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>> It was past midnight, but I was ready.
The next day, I meet with the CEO and
other senior leaders of my global consulting firm.
I talked about the work we were doing as employee resource groups and our progress,
and diversity, and inclusion.
For the past two years, I had been leading our LGBTQ and
ally employee resource group and we were doing great things.
We had expanded to over 25 offices globally.
We were increasing awareness and support across geographies.
These are just a few of the wins that I was really excited to
talk about the next day.
Earlier, I had rehearsed with the head of our diversity and inclusion team.
She was thrilled by the presentation.
There was just one last thing that I had to do.
She asked me if I was going to wear my nail polish to the meeting.
Now, I didn't think much of it in the moment.
I would often take off my nail polish to meet with clients.
But that night, it felt different.
I couldn't help, but
feel as I went finger by finger that I was removing a part of myself.
Now, I get that nail polish seems like something trivial.
But to me, it is so tied to my identity.
It's like my cross or my hijab in that I wear it as
a symbol to world about my queerness and
I wear it as a symbol to myself about who I am, and my journey.
I wear it like armor to feel confident and
to overcome the insecurity that I have felt for so many years.
So that night, I had an uh-huh moment.
I thought maybe I've slipped through a crack in our DNI.
Tonight, I'm going to talk about the work being done in diversity and inclusion.
I'm going to talk about what's going well and how it can be improved.
In doing so, I'm going to emphasize the importance of thinking
more about individuality in our work in DNI as practitioners,
business leaders and people.
So for those of you who aren't quite sure what DNI is, diversity and inclusion.
It's a firm's formal set of activities to create a workplace where
people of all backgrounds feel welcomed and valued.
It includes things like non-bias trainings, mentorship programs and
recruitment initiatives.
When it's done well, it can have business impacts.
In fact, in a recent survey, 85% of CEOs said that DNI
programs were improving their bottom lines.
They talked about things like greater innovation,
access to new markets and retaining talent better.
So it's clear that DNI can improve business performance,
but DNI is not just about bottom lines.
When DNI has done well, it can have big impacts on individuals.
That means all of us.
Even with my story about nail polish,
I would still argue that DNI is still essential.
As a queer person, I have a long complicated relationship with my identity.
So when I'm in a workplace where I feel included,
I don't have to stress about fitting it or if I'm being judged.
I can put all of my brain power into my work.
I deliver better results and I feel motivated to do so.
Now I assume others in the audience tonight have had
similar experiences about DNI and feeling included,
and that underscores the value of DNI for all of us.
So now that we've talked a little bit about why DNI is important,
I wanted to think about the ways that are current approaches may
actually be holding us back.
But traditionally, DNI is organized around categorical groups.
Think women, veterans, people of color.
This is great and it does bring a lot of value to firms, but it's not perfect.
I'll focus on two limitations in particular.
The first is how we think about the diversity within categories and
the second is how we handle intersectionality,
which is the interplay across our different identities.
So for this first idea of the diversity within categories,
let's go back to my original story.
It's true that we were having a lot of success for the LGBTQ community.
But as I realized firsthand, it wasn't success for everyone in that community.
More specifically, we weren't doing enough for trans and queer people like myself.
See, there was a problem with working with the group.
We weren't seeing who wasn't at the table and
we were getting a false positive on our success.
So as companies work on DNI, they need to look critically at
the composition of their diverse communities.
Ask in my company, does LGBTQ actually include L, G, B, T and Q?
In any company, is every woman white or is every black employee a man?
We need to take these into consideration to advance our DNI.
So having talked about this first limitation around the diversity within
categories, let's think about the second limitation around intersexuality.
Again, this is the interplay across our different identities.
And for this, I'm going to talk about the experience of my friend Erica,
a black woman.
Again, traditional DNI would organize programs around categorical groups and
there would be programs for black employees and
others for women and Erica would opt in to both.
But in her words, she wouldn't really be there as her full self.
She'd be black Erica had a lunch.
And later that day, woman Erica had a dinner.
It sounds strange, right?
Now we're all different, but we're all similar in that we are all complex.
We're all a combination of identities.
Some visible, most invisible.
And so we can all have this experience where it's hard to be present
as our full selves when we're only being viewed as categories.
So when working in DNI, we need to make sure we're designing it for whole people.
So having talked about these two limitations, the first,
the diversity within categories.
And the second, intersectionality.
But think of what we can do to get beyond them.
I would suggest that working more around this idea of individuality is a start and
what might that look like?
Well, it could take the shape of storytelling.
Think of the impact of Erica's and my stories tonight.
Think of the impact they and others could have in sparking discussions, and
shaping workplace culture.
It could take the shape of events that celebrate intersectionality and
all of our identities, visible and invisible.
Taken together,
these kinds of programs help us overcome the current limitation of our work.
We can see and support new pools of talent.
We can let people show up and
participate as their whole selves, and not just their parts.
Each of these incremental gains improves inclusively,
which would attract new forms of diversity which should lead to even better outcomes.
When I reflect on my experience,
I probably wouldn’t have joined my firm if it didn’t have DNI.
I probably would have opted out of consulting and business altogether.
For me, it would have been easier not to exist in those
worlds than to feel unwelcome or excluded, but what if I did?
What value would have been lost to my company, my clients and myself?
DNI gave me a reason to opt-in.
And while it's not perfect, it certainly part of the reason why I'm here now.
So in preparing for this moment,
I had to ask myself, should I take off my nail polish?
I can still be insecure in a lot of settings,
especially ones like this, but I'm proud to stand up here tonight.
Armor on and ready to go to battle for
a greater focus on individuality in our work in DNI,
because diversity and inclusion is business smart.
But designing it for individuals,
that's what makes it human.
Thank you.
>> [APPLAUSE]
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