BIO: Sellyna Ehlers is a Human Resource Administrator and DEI professional with more than twenty years of experience linking academic and research communities in creative partnerships. Diverse skills in human resources, policy and research, monitoring, and evaluation. An adaptable individual with a passion for inclusion and equity. Flexible and versatile – able to maintain a sense of humor under pressure. Poised and competent with demonstrated ability to easily transcend cultural differences. Thrive in deadline-driven environments. Excellent team-building skills.

Transcript:

Andrea G. Tatum [Intro]: Welcome to DEI Career Conversations. I'm your host and DEI career coach, Andrea G. Tatum. I just had a chance to sit down with Sellyna Ehlers, and we had such a great conversation. I can't wait for you all to get into this. Sellyna is the University of Washington School of Laws Director of Human Resources Equity and Engagement. She's a human resources administrator and DEI professional with more than 20 years of experience linking academic and research communities in creative partnerships. She has diverse skills in human resources, policy, research, monitoring, and evaluation, and she's really been able to adopt all of those skills with her passion for inclusion and equity. I love that she even says that her passion is treating people equally, but her mission is getting people to see HR as a friendly place.

In this episode, we talk about her journey into DEI, which includes a conversation around where things got started in this field with affirmative action and the impact it had on her as an individual. We also talk about how she really serves various constituents within her own organization, and although it's in the setting of a law school, it really resonates into a corporate setting as well. And she really talks about how she believes in transparency in data and gives some really great advice that I think any aspiring DEI professionals can really lean into. So let's dive right in.

Andrea G. Tatum: Hi Sellyna. I am so thrilled that you are a part of today's DEI Career Conversation. I'd love to start us out by just hearing from you a little bit about your journey and how you ended up in the role that you're in today.

Sellyna Ehlers: Thank you, Andrea, for inviting me to this session. My journey with DEI actually happened by mistake. I was initially hired at the University of California Davis as an assistant to the chair or something... That's so long ago. Of course, now I can't even remember. But at the time that I was hired, I did not realize I was an affirmative action hire. Why did I not realize? I was new to the country. I had just gotten here and I applied to this position because it met most of the things that I knew how to do. And once I got hired, there was just a weird vibe in the office. I felt like people looked at me and treated me very differently from the other staff members that worked there. And I have to tell you, it was a staff of 13 people and I was the only Black person in the department.

And of course, being the chemistry department, it was mostly male-dominated by scientists, very few female scientists. And actually the reason why they hired me was one of the female professors filed a grievance against the department and they found out that there were a lot of things that they were doing that were wrong. So when I was hired, I was supposed to fill in a quota and nobody told me that. So I actually was talking to my manager one day and I said, "I just get this weird feeling every time I talk to everybody." And she said to me, "We were forced to hire you,” and that made me feel really bad. Like what? So people don't really believe that I know what I'm doing? And I said to her, "I have worked three times harder than my White colleagues for everybody to accept what I was doing."

And I actually remember very clearly there was this one professor, he was about 78 years old. He actually wrote comments about me that “she doesn't know what a zip code looks like” and I was sad. And I spent a lot of time crying those days. And as luck would have it, my husband got a job at the University of California Riverside, and I moved with him and I left that department. When I came to the University of California Riverside, it was pretty much similarly the same thing. There was not that many Black women on campus. So I applied for a position and I got it. But at that point in my life, I started asking questions, "Is this an affirmative action hire?" Of course, affirmative action then ended up being repealed. So it doesn't happen anymore.

But I also noticed that as I started talking to other HR people, that we didn't tend to hire many Black people. So I just started learning everything that I could. And honestly, in the early eighties, DEI was not an issue. When you brought it up, people looked at you like you're a troublemaker. What are you talking about? What do you know? And it doesn't help that I had this weird accent, but I noticed very quickly that a lot of, not just staff, even the faculty that we hired that were people of color did not tend to stay because there was nobody mentoring them. They did not feel like they were accepted. And I have so many instances where I talked to junior faculty, male and female, who just told me that we were so excited to get into this job, but this is not the place for us.

So through the process, I ended up being the executive director of the faculty senate, and one of the biggest reasons I wanted that job was it had one of the first, at the time it was called the diversity committee, and then we expanded it to include equity and inclusion. And I worked really hard to make sure that it was always chaired by a person of color. And I would tell them things like, "if you don't chair this committee and if you don't get people to come and work into this committee, there's no way we are ever going to change the culture at the University of California Riverside." And I was really happy that it has become one of the most important committees within the Senate at the University of California Riverside. And it's not just up to me, but up to everybody who's been in that committee. We've changed a lot.

