Transcript:

Laura: Definitely I would say like influence without authority was like, maybe the top or close to the top of like something I had to rely on all the day, all day every day, you know, without a formalized role, right. It was so dependent on relationships and like, you know what leadership I was in conversation with and like, you know, building that trust and ongoing communication, just to make sure that, you know, hey, what are you hearing? What am I hearing? Hey, we're both in student services, how can we come together to, you know, serve this particular need at this particular time? You know, and sometimes, that takes a lot of time. I would say it's essential whether your role is formalized or not.

Andrea: Welcome to DEI career Conversations. I'm your host, the DEI career coach, Andrea G. Tatum. And this episode, I got to speak with Laura Snow Benoit. She's the director of the E ai initiatives for the MBA Career Management Program, or CMG at UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business. She spent the last 10 years in the Bay Area, helping MBA students navigate their career choices by harnessing their diverse identities and experiences in order to find meaningful work. I think you're really going to enjoy this episode, as we talked about what has changed in Dei, over the last few years, how having a formalized title has helped to move the initiatives forward within UC Berkeley, and so much more. Now, be sure to subscribe and like this, and drop some thoughts in the comments that really helps us to continue providing really fun information field episodes like this one. And if you want to learn more about dei career coaching, or our courses, be sure to go to dei career.com, to learn all about it. Now, let's get into it. Welcome to the show, Laura, I am so excited to have you here with us today.

Laura:  I'm so excited to be here. Thanks for having me.

Andrea: Absolutely. Well, let's get things kicked off, I would love for you to just start by telling us a little bit about your own unique journey to where you are now in Dei. Yeah, absolutely.

