Join us each week for deep, real conversations about how we can all lead the change in our workplaces and communities. In intimate conversations with advocates, activists, and allies, host Melinda Briana Epler provides a safe space to learn, build empathy for each other, and understand tangible actions we can all take to create diverse, equitable, and inclusive workplaces. To apply to be a guest on the Leading With Empathy & Allyship Show, complete this form.
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Moving Beyond Diversity
Rohit Bhargava, Founder of Non-Obvious Company
Jennifer Brown, Founder & CEO of Jennifer Brown Consulting
“I love this word, ‘beyond’, because really what it says to me is that we’re thinking about what’s next. And Beyond Diversity was specifically a book about going beyond the conversation… and to talk about real action. And not just real action for society or civilization but real action for you, for me, for us. What can each of us do to create a more inclusive world, and then how can we collectively impact the organizations that we’re part of whether it’s where we work or the clubs and groups that we are part of to enable that to happen for them as well.”
How Pandemic Trauma Is Showing Up At Work
Sara Wachter-Boettcher, Founder of Active Voice
“When people feel really powerless and go through traumatic experiences, like a pandemic, that breaks your idea of how the world works. It is very natural and normal to look for things that you can control… For a lot of leaders, I found that it’s really helpful to look at what their relationship is to control right now.”
Embracing Anger As A Pathway To Empathy… And Resilience
Meag-gan O’Reilly, CEO & Co-Founder of Inherent Value Psychology INC
“When you’re angry about something, it’s teaching you about your interaction with yourself in the environment. And if we have been taught to suppress that, it’s really interesting that then we don’t have the data from our anger necessary to inform some type of change.“
Creating Transformative Change Through Research
Leila McKenzie-Delis, Founder and CEO of DIAL Global, Author, Activist, Speaker, Podcast Host
“Whilst I do believe diversity and inclusion objectives can be very successful from grassroots up— and that is important at every single layer— we know that diversity initiatives are expedited much faster and more efficiently if they do start at the top and there is full buy-in across the C-suite.”
Addressing Burnout In The Workplace
Erayna Sargent, Founder and H.A.B.C. (Head anti-burnout champion) at Hooky Wellness
Anthony Ware, Principal at AWare Catalysts
Al Dea, Founder of Betterwork Labs
“If I asked for things, for solutions, or for help, then [an ally would] chime up. But they wouldn’t be there to fix me because I wasn’t broken. It’s the human thing, take out all the PR, take out all the constraints, just as an ally, show up human to human.”
How Women Network
J. Kelly Hoey, Author of Build Your Dream Network
“It actually takes much more effort— and we should be putting much more effort— into understanding other people and how we can be of service and connect with them because then we’ll build better relationships, have better connections, and have the strong network that we need for our lives and careers.”
Demystifying Disability
Emily Ladau, Disability Rights Activist, Author, and Communications Consultant at Words I Wheel By
“In order to acknowledge that there’s so much diversity under one umbrella, we have to recognize that disability cuts across all identities…. the reality is we all want different things but what unites us if anything is the common goal of fighting for access, inclusion, justice, and rights.”
Rebuilding Equitable Structures In The Workplace
Ulysses Smith, Head of Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging at Blend
“It’s what you are doing to build that culture of accountability within your executive team because our work— the success of DEI work— hinges on accountability, having the right accountability mechanisms in an organization.”
What Allyship Looks & Feels Like
Ritu Bhasin, Speaker, Author, & Consultant at bhasin consulting inc.
Wayne Sutton, Founder at Icon Project, Co-Founder & CTO at Change Catalyst
Rachel Williams, Head of Equity, Inclusion & Diversity at X- the moonshot factory
Tiffany Yu, CEO & Founder at Diversability
“Moments of allyship stand out for me, but also what continues to stand out are the moments where I needed an ally and I didn’t have one. Those moments haunt me. I am able to use those moments to exercise empathy for others, to understand how I can help other people feel safe and at ease.”
