"Are you a new or aspiring woman leader who wants to make a successful LEAP into leadership?"  

If so, I encourage you to check out The Leadership Leap® radio show, a weekly program on Voice America Business.  Hosted by the phenomenal Lianne Picot, whose life’s work is focused on helping people find their purpose in life and leadership, the show is a weekly exploration from the perspective of coaches, authors, experts and experienced leaders, adding new layers to dialogues on leadership.
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And I’m excited to be hosting a monthly segment called “Inclusion Zone” on the first Thursday each month LIVE at 12pm EDT!  (Click "Read More" for links to past episodes)

The past couple of weeks have been surreal. 

It’s taken me some time to wrap my head around it.  A lot of quiet reflection.  Realizing how fortunate I am to have my health, how privileged I am to be able to work safely from home.  Even in unbelievable uncertainty, I know I can count my blessings.  I send my love and thanks to all those essential workers and their families, who are giving so much of themselves during this time.
As we start to think about what a new normal might look like, I encourage us to take a moment to reflect on the lessons we’ve learned about ourselves. 

There's a wisdom in my culture, Sankofa, which means "go back and get it".  The idea here is that to understand where you are going, you need to know where you've been.  Like the Adinkra symbol that represents it, Sankofa asks us to look back into the past, taking lessons we’ve learned into the future. 

I believe that after everything we’ve been experiencing together, we are capable of being so much more inclusive than we ever imagined.  

Earlier this month, I had the pleasure of delivering my first ever live webinar, entitled "Empathy: The Secret Sauce in Effective DEI"!  Such a critical topic when planning for DEI-related change management and implementation, yet one we rarely discuss.  This webinar challenges some of the more traditional ways of doing this work, which often requires us to put emotions aside in order to appear neutral, unbiased or “professional”.  Unfortunately, this approach often overlooks the real feelings we carry with us when it comes to DEI -- and to DEI-related change in particular.  As a result, this webinar covers the following:  

1. What is empathy?
2. Why empathy is important in effective DEI
3. How modelling empathy supports collaboration, connection and understanding between diverse stakeholder groups -- and what this looks like
4. Why self-compassion is needed to be strong DEI leaders and champions
5. BONUS:  I share my own recipe for empathetic DEI based on my own work and lessons learned.

You can click the link to access the webinar here.  Many thanks to Charity Village for hosting this important discussion.

​Recently, I have been having a lot of conversations about the best ways to track the success of organizational diversity, equity and inclusion.  I am a strong believer that traditional approaches to measuring effectiveness based solely on diversity -- which tend to rely heavily on snapshots of representation by gender, race, LGBTQ2S+ identification, for example – are not sufficient. Instead, to be truly meaningful, I believe organizations need to also have insights into the experiences of diverse staff.

Here we are, just moments away from a new year -- and a new decade!  As many of us do every year, it's time to consider what's next for us, reflect on our goals, and set resolutions.  2020 is here and the future is NOW!

This year, I've decided to think about the future of DEI and set my goals accordingly. Ten years from now, what are the changes I hope we'll see in the field?  How can I help move the dial forward?  What is the story my clients will tell about their DEI journey?  This list offers food for thought for organizations seeking to grow their DEI capacity and establish themselves as leaders.