Laura Benoit: You know, I think like many of us in these roles, and in the field, D has always been a part of our work, or at least our mindset, and, you know, maybe the language has evolved, you know, particularly in the last few years. But, you know, social justice has, like always been just a part of how I operate in the world, whether it was like through volunteer work or, you know, wanting to have a mission driven career, wanting to be in community and like, make spaces where people are gathering together, you know, especially in the workplace, where we spend most of our lives, you know, not only productive spaces, but like really meaningful and hopefully joyful, and, you know, spaces where people can really like thrive and be themselves and bring all the amazing parts of their lived experience and work experience and knowledge and capabilities to the table. And so, you know, that that's interest, I think, started really early in my life. During even going way back to high school, like I worked at a law firm during the summer and, you know, just kind of seeing how the office environment worked and, you know, wanting to be like, ah, if we like painted that wall, a bright color, you know, like maybe that would bring a little bit more energy or joy to the space and, you know, always having a legacy of volunteerism and like wanting to be involved in my community and in various ways, but certainly, like the biggest first pivotal moment was post graduation, from undergrad moving to Chicago. And, you know, living in the Midwest was really different than being on the West Coast. You know, first job out of college, and trying to just like navigate being in a big city. And, you know, there's a lot of dichotomies in Chicago, right, you know, there's the north side versus the south side. You know, politics at that time, like would really swing back and forth. Earth. And it just like, was a really different experience. Where I ended up for my, my long term job there was in a mental health agency on the HR side. And so, you know, just seeing how the operations worked, seeing how people were getting hired, and who wasn't getting hired, you know, kind of asking questions at that time around, like pay equity, and like, how are these salary bands getting set? And like, who was getting promoted? And why, you know, what is the why behind how things are happening. And so, you know, that being in an agency that was like serving, you know, a really high need underserved mental health population, you know, we're talking folks living on the streets, schizophrenia, depression, meeting, housing needs, medical needs, you know, so I really saw my role, even though I wasn't in the direct service side of like, How can I support all these people doing the direct service and like, being out there serving these folks every day? Like, how can I make their job easier? How can I make these processes smoother? How can I make sure that they are making a living wage and like being able to support their families and, you know, loved so much about that work and realized there's a lot of policy enforcement, there was a lot of rules, there's a lot of structure that you have to follow and regulations and, you know, really started piquing my interest of like, what could the other side of that be? Obviously, I was surrounded by a lot of mental health professionals. So the seed had already been there, my undergrad degree is in psychology. So you know, I always thought that that might be a path that I would go down, I was really lucky that there is a counseling degree program and organizational psychology program in Chicago that was social justice focused. So it kind of lined up all these like areas of interest and like different ways that I'd already been doing the work and gave me a really like, tangible degree to put that into practice. So I worked while I went to school full time, and juggled all the things to make it happen. And, you know, after a while, really wanted to be on the side of like, How can I help people get into the system? Right? How can I help them navigate the hiring process? How can I help them get to the Yes, rather being on the side that was like saying know it all the time, or like enforcing the rules all the time, or pushing the paper all the time. So that really led to my eventual transition of being an NBA career services in the bay area had been here for over a decade now, which is shocking to say, but also exciting. And you know, embedded in that work, I was always my interest area was always in serving, particularly particular affinity groups and folks with like different elements of their identity. But you know, my first job was at a school that had a lot of international students, and they come with a really unique set of needs, and like navigating the US networking system, and like how to get a job here can feel really different than a lot of their home countries, or we had a really large veterans population, right. And so many folks coming out of the service, have never been in an unstructured, job search and need a lot of different kinds of support. So I always saw myself kind of gravitating to, like, how can I identify and like serve the needs of a particular group? How can I do it in partnership? How can I do it with intention, hopefully, with the most amount of impact? And, you know, from there, I moved to Mills College, which is, you know, open to all genders at the graduate level, but certainly predominantly women identified folks, you know, at the time, an increasing number of non binary and trans folks and definitely a like, very large LGBTQ community. You know, and so like, just was like a really awesome space to like, get to play around with some other ways to help students feel engaged, you know, in community when, you know, they were in the minority in a lot of different ways. And so that's really where like club partnerships and alumni partnership Epson really like looking at different ways of bringing folks together in conversation about careers, had a chance to like do a lot of cool different programming. And then that brought me to Haas where pretty much from the get go, I was running some of our biggest diversity programs, some of which, like, come from the admission side and like feed in to careers, like pretty directly just by the nature of how recruiting happens at the MBA level, and how some of these programs are structured. And so got to build out like 10 week preparation programs over the summer. And, you know, through that, and then, of course, during COVID, and the summer that George Floyd was murdered, just like, you know, we were all in dialogue, over zoom, and just like in a really different way, and needs were coming to the forefront, I think a lot more directly, and a lot more clearly. And so it really gave me and my team an opportunity to step in and create some different kinds of programming and opportunities, and eventually in person events now that that really serve particular communities with, you know, different different needs in their career search. So it's kind of been a log iteration. On paper, I think it looks really like seamless, and, and cohesive. But, you know, obviously, with anyone's careers, there's lots of decision making points, lots of turning points, you know, and then most recently, this last year, I was able to step into this director level role, where I have a little bit more autonomy and direction and ability to continue to drive this programming and the staff training side. So again, like getting to use both counseling coaching piece and the organizational development piece. And that's been really exciting. 

Andrea: I love that thank you for sharing that journey. And that's really how we became connected once you kind of got into the role at at Haas. And I love that you talked about how careers are not always linear, and there's so many decisions. And so I was so lucky. And thank you again for having me come in and speak to the MBA students about careers in Dei. And the passion that I saw from those students was inspiring and made me very hopeful for our for our future. So I know they're in good hands with you. And I'm really excited about the work that you're doing. So, in that role as the director of dei initiatives, specifically for the MBA career management program, I'd love to hear how you kind of break down what your focus is, like, you know, how, what is the day in the life in that kind of role? What kind of skills do you find yourself using? And what's the ultimate goal that you have for yourself and for the students in that program? 

