about it? And that gives you so much insight to be able to have developed communications that really help them hopefully come along or to, to give them some, you know, kind of framework to be in the mix. So surveys is a huge tool in this journey, at least in my mind.
Sharon Nyangweso
I'm a big believer in that, like, identity's not a prerequisite for this work in that it shouldn't stop you because I, I've heard people say, “I'll never understand cause I'm not this”. And it's like, yes, and you can still dive into research, you can dive into, you know, whatever knowledge is available. Which I think leads me to what I will say here, which is I cannot stress enough how important it is.
To be clear about what it is you're trying to solve for. We often say diversity, equity, inclusion as if diversity, equity, inclusion is the problem without getting really specific. Like are you talking about pay discrepancies? Are you talking about accessibility? What are we talking about specifically?
And when you start getting really narrow in your focus, in many, many different ways. You can also get really focused in your solutions rather than blanket captures. And again, it allows people to be a lot more creative, whatever their identity is. Because the first thing we are trying to solve for the fact that, you know, someone who is hearing impaired or deaf cannot access our material, then it's not, it becomes a question of how can we solve for that?
And you do not necessarily need to have that lived experience in order to start getting creative about how to solve for that. And so I think it gives everyone a lot of opportunity to, to get creative, to get specific and to deep dive into the information they need to make good decisions and to test and to iterate and to measure it all.
So that's one thing. The other thing I would say, this is not necessarily a tool, but a little bit of steering away, not steering away… [inaudible] let's call it. That diversity or diversification is not a silver bullet, right? Again, it's that conflating of identity with expertise, and so this idea that you just have to fill people up.
We call that aesthetic diversity at Quick Lab. This idea that the most important thing is how diverse you look and not thinking like, “Hey, what are you bringing people into?” And just because you brought it doesn't mean they like can magically fix the equity challenges you're having. If anything, they're just gonna be forced to, to navigate them without a ton of support.
And lastly, this is not so much in conflict with what you had said, Kai, but just in being very vulnerable about the fact that I struggle so deeply with the idea of, um, knowledge building in the workplace, or rather not knowledge building, but that that idea of filling those knowledge gaps or getting everyone in the same place in the workplace.
For a number of reasons. I think the, the first of which is workplaces are not always the best environment for that to happen. Like workplaces, they're not, they're not a neutral place like, you know, harm can happen there, are all of these things can happen and, and the same systems of repression that exist outside of work will exist within work, so it, it doesn't exist within a vacuum.
And also with that, one of the reasons that I also struggle with the idea of, you know, slowly doing the work of bringing everyone's knowledge to the same place. Well, two things. The first one is very simple, is that I, I have been in workplaces as an employee and I have also worked with workplaces where there are folks who are not there, not out of just not having the information, but because they, they really do have strong feelings.
They are openly transphobic. They are like, they're like, this is the thing I believe, and it is not a matter of me not having enough information. It's just this is the thing that I have chosen to believe and to sit behind.
And then on a, on a sort of different level, it's that I struggle with the idea of giving resources to educate and to work with the folks who are least affected by questions of inequity in a workplace because we also know that workplaces have, you know, just it's the reality, have limited resources often, especially, you know, whether that's nonprofits, you know, smaller teams. And then the resources that they have to this work is even more limited, and so we're saying there's somewhere this money, this time, this labor has to go and it's like we're gonna spend the next X amount of time educating and educating only.
That is going to be really valuable for the most privileged, but not so much for the folks who are experiencing harm. And moreover, those people who are experiencing harm, those people who live on the margins of society have more than likely been told to wait for decades. And this just becomes another reason to wait because like Bill doesn't understand feminism or race relations or gender expression.
And so as you are thinking about it, take a good amount of time, look at it in a really, like focused and systematic way. Think about, okay, if we're talking about educating, if we're talking about filling knowledge gaps, where is this going to happen? How is it going to happen specifically in really long-term ways?