So when I moved to Seattle in 2012, I knew I had to continue doing this in my work. So I've been doing it all along and I've been in academia most of my life. I left for a little bit of time to work at Fred Hutch, but then I came back into academia. And of course, what I've realized really quickly is there are challenges when you work within an academic unit and when you work in a nonprofit. Sometimes it's much easier to navigate DEI outside of the academia. Sometimes it's easier in the academia because they make it something that's mandatory.

Andrea G. Tatum: Absolutely. And it's so interesting that you mentioned affirmative action and the journey that you've been in. As someone who's worked in HR and has seen all these pivots, what would you say is the most interesting thing about where we are now in terms of what people describe as diversity, equity, and inclusion versus what you were maybe seeing in the eighties? What's the same and what's different?

Sellyna Ehlers: I think one of best, the things that I've noticed actually right now is you can talk about it easily. In the eighties, and at least in my department, they didn't talk about it. It was never brought up. And there were just this undercurrent vibes that you felt, but nobody brought it up. I think right now it's very easy for me to ask at an interview, "What is your DEI story? What do you do for DEI?" And that's the biggest difference. And right now, I just think that what has changed now is it’s easy, we have the language to use, we are allowed to talk about it. And more and more organizations are realizing that there's no way you can have a diverse employment or what I call them, people working for you if you're not serious about your diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Andrea G. Tatum: Yeah, I love that. And then thinking about, for you in the role that you're in now, you've got probably several different people that you're dealing with when it comes to making changes in terms of diversity, equity, and inclusion. So can you walk me through that? Who are you focused on day-to-day when it comes to driving this work?

Sellyna Ehlers: As you know, my title is director of human resources, equity, and engagement. The equity and engagement part of it is actually the part that I love the most. The HR part of it is fun because I get to meet people, and most people don't really like HR, but I went into this job with a heart, and I always want to tell people, "We have soul, and we feel," and I also, I really want people to look at HR as a place they can go to talk about anything, whether it's equity, whether it's they're being harassed by somebody, or if it's just a policy issue.

So my constituents include faculty, staff, and students. It is a very interesting mix because of the power dynamics that come in play. When you think about faculty, most of them are tenured. So once you get tenured, nobody can fire you. And when you think about staff, we work for these faculty members, but most of us are at-will employees. So there's that power play where you're not sure, "Can I really say this to my faculty member? Will I not be fired if I say this?" And then I have the students who are coming in, and these are the people who are going to go out and be leaders and lawyers and will be doing some of the things that we want to be put in place, and they come in knowing their rights.

And so you need to get all of these people together. And one of my biggest challenges has been when I think about training in terms of equity, how do I pose that? I think the hardest part of my job is dealing with faculty members. And I think it's even harder at the University of Washington because there's no mandate. It's not a requirement for merit. It is something that you just have to go out and talk to people and convince them that it is a good thing for the university. It is a good thing for the UW School of Law to show that we are people who embrace DEI.

I think my staff are much easier to deal with, but I also always have to think about, if I’m training them, if we bring somebody to train them, for example, on how to talk back to your boss and to talk down to the people you work with, they have to deal with the fact that, "Can I really say that? And do I really have the power to say that? And I will not be laid off?" And I have to convince them that, "Yes, you can." Within this dynamics and this scope, you can actually talk to your boss or manager, whether he's a faculty member or not, and say things in a way that will make them realize you're not being rude. You're just talking about things that you're seeing.

And then with the students, they come in and they're like, "This is not what we signed up for." And especially our BIPOC students, when they come into the building and they realize, "The face of our faculty does not represent us, what do we do with them?" I very much like to talk to all the students and I'm really engaged with the students and tell them that these things take time, that we will bring and change the face of the faculty members in time. The way we do that is by hiring people that the students feel like they can connect with, but also having just the faculty members who are there in classrooms talking about things that the students feel like this is what we want to hear. And that when I have a fellow student in my class make me feel like I don't belong, I have the language. I had one student come in and talk to me.

One of the things we did is we do, at the beginning of every quarter, we have retreats, BIPOC retreats. And he said to me, "Even though I went to a really good school, I was afraid to come to UW as a person of color. And that retreat that you guys put together and the speakers you brought just allowed me to realize that I belong. I can stay here. And when somebody says something in my classroom, I look at them and I am like, wow, did you just say that? But that's okay. I still belong."