Laura Benoit: Yeah absolutely. So my role is a hybrid role. And I only know of like one other person in the country that has kind of a similar role, where we both report to the NBA career management team and the DEI team. And so it's cool to see that like, maybe this will continue to grow and, you know, be be more standard across MBA programs and, and career centers, just in general. On paper, my job is about 30% dedicated to DDI. In practice, it is many more hours than that, you know, we will probably talk about this little later, but you know, the process of having a formalized role, you know, makes makes you have to put to thought and time constraints and other things, you know, particularly when you're reporting to to teams. And the reality of the of it is that this work doesn't stop and it is happening every day all the time. You know, as now a point person, you know, I definitely see an increasing in questions or people coming to me, you're bringing things to my attention. And I think those those are things that time doesn't always account for. So, you know, there's always the, you know, what, what elements does that include? The biggest piece of my work is definitely the student facing programming. So, you know, making sure that we are connected with these different affinity clubs, identifying and working with them to identify what their needs are. What, you know, maybe there are some skills gaps that we can do some programming to fill, you know, making sure that that is a really strong open channel of communication. I think a lot of times and dei work, you know, sometimes assumptions can be made about what a particular group of folks might need. And I work really hard to make sure that like, we're not just making assumptions, and we're working in partnership, to make sure that, you know, the community is speaking for themselves, and that, you know, we as staff, you know, me, particularly as a white woman, you know, being able to serve in a way that is going to have the most impact, and is going to, you know, put our limited dollars and resources to support them in the, in the, hopefully the most impactful and best way possible. So that's a big piece. And then the other big piece of my work is the stack training piece, around Dei, and making sure that our team is equipped to serve all of the diverse students and all of their intersectionalities that come and show up in our office, you know, someone may be coming in for a resume review. But, you know, what might not be apparent at first glance is that, you know, this person is planning on having a family and like really worried about either being pregnant at an interview or, you know, needing to have a flexible work schedule in the future. You know, there might be a Muslim student who is worried about alcohol consumption at networking events, right. You know, there could be a veteran that's like, never gone to a networking event before because their entire service, or entire career has been in the service. And this is their first like civilian job search and navigating that for the first time. Right. So, you know, my, my hope and my goal, which I think was third part of your question, there is like, increasing the comfort level on our team and the ease of win these like more challenging topics, or somebody sitting across with you, that holds a different identity or lived experience that you don't have still be a being able to be a coach in that moment. And like, feel confident in at least holding that space. Even if you're not the expert. We're not always here to give advice either or, or direction, right, but still being able to feel confident and collected and like using those skills. Many of us were like really trained in but, you know, being able to do it in these moments where, yeah, something someone's lived experience might be really different than your own.

Andrea: Yeah. Can you talk to me a little bit about the coaching skill? In particular, I heard you kind of mentioned that, for you and your team? Like, how do you see coaching coming in? Versus like I heard you say, right, like, you're not necessarily advising them? How do you define that? Because I think coaching is becoming more and more popular, but maybe not always understood what it means to show up as a, as a coach in these situations. Yeah,

Laura: I would say our, you know, our team as a whole, you know, certainly my training and counseling is like really wanting to see the whole student in the our case or alum in front of us, right, and like really taking a holistic approach. So, you know, careers takes up a lot of time and space in our lives. But like, is not separate from family, it is not separate from the workplace, it is not separate from your experience at school, right? And so, you know, being able to use those like active listening skills, like lean into curiosity, right? Let what emerges in the moment, come to the front, you know, not being afraid to ask a student if there's some like mental health needs, if there's some signals, right, that a student might be in distress or like, really overwhelmed, right, and VA programs are really challenging. And so, you know, that's a frequent thing that comes up in our office and so, you know, really making sure that those skills are at the ready, and fine tuned. You know, many of us have gone through formal coaching or counseling programs like I did, but you know, that was 15 plus years ago, right? So we want to keep those active and we want to make sure that there's like, enough knowledge, you know, around different dei topics around different identities and What those lived experiences can look like? And, you know, coming back to the just like, being able to have that conversation and not be afraid to, to engage in and what that looks like for that individual.

Andrea: Yeah, no, I think you hit on something so important, which is like for some of us, myself included, right? I haven't been in college in years. It's been, it's been a few, just a few years. And I see a lot of times I'm in, you know, different, like Facebook groups or on LinkedIn. And what I'm really seeing is that folks who are just getting started or coming out of college, they have so many questions. There's so much uncertainty that I think as people who are more mature in our careers, we just take for granted that we've navigated that already. And I think what students and people who are early in their careers are navigating today is different than what, you know, I was navigating coming out of college. While there's a lot of similarities. I think that having coaches and you know, taking advantage of the programs like you all have, and even for people who are enroll already within an organization, if you've got, you know, those those young early career folks coming in, they're still really trying to get their, their sea legs and they're afraid to ask questions. And so I see them going into these Facebook groups and saying, like, Can I wear my hair in natural locks? When do I need to wear a hijab? Is that okay? And so having a place and having the ability to ask questions in in comfortable spaces with a knowledgeable team. And so that's why it's so important, even in like, you know, corporate America to have your team have that level of understanding. Because again, you forget that folks who are just coming in are truly figuring this out. For the first time, it's so much that we've already done. So I love that, that you're really helping your staff to be prepared for how to help the students navigating this next phase of their career. Yeah,