And how much of our resources are being poured into that specifically, and who is it in service of?
Kai Scott
There was a—one time, where in our, in kind of the early days of TransFocus, you know, getting repeat calls for the basics of gender diversity, there was a moment of frustration where I just, I didn't do them for a while, and it's not to say that we don't need to understand terms and concepts and how to respectfully interact with one another.
I think those are really important. I very much underscore your point. It definitely does not help the most marginalized in those organizations. I mean that, that really hit me about the waiting, yet again, waiting piece. And that's where frustrations can really mount. And those frustrations are either come out and people are very strongly saying something because they just, they've capped out on being quiet and silent.
Or they leave. And actually it's probably more likely the leaving piece, right? So people are bleeding folks of high talent that are part of equity deserving groups sometimes without knowing, or perhaps they're like, “Ooh, we kind of see it, but I don't know how to handle it”, type of thing.
Sharon Nyangweso
There was a, a tweet I saw a few days ago that, like, made me cackle, but also like, you know, when you're, like, laughing, but also crying.
It was like, “Honey, what's wrong? You haven't touched your DEI, um, your DEI promises”. Cause we heard so much in 2020 and 2021. Like, we people come and say, oh, well first before we do anything, we need to all make sure we're in the same place. It's like, yes and that is an unreasonable baseline to start from. Not everyone will know the things.
Not everyone will have the information. Not everyone will be on board. You gotta think about this like a moving train, regardless of, you know, who wants to be on it, who knows how the engine works. Like it just, it has to keep moving. Because a lot of us are tired of waiting.
Megana Ramaswami
I love that, especially that last bit just because for a wrap up question, I wanted to ask something sassier, maybe a little bit more about your own personal feelings as experts and practitioners in what you do.
Um, but it is actually very much based on what you just said Sharon, which is that obviously we all were very much aware that there was what many people called a cultural reckoning in 2020 people want to be better, so to speak. And since then, I mean, we've seen a lot of jargon, a lot of empty promises, a lot of what we would maybe call aesthetic diversity or aesthetic DEI, I suppose.
So for each of you, for yourselves: what are the questions that you wish people would stop asking or if we wanna give it a positive spin? What are the answers that you wish are universally understood?
Kai Scott
I welcome a question, so I know there are ones that come up frequently and I, I think a lot of it is around how can we do this quickly?
Which I do think is related to budgets. I don't think it's malicious. To some, to most degrees it's just about the reality of budgets and so how can we pump in as much, uh, in as little time. Another one, it's a bit of an undercurrent is, uh, and typically it's, it's somebody coming to me who does wanna champion this work but is trying to convince others that perhaps are not on board.
And those people, their kind of limiting belief is that this is for so few people. If you think about the census data we have on trans and non-binary folks, hooray. Uh, as a social scientist, I'm very excited by this, but you know, it's less than 1% of the population. I think it's more, but we could talk about that as a separate podcast.
But, in any case, it's 1% of the population. And so some people will say, well, is this a good use of our dollars for such a small set of the population? Now that's a very utilitarian way of looking at things. And of course we can work on them on, on how to bring those folks along. Long, but typically that's a question that perhaps it's not asked directly, but indirectly that I'm having to bring people to share strategies and ways for folks to think beyond just one group.
That it's actually very similar to people with disability that if you make accommodations, or not even accommodations, but design, create universal design, it actually helps a whole host of other folks, surprise! And not that it needs to, in order for it to be that, right? I also wanna be very careful not to fall into that utilitarian way of responding.
So it's not even that I necessarily fault folks for it. But it's more that I, if we're having to convince people, we're not even at the starting blocks of where we need to go. So there's probably some other work that needs to be done, but it's not gonna be education. It's not gonna be the systems changes, and in fact, that'll be too deep of an anchor to be able to pull forward.