Andrea G. Tatum: Wow. That's really, really powerful. And I think that even though I know you're talking about it in the context of your university, I think it really resonates in a corporate sense, especially as you were talking about those power dynamics between students, staff, and faculty. There's definitely similar power dynamics from the C-suite to middle managers to individual contributors within an organization. And that same feeling of, can I speak up? Can I say what I need to say? And having those engagements where everybody is learning the same language, everyone's getting the same information, is really powerful because then like you said, then people feel that they're empowered to say, "Okay. We can really do better in, inside of this."

So for the people who you mentioned, your students coming in, and these are law school students, and you said they know their rights. So what does that look like? Do you get pushback from your students? And if so, how do you deal with that, knowing, I mean, they are literally being trained to be really good arguers, and that's what they're coming in to do.

Sellyna Ehlers: I haven't had a problem with the students. Actually, they welcome a lot of the DEI trainings that we bring in. And they realize that the trainings are good for them because like you say, they are people who are going to be going out and argue. They spend all their time arguing in court. I think what I do for students that is part of our DEI work is training them how to deal with difficult situations and difficult situations are going to happen in their lives throughout. For example, you're in a classroom and a fellow student who's not the same race as you, says something that's really derogatory, how do you deal with it? And we teach them, we give them the language and the tools to deal with that, because those difficult situation and circumstances are going to happen throughout their lives.

And if you're going to be a really good lawyer, you need to know how to deal with this because you might stand in front of a judge who actually is probably old school and doesn't understand this DEI language and says something, and we know that this happens, and how can you deal with it? So for the students, I actually find them much easier to provide training to because they want to get the tools, they want the tools that will help them reach out to the community and into the world that they're going to and be able to deal with even the most difficult, ridiculous circumstance because we've given them the training that they need.

Andrea G. Tatum: Wow. I love that. That's so amazing. So then you talked about doing what you love most about your job was doing the education. How do you go about that? How do you decide what you're going to provide and when? How do you map out your year?

Sellyna Ehlers: We have an associate dean for DEI. So at the beginning of every year, we know what we're going to do in every quarter, but I believe so much if DEI has the word inclusion in it and that, whatever training we bring in has been vetted by our entire community. So we send out surveys and ask them, "What are you interested in? What can you bring? What can we bring you?" We brought a psychologist one time because some students had heard this person talk somewhere, and it was right at the beginning of the pandemic, and people were going through some really tough times.

So we sent out a survey and say, "Okay. We're putting together our plan training goals for the year, and we would really love input from you." So we get input from the entire community. And this one student wrote me separately and said, "I heard this person talk at such and such a place. We really want this person to come and talk to us." That's how we get it. And I did bring that person in, and that person has remained a favorite of most of the students up until now. And this was in 2020.

Andrea G. Tatum: That's really cool. Okay. I love that. And I think that what I hear you really saying is ultimately you're collecting some data upfront before making decisions. And I think that's so imperative in this work that we do that really not only just understanding what's going on in the organization, but what is it that people need in any given moment. So I really love that you're really taking that approach. So for you, I'm interested to know before you fell into this work, what do you wish that you knew before starting into diversity, equity, and inclusion?

Sellyna Ehlers: I wish I knew how much of an impact a leader has. At this point in my life, I am so aware of the fact that leaders are crucial in establishing a workplace culture that is inclusive. At the time when I started, I didn't know that. So for every training that we bring in, and that's why sometimes I get a little frustrated, is I want everybody to participate, especially those people who are in the leadership role. Because if you just think of just the operational aspects of your work and not the people and the culture and the community, you will never be able to get this DEI work going on. So for me, the one thing that I wish I knew at the time was the importance, the important role for leadership and how leadership affects DEI and the cultural makeup of an organization.

Andrea G. Tatum: I love it. So when it comes down to your day-to-day and what you're focused on, for somebody who may be looking at a similar type of role, what are three skills that you would say are really important for a DEI professional? Especially one working wearing multiple hats, what are three skills that you would really encourage someone to make sure that they had to go into this role?

Sellyna Ehlers: Let me think about it really quickly. I think the one thing that I would tell somebody who's going into this role is that you have to ensure that there's employee buy-in. You cannot work in a vacuum, and that means everybody that you're working with, from the bottom to the top. If you cannot get employee buy-in, you're going to just be wasting and spinning your wheels forever, because nobody is going to just want to sign up with you. The second thing is to make sure that you are very transparent so they know. And I use data. I think data is really good because you tell people how DEI work will improve their organization. If you don't have data, and a lot of times when you're talking about this, highly educated people, they want to see the data, and you can't just go in and bullshit your way through it.