Laura: Absolutely. And especially as we're starting to edge into the Gen Z generation. You know, like some facts that I learned that a DUI Congress, the summer was that a lot of those folks didn't have jobs in high school. A lot of folks don't have driver's licenses, or didn't get them right away, right. And so, you know, these training opportunities and responsible mobility development, you know, however you want to frame that is really happening for the first time, a lot of times in these early career jobs. You know, a lot of our students are, you know, usually three to five, sometimes eight years out. So they've got their first job under their belt, but I think we're gonna keep seeing more and more of that, and, and having a safe place to have the conversation and ask the questions. You know, I think if I can have any main goal on my team, I hope we can just provide that, right, a place where we can come to do that.

Andrea: I love that. So I want to go back to something I heard you mentioned earlier, you talked about like, the the formalization of your role, and kind of the pros and some of the cons. So if you can talk to me a little bit about maybe some of the challenges that you see, now that your role has been more formalized. Just talk to me a little bit about about that.

Laura: Yeah, absolutely. You know, I think it's a big win in so many ways, because I think a lot of this work has been unpaid labor, on a volunteer basis, maybe maybe occasionally assigned, often opt in, and that sort of thing. So, you know, I really see this role as the next step, or the first step in continuing to build out some structure, you know, hopefully laid the foundation for some capacity building, you know, hopefully not just on my team, but like setting an example for other teams in the organization. You know, especially when you have these hybrid roles, like, dei doesn't have to live on the DEI team. And yeah, it's like, you know, my hope is that it lives in every person on our team and is being done, and hopefully 100 Maybe 1000 different ways every day. Right. But, you know, having a formalized role, I think, not only sends a message of like, we're taking this seriously, we're compensating for this role, and you know, because it's at an elevated level Um, it gives me a little bit of gravitas, especially because I work with a lot of other teams across campus and external partners. You know, before I had this job, I had to do a lot of explaining of why I'm reaching out, like, what my role is, etc. You know, and now I can just say, like, as the director of dei initiatives, we would like to bring you in to talk about x. And so there's some time savings on that end, and, and, you know, still having to navigate and have those partnerships. But I think the formalization process has really helped in that sense. I also, you know, I really see it as like an act of legacy, so that, you know, if I ever leave this job, it is on paper that this is somebody's responsibility, these are things that need to happen on a regular basis, and will be required, and written in somebody's job description, for the work to continue. You know, of course, like we have a committee, we have lots of people over, across the team that are engaged in this work. And I think it's really helpful to have a centralized person that's like, kind of got their eyes on, we have like three different parts of our teams that like, what is teammates doing on a team be doing, you know, what are these trainings that we're doing all together, to just help with the coordination, facilitation and making hopefully it more streamlined, so it can continue to move forward? It's slow work, but you know, I My hope is that it will continue to help it help it accelerate and help it happened more quickly.

Andrea: Yeah, yeah, I often hear, you know, from folks who maybe start off with and non formalized role. To your point, right, there's certain things you can get done, because you've got that title, you've got that cache. But when the role is not formalized, were there things that you found that you were able to maybe get done more easily, or to be able to navigate? Because I talked to people about this all the time, right, you talked about how dei can live within anybody's role. So you know, on the other side, how did you navigate? And did you find, again, pros and cons? Before the formalizations? Yeah,