Sharon Nyangweso
Hard agree. If I have to like whip out the “McKinsey says 20% of innovation…” then like, we're gone. We're just wrap it up. Wrap it up. I can't, I can't. I think, you know, I'm gonna, I'm gonna hop onto what you had said there, but more on an individual level. So we also get an individual in an organization who's coming to us and what they're essentially looking for is help making that case to the people who make decisions in their organization.
I have been on some devastating calls that are meant to be, you know, I think I'm walking into a sales call and people have cried on these calls being like, “I'm doing everything. I don't—it's so bad here. What do I do?”
And I would just genuinely say that there reaches a point when it comes to organizational equity work where you have to ask yourself, especially, especially if you are someone who is being called stern because of your identity in this space, you have to ask yourself, is my peace and wellbeing worth doing this work for this organization? And that answer might look like, you know what? I'm just gonna keep my head down and do this job.
There's a term I love so much, I, I can't say who said it, but it's, I'm not going to set myself on fire to keep you warm. So there's having to make that call, like, perhaps this is not the place for me if you are actively being disenfranchised or facing harm. The other thing is more specifically for comms people, for comms practitioners, you know, sit down.
It's me, your sister, your good sis. Like, I've been there. I've, I've worked in comms. Have a seat. Let me talk to you for a second. Equity work is not a branding exercise or a peer exercise. It's, I know it's hard to hear, but I know it's not what you think you're doing, but I have seen over the last few years an influx of communications agencies who are getting requests to do equity work and are taking on that work.
And that's not to say you are incapable of it, but because of where your expertise lies what starts to happen is you take on your clients to, let's say, review a DEI statement. That is wordsmithing, that is not equity and justice. For instance, when people come to us and say, can you review our DEI statement? We say, well, first we're gonna ask you to prove everything on this statement before we even talk about what it sounds like, right?
And so branding and PR are not the same as equity work, and that again falls into that place of being intensely obsessed with all of the language all of the time. If that's where your mind is, you are, as you know was so beautifully said by Kai before, like you're just sort of going through the process without really understanding the why or the what, the who or the where, right?
So, okay.
I've said it.
Unclench, you're okay.
You're still good at your job.
Hear me out.
Megana Ramaswami
Oh my God, no, I love it. That's the kind of thing that, um, that folks in our industry, many of us need told to us. Every once in a while. It's a, it's a good thing. It's a good thing.
Look, I just wanna thank you guys so much for this. It's been such a phenomenal round of wisdom and, and expertise to listen to, but it's, it's just been a really fun conversation.
If there's anything either of you would like to say that you haven't had a chance to, to say, yeah, the floor is yours. If there's anything you wanna wrap up with or state for the record.
Sharon Nyangweso
Work with us.
Kai Scott
Yeah, and also I would say encouragement too, right? I mean, it's been a lot of moments of tough love and insightful moments that perhaps have shifted the frame or expanded in ways that might feel kind of like, whoa.
So if you find yourself in that kind of moment where you're just like, holy smokes, there's so much to do, so much to consider. Breath is your friend. There's the next moment after that. There's tons of people, Sharon, myself, tons of other people as well, right? Or organizations with that expertise that can then can help you along the way, that you're not alone.
I always think we can do it together and it's gonna be fabulous, but of course that, that's just kind of my personality shining through a bit too. But I have tremendous amount of hope, even while things are very grim. And I, I will underscore that many times for all the groups, #AllTheGroups. I just, uh, invite you along to either continue if you already have started or to begin.
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Caitlin Kealey
Well, that's it for this week's episode of Ampersand. Thanks for joining us. For more comms and design tips, sign up for our newsletter at emdashagency.ca and follow us on your favorite podcasting app so that you don't miss our next episode.
Ampersand is hosted by Megana Ramaswami and me, Caitlin Kealey. And it's produced by Elio Peterson. This podcast is a project of Emdash, the small agency focused on big impact helping progressives be heard. We recorded our series with Pop Up Podcasting, and our theme music is Courtesy of Wintersleep. I'm Caitlin Kealey, the CEO of Emdash.
Thanks for listening.
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