So I just always tell people, have the data, have something that you can show that's construct, that's actually tangible, that they can say, "Look, this is what our numbers say, and this is what a good DEI experience will do to our organization." And the third thing that I would tell somebody starting, sometimes you're going to fail, but you get up, and you do it all over again. You might bring in somebody that you think is really great, and then it just bombs on you, or people just don't like them. You get up and you realize, "Okay. We'll do this again." Or you might have to work 10 times harder than most people, but I always say, "Never give up. You will fail, but you get up and you do it again."

Andrea G. Tatum: Wow. Yeah, I think we talk a lot about psychological safety for other people, but I don't think we actually talk a lot about psychological safety for DEI practitioners as well. We're working in a really fast-paced environment, and we're working in an environment where everybody has an opinion about the work that we are doing. So failure, it may not have really been a failure because you knew what you were really trying to accomplish, but the way people either perceived it or received it, it can be really hard. And people are so strongly opinionated. And I think that's one piece of advice I really do give to DEI professionals, is that you've got to really have a tough skin.

You've got to be able to have a self-care routine, because there are going to be those times where here you are thinking, I am doing the best that I can do. And all of a sudden someone has a totally different opinion or goes and squashes everything that you really try to do. And it can be disheartening and it can feel like, "Well, I should just give up and I can't do this anymore." But I really encourage people to think, okay, if this thing didn't work, and to your point, how do you use the data to either go back and show here's what we were really trying to do.

So speaking of data, how do you decide who gets access to what data? Do students get to see any information around your DEI numbers? Is it shared with faculty? Is it shared with staff? How do you decide who gets access to what information?

Sellyna Ehlers: Students, they will ask you for everything. And I just said something about transparency. I believe in sharing everything because first of all, when you are in academia, in the school of law, they have ways of finding things. And I actually think you are more credible when you put it up front and show it to them rather than have them go and dig out and wonder, "Why didn't you tell us this?" So our data is shared by this, whoever asks for it, if it's the faculty, if it's the staff, and if it's the students. And I can tell you, the students are always the ones who want to see the data because they want to be convinced that it really will work. So yeah, I provide data. We provide data to anybody who asks. And I think that the data, that transparency is really crucial. You never want to hide anything, even if it's bad. I think you need to show them and then figure out a way that we can fix this situation.

Andrea G. Tatum: Yeah, I love that. This has been so good. I have really enjoyed this conversation. Is there anything else that you would want to share with aspiring DEI professionals who are thinking about making that pivot into this career?

Sellyna Ehlers: I would tell them it is the most fulfilling journey. And there are days when after, say, a training or when we've put something together and people come back and write to me and tell me, "That was the best training I have ever seen." And especially if you are a person of color in DEI work especially, and you are working with mostly White people, when they come back and say, "I did not know that about a specific thing, thank you so much for bringing that to our attention." I'm like, "Wow. I did do something that was good." So what I would tell people is just go out there and do it. And a lot of times you will be surprised at the people who will reach out to you and tell you, "I didn't even know we needed that. I did not know."

Andrea G. Tatum: Yeah. I often tell people, when you have those situations, when you feel like you got that win, document it, write it down, put it on a sticky note, because then you go back to just having talked about those failures, you have to have that balance. So sometimes it's really helpful to go back and be like, okay, the work we're doing is good. We have made a positive impact, and you may need to go back and look at those wins. So I used to keep a little folder called Tiny Wins on my desktop and be like, "I got this email from someone,” just to your point that said, “that training that you did, or this email that you sent out, it allowed me to show up as my most authentic self. I am now this or that, or I'm doing this. This is what I've been experiencing, and now you've opened the door for me to be able to be true about that." To your point, you really know that you're making that impact and it's very validating.

Sellyna Ehlers: Yeah, I save all those emails and also those emails help me when I'm thinking about the next training that we're putting together, because I really believe if you're going to take people's time and have them attend training, make trainings that are valuable and useful to them, and it's always not going to be the same for everybody. But you can grow out of that and use those emails to look at the next one that you bring in and find something that will be very impactful and that can have that eye-opening time where you're like, "Wow. I didn't know that. You've just allowed me to ask those kinds of questions."

And it can be intimidating at times, but you reach out and like I said, always getting people's input, thinking ahead, and just realizing that organizations don't have all the tools and you're just part of making this thing work for everybody and you do it. You don't always feel like you are totally equipped to address all the issues. I know that. So it's reaching out to people like you who have been doing DEI work and other people, and talking to others who are in the same field that helps us to get the tools together that can move this DEI thing ahead and forward.