Laura: Yeah, totally. Definitely, I would say, like, influence without authority was like, maybe the top or close to the top of like, something I had to rely on all the day, all day, every day, you know, without a formalized role. Right. It was so dependent on relationships, and like, you know, what leadership I was in conversation with, and like, you know, building that trust, and ongoing communication, just to make sure that, you know, hey, what are you hearing? What am I hearing? Hey, we're both in student services, how can we come together to, you know, serve this particular need at this particular time? You know, and sometimes, that takes a lot of time, I would say it's essential, whether your role is formalized or not. And, you know, sometimes the challenges of that, and I've felt it in different ways, but like feeling siloed, you know, even before this work was official, this capacity or formalized in this capacity, you know, you feel like you're doing a lot of backdoor navigating, Hey, can I get a little bit of money here? Can I get a little bit money? Oh, maybe if we combine this, we can like have it networking event for underrepresented students? Right. You know, and now I think I feel it a little bit on the flip side of like, sometimes I think the default is like, oh, that's getting taken care of, like, we've got a person who does that. And so, you know, really trying to continue that capacity building work of like, Alright, how do we keep everyone engaged? How do we keep everyone feeling responsible for the work, realizing that they're empowered, and have the ability to do it? You know, and hopefully getting to a stage where I'm more of like a consulting partner, and that, that for those different teams or different individuals, but, you know, like one of the trainings we did at the very beginning of the year was how to how to practice antiracism in your role at CMG. And so we had our external cow career coaching network come Men and do a facilitated training and everybody made some kind of commitment to antiracism work for the year. And just, you know, one of my intentions for that training was like, really helping people see that it is in their power, and in their role. And, you know, really by design across the university or requirement of their job to be doing this work. And so like really trying to help make it tangible of like, Okay, what does that really look like? What does that feel like? And what can I commit to in this 12 month period?

Andrea: Yeah, yeah. Oh, man, you talked about budgets. And I'm just gonna say like, like, everything that you just talked about, it's not specific to universities. It's not specific, like I have seen this so often, especially when there's not a formalized ei or I see this a lot of times with employee resource groups inside of kind of the corporate sense is that if things haven't been formalized, that budget piece so often is where things are like, Ah, I don't know, we don't have money to do it. And so you're doing exactly what you just said, like, you're kind of going over here to this leader, like, Can I get a little bit of your funds for professional development? And what about your funds that were here for events? And what about and I have had to do that, or I'm like, literally pulling together money from lots of different places to be able to support the work that we do. But I think oftentimes as organizations mature, and so in the work that I do, I try to educate people who are right, like, oftentimes, the people who are watching this are saying, like, I'm really interested in D E, I want to get into that. But every organization matures at a different level of what they're doing. So to your point, right, like the fact that you were doing things without that title, and now that it's formalized, and like you said, you have that different sense of authority and being able to come in there that that is, that is across the board, what I see in pretty much every organization that things start at that very organic way you build, you build, then you actually get some formal budget, then you can get things and then you get goals and all these things tied to it. And you see the you see the progress. So it's not that if I always say to people, don't don't discount the wins that you had, even if you weren't in a formal, absolutely,

Laura: Yeah, I would not be here, for sure, you know, without a million small projects, like interactions, built relationships, you know, bringing something to the table that I saw going on with, you know, it was like many years of that before, there was a case, right, and there was the business case, and di work, I don't love going there. But unfortunately, we ended up there a lot of the time, right? To say like, you know, even just this one program I was running was taking war to six months of my, my year, right. And so I was like, and this requires like a different skill set than just the coaching, or just the programming, right? And so, yeah, I would say like, all those little bits and pieces matter. And we're still in the process, right? This is I'm the first person that's had this role on my team and like in any team of this size, outside of the DDI team, really, and so, you know, that we are still figuring out budget, we are still figuring out what are what are our metrics, right? Like, what can what can we continue to measure and look at year over year, or even with these trainings? Like, how are we looking at effectiveness over time, and those are all things that, you know, continue to take a lot of navigating and conversations and the space is changing a lot, right, you know, dei as a practice, you know, is is really in its infancy, like in some ways, kind of like startup in nature, right? Things are changing rapidly, best practices are changing rapidly. Language is changing rapidly. And so even just finding the starting point, you know, has been a lot of this last year of like, okay, like, how do we measure where we're at, right, like, how do we look at the foundation we've put in place? You know, I would say our team has been pretty dedicated to this work for the last five, six years since I've been there. But you know, kind of in this ad hoc capacity and like these ad hoc programs, so like, Where, where are we at? Where can we level set right now and then, you know, hopefully the next couple of years is like, how can we keep building and growing, having the designated budget and like those sorts of things, so that again, that the infrastructure is in place? The If responsibility, accountability and metrics are in place so that we can keep, keep growing and keep looking at it. Yeah,

Andrea: I really appreciate what you just said. Because I think you talked about like ei being in its infancy. And I agree to something in that, like, the ideas, the concepts of creating equitable spaces, trying to maybe undo some of the wrongs, historical wrongs that have happened, I would say universities have oftentimes led, in some ways, the work that that we've been doing there, and it's continued to morph into change the what we call it, or how it shapes is always different. But I would agree that, you know, we hit an inflection point about three years ago, post George Floyd's murder, and you mentioned this earlier. So I'm really interested to know since you've, you know, been at the University for five, six years. What changed? What have you seen, you know, like you said, like, as we're growing and changing, specially in these last three years, when we, when I think dei shifted the magnitude at which it was trying to it's trying to happen, what are your What are you seeing at the university level, especially both at Haas and general? within higher education? Post George Floyd's murder?