Mental Health & The Icon Ride Across The Country
Wayne Sutton, Founder at Icon Project, Co-Founder & CTO at Change Catalyst
“I think all those things are what it takes to remove the stigma in the Black community – and all communities – around mental health. We have to make it more of a thing that’s cool, and we have to make it like where it is OK to ask and take your time and continue to provide resources.”
The Power Of Storytelling To Create Change
Cynthia Overton, Senior Director of Tech Workplace Initiatives at Kapor Center
“Stories have the power to persuade and change. It’s easy for people to be presented with important statistics. But – in the absence of context, and the absence of a story – statistics are easy to forget. When you tell stories, stories bring situations, problems, challenges, victories, all of that to life.”
Behind The Scenes With Melinda Briana Epler
Ritu Bhasin, Speaker, Author & Consultant at bhasin consulting inc.
Melinda Briana Epler, Founder & CEO at Change Catalyst
“One or two people in a company doing diversity, equity, and inclusion work cannot change it. It takes a critical mass of people working together. We are part of our company cultures, and if we don’t change ourselves, individually, and how we interact with each other, it’s really fundamentally not going to change very much. I realized pretty early on in the diversity, equity, and inclusion work that it is essential to have allies throughout our workplaces to really create that change and create that transformation.”
What The Research Says: Change Catalyst’s State Of Allyship Report
Melinda Briana Epler, Renzo Santos, & Merve Bulgurcu of Change Catalyst
“Our research confirms that allies make a big difference. 92% of people surveyed feel allies have been valuable, and the more allies people have, the more they find allyship valuable. The majority of people – 68% of them – have at least two allies at work. However, 20% have just one ally, and 12% have no allies at all.”
Recognizing & Overcoming Microaggressions – Part 2
Melinda Briana Epler, Founder & CEO of Change Catalyst
“Unintentional harm is still harm. The impact is the key. Microaggressions are experienced and felt regardless of your intent. We must move from unintentional harm to intentional allyship.”
Recognizing & Overcoming Microaggressions – Part 1
Melinda Briana Epler, Founder & CEO of Change Catalyst
“Similar to biases, the key with microaggressions is to develop our empathy skills and to become more intentional so we recognize microaggressions forming and we stop them before they come out.”
Understanding & Correcting Our Biases
Melinda Briana Epler, Founder & CEO of Change Catalyst
“Biases are mental patterns. They are shortcuts that influence our perception about something, someone or a situation. We learn them from our families, from our friends, teachers, media, culture; and we might not be aware of them. They can perpetuate all the things we just talked about: oppression, inequity, and marginalization.”
Why Empathy & Allyship Matter In The Workplace
Melinda Briana Epler, Founder & CEO of Change Catalyst
“Allyship requires self-awareness. Self-awareness of your own presence and perspective, your biases, microaggressions, as well as curiosity, and openness to somebody else’s perspective. Really seeing them, appreciating them for their uniqueness. And having the courage to respond and show your empathy for them and their experience and to really take action.”
How To Be An Ally In The Remote Workplace
Melinda Briana Epler, Founder & CEO of Change Catalyst
“Empathy is different from pity or sympathy. It is really building a relationship. We learn what somebody is experiencing and access our own feelings to connect with them and act in solidarity. It is a muscle and you have to practice it. It can be learned…. Practice building that muscle.”
Why Mentorship & Advocacy Are Key To Career Growth
Sam Sepah, Artificial Intelligence (AI) / Research Product Manager at Google
“Sometimes when you have your ally and they have enough distance from it, they can point you toward the right support you need, the right network, the right way to get what you need because they have played this playbook before. They have seen this movie before. They are able to point you in the right direction and help you chase your dreams.”
Shifting Our Work From Diversity To Equitable Design
Aubrey Blanche, The Mathpath (Math Nerd + Empath), Director of Equitable Design & Impact at Culture Amp
“The first step of equitable design is about asking the question, ‘does this action, does this process, or does this situation create greater equality or equal power or opportunity?’ Just starting with that question – no matter what you are doing, whether you are organizing a career coaching session with a college student to designing a talent review process to building a special event, for example. I think you can ask that question first. And then I use a set of design principles to help me think about it…. ‘how can I or does this create equal power or opportunity?’ and then ‘how do I work from there?’”