Andrea G. Tatum: So truthful, so honest. I think it is so easy to believe that once you make this pivot, you're supposed to know everything. And that's just not realistic. Even though I have been doing DEI for... I mean, by comparison, you just talked about your journey and having seen affirmative action and been in the HR, but my time here has been short. But I have experienced the work of DEI in so many different ways, and I've been in so many different industries. So that's what I know I'm able to bring to this work.

But when I need to have that conversation about deep, deep policies and things, I have to then go and say, "Let me go and call on my network. Let me bring in those people who I know I trust and I value their opinion and who this is their specific area of expertise." No one person can do this alone. So if you get into an organization and you're the sole person doing the role of DEI, there's a lot of red flags there for a lot of reasons. But every organization's on their journey. But make sure that you build your community because I think you just really said something so powerful there, having people to lean on, lean into their expertise and , you know, you worked in the education field. We all have to constantly be on a journey to learn ourselves. Our journey doesn't end.

Sellyna Ehlers: Yeah. It never ends. And actually I always, it's a reminder whenever we have our DEI meetings that DEI and the learning is a journey. It never ends. And you said something too about the expertise. I think it's really important when you pick anybody to come and give any training that you make sure that they know what their circumstances are and what they're going to be presenting especially when you're presenting to lawyers, like I do, and to people who are really well educated, you do not want to seem like, what is this crazy stuff that you're bringing up? So for me, it's really interesting that I do my background searches and really go out and learn that before I bring this person, is this person going to be received well? Are they really an expert in their area? Do I need to bring an attorney to talk to attorneys? Is that the only way they're going to hear it? Or do I bring somebody with a PhD in psychology to talk about mental wellness?

And it doesn't have to be that you have the biggest names, your PhD or whatever. I had somebody come and talk about Juneteenth who has a bachelor's degree but is a well of, is a historian, like a historian I've never seen. And she was amazing. She pulls this information out of her head, I don't even know how you remember all of these things. And you can actually go back and look, and she was right. So it's not just the accolades that accompany the name, but it's the knowledge, the depth, and what they know.

Andrea G. Tatum: And I think it's really easy, and I assume even more so in that academics area, where people get caught up on titles and education and background. So even from the idea of hiring and best practices around that, you have to look deeper. You have to understand what is the value that this person is bringing. And it may not come with PhDs and JDs and all those kinds of extra letters. People can be educated in different ways and their experiences can have a lot of value. So even that in the idea of who you bring or who you're looking to hire for different roles says a lot. So we all have to be so cautious and conscious of not getting too caught up on, "Is this person, got this pedigree?" Because we could be really missing out on something.

Sellyna Ehlers: And that's another way that you end up leaving out a whole group of people. If you are going to get caught up in PhDs and just in this whole thing that, not just a PhD, but the titles and the schools and the classism. It becomes then it's a classism thing where you are looking at people because you only want a certain group of people. My eyes are always open to everybody. My whole belief is that you don't have to have come from the best Ivy school to be able to deliver a good message on DEI. You just have to feel it in your soul and in your heart and really know what you're doing.

Andrea G. Tatum: I love it. I think that's a perfect note to wrap up on. So I always love to end with just a little bit of fun. So if there was a musical or a biopic about your life, who would you have play you and what would it be called?

Sellyna Ehlers: I would be played by Viola Davis. 

Andrea G. Tatum: Absolutely.

Sellyna Ehlers: I love her. I think she represents a lot of qualities that I believe that she could play me very well. And what would my movie be called? Let me see. When I first arrived in California, one of my workmates used to call me the Nubian Princess. And my movie would be called the Nubian Princess.

Andrea G. Tatum: I love it.

Sellyna Ehlers: DEI journey through the eyes of the Nubian Princess. Because it's different. My journey is different from your journey, and so all our journeys are different. So you have to actually look it through the lens of the person that you're talking to. So mine would be DEI journey through the eyes of a Nubian Princess.

Andrea G. Tatum: Beautiful. Well, Sellyna, thank you so much for being here, and thank you for all the great advice and tidbits that you've given to our listeners. I'm so glad we were able to finally sit down and do this together. Thanks so much.

Sellyna Ehlers: Thank you so much, Andrea.

Andrea G. Tatum: I hope you all enjoyed this episode of DEI Career Conversations. My goal is to help create more transparency about what it really means to work in diversity, equity, and inclusion, while helping experienced professionals gain clarity about how their passion, skills, and experience can make a real impact. To learn more, visit deicareer.com. Don't forget, subscribe to this channel, like the video and share it with your friends. We'll see you next time.