Laura: Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, I love that you said that universities, like, tend to be the leading edge of this. And I would say, you know, being at UC Berkeley, probably adds another layer to that. Right, you know, I think the tangible things that you can see is that a lot more people have these formalized roles, right, like, our central dei team, for Haas used to be a chief or director, diversity, right, and now we've got an admissions person and a student experience person, and a faculty consultant, you know, and so they have, I don't know, times five, their team, right. So, you know, that's a really tangible thing you can look at, you know, I think roles like mine, right, where that some are still not as formalized on paper. But the like, you know, every team, someone's being assigned to, like, at least monitor that. So like, we have a community of practice that meets because about every three weeks, right of all the different folks doing di designated work across the different student experiences, teams at all levels of the Haas programs, from undergraduate to PhD. So like, we're being able to share best practices and challenges and like, have that dialogue space and community space on a, you know, monthly basis, which is, you know, I think has been attempted in other ways before, but feels a lot more solid, and like, a really good, great go to place. I think funding dollars, has been like really evident. Staff professional development, you know, not only at Haas but across the campus. I bet there's like a dei related training program, you could go to, at least once a week, right? Like, you know, and some are even getting like, more tailored to the management team. The the session, I mentioned about antiracism, that our team day, like we basically were the pilot, and then it got rolled out to all the managers across Haas. So, you know, the, the antiracism, for example, is like a pretty normalized word, at this point and in action, and, you know, in our performance evaluation process, like everyone, every term has to clearly articulate, like, what are the things you have done in service of diversity, equity and inclusion? You know, so there's some structural policy type things that you can like see and feel the difference. Then there's some of these like, macro programs, like I went through a nine month equity coaching program that was run through the Central University for student services folks and all kinds of divisions. So a lot of like, dedicated effort, research effort, you know, we are a research institute institution, so you definitely see that as well. But yeah, I think it's it's really getting embedded and practiced and centered more often. Do we have a long way to go? Absolutely. We, you know, are we still a representative institution of the state of California? No. Right. But like, these are all things that feel like progress. And like, you know, I think one of the things I didn't mentioned earlier in terms of skill is just like patience and persistence in this work. Like, you know, you, I think sometimes you want to see the like, big glorious outcome and this, like, massive change management process, you know, happen at the flip of a switch. And the reality of it is that this is like slow work, it is tedious work, it is work that like happens in those like, micro moments, right? Those like interactions at the front desk, right? The like, you know, just giving a student an extra minute in your office or saying like, Oh, hey, you know, I can squeeze you in today. Because I can tell like, you know, there's something really on your mind, right. So there's like, these moments where the add up, right, and we met, like, might not see the ripple effect, we might not be able to measure the ripple effects. But you know, it is a gradual shift is hopefully, creating a more inclusive environment and sense of belonging, and like folks wanting to, you know, in our case, be in our offices, to be in our space, be in conversation and in community, with our team and the alums, and all the employers we work work with, because, you know, that feels affirming, and that feels like they can show up. And, you know, so I think that's the eventual goal. But, yeah, everyone feels very committed, and the dialogue on campus is like, we're tripling down, right? Like, we're not letting up. And I think, you know, especially in the corporate spaces, there's a lot of conversation around like, hey, are people upholding the commitments they made three years ago, after the murder of George Floyd? Are the dollars still there? Right. And, you know, I feel really lucky to say that, like, yes, you know, and we are still, we're still moving. And we, you know, the brakes haven't been put on, we haven't pulled back and we've stayed really committed to, to continuing and growing this work.