How To Address Ageism In The Workplace
Jeff Tidwell, CEO and Co-Founder at Next For Me
“Being vulnerable is hard and that’s why you want allies in the relationships you are developing over time. If you do want to break down about this and, you know, the impact it is having on your family and your mental health and all of that, who can you go talk to about that? If you set-up the network in a healthy way, those people will be waiting for you, and you can do the same for them.”
An Allyship Journey As A Straight, White Man
Jeremy Sussman, Senior Product Manager at Google
“If you are really sorry, it requires more than saying the words ‘I am sorry.…’ It is really about the other person. It is really not about you. Allyship has to be about the other person. You have to be in a place where your desires come down to helping the other person, and it is not about you. If you can’t get there, you are really not being an ally.”
Centering BIPOC Voices In Business & Social Justice
Two Eagles Marcus, Founder of MPWRDX
“If you have people of color in our organization, you know, make sure they know the path to move up the ranks and move them up the ranks. Clear the pathway. If somebody isn’t moving up the ranks, why aren’t they moving up the ranks? Is it because they don’t have a Master’s Degree or additional education? OK. Invest in that education.”
Influencing Your Company To Address Racism
TDo, Senior Solutions Engineer at Gladly
“Expanding the work of anti-racism is the thing that shifts the needle and has the impact around what we are all trying to do when we talk about diversity and inclusion. Understanding these are the systems we exist in, and we need to collectively counteract these behaviors – but it literally requires everyone to do it. I talk a lot about Asana, and a “team of everyone” approach. This D&I work is not work that can be done by one person. Everyone needs to understand it and everyone has a role to play so it can have impact.”
Expanding Anti-Racist Allyship
Sonja Gittens Ottley, Head of Diversity & Inclusion at Asana
“And I think particularly for professionals in this space, you have to approach it in a way that allows you both to prioritize – or to center the groups that are under most harm at a particular moment – but also with the lens of centering, as well as, how can I expand this, or even scale it, if we want to use a business-y term? How can we scale it and take action in support of a particular group that will allow you to impact other groups?”
Designing For Intersectional Inclusion
Frieda McAlear, Senior Research Associate at the Kapor Center
“There’s 574+ federally recognized tribes in the US. Like I said, we are less than 2% of the population. Each of those tribes having their own populations, their own language, history, cultures, cosmologies, and governance, we knew we would have to tailor curriculum to that context and tribes and partner communities. We needed to adapt the curriculum to include goals for sovereignty and the maturation of land in order to make it significant to our children…. That’s what culturally relevant means.”
It’s OK To Make Mistakes As An Ally
Manisha Amin, CEO at Centre for Inclusive Design
“I think cancel culture fits into the notion we have to be perfect and right all of the time. The right comes from whoever has got that righteous anger. There is somebody on the other side who then feels shame and anger, who then becomes righteous in their anger – and the more we do that, the more we push each other away and teach each other we are different and not the same. The more different we are, the less likely we are to come together.”
Engaging Leadership To Improve Diversity, Equity & Inclusion
Sheree Atcheson, Author of Demanding More
“One thing that I think is super important in the first instance of bringing anybody on this journey, is understanding the perspectives of why they have the viewpoint they have at the moment. While I may disagree with people and their viewpoints, if I don’t understand it, I can’t truly bring that people along, because I am not tailoring my communication or the initiatives or the strategy or the education that that person needs to bring them on a journey. People are not a monolith.”
How We Can Collectively Address Anti-Asian Hate
Tammy Cho, Co-Founder & CEO of Hate Is A Virus and BetterBrave
“You know, as much as racism is not new, I also do want to highlight that activism is not necessarily new. There has been such an incredible history of solidarity among communities of color as well. And unfortunately, part of it is just that it is not covered in our history books and there is not as much dialogue or amplification of those moments.”