Andrea: That's so good to hear. Because I do think that a lot of people are feeling frustrated and concerned, right, you know, you look at the news, things are changing dei is just constantly kind of being picked that and so to know that, especially in that university space, even with all of those things that feel in opposition to the progress that when you have people on the ground, who are absolutely committed to it, the work, though, the work continues. And I think that's the case across the board and why sometimes it can feel slow as it's not just, Hey, we're committed and so yay, let's change. It's so many, like you said, these little micro moments happen that are great. And then those micro moments that are so great, can actually cause a few steps back. So yeah, I really appreciate you saying that, because it is all of the things that come together in order to, to make progress and, and it will feel challenging. It will feel hard, but it also, in my opinion, feels incredibly rewarding when you do see those successful moments.

Laura: Yeah. And I will say, you know, this is long haul work, right? This is, you know, not just one initiative, this is not just like one event. And it just it takes a lot of fortitude and persistence. And, you know, even I find myself like, Okay, I I pitched this this way that like didn't land. I'm gonna try again in a couple of weeks, right? Or I'm gonna like, talk, talk it out with another leader or two before I go back to the person that said no, originally right. So like, how can we continue to exercise the muscle, right and get help it land with the right people at the right time so that we can keep getting more money, we can keep getting more time and resources to do the work, but you know, certainly, it's all on a premium. We're all taking it when it comes. Yeah,

Andrea: Indeed a lot. I've enjoyed the conversation. So so much and so I'd love to know, you know, again, the audience for this a lot of times are people who are just getting started in their dei careers or who are thinking about moving into a dei career. So for for you What is one resource or piece of advice that you would give to someone new in this space as someone who's aspiring to be a dei professional? Yeah,

Laura: Absolutely. And this is probably the mental health professional in me, but I think therapy is probably the greatest support you can have in this work. You know, and that can look different for different people, it doesn't necessarily have to be a mental health counselor, but having a space where you can do your own reflection, you can sit with your own stuff. You can, you know, like, especially when you're talking about identities all day, right? And like shifting identities, or like, you got some feedback, or had an interaction that like, didn't go great, right, like having a space, hopefully, with another human, where you can dialogue and process through that and think about, like, where, where's the growth edge here, where, where is the learning for me. So I can show up, you know, different or more holy or more receptively, right in the future. And I think I couldn't do this work. Without my therapist. You know, I also mentioned like having a community of practice where I get to like dialogue with people having people outside your institution to that you can talk to and commiserate with and like, see what challenges they've navigated and how that might apply, or help you get through something you're struggling with. So big plug, for all the full time mental health professionals out there and finding one that works for you. It can take a lot of time, and I fully, I fully think it's worth it.

Andrea: Plus one plus one on that I say it all the time, caring for yourself in this work is is critical send checking and having those folks whether it's you know, I have a few folks now over over the last few years that you know, I've never even met in person, but they're my people. And we do a monthly check in one on one. And then obviously, with the DEI Career Center, we have a community, and especially for folks who are transitioning into the work, I really find that being in that community, people really find valuable because they've got questions, they're unsure, and they don't necessarily know, where can I ask this without getting, you know, social media, harassed or whatever it is, creating spaces to learn together to have conversation to work through things. I, you know, I have my community sometimes say like, Hey, let's talk through something that's relevant in the news, or let's talk through a challenge that you all have seen at work. And it's so interesting, because you may get lots of different perspectives in that and that will help you to navigate yourself and find what's the right answer for you and for your organization. And so I definitely plus one to every everything Laura has said. So, thank you so much for spending time and sharing these insights with this community. It's so valuable. And thank you for being here with us today. I

Laura: Really enjoyed it. Thank you so much, Andrea. Absolutely.

Andrea [outro]: I hope you enjoyed this episode of the E ai career conversations. Don't forget to like, subscribe and hit the bell so that you know, as soon as new episodes are live. Also, if you'd like to learn more about our brand new program, be sure to check out the links below or visit dei career.com and look at our courses. This new course is so exciting because not only are we going to help support you as a job seeker thinking about pivoting your passion into a career entity I. But we're also going to make sure that you have the tools and resources you need in order to learn how to create data informed strategies for the EI, how to create metrics, how to make sure that you know how to do the work of the AI by getting unprecedented insights from dei professionals who are doing this work day in and day out. So I'm so excited about it. I hope that you'll join us. We have monthly community connection calls for anyone who's a part of the program, and you can learn more about it all at dei career.com