Understanding Privilege & Using It To Create Change
Karen Catlin, CEO of Karen Catlin Consulting and author of Better Allies
“When we understand our privilege, it allows us to be empathetic, which is a part of allyship… and then to take action in support of people who don’t have all of the privileges we have. That’s really why it is so important to understand this. Step one in the allyship journey is to understand the privilege.”
Bridging Racial Divides Through Radical Empathy
Terri Givens, CEO & Founder of Brighter Higher Ed
“You have to understand yourself before you can have empathy for others…. I am trying to model vulnerability because when we’re vulnerable, it is so much more impactful and it also helps build trust.”
Raising Our Children To Be Allies And Advocates For Social Justice
Margenett Moore-Roberts, Chief Inclusion & Diversity Officer of IPG – DXTRA
“Children don’t process differences as a deficiency. How did we arrive at the conclusion that if you are different, if you are not white specifically, somehow you are deficient? Just because it is different doesn’t mean it is a deficiency.”
How To Advance Pay Equity & Reduce The Pay Gap
Sharawn Connors, VP of Diversity Equality & Inclusion at Micron Technology
“When we look at the pay gap, we know that a lot of time the majority group is paid more because of the positions that they are in. They are more likely to be VP and higher and even manager. Our broken rung starts to happen at the manager level. How do we impact that? One way is through hiring but another way is through growing and retaining the talent we have and paying people fairly helps us to do that.”
What Allies Can Do During Black History Month
Rachel Williams, Head of Equity, Inclusion & Diversity at X- the moonshot factory
Lionel Lee, Head of Diversity Engagement at Zillow Group
Almaz Negash, Founder & Executive Director at the African Diaspora Network
“People talk about us without us. We need to be at the table. When people talk about our future, we must be at the table… Where are they talking about the continent, when I am from the continent, and I’m not even at the table?” – Almaz Negaz
How To Use Empathy To Create Change In The Workplace
Kate Johnson, President at Microsoft US
“Empathy is a superpower. And it’s the common denominator for leaders and individual contributors in a successful organization and one that’s high-performing.”
Want To Be Inclusive? Support Women Of Color As Leaders In The Workplace
Deepa Purushothaman & Rha Goddess, Co-Founders at nFORMATION
“We need companies to do what they’re saying they want to do but show up in a totally different way.” Deepa Purushothaman
How To Create A Culture Of Belonging At Work: Put People At The Center
Kat Gordon, CEO and Founder of the 3%
“I think so much of belonging is about having the courage to ask and engage your employees in ongoing conversation about what’s working for them, what’s making them anxious, what do they need.”
Empathic Leadership & Emotional Tax In The Workplace
Andrea G. Tatum Senior Director, Corporate Equity Engagement at Catalyst Inc
“What really makes emotional tax so unique is that it’s not limited to just the workplace. As people of color, this is our experience day in and day out. Everywhere we go, we don’t have the luxury of being able to put aside our skin and say, well, today, I’m not a woman of color. I’m not a Black woman.”
How To Make Disability Accommodation & Inclusion The New Working Norm
Victor Calise, Commissioner of the New York City Mayor’s Office for People with Disabilities
“The reality is that people with disabilities aren’t really disabled. It is our environments that disable us. If we can fix those environments so we can live our lives there is no such thing as disability.”
Exploring What It Means To Be An Upstander
Daralyse Lyons, Creator of Demystifying Diversity Podcast
“The bystanders are actually the ones who tend to make up the majority of the social collective and who tend to be the ones who have the ability to, if they will step into that upstander role, these atrocities don’t happen or at least we could stop them a lot sooner.”
Understanding The Effects Of Racism On Black Boys & Men
Dr. Kevin Simon, Board-Certified Adult Psychiatrist / Child & Adolescent Psychiatry Fellow / Addiction Medicine Fellow
“If you’re an ally, particularly to Black and Brown boys, particularly to the persons of color, you should be trying to promote institutions and environments policies that would be protective of that community.”
Pandemic And Parenting: How To Juggle The Impossible
Muna Hussaini, Chief of Staff to Indeed CTO
“We have an opportunity to redefine what success looks like so that the costs that were incurred by the few are now shared collectively and I think if we can redefine what that looks like, we win together.”
Opening Doors For The Disabled Community
KR Liu, Head of Brand Accessibility at Google
“If anything, we want people to feel empowered by us on what we have been able to achieve. That’s really, really important that people understand the contribution that disabled people have made to society.”
Advocating For People With Disabilities
Tiffany Yu, CEO & Founder at Diversability
“When we tell a disabled person that we don’t consider them to be disabled, what it is doing is perpetuating the stigma that being disabled is a bad thing. And when we don’t use words like disabled or disability, it is saying we think it is a bad word, and there is shame around it.”
Amplifying The Latinx Experience In The Workplace
Daisy Auger-Domínguez, CEO of Auger-Domínguez Ventures
“An ally helps you find your way without projecting on you who you should be.”
Supporting Indigenous Power, Leadership & Community
Vanessa Roanhorse, CEO at Roanhorse Consulting
“I don’t want to be the kind of person who only knows Native American issues. I want to be the kind of person who thinks about making sure we have ASL folks and making sure we have people who are providing closed captioning. I want to be the kind of person who can share the statistics of what’s happening to our undocumented community. I want to be that kind of human being that never forgets we are all here and we are all living beings, and without that respect none of this matters and we are just repeating the same harm.”
Host: Melinda Briana Epler
Melinda Briana Epler has over 25 years of experience developing business innovation and inclusion strategies for startups, Fortune 500 companies, and global NGOs.
As CEO of Change Catalyst, Melinda currently works with the tech industry to solve diversity and inclusion together. Using her background in storytelling and large-scale culture change, she is a strategic advisor for tech companies, tech hubs, and governments around the world. She co-leads a series of global solutions-focused conferences called Tech Inclusion, where she has partnered with over 450 tech companies and community organizations and hosted 43 solutions-focused diversity and inclusion events around the world.
Previously, Melinda was a Marketing and Culture Executive and award-winning documentary filmmaker – her film and television work includes projects that exposed the AIDS crisis in South Africa, explored women’s rights in Turkey, and prepared communities for the effects of climate change. She has worked on several television shows, including NBC’s The West Wing.
Melinda is a TED speaker. She speaks, mentors and writes about diversity and inclusion in tech, allyship, social entrepreneurship, underrepresented entrepreneurs and investing. She has spoken on hundreds of stages around the world, including SXSW, Grace Hopper, Wisdom 2.0, the World Bank, Obama White House, Clinton Foundation, Black Enterprise, Google, Indeed, Capital One and McKinsey.
Watch Melinda’s TED Talk
Speaking Engagements
Change Catalyst Co-Founder Melinda Briana Epler has spoken across the globe in hundreds of venues and virtual events. Empathy, Allyship, Advocacy, Microaggressions, Inclusive Leadership, and Building Inclusive Teams are just some of the topics Melinda has spoken on. Let us know about your next speaking engagement needs! Melinda has also spoken on how to build organizational capacity to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion, such as how to lead behavior change or how to build allies and advocates.
Testimonials
The show shaped my scope of reasoning on the dynamics in the corporate world, brand building, harmony across board with team mates. Your series has helped me feel less alone and less daunted by the challenges I face as a leader at a company that is used to moving fast with decisions and making swift progress across the board. I so earnestly want to grow and deepen my perspective when it comes to diversity and allyship; it’s not always clear how to do it. This series has felt like a path I can follow and revisit and draw strength and insight from. Thank you.
This show has given me clear opportunities to learn in the midst of 2020’s numerous social and personal challenges, including engaging remote content. I’ve learned new terms, heard new voices, diversified my interests and internalized personal narratives that have inspired me to get more active.
I watched many of your live shows in 2020, and I learned something from every discussion. They were inspiring on many levels. Early on during the pandemic (especially), the show also provided me with a sense of community that I was sorely needing. Thank you.
